Maya Pencil Test

 

Well, I haven't been posting because I have been animating again. In the midst of preparing for a new job I found myself looking all over for Jason Schleifer's grease pencil tool for maya. Alas I couldn't find a working copy and ended up coding my own mess of a pencil test tool for maya. I share it freely with anyone who finds this blog. Just let yer pals know where ya got it from if you like it and find it helpful.

 

Download Pencil Test Tool

 

Tips to get you going:

-Load the script into script editor in Maya and then run it

 

-Don't draw anything till you hit Activate on there.

 

-You can have up to 9 layers, if you want them.

 

-You can draw anywhere on the timeline and then move to the right frame before you set your drawing.

 

-When you hit Assign Frame it will lock that drawing to that frame.

 

-Hold button will set the current frame invisible wherever you want it. That is the only key you will have to manipulate on your own. You can get too many of them rolling around the timeline for a certain frame.

 

-If you hit hold and there is another Keyframe up the timeline from your current keyframe...it will hold to the later frame.

 

-The frame list that pops up you may want to hit the button when you want to know where frames are.

 

-It's pretty good about updating but not perfect, so hit the button to refresh the list. It will list the frames for whatever layer you are on.

 

-Ghosting just shows you all of your drawings at once or whatever range you want if you want to draw between a couple.

 

-The draw tool is set for meters but there is a scrub bar for the size at the bottom of that main window so you can make it larger or smaller.

 

-There is a weird thing that maya highlights any curves when it initializes paint effects, so your animation controllers will get big the first time you hit activate but when you start drawing they go back to normal

 

Enjoy,
-Craig