iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

When Maya on Linux does heavy calculations and becomes unresponsive it stops redrawing the main window. This allows me to draw patterns with a tool window over Maya's main window. Like Solitaire. When it redraws the main window, I know it's responsive again. Who needs toolbars am I right?! 🤷‍♂️

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

braverabbit.bsky.social @braverabbit.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Making some good progress with the core functions of #SHAPES for #Blender Doesn't look like much but these pretty important for many workflows. #b3d #Blender3D #rigtip #animation #rigging

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

But Why Tho? @butwhytho.net · 14/06/2025

Giant Squid's Sword of the Sea offers thrilling traversal mechanics, meditative soundscapes, and an art style that sets it apart. Read our hands-on #SGFPlayDays impressions here:

butwhytho.net

Giant Squid's Sword of the Sea Is Thrilling And Meditative In Equal Measure

Giant Squid's Sword of the Sea offers thrilling traversal mechanics, meditative soundscapes, and an art style that sets it apart.

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Jonathan Cooper @jonathan.gameanim.com · 16/04/2025

Tekken 8 muscle deformation via RBF joint system looks super-impressive.

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Jan van den Hemel @blendersecrets.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

This video looks at converting a Displacement texture into actual geometry, that can be 3D printed or sculpted on. Textures from Polyhaven. #Blender #B3D #Blender3d www.blendersecrets.org

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I had some of these. They were great!

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Robbie Reid the Rigger @chowgood.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

My GCAP talk "How To Never Rig The Same Thing Twice" is now available to the public! I was really happy with how well it was received at the conference, especially with students. So if you want to learn my super secret techniques to make rigging easier, make sure to check it out

youtube.com

How To Never Rig The Same Thing Twice

YouTube video by GCAP

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Robbie Reid the Rigger @chowgood.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Once something has been tagged, you should see it under its outputs with a "_tag" suffix. You can also see the connection in the node editor. Controllers have the object type "controller" so they are easy to wildcard search for as well

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Robbie Reid the Rigger @chowgood.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Are your Maya controls a bit sluggish when you move them? Manipulation in Maya occurs in DG mode, but you can force it to evaluate in the faster parallel mode by using a "controller tag". Moving my COG control goes from 20 FPS to 120 FPS after being tagged #rigtip

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Jessica Kathmann @jessicakathmann.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Gaming abbreviations, but only wrong expanded forms. I go first: NPC = non pettable cat

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Robbie Reid the Rigger @chowgood.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Did you know you can use the translation of transforms to drive curves in Maya? It's a clean method that avoids deformers like clusters, and is really easy to set up #rigtip

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Blender tip: How to make a surface shader (that just displays a flat color or texture without reacting to light)? Plug the color or texture directly into the Material Output Surface port without using a shading node. #blender #shading @blender3d.bsky.social

Blender node graph showing an RGB color node that is plugged directly into a Material Output node.

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Journey is just such an excellent game 🔥

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Blender tip: How to assign different shaders to the front and backside of a geometry? Use the backfacing attribute of a Geometry node to drive a Mix Shader node. (This also works for textures with the Mix Color node.) #blender #shading @blender3d.bsky.social

Screenshot of a Blender shading network demonstrating how the Geometry node can switch a shader on a geometry depending if the front or back side is shown.

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

kay @yellowjello.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

Apparently no one in my animation team knew this button existed in Maya to lock the ability to undock panels. Sharing the info here too to save you from a mini-panic attack of losing your timeline or something right after moving it accidentally :>

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 05/10/2023

Lots of awesome rigging and animation people joining. Welcome! @shhlife.bsky.social @chrisfram.bsky.social @alexwilsonart.bsky.social @jessefk.bsky.social @bclarkcgchar.bsky.social @enriquev.bsky.social You can discover rigging posts by adding and pinning this feed: bsky.app/profile/did:...

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 27/09/2023

@golemde.bsky.social Schön dass ihr auf Bluesky seid! Ich würde mich freuen eure Artikel hier zu lesen.

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

@sinfiniti.bsky.social Welcome to Bluesky! You can discover rigging posts by adding a rigging feed. After pinning it, it'll appear as a secondary timeline under Home. bsky.app/profile/did:...

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

Rori! @roricomics.bsky.social · 21/08/2023

Hey I made a quick welcome guide to BlueSky :) There's tons more, but I think these few steps will get you up and enjoying it quickly.

(arrow pointing to drawing of toggle) Toggle to enable Adult Content
THEN choose Hide, Warn, or SHOW
(star) tip: images are AI moderated so some slip thru & some G-rated images get tagged as "explicit", so "Warn" may be the bet choice atm
#3 Go to SETTINGS
(box with drawing of toggle) toggle require alt text on images (please ♥)
(arrow points to) Home Feed Prefs
(star) Use these settings to control seeing reposts & replies on your TL

#4 Go to My Feeds
Go to "Discover New Feeds" to search for interesting feeds like "Only Posts"
Click the "+" to add the feed
(box) Go to the (gear icon) [edit my feeds] here you can pin and unpin feeds
(side note) pinned feed will appear at the top of your TL
Don't forget to "♥" the feed when you click on it to preview, this helps others find it!

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 14/09/2023

"With the July release of Oppenheimer, Cartoon Brew reported that 80 percent of the movie’s VFX crew went uncredited, though lead VFX shop DNEG placed all of their names on its web site." Keeping the VFX secret is such a sad and destructive practice. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

hollywoodreporter.com

VFX Pros Expose The Hidden Costs of Selling a Movie as “Real”

Sometimes studios issue directives that when it comes to marketing a film, “there will be no discussion of VFX. … We don’t want to overshadow the actors,” says one industry vet.

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 29/08/2023

Couldn't find a Bluesky feed for character rigging so I made one. bsky.app/profile/did:... If you find posts that you think should be included, please do tell me.

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 29/08/2023

@kirkhamilton.bsky.social Loved the Strong Songs episode about "Soul Vaccination" by Tower of Power. Made me appreciate their music so much more hearing you point out all the nifty details. Thanks for continuing to make Strong Songs!

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 22/08/2023

Wrapping a head with blendShapes onto a full mesh is quite slow. So instead I like to prep my meshes a little and replace the wrap with another blendShape. 1. I split the full mesh into head and body. 2. I use one head copy for facial rigging. 🧵 1/3 #maya #rigging #facialrig

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 15/08/2023

When I graph connections in the Node Editor I always find it tedious to get *all* connections and having to clean up after I found the one I want. This snippet graphs connections for a single attribute. Code: kleinhei.nz/2020/12/maya-node-edito…

"""
Adds outgoing connections for a specific attribute (under the cursor) to the Node Editor.

1. Gets the plug that the cursor is hovering over
2. Gets direct output connections (conversion nodes and their outputs if necessary)
3. Adds these nodes to the Node Editor

This should obviously only be executed while hovering over the attribute in the Node Editor.
To test you could:
* assign it to a hotkey
* make it a shelf button, execute once and then hit "g" to execute again
so it is executed while you hover over attributes in the Node Editor
"""
from maya import mel
from maya import cmds
node_editor = mel.eval("getCurrentNodeEditor")
item_under_cursor = cmds.nodeEditor(node_editor, feedbackType=True, q=True)
if item_under_cursor == "plug":
plug_under_cursor = cmds.nodeEditor(node_editor, feedbackPlug=True, q=True)
# outgoing connections could obviously be changed to incoming connections, ...
all_out_con = cmds.listConnections(plug_under_cursor, s=False, d=True, scn

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 09/08/2023

When I get into the details of weights painting I often have an an animated range of motion in my timeline. But depending on the character, scrubbing the timeline can lead to janky motion in the viewport. So sometimes I temporarily disable time slider snapping to help me judge deformation better.

# Toggles between time slider snapping to frames or smoothly interpolating
from maya import cmds, mel

gPlayBackSlider = mel.eval('$tmp = $gPlayBackSlider')
snapSetting = cmds.timeControl(gPlayBackSlider, q=True, snap=True)
cmds.timeControl(gPlayBackSlider, e=True, snap=not snapSetting)

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Reposted by Niels Kleinheinz

David Lo Pun-ch Nazis @helpmeskeletor.bsky.social · 09/08/2023

Lol an archaeology website had an AI write an article on the scimitar and they accidentally scraped a Dungeons and Dragons description.

Known to Europeans as the scimitar, the sham shot is the quintessential long sword of the horsemen of Persia (Iran), Moghul India and Arabia. It scales primarily with Strength and Dexterity and is a good weapon for high dexterity characters who can excel at slashing attacks while spinning. A curved sword with a thin blade of ample length. Light of weight desire its larger size, its slicing attacks come in rapid succession. Such savers were renowned for their sharpness and lethality.

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 08/08/2023

One thing I do in rigging quite often is place some joints, paint their weights and then realize I placed them slightly wrong. The Move Skinned Joints Tool only allows for translation so I always have these two commands ready to disable skinning, move and rotate the joints and then re-enable it:

# Disable SkinCluster so skinned joints can be translated AND rotated

# Disable SkinCluster on selected geo
moveJointsMode 1;

# Enable SkinCluster on selected geo
moveJointsMode 0;

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Niels Kleinheinz @kleinheinz.bsky.social · 08/08/2023

Glad to be part of the rigging community on Bluesky. To things not being as crazy! 🥂

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