Save and Version Up buttons
There are many different approaches to hip file management and version control, with many clever tools posted online. However, I tend to just keep things very simple with these two buttons. The first one is simply for saving the current scene (overwrite):
The second one is for versioning up the scene. Here I am padding the version number to 3 digits, however you can edit this in the script if you want different padding or just want to increment whatever number is at the end of the name. If there is already a higher version of the scene on disk it will increment up to the next available version:
Merge
This is fairly simple but I use it all the time. It will just merge the selected nodes (or create a merge node under the cursor if no nodes are selected). I have this mapped to the 'm' key so I can quickly create a merge whenever I need one (just like in Nuke!)
Or if you prefer to avoid having lots of wires around the place you can use the script below to object merge the selected nodes instead:
Save and Playblast
When flipbooking heavy sims I find its useful to write the images to disk while the playblast is running (in case I crash the computer!) This tool will flipbook to mplay but at the same time also write jpg images to a new folder in the JOB folder called "playblasts". It will also version up the hip file and make a copy of the hip file in the playblast folder. I find it useful in case I decide later to go back to a previous playblast version I know there is always a copy of the exact hip file in the folder:
It also initialises simulation operators and tries to get the resolution from the active camera. If there is no camera it will use 1920x1080 - or you can set your own resolution where the comment is.
Direction Arrow
I created this shelf tool just as a very quick way to get a specific vector. It will create an arrow (obj/arrow) that can be moved/rotated/scaled from the transform node and will give the direction vector in a param on the null (only the rotation is used to calculate the vector so scaling wont make a difference). This could then just be copied or referenced elsewhere for example in a wind in a solver. Because there is a transform node its easy to add motionfx noise on the rotation if needed. There is a magnitude multiplier on the null which could also be animated, so can be quite useful for controlling wind strength.
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