Maya Shaders And Shader Utils

CgfxShader
cgfxShader.mll

The CGFX Plugin that ships with Maya is functional, but lacks a few little polishes
make actually using it a pleasant experience. When you tell the plugin node what shader you want
to load, it create any needed input file textures, but they're all named file1, file2, file3, etc.



This isn't very artist friendly, so I added a bit to the plugin so it renames the file nodes
to tell you what shader they're connected to and to what input - eg. treeShader_diffuseMap

236.0 KiB

Uber Character Shader
alx_char_uber.cgfx

This is my big fat character shader. It's got just about everything an artist needs to make something look real nice in Maya. There are no special effects on it, and no uv tiling of any layers - it's not meant to be an in-game shader, but more of a test shader for models and characters.
It features:
- Regular Color, Normal, Specular, Glossy, and Ambient Occlusion Maps
- Cubic Reflection and Ambient Light
- 1 Directional light for highlights, Blinn model for specularity
- It has an alpha technique, although Maya doesn't sort that well

There are a lot of file inputs - if you plan on using this, you might grab my modified version of the cgfxShader.mll plugin from the download section - it make dealing with many texture inputs much easier!

10.2 KiB

Maya Mel Scripts

AimNormalToCamera
aimNormalToCamera.mel

2.7 KiB

AjhMeshConform
ajhMeshConform.mel

This mel script will snap every point on low-res mesh to the closet point to it on another,
higher resolution object, hopefully approximating the shape well enough to be a
starting point to remodel from.

17.1 KiB

AjhMeshConnect - Connects poly meshes together
ajhMeshConnect.mel

This script connects poly meshes together in a smarter and faster way.

1.3 KiB

ControlBoxSetup
controlBoxSetup.mel

This mel script will traverse a hierarchy of joints and create a control box for each one.

2.1 KiB

CreateCtrlBox
createCtrlBox.mel

This mel script will create one control box made from a NURBS curve.

432.0 B

FlattenNormal
flattenNormal.mel

This mel script will flatten your geometry normals along an axis.

3.2 KiB

Ms
ms.mel

This mel script can set attributes (via setAttr) on all objects in a selection, and has a layer of error checking built in.

4.2 KiB

Scene Smoke Test
smokeTest.zip

This is a tool that appears modest, but can save you more time than just about any other one thing here.
It is a standard UI and framework for setting up mel filters for a scene. A filter is a script that returns 0 if nothing was found, or 1 if it was. The SmokeTest UI gives you the stats of all filters.
Each filter may also contain procedures to fix, suggest action, get more information on, or identify/select the problems in the scene.
The Zip file here has 4 sample filters and a template for new ones.

7.9 KiB