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This is a feature-rich direct export of Maya 2024 .ma files, supporting embedded meshes, projection screens, trackers as locators and/or chisels, consistent frame number controls, Arnold or native rendering, etc etc. It has a full set of controls to go with that; fortunately the defaults should always be a good starting point.
Maya ASCII files are much easier and robust for SynthEyes to generate, and you can open them and see what’s inside. However, they are also larger and slower to read. Once you’ve opened the Maya ASCII file in Maya, you can save it in the more efficient Maya binary format.
Timeline setup. Drop-down: Active part starts at ..., Entire shot starts at..., or Match Image frame numbers. Controls which portion of the incoming shot is placed at the Starting frame#. Match Frames makes the placement match the image sequence's frame numbers; equivalent to Entire shot for movies..
Starting Frame#. Number. This is the starting frame number for the shot in Maya, if either the active or entire Timeline setups are selected; ignored otherwise.
Interpret SynthEyes units as. Drop-down. Interpret SynthEyes units as this; combined with the Maya units we obtain a relative scaling factor. Keeping this at cm matches maya's default setting. If None, no scaling factor is applied.
Maya’s Working unit. Drop-down. This will be the scene's Working Unit setting. Maya likes centimeters. Be careful, see Autodesk's ‘Working in Maya in different scales’ for more information.
Use Arnold. Checkbox. When checked, use Arnold materials instead of the builtin Maya materials. You must manually select Arnold in the Render Settings to actually start rendering with it. Lights are made extra-bright in Maya so that your first renders aren’t completely black; adjust the lights after that.
Set shutter angles/rolling. Checkbox. For Arnold only, only if rolling shutter is present, set the shutter angles (from the Perspective View's Render Settings) and rolling shutter value.
Rotation order. Drop-down. Use this rotation order for objects created in Maya.
Projection screens. Drop-down. When to generate a projection screen to hold the shot imagery, distorted as necessary to match the scene. If a projection screen isn't
generated, then an image plane is generated to hold the (undistorted!) shot imagery.
Based on. Drop-down. Where to look for lens distortion information. Normally, this should be the Image preprocessor, after running the Lens Workflow script. The solver's distortion can also be selected for the zero-pass workflow, though this is not recommended.
UV screen mode. Dropdown. With a UVmap, a projection screen using texture coordinates will work better than a vertex-positioning screen, although animated distortion can't be handled. This controls when the alternate version is used.
Horizontal Grids. Number. The number of grids horizontally in the projection screen.
The vertical direction is determined based on the aspect ratio.
Screen Relative Dist. (distance). Number. Sets the distance from the camera to the image plane holding the source imagery in the 3D environment, as a multiple of the camera’s world size.
Overscan Override %. Number. When using a zero-pass overscan workflow, the overscan in Fusion, Maya, and Nuke must be identical. One way to achieve that, and keep the images to a uniform size, is to enter the same overriding overscan percentage in this field in all exporters. If this value is zero, a minimal value overscan will be computed, which should be identical in the exporters, and the amount of overscan will vary depending on the distortion in each shot
Maximum rounding error. Number. Fraction of a pixel. For zero-pass workflows, the maximum permitted error, in pixels, as the exporter selects padded image sizes that best maintain the original image’s aspect ratio. Any changes to that aspect ratio create small errors that reduce the match's accuracy. For example, a 16:9 image will keep that exact aspect ratio if the horizontal resolution is increased by a multiple of 16, and the vertical resolution is increased by that same multiple of
9. For some irregular image sizes, the size may have to increase by a large amount to maintain the aspect ratio. If the padded size is much too large, slowly increase the allowable Maximum rounding error (0.01? 0.02?, 0.05?, 0.1?), permitting a slight mismatch to reduce size. Use the same value in the Maya, Fusion, and Nuke exporters! Values over 0.5 suppress aspect-maintaining padding as any number can then be rounded to an integer.
Output trackers as: Drop-down. Determines what sort of thing is created for exportable trackers.
Relative tracker size. Number. Sets the size of the marker for trackers, as a multiple of the object's world size.
Embed meshes. Drop-down. Which meshes are embedded in the .ma file, vs a maya primitive being used. If no suitable primitive is available for a non-embedded mesh, a box will be output. Note that embedded meshes will make the file much larger.
Remove path prefix. Text. When this text appears at the beginning of a path, for example an image name, it is removed. Use the add and remove path prefixes to retarget the exported file to a different machine, for example remove "/Volumes/SHOTS" and add "S:" to go from Mac to PC, or use them to change from local to network drives.
Add path prefix. Text. Whenever the path prefix above is removed, this prefix will be added.
Far clipping plane multiple. Number. Far clipping plane distance, as a multiple of the world size.
Bigger/more precise. Checkbox. When checked, more digits of precision are included for the numbers being exported. The file will be more accurate, but larger.
©2024 Boris FX, Inc. — UNOFFICIAL — Converted from original PDF.