ALL-CAPS

Solo | Maya Tool to generate an array of caps at the click of a button

2024-03-25 08:00:00 +0000

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ALL_CAPS is a Maya tool for generating an array of caps (fan, strip, grid and max-area) for a given hole. The base Maya supports the generation of fan caps for cylinders, but this topology is not optimal for all circumstances. So, instead of manually building caps dozens of times on a given model, I have created a tool that procedurally generates caps at the click of a button

Cap Types from left to right: fan, strip, grid & max-area

I created the tool after reading an article on triangulation performance by Humus that found a dramatic difference in render time across fan, strip and max-area triangulation. Admittedly, the performance difference is negligible at the resolution we find in games, but I still thought it would be an interesting exercise. The tool is created using Python withPyMEL and PySide2 - it is still an early work in progress.

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User Guide

To begin, we must select the edge loop surrounding a hole. The tool works best on holes that contain even numbers (square numbers are even better).

We can then open up the ALL_CAPS tool via the innesthetic menu.

The cap type buttons are enabled once a valid selection is made. We can choose a cap type and see it instantly applied to our mesh. The cap buttons toggle, and so we can revert the cap or change it’s type without any manual work. We can also use the Cap Rotation Offset to rotate the cap to the desired angle. Check out the code in GitHub.