Skin Sliding Deformer

This video shows a skin sliding deformer I wrote for Maya. It's paintable, multi-threaded, and fast! ...

Maya API Notes

I started putting up pages about the Maya API with C++ and Python. I'll be adding to it more in the future. Check it out here....

GPU Blend Shapes

I wrote this last week. It's a Maya blend shape deformer that runs on the GPU. The sample shown is a 30,000 vertex mesh with 1000 targets. It runs 32x faster than Maya's blendShape node on a Geforce 230M notebook GPU. A 40,000 vertex mesh with 1500 targets ran 40x faster. ...

This Chapter is Ending

Well, it was fun while it lasted… LOS ANGELES — To further cut costs at its movie studio, The Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it will shut a San Francisco-area facility used to capture the performance of Jim Carrey for his digitally animated character, Scrooge, in “A Christmas Carol.” The closure of the facility in Marin County, north of San Francisco, will be completed by January and result in the loss of 450 jobs....

Python Workshop Notes

A few months ago, I taught a Python scripting workshop at my old school, Expression College, aimed at introducing students to the Python scripting language and using it in Maya. It was a one day workshop so everything was condensed and to the point. There's no history of Python section or best practices section. The goal of the workshop was to get students familiar with Python so they could learn how to read and write basic scripts and also how to further their studies....

Sticky Lips Test

This is a test of a sticky lips deformer I wrote. The first time the character opens his mouth, there is no sticky lip effect. The second time he opens his mouth, you can see the slight stickiness taper off on his lips which you can see in people when their lips are somewhat dry. ...

Welcome to my (new) Blog!

This is my latest site. If you've been following along with me, you'll know that this is something like my 7th generation website. However, all the sites before this one used all my own code as a backend. I've decided to ditch about 3 years of stored posts from my old database to move over to the wonder that is Wordpress. Never fear, if you're here for my DirectX tutorials, they've all been transferred over along with my Maya exporter....