Ritalin - simpler camera navigation in Maya's viewports

When you come from a Max or Softimage background, you might miss that "automatic center camera interest on current selection" feature that allows you to tumble the camera around the center of the current selection without having to press the f key (or z in 3dsMax) and then dolly in and out again to fit whatever you've been working on propperly on screen.  Autodesk seems to have planned such a feature for Maya too, but never actually got around to implementing it in a truly usable way. In any view click View->Camera Tools->Tumble Tool (the little config box to the right of it actually). And there it is: A check box labelled "Tumble on object". That sounds nice, but unfortunately it only works for those objects directly under the mouse (which makes it hard to control when objects overlap), and fails on many common object types, like joints or lights.

Enter Ritalin, a Python script that will automatically set your camera's tumble pivots when the selection changes in the scene, and even when your selection is moved. Special case handling has been added for convenience that centers the tumble pivots on the currently active deformer (e.g. joint) when painting skin weights on a mesh, which is a huge time saver when painting hard to see or detailed areas like a character's fingers, where a considerable amount of time is usually spent on adjusting the camera in such a way that it tumbles without constantly loosing the paintable area out of sight, and where pressing f on your keyboard usually doesn't help because it will center on the selected mesh, not the active deformer.

Lots of text to describe such a simple thing right? A short video shows a lot better  how it looks and feels like.
If that video looks cut off on the right you might want to watch it on youtube directly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmFiOkboAR0




Result:
You will find yourself not having to press "f" so often anymore, camera pivots are centered completely automaticlally, and your viewport "calms down" a lot. Your eyes and poor little f key will be eternally grateful, let alone the time you can save and concentrate on more important things, like creating art for a change.


Installation:
1.) Download http://keyvis-dev.googlecode.com/files/RitalinForMaya_2008-2010_1.4.zip
2.) Unpack and copy the files to your user scripts directory.

In WindowsXP this folder is normally normally located at
C:\Documents and Settings\-YourUserName-\My Documents\maya\2009-x64\scripts

In Win7 (and I think Vista too) the path usually is 
C:\Users\-YourUserName-\Documents\maya\2011-x64\scripts


For Mac finding this path can be found using a different procedure, please see Damien Hess' comments below.

For Linux: Maybe someone can help out with information here, I don't have access to a Linux workstation.

Your actual path depends on your user name and Maya version you want to install this for, so it will most likely look slightly different compared to above examples. If this folder already contains a userSetup.py, just copy the contents from the userSetup.py that comes with Ritalin and paste it at the end of your already existent useSetup.py file. Change the file path according to your user name, user scripts folder location and Maya version. Save it.
The mechanism is that Maya always runs any script code in the userSetup.py file automatically when it starts. We're simply using this mechanism to load Ritalin on startup. 

3.) (Re)start Maya.

A Ritalin menu should appear in the main menu bar. You can disable or re-enable Ritalin there.
There's also an option to disable skin weight painting integration separately.


For TD's:
The archive contains a modified version of a mel file that ships with Maya - artAttrSkinCallback.mel.
It is important that the Ritalin'ed version of it gets sourced after Maya has sourced the original file from its native ...\scripts\others folder for the code change to take effect.
 
Note: The modified file only enables paint skin weights tool panel integration, and only some lines were added at the end of the global artSkinSelectInfluence procedure.
 If you are using a modified version of this file in your own pipeline you might want to add the extra lines to the same function in your version of the file instead of replacing the whole file. In case this is not practical, simply not copy the file at all, you will simply have to live without paint skin weights tool panel integration (clicking on a deformer in the paint tool panel will not center the camera's tumble pivot on it automatically). However, you will still be able to use Ritalin when right-clicking over a deformer in th viewport and choosing "Paint Weights" from the context menu to set the tumble pivots. Anything else will work normally.

Uninstall: 
Just delete the files from your user scripts folder.
In case you have modified your userSetup.py file, comment out, or remove, the line you copied into it too.

Disclaimer: 
This tool has been used successfully in production of several commercial game titles. Yet, it is provided "as is" and free of charge. I'm not liable for any damages incurred, use and modify at your own risk.
 
Should you encounter any problems or limitations, or should you simply like it or use it successfully in production, I'd love to hear about it. In any case, just leave me a comment below.

Stefan

Autodesk 2011 product updates

I remember when Autodesk bought Softimage many people were worried about the future of their DCC packages. Many believed, that it would not make sense for AD to continue development on three different packages that do all more or less the same, and that at some point these packages would be consolidated into one or two to reduce development overhead.

Two years later it seems that we don't need to worry about that, at least not in the mid term.
I must admit that I was mostly underwhelmed by last years updates, but this time around the additions are so substantial and fundamental that it seems safe to assume that AD really has no plans to ditch any of it's main DCC packages in the foreseeable future. Especially additions to Maya (new GUI), Max (Project codenamed Excalibur that aims to refurbish Max from ground up)
and massive additions into Softimage'S ICE (ICE Kinematics and lots of new compounds for the classic ICE) are investments into the software's foundations and ground laying infrastructure which bind a lot of ressources and money to develop and  would probably not be made if the application was planned to be phased out soon.

In addition there seems the be increased amount of research being done at AD, some of which has been posted here:

http://www.autodeskresearch.com/pubs.html


The updates:

Maya
http://area.autodesk.com/maya2011

Most notable changes and additions:

 - Revised skinning tools (volumetric influence objects a la 3dsMax' Skin and Character Studios old Physique modifiers, and quaternion skinning, as well as a new Paint Skin weights tool panel with filtering options.)
Allegedly, undo now works reliably when undoing a skin weight paint stroke (boy, how much I wish that had never been an issue).

- Qt-based UI, which is something the big studio's TD's will love'em for. It should make the creation of custom UI's much faster and easier and give more options than what the old toolkit offered. I'm looking forward to what learn how much of Qt they have actually exposed.

Update: Here's a video showing some of QT's merits in Maya
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/maya_2011_highlight_qt_user_interface

-Roumors have it that there were also updates and improvements to the viewpport renderer, lets see how much of that is true. if anyone has more information on that please let me know.



Softimage
http://area.autodesk.com/softimage2011/features
or more detailled:
http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/index.php/Autodesk_Softimage_2011
Some videos:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/softimage_2011


Of all the updated packages Softimage seems to have received the most amount of love, the new features list is nothing short of impressive, and some could prove to be real game changers.


Most notable additions:

- ICE Kinematics. I've been waiting for this one since first information about ICE and Phil Taylors involvement (CAT) made the rounds. What this will allow is to create highly complex, yet very robust and easy to handle animation rigs, just like you might know, or being used to, in 3dsmax Character Studio and CAT, with the nenefit of being able to go in and change the underlying "Code" if you want to.

- Automatic Lip syncing  to audio and text files in face Robot

- New shader handling and testing tools. Information on this, and how it really works and what it means, is a bit sparse still.

- Lots of new Mental ray shaders and additions to existing ICE functionality, like spring dynamics
and lots more.


Max:
http://area.autodesk.com/3dsmax2011
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/shane/slate_material_editor
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/3ds_max_2011_announced

Most notable additions:
- Node based matertial editor (of Node Joe's fame)
- Improved realtime material representation of standard Max materials in the viewport
- A new interactive rendering engine (Quicksilver)
- Improved texture painting features


Mudbox:
http://area.autodesk.com/mudbox2011/features

Most notable additions:
- Improved Painting tools and introduction of posing tools based in real joits and skinning data, interoperability with Max, maya, Softimage and PShop.
- Vector displacement for added details and prefab-modelling. Check out Oglu's impressively fast ear modelling session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPezIU0c4zc