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.

… is a WYSIWYG mass rename tool and comes with a live preview.

The lower part of the left, the Find pane, behaves just like your ordinary Outliner window. Enter the phrase that you would like to replace in the upper text field and select all objects that you would like to be considered for renaming. In the right, the Replace pane, enter what you would like to use as the replacement phrase in the upper text field.
The window in the lower right part will show you a preview of your renamed objects. Since selecting an object in the Outliner usually only selects the transform you should turn on the Show Shapes option from the Outliner’s context menu and also hit the Select > Select Hierarchy and Unfold menu item. This will make sure that transforms and their shapes will be selected and renamed properly.
The example shows an unfolded hierarchy of some cubes and their transforms. The phrase to search for is pCube and its replacement phrase is polyCube. If you see the desired result in the preview just hit Rename to apply it to all selected objects.

Setting the status of the undo queue is now as easy as it is with the history. No need to go to the preferences anymore. This is particularly useful when a time and/or memory consuming task is ahead and you know that there is no need to undo it.

Checking this option places a little icon right next to the Construction history on/off button in the Status line. Toggling its state will toggle the state of the undo queue.

Rendering a wireframe representation of your meshes in decent quality is pretty easy with this one-click contour shader setup.

Select the mesh object you would like to attach the shader to and select the Assign Contour Shader item from the menu. This will create an optimized render setup for mental ray contour rendering.

Tweaking the contour shader settings is easy and can be done through:

• select the object you attached the wireframe shader to
• select its material tab in the Attribute Editor
• go to its corresponding shading group, you can use the output connection icon right next to the materials name
• open the mental ray section, it contains a Contours section
• tweak these attributes to change the appearance of the rendered wireframe

If you need to render out subdivided meshes with a perfect contour have a look at ticket01′s Contour plug-in for mental ray for Maya.

Creates the approximated mesh object that mental ray would render.

Select the object you would like to attach the shader to and select the Assign Approxivizer item from the menu. This will create and attach the shader to your object. Tweaking the shader is done by tweaking the mental ray approximation settings. To create the mesh render with mental ray. You can stop the render process when the initialization pass has finished.

… creates a new mesh out of your selected one by converting its edges to faces between connected vertices.
Select the mesh object you would like to attach the LiveWire node to and select the LiveWire item from the menu.

The thickness of the wires can be controlled via the Inset attribute.

If you need more control like converting only selected faces or texture driven inset values have a look at ticket01′s Konstrukt plug-in for Maya that offers an extended version of LiveWire with these and a lot more features.

… creates a double-sided hull mesh out of your selected one.
Select the mesh object you would like to create the shell from and select the Shell item from the menu.

The hull’s thickness can be controlled via the Thickness attribute. The inner and outer shell can be connected with the Bridge attribute.

… is a deformer that wraps a polygonal mesh around arbitrary shaped meshes. To get the best results and for some special applications there are several modes how the wrapping can be performed.

Center – moves the vertices towards the object’s center
Normals – moves the vertices along their normals
Object – works like blend shapes and moves the vertices of the wrapping object towards their end position on the object set
Vector – moves the vertices along the given vector

• create a mesh, e.g. a sphere, that will be used as the shrink wrap object
• create some more mesh objects and place them inside the sphere
• select the first sphere again and hit the ShrinkWrap item from the menu
• open the Attribute Editor and look for the shrinkWrap tab
• hit the Add Obstacles button and select all the other objects
• when done press ENTER
• the first sphere object should now be shrink wrapped around those other objects

… consists of multiple tools for manipulating particle objects.

If you’re new to the whole process it’s very important to follow the steps mentionend below in their listed order.

The following setup uses the rayIntersect node and a stamp object to shift the instances (pinscreen effect):

• create a particle object, either use an emitter or the Particle Tool
• use the Instancer (Replacement) on the particle object
• create the influence object that should be used to move the instances
• go to the Outliner and select the instancer object and make sure you’ve selected the instancer only otherwise you’ll need to do the whole node setup by yourself
• select ticket01 > MultiTool > Particle Tools > Create RayIntersect Setup
• open the Attribute Editor, the rayIntersect node should be active by now
• use “Add Obstacles” to attach the stamp object(s) and hit ENTER when done
• tweak the attributes to your needs

The following setup uses the imageBasedDisplacement node and a texture to shift the instances:

• create a particle object, either use an emitter or the Particle Tool
• use the Instancer (Replacement) on the particle object
• go to the Outliner and select the instancer object and make sure you’ve selected the instancer only otherwise you’ll need to do the whole node setup by yourself
• select ticket01 > MultiTool > Particle Tools > Create ImageBasedDisplacement Setup
• open the Attribute Editor, the imageBasedDisplacement node should be active by now
• map a texture or an image to the In Color attribute
• tweak the attributes to your needs

This file translator allows the export of STereoLithography files via the Maya’s export functions.

Select File > Export All… or Export Selection… and hit the Options button in the file browser dialog. Choose STereoLitography from the drop down box in the General Options. Select the file format, ASCII or Binary, from the File Type Specific Options and hit Apply.

This file translator allows the export to older Maya versions. The oldest version currently possible is Maya 6.5. Please obey that you may run into problems when trying to open these scenes with older Maya versions since some nodes may not exists in these versions. Both, Maya ASCII [.ma] and Maya binary [.mb] files, can be exported.

Select File > Export All… or Export Selection… and hit the Options button in the file browser dialog. Choose mayaAscii (old) or mayaBinary (old)from the drop down box in the General Options. Select the Maya version under the File Type Specific Options and hit Apply.