select curves in hierarchy

//select the curves in hierarchy
{
select -hi `ls -sl -dag -type "nurbsCurve"`;
string $sel[] = `ls -sl`;
select -clear;
for ($e in $sel)
    select -add `listRelatives -p $e`;
}

Motionographer Motion Award for Nickelodeon ID campagin

Pretty cool to get acknowledged 
http://motionographer.com/2018/05/02/motion-awards-2017-winners/

Aardman Nathan Love : Chobani

Had a great time being involved with this Chobani Project. 

Directed by Anca Risca , and art Directed by Kim Dulany ,  Eric Cunha really nailed the hand drawn look of the integrated CG into the beautifully hand animated animation. 

Chobani "The Giving Tree" from Aardman Nathan Love on Vimeo.

New Projects from Aardman Nathan Love

 Back in September I picked up a job as CG supervisor at Aardman Nathan Love. Super awesome bunch of artists to work with.. 


It was a busy end to 2017 with two projects stacked on top of each other with a Sprite Cranberry christmas special type spot featuring Lebron James and Dram .



Sprite "Thirstiest Time of the Year" from Aardman Nathan Love on Vimeo.



and a whole mess of station IDs for Nickelodeon..



Nickelodeon "Winter Refresh" ID's - Supercut from Aardman Nathan Love on Vimeo.



 

V-ray Light inconsistency on "visibility"

 I don't know why Vray lights are set to "visible" , or in some cases not set to "invisible" by default.   I can't think of any time I actually want my lights visible and to affect the alpha of the image.
    However.  no big deal,  I thought I'd write a little script to auto turn them off.. Only to discover that some lights use "visibility" and some use "invisible" for their channels. 

LightDome, sphere  and Rect Lights use "Invisible" while IES use "Visibility" 

In the end, I don't care what the channel name is.. but it sure would be nice if it was consistent. 

 

hiding Arnold channels on shapes

Man, those keyable and visible channels on mesh and curve shapes are super annoying. I have no idea what they do, and have never really understood why they are all there .. but Arnold adds them, and for some reason. Ignores requests to hide them, which is interesting, cause to hide them, is super easy .. 

---

 so. I wrote a simple script to hide arnold channels,, It's not automatic, so every new mesh or curve needs to have it run, and sometimes when doing mesh separate and mesh combine operations, a new mesh object is created, so the channels are created fresh on the new object.
 

 I just put the script on my shelf and randomly hit it, like a gerbil hitting the space bar for food in a pysch 101 class experiment. 

---

You don't need anything selected, it just grabs all nurbs curves , and all mesh shapes, and hides the channels,... ( and of course can be reverse engineered if you ever want to show the channels again ) 

here's the script: 

// stephenkmann@gmail.com
// just a quick way to hide all the arnold channels that are added to shapes
global proc hideArnoldChan()
{
string $meshes[] = `ls -type "mesh"`;
for ($mesh in $meshes   )
    {
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_shadow_density");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_exposure");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_diffuse");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_specular");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_sss");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_indirect");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_volume");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_use_color_temperature");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".ai_color_temperature");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".scr");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".scg");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".scb");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".intensity");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".emitDiffuse");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ($mesh + ".emitSpecular");
    }
    
    
string $nurbsCrvs[] = `ls -type "nurbsCurve"`;
for ($crv in $nurbsCrvs)
    {
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ( $crv + ".rcurve");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ( $crv + ".cwdth");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ( $crv + ".srate");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ( $crv + ".ai_curve_shaderr");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ( $crv + ".ai_curve_shaderg");
    setAttr -keyable false -channelBox false ( $crv + ".ai_curve_shaderb");
    }

}

Random scripts I needed this week

This is more for me than to actually share as I know I'll forget these ...

in a heavy scene file I was running into issues dealing with the geo and blendShapes and just wanted to kick out some things without having to deal with the ui.  ( I had also transferred UV maps which kills basically everything until you get rid of history ) 

 so for exporting the blendShape maps  the command is part of the ART brush commands and will open up the file dialog for size and where you want to save the exported image file

// export maps 

artExportMapDialog "artAttrCtx";

 I also wanted to smooth flood the hell out of my painted maps, but I didn't want to sit there hitting the "flood" button forever.. so I just wrote an uber simple loop script..  What's weird to me is that the flag that coincides with "flood" .. is -clear.    

{

int $i = 0;

while ($i <= 25)

    {

    artAttrCtx -e -clear `currentCtx`;

    $i++;    

    }    

}    

also this is all in Maya 2016. so I am not even sure what works and doesn't in 2017 yet with blendshapes, and blendShape wt maps.