 or  |
Retopo Tool – Use this for all your polygon building resurfacing. Repeat with “G“ |
| + Edge |
Create New Tri – Pull out new Triangle with middle mouse. |
| + Vertex |
Create Quad from resulting Tri – Pull out new Vertex. |
| + Vertex |
Append Resulting Vertex – Append Vertex to inside edge if available. |
| + Inside Vertex |
Point Sliding – Enable Soft Selection sliding along the surface. |
| + Soft Selection |
Relax and Wrap – Relaxed soft selection region and wrap. |
| + Mutiple vertex |
Merge Vertex – Merges selected Vertex to Center. |
| + Border Edges |
Append Edges - Appends the selection creating a poly between them. |
| + Objects |
Combine - Maya Standard tool. Combines selected objects. |
| + Nothing |
PolyDraw - Draw polygons with lines. |
| Shift + S | Extrude Edges on Surface *New – When the “s” Topo hotkey is activated under options, Shift + S will extrude the selected edges to your mouse and project them back onto the live object. This special Extrude will also efficiently rotate to face the direction, making it quick and easy to build a path of extrusions! |
 |
Hide Manipulator - Allows for easier tweaking and moving of points. |
 |
Backface Toggle – Toggle backface viewing and component selection. |
 |
Easy selection – Turn on easy selection. Adjust settings under options. |
 |
Slide Edge Loop – Standard Maya Tool. Repeat “G” to Wrap to base. |
 |
Target Weld Verts – Standard Maya Tool. Use this to quickly merge vertices. |
 |
Bold Edges – Make Edges thicker on current selection. |
 |
Standard Edges – Make Edge thickness the standard on the current selection. |
 |
Poly Draw – Sketch in polygons, see below for instructions. |
 |
Paint Selection – Standard Maya Tool. Paint components to select. |
 |
Relax Paint – Relax polygons while retaining the form. (see below for limitations) |
 |
Pinch Paint – Pinch polygons while retaining the form. |
 |
Drop Outside Selection - Remove outside. Useful before Relax and Wrap. |
 |
Relax Selection – Use multiple times followed by a Wrap for best results. |
 |
Quick Wrap – Instant wrap, use when points are relatively in position. |
 |
Acurate Wrap – Slow Wrap, use only when vertices are far away from the base. |
 |
Display Over Live Object – View new Mesh on top of your live object. |
 |
Toggle Shading – Toggle to view only the wire-frame of your selected object. |
 |
Select Base object – Create New Live Object to snap everything to. It is possible to select Multiple live object to snap too! |
 |
Remove Live – Remove all from Live Object list. |
 |
Add Object as Display – Adds an object to the Live Object List. All objects Added through this button will not be made live with “All”. |
 |
Isolate Live Object – Toggle hiding live objects not active. |
 |
Add Live Object – Adds selected live object to the Live Object List. |
 |
Pick Current Live – Selection tool to interactively Pick Live Object. |
 |
Easy Selection Value- Mouse precision necessary for selection when Easy Select Value is activated.Accurate Projection - Poly Draw projection accuracy. Turn it off if the PolyDraw Tool is slow with a heavy live object. Less desirable results but depending on the density it may be faster.
Smooth Sliding – Turn off if Soft Selection sliding becomes slow. Topo Tool – Set ”s” as the hotkey for the Topo Tool. This is a non-destructive hot-key. It will not replace the “setKey” function in Maya as it only activates when the RetopoG Window is open and your selection is in component mode. This feature was added as a way to help relieve some stress on your wrist from having to constantly reach for the “g” key. Marking menu – When activated, hold “d” and left click to activate the marking menu (see below). This is also a non-destructive hot-key, so long as your “d” key is still set the standard Maya hotkey, it will not interfere with all your Maya tasks. Viewport 2.0 – Activates Viewport 2.0. Requires Maya 2012. Very important, if you wish to use Viewport 2.0 with RetopoG, turn it on here and not under your Viewport render options. Viewport 2.0 has the benefit of running faster with more polygons but unfortunately does apply backface culling properly on the wireframe.
|
Marking Menu:
PolyDraw Instructions:
PolyDraw requires all curves in your scene to be deleted in order to work properly. For safe measure, you should always use RetopoG in an empty scene where your only task is Retopology.
Step 1 - Draw the boundaries. Very important you do these first.
Step 2 - Draw lines on each line for how many times you wish to divide.
Step 3 - Hit the “g” key, or the PolyDraw button again to create and project your new polygon onto the Live object.
Limitations:
Some bugs just refuse to go away. Here is one that you will likely encounter:
If you continue to Relax Paint polygons beyond a state of being well relaxed, they will start to explode. Use the “Z” key to undo and re-select Relax Paint to reset.
*New To help avoid the issue, a Limit Relax Stroke option has been added. While this option does not completely solve the issue, it will make it far less of a problem and easier to avoid. Turning it on slightly changes how the Relax tools works requiring multiple strokes to relax to the same effect, helping to avoid over relaxing.
Next: Motion Trail Manager
Info
Motion Trail Manager is a tool that both improves Maya’s existing animation tools as well as invents new ways to change how we animate. First, it addresses several issues with Maya 2012′s Editable Motion trails to make the workflow easier and improve performance. Second, it introduces a brand new way to animate in 3D, called Interactive Ghost Trails.
Motion Trail Manager will be included with RetopoG Beta V2! Requires Maya 2012.
 |
Timing Beads- Select Motion trail Keys. Motion Trail Manager’s timing beads automatically turn on the weighted tangents to display timing beads. They also allow you to view both the “in” and “out” timing beads together.Break Tangents - Allows you to break tangents directly from your Motion Trail selection.Unify Tangents – Allows you to break tangents directly from your Motion Trail Selection.
Both, In, Out – Set the tangents of your motion trail key selection based on all the common options. New Key Tangents – Quickly set what default tangents are with new keyframes. |
 |
Set Thickness.- Sets the thickness of all Motion Trails in your scene.Set Key Size - Sets the key size of all Motion Trails in your scene.X-ray – Toggle display of all Motion Trails on top of other objects in the scene.
Set Pre-Display Frame – Sets the number of frames all motion trails are displayed before the current frame. “0″ is for unlimited. Set Post-Display Frame – Sets the number of frames all motion trails are displayed after the current frame. “0″ is for unlimited. Curve Speed – Optimizes the quality display of the Motion trail curves based on the range of your time slider. The higher the value, the faster it will be to edit. The lower the value, the smoother the curve will appear. Motion Trail curves dynamically update for optimal performance! |
 |
Introducing Interactive Ghost Trails!Before you get started, There are a few things you need to check for first.1. Everything relating to the character must be under the same root group!
2. You have a character set selected that holds all the controls! (see Maya’s documentation for more information about character sets). This step is optional, but ideal. It allows the Ghost Trail to update properly when you set a key on any one of the rigging controls. Define Ghosts Objects – Select all the Objects that will be duplicated. (Note: the more objects selected, the slower it will be, try and keep it to the most important parts.) Define Keyframe Base - Usually your Root controller, assign this to the controller that will likely need a key-frame with every pose. Create Ghost Trail - Creates the Ghost trail after the previous have been defined.
|
Update – Updates the Motion trails while preserving the pose colors.
KeyPose – Assign a color to the current ghost trail that represents a key pose.
Breakdown – Assign a color to the current ghost trail that represents a breakdown pose.
Between – Assign a color to the current ghost trail that represents an inbetween pose.
Hide/Show – Toggle viewing the relative pose type.
Show Ghost Trails – All Ghost trails visible.
Hide Ghost Trails – Hide All Ghost trails.
Toggle Ghost with ‘C’ Key – Toggle Ghost visibility when “snap to curves” is active.
[Ref] Ghost T – Prevent Ghost Trails from being selected.
[Ref] Motion T – Prevent Motion Trails from being selected.
[Temp] – Template Motion Trails.
[Hide] – Hide Motion Trails. (May result in slight performance boost)
Workflow:
Establish your Ghost Objects and keyframe base, the less ghost objects the better. Create your Ghost trail. Select a ghost trail and it will automatically jump to that key frame! Set a keyframe and it will automatically override or create a new ghost trail. Use the pose colors to keep organized. If you cut and paste keyframes, you will have to “Update”.
When you are all done blocking in your poses, you can either delete the group and/or remove the MTM groups from the outliner.
Limitations:
Interactive Ghost trails do not work with Maya’s Auto Keyframe toggle. It has to be done with the “s” key to register properly. Also if the Maya cursor is “waiting” try not to interrupt it. The tool is actively fixing a Maya bug that causes slower interaction when setting a keyframe on objects with a motion trail. If this is constantly a problem for you, deleting any attached motion trails will remove the problem.
 |
Quick Animation Scrubber – A time scrubber that lets you jump quickly through the frames in a fraction of the mouse movement. Set Inbetween Key – Sets a key at the current frame, adjust the bias to tell it which pose to favor, the pre or post. Scale Multiple Curve Points – Scale Curve points in the viewport from your motion trail selection! Click which axis, then click and drag left or right in the Viewport to determine how much. Let go and it will update.
|