Massive Importer for Maya 8.5
www.NimbleStudiosInc.com
[email protected]
Import skinned and textured Massive simulations into Maya
Elements Supported
==================
o Plug-in has been tested on Linux and Windows, and may work on OSX
o Agent skeletons and segment shapes
o AMC and APF simulation data
o Geometry and skin weights
o Materials (currently treated as Maya blinn or lambert shaders)
o Some variables:
o those used to scale the agent or its segments
o those embedded in texture file names
o those used to drive Choice nodes
Known Limitations
=================
o Only supported for Maya 8.5
o Cloth/Lights/Cameras are not imported
o All materials are treated as Maya lambert or blinn shaders (no RenderMan,
MentalRay, or Velocity support)
o It can take a loooong time to import a scene
o Maya is not set up to handle the same complexity and size scenes as Massive
is, nor does the importer use massive.so or anything like it, so you may run
out of memory during an import.
Questions/Bugs/Suggestions
==========================
Feel free to contact us at [email protected]
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*** Instructions ***
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In Massive
==========
1. Save the skin weights to a weights file for all geometry nodes
2. Save a callsheet for the setup
3. Run a sim using .apf or .amc
In Maya 8.5
===========
1. Load the NimbleMsv.py Python plug-in
2. Run the MEL script 'nsImportMsvWin' to launch the Massive Import window
Massive Import Options
======================
Setup File (required): the .mas file to load
Sim Directory (required): the directory containing the .amc or .apf sim data
Callsheet (optional): the callsheet to load agent variables from. If a
If no callsheet is specified variables will be
assigned a random value by the importer (one which
almost certainly differs from the value used in
Massive).
Sim Type: the importer will only load sim data of this file
type
Load Geometry: check this if you want to load the skinned agent
geometry
Load Segment Shapes: check this if you want to load the tube/sphere/cube
agent segment shapes
Load Materials: check this if you want to load the geometry
materials.
Skin Type: "smooth" skinning will smoothly bind the geometry
to the skeleton and resembles the skinning seen in
Massive.
"chunk" skinning will chop up each piece of
geometry into many pieces. Each of these chunks
will be parented to a joint. The result is
definitely not final render quality, but uses less
memory than "smooth" skinning, and looks closer to
the final render than using segment shapes.
Load Materials As: currently the importer does not support RenderMan or
MentalRay - all materials will be loaded as either
Maya blinn or lambert shaders
Instance Segments: when loading segment shapes you have the option of
instancing every shape, or duplicating it.
Instancing will minimize the amount of RAM required,
but increases the load time. Duplicating loads
quicker but takes up more RAM
Frame Step: how finely to sample the sim animation data. A frame
step of 1 loads every frame of data, a frame step of
2 loads every other frame of animation data. In many
setups animation data will consume the lion's share
of RAM. If the scene is too heavy for Maya to handle
you can try increasing the frame step.
step.
Caching: Enabling will use Maya's Geometry Cache to cache
the agent skin deformations to disk. When combined
with the "Delete Skeleton" option this can
significantly reduce the amount of memory required
to import a Massive sim. It will also significantly
increase the amount of time required to import.
Caching is only valid with the "smooth" skin type.
Delete Skeleton: If this option is enabled, each agent's skeleton,
skin deformers, animation curves, and segments will
be deleted after the deformations are cached. This
will reduce the amount of memory required to load
a sim.
Cache Dir: The directory that the Geometry Cache files will be
saved in. If left blank it will default to the
data/cache directory of the current project.
Selections: you can choose to load all agents in the setup, or,
if you have defined locator selections in Massive,
you can tell the importer to only load those agent
in the specified selections.
Memory Management Tips
======================
o Enabling Geometry Caching and the Delete Skeletons options yield the best
results and memory usage.
o If a sim is too large to import all at once, try using the Selections option
to import it in groups.
o After you import a sim, save it as a Maya scene file, quit and restart Maya,
and then load the scene file. The memory usage should be much lower than
when the sim was first imported. You can use this technique along with the
Selections option to import a large sim in groups - save each group as its
own Maya scene file, and then import all of the Maya scene files later.
o Increasing the Frame Step can speed up load time and reduce memory usage -
however the animation quality of the resulting sim may be degraded. If you
can wait for the long import time, it is better to enable Geometry Caching and
Delete Skeletons.
o Using the "chunk" Skin Type will speed up load and play back time. It also
consumes less memory than a non-cached "smooth" skin type. The visual
quality, however, is greatly degraded. Again, if you can spare the time and
disk space, it is better to enable Geometry Caching and Delete Skeletons.