thanks, it was the loading of the plug-in that prevented the joints to come in, (not to mention the mesh is better now too) now I'm experimenting with stuff!

By the way, maybe open a new sub-forum for discussing such tools. Since Spore is all about creating, I think it would fit the forums well too.

irlydontknow wrote:

MaxisEditorDan wrote:

sonicdude98 wrote:Oops, just have to set it to High Quality. Everything works now!

BUT. How the heck do you pose your creature and move it's joints?

Now you're getting into basic questions about how to use Maya.

But here's a super quick tutorial:

Camera:
Hold ALT and left click to rotate the camera
Hold ALT and middle click to pan the camera
Hold ALT and mousewheel to zoom

Click on a joint to grab it:
Press W to change to "Translate Mode", use the red, blue, green arrows to translate that joint
Press E to change to "Rotate Mode", use the red, blue, green circle to rotate that joint
Press R to change to "Scale Mode", use the red, blue, green boxes to scale that joint

For further Maya tutorials check the web

Good luck everyone and be sure to post some renders!

Thanks for that, can you keep us updated if there is a plug-in for blender 3D soon? I don't have enough money to afford maya

Sure no problem. You can also track the progress of the Google Summer of Code Blender Project here (http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/blender), so I assume the blender plug-in will be ready later this summer. I'll start a new thread whenever that happens as well.

-Dan

Is it by the way normal that it can take quite a while for a render to complete (Maya software-very high quality). Just want to be sure my Maya didn't froze and I'm waiting for nothing.

From my experience, simpler creatures are easier to pose.

Here are some good, easy to follow tutorials for using Maya:

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/maya-video-tutorials.php

It's great if you have never used a program like this, and if you know your stuff also. I hope it helps .
Respect,

(*$malli$*)

yay, my first render :3

Just thought I'd share my 'attempts' at rendering 2 of my creatures on Maya:







I didn't know you could even move the eyes! This program is big, it will take some time to get these creatures looking as good as those on the first page, anyway, i'll keep practicing.
Respect,

(*$malli$*)

animations!

How do you add lighting like in your first picture, Malli?

sonicdude98 wrote:How do you add lighting like in your first picture, Malli?

On the tabs at the top, go onto "Rendering", and there are different styles of lighting, I clicked on the "Spot Light", you can move it about and rotate it ect to aim it where you desire. Also in the right column attribute come up like the intensity of the light ect. Hope this helped.

P.S. Animation in Maya is allot easier than I thought.
Respect,

(*$malli$*)

Testing Google Earth import of Spore creatures.

Exported creature in COLLADA.
imported in Maya
Scaled model x1000
exported back in collada, with triangulate, no animation, no skeleton, bake transforms as options
replace diffuse texture with a diffuse texture without alpha channel, since Google Earth does not support alpha textures it seems.

Copy/paste .dae in google earth. right click on imported model to change altitude and position (did not see how to rotate model).

Et voila, your spore creature are invading the real (google) earth !



Here's the .kmz file for the picture above. Open in Google Earth to reproduce picture.
(for the curious, the kmz file is a zip file containint the .kml geolocation, the collada file and the texture. Noticed that I changed the texture format from jpg to png. I simply edited the .dae file as a text file to change the name of the texture file)

I was playing around with some creature test animations in Maya, and put one up here on my blog. Take a look if you like.
http://oceanquigley.blogspot.com/2009/07/spore-creature-animating-in-maya.html

Ocean.

Heres a Render I did.

is it legal to download that? from that website couse i never saw that web lo

For whoever asked about sketchup.
You need to get an old version of the FBX converter from autodesk and convert the collada file to a dxf.

I got it working but its slow as beans even on my beastly machine (8gb ram 2.8ghz dual core processor). I had to turn off all the lines and its still a bit sticky. And then of course there's the obvious limitions of sketchup having no bones, no keyframe animation, no real way to use UV to texture things... the list really goes on.

So if you have an even beastlier machine than mine and if you feel like wasting effort for really no result... then yes sketchup will work.