Detailed Brushed Metal Anisotropic Shader tutorial (maya)

YOU CAN READ THE SHORT VERSION OF THIS TUTORIAL HERE.

First off Anisotropic shaders are bit tricky, how good they look has a LOT to do with the environment and lighting. You can have the greatest shader in the world but unless those other two factors are also perfect you WON'T SEE IT.

ANISOTROPIC SHADER RECIPE

Model moves to wrong position when exporting POD PVRGeoPOD MAYA

When you try to export to a POD file using PVRGeoPOD if you hit export and the model get's all jumbled up it is because the transformation center isn't the same for all parts of the object.

First select all objects delete your history

Select object in your viewport. Edit Menu>delete by type> History

Then freeze transformations on all selected objects

Modify menu>freeze transformations.

If you get an error message like this:  "Freeze Transform was not applied because subdivCylinder1.translateX has incoming connection"

Here is the blog post describing how to fix that error message

Can't freeze transformations message (translateX has incoming connection) Maya

You might run into something like this message when trying to Freeze transform: 

Freeze Transform was not applied because subdivCylinder1.translateX has incoming connection

First thing you should do is try deleting history on the the object.Select object in your viewport. Edit Menu>delete by type> History

If that doesn't work try something else. 

Select your model then open the channel box/layer editor (far right most of the three little icons in the top right of your screen) 

In the channel editor you will see al your channels Translate X, Y Z, Rotate X,Y,Z etc. If they are all highlighted with like a pink or orange color then they have connections to them. 

Click the top on then hold shift and click the bottom one "Scale Z" to select them all. Now right click on them a menu pops up select "break connections" The highlight color should disappear. 

Now go and delete your history for the object again. 

Select object in your viewport. Edit Menu>delete by type> History

NOW try a freeze transform and it should work!


This additional note from Tyler Wood on what might be causing this issue. 
Hi guys, so I just ran into this problem, but I know exactly what the issue is. You run into this issue when you key an object and then try to freeze the transformations. For me, sometimes I key an object and move it out of the way when modeling so I can snap it right back to where i want it by scrubbing the timeline. You just have to remember to delete the keys when you're done. It can be confusing if, like me you started parenting objects and getting everything ready for rigging. The parent may have the keys deleted but all of the children need to have keys removed as well before you can freeze it in place. Hope that clears up everything for everybody! -Tyler Wood

Creating a realistic brick shader with randomly shuffled tiles in Maya. Tutorial

1. Creating a realistic brick shader with randomly shuffled tiles in Maya.

This technique may look a little complex but you will find it is very useful! You could use it to create mixes of tiles for floors space ship hulls all kinds of things.

How to create 3D models for I-phone and Andriod with Maya.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of information readily available yet for how to do this but here is the link to download the development tools. Basically it's a plugin-for maya that let's you export POD files. These can then be textured and displayed in code using openGL on the iphone etc.

Please note the SDK is ONLY for Maya 32 bit! It crashes Maya 64bit.

Here is the workflow>>>

Fixing Faces with zero map area Problem in Maya

I've run into an interesting issue when creating models for I-phone 3D display. The model works fine in PVRshamman but once in code crashes. Once solution proposed online is to do a "cleanup" operation in Maya. Upon trying to do this however I notice that shapes with "zero map area" are disappearing from my model on cleanup. It seems to happen if the object doesn't have full UV co-ordinates assigned. Therefore here is the solution.

Select your object, then with the Polygons main sub menu selected in the left. Go to Create UV's>automatic mapping.

This will give the entire object some form of UV mapping. Then upon cleaning up Faces With Zero Map area you won't lose geometry. Hope that helps someone out!