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1. 0 00002 eee eee 127 New support for region rendering ana naan 127 New support for Area Lights 0c eee ee eee 128 Improved on demand translation 00000 eee 128 Improved Custom Scene Text a na anaana nananana 129 Extension to mental ray shading language 129 New file texture filter types e eee eee eee 129 New Framebuffer Settings 00 cece een eee eens 130 New Framebuffer options 0 anaana anen 130 Improved preview rendering eee eee ees 130 New attribute for Texture Bake sets 130 New attribute for Use Background shader 131 New image output formats eee eee 131 IPR Interactive Photorealistic Rendering improvements 131 What s New in Maya 6 5 9 Table of Contents Dynamics 205055 604 See he ee tee ee 132 Support for renaming per particle fields 132 Specifying which particle systems to cache 132 Painting oe ecne ENG PORTABLE 132 Artisan improvements 0 000 eee ee 132 3D Paint Tool improvements 0000 eee eee eee 132 Maya Unlimited 00000 20 ee 133 Fluid Effects improvements cece eee eee 133 outFoam attribute e e esie ta i e e a a ee 133 New Solver Quality attribute nannan anaana eee eee 133 Fur improvements 0 002 cece eee tee eee 133 Fur equalizer maps improvements 5
2. What s New in Maya 6 5 145 4 Other improvements gt FCheck improvements on Mac OS X Utilities FCheck improvements on Mac OS X The following improvements have been made to FCheck on Mac OS X e FCheck supports Z depth viewing e FCheck is available through Terminal The FCheck command line utility has different options available on Mac OS X than on Windows and Linux You can get complete details on all the FCheck options by typing FCheck h Additional utilities on Mac OS X The following utilities are now available for Mac OS X through Terminal e imgcvt e interlace e blur2d e xpm2bmp For more details on these utilities see the Maya Help Environment Variables Improvements to IMF IMF can now load plug ins from multiple directories as opposed to loading from a default directory You can set an environment variable IMF_PLUG_IN_PATH to use this functionality What s New in Maya 6 5 146 4 Other improvements gt New MEL commands and flags MEL New MEL commands and flags The following are new MEL commands and flags for Maya 6 5 General The getAttr command now works on attributes of type pointArray You can now use the setAttr command to set string attribute names that begin with a dash For example setAttr SnodeAttr type string text There is a new dag flag for the cycleCheck command Use the dag flag to enable detection of cycles involving the DAG There is a
3. This method resets the interator s root type and filter list MitDependencyGraph This is a new constructor with reset methods that accept an object that defines the iteration type You can now specify multiple MFn types to filter the iteration using the MIteratorType class What s New in Maya 6 5 168 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MItDependencyGraph MObject amp rootNode MPlug amp rootPlug MIteratorType amp infoObject Direction direction kDownstream Traversal traversal kDepthFirst Level level kNodeLevel MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method constructs a DG Iterator with a root node or a root plug MStatus resetTo MObject rootNode MPlug rootPlug MIteratorType amp infoObject Direction direction kDownstream Traversal traversal kDepthFirst Level level kPlugLevel This method clears the iterator data and reinitializes the iterator MitDependencyNodes This is a new constructor with reset methods that accept an object that defines the iteration type You can now specify multiple MFn types to filter the iteration using the MIteratorType class MItDependencyNodes MIteratorType amp infoObject MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method initializes the iterator and the filter list MStatus reset MIteratorType amp infoObject This method resets the iterator and reinitializes the filter list The filter list is specified by the MIteratorType object
4. static void flushAnimKeyframeEditedCallbacks Animation keyframe edited callbacks are queued such that they are only issued on idle events However there may be a time when you want to issue the callback at a specific time This method provides this functionality This method will flush all animation keyframe edited callbacks and force them to issue their callbacks with the data they contain What s New in Maya 6 5 154 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MDataHandle We have added support for getting the MTypeld information of a data handle In some cases data handles accept more than one type ID which requires an array for the results MStatus acceptedTypelds MUintArray amp const This method returns an unsigned integer array of numbers which can be used to create a MTypeld of the accepted data type This is useful when working with MPxData objects MFilelO There has been some substantial changes to this class in order to support the file referencing changes that have been made in Maya static MStatus import const MString amp fileName const char type NULL bool preserveReferences false const char nameSpace NULL static MStatus exportSelected const MString amp fileName const char type NULL bool preserveReferences false static MStatus exportAll const MString amp fileName const char type NULL bool preserveReferences false The three existing methods abo
5. File referencing gt Proxy references if Reference Editor of x File Reference Proxy Help v File Particulars Unresolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson Reload Resolved Name Namespace reference1 When you have finished setting the Proxy Tag options click the Proxy button The file browser appears showing the current default project scene directory or the last directory that was accessed by the file browser when referencing a file In the file browser navigate to the file you want to specify as the proxy reference and select it Click Proxy to add the selected file as a proxy reference to the existing file reference The proxy file is added to the list of available proxies within the proxy set C Documents and Settings mjamieson mb reference2R N reference2 mb In the Reference Editor the selected file reference s name updates to display a P icon immediately to the right of the load unload check box The P indicates that one or more proxy references exists for the file reference When Proxy gt Add Proxy is first used with an existing file reference a proxy set is created for that file reference The proxy set contains the original file reference as well as the new proxy reference That is all of the file references are members of the proxy set The proxy set implicitly defines the various proxy files for that file reference For more information on proxy tag options see P
6. New Preview settings The following new settings are available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Preview section Preview Convert Tiles This option enables a plug in conversion procedure for previewing image tiles when the primary framebuffer type is of a type that is not supported by Maya s Render View for example floating point framebuffers or color framebuffers with components larger than 8 bit The conversion procedure involves the clipping and rescaling desaturation of colors for display This option is on by default Preview Tonemap Tiles and Tonemap Scale What s New in Maya 6 5 122 The Preview Tonemap Tiles option previews image tiles for floating point framebuffer types where the color values exceed the typical 0 1 range because the color values are RGB This option is on by default 4 Other improvements gt New Shadows settings The Tonemap Scale value is used to rescale the color data of image tiles prior to clipping This is useful when rendering high dynamic range images The final rendered image is not affected by this value The default value is 1 New Shadows settings The following new settings are available for shadows in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Detail Shadow Maps drop down list The Detail shadow map option is a combination of features from standard shadow maps and raytraced shadows meaning that it collects more information about shadow cast
7. Use default lighting Turn off hardware texturing and back face culling Turn on fast interaction 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback In the Panel menu select alternate shading modes from the Shading gt Interactive Shading menu The performance of different shading modes from best to worst is 1 Bounding Box 2 Points 3 Wireframe 4 Normal In the Panel menu turn on Lighting 5 Use Default Lighting In the Panel menu bar do the following e Turn off Shading gt Hardware Texturing e Turn off Shading gt Back Face Culling Turn on Display gt Fast Interaction In this mode objects are drawn at a resolution that is based on their screen size In other words the further an object is from the camera the lower its drawn resolution What s New in Maya 6 5 189 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback Put non moving objects in Template mode Turn off grid display Turn off Time Slider ticks Hide Time Slider What s New in Maya 6 5 190 Templated objects are not redrawn during playback Also templated objects will always be drawn in wire mode even when the current view is shaded It is useful to put large currently insignificant objects in the scene into template mode while working on other objects in the scene 1 Select the non moving object you want to template 2 Select Display gt Object Display gt Template Select Display gt
8. bind and unbind If you also want to batch render your hardware shader we recommend you use the newer API glGeometry glBind and glUnbind We recommend you cache all node attributes as internal The example plug ins hwColorPerVertex hwPhongShader and the cgFxShader all do this Non cached values are very expensive to evaluate and can double the draw time Avoid using complex attributes structures and arrays If the output color on the shader is not important do not make any attributes affect it This causes additional computation as marking one attribute dirty causes a recomputation to derive the dependent one What s New in Maya 6 5 183 5 Performance tips gt Best practices for performance What s New in Maya 6 5 184 The compute method can be left empty if not required The simpler the method the better You will not see Hypershade swatches if you do not compute the output color Do not post normalize tangents in the plug in This is done for you Data sent via the geometry calls are read only and are cached internally Do not modify the values Use simple data structures versus Maya API objects for simple data For example use float3 versus MFloatVector There is a performance overhead due to the interfaces used in OpenMaya Take advantage of methods available on M3dView OpenGL state is cached internally and can give better performance than using beginGL endGL and direct calls to OpenGL Us
9. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners All images Copyright Alias unless otherwise noted ALIAS E 210 KING STREET EAST E TORONTO CANADA MSA 1J7 Table of Contents 1 About Maya 6 5 nee eck ea eter aie ig a BRAD eee ee ee ar ele Sie 13 What s new and improved in Maya 6 5 05 13 2 File referencing 2 ee 15 About file referencing improvements a 15 General file referencing improvements 15 File reference edits cece eee e eee eee 15 File reference node architecture a 16 Selective preload of file references 17 Maya API gcc cies 2 eek ohare AARAL ese ain NG 17 File referencing MEL update 000 ee eee 17 Grouping file references 00 ccc eee cece 18 Multilevel file references 0000 cece eee eee eaee 18 Create Reference options cece eee eee 18 Reference Editor cece eee eee eens 23 Preload Reference Editor 0000 cece eee e eens 27 Proxy TeferenGes iadd see ee ee ee ee ee NG 27 Working with proxy references 000 cece ee eeeee 31 Proxy Options sree kia 4 gate ee ee CIRE ee ea 42 3 Performance improvements 0000 0200 ee eee eee 47 About Maya performance improvements 47 Generales vas cele AA PAA 48 Opening scenes with large polygonal datasets 48 Shaded and wireframe larg
10. MitMeshPolygon We have added more UV support to this class along with a new set points method MStatus getUVSetNames MStringArray amp setNames const What s New in Maya 6 5 169 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements This method returns the names of the UV sets that are mapped to the current mesh polygon that the iterator is pointing to MStatus setPoints MPointArray amp pointArray MSpace Space space MSpace kObject This method lets you set the positions of the current mesh polygon points using an array MitMeshFaceVertex This class has been improved and now supports iterating over face vertices A face vertice component can now be passed into the constructor of the iterator As a result you can now retrieve the face vertex with the following new method Additionally you can now access the tangent and binormal information of the component MObject faceVertex MStatus ReturnStatus NULL const This method returns the double index component of the vertex and face MVector getTangent MSpace Space space MSpace kObject const MString uvSet NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method returns the tangent information of the current mesh face vertex MVector getBinormal MSpace Space space MSpace kObject const MString uvSet NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method returns the binormal information of the current mesh face vertex MMatrix This class no
11. What s New in Maya Version 6 5 Legal Notices Maya Version 6 5 Copyright 2005 Alias Systems Corp Alias All rights reserved Graph Layout Toolkit Copyright 1992 1997 Tom Sawyer Software Berkeley California All rights reserved All documentation Documentation is copyrighted 2005 Alias and contains proprietary and confidential information of Alias The Documentation is protected by national and international intellectual property laws and treaties All rights reserved Use of the Documentation is subject to the terms of the license agreement that governs the use of the software product to which the documentation pertains the Software The authorized licensee of the Software is hereby authorized to print no more than one 1 hardcopy of any Documentation provided in digital format per valid license of the Software held by such licensee Except for the foregoing the Documentation may not be translated copied or duplicated in any form physically or electronically in whole or in part without the prior written consent of Alias Alias the swirl logo and Maya are registered trademarks and the Maya logo Conductors Trax IPR Maya Shockwave 3D Exporter and MEL are trademarks of Alias in the United States and or other countries worldwide FBX is a registered trademark of Systemes Alias Qu bec Inc SGI IRIX Open GL and Silicon Graphics are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics Inc in the United States and or oth
12. A new Select Coarser Components feature has been added for subdivision surface work to let you move to a coarser level in the subdivision surface hierarchy while maintaining an active selection For example when editing a face or vertex at one level and you select Subdivision Surfaces gt Select Coarser Components the related subdivision surface component at the next coarser level is selected What s New in Maya 6 5 81 4 Other improvements gt New animation clip per channel offset controls This Select Coarser Components feature is also available by pressing the right mouse button on the subdivision surface and selecting Select Coarser from the marking menu or by pressing Ctrl Up Animation New animation clip per channel offset controls In Maya 6 5 rather than offsetting whole clips you can now offset each clip s individual channels with the new Channel Offsets The Channel Offsets provide you with a more open ended way of specifying how Maya interprets channel values within and between clips in the Trax Editor In previous versions of Maya you had to place animation channels in separate clips under a subcharacter if you wanted them to have different offsets For example you can now treat animation control objects in world space like root nodes by giving them absolute rotation channels and relative translation channels This lets you correctly offset your control objects without using subcharacters Absolute and relat
13. Duplicate Absolute Settings 84 triangles precomputation 52 U update sculpt deformations 53 pdate Cloth State 137 se Background shader 131 se Distance Cache 53 56 se Smooth Skin Weight Copy 92 UV Texture Editor Dim Image 81 performance improvements 54 Selected Images 80 U U Use default material 50 U U Index vV Vertex bake set 116 alpha blending 117 ambient occlusion 111 bake alpha 116 bake color 116 clamp max 116 clamp min 116 color blending 117 max alpha 116 min alpha 116 View Radii in Pixel Size 125 viewCallbackTest 177 virtual memory increase 74 Visibility Samples 108 Visible In Transparency 117 Visualize Cloth collision attributes 137 Volume Samples 120 W weightListNode 178 weights smooth skin copy 92 wheel mouse 69 wrap deformers playback improvements 52 X xpm2bmp for Mac OS X 146 What s New in Maya 6 5 201 Index What s New in Maya 6 5 202
14. Grid When the Grid menu item is off the grid does not appear in the scene view 1 Select Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences The Maya Preferences window appears 2 Inthe Categories column select Timeline 3 In the Timeline section set Key Ticks to None Select Display 5 UI Elements 5 Time Slider When the Time Slider menu item is off the Time Slider does not appear in Maya s main interface Set Playback Update View to Active Modeling Remove invalid geometry Remove unused geometry Reduce evaluations of NURBS objects 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback 1 Select Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences The Maya Preferences window appears 2 Inthe Categories column select Timeline 3 In the Playback section set Update View to Active Your scene s animation now plays back only in the active Maya scene view 1 Select File 5 Optimize Scene Size 5 O The Optimize Scene Size Options window appears 2 Turn on NURBS Surfaces Curves and then click the Optimize now button next to the option 1 Select File gt Optimize Scene Size gt O The Optimize Scene Size Options window appears 2 Turn on NURBS curves and Locators and then click the Optimize button Use the Display 5 NURBS Smoothness menu to reduce the number of evaluations along each span of a NURBS object Hull mode is the fastest to draw The Rough Medium and Fine modes c
15. but after the background has been drawn The callback function is passed any client data that was provided when the callback was registered static MCallbackId add3dViewPostRenderMsgCallback const MString amp panelName void func MString amp panelName void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method registers a callback when the 3D view is about to display its rendered contents to the Render View It is called for every refresh of the view after the scene is drawn but before any 2D adornments are drawn The callback function is passed any client data that was provided when the callback was registered Examples of new plug in functionality apiSimpleShape This is a new example that demonstrates the usage of the MPxComponentShape class for creating surface shapes with components intersectCmd This new example demonstrates the usage of the new acceleration intersection methods available in the MFnMesh class pfxInfoCmd This is a new example that demonstrates the usage of the new Paint Effects API classes viewCallbackTest This is anew example that demonstrates the new pre post render and view destroyed callbacks of the MUiMessage class What s New in Maya 6 5 177 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements weightListNode This is a new example that demonstrates the reading and writing of a multi of multi attribute An example of a multi of multi attribute
16. defaults to the mental ray core value 4 Shading Quality This value indicates the number of shading samples per image pixel The default value is 1 and the maximum value is 4 You can find these new settings in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab in the Raytracing section You can also use new quality presets for Rapid Scanline see New Quality Presets on page 118 for more information Note Rapid scanline should not be used for scenes that require ray tracing or final gathering New shader library A new shader library called subsurface mi enabling subsurface scattering is available To see the contents of this library click the information _i button in the Shader Manager This library is loaded by default The subsurface mi library includes fast non physical subsurface scattering shaders misss_fast_ and physically correct subsurface scattering shaders misss_physical What s New in Maya 6 5 108 4 Other improvements gt Improved displacement approximation in mental ray for Maya The physically correct subsurface scattering shaders provide physically accurate results by using true volumetric computations They work better in scenes where photon tracing is required The non physical subsurface scattering shaders do not provide physically accurate results but instead provide quick consistent and visually pleasing results The non physical subsurface scattering shaders provide a way to e
17. long GetIntResult double GetDoubleResult What s New in Maya 6 5 144 4 Other improvements gt Maya browser can get data from Maya Array return types unsigned long GetArrayResultSize string GetStringArrayIndexResult in unsigned long index long Get IntArrayIndexResult in unsigned long index double GetDoubleArrayIndexResult in unsigned long index void GetStringArrayResult out PRUint32 count retval array size is count out string result void GetIntArrayResult out PRUint32 count retval array size is count out long result void GetDoubleArrayResult out PRUint32 count retval array size is count out double result hi The following example demonstrates the use of the Web browser getting data from Maya Example var imel this line is only required if this is a web page netscape security PrivilegeManager enablePrivilege UniversalXPConnect imel Components classes alias com CommandEngine MEL 1 getService imel imel QueryInterface Components interfaces nsIMEL create a sphere make the command undoable and show results in the script editor imel ExecuteCommand sphere 1 1 The sphere command returns a string array var array var count array imel GetStringArrayResult count var arrayLen count value for index 0 index lt arrayLen index can do something with the results here using array index
18. 2 File referencing gt Proxy references File Type Specific Options Depending on the File Type you select various File Type Specific Options are displayed here See File gt Open Scene in the Basics guide for more information Remove Proxy Deletes the proxy reference that is selected from the submenu The proxy reference is deleted from the proxy set The list of available proxy references is displayed in the menu based on their proxy tags When a proxy tag appears in gray it indicates that it is currently loaded File Reference Prox original kka Reload Reload Proxy as gt loRes treePM loRes proxy1 mb reference2RN reference2 mb reference3RN reference2 mb When a proxy reference is removed from a proxy set and only the original file reference remains the proxy set is removed and the reference returns to a normal reference state In the Reference Editor the P icon is removed from the listed file reference and the listed name of the file reference is updated What s New in Maya 6 5 44 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Note It is not possible to remove a loaded proxy To remove the currently loaded proxy you must first reload any other proxy reference from the list so that the proxy you want to remove becomes available within the list for removal Reload Proxy As Loads the proxy reference that is selected from the submenu into the scene it Reference Editor UAA Help gt
19. 75 4 Other improvements gt Soften split polygons Now when you split your polygonal geometry you can specify whether or not the edges of your split geometry are soft or hard A high Smoothing Angle value like 180 makes your edges soft or rounded and a low Smoothing Angle value like 0 makes your edges hard or sharp Note When the angle between your split polygonal faces is 0 e You can make the shared edges hard by setting their Smoothing Angles to 0 0 e You can not see the effect of your split polygonal faces Smoothing Angles in the scene view The Smoothing Angle option is located in the Split Polygon Tool settings and in the Poly Split History section of each polySplit node The default Smoothing Angle value for split polygons it is 0 What s New in Maya 6 5 76 Before Split Polygon 4 Other improvements gt Polygon Bevel improvements After Split Polygon Split Polygon Tool Smoothing Angle 180 Split Polygon Tool Smoothing Angle 0 Polygon Bevel improvements Merge Vertices The polygon Bevel feature now incorporates attributes for merging vertices Vertices are merged automatically when beveling an edge without having to use the Merge Vertices feature separately When you merge vertices coincident edges and their associated UVs are also merged automatically within a specified threshold The merge vertices attributes are on by default and can be edited from both the Channel Box and within t
20. For a description of this attribute see New Displacement Overrides setting on page 126 Create this attribute as an override on the shape node as follows addAttr ln miMaxDisplace at float pSphereShapel Disable Animation Detection For a description of this attribute see Animation detection on page 58 Create this attribute as an override on the shape node as follows What s New in Maya 6 5 113 4 Other improvements gt New Dynamic Attributes addAttr ln miAnimated at bool group1 Disable DG Cycle Detection Use this attribute to turn off the detection of cycles in the dependency graph when very complex shading networks are used to improve performance Cycles in shading networks may cause mental ray for Maya to become unstable in some cases Set this attribute to false to disable the DG cycle detection Create this attribute as follows addAttr at bool ln nodeCycleCheck mentalrayGlobals Force On demand Translation of Geometry For a description of this attribute see Improved on demand translation on page 128 Create this attribute as an override on the shape node as follows addAttr ln miPlaceholder at bool pSphereShapel Custom Phenomenon for Translation Use this attribute to attach a replacement material usually a material phenomenon node to replace the current shading group upon translation This attribute lets you use more complex phenomena Create this attribute as fol
21. MFnKeyframeDelta 151 MFnLayeredShader 152 MFnPhongEShader 152 MIteratorType 152 MPxComponentShape 152 Paint Effects 151 clips per channel offsets 82 Closest In Hierarchy 96 Cloth Collision Debug 136 Cloth constraints 60 edit membership 142 cluster deformers playback improvements 53 Collision Depth visualize Cloth 136 Collision Offset Paint Collision Properties Tool 136 visualize Cloth 136 collisions debug Cloth 140 Color Blending 117 Color Feedback Artisan 58 command line renderer 100 compiler API requirements 178 component editor custom layouts 73 constraints Cloth 60 Lock Output 90 constructors new MItDag 168 MItDependencyGraph 168 MItDependencyNodes 169 copy smooth skin weights 92 how to 93 Create Reference options 18 Custom Entities 127 custom layouts component editor 73 Custom Motion Offsets 124 Custom Scene Text 129 Render Text 129 Root Group Text 129 custom shelves 73 D debug collisions Cloth 140 deformers cluster playback 53 sculpt updates 53 soft modification tool 53 56 wrap playback 52 Diagnose Finalgather 126 Diagnostics Diagnose Finalgather 126 Diffuse Bounces 126 Dim Image 81 dirty node callback new MNodeMessage 171 displacement approximation 109 Displacement Overrides Max Displace 126 drawing improved skeleton 52 Duplicate Absolute Settings 84 edges soften extruded 74 soften split polygons 75 Edit Constraint Membership Tool Cloth 136 Edit Polygons Bevel
22. New in Maya 6 5 158 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements This method sets the worldspace flag on the attribute If this flag is set the attribute will be computed every time the node s worldspace information is changed as long as there is another attribute requesting its value MStatus setAffectsWorldSpace bool state This method sets the affects worldspace flag on the attribute If set any modifications to the attribute will cause worldspace to be computed as long as there is another attribute requesting worldspace bool isWorldSpace MStatus ReturnStatus NULL const This method returns true if the attribute has its worldspace flag set bool isAffectsWorldSpace MStatus ReturnStatus NULL const This method returns true if the attribute has its affects worldspace attribute flag set MFnClip We have added two new methods to this class for working with tracks and channel settings MStatus setTrack int index MDGModifier mod NULL This method specifies the one based track number for the clip MStatus setAbsoluteChannelSettings const MIntArray amp absoluteChannels MDGModifier mod NULL This method sets which channels of the clip are absolute and which are relative MFnDependencyNode A new attribute utility method is available in this class bool hasAttribute const MString amp name MStatus ReturnStatus NULL const What s New in Maya 6 5 159 4 Other improvements g
23. Use it to change the namespace that a reference will be loaded into This functionality can also be accessed through a new Edit Field in the Reference Editor The cleanReference flag for the file command has been expanded to allow the removal of edits from a reference node by their specific type You can use it to remove setattr addattr deleteattr disconnectattr and parent modifications from the reference node We ve added a new saveReference flag for the file command This can be used to save internal edits and connections directly to the referenced file instead of saving it in the reference node of the parent scene Modeling What s New in Maya 6 5 148 There is a new polyMirrorFace command that does mirroring of polygon objects 4 Other improvements gt New MEL commands and flags There is a new sma flag for the polyExtrudeFacet and polyExtrudeEdge commands Use the sma flag to specify the smoothing angle used for the edges of extruded polygonal geometry There is a new sma flag for the polySplit command Use it to specify the smoothing angle for the edges of split polygonal geometry Animation There is a new freezeJoints flag for the ikHandle command This flag forces the curve specified by curve option to align itself along the existing joint chain When false or unspecified the joints will be moved to positions along the specified curve There is a new rawFrameNumbers flag for the playblas
24. available What s New in Maya 6 5 112 Ambient Occlusion shader mib_amb_occlusion This shader is used to calculate how ambient light affects the scene Use it to add more realism in a more efficient way than traditional global illumination Blackbody light utility shader mib_blackbody CIE D Illuminant light utility shader mib_cie_d 4 Other improvements gt New Dynamic Attributes Use these shaders in addition to other light shader nodes to mimic real lights You can find these shaders in the Hypershade mental ray node Textures section or Lights section For more information see Base Shaders in the mental ray Shaders Guide in the Maya Help New Dynamic Attributes These new dynamic attributes are Maya specific and are designed to work in conjunction with custom shaders Some of these attributes are not available in the Maya user interface Once you have created the attribute you can tweak the value in the Extra Attributes section in the Attribute Editor Export Shadow Shader Use this attribute to have transparent shadows even when photons are used The attribute functions locally and overrides the shadowEffectsWithPhotons attribute the Direct Illumination Shadow Effects setting in the Render Global Settings on a per material basis so that shadow shaders are exported even when photons are turned on Create this attribute as follows addAttr ln miExportShadowShader at bool phong1SG Force Displacement
25. by node type to exclude That is the entire set of attributes for a given node type are excluded from locking by simply declaring the node type in the array Regardless of which attributes are excluded the Lock option always locks all of the nodes for the referenced file You can override the MEL procedures that ship with Maya by creating your own customized MEL procedures Your MEL procedures must be named exactly the same as the ones that ship with Maya You must additionally ensure the files are placed in the Maya script path For more information on working with MEL procedures in Maya see the MEL and Expressions guide The following examples describe the MEL procedures for excluding attributes and attributes by node type that were shipped with Maya They can be used as the basis for creating your own customized MEL procedures Note While these procedures are fully customizable through MEL users working in a team production environment should be cautious when changing these procedures in mid production as the change could inadvertently affect the overall pipeline and the data What s New in Maya 6 5 20 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements Example 1 MEL procedure for excluding attributes This example shows you how to create your own MEL procedure to specify which attributes get excluded by the file referencing lock operation The MEL procedure provided in this example is the same procedure tha
26. file will be stored in the parent scene s reference node You will experience improved performance when performing a selective load of a referenced file since unnecessary reference files which previously required their existing edits to be resolved and then applied to their related references are no longer pre loaded Maya API MFilelO now lets you create load and unload references and provides a number of export options that were previously unavailable File referencing MEL update The file and namespace commands have been extended to add support for managing namespaces The cleanReference flag for the file command has been extended The reference command now has anew editCommand flag which lets you query the edits on an unloaded reference node The reference command has been extended to allow the query of a reference file associated with a reference node For more information see New MEL commands and flags in Chapter 4 What s New in Maya 6 5 17 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements Grouping file references We have improved how Maya handles the grouping of file references Previously when a file reference was grouped and the referenced file itself was changed or modified in some way the grouping was not maintained Grouping is now maintained in all cases Grouping is also maintained between proxy references that reside within the same proxy set Multilevel file references We h
27. general if the angle between two shared edges is greater than the value specified by the Smoothing Angle attribute the beveled edge will be shaded to appear hard The default Smoothing Angle value for polygon Bevel is 30 degrees Mitering Angle The polygon Bevel tool now incorporates a Mitering Angle attribute to control how two intersecting beveled edges get joined when an intersecting non beveled edge is involved You can specify whether you want the recently beveled edges to be mitered or not by setting the Mitering Angle value as required Bevel on corner Bevel on corner Miter Angle 0 Miter Angle 180 What s New in Maya 6 5 79 4 Other improvements gt UV Texture Editor improvements The Mitering Angle attribute can be edited from either the Channel Box or within the Cleanup section of the polyBevel Attribute Editor If the angle between the two beveled edges is greater than the specified mitering angle the beveled edges will not be mitered The Mitering Angle feature is on by default and is set to 180 degrees UV Texture Editor improvements Image gt Selected Images improved Polygons Subdivs View Select BOEMA Hee ip te FF maena v Display Image DO Q 35 aNg A v Dim Image UY Texture Editor Baking Display Unfiltered Display RGB Channels Display Alpha Channel Use Image Ratio Pixel Snap Selected Images TA v pCubel blinni color checker2 gt pCube1 blinn1 transparency fractal2 pCubet bl
28. hides all meshes First Last Previous and Next Use any of these to view the appropriate group of meshes and hide the previously viewed group if any First select Hide All of the meshes and then use these buttons to step through the subframes To debug a Cloth collision simulation 1 Open the Cloth scene 2 Select the Cloth collision objects that seem to be causing the problem and then in the Cloth menu set select Cloth 5 Collision Object Debug 5 Add Selected Objects What s New in Maya 6 5 141 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements 3 4 In the cpSolver node go to the Collision Object Debug section and turn on the Collision Obj Debug Enable attribute Do one of the following e Select Simulation gt Start Local Simulation to run the simulation e Use the Collision Object Debug controls that are available in the cpSolver node to visualize the results The selected collision objects will be echoed as the solver evaluates them during simulation Editing Cloth constraints membership To edit the set membership of a Cloth constraint 1 2 3 Select the Cloth constraint in Outliner In the Cloth menu set select Constraints gt Edit Cloth Constraints Membership Do the following e Shift click to add items for example vertices points e Ctrl click to remove items for example vertices points Using expressions with Cloth To use expressions with Cloth 1 What s New in May
29. mode What s New in Maya 6 5 50 3 Performance improvements gt Animation Binary save over a network The speed of saving Maya binary files mb over a network has been improved dramatically You may notice some very large speedups However the performance of a networked file write is dependent on the structure of the file being saved as well the performance of the network influences the results Import of polygon obj files Windows We have modified the way that polygon obj files are read into Maya for Windows You should notice a large speedup of file import operations involving polygon obj files Animation Skinned geometry playback e Skinned geometry plays back faster when its unused influences are removed You can now use the Remove Unused Influences option at the time of bind or when optimizing your scene to speed up the playback of your skinned geometry See Prevent attachment of zero weighted smooth skin influences on page 26 Skinned polygonal meshes now play back faster in shaded mode when their triangles are precomputed See Precomputation of triangles for faster playback on page 52 High resolution skinned polygonal meshes now play back at faster rates in shaded mode in this version of Maya e Skinned geometry with user normals that are being deformed now plays back faster However playback of skinned geometry is still faster when you turn off the deformation of its user normals For
30. new floatSlider2 command which is a two handled slider widget The two handles cannot pass one another in other words handle 1 will always have a value less than or equal to handle 2 The nodeType command now has a api flag which allows you to determine the API type of a node There is a new mouse command for system devices It has two flags enableScrollWheel Enable or disable scroll wheel support scrollWheelStatus Returns current status of scroll wheel support There is a new imageBaseColor flag for the textureWindow command It accepts 3 float inputs representing the Red Green and Blue components to use as the base color for the image used as the background on the UV Texture Editor What s New in Maya 6 5 147 4 Other improvements gt New MEL commands and flags The following example will give the UV Texture Editor background a red tint textureWindow e imageBaseColor 1 0 0 0 0 0 polyTexturePlacementPanel1 File Referencing and Namespaces There is a new moveNamespace flag for the namespace command Use it to move the contents of one namespace into another You can now use the reference command as follows to returns objects in a reference file reference rfn q node There is a new usingNamespaces query flag for the file command Use it to determine whether a reference is using a namespace or a renaming prefix to resolve name clashes The namespace flag on the fi1e command can now be edited
31. of Maya polygon meshes that contained color per vertex information could take a long time to be combined into one mesh Polygons gt Mirror Geometry Polygons gt Mirror Geometry works much faster and is now implemented as a command with a single node You can now change the mirror properties on the single node Previously it was necessary to make edits on multiple nodes Polygons gt Smooth Proxy Polygon meshes that contain UV information have improved interactive performance when working in Smooth Proxy mode Polygons gt Cleanup Polygons gt Cleanup works much faster when you pick faces Edit Polygons gt Subdivide After picking faces when you select Edit Polygons gt Subdivide gt O to open the Polygon Subdivide Faces Options box it performs much faster when working with large data sets Edit Polygons gt Merge Vertices Edit Polygons gt Merge Vertices works faster Edit Polygons gt Delete Vertex Edit Polygons gt Delete Vertex works much faster What s New in Maya 6 5 55 3 Performance improvements gt Modeling Edit Polygons gt Delete Faces Edit Polygons gt Delete Faces works much faster Edit Polygons gt Separate Edit Polygons gt Separate works faster specifically when separating large polygon meshes that contain color per vertex information It is now possible to separate large data sets with thousands of meshes output much faster with a reduction in the memory required to do
32. reference in order to add one or more corresponding proxy references to the proxy set Example Creating proxies for a file reference A generalized workflow for creating proxies for a file reference is as follows 1 Create the files you want to use as proxy references What s New in Maya 6 5 31 2 File referencing gt Proxy references For example if you have a full resolution version of your scene you can create simpler lower resolution copies of this scene That is the other versions contain simpler versions of the objects comprise the scene but have the same names etc As a result you might have three versions of the scene a high resolution version called Scene_HiRes ma a medium resolution version called Scene_MedRes ma and a low resolution version Scene_LowRes ma Create a file reference for the full resolution version of the scene and give it a proxy tag name of Hikes In the Reference Editor select the file reference you just created and then add one of the other files as a proxy reference using the Reference Editor s Proxy menu In this example when you add the file Scene_MedRes ma as a proxy ensure you apply a proxy tag named MedRes Repeat step 3 for the Scene LowRes ma file to add it to the proxy set ensuring you apply the appropriate proxy tag name LowRes You can load or unload multiple proxy references in the scene simultaneously by selecting the file references within the Reference Editor and t
33. s New in Maya 6 5 99 4 Other improvements gt New flags for the Command Line Renderer Create Bins we A Add Selected Remove Selected Select Content Make Selected Exclusive Rename Duplicate Empty Delete We ve also improved navigation in Hypershade by including the swatch name in the pop up menu when you right click a swatch Assign Material To Selection Select Objects With Material Graph Network Frame Objects With Material Select Input Nodes Select Output Nodes Rename Help on lambert New flags for the Command Line Renderer We ve introduced the following new flags for the Render command What s New in Maya 6 5 100 4 Other improvements gt New flags for the Command Line Renderer Flag Name Definition sel Selects individual objects groups or sets el Selects display layers or render layers 70g Specifies a render log file and location The log file contains the standard output and standard error information lic Checks out the best available license for mental ray for Maya Two options are available for this flag mu and me The mu option checks for a mental ray for Maya Unlimited license If the license is available it is used and the maximum number of satellites is set to 8 If the license is not available a mental ray for Maya Complete license is used and the maximum number of satellites is set to 2 Th
34. shaded mode Fluids Solver Simulating fluids in the interactive view is now much faster Rendering will also be faster if the fluid is not pre cached The speedup is most significant when working with large 3D grids using the linear solver What s New in Maya 6 5 59 3 Performance improvements gt Fur Fur When using the new Rapid Scanline renderer for mental ray you may find that if raytracing is turned off Fur is rendered about twice as fast as the regular renderer If raytracing is turned on Fur is rendered more slowly but at better quality than the regular renderer Hair We ve noticeably sped up the creation and playback of hair caches for NURBS Curve output hair systems Cloth We ve improved the performance of drawing Cloth constraints This will be most noticeable when many Cloth vertices are constrained This improves the interactive performance while working with Cloth Results vary depending on the size of the model The larger the model the better the performance change If a model is very small the performance change may not be noticeable as the maximum frame rate is achieved Nodes and Attributes PolyBlindData node File operations for scenes containing poly meshes with blind data and operations within the Blind Data Editor are now improved in many cases as a result of changing the behavior of the blindDataEntriesAreNew attribute on the polyBlindData node In previous versions of Maya the default
35. so Edit Polygons gt Colors The Remove operation in the Apply Color command removes color per vertex information faster on large polygon meshes Edit Polygons gt Normals We ve improved the performance of several of the Edit Polygons gt Normals submenu items Average Normals Set to Face and Reverse Dramatic improvements will be experienced mostly when working with large data sets Subdivision surfaces display The display for subdivision surfaces is improved for wireframe wire on shaded and component display modes Users will notice improved interactive performance dolly tumbling and so on when working with complex subdivision surfaces Soft Modification Tool See Soft Modification Tool on page 53 What s New in Maya 6 5 56 3 Performance improvements gt General rendering General rendering New user preference for maximum hardware texture resolution A new user preference Max Texture Display Res is now available Use this preference to control the maximum hardware texture resolution to improve performance when the available texture memory on your graphics card is small The default value for the Max Texture Display Res is based on the maximum resolution supported by your graphics card up to 4K You can find this preference in the Display section of the Preferences window Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences Reducing the value of the Max Texture Display Res improves performa
36. the cloth to simulate faster or slower and still keep the same cloth property As well this allows you to control the step size over the course of a simulation many steps need only be used where the simulation is particularly complex We ve added a new Time Scale attribute to the Cloth solver cpSolver node Solver Attributes section The Time Scale attribute determines the relative time Cloth is running with 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements respect to the Dependency Graph time For example if you want the cloth to run through the simulation twice as fast Time Scale should be set to 2 The longer the Cloth s simulation time is the more force has an effect on the Cloth For example if the force is gravity the Cloth will appear to be heavier as the Time Scale increases The default value is 1 which results in the same behavior as in previous versions of Maya To reduce the solving time you can animate the Time Step Size accordingly You now have the option to allow animated collision geometry to block field constraints This automates the occlusion detection for field constraints Previously users could only get this by applying the constraints to components This became challenging if the collision object or the field was animated and the occlusion relationship changed over time Simulation gt Update Cloth State and the cpSolver command now automatically update the velocity based on the position from the previous
37. the frame buffer for a given view The buffer is read into a block of data that is defined as an argument The data block size must be large enough to accommodate view width view height depth map precision bytes of data MStatus readBufferTo2dTexture unsigned short x unsigned short y unsigned int width unsigned int height This method reads the depth values from the frame buffer for a given view into a current predefined OpenGL 2d texture What s New in Maya 6 5 153 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements Note The texture should be created and bound before making this call MAnimMessage This class now has better support for animation keyframe messages static MCallbackId addAnimKeyframeEditedCallback void func MObjectArray amp editedKeys void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method registers a callback that is called whenever groups of keys are modified The callback is invoked once per change for either single or groups of keyframes static MCallbackId addAnimKeyframeEditedCallback MObject amp animNode void func MObject amp animNode MObjectArray amp editedKeys void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method registers a callback that is called whenever groups of keys are modified The callback is invoked once per change for single or groups of keyframes on the specified animation curve node
38. the tangent of the vertex described by faceIndex and vertexIndex getFaceVertexTangents int faceIndex MFloatVectorArray amp normals Space space MSpace kObject const MString uvSet NULL const This method returns the tangents of all vertices of the face specified by faceIndex getBinormals MFloatVectorArray amp normals MSpace Space space kObject const MString uvSet NULL const This method returns the binormals for all face vertices getFaceVertexBinormal int faceIndex int vertexIndex MVector amp MSpace Space space MSpace kObject const MString uvSet NULL This method returns the binormal information of the face vertex specified by faceIndex and vertexIndex What s New in Maya 6 5 162 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MStatus getFaceVertexBinormals int faceIndex MFloatVectorArray amp normals MSpace Space space MSpace kObject const MString uvSet NULL const This method returns the per vertex per face binormals for the face specified by faceIndex MFnParticleSystem This class now lets you create and manipulate particle systems The RenderType enum now contains new items that describe the exact kHardware rendering type The new enum items are kMultiPoint kMultiStreak kNumeric kPoints kSpheres kSprites kStreak Note kHardware has been removed from the enum since the specific hardware render type is now used MObject create MStatus
39. tips on how to improve the overall playback of your scene see Getting the most out of Maya on page 181 What s New in Maya 6 5 51 3 Performance improvements gt Character Setup and Deformers Skeleton draw Simple and complex skeletons now draw at a faster rate Precomputation of triangles for faster playback You can now precompute the triangles for a shaded polymesh character using the Reuse Triangles attribute and improve playback performance Reuse Triangles precomputes the triangles for a shaded character and then reuses the triangles during playback rather than recomputing them for every frame Shaded characters comprised of quadrilateral polygons quads benefit the most when this option is turned on To turn on Reuse Triangles for optimized playback 1 Select the polygon mesh you want precomputed for optimized playback 2 Inthe Attribute Editor select the nShape tab for the poly mesh where n is the name of the poly mesh 3 In the Mesh Controls section turn on Reuse Triangles Character Setup and Deformers Wrap deformer setup and playback It is now much faster to set up wrap deformers with Max Distance values other than 0 Also the playback speed of wrap deformers with a Max Distance value of 0 or with Use Max Distance turned off has increased To further improve the performance of wrap deformations the default Max Distance value for wrap deformers has been changed to 1 What s New in Maya 6 5 5
40. use of multiple MFn Type IDs to filter through the iteration This functionality can improve the performance of an API iteration since multiple MFn Type IDs can be iterated over in one pass MPxComponentShape This class is derived from MPxSurfaceShape and it provides a high level interface for creating surface shapes with components MTimer This class lets you access to the functionality of the MEL timerx command What s New in Maya 6 5 152 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements Important changes to existing classes M3dView This class now has better support for view buffers enum DepthBufferFormat kDepth 8 0 kDepth Float ye The new DepthBufferFormat enum is used for querying the types of depth buffer formats that are available for reading MStatus readColorBuffer MImage amp image This method reads the RGB values from the frame buffer for a given view The buffer is read in a RGBA pixel format where each channel is one byte in size MStatus writeColorBuffer const MImage amp image signed short x 0 signed short y 0 const This method overwrites the RGB values for the frame buffer for a given view The expected input is a block of RGBA where each channel is one byte in size MStatus readDepthMap unsigned short x unsigned short y unsigned int width unsigned int height unsigned char bufferPtr DepthBufferFormat depthMapPrecision This method reads the depth values from
41. when it is first created The proxy tag appears in the list of proxy references within the Reference Editor Proxy tags let you globally load unload or switch between proxies Set Proxy Tag to this string high ji Tag Options Maya keeps track of and can distinguish between the last proxy tag used for a file reference and the last proxy tag used for a proxy reference This ability streamlines the tagging process regardless of your preferred workflow For example you may want to tag multiple file references in succession with a tag named hiRes when you first create each one In this case you need only type the tag name once and it is automatically assigned to successive file reference tags If you want to tag multiple proxies for those same references you only need type in the proxy tag name for the proxy once and the proxy tag will be remembered for successive proxies Alternatively you may want to create and tag one file reference named hiRes and then immediately create and tag its corresponding proxy reference named loRes You can then create the next file reference and it will automatically be assigned the tag hiRes then create its proxy reference and it will automatically be assigned the tag loRes Because Maya can distinguish between the most recent file reference and proxy reference tags specified this alternating tagging workflow is possible For more information see Proxy Options on page 42 What s Ne
42. where the name of the environment variable stays bound into the scene file This can be useful in a number of cases for example you can use the environment variable to switch between high medium and low res versions of referenced files just by changing the value of the environment variable and restarting Maya For example if you put your high resolution objects in reference files in usr project25 models hi res and low resolution objects in usr project25 models lo res and then create an environment variable such as SPROJ25 MODELS which is set to usr project25 models hi res then set the option in Maya to not expand environment variables see below If you then type a name such as PROJ25_MODELS penguin ma into the file browser when referencing What s New in Maya 6 5 70 4 Other improvements gt Environment variable expansion in Maya file browser in an object you will get the high resolution version of penguin ma If you save your scene it will contain the string PROJ25_MODELS penguin ma instead of the fully expanded path name If you now change SPR0OJ25 MODELS to point to the lo resolution directory restart Maya and reload the scene it will now look for penguin ma in the lo resolution folder You can also create a portable scene file which is independent of directories and folders The environment variables are set by the user to point to the location of any data which the scene accesses Preference We have adde
43. 133 Hair improvements 0c 135 Cloth improvements 0 000 ee eee eee 136 Visualizing Cloth collision object attributes 137 Painting Cloth collision attributes 138 Debugging Cloth collisions 2 000000 00 140 Editing Cloth constraints membership 142 Using expressions with Cloth 200000000 142 Maya Web browser 2 0000222 eeees 144 Maya browser can get data from Maya 144 Utilities bea ea oe Ge ae nie ee week eee BOR Bow Mier ae ee a 146 FCheck improvements on Mac OS X 0000 e ee eee eee 146 Additional utilities on Mac OS X 0 es 146 Environment Variables 055 146 Improvements to IMF 00000 ee 146 What s New in Maya 6 5 10 Table of Contents MEL ees sel eee ae ee oe Wee ee ees Se 147 New MEL commands and flags 00000 eres 147 General tee scene pnaka e NAE Mates KA eee ee Oe 147 File Referencing and Namespaces 2 00 148 Modeling beet has eae hee eee oe aS 148 AnimatloN cs tesla tom es initia Acta acess eee els 149 Paint EffeCtS coy td se ee earn bt at Lew Read odie na 149 Cothi ei i nea AA as 150 Photo Shop ua see a dee ee a ve RANA 150 API and Devkit 200000 2 eee 150 API and Devkit improvements eee eee 150 Performance improvements cence nee eens 151 New classes and header files 0 a 151 Imp
44. 2 3 Performance improvements gt Character Setup and Deformers Update for Sculpt deformations Sculpt deformations created by secondary NURBS objects now update faster The speed at which the updates occur is determined by the size of the region the smaller the region the faster the update speed and the number of control points the smaller the number of control points the faster the update speed being deformed Cluster deformations on polygonal models Cluster deformations on large complex polygonal models for example models that have many UVs colors blind data and so on now play back faster when in wireframe mode Soft Modification Tool Soft Modifications that use the Falloff Around Selection option now occur much faster particularly on dense meshes when a significant number of components have been selected In addition a new Use Distance Cache option caches the influence distance information to improve interactive performance when modifying the falloff curve falloff radius or the position of the manipulator The Use Distance Cache option will slightly increase the memory used by the softMod node and can be turned off from the Extra Attributes section of the softMod Attribute Editor v Extra Attributes Iv Falloff Around Selection Falloff Masking V Use Distance Cache Smooth skin weights in the Component Editor It is now significantly faster to change selections in the Component Editor when the Hid
45. 2 S sampling object samples 119 satellite rendering master 104 master machine setup 104 mental ray for Maya 103 port number 105 slave 104 Save Reference Edits 25 Scale 125 scaling camera icon 69 light icon 69 scrolling wheels 69 sculpt tool faster update 53 sculpting Artisan 58 Selected Images 80 Separate Shadow Bsp 120 shader library 108 shaders library 108 Use Background 131 Shading Quality 108 Shadow Map Bias 124 shadow maps detail 123 shadow maps rebuild merge 124 shared shelves 73 sharpen extruded polygon edges faces 75 split polygons 75 shelves custom 73 shared 73 skeletons faster draw 52 skin add influences at any pose 97 bind to non joints 95 faster playback 51 maintain smooth bind settings 97 prevent zero weighted influences 96 slave machine 104 Smooth Polygon Derivatives 121 smooth skin copy weights 92 Smoothing Angle 75 78 Soft Modification Tool Use Distance Cache 53 56 soften extruded polygon edges faces 75 split polygons 75 Solver Quality Fluid Effects 133 speed custom playback 91 Static Object Offset 125 STEP 65 Subdiv Details 67 Subdivide Ngons 78 subdivision surfaces component display 50 display performance 56 improved approximation 110 Subdiv Details 67 T tagging proxy references 31 Texture bake set 115 ambient occlusion 111 Final Gather Reflect 130 Time Scale Cloth solver 136 Time Step Size Cloth solver 136 Tonemap Scale 122 Transmit Transparency 117 Trax
46. 77 Delete Faces 56 Delete Vertex 55 Extrude Edge 74 Extrude Face 74 Merge Vertices 55 Normals 56 Separate 56 Subdivide 55 environment variable expansion 70 equalizer maps Fur 133 example plug ins API apiSimpleShape 177 pfxInfoCmd 177 viewCallbackTest 177 weightListNode 178 Export Tessellated Polygons 121 expressions Cloth 136 142 extrude soften edges faces 74 F faces soften extruded 74 FCheck Mac OS X command 146 field constraints Cloth 137 file browse environment variable expansion 70 file command 17 file referencing API update 17 Create Reference options 18 excluding attributes when locking 18 21 grouping improvements 18 locking and unlocking 18 MEL update 17 multilevel references 18 namespace editing 23 nested references 18 node architecture updates 16 Preload Reference Editor 27 proxy referencing 27 proxy tags 29 Save Reference Edits 25 selective preload 17 file texture 102 Index file texture filter 129 Final Gather 106 Final Gather Cast 117 Final Gather Receive 118 Final Gather Reflect 130 Final Gather settings 125 framebuffer 130 Freeze 125 Fur equalizer maps 133 G global illumination global illum scale 119 Hair 2D motion blur 135 hardware shader plug in 102 header files MIOStreamFwd h 152 header files new 151 how to copy smooth skin weights 93 make channels keyable nonkeyable 87 Hypershade 99 swatches 57 IBL 110 What s New in Maya 6 5 197 Index image o
47. 78 performance improvements 151 API example plug ins apiSimpleShape 177 pfxInfoCmd 177 viewCallbackTest 177 weightListNode 178 apiSimpleShape 177 approximation 110 area light 128 Bake Alpha 116 Bake Color 116 bake sets ambient occlusion 111 baking improvements 111 Bevel 77 Merge Vertices 77 Smoothing Angle 78 Subdivide Ngons 78 bind maintain settings after bind 97 to non joint objects 95 Blackbody shader 112 blend Animation preferences 89 Blend With All Except Constraints 90 blur2d for Mac OS X 146 Bone Radius Settings 99 C CAD files importing 65 camera icon scaling 69 caustics caustic scale 119 Channel Box how to make channels keyable nonkeyable 87 keyable nonkeyable 85 Channel Control Editor how to make channels keyable nonkeyable 88 keyable nonkeyable 86 channel offsets how to set 84 What s New in Maya 6 5 195 Index channels clip offsets 82 how to make keyable nonkeyable 87 keyable nonkeyable 85 CIE D Illuminant shader 112 Clamp Max 116 Clamp Min 116 classes changed 153 M3dView 153 MAnimMessage 154 MFileIO 155 MFn 158 MFnAttribute 158 MFnClip 159 MFnDependencyNode 159 MFnMesh 160 MFnParticleSystem 163 MFnSkinCluster 166 MGlobal 167 MImage 167 MItMeshFaceVertex 170 MItMeshPolygon 169 MMatrix 170 MPlug 171 MPxCommand 172 MPxFileTranslator 172 MPxHwShaderNode 173 MString 176 MTypes h 176 MUiMessage 176 What s New in Maya 6 5 196 classes new 151 MFnAnisotropyShader 152
48. Attempt to use fewer partitions if possible and if used for visibility to partition the surfaces into grid sections This helps with visibility culling Attempt to build surfaces that do not intersect each other in terms of their bounds bounding boxes Visibility testing performs worse in these cases Sorting of the dag hierarchy by display attribute types may help This can be done by reordering dag objects in Outliner Ordering your dag hierarchy may help e all surfaces first then all non surfaces 5 Performance tips gt Best practices for performance e by visibility within a given region perhaps by layer if layers are used for visibility partitioning e by depth to viewer if feasible material and lighting attributes for example all lamberts then all blinns then all shaders which don t use lighting then all those that do and finally all shaders which don t have transparency then all those that do Use a minimal shader for an object For example use a surface shader when you don t require lighting or you ll be overriding lighting elsewhere for example with color per vertex Remove duplicate shading networks Hardware Shaders These are coding tips for hardware shader plug in writers Do not push and pop all GL attributes if not required This is more expensive than pushing specific attributes If you re only using hardware shaders in the scene view we recommend that you use the older API geometry
49. Cleanup on page 55 e Edit Polygons 5 Subdivide on page 55 e Edit Polygons gt Delete Vertex on page 55 e Edit Polygons gt Delete Faces on page 56 e 3D Paint Tool on page 59 e Fluids Solver on page 59 Keep in mind the following about the performance improvements e The performance improvements detailed in this chapter were achieved on the scenes we tested Since Maya scenes vary widely your results may differ For additional information on speeding up your work please see Getting the most out of Maya on page 181 What s New in Maya 6 5 47 3 Performance improvements gt General We ve pushed the limit on the size and complexity of the scene you can work with While you may notice small improvements in some areas the sum of all the improvements may produce significant results In previous releases of Maya you may have met challenges with some features and workflows but in Maya 6 5 you may find the ease of working with Maya is significantly increased details see the following sections General on page 48 Animation on page 51 Character Setup and Deformers on page 52 Modeling on page 54 General rendering on page 57 mental ray for Maya rendering on page 57 Painting on page 58 Fluid Effects on page 59 Fur on page 60 Hair on page 60 Cloth on page 60 Nodes and Attributes on page 60 API on page 61 General
50. File Partict Unresolved Name Add Proxy Remove Proxy Reload original reference i loRes Loix feferencelPM ofidina scaccuce 0b reference4RN reference2 mb reference5RN reference3 mb Reload Proxy As is used to switch between proxy references for a given file reference The list of available proxy references is displayed in the menu based on their proxy tags When a proxy tag appears in gray it indicates that it is currently loaded Related topics o NG File 5 Open Scene in the Basics guide Y NG File 5 Reference Editor in the Basics guide What s New in Maya 6 5 45 2 File referencing gt Proxy references What s New in Maya 6 5 46 Performance improvements About Maya performance improvements We ve made various performance improvements to Maya 6 5 which are all described in this chapter In particular we d like to draw your attention to the following significant performance improvements which in some cases are thousands of times faster e Binary save over a network on page 51 Import of polygon obj files Windows on page 51 e Wrap deformer setup and playback on page 52 e Update for Sculpt deformations on page 53 e Soft Modification Tool on page 53 e Polygon editing with color per vertex on page 54 e UV Texture Editor on page 54 e Polygons gt Combine on page 55 e Polygons gt Mirror Geometry on page 55 e Polygons gt
51. FnKeyframeDel taAddRemove MFnKeyframeDeltaBlockAddRemove MFnKeyframeDeltaBreakdown MFnKeyframeDeltaInfType MFnKeyframeDeltaMove MFnKeyframeDeltaScale MFnKeyframeDeltaTangent MFnKeyframeDeltaWeighted These new classes provide access to atomic changes to keyframes as a result of animation curve edit operations These function sets work in conjunction with the new methods added to the existing MAnimMessage class New Paint Effects classes MFnPfxGeometry h MRenderLineArray h MRenderLine h These new classes let you access Paint Effects line information Please see the related example pfxInfoCmd on page 177 What s New in Maya 6 5 151 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MFnAnisotropyShader This class facilitates the creation and manipulation of dependency graph nodes representing anisotropy shaders MFnLayeredShader This class facilitates the creation and manipulation of dependency graph nodes representing layered shaders MFnPhongEShader This class facilitates the creation and manipulation of dependency graph nodes representing phongE shaders MlOStreamFwd h This header file in addition to the iosfwd header file lets you manage the inclusion of IO stream system headers MlteratorType This class is used to configure the type of iteration required An instance of this object is passed into the newly added constructor and reset methods of the iterator classes This class supports the
52. Opening scenes with large polygonal data sets We have made improvements in the loading of Maya ASCII format scenes comprised of large polygon data sets that contain UV information These types of scenes now load faster What s New in Maya 6 5 48 3 Performance improvements gt General Shaded and wireframe large scenes display draw and refresh We have made improvements to the display refresh and tumbling speed for shaded geometry polygon wireframe objects and subdivision surfaces wireframe objects The speedup varies a great deal depending on the complexity of the scene You will see the greatest improvement in large scenes 1000s of objects or large objects with more than 50 000 faces which may be as much as three to four times as fast scenes with only a few objects may be a small amount faster Polygonal objects with per face shader assignments Polygonal objects which have per face shader assignments refresh faster in the interactive scene view when in smooth shaded or smooth shaded and textured display mode You can also see the speed improvement when you use Isolate Select for polygonal object faces Particle sprite display We have made improvements to the display of particle sprites The speedup can be very large for cases where a single texture has been applied to sprites Smaller improvements have been made in cases where 2D scale or twists have been applied to sprites Polygon color per vertex draw Sce
53. a 6 5 142 In the Cloth cpSolver node go to the Extra Attributes section and right click the new Post Solver Callback attribute then select Create New Expression from the pop up menu Set the Evaluation option to be After Cloth 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements The other settings would force Maya to call this expression at times when the solver s internal state may not be valid which might cause problems If you re not getting the expected results for example the cloth starts bouncing around it s likely because this option is not set correctly 3 Now you re ready to write your expression We ve added two new commands cpGet SolverAttr and cpSetSolverAttr You can use the Get function to retrieve information for a single vertex or for every vertex at once Currently you can specify one of three data types position velocity or stress For example float Spos cpGetSolverAttr attribute position clothi float Sv5 cpGetSolverAttr a velocity index 5 clothi You can operate on the values returned from the Get functions in any way you like To return them to the solver you must return information for each vertex individually and the index and new values must be supplied For example cpSetSolverAttr a velocity 5 newVx newVy newVz The Set function currently supports position and velocity 4 The final step is to connect the new expression to the clothSolver node Do this by
54. a searches for maps with the correct name and frame extension defined in Use Frame If no default equalizer maps exist then they are created if they exist the time stamp is checked against the scene time stamp If the scene is newer the maps are rewritten The new Default Equalizer Map option only ever reads a default equalizer map and not one generated somewhere else If you want to use a map that has been generated or edited elsewhere you should select the Custom Equalizer Map option The behavior of the Custom Equalizer Map option has not changed except that the Use Frame number is used to initially generate the maps You should use custom equalizer maps in the following situations e if you want to edit the maps in any way such as painting them in the Paint Fur tool or in an external package e or if you are referencing the furry model from another project and want to use the maps generated in the original project Support for fur scene files from Maya 6 0 and earlier When you open an old scene with read equal maps you are prompted with the following dialog box What s New in Maya 6 5 134 4 Other improvements gt Hair improvements Equalizer Map for Old Scene xi Your scene is from an older version of Maya and was set to Read Equalizer Maps this functionality has been superceded If you had customized the maps or referencing the furry scene select Custom Equalizer Maps If you were reading default equalizer ma
55. able per object NURBS or polygonal surfaces This is available in the Attribute Editor in the Object Display section and as a new option in the Display gt Object Display menu Use Ignore Hardware Shader to make the hardware shader not show up on the object or use Use Hardware Shader to restore the default state of showing the shader This allows users of the plug in to selectively disable shader display for performance reasons Memory Unlimited undo queue takes more memory than a limited undo queue The default Undo queue is set to 50 in the Preferences window Take advantage of large address awareness on Windows XP up to 3 GB Use instancing when possible This includes geometry materials textures lights and so on Animation See also Optimize your scene for playback on page 188 See also New attribute for Hardware Shader Plug in on page 102 Use Skin gt Edit Smooth Skin to limit max influences remove unused influences and prune small influences What s New in Maya 6 5 185 5 Performance tips gt Best practices for performance Use Deform gt Prune Membership to remove components that aren t affected by the deformer Fur Lowering the Fur Accuracy value for the Fur Feedback hairs significantly increases interactive draw speed but makes it less easy to preview Scraggle Curl or Clumping Since Shadow Maps are expensive to render don t use more than you need Autoshading is free and can
56. adding the line postSolverCallback true to the expression For example the following expression clamps a piece of cloth to 3 along the Y axis Get the current positions These are directly from the solver float Spos cpGetSolverAttr a position clothi int SnumPts size Spos 3 Check each point for Si 0 Si lt SnumPts i int Sidx i 3 if Spos Sidx 1 lt 3 Set the new value into the solver What s New in Maya 6 5 143 4 Other improvements gt Maya browser can get data from Maya cpSetSolverAttr a position Si Spos Sidx 3 pos idx 2 clothi Trigger to ensure that this expression is called immediately after the solver has completed its calculations for the current frame postSolverCallback true Maya Web browser Maya browser can get data from Maya We have implemented a feature that allows you to obtain data from Maya using scripting languages such as JavaScript in the Maya Web browser The following example shows how this might be done The current IDL interface is interface nsIMEL nsISupports boolean ExecuteCommand in string command in boolean undoable in boolean display Return type of the last command executed through ExecuteCommand Value Type 1 int 2 int array 3 double 4 double array 5 string 6 string array long GetResultType Basic return types string GetStringResult
57. aed set and A 60 CLOT ee hee eg areas Sec AA 60 Nodes and Attributes 0 000 c ee eee 60 PolyBlindData node 000 eee ees 60 PAP lien ds Paved Hae Pat etre aol ae rad and a NA 61 Plug in Manager updating eee eee eee 61 MFnMesh create 000 0c eee ees 61 MFnMesh acceleration intersection methods 62 Iteration over several MFn types annann 62 What s New in Maya 6 5 5 Table of Contents 4 Other improvements 2222 2s ee 63 What else is new and improved eee eens 63 General a sei oe ede BANA ie ee hed ADS 65 Alias DirectConnect included with Maya 65 FBX plug in included with Maya 0000 sees 66 CGFx plug in Windows 0000 c cece eee eee eens 66 Subdivision surfaces heads up display 67 Improved Layer Editor navigation 0000 0ee 68 Maya Web browser improvements 22000 0 0 es 68 Improved wheel mouse support cece eee eee 69 Scaling a light or camera locator 00c cece eeaes 69 Environment variable expansion in Maya file browser 70 Examples man a E T wale BETA END PAN 70 Preferen Gen maa a IM NAA DRA DAA DA eae A 71 Oter notes a naan aaa GA KANA BAYANAN DA 72 Create new layoutsin the Component Editor 73 Adding custom shared shelves 200 aan 73 Virtual Memory limit of Maya Windows 74 Mode
58. ake a channel keyable or nonkeyable from the Channel Box 1 Select the object that has the channel you want to make keyable or nonkeyable 2 In the Channel Box select the channel you want to make keyable or nonkeyable 3 Doone of the following e Right click the channel The Channel Box s Channels pop menu appears What s New in Maya 6 5 87 4 Other improvements gt New channel state controls e Select Channels in the Channel Box s menu bar The Channel Box s Channels menu appears 4 Doone of the following e If you want to make the selected channel keyable select Make Selected Keyable e If you want to make the selected channel nonkeyable select Make Selected Nonkeyable The selected channel now appears light gray in the Channel Box To make a channel keyable or nonkeyable from the Channel Control Editor 1 2 What s New in Maya 6 5 88 Select the object that has the channel you want to make keyable or nonkeyable In the Maya main menu bar select Window gt General Editors gt Channel Control The Channel Control Editor appears with all the selected object s channels loaded Select the channel you want to make keyable or nonkeyable Click the Move gt gt or lt lt Move button to do one of the following e To make a channel keyable and have it appear in the Channel Box move the selected channel to the Keyable column e To make a channel nonkeyable and have it n
59. an be quickly accessed using the 1 2 and 3 keyboard hotkeys What s New in Maya 6 5 191 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback Precompute triangles for high resolution polygonal geometry Skeletons Turn off joint display Skinning Remove unused skin influences Disable deformation of skin s user normals What s New in Maya 6 5 192 1 Select the polygon mesh you want to precompute 2 Inthe Attribute Editor turn on Reuse Triangles in the Mesh Controls section of the nShape node Where n is the name of the poly mesh See Precomputation of triangles for faster playback on page 52 Select Display 5 Hide 5 Hide Kinematics 5 Joints 1 Select your skinned object 2 In the Animation menu set select Skin 5 Edit Smooth Skin 5 Remove Unused Influences This disconnects all zero weighted skin influences from your skinned geometry 1 Select your smooth skinned object and open the Attribute Editor 2 Select the skinCluster node s tab 3 In the Smooth Skin Attributes section turn off the Deform User Normals attribute Display skinned geometry as wireframes Deformers Decrease the wrap deformer s Max Distance 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback In the Panel menu select Shading 5 Wireframe This is useful when your skinned object is not triangle based The wrap deformer s playback speed and memory usage improves as you decrease its M
60. and animate the Cloth collision depth and offset This allows users to better control the collision parameters especially while painting For more information see Visualizing Cloth collision object attributes on page 137 In addition you can now paint Collision Offset map values using the Paint Collision Properties Tool See Painting Cloth collision attributes on page 138 For more information see Cloth 5 Paint Collision Properties Tool in the Maya Help We ve added a new Cloth Collision Debug feature to the Cloth solver cpSolver node to allow you to diagnose problems with collision objects in complex production environments For more information see Debugging Cloth collisions on page 140 You can now edit membership of Cloth constraints using the new Constraints 5 Edit Constraint Membership Tool Editing of membership is now possible whereas in previous versions of Maya you had to delete the constraint and recreate it again with the new component set For more information see Editing Cloth constraints membership on page 142 You can now use expressions to query and set vertices during simulation See Using expressions with Cloth on page 142 This allows direct manipulation of a vertex and can be used to fix pinching problems You can now animate the Cloth solver s Time Step Size cpSolver node Solver Attributes section The timing control for cloth is now independent from Maya s playback time This allows
61. ar type NULL This method exports selected animation objects to the specified file static MStatus exportAsReference const MString amp fileName const char type NULL This method exports selected objects to a reference file static MString getLastTempFile MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method returns the last temporary file used in the file save operation What s New in Maya 6 5 156 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements static bool getErrorStatus MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method returns the error status of the last file read static MStatus resetError This method resets the current file error state static MString loadReference MString amp referenceFileName MStatus returnStatus NULL This method loads the reference file specified static MString loadReferenceByNode MString amp referenceNodeName MStatus returnStatus NULL This method loads the reference referenced by the given reference node name static MString loadReferenceByNode MObject amp referenceNode MStatus returnStatus NULL This method loads the reference by the reference node specified static MString unloadReference MString amp referenceFileName MStatus returnStatus NULL This method unloads the reference file specified by the filename static MString unloadReferenceByNode MObject amp referenceNode MStatus returnStatus NULL This method unloa
62. at if the Max Object Samples value exceeds the global sample settings it is ignored This lets you keep global sample settings low The default value is 127 Volume Samples This setting specifies the default value for the number of volume samples for any volume effects in Maya shaders The default value is 1 These settings can also be adjusted on a per object basis This is useful in improving rendering speed by increasing anti aliasing quality only where necessary For more information see the mental ray User Manual available from the Maya Help New Memory and Performance option The Separate Shadow Bsp option is now available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Memory and Performance section This option enables mental ray for Maya to use a secondary Bsp tree for objects that have low detail shadow stand ins to improve performance What s New in Maya 6 5 120 4 Other improvements gt New Translation Performance options New Translation Performance options The following new options are available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Translation gt Performance section Optimize Non animated Display Visibility previously Prune Invisible Parts This option ignores non animated invisible scene entities during translation so that they are not part of the final rendered scene This option is on by default Prune Objects Without Material This option ignores objects without materia
63. atus What s New in Maya 6 5 174 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements This method gets the value at position If this ramp is a color ramp then this method returns a failure If this ramp is empty then this method returns a failure If the position is out of range either the start or end value is returned MSceneMessage This class now supports the before and after unload reference messages Also you can now cancel File New Open and Save operations using this class Called before a File gt UnloadReference operation kBeforeUnloadReference Called after a File gt UnloadReference operation kAfterUnloadReference These new Message enum items let you listen to before and after unload reference messages Called prior to File gt New operation allows user to cancel action kBeforeNewCheck Called prior to File gt Open operation allows user to cancel action kBeforeOpenCheck Called prior to File gt Save operation allows user to cancel action kBeforeSaveCheck These new Messages for File New Open and Save let you cancel the operation static MCallbackId addCallback Message void func bool retCode void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method is used in conjunction with the new Message items for File New Open and Save which let you cancel the operation The callback function contains a new retCode parameter A retCode set to true cont
64. ave improved how Maya handles the grouping of multilevel file references also referred to as nested references Previously Maya did not recognize the grouping that occurred when multilevel nested file references were used This is now maintained in all cases Create Reference options Lock option A new Lock option has been added to the Create Reference options window The Lock option lets you lock all of the nodes and attributes for a file when that file is first referenced into the scene You can also lock an existing reference using the Reference Editor P3 General Options fe Locator File Type Best Guess Locking file references is useful for collaborative work environments when files need to have their nodes and attributes locked to avoid accidental modifications by the users that reference the files In the Reference Editor a lock icon appears beside the listed reference whenever a file reference is locked What s New in Maya 6 5 18 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements File Particulars Unresolved Name hw CU Reload Resolved Name N A a Namespace NA a airplane2dAN airplane2d mb A airplane1RN airplane1 mb airplane2cRN airplane2c mb If you reference a file without turning on the Lock option any pre existing locked attributes in a referenced file remain unchanged That is if the file being referenced has locked attributes when it gets referenced th
65. ax Distance We recommend that you use the lowest non zero Max Distance value that still provides an acceptable wrap deformation on your geometry However do not use a Max Distance value of zero as it will disable the Max Distance option Disabling this option reduces the playback speed of the wrap deformer and causes it to use more memory What s New in Maya 6 5 193 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback Animation Remove unused animation components Delete all flat animation curves What s New in Maya 6 5 194 1 3 Select File gt Optimize Scene Size gt O The Optimize Scene Size Options window appears Turn on e Animation Curves e Animation Clips e Poses e Cached Data e Deformers e Expressions e Constraints e Pair Blends Click the Optimize button Select Edit gt Delete by Type gt Static Channels Index Numerics 2D motion blur Hair 135 3D Paint Tool multiple textures 59 A absolute clip channel offset 82 Duplicate Absolute Settings 84 Add Proxy 44 Alias DirectConnect 65 Alpha Blending 117 Always Blend with Existing Connections 89 ambient occlusion 111 Ambient Occlusion shader 112 animation blend preferences 89 animation detection 58 anti aliasing 119 API complier requirements 178 examples of new plug in functionality 177 important changes to existing classes 153 new classes and header files 151 other significant changes 1
66. ayeredShader 152 MFnMesh 160 faster mesh creation 61 new methods 62 MFnParticleSystem 163 MFnPhongEShader 152 MFnSkinCluster 166 MGlobal 167 MImage 167 Min Alpha 116 Min Max Object Sample Limits 118 Min Object Samples 120 Min Sample Level 118 MIOStreamFwd h 152 MItDag 168 MItDependencyGraph 168 MItDependencyNodes 169 MlteratorType 152 MItMeshFaceVertex 170 MItMeshPolygon 169 MMatrix 170 MNodeMessage 171 modeling 54 Motion Back Offset 125 MPlug 171 MPxCommand 172 MPxComponentShape 152 MPxFileTranslator 172 MPxHwShaderNode 173 MRampaAttribute classes changed MRampAttribute 174 MSceneMessage classes changed MSceneMessage 175 MString 176 MTimer classes new MTimer 152 MTypes h 176 MUiMessage 176 namespace command 17 namespace editing 23 Never Blend with Existing Connections 90 non joint objects binding 95 nonkeyable Channel Control Editor 86 normal mapping 57 O Object Hierarchy 95 object instancing 57 object samples 119 object specific render attributes 117 Occlusion Mask 131 offset clip channels 82 on demand translation 128 openEXR 131 Optimize Non animated Display Visibility 121 Optimize Raytrace Shadows 122 options for proxy referencing 42 Other Speed 91 outFoam attribute Fluid Effects 133 P Paint Collision Properties Tool Collision Offset 136 Index Paint Effects classes 151 Pass Custom Alpha Channel 127 Pass Custom Depth Channel 127 Pass Custom Lab
67. cing and the collection of received rendering tasks which make up the rendered image Master machine setup Maya Once you have installed Maya you do not need to install anything else on the master machine Mental ray satellites are enabled licensed and controlled by the mental ray for Maya technology in Maya What s New in Maya 6 5 104 4 Other improvements gt Rendering with mental ray for Maya and mental ray satellite On the master machine the maya rayhosts file controls which slaves participate in the render limited by the number of satellites permitted by Maya 2 for Maya Complete 8 for Maya Unlimited For more information see the Network Rendering chapter in the Rendering guide especially Set up a master machine with mental ray for Maya or mental ray for Maya Satellite in the Rendering guide which describes how to set up the rayhosts file on your system You must specify the port number for satellite rendering in the maya rayhosts file You must specify it in the rayhosts file as well as the host name The port number for mental ray for Maya Satellite is 7103 For example the rayhost file might look like this host1 7103 host2 7103 You can set the port number to a different value if you are using a different port on both master and slave machines For more information about installing mental ray on slave machines and setting up slave machines see Slave machine installation in the Installati
68. d This control is applied to the content of the root group not the whole root group section like other types of scene text Render Text The Render Text control can be used to customize render commands for renderable cameras For example it can be used to perform operations between renderings like file operations These custom entities should only be used by advanced mental ray for Maya users For more information see Render Global Settings mental ray tab in the Rendering guide or see the mental ray Shaders Guide available from the Maya Help Extension to mental ray shading language A new flag photonvol is available for shader apply statements The photonvol flag indicates a photon volume shader in a material or camera This flag is used to write custom shaders or phenomena and is available in the mi file that describes your shader For more information see the mental ray User Manual available from the Maya Help New file texture filter types You can now use Quadratic Quartic and Gaussian filters on 2D file textures when rendering with mental ray for Maya What s New in Maya 6 5 129 4 Other improvements gt New Framebuffer Settings In previous releases of Maya these texture filtering methods were automatically converted to mipmap filtering Older scenes may render differently now To revert to the previous behavior you should explicitly edit all the file texture nodes and set the filtering method to
69. d a new preference which controls if the Maya File Browsers expand environment variables in path names In the Preferences editor Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences select User Interface In the File Browser section there are two options for Environment Variables Retain Environment variables typed into Maya File Browser path name textfields are displayed unexpanded When accepting the selected filename in a Maya File Browser the unexpanded path name is passed to the recipient in unexpanded form For example if the file browser were invoked on a file texture node and a path name such as SIMAGES sgi mandrill gif is entered the unexpanded name SIMAGES sgi mandrill gif is displayed in the file texture s Image Name textfield Should the recipient field be exportable that field is output in unexpanded form Expand Environment variables are automatically expanded by the Maya File Browsers This is the default setting for the preference and also the behavior consistent with previous Maya releases For example if the environment variable SIMAGES is set to usr images and the path name IMAGES sgi mandrill rgb is typed What s New in Maya 6 5 71 4 Other improvements gt Environment variable expansion in Maya file browser into the path name textfield of a Maya File Browser and the user accepts the current selection the typed path name changes to the expanded name that is usr images sgi mandrill rgb The expan
70. ds a reference by the specified reference node static MString unloadReferenceByNode MString amp referenceNodeName MStatus returnStatus NULL This method unloads a reference node specified by an MObject static MString getReferenceFileByNode MObject amp referenceNode MStatus returnStatus NULL This method returns the reference a node belongs to What s New in Maya 6 5 157 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MFn kKeyframeDelta kKeyframeDeltaMove kKeyframeDeltaScale kKeyframeDeltaAddRemove kKeyframeDeltaBlockAddRemove kKeyframeDeltaInfType kKeyframeDeltaTangent kKeyframeDeltaWeighted kKeyframeDeltaBreakdown These classes now have new enum types for working with function sets MFn Type nodeType The MFn class now also contains a variable that you can use to store a MFn Type Note An unused if defined block has been removed from the MFn h header file MFnAttribute This class now has better support for controlling the display of attributes in the Channel Box In addition we now have better support for worldspace attributes of proxy DAG nodes bool isChannelBoxFlagSet MStatus ReturnStatus NULL const This boolean returns true if this attribute has its Channel Box flag set MStatus setChannelBox bool state This method sets whether or not this attribute appears in the Channel Box when the node is selected MStatus setWorldSpace bool state What s
71. dules Save Cancel Always Blend with Existing Connections When this preference is on e You can move or key objects that have existing connections such as animation and constraints What s New in Maya 6 5 89 4 Other improvements gt Improved animation constraint blending When you key or constrain an object Maya inserts a pairBlend node between the object s existing connections and the new keys or constraints The Lock Output attribute is off by default for all new constraints Always Blend with Existing Connections is on by default Blend With All Except Constraints When this preference is on You can only key objects that are not constrained When you key an object Maya inserts pairBlend nodes between the object s existing connections and the new keys Objects with connections cannot be constrained The Lock Output attribute is on by default for all new constraints Never Blend with Existing Connections When this preference is on You can only key objects that have no existing connections Maya does not insert pairBlend nodes to blend object connections The Lock Output attribute is on by default for all new constraints New Lock Output attribute The new Lock Output constraint attribute lets you specify whether or not you can directly manipulate an object s constrained channels For example when an orient constraint s Lock Output attribute is off you can change the orientati
72. e attribute is renamed and the per particle field attribute now works with file referencing Specifying which particle systems to cache We ve added an option to Solvers gt Create Particle Disk Cache gt O to allow you to specify to cache either Selected or All particle systems If Selected is specified then only visible non intermediate particle systems are cached Painting Artisan improvements When painting polygons with Artisan tools there is now added support for Show gt Isolate Select and Shading gt Backface Culling In previous versions of Maya the hidden areas in both these cases used to get painted Now the hidden areas are not affected by painting with Artisan Tools 3D Paint Tool improvements We have added support for Show gt Isolate Select and Shading gt Backface Culling In previous versions of Maya the hidden areas in both these cases would be painted Now the hidden areas are not affected by painting with the 3D Paint Tool What s New in Maya 6 5 132 4 Other improvements gt Fluid Effects improvements Maya Unlimited Fluid Effects improvements outFoam attribute The outFoam attribute now works on the Ocean Shader node This allows mapping of foam for various uses outFoam is the output foam density value computed by the texture Use this value to control the density of a layered foam shader If applied to transparency the value should be first inverted The outFoam attribute is not in
73. e Proxy To airplane2dPM1 original The selected file reference name updates in the Preload Reference Editor to indicate that the proxy reference is set to be loaded 6 So the reference loads turn on the checkmark for the file reference You can set any other file references at this time as desired 7 Click Open The scene opens as per the Preload Reference settings Note It is possible to set the load or active state for multiple proxies simultaneously when using the Preload Reference Editor The list of proxy tags that appear in the drop down list when multiple file references are selected is generated from all of the proxy tags currently in use for the proxy sets associated with the selected file references What s New in Maya 6 5 41 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Proxy Options The following updates and options are new to the Reference Editor in support of the new proxy reference features Note The Proxy Options menu items are also available from the context sensitive menu in the Reference Editor To display this menu select a file reference and right click the item Proxy Menu it Reference Editor File Referencq Add Proxy CR Remove Proxy P njamieson h Reload Reload Proxy as gt njamieson h reference4RN reference2 mb reference5RN reference3 mb Add Proxy Add Proxy gt O What s New in Maya 6 5 42 Adds a proxy reference to the currently selected file refere
74. e Zero Columns option is on This makes editing smooth skin weights for complex characters in the Component Editor more efficient What s New in Maya 6 5 53 3 Performance improvements gt Modeling Modeling A number of performance improvements have been made to the polygon modeling tools for Maya 6 5 specifically when working with large polygon data sets In particular the speed in which Maya selects data for many of the tools has been improved Polygons Reduce Polygons gt Reduce now works faster for all polygon meshes Reduce automatically reduces the number of polygons in a selected mesh by a user specified percentage Polygon editing with color per vertex The performance for polygon editing tools that modify the number of faces in a poly mesh that contains color per vertex information has been improved for example the Extrude Face command UV Texture Editor e Polygons gt Rotate UVs works faster e Polygons gt Scale UVs works faster e Polygons gt Cut UVs works faster e Polygons gt Copy UVs works faster Refresh Current UV values works faster e Select gt Select Shell Border works faster e Sew UVs works much faster now when it s selected from the UV Texture Editor toolbar What s New in Maya 6 5 54 3 Performance improvements gt Modeling Polygons gt Combine Polygons gt Combine now works faster for polygon meshes that contain color per vertex information In previous versions
75. e determined by the length of their bones This means that when you draw a joint chain the radius of all the joints in the chain automatically adjust to the length of their bones For example short bones like those in the human hand generate small joints and long bones like those in the human leg generate much larger joints than those in the hand New Joint Tool settings Any bones shorter All intermediate length Any bones longer than the Short Bone bones have interpolated than the Long Bone Length have the radii between the Short Length have the Short Bone Radius and Long values Long Bone Radius What s New in Maya 6 5 98 4 Other improvements gt Improved Hypershade navigation Bone Radius Settings Short Bone Length Short Bone Radius Long Bone Length Long Bone Radius Sets the bone length at which a bone is short Sets the bone radius of short bones This is the minimum bone radius Sets the bone length at which a bone is Jong Sets the bone radius of long bones This is the maximum bone radius New Joint Radius attribute The new Radius attribute lets you set the radius of individual joints The radius attribute is located in the Joint section of the joint node Rendering Improved Hypershade navigation We have improved navigation in Hypershade by including the bin name in the pop up menu when you right click a bin In addition you can rename an existing bin by double clicking it What
76. e glDrawRangeElements to draw with This is the API recommended by the card vendor for drawing with the geometry arrays passed to the hardware shader Make sure to set the hasTransparency return value appropriately Setting it to true causes Maya to draw an object twice once culling front faces once culling back Take into account the current display state in M3dView For example don t disable lighting if the display mode is Use No Lights When transparency is enabled framebuffer blending is already enabled You do not need to enable it again Take advantage of the new method MPxHwShaderNode currentPath to send the appropriate information for attribute query methods for example getTexCoordSetNames Test which parameters on color alpha and depth mask are enabled for interactive and especially for hardware rendering They can give hints as to how to draw a simpler version of the geometry 5 Performance tips gt Best practices for performance For the Hardware renderer the plug in can be called multiple times The general sequence is usually depth pass lighting pass es color pass shadow map pass alpha pass depth pass Items marked with braces are optional and dependent upon the number of lights in the scene whether shadows are enabled for those lights and whether alpha and depth output images are specified in the Render Globals Use the new Ignore Hardware Shader option which is avail
77. e information see Render Stats in the Rendering Guide Texture bake set Final Gather Quality For Texture bake sets the maximum value for the Final Gather Quality attribute has been increased to 2 The default value is 1 What s New in Maya 6 5 115 4 Other improvements gt New Vertex bake set functionality New Vertex bake set functionality Vertex bake sets have been enhanced with the introduction of new attributes and improvements to existing attributes Vertex bake set attributes Bake Color new Turn this attribute off when you do not want to bake the color channel When this option is on you can set Min Color and Max Color values and the Color Blending method This attribute is on by default Bake Alpha improved Turn this option on to bake the alpha channel equivalent to Maya s Bake Transparency option When this option is turned on you can set Min Alpha and Max Alpha values and the Alpha Blending method This attribute is off by default Clamp Min and Clamp Max improved Turn on these attributes to clamp the minimum and maximum color and alpha values so that the values are forced to be within the set range Min Alpha new The lower clamp limit for the alpha channel Max Alpha new The upper clamp limit for the alpha channel Occlusion Rays and Occlusion Falloff new For more information about these attributes see Improved Baking on page 111 What s New in Maya 6 5 116 4 Ot
78. e mc option checks out a mental ray for Maya Complete license The maximum number of satellites is set to 2 This flag is for use with mental ray s Satellite rendering What s New in Maya 6 5 101 4 Other improvements gt Maya vector rendering For more information see Rendering with mental ray for Maya and mental ray satellite on page 103 and Command line renderer in the Maya Help Maya vector rendering New maximum resolution for vector rendering Vector rendering now supports rendering for resolutions up to 3200x3200 pixels This lets you use bitmap renders created with the Vector Renderer for High Definition and standard film 2K production Maya hardware rendering Unlimited file texture size We ve removed the 1K file texture size limit in Maya 6 5 You can now create and use file textures larger than 1K on Windows IRIX and Linux Note File textures larger than 1K are not supported on Mac OS X New attribute for Hardware Shader Plug in A new attribute Ignore Hardware Shader is now available Use this attribute to ignore a hardware shader on a particular object without reassigning shaders When Ignore Hardware Shader is on the object appears with the untextured default of the hardware shader that is applied to it The Ignore Hardware Shader attribute is available on the shape node of polygon and NURBS objects in the Attribute Editor in the Object Display section You can turn the attribute on
79. e scenes display draw and refresh 1a ie er Pea aie a bare tee KAANAK AN 49 Polygonal objects with per face shader assignments 49 Particle sprite display 0200 c eee ees 49 What s New in Maya 6 5 3 Table of Contents Polygon color per vertex draw eee eee 49 Hardware shader drawing 2000c cece cece eee 49 NURBS shaded display ccc eee ee eee eee 50 Subdivision surfaces components display 50 Scene view speedup Use default material 50 Binary save over a network 0 eee ees 51 Import of polygon obj files Windows 51 Animations sce teed we eee ede Sse eee Sith a sh 51 Skinned geometry playback 0c cece ene ens 51 Skeleton draw pen as grees EAERI eis ce RRO O EA 52 Precomputation of triangles for faster playback 52 Character Setup and Deformers 000 cece eee eee 52 Wrap deformer setup and playback 52 Update for Sculpt deformations 53 Cluster deformations on polygonal models 53 Soft Modification Tool 0 0 a 53 Smooth skin weights in the Component Editor 53 Modeling ssr teeren ARLAN NN KALAN kl ee heed 54 Polygons Reduce saorte hta ma a E tees 54 Polygon editing with color per vertex 54 UV Texture Editor niiae n e Ea E a a es 54 Polygons gt Combine 0 ccc eects 55 Polygons gt Mir
80. ecked 2 Select File gt Import What s New in Maya 6 5 65 4 Other improvements gt FBX plug in included with Maya Note A CAD file s parts and assemblies are imported as groups For more information on Alias DirectConnect including supported CAD formats system requirements purchasing information limitations and troubleshooting information go to www alias com directconnect FBX plug in included with Maya FBX is a platform independent 3D interchange and authoring format which is designed to allow access to 3D content from all major 3D vendors and platforms FBX supports all major 3D data elements as well as 2D audio and video media elements FBX can be used as an interchange format between 3D content providers motion capture systems 3D modeling animation rendering packages 3D scanners hardware camera tracking systems and other applications The Maya FBX plug in allows you to read and write your scenes using the FBX file interchange format Once in FBX format data can be easily transferred to other programs such as Alias MotionBuilder For more information about FBX see the documentation that comes with the FBX plug in available as a PDF document in the docs directory of Maya CGFx plug in Windows The CGFx plug in is more accessible in Maya 6 5 Several important improvements and bug fixes have been made to the CGFx plug in and we are making it available to you in two different formats What s N
81. el Channel 127 pfxInfoCmd 177 photonvol flag 129 playback cluster deformations 53 custom speed 91 faster skinned geometry 51 wrap deformations 52 plug in manager improved update 61 plug ins example apiSimpleShape 177 pfxInfoCmd 177 viewCallbackTest 177 weightListNode 178 PNG 131 polygons Cleanup 55 Combine 55 editing 54 loading arge data sets 48 Mirror Geometry 55 Reduce 54 soften extruded edges faces 74 soften split 75 port number satellite rendering 105 precomputation of triangles 52 What s New in Maya 6 5 199 Index preferences Animation Blending 89 maximum hardware texture resolution 57 Preload Reference Editor 27 presets 118 Preview Convert Tiles 122 Preview Tonemap Tiles 122 proxy referencing adding a proxy reference 33 36 44 applications 28 description 27 options 33 42 Proxy Tag options 31 37 proxy tags 29 Reference Editor 29 Reload Proxy As 45 reloading multiple proxy references 39 Remove Proxy 44 removing a proxy reference 38 workflow example 35 proxy tags 29 Proxy Tag Options 40 Prune Invisible Parts 121 Prune Objects Without Material 121 Radius 99 Rapid Scanline 108 rebuild merge 124 What s New in Maya 6 5 200 reference command 17 region rendering 127 relative clip channel offset 82 Reload Proxy As 39 45 Remove Proxy 44 Remove Unused Influences 96 Render command 100 render region 127 Render Shaders With Filtering 122 Render Stats 115 rendering 57 Reuse Triangles 5
82. endering Improved on demand translation To improve mental ray for Maya s on demand translation the new Export Objects On Demand option is available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab in the Translation gt Performance section This option is off by default Use the Export Objects On Demand option to control the processing of objects in your scene This option is particularly effective in scenes that have objects beyond the view of the camera In this case mental ray does not process the objects beyond the camera view therefore reducing processing time When Export Objects On Demand is on it includes a Threshold value that lets you tune on demand translation for objects Objects with a number of vertices or controlled vertices greater than the threshold value are not translated until a ray hits the bounding box A value of 0 results in all objects processed on demand In this case translation is quick but render time may not improve You can select larger objects for on demand translation by raising the Threshold value Note This option is not supported for Fur What s New in Maya 6 5 128 4 Other improvements gt Improved Custom Scene Text Improved Custom Scene Text The following new custom entities are available for custom scene text for exported mi files Root Group Text The Root Group Text control can be used to customize the final root group specifying all cameras and objects to be rendere
83. epth map values for a collision object In Maya 6 5 you can also paint Collision Offset map values for a collision object To make it easier to see the effects of your painting you can also use the new Cloth gt Create Collision Offset Depth Mesh menu item The following are a couple of suggested workflows using these new features e To paint Cloth collision attributes on page 139 e To tweak a Cloth collision simulation on page 139 What s New in Maya 6 5 138 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements To paint Cloth collision attributes 1 Select the Cloth collision object 2 Inthe Cloth menu set select Cloth gt Create Collision Offset Depth Mesh A mesh appears around the collision object representing the Collision Offset value To change the mesh display to Collision Depth go to the Attribute Editor of the object s shape node and in the Extra Attributes section select depth from the Display Collision drop down list 3 Select Cloth gt Paint Collision Properties Tool gt O The Paint Cloth Collision Properties Tool settings window appears 4 Select the attribute you want to paint from the Paint Attribute drop down list and then select a Value to paint Tips Paint in Smooth Shaded display mode If painting Collision Depth the mesh appears on the inside of the collision object To make it easier to paint go to the Attribute Editor of the collision object s shape node in the Extra Attributes sec
84. er countries worldwide mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH amp CO KG in the United States and or other countries Lingo Macromedia Director Shockwave and Macromedia Flash are trademarks or registered trademarks of Macromedia Inc Wacom is a trademark of Wacom Co Ltd NVidia is a registered trademark and Gforce is a trademark of NVidia Corporation Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat Inc ActiveX Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and or other countries Mac Macintosh and QuickTime are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc registered in the United States and other countries Adobe Adobe Illustrator Photoshop and Acrobat are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated UNIX is a registered trademark licensed exclusively through X Open Company Ltd AutoCAD Discreet Logic Inferno and Flame are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk Inc in the USA and or other countries OpenFlight is a registered trademark of MultiGen Inc Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc RenderMan is a registered trademark of Pixar Corporation Softimage is either a registered trademark or trademark of Avid Technology Inc in the United States and or other countries
85. erence2AN referenceZ mb file name reference3AN reference3 mb Indicates locked l reference Any edits that occur to a proxy reference are independent from the other proxy references in the same set except when the original reference is created with grouping turned on In that case all subsequent proxy references that get added to the file reference are in the same group In this way you can use the group to transform the proxy within the scene reload a different proxy and have the transformation maintained When the second last proxy reference is removed from the proxy set and only the original file reference remains Maya collapses the proxy set The file reference gets updated in the Reference Editor to reflect this change You can differentiate between proxy references for a given file reference by labeling the proxies so they appear with a unique tag in the Reference Editor Proxy Tag options Proxy Tag options have been added to the Create Reference options window as part of the new proxy reference feature The Proxy Tag options also appear in the Add Proxy options window in the Reference Editor What s New in Maya 6 5 29 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Proxy Tags are unique names you can assign to both file and proxy references to more easily manage those references from within the Reference Editor The Proxy Tag option lets you specify the label tag you want applied to a file reference or proxy reference
86. erenced tree will be substituted with a simpler proxy reference 1 Inthe Reference Editor from the list of file references select the existing file reference for the detailed model of the tree In this example the file reference is named tree fi Reference Editor ON x File Particulars Unresolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson Reload Resolved Name C70 ocuments and Settings mjamieson Namespace tee treeRN tree mb 2 In the Reference Editor select Proxy gt Add Proxy gt O What s New in Maya 6 5 36 2 File referencing gt Proxy references it Reference Editor File Reference D9 The Proxy Options window appears 3 In the Proxy Options window set the Proxy Tag Options by typing lores in the text string field if Proxy Options of x Edit Help File Type BestGuess Proxy Tag Options Set Proxy Tag to this string vf loRes File Type Specific Options No Options Available E Proxy Apply Close 4 Click the Proxy button The file browser appears showing the current default project scene directory or the last directory that was accessed by the file browser when referencing a file 5 In the file browser select the treeSimple scene you want as the proxy reference 6 Click Proxy to add the selected file as a proxy reference to the existing file reference The proxy file is added to the list of available prox
87. erences We have restructured the representation of edits for file referencing to address these limitations The following changes were made for this release e File reference node architecture on this page Selective preload of file references on page 17 e Maya API on page 17 These architecture changes are described in more detail below File reference node architecture The representation of edits that get stored on the reference node of the parent scene has been modified for this release of Maya A reference node is created in the parent scene file when a file is initially referenced The reference node stores any modifications that occur in the parent scene to the referenced data Previously when a referenced file was unloaded edits that were made to the referenced file for example modified attribute values connections and so on were stored in a number of attributes comprised of arrays of strings within the reference node What s New in Maya 6 5 16 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements Now the parent scene s reference node stores the edits with a single complex data attribute and the edit strings that previously existed are no longer available Selective preload of file references To improve the performance of selective loading of reference files Maya now saves references more consistently compared to previous versions Any edits that have been applied to a reference
88. es from the main scene will never be saved to the reference file with the exception of new construction history shapes that are parented beneath transforms from the reference file Only edits to references that exist one level below the parent scene can be saved If the reference is nested deeper in the referencing hierarchy that is the file reference is a grandchild of the parent scene the edits cannot be saved Additionally if the reference contains nested references the edits will not be saved Saving reference edits is not possible if the file reference is unloaded You must first load the file reference before saving the edits Just like any file input output operation you cannot undo the Save Reference Edits command Nodes that are automatically created for a scene such as default cameras and default shaders are written to the child file during the Save Reference Edits operation If you require new DAG nodes to be written out as part of the save reference edits operation you can import the referenced file so all of the items reside in the scene and then select only those imported items as well as any new nodes and export the selection as a reference again In this way all of the edits to the nodes and attributes will get written to the exported file reference Importing and then exporting a reference has the potential to introduce namespace conflicts for other scenes that subsequently reference the exported reference It
89. etry items have changed from the last invocation of the plug in to draw The mask is valid only at the time that geometry or glGeometry is called virtual MStatus getAvailableImages const MString amp uvSetName MStringArray amp imageNames Override this method to specify the list of images that are associated with the given UV set in this shader This method is used to determine which texture images are available in the UV Texture Editor virtual MStatus renderImage const MString amp imageName const float region 2 2 int amp imageWidth int amp imageHeight Override this method to draw an image of this material This method allows a shader to override a render Maya only uses this method if getAvailablelmages returns at least one image name The imageWidth and imageHeight parameters should be populated with the native resolution of the input image to allow pixel snapping or other resolution dependent operations MRampaAttribute This class now has enhanced support for getting the color or value of a ramp position void getColorAtPosition float position MColore color MStatus returnStatus This method gets the color at a position If this ramp is a curve ramp then this method returns a failure If this ramp is empty then this method returns a failure If the position is out of range either the start or end value is returned void getValueAtPosition float position float amp value MStatus returnSt
90. ew in Maya 6 5 66 4 Other improvements gt Subdivision surfaces heads up display e A compiled version of the plug in is available This may be useful to you if you don t have access to a compiler The most recent version is available by choosing Download Bonus Tools from the Web from the Help menu of Maya e The source code continues to be available as part of the Maya 6 5 Development Kit in the devkit directory under your Maya installation directory by default this is c Program Files Alias Maya6 5 devkit plug ins You will need to compile this plug in to use it for more information about compiling and using plug ins see the API Guide You will require additional libraries from nVidia to use the CGFx plug in See www nvidia com for details Please check the Maya section of the Alias Support Web site for updates to the CGFx plugin Subdivision surfaces heads up display The Heads Up Display submenu now includes a Subdiv Details option to let you view subdivision surface information over top of a scene view To turn on the heads up display select Display gt Heads Up Display gt Subdiv Display Two lines of information get displayed in the scene view View Shading Lighting Show Panels Subdiv current level Displays the level setting for the currently selected components of the subdivision surface This option is particularly useful when subdivision components are displayed as points rather than numbers and the le
91. ew mental ray attribute called Occlusion Mask Use the Occlusion Mask attribute to see the soft shadow produced by final gathering of an object on a surface that uses the Use Background shader These soft shadows are also captured in the alpha channel of the image for compositing purposes You can set values for Occlusion Mask between 0 no shadows to 1 full shadows or map the attribute New image output formats When rendering with mental ray for Maya you can now save rendered images in PNG png and openEXR exr formats In the Render Global Settings window Common tab in the Image File Output section select PNG png or openEXR exr from the Image Format drop down list IPR Interactive Photorealistic Rendering improvements We ve improve IPR in the following ways mental ray for Maya s IPR now supports transformation orientation moving and scaling of lights and cameras e You can now tweak attributes in the shader glow node to see immediate updates in IPR The scene is not re rendered only post process updates occur For more information on IPR see Interactive Photorealistic Rendering IPR in the Maya Help What s New in Maya 6 5 131 4 Other improvements gt Support for renaming per particle fields Dynamics Support for renaming per particle fields There is now improved renaming support for per particle fields Specifically the per particle field attribute automatically updates if th
92. ey remain locked You can load and unload a locked reference file and the locked attributes will remain unchanged If you need to modify any nodes or attributes on a locked reference file you can unlock and later re lock the reference file from within the Reference Editor Note If edits are applied to an unlocked reference file at the parent scene level those edits are not locked when the file reference is locked once again because the edits exist only in the parent scene If you want the edits to be saved to the reference file so they can be locked see File gt Save Reference Edits on page 25 To lock or unlock an existing file reference 1 In the Reference Editor select the file reference you want to lock or unlock by clicking on its name 2 Inthe Reference Editor do one of the following e Select Reference gt Lock Reference e Select Reference gt Unlock Reference What s New in Maya 6 5 19 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements With the exception of a few specific attributes and node types all nodes and attributes for a file reference are locked by default The attributes and node types that are excluded by the Lock option are specified by two MEL procedures Each procedure outputs a string array that is used by the Lock option to specify the attributes to be excluded The first procedure specifies which individual attributes to exclude The second procedure specifies which attributes
93. faster less accurate smooth skin weights copy Warning If Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy is off when copying What s New in Maya 6 5 94 smooth skin weights from a low resolution polygonal mesh to a high resolution polygonal then the results of your Copy Skin Weights operation will have undesirable aliasing Do one of the following Click Copy to copy the smooth skin weights from the source skin to the destination skin The options window closes Click Apply to copy the smooth skin weights from the source skin to the destination skin The options window remains open Click Close to close the options window without copying the skin weights 4 Other improvements gt Bind skin to non joint objects Bind skin to non joint objects With the new Object Hierarchy option in the Smooth Bind Options window you can now bind geometry to any transform node or hierarchy of nodes such as an empty group node or a locator For example you can now create a deformation effect by binding a polygonal mesh to locator nodes that are connected to the CVs of a spline curve In previous versions of Maya you could only bind geometry to hierarchies of joints Note When using the Object Hierarchy option you can only select joints or objects that cannot be skinned for example group nodes or locators not pieces of geometry as the initial influences in the bind Improved Smooth Bind Options Bind to Bind to Joint Hierarchy Joi
94. fficiently render human skin especially for shallow near surface scattering For more information see the mental ray Shaders Guide available from the Maya help Improved displacement approximation in mental ray for Maya mental ray for Maya s handling of displacement approximation settings derived from Maya has been improved in the following ways e Extreme values in Maya now result in high quality fine displacement in mental ray Common values in Maya now result in fast fine displacement with reasonable quality e Standard non feature based displacement is now supported Note Some scenes may render differently due to the above improvements To achieve the desired results turn on feature based displacement on the shape nodes What s New in Maya 6 5 109 4 Other improvements gt Improved approximation on Subdivision surfaces Improved approximation on Subdivision surfaces mental ray for Maya now uses a single approximation value for base surface tessellation and displacement tessellation on subdivision surfaces As a result some scenes may render differently New Render Stats for image based lighting IBL We ve added the following new Render Stats previously called Visibility for IBL Visible as Environment When on the surface is visible to environment rays direct reflection of the environment This attribute is off by default unless you created the IBL node from the mental ray Render Globa
95. frame and the new position from the current frame Visualizing Cloth collision object attributes You can visualize and animate a cloth object s collision depth and offset attributes This helps to better control the collision parameters especially when painting To show the collision object s offset or depth mesh 1 2 Select the collision object whose collision attributes you want to visualize In the Cloth menu set select Cloth gt Create Collision Offset Depth Mesh A mesh appears around the collision object representing the Collision Offset value A Collision Display drop down list is added to the collision object attributes Use this drop down list to control which collision attribute is displayed Depth Offset Depth What s New in Maya 6 5 137 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements and Offset or None For more information about collision attributes see Adjust the collision object in the Cloth guide in the Maya Help pig IZ Collision object without mesh Collision object with mesh To hide the collision object s offset or depth mesh 1 Select the collision object whose collision mesh you want to hide 2 Select Cloth gt Remove Collision Offset Depth Mesh The mesh is removed from the collision object Painting Cloth collision attributes In Maya 6 0 we introduced the Cloth gt Paint Collision Properties Tool feature which can be used to paint the Collision Priority and Collision D
96. gning a Lambert material and recovering an existing shading network e Anew Occlusion color mode is now available including the following attributes that let you bake ambient occlusion e Occlusion Rays What s New in Maya 6 5 111 4 Other improvements gt New light and texture shaders This attribute determines the number of occlusion rays to trace per sample point Increasing the number of occlusion rays improves quality but reduces performance speed The default is 64 e Occlusion Falloff This attribute determines the maximum length of an occlusion ray Rays longer than this value are not considered for occlusion For texture bake sets if Final Gather is not used occlusion is computed for all sample points Although this takes time the result is very sharp light maps If Final Gather is used and the final gather quality is greater than 0 the occlusion is pre baked into a final gather map This final gather map can then be interpolated during rendering providing quick results at a reasonable quality Vertex baking is improved by the introduction of the new Optimize Vertex Sharing option Optimize Vertex Sharing ensures that there is no duplication of vertices and improves the quality of baking to vertices in many cases This option is turned on by default in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab in the Translation gt Performance section New light and texture shaders The following new shaders are
97. he Cleanup section of the polyBevel Attribute Editor For more information on merge vertices see Edit Polygons gt Merge Vertices in the Polygonal Modeling guide What s New in Maya 6 5 77 4 Other improvements gt Polygon Bevel improvements Subdivide Ngons The polygon Bevel feature now provides an attribute for subdividing any faces that have large numbers of edges as a result of doing a bevel operation with more than one segment The Subdivide Ngons option is on by default and can be controlled from both the Channel Box and the Cleanup section of the polyBevel Attribute Editor Polygon Bevel Polygon Bevel Subdivide Ngons Off Subdivide Ngons On Smoothing Angle PolygonBevel now incorporates a Smoothing Angle attribute to control the hardness of beveled edges You can specify whether you want the recently beveled edges to appear hard or soft when shaded by setting the Smoothing Angle attribute value The Smoothing Angle attribute can be edited from either the Channel Box or within the Poly Bevel History section of the polyBevel Attribute Editor If you want the beveled edges to be soft you can set the Smoothing Angle to a high value such as 180 If you want the beveled edges to be hard you can set the Smoothing Angle to a low value such as 0 What s New in Maya 6 5 78 4 Other improvements gt Polygon Bevel improvements NY Polygon Bevel Polygon Bevel Smoothing Angle 0 Smoothing Angle 180 In
98. hen selecting the appropriate proxy tag name provided you have been consistent with your proxy tag naming For more information on specific steps that support the above workflow please refer to the following What s New in Maya 6 5 32 To add a file as a proxy reference on page 33 To load or switch a proxy reference on page 35 To remove a proxy reference on page 38 To reload multiple proxy references on page 39 To selectively preload a proxy reference on page 40 2 File referencing gt Proxy references To add a file as a proxy reference 1 In the Reference Editor select the file reference to which you want to add the proxy reference yl Reference Editor Loix Fie Reference Proxy Help v File Particulars Unresolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson Reload C 7Documents and Settings mjamieson b fieferencel 2 In the Reference Editor select Proxy gt Add Proxy gt O The Proxy Options window appears 3 In the Proxy Options window set the Proxy Tag Options by either typing a text string that you want as the label tag for the proxy reference or choose an existing tag from the text string drop down menu if Proxy Options ojx Edit Help General Options File Type Best Guess rProxy Tag Options Set Proxy Tag 6 this string high File Type Specific Options No Options Available Gal What s New in Maya 6 5 33 2
99. her improvements gt New object specific render attributes in the Attribute Editor Color Blending improved Merges existing vertex colors with the ones just baked if any Select a merge method from the Color Blending drop down list Alpha Blending improved Merges existing vertex alphas with the ones just baked if any Select a merge method from the Alpha Blending drop down list New object specific render attributes in the Attribute Editor In the Attribute Editor mental ray section the following new attributes are now available Visible In Transparency This attribute indicates whether the object shows through other transparent objects if ray depth has not reached its limit This attribute is on by default When this attribute is turned off the object becomes invisible behind transparent objects Transmit Transparency This attribute indicates whether the object receives transmitted transparent rays from other objects This attribute is on by default When this attribute is turned off the object becomes opaque or does not show transparency effects Final Gather Cast This attribute indicates whether the object casts final gather rays allowing the object to contribute to the final gather lighting in the scene This attribute is on by default What s New in Maya 6 5 117 4 Other improvements gt New Quality Presets Final Gather Receive This attribute indicates whether the object receives final gathe
100. iangle shows up Maya draws everything e Use the new hardware Mipmap filtering options which are in the Hardware Texturing section of the shader node Texture Filter drop down list What s New in Maya 6 5 181 5 Performance tips gt Best practices for performance What s New in Maya 6 5 182 Use the new Use default material display mode if applicable Don t use extra Shading menu settings like Wireframe on Shaded if you don t need them If possible use Show gt Isolate Select to limit what is displayed and refreshed in the scene Objects with less than a few hundred triangles and especially those with only a few triangles will have a high performance overhead If possible merge the objects together into one Maya performs much better with less objects that each have thousands of triangles versus many objects with only a few triangles Use instancing when possible This includes instancing geometry materials and textures If using file texture nodes it is better to have one file texture node that is instanced versus many copies of the node This affects memory used when the file is loaded as well as on disk Make sure to set your video card settings to Maya settings and disable vertical sync sync e The default material display option can be used to see the difference between using 1 shader for all objects versus n shaders e If surfaces are partitioned into many layers this may slow down shaded mode display
101. ies within the proxy set This is indicated by the P icon in the Reference Editor The proxy file does not appear within the scene until you load it What s New in Maya 6 5 37 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Reference Editor File Reference Proxy Help v File Particulars Unresolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson Reload E Documents and Settings mjamieson treePM original tree mb 7 Inthe Reference Editor with the existing file reference still highlighted select Proxy gt Reload Proxy As 8 Select loRes from the pop up menu that appears ii Reference Editor OF x Peod treePM original tree mb Maya updates the file reference by loading the treeSimple proxy reference into the scene To remove a proxy reference 1 Inthe Reference Editor select the existing file reference that contains the proxy reference you want to remove 2 Select Proxy gt Remove Proxy and select the proxy file from the list of proxy references that appear in the pop up menu What s New in Maya 6 5 38 2 File referencing gt Proxy references it Reference Editor File Reference i gt File Partict Unresolved Name Reload Resolved Name Namespace reference2RN reference2 mb reference3RN reference2 mb The proxy file is removed from the list of available proxies within the proxy set When a proxy tag appears in gray within the list of available proxies
102. in Maya 6 5 40 Select File gt Open Scene gt O The Open Options window appears In the Referencing options section turn on Selective Preload then click Open The file browser appears listing the default scene directory for your project Select the file that contains the file and proxy references you want to selectively preload then click Open The Preload Reference Editor appears The Preload Reference Editor lists all available file references for the scene Depending on how the Referencing options were set some file references will appear loaded or unloaded in the Preload Reference Editor When a P icon appears beside a particular file reference it indicates that one or more proxy references exist for that reference Right click the file reference that contains the proxy reference you want to have loaded when the scene is opened so that the Preload Reference Editor pop up menu appears 2 File referencing gt Proxy references 5 From the pop up menu choose Set Active Proxy To and select the desired proxy reference from the list of proxy tags in the drop down list it Preload Reference Editor of x Help File Particulars Unresolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson My D Resolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson My Do O P airplane1 RN airplane1 mb airplane2AN airplane2 mb a P Cancel Bring in Reference Loaded Bring in Reference Unloaded Set Activ
103. ing objects Unlike the standard shadow map a detail shadow map also takes into account surface and lighting properties such as transparency Detail shadow maps store a list of depth values together with the light transmission coefficients at each depth This provides similar quality shadows as raytraced shadows but at processing times similar to depth map shadows Detail shadow maps may require more time to calculate because they compute and store more per pixel information Note Detail shadow maps are more sensitive to the Softness attribute in the Attribute Editor Shadow Maps section for the light shape node A large Softness value results in a penumbra spread well beyond the shadow area What s New in Maya 6 5 123 4 Other improvements gt New Motion Blur Calculation settings Merge Rebuild drop down list The Merge option specifies that shadow maps should be loaded from files if available The default shadow map calculations are still performed and the existing points are overwritten by the recomputed points but only if the new points are closer to the light source This option is useful for building shadow maps for use in multi pass rendering because it allows shadow maps from a previous render pass to be reused for the current pass Only shadow map changes are recalculated not the entire shadow map Shadow Map Bias This option applies the specified Shadow Map Bias value to all light sources that do not have
104. inn15G The Image gt Selected Images submenu now lists all of the images available for display as the background within the UV Texture Editor for the selected polygon meshes The Selected Images submenu displays texture channels for Maya native software shaders and hardware shader plug ins including CgFX shaders What s New in Maya 6 5 80 4 Other improvements gt Subdivision surface improvements Note In previous versions it was possible to choose a specific Texture Channel for a given shader for example color transparency and so on However this did not provide access to specific textures and was only accessible on some shaders through the Hardware Texture settings within the Attribute Editor You can access this original functionality by selecting the shading group entry from the Selected Images pull down menu For example for a shader named blinn1 the shading group entry in the pull down menu would be named blinn1SG Dim Image The UV Texture Editor now provides a Dim Image feature to reduce the brightness of the currently displayed background image Dimming the background image lets you more easily view and select components in the UV Texture Editor s view To dim the background image in the UV Texture Editor 1 Inthe UV Texture Editor select Image gt Dim Image 2 To return the display of the image to normal brightness select the Image gt Dim Image to toggle it off Subdivision surface improvements
105. inues the file operation as normal A retCode of false aborts the operation What s New in Maya 6 5 175 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements Note The Message parameter must be one of kBeforeNewCheck kBeforeOpenCheck or KBeforeSaveCheck MString This class now has enhanced support for string operations MString amp operator unsigned int other MString amp operator float other These are new MString concatenation operators MTypes h The MAYA API VERSION number has been updated to 650 MUiMessage This class now has enhanced support for view messages static MCallbackId add3dViewDestroyMsgCallback const MString amp panelName void func MString amp panelName void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method registers a callback for when a specific 3D view is destroyed The callback is called before the destruction of the view The callback function is passed any client data that was provided when the callback was registered static MCallbackId add3dViewPreRenderMsgCallback const MString amp panelName void func MString amp panelName void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL What s New in Maya 6 5 176 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements This method registers a callback when a particular 3D view is about to render its contents It is called before the scene is drawn
106. is recommended that you remove any recently imported nodes from their old namespace prior to exporting a reference For more information see Editing a namespace in the Basics guide 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Edit Menu The Edit Menu has been removed from the Reference Editor The Remove Reference menu item has been relocated to the Reference Menu The Select File Contents menu item has been relocated to the File Menu Preload Reference Editor The Preload Reference Editor includes features to support the selective loading of proxy references introduced in this release The Preload Reference Editor lets you choose which file references and proxy references to load or unload before you open a scene containing file references You can select whether you want the proxy to be loaded or unloaded when the scene is opened or simply select the proxy to be active so that it is set to load whenever you load or unload the reference after the scene is opened For more information on selectively preloading a proxy reference see Working with proxy references on page 31 Proxy references Proxy References lets you substitute one or more file references by creating a set of possible substitute references known as proxies for a given file reference Proxy references are files that you create to visually or spatially stand in for an existing file reference In most cases proxy references are used to temporarily simplify co
107. is the weightList attribute of a deformer Other significant changes Maya now has a noAutoLoadPlugins option The nodeType MEL command now has an api flag for finding out the associated MFn Type of a node Maya now searches the SMAYA LOCATION modules directory for module files which releases the restriction that require plug ins be placed on local disks even if Maya is installed on a network The behavior of the MPlug getValue MString amp val MDGContext amp ctx method has been altered to not fail if the default value of the attribute is NULL Instead this method will succeed and return an empty MString in this situation The method MStatus MFnDependencyNode addAttribute const MObject amp attr MFnDependencyNode MAttrC lass type will always fail if the type is kLocalDynamicAttr This option is not fully supported in Maya so we have made the API fail under this situation We have been reducing the bloat created by systems files such as iostreams In some cases we now use forward declarations for streams in the API headers This will cause some existing code not to compile but can be worked around by including MIOStream h Compiler requirements What s New in Maya 6 5 178 Red Hat 9 and gcc 3 3 4 are required for developing on Linux 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements Note Our example Makefiles now contain the pthread compile and link option for building plug ins and standalo
108. ise it is applied to all selected brushes Cloth There is anew cpSetEdit command to edit constraint vertex membership lists with the Set Editor There are new cpGetSolverAttr and cpSetSolverAttr commands for getting values from and setting values for the Cloth solver PhotoShop There is anew uvSnapPostionTop flag for the psdTextureFile command This flag specifies the position of the UV snapshot image layer in the PSD file If the flag is set to True this layer is positioned at the top and if set to False the layer is positioned at the bottom next to the background layer in the PSD file API and Devkit API and Devkit improvements This release contains many improvements to the Maya API New classes have been added to the API along with improvements to existing classes Improvements include making some API operations faster In addition we have written new examples and have added them to the devkit What s New in Maya 6 5 150 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements e Performance improvements on page 151 e New classes and header files on page 151 e Important changes to existing classes on page 153 e Examples of new plug in functionality on page 177 e Other significant changes on page 178 Performance improvements See API on page 61 in the Performance Improvements chapter New classes and header files New MFnKeyframeDelta classes MFnKeyframeDelta M
109. it indicates that it is currently loaded It is not possible to remove a loaded proxy To remove the currently loaded proxy you must first reload any other proxy reference from the list so that the proxy you want to remove becomes available within the list When only a single reference remains in the proxy set Maya automatically removes the proxy set for the file reference The P icon beside the listed reference is also removed from the Reference Editor To reload multiple proxy references 1 Inthe Reference Editor select the file references containing the proxy references you want to reload 2 Select Proxy 5 Reload Proxy As A drop down menu appears 3 Select the desired proxy tag from the list of proxy tags The selected file references update by loading the proxy references associated with the proxy tag you selected What s New in Maya 6 5 39 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Note The list of proxy tags that appear is generated from all of the proxy tags currently in use for the proxy sets selected A proxy for a specific proxy set is only reloaded when the selected proxy tag matches one of the available tags for that set For example if multiple proxy sets are selected and the high proxy tag is chosen for reload only those proxy references that have the high tag will be reloaded Any proxy set that does not include the high tag will remain unchanged To selectively preload a proxy reference 1 What s New
110. its no longer reside in the parent scene Saving the edits to the referenced file is useful if you want the edits to permanently exist in the referenced file In this way the edits are propagated to all users of the reference For example if a tree were referenced into a parent scene at the wrong scale it could be correctly scaled within the parent scene and then have its scale attributes permanently saved back to the reference file To save edits directly to a file reference 1 In the Reference Editor select the file reference to which you want the reference edits to be saved 2 Select File gt Save Reference Edits The edits for the selected file reference are transferred from the parent scene file and applied to the referenced file Notes e Edits that are applied in the parent scene specifically setAttr deleteAttr and addAttr as well as commands that create and remove connections within the same referenced file specifically connectAttr and disconnectAttr are saved as part of the Save Reference Edits operation Nodes and connections from the parent scene that affect only nodes from the referenced file will be saved What s New in Maya 6 5 25 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements What s New in Maya 6 5 26 to the reference file For example animation curves construction history and textures that affect only the reference file will be saved into the reference file DAG nodes such as shap
111. ive offsets You can set the offset of a clip channel to absolute or relative Absolute channels do not accumulate motion This means that when the offset of a clip channel is absolute then that channel does not add the motion of the equivalent channel in the previous clip to its own animation Note Rotation channels are the only clip channels that have absolute offsets by default What s New in Maya 6 5 82 4 Other improvements gt New animation clip per channel offset controls Relative channels accumulate motion This means that when the offset of a clip channel is relative then that channel adds the motion on the equivalent channel in the previous clip to its own animation For more information on absolute and relative clip channel offsets see Offset clip channels in the Nonlinear Animation chapter of the Animation guide Channel Offsets The Channel Offsets are located on each animClip node in the Attribute Editor v Channel Offsets All Absolute All Relative Restore Defaults Absolute Relative Sam translatex Sam translateY Sam translateZ Sam visibility Sam rotatex Sam rotateY Sam rotateZ Sam scalex Sam scaleY Sam scaleZ D KO HO Na Ke le KO NO KO NO C la a c Ol Ce ol c C C Absolute and Relative radio buttons The Absolute and Relative radio buttons let you set the offsets for each clip s channels When an Absolute radio button is turned on the offset of the channel be
112. l Settings window Visible in Secondary Reflections When on the surface is visible to secondary reflection rays This attribute is off by default unless you created the IBL node from the mental ray Render Global Settings window New image based lighting IBL attributes Use the new IBL attributes to adjust the environment final gather light emission and photon emission Color Gain and Color Offset contributions These attributes are off by default Modify environment color effects and final gather color effects in the Attribute Editor for the IBL shape node in the Render Stats section What s New in Maya 6 5 110 4 Other improvements gt Improved Baking IV Adjust Environment Color Effects T Invert Color Gain ColorOffset fo lv Adjust T Invert Color Gain a a Cola orse fw BB 2 Modify the light emission color effects in the Attribute Editor for the IBL shape node in the Light Emission section M A T Invert Color Gain J EJ Color Offset ES IP EJ Modify the photon emission color effects in the Attribute Editor for the IBL shape node in the Photon Emission section IV T Invert Color Gain J EJ Color Offset Ea mmm Ps Improved Baking We ve made the following baking improvements e To better represent the functionality we ve renamed Incoming Illumination to Light Only mode The Light Only mode is supported directly from a shader so it doesn t have the overhead of assi
113. lator and determine if it provides a reference method This What s New in Maya 6 5 172 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements virtual method must be overloaded in derived classes if a writer method exists as the default version defined in MPxFileTranslator always returns false static MPxFileTranslator FileAccessMode fileAccessMode This method returns Maya s current fileAccess mode MPxHwShaderNode This class now provides more information on the object being drawn in a hardware shader node enum DirtyMask kDirtyNone 0x0000 kDirtyVertexArray 0x0001 kDirtyNormalArray 0x0002 kDirtyColorArrays 0x0004 kDirtyTexCoordArrays 0x0008 kDirtyAll 0x000f bi This is the new DirtyMask enum that is used with the dirtyMask method to find out which geometry items have changed since the last plug in draw call const MDagPath amp currentPath const This method returns a reference to the current path for which the shader is invoked The path is only valid before a call to any of these attribute specifying routines normalsPerVertex colorsPerVertex texCoordsPerVertex getTexCoordSetNames hasTransparency provideVertexIDs The path is not guaranteed to be valid at any other time unsigned int dirtyMask const What s New in Maya 6 5 173 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements This method returns a dirty mask that indicates which geom
114. leShape MStatus status NULL const This method returns true if this particle shape is deformed MObject deformedParticleShape MStatus status NULL const This method returns the deformed particleShape MObject originalParticleShape MStatus status const NULL This method returns the original particleShape What s New in Maya 6 5 165 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MFnSkinCluster This class now has enhanced support for getting and setting the weights of skin clusters MStatus getWeights const MDagPatha path const MObject amp components MDoubleArray amp weights unsigned amp influenceCount const This method gets the skinCluster weights for all influenceObjects for the specified components of the object whose dagPath is specified MStatus setWeights const MDagPatha path const MObject amp components unsigned jointIndex double value bool normalize true MDoubleArray oldValues NULL This method sets the skinCluster weight for the influence object that affects the specified components of the object whose dagPath is specified MStatus setWeights const MDagPatha path const MObject amp components MIntArray amp influenceIndices MDoubleArray amp values bool normalize true MDoubleArray oldValues NULL This method sets the skinCluster weights on the specified components of the object whose dagPath is specified for the influence objects correspondi
115. leafnodes 593 CI 0 2 info bsp size Kb 26 PHEN 0 2 info maya shaderglow Glow Filter Width 21 PHEN 0 2 info maya_shaderglow Resolution 0 638926 PHEN 0 2 info maya_shaderglow Normalization 0 882000 PHEN 0 2 info maya shaderglow Halo Filter Width 51 PHEN 0 2 info maya shaderglow Resolution 0 260841 PHEN 0 2 info maya shaderglow Normalization 5 202000 c 0 2 info wallclock 0 00 05 59 for rendering 0 2 info allocated 5 MB max resident 10 MB GAPM 0 2 info triangle count excluding retessellation 1160 GAPM 0 2 info triangle count including retessellation 1160 B 0 2 info disk swapping O objects O KB swapped out in 0 00 s B 0 2 info O objects O KB swapped in in 0 00 s max swap space used O KB O KB 1 bd 4 Adjust the Min Radius and Max Radius in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Final Gather section if necessary What s New in Maya 6 5 107 4 Other improvements gt New Rapid Scanline method New Rapid Scanline method The mental ray for Maya Rapid Scanline rendering method has been optimized for use with motion blur and fur It uses a new algorithm to achieve finer shading and improve performance To tune the new Rapid Scanline method we ve added the following new settings Visibility Samples This value indicates the number of samples used for anti aliasing The default value is 0 and the maximum value is 8 A value of 0
116. ling nea sce eel ee DRAG 74 Soften extruded polygon edges and faces 74 Soften split polygons 0 0 cee eee 75 Polygon Bevel improvements cece ee eee 77 Merge Vertices cc eee es 77 Subdivide Ngons 600 cece ene a e 78 Smoothing Angle 0 0 ccc eens 78 Mitering Angle 0000 e eee ees 79 UV Texture Editor improvements seers 80 What s New in Maya 6 5 6 Table of Contents Image gt Selected Images improved 80 Dimimage sp oie hae he DAMN ne ae Bh ea ap es Se ee 81 Subdivision surface improvements eee ene eee 81 Animation 2 2 0006 ee ee 82 New animation clip per channel offset controls 82 Channel Offsets 00 t Ea eee ene ene ees 83 Copy Channel Offsets 0 00 cee 84 New channel state controls s a naana 000 c cece eee eee 85 Make channels keyable nonkeyable from the Channel Box 85 Improved Channel Control Editor 86 How do make channels keyable or nonkeyable in Maya 6 5 87 Improved animation constraint blending 89 New Lock Output attribute 0 0 0 eee 90 Custom playback speed e eee eee 91 Character Setup and Deformers 92 Improved Copy Smooth Skin Weights 92 How do copy smooth skin weights between polygonal meshes iniMaya 6 5 Aaa padaan BAN AG nn LAH band 93 Bind skin to
117. lobal Settings window mental ray tab Final Gather section View Radii in Pixel Size This option causes the Min Radius and Max Radius of final gather rays to be calculated in pixel size rather than in object space This allows you to set the visual quality in pixel size without knowing the object or scene bounds Scale The Scale value allows you to easily control the intensity and color of the final gather contribution on a global scene level You can use the Color Chooser or use the slider to set the Scale value Freeze Rebuild Final Gather drop down list The Freeze option stops any new data from being written to the final gather file This option causes mental ray for Maya to compute the final gather solution just once for a full sequence of animation It is useful to reduce light flickering in your animation What s New in Maya 6 5 125 4 Other improvements gt New Diagnostics option Secondary Diffuse Bounces Turn on the Secondary Diffuse Bounces option to allow multiple diffuse bounces for final gathering This option controls whether indirect diffuse lighting contributes to final gather up to a sum of the Final Gather Reflection and Final Gather Refraction values This option is off by default For more information see Render Global Settings mental ray tab in the Rendering guide New Diagnostics option The Diagnose Finalgather option Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Diagnostics sectio
118. lows addAttr ln miMaterial at message shadingGroup1 Connect this attribute as follows connectAttr customPhenomenon message shadingGroup1 miMaterial What s New in Maya 6 5 114 4 Other improvements gt mental ray for Maya support of native Render Stats Disable Custom Node Automatic Light Linking Use this attribute to turn off automatic light linking on a per node basis set the attribute to false This is useful when the same material is used by several objects that have different light linking In this case disable light linking with this attribute then manually connect the light nodes to the shader s light attributes Create this attribute as follows addAttr ln miLightLink at bool mib_illum_lambert1 Per light Shadow Map Bias Use this attribute to specify shadow map bias on a per light basis when the mental ray for Maya Shadow Map attribute in the Attribute Editor gt mental ray gt Shadow Maps section for the light is turned on Create this attribute as follows addAttr ln smapBias at float pointLightShapel mental ray for Maya support of native Render Stats mental ray for Maya now supports all Render Stats attributes with the exception of the Smooth Shading attribute In particular Visible in Reflection Visible in Refraction and Visibility are now supported The Render Stats attributes are located in the Attribute Editor Render Stats section for the shape node For mor
119. ls during translation so that they are not part of the final rendered scene This option is on by default Export Tessellated Polygons This option translates all polygon meshes as triangulated in Maya This allows more efficient use of memory so that larger scenes with many polygons render with less memory usage This option is off by default Smooth Polygon Derivatives This option calculates derivatives by taking into account vertex sharing to decide if texture seams can be ignored This calculation avoids artifacts due to UV seams This option is off by default New Translation Customization options The following new options are available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Translation gt Customization section What s New in Maya 6 5 121 4 Other improvements gt New Preview settings Render Shaders With Filtering This option causes mental ray shaders to perform filtering in individual shaders This option reduces texture and bump mapping artifacts and is on by default Render Shaders With Filtering requires that the Export Polygon Derivatives option be turned on Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Translation gt Performance section Optimize Raytrace Shadows This option optimizes the algorithm used to assign mental ray shadow shaders to materials When turned on mental ray determines whether shadow shaders are necessary before assigning the shader This option is on by default
120. mation see New Rapid Scanline method on page 108 New Caustics and Global Illumination settings The following new settings are available for caustics and global illumination in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Caustics and Global Illumination section Caustic Scale Use this setting to control the influence of indirect illumination effects for caustics You can select a color with the Color Chooser or use the slider to set the Caustic Scale value Global IIlum Scale Use this setting to control the influence of indirect illumination effects for global illumination You can select a color with the Color Chooser or use the slider to set the Global Illum Scale value These settings are off by default New Anti aliasing Quality settings A new Sample Defaults section containing the following new settings is available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab What s New in Maya 6 5 119 4 Other improvements gt New Memory and Performance option Min Object Samples This setting specifies the minimum number of samples taken for objects This value is clamped by global sample settings so that if the Min Object Samples value exceeds the global sample settings it is ignored This lets you keep global sample settings low The default value is 128 Max Object Samples This setting specifies the maximum number of samples taken for objects This value is clamped by global sample settings so th
121. mipmap For more information on file texture filters see File in the Shading guide New Framebuffer Settings We ve made the following improvements to Framebuffer settings for mental ray for Maya New Framebuffer options The Framebuffer options are now organized into two sections Primary Framebuffer and User Framebuffer The Primary Framebuffer section contains existing attributes including Data Type Gamma and Colorclip Use the new User Framebuffer options to select one or more user defined framebuffers for use with your custom shaders You can use up to eight user framebuffers To enable a particular framebuffer click the corresponding checkbox Improved preview rendering You can now preview render 16 bit and 32 bit framebuffer types New attribute for Texture Bake sets The Final Gather Reflect attribute is available for texture bake sets This attribute determines the reflectivity of an object when precomputing final gather points for light mapping This simplifies the simulation of reflective objects whose texture maps include What s New in Maya 6 5 130 4 Other improvements gt New attribute for Use Background shader contributions from objects that surround them For example if the Final Gather Reflect value is set to 0 25 every fourth final gather point is precomputed on the object hit by the reflection ray New attribute for Use Background shader The Use Background shader now includes a n
122. mplex scenes by substituting simpler versions of the objects into the scene This allows production work to proceed without the overhead of the complex components of the original scene When a scene is simplified in this manner Maya s performance improves Proxy references reduce the visual clutter in a scene by allowing you to focus on the elements you need to work on while still maintaining a spatial context of the scene s elements What s New in Maya 6 5 27 2 File referencing gt Proxy references For example a user may wish to substitute a scene that contains primitive objects that exist in the same position size and scale as a similar scene that contains more complex and detailed versions of furniture for an office By substituting a simple primitive based proxy version of the scene the user can obtain better interactive performance when dollying tumbling or playing back animation Because the primitive objects also represent where the more detailed versions of the furniture elements exist spatially in the original file reference the user can more easily concentrate on animating their character or camera To create a proxy reference for a scene you must first create a scene that contains the proxy reference data This could involve creating a scene that generally matches the contents of a pre existing scene but contains simplified versions of your characters props and assets The items in this scene would be set up a
123. n renders final gathering points in green for initial raster space and in red for render time final gathering points This is useful in fine tuning final gather settings to distinguish between view dependant and non view dependant results to better distribute final gather points This option is off by default New Displacement Overrides setting The Max Displace setting Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Overrides gt Displacement section specifies the maximum displacement applied to object control points in a normal direction This provides control over the otherwise automated displacement range to better focus tessellation where most needed Set this value if you have any displaced objects in your scene A Max Displace value that is too large results in a correct image but takes more time and uses more memory If the Max Displace value is too small parts of the displaced object may be clipped The default value of 0 means the setting is not active A warning message appears if a displacement shader returns a value greater than the Max Displace value This can result in rendered geometry appearing clipped What s New in Maya 6 5 126 4 Other improvements gt New Custom Entities options New Custom Entities options There are new Custom Entities Render Global Settings window mental ray tab attributes designed to improve compositing for Maya post effects Pass Custom Alpha Channel This option passes the men
124. n edges and faces The new Smoothing Angle option lets you automatically smooth the edges of your extruded polygonal geometry Previously the edges of extruded geometry were hard by default and to soften the edges you had to use Edit Polygons gt Normals gt Soften Harden What s New in Maya 6 5 74 4 Other improvements gt Soften split polygons Now when you extrude your polygonal geometry you can specify whether or not the edges of your extruded geometry are soft or hard For example if you are extruding part of a character s face and you want the extruded edges to be soft you can set the Smoothing Angle to a high value such as 180 Or if you are extruding part of a building model and you want the extruded edges to be hard you can set the Smoothing Angle to a low value such as 0 The Smoothing Angle option is located in the Extrude Face Edge Option windows and in the Poly Extrude Face Edge History sections of each polyExtrudeEdge polyExtrudeFace node The default Smoothing Angle value for extruded faces edges is 30 Extrude Face Extrude Face Smoothing Angle 0 Smoothing Angle 180 Soften split polygons The new Smoothing Angle option in the Split Polygon Tool Settings lets you automatically smooth the edges of your split polygonal geometry Previously the edges of split geometry were hard by default and to soften the edges you had to use Edit Polygons gt Normals gt Soften Harden What s New in Maya 6 5
125. n when painting and tumbling with color feedback on Results vary depending on the size of the model The larger the model single skin the better the performance change This improves workflow efficiency when using any Artisan tool especially with large data sets e We ve made performance improvements to Artisan sculpting overall and especially when flooding This improves efficiency when using Artisan for sculpting especially with large data sets e We ve improved the performance of importing attribute maps on polygons using the Sculpt Polygons Tool What s New in Maya 6 5 58 3 Performance improvements gt Fluid Effects e The Artisan Tool Settings editor now opens much faster This improves workflow efficiency when using the Artisan or 3D Paint tools 3D Paint Tool e We ve improved the performance of 3D Paint especially with large and multiple textures and have extended the maximum texture size to 4K The 3D Paint Tool is now much easier to use with production quality resolution textures e We ve made improvements to the quality of the 3D Paint Tool s brush strokes The strokes now have the appearance of an airbrush style and are smoother especially where a stroke crosses itself We ve also changed the default setting of the tool s Stroke 5 Stamp Spacing from 0 1 to 0 05 and the default Flood Color from black to white Fluid Effects Ocean shader playback We ve improved the playback speed of the Ocean Shader in
126. nabled false Mimage This class now has enhanced image querying and manipulation operations MStatus getSize unsigned int amp width unsigned int amp height const This existing method has now been made const What s New in Maya 6 5 167 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements unsigned char pixels const This method returns a pointer to the first pixel of the uncompressed pixels array This array is tightly packed of size width height depth bytes Currently pixels are always stored in a RGBA depth 4 bytes pixel format void setPixels unsigned char pixels unsigned int width unsigned int height This method sets the pointer to the first pixel of the uncompressed pixels array This array is tightly packed of size width height depth bytes Currently pixels are always stored in a RGBA depth 4 bytes pixel format MitDag This is a new constructor with reset methods that accept an object that defines the iteration type With this constructor you can now specify multiple MFn types to filter an iteration using the MIteratorType class MItDag MIteratorType amp dagInfoObject TraversalType kDepthFirst Status ReturnStatus NULL This method initializes the root of iteration at the world node and sets the type of the traversal and the filter list MStatus reset MIteratorType amp dagInfo0bject const MObject object const MDagPath path TraversalType kDepthFirst
127. nce When you select Proxy gt Add Proxy gt O you can specify the file type to add and set the Proxy Tag Options See Proxy Options window below If a proxy reference does not exist for the file reference a proxy set is created for the proxy references for that file reference If a proxy reference exists the new proxy becomes a member of the existing proxy set for that reference 2 File referencing gt Proxy references When a proxy reference is created the listed file reference updates to display a P icon to indicate that one or more proxy references exist for that reference For information on how proxy references are tagged see Proxy Tag Options on page 43 The Proxy Options O window is used to set the following options ih Proxy Options Oy x Edit Help File Type Best Guess KE Tag Options Set Proxy Tag to this string fl i Type Specific Options pam Options No Options Available Proxy Apply Close General Options Select the file format you want to use as a default for the next time you add a proxy reference If you have a project set up when you open a scene the browser points to the directory containing files of that type On Windows and Mac OS X it also sets the filter to display only files of the selected type Proxy Tag Options For more details about the Proxy Tag Options see Proxy Tag options on page 29 What s New in Maya 6 5 43
128. nce but reduces quality Improved normal mapping The time required to generate a normal map has been significantly reduced The larger the normal map the greater the performance improvement Swatch updating in Hypershade The time required to update material swatches in Hypershade has been significantly reduced in some cases especially when resizing swatches mental ray for Maya rendering Improved Object Instancing The handling of scenes with large amounts of instances has been optimized leading to improved performance What s New in Maya 6 5 57 3 Performance improvements gt Painting Animation detection To improve mental ray for Maya s animation detection the new Optimize Animation Detection option is now available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab in the Translation gt Performance section This option is turned off by default When the Optimize Animation Detection option is turned on the processing of non animated geometry is significantly optimized because mental ray for Maya detects animated nodes prior to processing the scene This is especially useful for scenes that contain many static objects and only a few simply animated objects Note Animation detection is limited in several ways as it currently can only detect key frame animations but not those generated by expressions and pre post RenderMel scripts Painting Artisan tools e We ve improved the performance of Artisa
129. nd positioned exactly the same way as your more complex version of the scene so that a spatial correlation is created between the high and low detail versions of the scenes Once the high detail version of the scene is referenced the low detail version can be added as its proxy reference using the Reference Editor A proxy reference can only be created for an existing file reference That is a proxy cannot exist by itself When a proxy reference is first created a proxy set is also created When the proxy set is created the original file reference as well as the selected proxy reference are organized under a new proxy manager node The user can then select which file the original reference or the proxy reference they want to load in the scene using the Reference Editor or by right clicking an object in the scene and making the appropriate selection from the marking menu When a proxy reference is added to an existing file reference the original reference becomes a proxy reference within the new proxy set In the Reference Editor a P icon is displayed to indicate the What s New in Maya 6 5 28 2 File referencing gt Proxy references existence of one or more proxies for the reference and the name displayed in the Reference Editor reflects the proxy manager that is created f M Reference Editor iol xi i laas Indicates one or more ae Proa gp proxy references exist Proxy manager node name Proxy tag Currently loaded ref
130. ne API applications e Mac OS X 10 3 4 and gcc 3 3 build 1666 or Xcode 1 5 are required for developing on this platform What s New in Maya 6 5 179 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements What s New in Maya 6 5 180 Performance tips Getting the most out of Maya Use the following suggestions to maximize Maya s performance e Best practices for performance on page 181 e Optimize your scene for playback on page 188 Best practices for performance Interactive drawing e Turn on Shading gt Interactive Shading to improve performance when moving the camera e Save the file in the simplest display mode to make load time faster Avoid saving files in textured display mode e Use default display options for polygons e Tum off display of all non essential UI that updates when the scene view updates for example Heads Up Display Time Slider Range Slider Hypershade Attribute Editor UV Texture Editor e Turn off the display of all non essential scene elements ranging from the Grid to drawing skeletons e Work with a layout that only includes a single modeling panel e Partition the scene into logical grid areas that don t overlap Use display layers to turn on or off partitions as required If you need to set up layers for visibility splitting up into non overlapping rectangular grid sectors should help Maya performs front back and side camera frustum culling per object If even one tr
131. nes with polygonal surfaces where color per vertex was used are much faster when drawing or refreshing Hardware shader drawing The performance of drawing hardware shaders on objects which do not deform has been improved What s New in Maya 6 5 49 3 Performance improvements gt General NURBS shaded display The speed of NURBS shaded display and tumbling has been improved especially on Windows Subdivision surfaces components display To improve the speed of working with subdivision surfaces in Standard mode Maya now draws components vertices or faces as points by default to indicate finer levels of the base mesh There is a user preference to switch back to the previous behavior drawing components as numbers To use the previous behavior drawing components as numbers 1 Select Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences The Preferences window opens 2 Select the Subdivs category from the list and select Numbers beside Component display Scene view speedup Use default material In the Shading menu of the scene view there is a new Use default material menu item This option applies the default shading material Lambert unless you have changed the default to all objects in the scene This is much faster than assigning shaders individually as well redrawing is faster When this option is selected Hardware Texturing and X ray are disabled As well transparency and shadows are not supported in this
132. nfluences if you want to be able to set or paint weights for all influences for example all the joints in a skeleton after the bind The Remove Unused Influences option is located in the Smooth Bind Options window For more information on these options see Skin gt Bind Skin gt Smooth Bind gt in the Character Setup and Deformers guide The new Remove Unused Skin Influences option in the Optimize Scene Size Options window also lets you remove any zero weighted influences from your character s skin bind For more information on the Optimize Scene Size window see File gt Optimize Scene Size What s New in Maya 6 5 96 4 Other improvements gt Maintain Max Influences These new options are useful when you want to reduce the number of calculations for your scene to increase your scene s playback speed For additional ways you can increase your scene s playback and interactive speed see Optimize your scene for playback in the Animation guide Maintain Max Influences The new Maintain Max Influences option lets you control whether or not the Max Influences smooth bind setting is maintained after you bind your geometry When Maintain Max Influences is on your smooth skinned geometry cannot have at any time a number of influences greater than that specified by Max Influences For example if Max Influences is set to 3 and you then paint or set weights for a fourth joint one of the weights of the other three j
133. ng to the specified influence indices MStatus getPointsAffectedByInfluence const MDagPath amp path MSelectionList amp result MDoubleArray amp weights This method lets you query the non zero weights for a particular influence object What s New in Maya 6 5 166 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MGlobal This class now has enhanced support for selection lists and the display of CVs Also there is anew method for executing MEL in a thread safe manner Note The MMayaState enum no longer contains the kBatchRender item Use kBatch instead static MStatus setHiliteList MSelectionList amp src This method sets the current hilite list The current selection list is unchanged static MStatus setDisplayCVs MSelectionList amp bool This method controls the draw of control points in the specified selection list The selection items on the given list are marked for drawing This overrides Maya s current draw list and for example lets you draw the control points without being in vertex selection mode static MStatus executeCommandOnIdle const MString amp command bool displayEnabled false This method sets a MEL command to execute on the next idle event This is a thread safe way to execute commands However there is no way to access the command results With the displayEnabled boolean you can set whether or not the command is displayed in the Script Editor By default displayE
134. nkeyable channel calen Scale Y 1 ScaleZ 1 Visibility on When keying an object the state of its channels affects which of the object s channels are animated The keyable and nonkeyable channel states let you specify which of an object s channels are keyable or are not nonkeyable keyed when using the following methods to animate your object e Autokey e Animate gt Set Key shortcut S key Improved Channel Control Editor In Maya 6 5 two new columns have been added to the Channel Control Editor Nonkeyable Hidden and Nonkeyable Displayed What s New in Maya 6 5 86 4 Other improvements gt New channel state controls ih Channel Control nurbsSphere1 Oy x Object Help Keyable Locked Keyable Nonkeyable Hidden Nonkeyable Displayed caching a f translateY displayHandle displapLocalAxis displapRotatePivot displayS calePivot ghostPostSteps ghostPreSteps translateZ ghostRangeE nd visibility ghostRangeStart ghostStepSize ghosting ghostingControl identification inheritsT ransform intermediateObject layerO verrideColor averRenderable IV Change all selected objects of the same type Move i aS When a channel s name is in the Keyable or Nonkeyable Displayed column the channel appears in the Channel Box When a channel s name is in the Nonkeyable Hidden column the channel does not appear in the Channel Box How do make channels keyable or nonkeyable in Maya 6 5 To m
135. nnel offset settings you want to copy This clip is the source clip 2 Shift click the clip to which you want to apply the source clip s channel offset settings This clip is the destination clip What s New in Maya 6 5 84 4 Other improvements gt New channel state controls Note e The source and destination clips must belong to the same character e The source and destination clips must have common channels e You cannot copy clip channel offset settings from one source clip to multiple destination clips 3 Inthe Trax menu bar select Edit gt Copy Channel Offsets The destination clip now has the same channel offset settings as the source clip New channel state controls You can now display nonkeyable channels in the Channel Box This lets you easily access nonkeyable channels from the Channel Box without running the risk of accidentally keying them Previously you could only display channels in the Channel Box by making them keyable Make channels keyable nonkeyable from the Channel Box You can now change the state of channels in the Channel Box from keyable to nonkeyable using the new Make Selected Keyable and Make Selected Nonkeyable options located in the Channel Box s Channels menu Channels that are nonkeyable appear light gray in the Channel Box What s New in Maya 6 5 85 4 Other improvements gt New channel state controls nurbsSpherel Translate x 0 Translate Y 0 TranslateZ 0 Rotatex 0 No
136. non joint objects 0c cece eee 95 Improved Smooth Bind Options 000 eee e eee 95 Prevent attachment of zero weighted smooth skin influences 96 Maintain Max Influences 00000 eee eee 97 Add influence objects at any pose aa 97 Related topi OS 0 ies cewek And pa BANNA bi NPA ae 98 Automatic joint radii according to bone length 98 New Joint Tool settings 000 eee eee 98 New Joint Radius attribute 0 00a 99 What s New in Maya 6 5 7 Table of Contents Rendering 2s na eee ee hk ee ee 99 Improved Hypershade navigation 0000 ee eee 99 New flags for the Command Line Renderer 100 Maya vector rendering 0 0 00 cece eee ee 102 New maximum resolution for vector rendering 102 Maya hardware rendering 2 eee eee eee 102 Unlimited file texture size 0 0c eee 102 New attribute for Hardware Shader Plug in 102 mental ray for Maya rendering 103 Summary of major improvements 000000eeeeee 103 Rendering with mental ray for Maya and mental ray satellite 103 Overview sirri e Dn RA Ad Pa a aaah Ka 103 Master machine setup Maya 00 cece eee eee 104 Improved Final Gather method rues 106 Tips to retune scenes with the new Final Gather method 106 New Rapid Scanline method 0 0c eee eee eee 108 New shader librar
137. nostics in the Maya Help for more information e Remove duplicate shading networks See also Improved on demand translation on page 128 Artisan e Increase Stamp Spacing if possible Stroke section of Artisan Tool settings editor e Use Screen Projection if possible Stroke section of Artisan Tool settings editor Paint Effects e Lower the Display Quality in the Paint Effects Tool settings editor What s New in Maya 6 5 187 5 Performance tips gt Optimize your scene for playback Optimize your scene for playback This section describes in detail various ways you can increase the interactive and playback speeds of your Maya scene Display and Ul Elements Tip Hiding any of the components selection handles locators entire objects and so on of your Maya scene will increase the scene s interactive speed To hide components of your scene use the options in the Display gt Hide menu Close any e Close all Maya editors and windows you unnecessary are not currently working with especially windows the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet which update during playback e Close as many windows from other applications as you can e Close UNIX shells DOS windows or Terminal windows Hide UI Select Display gt UI Elements gt Elements Hide UI Elements This hides all panes in the Maya main window except for the scene views What s New in Maya 6 5 188 Use alternate shading modes for your view
138. nsion in Maya file browser on page 70 e Create new layouts in the Component Editor on page 73 e Adding custom shared shelves on page 73 e Virtual Memory limit of Maya Windows on page 74 Modeling improvements e Soften extruded polygon edges and faces on page 74 e Soften split polygons on page 75 e Polygon Bevel improvements on page 77 e UV Texture Editor improvements on page 80 e Subdivision surface improvements on page 81 What s New in Maya 6 5 63 4 Other improvements gt What else is new and improved Animation improvements New animation clip per channel offset controls on page 82 New channel state controls on page 85 Improved animation constraint blending on page 89 Custom playback speed on page 91 Character Setup improvements Improved Copy Smooth Skin Weights on page 92 Bind skin to non joint objects on page 95 Prevent attachment of zero weighted smooth skin influences on page 96 Maintain Max Influences on page 97 Add influence objects at any pose on page 97 Automatic joint radii according to bone length on page 98 Rendering improvements Improved Hypershade navigation on page 99 New flags for the Command Line Renderer on page 100 Maya vector rendering on page 102 Maya hardware rendering on page 102 mental ray for Maya rendering on page 103 Other improvements What s New in Ma
139. nt Hierarchy Selected Joints Object Hierarchy Joint Hierarchy In Maya 6 5 the Complete Skeleton Bind to option has been renamed to Joint Hierarchy For details on this option see Skin gt Bind Skin gt Smooth Bind in the Skinning chapter of the Character Setup and Deformers guide Object Hierarchy When this option is selected the selected deformable geometry is bound to the entire hierarchy of the selected joint or non joint transform node from the top node down through the entire node hierarchy If there are What s New in Maya 6 5 95 4 Other improvements gt Prevent attachment of zero weighted smooth skin influences any joints in the node hierarchy they are also included in the bind With this Bind to option you can bind entire pieces of geometry to nodes like groups or locators Bind Method Bind Method Closest In Hierarchy Closest In Hierarchy Closest Distance Closest In Hierarchy In Maya 6 5 the Closest Joints bind method has been renamed to Closest In Hierarchy For details on this option see Skin gt Bind Skin gt Smooth Bind in the Skinning chapter of the Character Setup and Deformers guide Prevent attachment of zero weighted smooth skin influences Now when you smooth skin bind your geometry you can turn on the new Remove Unused Influences option to prevent any weighted influences that would receive a zero weighting from being included in the bind You can turn off Remove Unused I
140. oints is set to 0 to maintain the total number of weighted influences specified by Max Influences This limits the redistribution of weights to a specific number of influences and ensures that the primary joints are the ones that receive the weights Maintain Max Influences is located in Skin gt Bind Skin gt Smooth Bind gt O and in the Smooth Skin Attributes section of the skinCluster node Note If you turn on Maintain Max Influences in the Attribute Editor your skin s weights will not be modified until you reassign its weights by clicking the Update Weights button Add influence objects at any pose You can now add influence objects to smooth skinned geometry at any pose not just at the bind pose What s New in Maya 6 5 97 4 Other improvements gt Automatic joint radii according to bone length However adding an influence object to smooth skinned geometry when not at the bind pose produces slightly different results than when at the bind pose For example if you add an influence object to geometry that is not at its bind pose then some deformation may occur at the location of the influence due to a redistribution of weights in that area Related topics o Bind pose in the Character Setup and Deformers guide 7 Smooth skin influence objects in the Character Setup and Deformers guide Automatic joint radii according to bone length Now when you create joints the radii of your joints ar
141. on and Licensing guide Note A full version of mental ray for Maya Standalone provides these additional features e The ability to be a master for an unlimited number of mental ray Standalone slave CPUs e The ability to accept rendering tasks from Maya or render mi files offline You can purchase mental ray Standalone from Alias at www alias com What s New in Maya 6 5 105 4 Other improvements gt Improved Final Gather method Improved Final Gather method The mental ray for Maya Final Gather processing method has been improved to produce better quality shading effects As a result lower settings can typically be used to reduce processing time In addition final gather now supports multiple diffuse bounces to achieve more realistic results see Secondary Diffuse Bounces on page 126 We ve also made other improvements to Final Gather including e New object specific render attributes in the Attribute Editor on page 117 e New Final Gather settings on page 125 Tips to retune scenes with the new Final Gather method The following tips may help you retune your final gather settings to work with the new final gather method These tips may also improve performance and quality in your scenes e Adjust Final Gather Rays Because the new final gather method is more efficient you should use significantly fewer final gather rays Typically only one tenth of the original number of final gather rays are n
142. on of the constrained object without having to rotate the driver object What s New in Maya 6 5 90 4 Other improvements gt Custom playback speed When a constrained object s Lock Output attribute is on you can only manipulate its constrained channels by transforming its driver object When a constrained object s Lock Output attribute is off you can directly manipulate its constrained channels without having to transform its driver object The Lock Output attribute is located in the Constraint Attributes section of each constraint node Note The Animation Blending preferences affect the default state of the Lock Output attribute Custom playback speed In Maya 6 5 you can now easily specify a custom playback speed in frames per second for your scene using the new Other Speed setting For example if you specify an Other Speed value of 72 then your scene s animation will play back at 72 fps Previously to specify a custom playback speed you had to set a multiplier value for the Real time playback speed The Other Speed setting is located in Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences gt Timeline category gt Playback section For more information see Timeline preferences in the Preferences and Customization chapter of the Basics guide The Other Speed setting is only available when you select Other from the Playback Speed drop down list What s New in Maya 6 5 91 4 Other improvements g
143. opying smooth skin weights from a small biped model to a large biped model e When the source and destination skins are bound to different skeletons make sure that the way they are parented if applicable is consistent For example if the source skin s skeleton is grouped under a node make sure that the destination skin s skeleton is also grouped under a node Otherwise Maya may make the wrong associations between joints and this can produce undesirable results in the copy 1 Doone of the following Select the smooth skin polygonal mesh or group of meshes you want as the source skin and then select the polygonal mesh or group of meshes you want as the destination skin Select the polygonal mesh vertices you want as the source skin vertices and then select the polygonal mesh vertices you want as the destination skin vertices What s New in Maya 6 5 93 4 Other improvements 5 Improved Copy Smooth Skin Weights Select Skin gt Edit Smooth Skin gt Copy Skin Weights gt O The Copy Skin Weights Options window appears Note Do one of the following Turn on Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy is on by default for best results when copying smooth skin weights from a low resolution polygonal mesh to a high resolution polygonal mesh The Copy Skin Weights operation is slower when Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy is turned on than when it is turned off Turn off Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy for a
144. or off per object What s New in Maya 6 5 102 4 Other improvements gt Summary of major improvements To apply the Ignore Hardware Shader attribute to multiple polygon or NURBS objects Shift click the objects in your scene then select Display gt Object Display gt Ignore Hardware Shader To show the hardware shader Shift click the objects in your scene then select Display gt Object Display gt Use Hardware Shader mental ray for Maya rendering Summary of major improvements In Maya 6 5 we ve integrated mental ray version 3 4 This version is focused on performance and large scene handling Major improvements to mental ray for Maya may cause some of your existing scenes to render differently These improvements include e Improved Final Gather method on page 106 e New Rapid Scanline method on page 108 e Improved displacement approximation in mental ray for Maya on page 109 e Improved approximation on Subdivision surfaces on page 110 e New file texture filter types on page 129 For more information see the detailed documentation for each topic Rendering with mental ray for Maya and mental ray satellite Overview Mental ray for Maya now supports a new form of network rendering mental ray satellite rendering The new network rendering capability based on mental ray satellite technology lets you install a version of mental ray satellite on any networked computer This special ver
145. ortant changes to existing classes 153 Examples of new plug in functionality 177 Other significant changes 0 nee eens 178 5 Performance tips 0 00 eee ee 181 Getting the most out of Maya 0 eee eee 181 Best practices for performance 0000 cece eens 181 Interactive drawing 0 00 eee 181 Hardware Shaders 0 eee eee eens 183 MEMORY aeeoa eee eas be ee Nee da etna E 185 Animation 24 2 eee os ek ole chek Glee a Se ee als 185 FUR Woh Aten ee ee de ett Gee he es 186 Miscellaneous 0 000 eee es 186 Modeling 20 cc eee ee tees 186 DYNAMICS 2 08 sf teh eas ae ee pe ee See 187 ClOt sic cseciied elk ek e we atch AA 187 Rendering va s radere a oa ea ee dae ee eee ag 187 What s New in Maya 6 5 11 Table of Contents Artisan noe e KA ABA ee tot ee ee ee 187 Paint Eects a kasa Sos nh Eh eae ee Ens 187 Optimize your scene for playback 188 Display and Ul Elements 20000 eee ees 188 Modeling NAA el NP aria ae eae 191 SkeletONSi 0 a AO Banh id cae ie Motte alec dal RA has 192 SKM MIA AA 192 DefoOrmers iamar hk an hehe eee a be ele NG 193 Animation 23 208 panda Ba Eee aa Pe Le ee ee 194 index ric TAG DAA Ge ee a NANG Fee be ee ee 195 What s New in Maya 6 5 12 About Maya 6 5 What s new and improved in Maya 6 5 The main focus of Maya 6 5 is the ability to handle larger and mo
146. ot appear in the Channel Box move the selected channel to the Nonkeyable Hidden column e To make a channel nonkeyable and have it appear in the Channel Box move the selected channel to the Nonkeyable Displayed column 4 Other improvements gt Improved animation constraint blending Improved animation constraint blending The new Animation Blending preferences in the Maya Preferences window let you specify the types of blends that can occur between object connections For example when you turn on the Always Blend with Existing Connections Animation Blend preference you can then both animate and constrain a single object Note In Maya 6 5 the Keys category in the Maya Preferences window has been renamed to Animation ih Preferences Edit Help BEE Categories Interface UI Elements Help Display Kinematics Animation Manipulators NURBS Polygons Subdivs ameras Animation Animation Preferences Auto Key T Auto Key Key Modified Attribute On Character Sets Na New Curve Default Independent Euler Angle Curves Tangents I Weighted Tangents Dynamics Default In Tangent Clamped v Files Projects Modeling Default Out Tangent Clamped Rendering Animation Blending Snapping Blend Always Blend with Existing Connections Sound C Blend With All Except Constraints ee C Never Blend with Existing Connections Web Browser Mo
147. ow required You can adjust Final Gather Rays in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Final Gather section e Adjust Final Gather radii If the mental ray for Maya statistics on final gathering show more than 30 to 50 final gather points per interpolation of the Min Radius and Max Radius you should reduce the radii size to improve performance What s New in Maya 6 5 106 4 Other improvements gt Improved Final Gather method To see statistics and adjust final gather radii 1 Inthe Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Translation section select Info Messages from the Export Verbosity drop down list 2 Render your scene 3 In the Maya Output window check for the final gather points statistic PE finalgather 534256 a CFG 0 2 info balancing updated finalgather map 5344 points CFG 0 2 info wallclock 0 00 03 21 for computing finalgather points CFG 0 2 info allocated 5 MB max resident 9 MB 19 0 2 info rendering statistics c D2 jinfo s type number per eye ray Cc Ose Info eye rays 117422 1 00 Cc 0 2 info finalgather rays 37185 0 32 C 0 2 info fg points computed 373 0 00 C Nn inn fe nainte inrernnlared aag na RC 0 2 info on average 35 45 finalgather points used per interpolation UL UG LULU MALH op LEE DLALLOLILDG CI 0 2 info max depth 40 CI 0 2 info max leaf size 20 CI 0 2 info average depth Aspe CI 0 2 info average leaf size 7 CI 0 2 info
148. provide an acceptable alternative for some lights when using the Maya Software renderer Miscellaneous On Windows fragmented hard drives can cause serious performance issues We suggest you defragment regularly and thoroughly with a dedicated application Standard tools offered by the operating system are often not sufficient to gain performance benefits Take advantage of file referencing For more information see About file referencing improvements on page 15 Become very familiar with Windows gt Settings Preferences gt Performance Settings Use File gt Optimize Scene Size gt O to remove unused scene data Modeling What s New in Maya 6 5 186 Use the Reuse Triangles attribute on polygons Use Poly Reduce to simplify complex geometry Polygonal models that don t have the following will display faster unshared normals unshared texture coordinates unmapped faces and faces that are not triangles not triangulated 5 Performance tips gt Best practices for performance Dynamics e Use the Stand In attribute on rigid body geometry e When starting or setting up a simulation start with less geometry on particles Cloth e Turn off Cloth collisions for the initial setup and testing of a simulation e Animate settings like Frame Samples and Time Step Size to improve solve time e Solve in batch mode Rendering e Use Render Diagnostics for hints on improving performance See Maya render diag
149. ps generated from a particular frame select Default Equalizer Maps and set the Use Frame field to the required frame number Default Equalizer Maps If you select Default Equalizer Maps Fur Globals are set to default equalizer If you select Custom Equalizer Maps and the map is found old read equal maps will be converted to custom equalizer maps If the map is not found you are prompted with the following dialog box Custom Equalizer Map xi The following Equalizer map could not be found C Documents and Settingsssusanf My Documents mayasprojectsidefaultsfurE qualM ap B oring_fur_nurbsPlaneShape1_eqMap iff Click Default to generate a new default map to customize Click Browse to search for the map Default Browse Select Default if you want to generate a default equalizer map Otherwise select Browse to look for your own custom equalizer map Hair improvements e 2D Motion blur now works on hair when shadow casting is turned on Previously it only worked with hair when Cast Shadows was turned off e 2D Motion blur now works correctly for hair when the number of hairSystem Sub Segments is greater than one Previously a Sub Segments value greater than one resulted in overly long streaks at the hair tips e You can now use Motion Blur on self shadowed hair What s New in Maya 6 5 135 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements Cloth improvements What s New in Maya 6 5 136 You can now visualize
150. r rays When this attribute is turned off the object is not affected by final gathering This attribute is on by default Note The above attributes are only available on the shape node of NURBS Subdiv Mesh objects and Fur Feedback nodes Min Max Object Sample Limits Use this attribute to set specific sample limits on a per object basis The values you select must be within the global sample limits which are available in the Render Global Settings window The default Min Sample Level value is 0 and the default Max Sample Level value is 2 The Min Max Object Sample Limits attribute is off by default New Quality Presets We ve added new quality presets for mental ray for Maya in the Render Global Settings Window mental ray tab Quality Presets drop down list Custom Lets you specify the mental ray for Maya quality settings independently DraftRapidMotion Gives you a relatively good indication as to what the scene will look like when using Rapid Scanline while taking the least amount of processing time What s New in Maya 6 5 118 4 Other improvements gt New Caustics and Global Illumination settings PreviewRapidMotion Slightly better than Draft when using Rapid Scanline takes a little more processing time but achieves a good balance between quality and time ProductionRapidMotion Use this when testing the final rendering or rendering the final image s when using Rapid Scanline For more infor
151. re complex scenes than ever before We ve approached this from two directions performance enhancements throughout the software and new and improved tools for breaking your scene into manageable pieces through file referencing As well there are new features in this release For details see e Chapter 2 File referencing e Chapter 3 Performance improvements e Chapter 4 Other improvements We ve also provided a list of some best practices to get the most out of using Maya See Chapter 5 Performance tips All features are common to all supported platforms unless otherwise indicated Some features Fluid Effects Cloth Fur Hair and Live are only found in Maya Unlimited Note You can also find all this information in the Maya Help Please check the information in the Maya Help as it may be more up to date What s New in Maya 6 5 13 1 About Maya 6 5 gt What s new and improved in Maya 6 5 What s New in Maya 6 5 14 File referencing About file referencing improvements File referencing lets you assemble multiple objects shading materials animation and so on into a scene without importing the files into the scene This lets you segment digital assets in your scenes to better coordinate production on complex scenes and work more collaboratively This release includes architecture enhancements to file referencing as well as many new features such as proxy references Proxy references let yo
152. ror Geometry 0220s 55 Polygons gt Smooth Proxy 0000 cece eee eee 55 Polygons gt Cleanup 000 eee eee 55 Edit Polygons gt Subdivide 000 cece eee eens 55 Edit Polygons gt Merge Vertices aa 55 Edit Polygons gt Delete Vertex 0000 a 55 Edit Polygons gt Delete Faces 0 0 a 56 Edit Polygons gt Separate 00 cece eee eee ees 56 What s New in Maya 6 5 4 Table of Contents Edit Polygons gt Colors 0 nananana anaana 56 Edit Polygons gt Normals 000 0c cee eee eee eeeee 56 Subdivision surfaces display 000 cece eens 56 Soft Modification Tool 0 a 56 General rendering eee eee ees 57 New user preference for maximum hardware texture FeSOlutiON wei os NAAN tote eae tae De ee Aes 57 Improved normal mapping 2222 ee eee eee 57 Swatch updating in Hypershade 57 mental ray for Maya rendering eee eee 57 Improved Object Instancing cee eee eee 57 Animation detection 0000 cette eee 58 Painting nnes ANN GA NAKAWAN EEN RAA O 58 Artisan tools muna kaa Na ua way Sa eee ee 58 3D Paint Tool Ga tie oats LAKAD ead ase 59 PIOIGS Effects re ram naa D KA dee En Se ee ets ek he 59 Ocean shader playback cece eens 59 FIUIAS Solver se iss ia de a I a ed ae bee 59 FUND pgka AA Sue hte ato NANAA Dinaan MAA Dan LAG had 60 Halka AG NANA Reese de an Dn
153. roxy Tag options on page 29 What s New in Maya 6 5 34 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Note When you add a proxy reference to an existing file reference it is not immediately loaded into the scene For more information see the next section To load or switch a proxy reference 1 Inthe Reference Editor select the file reference that corresponds to the proxy reference you want to load into the scene 2 Select Proxy gt Reload Proxy As A drop down menu appears 3 Select the desired proxy file from the list of proxy references Maya immediately loads the selected proxy reference Note When a proxy reference is selected for reload Maya first checks to see if the current proxy is loaded If it is loaded Maya unloads it before automatically loading the selected proxy reference It is not possible to switch between unloaded proxy references and have the reference remain unloaded When a proxy tag appears gray in the list it indicates that it is the currently loaded proxy reference Example 1 Adding and loading a proxy reference This example shows you how to add a proxy reference using the Reference Editor identify it with a unique tag and then load it into the scene What s New in Maya 6 5 35 2 File referencing gt Proxy references File reference of tree model Proxy reference 1 800 polygon faces 170 polygon faces A scene contains a file reference to a scene containing a tree model The ref
154. s displayed with a mesh All of the generated meshes are parented under a common transform node called CollisionObjectDebug solvername Under this transform node transforms are created for each subframe being evaluated These nodes are named frame frame subframe Under these transforms the actual meshes are created and named after the original collision object that they are based on The Frame Samples attribute in the cpSolver node determines how many meshes are created for each frame of the simulation What s New in Maya 6 5 140 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements Note When using the Cloth Collision Debug feature groups are created each time the Cloth solver samples the shape of a collision object This may result in additional groups being created that are slightly beyond the playback range If the collision geometry is not animated beyond the last frame of the playback these additional groups will be in the same position as the last frame This is expected behavior However as a workaround you can delete the groups you don t want Large amounts of meshes may be created using this feature Collision Object Debug Enable is keyable and you are encouraged to only turn it on for problematic areas Once the simulation is run and the meshes are generated they are visible which may be confusing To assist with visualizing all the meshes there are new control buttons in the cpSolver node Show All Hide All Shows or
155. s method returns the per particle integer attribute of the given name int getPerParticleAttribute MString amp attrName MVectorArraya status NULL const This method returns the per particle vector attribute of the given name int getPerParticleAttribute MString amp attrName MDoubleArrayas status NULL const This method returns the per particle double attribute of the given name What s New in Maya 6 5 164 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements void setPerParticleAttribute MString amp attrName MVectorArray amp MStatus status NULL const This method sets the per particle vector attribute of the specified name with the specified values void setPerParticleAttribute MString amp attrName MDoubleArray amp MStatus status NULL const This method sets the per particle double attribute of the specified name with the specified values bool isPerParticleIntAttribute const MString amp attrName MStatus status NULL const This method checks if the input attribute is a per particle integer attribute bool isPerParticleDoubleAttribute const MString amp attrName MStatus status NULL const This method checks if the input attribute is a per particle double attribute bool isPerParticleVectorAttribute const MString amp attrName MStatus status NULL const This method checks if the input attribute is a per particle vector attribute bool isDeformedPartic
156. setting was False Maya now automatically sets the value of the attribute to True or False whenever it is appropriate What s New in Maya 6 5 60 3 Performance improvements gt API For example if there is only one blind data node of a particular blind data type for a poly mesh then the attribute will be set to True If more than one blind data node exists for a particular blind data type for a particular poly mesh then the first occurrence of the node will be set to True The other occurrences in the meshes history will have this node attribute set to False Generally there will only be one node of this type for a given mesh unless the user has added to the construction history in between modifications to blind data API Plug in Manager updating The Plug in Manager now updates more quickly on subsequent opens For example opening a directory with hundreds of entries now takes a fraction of the time it did in previous versions of Maya As a part of this change the MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH is scanned only once when you first open the window As a result if you create a new plug in on the MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH while Maya is running it will not show up in the Plug in Manager To access newly created plug ins do one of the following e Click the Refresh button located in the Plug in Manager window to update the list This causes the directories to be scanned for changes to the window s contents e Use the loadPlugin MEL command e Res
157. shows you how to create your own MEL procedure to specify which attributes by node type get excluded by the file referencing lock operation The MEL procedure provided in this example is the same procedure that is distributed with Maya 1 Create your MEL file using your favorite text editor and name the MEL file getLockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes mel 2 Add the following text to the file ensuring you follow the exact syntax global proc string getLockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes Return a string array containing a list of node types whose attributes should be skipped during locking of a referenced file string lockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes 0 lightLinker SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes 1 displayLayerManager SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes 2 displayLayer SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes 3 renderLayerManager SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes 4 renderLayer return S SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes What s New in Maya 6 5 22 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements Note Add or remove any node types you want excluded by the locking operation by editing this text as necessary That is add or remove any SlockReferenceExcludedNodeTypes n lines as necessary using the same syntax as in the above example also ensuring the array indices n are consecutive 3 Save the MEL file and place it in yo
158. side the radio button is absolute When a Relative radio button is turned on the offset of the channel beside the radio button is relative What s New in Maya 6 5 83 4 Other improvements gt New animation clip per channel offset controls Each channel name beside the radio buttons has a prefix This prefix is the name of the object to which the animation channels belong For example if the animation in a clip belongs to an object named Sam then the prefix Sam appears before each of the clip s channels in the Channel Offsets All Absolute The All Absolute button lets you set the offsets of all the channels for the current clip to absolute All Relative The All Relative button lets you set the offsets of all the channels for the current clip to relative Restore Defaults The Restore Defaults button lets you revert the current clip s Channel Offsets to their original settings Copy Channel Offsets The new Copy Channel Offsets menu item in the Trax Editor lets you apply the current channel offset settings from one clip to another This is useful when you want multiple clips to have the same offset settings Copy Channel Offsets is located under the Edit menu in the Trax menu bar For more information on clip channel offsets see Offset clip channels in the Nonlinear Animation chapter of the Animation guide To copy the channel offset settings from one clip to another clip 1 Select the clip that has the cha
159. sing them into the closestIntersection allIntersections or anyIntersection methods MStatus freeCachedIntersectionAccelerator If the mesh has a cached intersection accelerator structure then this routine forces it to be deleted MString cachedIntersectionAcceleratorInfo MStatus ReturnStatus NULL Retrieves a string that describes the intersection acceleration structure for this object if any What s New in Maya 6 5 161 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MStatus normal const MStatus MSpace MStatus MSpace MStatus normal const static MString globalIntersectionAcceleratorsInfo Retrieves a string that describes the systemwide resource usage for cached mesh intersection accelerators static void clearGlobalIntersectionAcceleratorInfo mon Clears the total count total build time and peak memory fields from the information string returned by globalIntersectionAcceleratorsInfo MStatus getPolygonTriangleVertices int polygonId int triangleId int triangleVertices 3 const This method retrieves the object relative mesh relative global vertex indices for the specified triangle in the specified polygon The indices refer to the elements in the array returned by the getPoints method getFaceVertexTangent int faceIndex int vertexIndex MVector amp MSpace Space space MSpace kObject const MString uvSet NULL This method returns
160. sion of mental ray resides on that machine and waits for rendering tasks from Maya It supplements the mental ray rendering capabilities in What s New in Maya 6 5 103 4 Other improvements gt Rendering with mental ray for Maya and mental ray satellite Maya with additional rendering power provided by the networked computers CPUs It can only receive these tasks from Maya and does not have the ability to receive mi files for rendering it also cannot be a master for other mental ray slave machines A mental ray distributed rendering can speed up all of the following tasks e interactive rendering through the Maya interface e IPR rendering with mental ray for Maya e interactive batch rendering a batch render started by Maya command line rendering e pre lighting baking to textures and vertices The mental ray for Maya plug in that is integrated in Maya always lets you render on up to 4 local CPUs With Maya Complete mental ray satellite rendering can take place on 2 additional remote CPUs With Maya Unlimited mental ray satellite rendering can take place on 8 additional remote CPUs The rendering process is typically initiated from the master machine the machine running Maya or where the command line render starts from The slave machines satellite rendering computers process rendering tasks they receive over the network from the master and send back results The master machine handles task distribution load balan
161. sion of environment variables when Retain is selected happens internally with each field which invokes the File Browser For example when specifying a filename for a file texture the node must now internally find a filename which contains environment variables Should the recipient of File Browser output be unable to handle environment variables in the filenames it accepts as a workaround manually expand the environment variable Note Some file browsers used by Maya are standard platform specific file browsers and not the Maya File Browser Only the Maya File Browser is able to handle unexpanded path names Other notes Environment variables are typically defined externally prior to starting Maya but can also be set via the putenv command The internal Maya environment variable expansion code handles 5 as an environment variable delimiter on all platforms as well as the standard combinations of and on Windows and on IRIX and Linux The Up button in the browser only expands the current path name if necessary For example if the path name is SIMAGES sgi and you click Up the path name changes to IMAGES Clicking Up again expands the current path name first and usr becomes the current selection What s New in Maya 6 5 72 4 Other improvements gt Create new layouts in the Component Editor Create new layouts in the Component Editor You can now create custom layouts in the Component Editor In a Component Edi
162. status NULL This method creates a new particle shape with a transform MObject create MObject parent MStatus status NULL This method creates a new particle shape with the specified parent MStatus emit const MPoint amp position This method adds a new particle at the specified position to the particle system MStatus emit const MPointArray amp positionArray This method adds an array of particles specified by the position array to the particle system What s New in Maya 6 5 163 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements unsigned MStatus unsigned MStatus unsigned MStatus MStatus emit const MPoint amp position const MVector amp velocity This method adds a new particle at the specified position and velocity to the particle system MStatus emit const MPointArray amp positionArray const MVectorArray amp velocityArray This method adds an array of particles with velocity to the particle system MStatus saveInitialState const This method resets the particle s current state as the initial state void velocity MVectorArray amp const This method returns the particle velocity array void acceleration MVectorArray amp const This method returns the particle acceleration array void mass MDoubleArray amp const This method returns the particle mass array int getPerParticleAttribute MString amp attrName MIntArrayas status NULL const Thi
163. t API and Devkit improvements This class returns true if the specified node already has an attribute with the given name MFnMesh We have added more UV functionality to this class In addition we have added new functionality for finding intersections faster and tangent and binormal information MStatus getFaceUVSetNames int polygonId MStringArray amp setNames const This method returns the UV set names that are mapped to the polygon specified by polygon ID The methods which improve mesh intersection speed are described next static MMeshIsectAccelParams uniformGridParams int xDiv int yDiv int zDiv Creates a MMeshIsectAccelParams configuration object to pass to the methods MFnMesh closestIntersection MFnMesh anyIntersection or MFnMesh allIntersections static MMeshIsectAccelParams autoUniformGridParams Creates a MMeshIsectAccelParams configuration object to pass to the methods MFnMesh closestIntersection MFnMesh anyIntersection or MFnMesh allIntersections bool closestIntersection const MFloatPoint amp raySource const MFloatVector amp rayDirection const MIntArray faceIds const MIntArray triIds bool idsSorted MSpace Space space float maxParam bool testBothDirections MMeshIsectAccelParams accelerator MFloatPoint amp hitPoint float hitRayParam int hitFace int hitTriangle float hitBaryl float hitBary2 float tolerance le 6 MStatus ReturnStatus NULL Finds
164. t Improved Copy Smooth Skin Weights Low resolution mesh Character Setup and Deformers Improved Copy Smooth Skin Weights Now when you copy smooth skin weights from one skinned polygonal mesh source skin to another destination skin the new Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy option improves the results of the copy Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy lets you smooth the distribution of copied weights on the destination skin Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy is most useful when copying smooth skin weights from a low resolution polygonal mesh to a high resolution polygonal mesh Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy is located in Skin gt Edit Smooth Skin gt Copy Skin Weights gt O High resolution meshes Use Smooth Skin Use Smooth Skin Weight Copy on Weight Copy off Character by Rick Kogucki What s New in Maya 6 5 92 4 Other improvements gt Improved Copy Smooth Skin Weights How do copy smooth skin weights between polygonal meshes in Maya 6 5 Tips For best results when copying smooth skin weights note the following e Your source and destination skins should be positioned closely together in your scene For example the skinned meshes you are copying weights to and from should be located at the same position in Maya s coordinate space e Your source and destination skins should look similar For example copying the smooth skin weights from one medium sized biped model to another produces much better results than c
165. t command Playblast typically numbers its frames sequentially starting at zero This flag will override the default action and frames will be numbered using the actual frames specified by the frame or startFrame endFrame flags There is a new flag removeUnusedInfluence rui flag for the skinCluster command If this flag is set to true then the transform or joint whose weights are all zero they have no effect will not be bound to the geometry Having this option set will help speed up the playback of animation There is a new smooth flag for the copySkinWeights command When this flag is used the weights are smoothly interpolated between the closest vertices instead of assigned from the single closest vertex Paint Effects There is anew scaleBrushBrightness command you can use to scale how bright a brush appears There is no single parameter on a brush for overall brightness Adjusting the scaleBrushBrightness can require editing several color diffuse What s New in Maya 6 5 149 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements and specular values This command provides a simple way of adjusting all the parameters to uniformly scale the brightness You can adjust several brushes in the scene or just the template brush There are two flags scaleFactor This is a multiplier so a value of 0 5 makes the brush half as bright useTemplate If set to true or non zero the scale is applied to the template brush otherw
166. t is distributed with Maya 1 Create a MEL file using a text editor and name the MEL file getLockReferenceExcludedAttributes mel 2 Add the following text to the file ensuring you follow the exact syntax global proc string getLockReferenceExcludedAttributes Return a string array containing a list of attributes to be skipped during locking of a referenced file The listed attributes locked state will remain the same as in the referenced file string lockReferenceExcludedAttributes SlockReferenceExcludedAttributes 0 visibility return SlockReferenceExcludedAttributes Note Add or remove any attributes you want excluded by the locking operation by editing this text as necessary That is add or remove any lockReferenceExcludedAttributes n lines as necessary using the same syntax as in the above example also ensuring the array indices n are consecutive 3 Save the MEL file and place it in your Maya script path What s New in Maya 6 5 21 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements If you named the MEL file exactly the same as the default one that is distributed with Maya the Lock option uses this new customized script for locking file references the next time Maya starts For more information on sourcing MEL scripts and working with MEL procedures in general see the MEL and Expressions guide Example 2 MEL procedure for excluding node types This example
167. tal ray alpha component of the final color as the alpha channel ignoring the Maya alpha component This is useful when a custom shader is producing an alpha value This option is off by default Pass Custom Depth Channel This option overrides the Maya depth channel calculation with the default mental ray depth channel calculation This option is useful when you want to revert to using the mental ray depth calculation instead of the default Maya calculation This option is off by default Pass Custom Label Channel This option passes label data untouched rather than allowing adjustment for Maya shaders This option is off by default Use these options to take advantage of alternate channel computations when writing custom shaders For more information see Render Global Settings mental ray tab in the Rendering guide or see the mental ray Shaders Guide available from the Maya Help New support for region rendering mental ray for Maya batch rendering now supports user defined region rendering Use the new reg flag for example render r mr reg 0 100 O 100 scene ma What s New in Maya 6 5 127 4 Other improvements gt New support for Area Lights where reg 0 100 0 100 indicates the region to be rendered in pixels left right bottom top The above command renders the lower left 100 x100 pixel region of the scene New support for Area Lights The Maya Area light is now supported by mental ray for Maya r
168. tart Maya MFnMesh create Creating the polygons of a large mesh using MFnMesh create is now faster What s New in Maya 6 5 61 3 Performance improvements gt API MFnMesh acceleration intersection methods We have added a number of new methods to the MFnMesh class to help you find intersections more quickly e closestIntersection e anylntersections allIntersections See API and Devkit improvements in the Other improvements chapter for the full list Iteration over several MFn types The following classes now accept MIteratorType objects that allows iteration over multiple MFn Type values e MltDag e MltDependencyGraph e MltDependencyNodes Plug ins that take advantage of this feature can scan the DAG or DG faster since multiple passes are not required What s New in Maya 6 5 62 Other improvements What else is new and improved In this chapter you ll find new features and improvements made to Maya which are not performance related General improvements e Alias DirectConnect included with Maya on page 65 e FBX plug in included with Maya on page 66 e CGFx plug in Windows on page 66 e Subdivision surfaces heads up display on page 67 e Improved Layer Editor navigation on page 68 e Maya Web browser improvements on page 68 e Improved wheel mouse support on page 69 e Scaling a light or camera locator on page 69 e Environment variable expa
169. tatus ReturnStatus NULL const This method determines whether or not the attribute s type is dynamic MDataHandle constructHandle MDataBlock amp const What s New in Maya 6 5 171 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements This method returns a data handle constructed for this plug void destructHandle MDataHandle amp const This method destructs the data handle for this plug MPxCommand This class now has support for including the line number of a proxy command warning or error message static void displayWarning const MString amp theWarning bool wantDisplayLineNumber static void displayError const MString amp theError bool wantDisplayLineNumber The following overloaded methods include a parameter for requesting the generation of line number information when the warning or error is displayed Note The option to display line numbers in the MEL scripting window must also be on for line number information to be generated MPxFileTranslator This class now has enhanced support for referenced models and now provides information on Maya s current file access mode The FileAccessMode enum now contains a new item called kReferenceAccessMode for controlling the reference of data in the current scene virtual bool haveReferenceMethod const This routine is called by Maya while it is executing in the MPxFileTranslator constructor Maya uses this entry point to query the trans
170. the Ocean Shader node s Attribute Editor but can be connected to using the Connection Editor New Solver Quality attribute We ve added a new Solver Quality attribute to the fluid shape node Dynamic Simulation section Increasing the Solver Quality value increases the number of steps used internally by the Navier Stokes solver which may increase the accuracy of the simulation and certainly increases the time required to run Depending on your fluids material properties you may get satisfactory results lowering this from the default value of 20 Fur improvements Fur equalizer maps improvements We ve redesigned the handling of equalizer maps and corrected some known issues e We ve added the ability to specify the frame number at which the equalizer map is generated e We removed the browse button of ReadEqualMap Path the Custom Equalizer workflow is now used to read maps generated elsewhere This ensures that the maps are always found correctly What s New in Maya 6 5 133 4 Other improvements gt Fur improvements Fur equalizer map options In the Fur Globals window there are now only three options for equalizer maps e No Equalizer Maps e Default Equalizer Maps e Custom Equalizer Maps A default equalizer map is created at the frame specified in Use Frame It is used throughout a sequence even if the fur is rendered in sections or over a render farm If Default Equalizer Maps is selected at render time May
171. the closest intersection of a ray starting at raySource and travelling in rayDirection with the mesh What s New in Maya 6 5 160 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements bool anyIntersection const MFloatPoint amp raySource const MFloatVector amp rayDirection const MIntArray facelds const MIntArray triIds bool idsSorted MSpace Space space float maxParam bool testBothDirections MMeshIsectAccelParams accelerator MFloatPoint amp hitPoint float hitRayParam int hitFace int hitTriangle float hitBaryl float hitBary2 float tolerance le 6 MStatus ReturnStatus NULL Finds any intersection of a ray starting at raySource and travelling in ray Direction with the mesh bool allIntersections const MFloatPoint amp raySource const MFloatVector amp rayDirection const MIntArray facelds const MIntArray triIds bool idsSorted MSpace Space space float maxParam bool testBothDirections MMeshIsectAccelParams accelerator bool sortHits MFloatPointArray amp hitPoints MFloatArray hitRayParams MIntArray hitFaces MIntArray hitTriangles MFloatArray hitBaryl MFloatArray hitBary2 float tolerance le 6 MStatus ReturnStatus NULL Finds all intersections of a ray starting at raySource and traveling in ray Direction with the mesh MStatus sortIntersectionFaceTrilIds MIntArray facelds MIntArray trilds Convenient routine for sorting facelds or face triangle ids before pas
172. their own biases This adds a slight offset to the shadow depths resulting in a slightly shifted shadow This option is useful in tuning shadows in specific cases such as when rendering Fur The bias value should be smaller than the smallest distance between a shadow caster and a shadow receiver However bias values that are too small may cause self shadowing See also Per light Shadow Map Bias on page 115 For more information see the mental ray User Manual available from the Maya Help New Motion Blur Calculation settings The following new options are available in the Render Global Settings window mental ray tab Motion Blur gt Calculation section e Custom Motion Offsets What s New in Maya 6 5 124 4 Other improvements gt New Final Gather settings Turn on this option if you want to set values for Motion Back Offset and Static Back Offset Use these custom motion offsets to define the time steps where motion blur information is captured This option is off by default e Motion Back Offset This value determines the start point of the time interval used for motion blurring It is an offset to the current time in frames The default value is 0 5 and corresponds to Maya e Static Object Offset This value determines the time used to render static objects The default value is 0 and corresponds to Maya New Final Gather settings The following new settings are available for final gather in the Render G
173. tion and adjust the overall Collision Depth value for example to 3 Once you ve finished painting reset the Collision Depth value 5 Paint the collision object and see the effects on the Offset Depth mesh To tweak a Cloth collision simulation If a Cloth collision simulation is incorrect and vertices are sticking inside the collision object you can use the following workflow to adjust the simulation results What s New in Maya 6 5 139 4 Other improvements gt Cloth improvements 1 Play the Cloth simulation 2 Follow the steps in To paint Cloth collision attributes on page 139 to paint Collision Depth or Collision Offset values in the problem areas 3 To clear the Cloth cache select Simulation 5 Delete Cache 4 Replay the Cloth simulation 5 Repeat steps 2 to 4 until the Cloth collision simulation is corrected Debugging Cloth collisions Complex Cloth simulations that generate collision objects through the use of deformers or custom nodes can cause problems with the Cloth simulation when the object moves through the scene in an erratic or jumpy manner If erratic motion occurs at the subframe level you previously had no way to visualize and diagnose the problem Now you can use the Cloth Collision Debug feature to troubleshoot See To debug a Cloth collision simulation on page 141 When you turn on Cloth Collision Debug and run the Cloth simulation each collision object that was selected for debugging i
174. tion work To edit the namespace for a file reference 1 In the Reference Editor select the file reference whose namespace you want to edit The current namespace for the selected file reference appears in the Namespace field Double click within the Namespace field to select the text for the current namespace Type the text you want for the namespace for the file reference and click Enter Notes What s New in Maya 6 5 24 The file reference must have been created using the namespaces option for its namespace to be editable That is you cannot edit references that were created using the older file renaming prefix convention A namespace cannot be edited if the file reference is unloaded The new namespace you enter cannot already exist 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements e The namespace for a reference can only be edited for references that are made from the currently open scene That is you cannot edit namespaces for references that are nested within other file references File gt Save Reference Edits You can now save edits made within the parent scene to the referenced file using Save Reference Edits Because edits made to a file reference reside within a reference node in the parent scene that references the file Save Reference Edits transfers the edits that were made for a referenced file from the parent scene and applies them directly to the referenced file As a result the ed
175. tor tab select columns and select Options gt Remember This Layout You are prompted to name this layout A tab appears with the name and column layout you selected To remove the custom layout select Options gt Delete Current Layout Adding custom shared shelves We have added a feature that allows you to create custom shared shelves You can use this feature to create custom shared shelves for different groups who need access to different sets of shared commands for example when working on different stages of a production Previously Maya stored and retrieved shelves only from the default shelf directory for example SUSER maya 6 0 prefs shelves The new environment variable MAYA_SHELF_PATH allows you to specify the directories that Maya searches to access the shelves You can store shelves in a location accessible by different groups who then set the MAYA SHELF PATH variable for their workstation You can specify more than one directory using MAYA_SHELF_PATH separated by colons for example Product ion shelf Shot shelf MyDir shelf specifies three different shelf directories At startup Maya searches each directory in the order specified to instantiate shelves After searching the directories specified in MAYA_SHELF_PATH Maya continues to add shelves from the default shelf directory Once a shelf exists a shelf with the same name in the subsequent searched directories is ignored When a new shelf is created it is al
176. u substitute one or more file references by creating a set of substitute references known as proxies In this chapter you ll find descriptions of these new features and improvements General file referencing improvements on this page e Proxy references on page 27 Related topics Managing complex scenes in the Files and Organization chapter of the Basics guide About file referencing in the Files and Organization chapter of the Basics guide General file referencing improvements File reference edits In Maya 6 0 and earlier versions the representation of edits to file references had a number of limitations What s New in Maya 6 5 15 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements The user workflows that supported multi level references were limited Edits to references could be lost depending on the unload load order that the user performed as well as the unload load state of the files lower in the referencing hierarchy As a result nodes might have appeared ungrouped or disconnected after an unload load operation on a lower level file reference In most instances this was remedied by unloading everything and reloading the reference from the top down to restore the edits e Edits were not maintained between reference files when you switched between references using the Replace Reference command This resulted in the loss of data when switching between different ref
177. ur Maya script path If you named the MEL file the same as the default one that is shipped with Maya the Lock option uses this new customized script for locking file references the next time Maya starts For more information on sourcing MEL scripts and working with MEL procedures in general see the MEL and Expressions guide Proxy Tag Options For more information see Proxy Tag options on page 29 Reference Editor Namespace editing You can now edit the namespace for an existing file reference Using namespaces ensures that each node gets assigned a unique name when referenced into a scene and avoids conflicts when multiple files are referenced The new Namespace editing feature appears in the upper section of the Reference Editor What s New in Maya 6 5 23 2 File referencing gt General file referencing improvements Namespace level3 MM Reference Editor nf x File Reference Proxy Help File Particulars Unresolved Name C Documents and Settings mjamieson My Documents maya projects default scenes airplane2 mb Reload guments maya projects default scenes airplane2 mb airplane3RN airplane1 mb Editing a file reference s namespace is useful if you change your mind after the file reference is created or inadvertently experience a namespace name clash Editing the namespace is also useful if your project s production pipeline naming conventions change in the middle of your produc
178. utput formats 131 image based lighting Render Stats 110 see IBL 110 imgcvt for Mac OS X 146 importing CAD files 65 increasing virtual memory 74 influences add at any pose 97 prevent attachment of zero weighted 96 instancing 57 Interactive Photorealistic Rendering see IPR 131 interlace for Mac OS X 146 intersection new MFnMesh methods 62 IPR 131 joints automatic radii 98 K keyable Channel Control Editor 86 keyable nonkeyable channel states 85 set from Channel Box 85 set from Channel Control Editor 86 What s New in Maya 6 5 198 L layer editor 68 light icon scaling 69 Light Only 111 locator scaling 69 Lock Output 90 locking and unlocking file references 18 M3dView 153 Maintain Max Influences 97 MAnimMessage 154 master machine 104 Max Alpha 116 Max Displace 126 Max Object Samples 120 Max Sample Level 118 Maya browser data from Maya 144 Maya hardware rendering 102 Maya vector rendering 102 resolution 102 MEL commands file 17 namespace 17 reference 17 mental ray for Maya area light 128 file texture filter 129 framebuffer 130 image output formats 131 quality presets 118 region rendering 127 rendering 103 satellite rendering 103 mental ray for Maya rendering 57 Merge Vertices 77 methods new MFnMesh 62 MFileIO 155 MFn 158 iteration over several types 62 MFnAnisotropyShader 152 MFnaAttribute 158 MFnClip 159 MFnDependencyNode 159 MFnKeyframeDelta 151 MFnL
179. ve now have a new default parameter for preserving references In addition the import method has a new default parameter for specifying the namespace to be used We now have support for deferring reference loading static MStatus reference const MString amp fileName bool deferReference false This existing method has been modified to include a default paramter that controls the deferring of references What s New in Maya 6 5 155 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements Additionally we have provided many new methods for handling file referencing static MStatus exportAnimFromReference const MString amp fileName const MString amp refNodeName const char type NULL This method exports the animation from the specified reference node to the specified file static MStatus exportSelectedAnimFromReference const MString amp fileName const char type NULL This method exports the animation from a selected reference node to the specified file static MStatus exportSelectedAnimFromReference const MString amp fileName const MString amp refNodeName const char type NULL This method exports the selected animation from the specified reference node to the specified file static MStatus exportAnim const MString amp fileName const char type NULL This method exports animation to a specified file static MStatus exportSelectedAnim const MString amp fileName const ch
180. vel information is required What s New in Maya 6 5 67 4 Other improvements gt Improved Layer Editor navigation Subdiv mode Displays the mode for the currently selected subdivision surface That is Standard or Polygon Proxy mode Improved Layer Editor navigation We have improved navigation in the layer editor by including the layer name in the pop up menu when you right click a layer Layers Options Display E v layerl layerl Create Layer Delete Edit Layer 7 Attributes Membership Maya Web browser improvements You can now search for text in the current page by choosing File 5 Find in This Page You can choose to make your search case sensitive change the direction of the search and choose whether the search wraps at the end of the page What s New in Maya 6 5 68 4 Other improvements gt Improved wheel mouse support Find in This Page Find Direction Options C Up J Match Case C Down I Wrap Find Next Close Improved wheel mouse support We have improved the support for scrolling wheels on mouse input devices In addition to the previous functionality dollying zoom in Hypershade and other windows and editors scrolling in some windows you can now scroll in most editors with scroll bars such as the Attribute Editor Outliner and Channel Box As well you can use Shift scroll wheel to scroll horizontally There is no
181. w a preference to enable or disable wheelmouse scrolling functionality Window gt Settings Preferences gt Interface gt Devices Scaling a light or camera locator You can scale light and camera icons to help you see cameras in scenes where the scene size or camera perspective masks these locator icons This is particularly useful when you have geometry parented under these objects and you want the locator to scale but not the geometry The new attribute name is locatorScale and is present on all cameras and certain lights It only affects the following types of lights e Directional light Spot light e Area light e Volume light What s New in Maya 6 5 69 4 Other improvements gt Environment variable expansion in Maya file browser Other light sources are drawn as bitmaps and have a fixed size regardless of scene scale To scale a light or camera locator icon 1 Select the light or camera icon you want to scale 2 Inthe Attribute Editor go to the shape tab for the light type for example for directionalLight go to the directionalLightShape tab 3 In the Object Display section enter a value in the Locator Scale text box Environment variable expansion in Maya file browser The Maya file browser can now optionally display the expansion of environment variables in path names entered into the path name text box for example in the Reference Editor Examples This feature allows you to create scene files
182. w has support for finding out if a matrix is singular bool isSingular const This method returns true if the given matrix is singular What s New in Maya 6 5 170 4 Other improvements gt API and Devkit improvements MNodeMessage This new dirty node callback provides information on which plug was made dirty static MCallbackId addNodeDirtyCallback MObject amp node void func MObject amp node MPlug amp plug void clientData void clientData NULL MStatus ReturnStatus NULL This method registers a callback for node dirty messages This callback provides the plug on the node that was dirtied This method only provides dirty information on input plugs MPlug This class now has support for controlling the display of plugs in the Channel Box Also you can now find out if a plug is dynamic as well as construct and destruct data handles for the plug bool isChannelBoxFlagSet MStatus ReturnStatus NULL const This method returns true if this plug or its attribute has its Channel Box flag set Attributes appear in the Channel Box if their Channel Box flag is set or if they are keyable MStatus setChannelBox bool channelBox This method sets whether this plug is displayed in the Channel Box This overrides the default display of a plug set with MFnAttribute setChannelBox Keyable attributes are always shown in the Channel Box so this flag is ignored on keyable plugs bool isDynamic MS
183. w in Maya 6 5 30 2 File referencing gt Proxy references Proxy Tags can be used for many other proxy situations for example modelFur vs modelNoFur or SceneDynamics vs SceneNoDynamics and so on Notes e Ifa file reference has not been assigned a unique proxy tag prior to the creation of the first proxy in the scene the file reference will be assigned a proxy tag named original to differentiate the original file reference from the first proxy Once a tag has been specified for a file reference it will continue to be used as the default file reference tag until another is specified That is Maya only uses the default original tag if the user has not previously explicitly specified a tag for a file reference e Ifa proxy tag is not specified when the first proxy reference is created in the scene Maya will automatically apply a unique proxy tag based on the name of the reference node Once a proxy tag has been specified for a proxy reference it will continue to be the default tag for proxy references until another is specified That is Maya only uses a default proxy tag name when the user has not previously specified an explicit tag name for a proxy reference To label a proxy reference see To add a file as a proxy reference on page 33 Working with proxy references Proxy references let you substitute different files in the scene that have been previously organized within a proxy set You must have an existing file
184. ways saved in the default shelf directory To share it move it to the desired directory that is one of the ones specified by MAYA_SHELF_PATH What s New in Maya 6 5 73 4 Other improvements gt Virtual Memory limit of Maya Windows To restrict access to a shelf directory disable the write permission of that directory A warning appears when a user attempts to write into a restricted shelf directory while exiting or saving all shelves Virtual Memory limit of Maya Windows Under Windows 2000 XP the normal application memory partition is 2GB for system and 2GB for applications For Maya this means that the largest virtual memory that can be obtained is 2GB Portions of this address space is used by MFC Microsoft Foundation Classes as well as graphic card drivers The effective virtual memory size of Maya is approximately 1 6GB Under Windows XP SP2 there is a system boot option that partitions the memory into 1GB system and 3GB user This option is 3GB Microsoft Reference e www microsoft com whdc system platform server PAE PAEmem mspx Windows XP SP1 may have problems starting if 3GB is used See Microsoft knowledgebase article 328269 e support microsoft com default aspx scid kb en us 328269 Maya 6 5 is linked with the LARGEADDRESSAWARE linker option This effectively adds approximately 1GB to the virtual memory that Maya can grow to when used with the 3GB boot option Modeling Soften extruded polygo
185. y 000000 eee 108 Improved displacement approximation in mental ray for Maya 109 Improved approximation on Subdivision surfaces 110 New Render Stats for image based lighting IBL 110 New image based lighting IBL attributes 110 Improved Baking 2 a a E a A eee 111 New light and texture shaders sussun 0000 ce eerie 112 New Dynamic Attributes naana 113 mental ray for Maya support of native Render Stats 115 Texture bake set Final Gather Quality 115 New Vertex bake set functionality 0 05 116 What s New in Maya 6 5 8 Table of Contents New object specific render attributes in the Attribute Editor 117 New Quality Presets 0 0 00 cece cece eee eee eee 118 New Caustics and Global Illumination settings 119 New Anti aliasing Quality settings 119 New Memory and Performance option 120 New Translation Performance options 121 New Translation Customization options 121 New Preview settings 0c cece eee ee 122 New Shadows settings 0 0c cece eee eee eens 123 New Motion Blur Calculation settings 124 New Final Gather settings eee eee eee 125 New Diagnostics option eee ee 126 New Displacement Overrides setting 126 New Custom Entities options
186. ya 6 5 64 Support for renaming per particle fields on page 132 Specifying which particle systems to cache on page 132 Artisan improvements on page 132 3D Paint Tool improvements on page 132 Fluid Effects improvements on page 133 Fur improvements on page 133 4 Other improvements gt Alias DirectConnect included with Maya e Hair improvements on page 135 e Cloth improvements on page 136 e Maya browser can get data from Maya on page 144 e FCheck improvements on Mac OS X on page 146 e Additional utilities on Mac OS X on page 146 Improvements to IMP on page 146 e New MEL commands and flags on page 147 e API and Devkit improvements on page 150 General Alias DirectConnect included with Maya Maya 6 5 includes Alias DirectConnect For this release of Maya Alias DirectConnect is available on Windows and Mac OS X only Alias DirectConnect is a family of products that let you import CAD data into Alias software Each DirectConnect product lets you import a specific format of CAD file into Maya For example e Alias DirectConnect for STEP lets you import STEP files stp or step Alias DirectConnect for STEP is included with and automatically installed with Maya To import a CAD file into Maya 1 Make sure the Alias DirectConnect plugin is loaded Window 5 Settings Preferences gt Plug in Manager make sure the DirectConnect plug in is ch

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