Maya Scripting: Ideas and Concepts

Scripting in Maya can be hazard, but worth it once you understand the finer details of the work. For our Programming class, our Final assignment is to create 1 complex script to use in maya, or 3 simple scripts- all of which can be useful to speed up the workflow within Maya's not so user-friendly interface.

Scripts in Maya use two different languages, MEL and Python. MEL is slightly harder than Python, and is much more preferred, since it's much more user-friendly and much less tedious to write- which I can tell you can be a god send in the long run.

We've learned to create several different simple scripts that help with workflow so far, but for now, I have to list 10 possible scripting ideas that would be useful- and hopefully create a few for this assignment.

Here's the list:
1. Quickly add a new material to selected mesh
2. Toggle Texture borders on selected mesh
3. Toggle wireframe on a selected mesh
4. Toggle smooth preview on a selected mesh
5. Quickly assign a material to all meshes in the scene
6. Quickly place a smooth node on every mesh within the scene
7.Quickly take away the default U.Vs on a mesh
8. Quickly take the default U.V on every mesh in the scene
9. Immediately import an external mesh
10. Make Maya Dance.

Hopefully any and all of these (sans the last one) will be good to script.

Trailer Analysis: Mario Kart

For our Game Design class, we have to create a trailer for our (finally finished) racing game. To do this, we have to analyze some racing trailers ourselves! Official Analysis coming later, here's the video I chose in the meantime! 

HUDS and racing

Huds are neccesarry parts of games- and also the most unfortuante. Many games, which strive for immersion, for a complete and intense package of experience, lost much when HUDS are involved, because suddenly the immersion is broken- by creating map markers within a centuries old land (a la skyrim) or waypoints within a normal house enviroment (a la heavy rain). Huds, have unfortunately also been the task that we have been assigned to create within our gaming levels.

Unfortunately for us, they also have to be as non-diagetic and immersion breaking as many other huds, but it is a neccesary evil- needed to accurately relay information to the player where simply having a character say or do would not suffice. We're working on extremely limited resources, and as such we produce limited products. In anycase, on to the reasearch.

Older racing games strived for immersion- did their best to make all parts of the HUD look as if they were a part of the car, even if they were just floating up on screen. This was appealing, and was a staple for many racing games to come. Some games however, have completely gone away with much of this, in favor for a more stylistic looking, modern feel.

This has its appeal, and shows off much more of the screen and the graphics and aesthetics that much of the game artists have spent time into making. It's an obvious choice for those high-enviroment type racing games, such as Mario Kart and Ridge Racer, which are all based upon track-interaction or stylization to an extent.

Other Games have gone to create a more immersive feel, by going back to the tried and true original HUD style, with a more modern twist.

This, of course, also shows that much of the environment is devoid of interesting assets, and the focus is much more on the track itself, as well as the interaction between the players within the simple track- a much similar appeal to actual racing. 

For my hud, I have the idea to keeping it to the tried-and-true HUD style, while giving it a bit of a flare, that of my own level, the Neon Casino- which I will talk of at-length in coming posts. Here is the mockup.