Stumbling Toward 'Awesomeness'

I like to live on the edge when it comes to new versions of Maya, but rarely does it cause a major issue for me. A wise man once said ‘the moment you stop respecting something is when it bites you in the ass’. Well consider me bitten.

Anytime a rig I created with 2015 is loaded in 2014 it is irreparably broken. Spewing tons of errors like this one:
// Error: file: C:/Users/chris.evans/Desktop/test.ma line 210: The orientConstraint ‘nurbsSphere1_orientConstraint1’ has no ‘w0’ attribute. //

Diffing two constrained spheres, I noticed that there’s a new flag called ‘DCB’ or Disconnect Behavior.  Batch delete that and it seems that 2015 rigs can work in 2014.

But as usual, be a better person than me and just don’t open a file with a version of Maya your animators aren’t on. 😀

In November I started at Epic Games in North Carolina, joining Jeremy Ernst and his team to focus on high quality characters and related technologies. For quite some time I have been enamored with not only the decisions and business practices of Epic, but the engine itself. Whether it’s putting the code on github, or the deep implementations of things like Blueprint; I am constantly amazed that they seem to remain focused, always putting the user first.

Look for some cool things coming down the pipe this year, we have an amazing team of really talented people, and an huge user-base that spans all industries.

Not many people know that I was born in South Carolina, I grew up in Florida and went to school in Georgia. I always felt a bit out of place on the West Coast, it’s great to finally be back to a place that feels like home.