TheTell-TaleHeart.com Blog

(Used as technical notes for my own troubleshooting and others running into the same problem) (scene #170.05, testing LowFlyingCamera, Object strokeDeadWillow1Freaky2_TTH20093))

The issue: When the paint effects are drawn, they look fine from one frame to next with a still camera, but when a moving camera goes by the texture/shading, slides up the tree.

Environment and Assumptions:

• Maya 2009 64Bit
• Rendering in Maya Software
• Production Level Rendering and Anti-Aliasing

Steps and Results:

• Removed shadows - is this a shadow effect (didn’t solve problem)
• Removed texture applied (didn’t solve problem)
• Made Shading> Color 1 and Tube Shading>Color2 same color  (didn’t solve problem)
• Conver t to polygons - While this may work and is not a viable workaround for me, it is good to know (problem does not exist on polys)
• Turned Translucence from 0.2 to 0 (didn’t solve problem)
• Set Twist>ForwardTwist=off (didn’t solve problem)
• Twist =.446 –> 0 (didn’t solve problem)
• Twist Rate =0.289 –> 0 (didn’t solve problem)
• Twist Rand =0.421 –> 0.078 (didn’t solve problem)
• Tip Fade = 0.100 –> 0 (didn’t solve problem)
• Shading>Transparency 1= 0  –> about 10% (didn’t solve problem)
• Tube Shading> Tube Transparency 2= 0  –> abuot 20% (didn’t solve problem)
• Tube Shading>Tip Fade=0.1 –> 0 (didn’t solve problem)
• Map Opacity=0 –> 1 (didn’t solve problem)
• Map Method=Full View   –> Tube2D (with additional new settings) (SOLVED IT!) A little Blur Mult and Smear is needed as well.

Apparently the full view texture mapping was causing the shader/texture to slide as the camera moved. Why, right now I am not exactly sure…but I will be using other Map Methods.

Mudbox allows me to create and refine the organic items in the short such as the character heads, bodies, trees, etc.  A fabulous software, that does require some know how despite its user friendly interface. I am useing Mudbox 2009 Service pack 2 64bit on Vista 64.

- Importing texture layers. I created a base head in Maya to start working from in mudbox. In that process, I created strarting color, bump, and spec textures. Note that bump maps and other grey scale textures need to be 8 bit. So, if you are pulling it from Photoshop, make your texture grey scale before exporting for use in Mudbox.

Using Maya 2009 and Photoshop CS4, I am creating a base face texture for all the characters in the story. Here are my notes:

GENERAL NOTES:
- It is a little unstable: , At one point, Maya no longer recognized the PSD file. Spent hours trying different approaches (tossing special layers, removing extra sub-groups, etc). Eventually, I had to recreate, however, copying the layers from the old PSD to a newly created Maya PSD network proved challenging as Maya would reject half of the layers. A few hours later I rebuild the face texture to where I left off.
- To see how Maya will read the folder, flatten the layers: For the most part, Maya seems to flatten the layers inside each group top down. Once or twice I thought Maya was messing something up as Maya created texture did not match what I was seeing in Photoshop…until I went layer by layer flattening the layers…and then I saw the same thing as Maya.

AVOID:
- Transparent Photoshop layers which have a layer mask. I have noticed some odd interpretations. However, this can be side stepped by placing a white layer underneath, flatten the two layers into one, set the resulting layer as multiply…then you can use a layer mask.