Maya to Second Life: a new option for builders

Hi all

I just wanted to share something I've been working on and get some feedback. Second Life's great, but as someone who's used to Maya, I find the build tools really frustrating. So I've been building a workaround that allows for content to be created in Maya and re-made in SL. I know that an OBJ importer exists (and kudos to whoever built it), but that can result in really heavy prim counts.

My solution is to rebuild the Second Life prim creation tools in Maya, and then bring that information over to SL. The solution has two parts- a MEL script that remakes the SL interface in Maya, and a "replicator" object that recreates the content in world.

For more info, and video (requires the Flash 8 plugin) of it in action, head over to:

http://www.purplestatic.com/MEL_SL/

The most significant drawback right now is that it only supports cylinders and boxes, but I'm working on building support for all of the prim types.

Have a look and let me know what you think. Thanks!

- Adrian

Here's a pic of the MEL script interface:



Again, for more info and videos, head to

http://www.purplestatic.com/MEL_SL

Cheers!

- Adrian

Adrian, you just put the biggest smile on my face I've had in quite some time. I've been in awe of Jeffrey's Blender to SL importer, but Blender never really quite agreed with me so I've been reluctant to start using it. Maya, however, is what I use every day, and I had been so hoping for the past couple years that someone would do this with it (wish I had the mel chops to do it myself, but I'm just a lowly modeler & texture artist, not much of a scripter). You may just be my new favorite person in the whole wide world.

I just have two questions for you:

1. Any idea how soon you expect to get the other prims into the system?

2. How can I get a copy of this to play with?

I guess I'm out of luck. I prefer Rhinoceros.

I don't get it... the steps in Maya are almost identcle to SL basically. If I were to make a grey box room and put a grid on the floor it would be very similar. To me, the advantage would be the ability to build items off line but then the hardest part of most builds it getting the texturing right so there isn't that much of an advantage. It's kinda neat but what is it's ultimate value? I am not dirriding it, I simply don't know.

I followed the video, built the treasure chest in Blender using the numbers in the boxes ( Your Y and Z axis are reversed and your rotations X are backwards from what I can tell)

Then imported it using the Offline Builer importer... looks nice... very well constructed model.

Just to clarify- my system works with Maya, not Blender. The rotations are different, since Maya uses a Y-up coordinate system and SL uses a Z-up system. Following the video with the Blender-based system would result in needing to swap out the rotations.

Rather than switching out the rotations in the MEL script, I corrected them in SL in the script attached to my replicator object.

Incidentally, there's really no reason that the a similar approach couldn't be taken with almost any 3d modeling package (as has been done with Blender)- almost all of them have a built-in scripting language. The only tricky thing is to duplicate SL's somewhat unorthodox way of approaching model creation.

(in response to the other post)
While all 3d packages have primitives, they are generally very different from SL's prims. In most packages, it's expected that you will pull out faces and more vertices around, and end up with a single object. In SL, you're expected to build things up from a collection of prims. That's why there are options like twist, hollow, and taper available for each prim.

But since so many packages incorporate scripting, anything that isn't there to begin with can be added easily enough.

Thanks for the thoughts!

- Adrian

This looks really cool, Adrian! A great start on an off-line building option for Maya lovers. I really like the fact that you are using the same objects/prims and not just converting everything to a pseudo triangle mesh.

Keep up the good work and I'm sure you will make many Maya users very happy.

Excellent!

While this is definitely something positive, I can't help but think that part of the motivation to do it is that the SL build tools are starting to get so infuriating to use that we are heading towards offline builders.

While there are also many other reasons for offline build tools, the hard truth is that building in SL can very often be a pain.

Every new update, we are forced to face the fact that building inworld is something really excruciating, plagued by missing prims, rubbery prims that won't stick to their settings, prims that drift, suddenly taper by itself or just plainly explodes when you link them and never to be seen again.

Its peculiar that some of us pay enough to LL in a year equivalent to the price of a very stable 3d app like Maya, while getting something really clunky back in return.

Hi, great work. I couldn't see a link to the MEL script, is it available yet ?

i loved your texture mapper...cant wait to try this!!! keep up the good work!!!

Is Maya any easier to use than Blender?

eh all pro 3d modelers have a heavy learning curve ... just like photoshop or whatever, but blender's interface is completley different to the more traditonal setups in maya or 3dS, or pretty much every other 3d package

blender is free (under the GPL i think) and quite powerfull, having almost everything you could want in a 3d package, but its interface makes it where ppl basicly have to relearn the basics, which isnt appealing to someone who has spent alot of time in other software

me personally it doesnt make much of a difference, i have an aicent copy of maya, and a copy of blender installed, i tinker and play around them, but have no real grasp on what does what, so its all just a big blur of buttons to me

examples:

maya
http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/info/maya/manual/UserGuide/Overview/images/GettingStarted.fm.anc2.gif

3d studio max
http://www.newmediahull.net/NMsite/lrng_mats/3ds-html/images/3ds01.jpg

blender
http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2000/07/VirtuelleWelten/blender_interface.jpg

Wow! More external builder!

Will there be any chances that it could move to 3DSMax also? o.o Max has been my fav. o.o

Does the UVs for the objects translate across, too? It'd be pretty slick to do all your texture previewing in Maya, that way by the time you're ready to build in SL everything's ready to go.

I like this movement.

I mean really how many of us would prefer to do most of our building offline?
My personal preference for it to be ported to is Wings3D as that is what I learned on. I hear Maya is a bit spendy, and I have not learned Blender yet.

But it brings up a question in my mind. I personally would pay extra for an offline
app designed specifically for building that was exactly the same tools and interface as SL with just enough 3D environment to be a functional preview.
Why has'nt this been done already?
I would hazard to guess that they want people to be active in world in order to
increase the livlihood and the numbers of users. Yet on the other hand
a completely compatible LL offline modeling app provided by LL even sold at a
low additional price could be a huge hit and actually generate more interest
in SL.
Just the ability of modelers to be able to build and save models for later addition to inventory.
In addition to being able to test their ideas in a fully animated 3d environ
is a powerful idea. I know there are alot of 3d modeling enthusiasts out
there, however many of them look down on SL as something that is beneath
them somehow. Not the same tools etc., yet if there was a component
function of the kind that I am describing It very well could provide an avenue
of growth and design ingenuity that has not yet been factored.

Ok, hehe enough rambling. But seriously would it be that hard for LL to copy those functions to an offline app. I would pay at least 25$ for something like
that.

Maybe Im dreaming and the costs would be huge.

I actually have no clue on that part.

Hey folks. I was wondering how development on this was coming along, as this tool combined with some of the other SL-related MEL scripts out there would pretty much solve my building and texturing troubles in Second Life.

The thing that has hurt me the most in making my avatars is that it is a royal pain to draw complex textures onto multi-prim avatar attachments. However, with this builder I can create or re-create an attachment in Maya, then (hopefully) generate a wireframe template I can use in Photoshop, draw my skin, import that skin back into Maya, use that projection script to get everything aligned, cut the texture up prim by prim, and upload the resultant mess into SL.

At least this is how I'm hoping things will/can work out for me. If anyone here has worked on non-human avatars before, they should know how much of a pain it is to get complex textures to align right when they cross multiple prim borders, especially spheres. *shudder*

Well, that's my 0.02 Linden. Later!

ahem...
don't you think you have teased us enough? hehe

It would me nice... real nice .... extremely nice if you could be so kind as to share your current progress.

post the mel script and whatever it takes to make the gadget run in SL... unless you are planning to sell it.

Have you considered making it like the Open Source Foundation and getting hoardes of developers lining up to help?

It could have very good results or total disaster if there is no 'leadership/coordination' involved.

great work!

I went to your site to check out Maya--Second Life Beta Version. I am trying to build an avatar for my husband (Austen Scanlan) to use in Second Life. I am new to Maya 7--can build objects but haven't really explored MEL Scripts. Is your Maya--Second Life Beta Version available for download? Can you tell me a little more about it?

Thanks much.

Mrs. Austen Scanlan

I can't speak for Adrian, but I can tell you this tool won't help you make avatars. That has to be done inworld, always. This tool will allow the creation of SL-style parametric primitives (prims) in Maya, and then a port to copy those prims in SL. That has nothing to do with the avatar model, which works on a completely different principle.

If you're talking about making attachments for an avatar, then you could do that with this tool, but you're still better off doing that inworld since there's no way to see where they'll fit on the avatar in Maya. You could use the mannequin OBJ as a dummy I suppose, but it's not really an acurate model for an avatar that has been customized in any way.



Now that that's out of the way, Adrian, how's the progress coming on this? I've been salivating for it for months now. Any news?

so Thraxis the importer works??

Hi all

Since there have been a few postings here lately inquiring as to the status of the Maya->SL pathway I've been working on, I thought I'd post an update.

The current version is as follows:
- a MEL script that can create box and cylinder prims within Maya, and that spits out the text needed to recreate the created object(s) within SL when prompted
- a SL "replicator" object that creates objects based on the text contained in its notecard

So, the workflow for using it is:

1) use the MEL script to create and modify prims in Maya. You can also use Maya's normal move/rotate/scale tools to manipulate the prims
2) once you're done with your object, click on a button within the MEL script to generate the necessary code to recreate the object in SL
3) switch over to SL and rez a copy of the replicator object
4) copy the text from the MEL script into the notecard in the replicator's inventory
5) touch the replicator object, which will cause it to recreate the Maya object prim-by-prim

Unfortunately, I haven't had time to work on this since I posted the original posting, but since there seems to be quite a demand, and I have a few more weeks before starting up the fall semester (I teach Maya and MEL scripting), I'll be making the script and replicator object available by the end of the week.

So, sorry for the delay, but there will be something for everyone to play with in the next few days

- Adrian