Mike Ton

Filtering out elements/data is a core component of building automated production tools.  Here's a collection of core filter pythons scripts that I use over and over in Maya.  Useful as a resource to bring budding tech artists to speed.

Code is available at : https://github.com/miketon/Maya_Tools/tree/master/toolBox

This tool complements my layersToStrip.jsx.  StripToLayers.jsx takes an existing strip and copy shifts each frame into a single series of layers.  The default number of frames is estimated by dividing width/height.  This works perfectly for frames with uniform aspect ratio.  But will need to be adjusted manually if frame aspect are non-uniform.

Code is available at : 

https://github.com/miketon/Photoshop_Scripts/blob/master/source/stripToLayers.jsx

I've written a large number of tools that end up deprecated.  Often times the content creation app will offer a more elegant native solution in an update, or more commonly, the pipeline needs itself changes.

Interfaces however, are much more resilient and surprisingly high mileage.  

I've built many one off animations rigs that languish, while the keyframe tool that drives it continues to find usage.  The animation UI pictured for simple commands such as zeroing out, mirroring and keying poses have been adapted to numerous foreign rigs on a number of various contracts and small side projects.

Updated my layersToStrip.jsx Photoshop tool with a UI.  Options to set orientation, spacing, and an order toggle for the background layer to be the begining or end of strip have also been added.

Code is available at :  https://github.com/miketon/Photoshop_Scripts/blob/master/source/layersToStrip.jsx

This post over at Hacker News: Vim the Six Billion Dollar Editor reminded me of just how much I love Vim.  If your day to day involves text-slinging, Vim is a bionic weapon that'll return the investment in understanding it many times over.      

It's modal nature is somewhat astonishing at first : Why would a text editor have a mode that does not input text?  The reason becomes a bit more clear when you consider that about half the time of an average text editing session is spent tumbling to and from characters/words.  And by separating those two modes, Vim effectively doubles the available keystroke space.

Originally, I struggled with a number of false starts with picking up Vim.  Persistance paid off.  And the resources that helped me most were:

• The built in vimtutor or the browser based openvim .
• The videos at vimcast.org are a gentle, practical introduction to Vim's day to day use.  These videos got me to the critical point of applying Vim idioms to my real world projects.
• Beautiful wallpaper by Ted Naleid. (My personal variant is attached.)

I also recommend finding a nice .vimrc :

• https://github.com/wgibbs/vim-irblack   (my initial starting point)
• https://github.com/miketon/vimrc         (tuned to my personal workflow) 

(The jj macro to switch modes will be kinder on your fingers than having to reach for the escape key.)

Vim is ~20 years old, yet IMHO manages to feel ahead of the curve.

This tool will render each individual object in a Maya scene to a thumbnail.  Useful as a means to catalog your art assets.  Additionally it'll also generate a stickman marker to give a sense of scale to the size of each object.  

Code available at: https://github.com/miketon/Maya_Tools/tree/master/browserUtil

I do a healthy amount of graphic debugging and profiling.  This includes taking screenshots, making A/B comparisons, and laying them out into a report format.  This script automates the layer->strip(or stack) aspect of that.  

Code is available at: https://github.com/miketon/Photoshop_Scripts/tree/master/source

Next up is updating this with a UI interface and generalizing it into a much friendlier tool.  Currently things like space offset between stacks are hardcoded.  

Here's a script to import SVG to Maya curves.  Built for a small micro-project and tested with Inkscape files.  Available at Github : https://github.com/miketon/Maya_Tools/tree/master/SVG_CurveImport