Vertex Normal Script For Maya?

[mikebart]

Hey all, Im looking for a vertex normal script for maya which allows me to be able to project all vertex normals outwards from a center origin.
I want to use it for adjusting vert normals on low poly trees, I know about the edit vert normals tool for maya but its pretty crap.

Thanks in advance

[joojaa]

Well this is a bit unusual, as it would create locked normals and for most uses you couldt animate the tree at all after the fact with anything other than bones, without resetting the normals screwing them up permanently.

So are you sure you dont need a node instead?

Im pretty sure it dont exist. But easy tio make tough after all it is 6 lines of code. Whoever the node question is much more important because doing 6 lines of sometyhing that ultimately useless is not something i would do.

[mikebart]

Thanks for the reply Joojaa,
Im not sure a node would be what im looking for, there's no animation in these trees at all, they're very low poly, about 250 verts at high lod for realtime environments where you would have thousands rendered on screen at one time. I get better lighting results when the vertex normals are aranged outward.
Im using maya 8.0 and finding it very time consuming to arrange all the vertex normals for 25 different trees using the "edit vertex normal tool", so im just trying to save a bit of time really.
I've heard maya 2008 has a way to do it, so i guess look into that, seems like such a simple thing, im suprised its not something native to older versions of maya.

cheers,

mike.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(mikebart @ 04/01/09, 03:37 PM) [snapback]304587[/snapback]
so i guess look into that, seems like such a simple thing, im suprised its not something native to older versions of maya.

Theres a infinite number of possibilities out there, with a infinite number of variations. I am not aware thet theres a new tool in 2008 that would do this. Its just not practical to do everything thats what you have scripting for. Really you would have learned all you need on scripting between theese postings if youd REALLY wanted to. Scipting dont get much more straight forward than this. (making this a node on the otherhand is real work, id say 1 day for code, testing and deployment unles on uses python in wich case more like 20 minutes)

but here you go, im not sure what you consider the center so i modularized it.

CODE
global proc jooProjectNormalOutForm(vector $center,string $points[]){
  for ($item in $points){
    float $pos[];
    vector $dir;
        //would need small tweak to support vertex faces
    $pos=pointPosition -world $item;
    $dir=unit(<>-$center);
    polyNormalPerVertex -xyz ($dir.x) ($dir.y) ($dir.z) $item;
  }
}

// run for all selected vertices facing away form world ceneter
// no more then rudimentary chek of correctness so be carefull
// what you choose. So only choose vertexes

jooProjectNormalOutForm(<>,ls -sl-fl)

Just run place the proc into file named jooProjectNormalOutForm.mel in your user scripts directory and then put the jooProjectNormalOutForm(<>,ls -sl-fl -type float3) into your shelf as a button. (mmb drag teh text there form command editor) Restart Maya done. Select some vertices and hit the button.

Modify center to match what you need.

Nothing to it. Like i said 6 lines of code i just made it nicer to use with the remaining 3 and put a example on how to use it.

PS: you should be able to modify the center metric to make more sense for your practical purposes in no time.

PPS: it took me 10 minutes to write this form scratch and then test it, and write this post. Most of the timne was spent tweaking the post (id say 4/5 if the time, so 2 mnutes for the code, 1 would have been enough had i not had a typo and got a unhelpfull spill all error).

[mikebart]

Joojaa, thankyou so much, this is fantastic, works a charm.