ticket01

If Maya is currently running close all instances of it before running any plug-in installer. You also need Administrator privileges in order to install the plug-in properly.

Start Maya and load the plug-in via the Plug-in Manager. The Plug-in Manager can be found under Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager. Find the plug-in from the list and check both Load and Auto Load. The plug-ins from ticket01 are usually on the end of the list so you may need to scroll all the way down to find them.

When the plug-in is loaded for the first time a dialog will come up asking you to enter your license in order to activate the plug-in. The license data always starts with a line of clear text that states the licensee’s name, the company (optional), the licensee’s email, the product the license is for and a date that tells you when the maintenance is over. After that there are some lines of code.

Clear the activation window and copy all of the license, starting with your name, and paste it into the activation window. Hit Activate and the window disappears. After successful activation of the plug-in a new menu item called ticket01 is added to the main menu bar. You will find your plug-in and all its functionality there.

The Service Preferences menu lets you configure the plug-in whether or not it should perform a check for a new version every time it’s being loaded. A working internet connection is needed for this to work. Furthermore you can decide whether or not you should be informed when the last 30 days of your maintenance have begun.

The Boole menu

The Boole menu

The Boole menu gives you all the tools to perform a boolean operation with one click. The first 5 entries are the operations Boole can perform. The Slice command is another way to intersect objects with each other.

Multi-Object Operands determines the number of objects you boole in one step. If it is turned off you will you simply select 2 objects and perform one of the 5 operations. A new boole node will be created with the Operation set. If it is turned on then you will be guided interactively and can select as many objects per operand as you like. Each set of objects will be merged with a union operation first and then the output of this union will be used as a single operand in the actual Operation set.

Smooth Mesh Support determines whether you will be able to simply use the Smooth Mesh Preview AFTER the boolean operation as been set up or not. If this is turned on you can go back to an operands shape and activate its Smooth Mesh attribute and see the boolean operation now being performed on the smoothed version of the operand.

The Boole node in the Attribute Editor

The Boole node

Boole supports all boolean operations (union, difference, intersection, symmetric difference). If the history is turned on every time  you perform a boolean operation a  new node with prefix boole will be created followed by an index depending on how many boole nodes you already have in your scene. It will allow you to switch between these operations using the boole node’s Operation attribute.

In order to see what the operands A and B , the input objects, look like you can turn on a preview by selecting either Show A or Show B or both. This visual feedback makes it a lot easier to apply any transformation to the input objects after the boolean operation has been set up.

Performing boolean operations (without Multi-Object Operands)

Every boolean operation other than the union needs two selected objects.  The union operation can be performed on more than two objects at once.

Union

Union

Intersection

Intersection

A minus B

A minus B

B minus A

B minus A

Slicing objects

The slice command is used to intersect two objects. The slice options allow you to select which of the operands should be sliced and whether or no to create curves at the intersection edges. Available options are Slice A, Slice B and Intersection Curves. Depending on the settings and intersections a number of groups will be created holding the particular sliced objects.

Slice object output

Slice Parts

Intersection Curves

Intersection curves are green

The intersection curves being created are Maya NURBS curves.

Although Boole is able to cut or slice nearly every object there are a few requirements the objects have to met. Before  performing an operation Boole will make sure that your output will be proper by checking the input operands. Here is what you have to do if you receive one of the following error messages.

Hole example

Error: Operand [A|B] has holes. Objects with holes are currently not supported.

Either of the operands has at least one face that is completely surrounded by another face. In Maya these faces are considered holes regardless of whether there is a face closing the enclosing one or not. Boole will select these faces making it easier for you to spot them. On way to resolve this issue is by simply triangulating these faces  (using  Mesh > Triangulate). In cases where this is not feasible you can try to split (using  Edit Mesh > Split Polygon Tool) or cut (using Edit Mesh > Cut Faces Tool) them manually before retrying the operation.

Manifold problem

Error: Operand [A|B] is not two-manifold. Try cleaning the geometry at selected components.

Boolean operations rely on the possibility to determine the inside and outside of an object. Therefor it must be guaranteed that the objects are two-manifold meaning each edge is connected to not more than two faces. If this requirement is not met neither boole nor slice will work.

If you get the error message above Boole will have also marked the edges that are responsible for this problem. Simply delete the superfluous faces.