On OSX 10.6, installing Numpy for Maya 2012 was simple enough. You could do it either by directly copying the Numpy install folder into Maya’s Python’s site-packages folder or by adding a sys.path.append to Maya’s UserSetup.py. The process was quite simple since OSX 10.6’s default preinstalled version of Python was 2.6.x and Maya 2012 uses Python 2.6.x as well.

However, OSX 10.7 comes with Python 2.7.x, so a few extra steps are needed:

For Maya 2012 64-bit:

1. OSX 10.7 comes with Python 2.7.x, but we need 2.6.x, so install 2.6.x using the official installer from here: http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/python-2.6.6-macosx10.3.dmg

2. Since we’re using 64-bit Maya with 64-bit Python, we’ll need a 64-bit build of Numpy. The official version distributed on scipy.numpy.org is 32-bit, so we’ll need a 64-bit build. Thankfully, there is an unofficial 64-bit build in the form of the Scipy Superpack for Mac OSX. Even though we’re on OSX 10.7, we’ll want the OSX 10.6 variety of the script since the OSX 10.7 is Python 2.7.x dependent: http://idisk.mac.com/fonnesbeck-Public/superpack_10.6_2011.07.10.sh

   EDIT (01/12/2012): I’ve been informed by Michael Frederickson that the link originally posted to the unofficial 64 bit Scipy Superpack build for 10.6 no longer works. Fortunately, I’ve backed up both the script and the required dependencies. The install script can be found here: http://yiningkarlli.com/files/osx10.7numpy2.6/superpack_10.6_2011.07.10.sh

3. Go to where the script downloaded to and in Terminal:

   chmod +x superpack_10.6_2011.07.10.sh ./superpack_10.6_2011.07.10.sh

   If you don’t already have GNU Fortran, make sure to answer ‘yes’ when the script asks.

4. Once the script is done installing, in Terminal:

   ls /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ | grep numpy

   You should get something like: numpy-2.0.0.dev_b5cdaee_20110710-py2.6-macosx-10.6-universal.egg

   Even though we installed Numpy for Python 2.6.x, on Lion it installs to the 2.7 folder for some reason. No matter, you can either leave it there or move it to 2.6.

5. Go to /Users/[your username]/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2012-x64/scripts

6. If you don’t have a file named userSetup.py, make one and open it in a text editor. If yes, open it.

7. Add these lines to the file:

   import os import sys sys.path.append('/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/[thing you got from step 4]')

8. Sidenote: installing Python 2.6.x sets your default OSX Python to 2.6.x, but if you want to go back to 2.7.x, just edit your ~/.bash_profile and remove these lines:

   PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/bin:<span>$</span>{PATH}" export PATH

….and you should be done! In Maya, you should be able to just use import numpy and you’ll be good to go!

Here is a cautionary tale about why backing up one’s harddrive is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

Over the summer, I started making a little scene based off of the GH House Challenge from RonenBekerman.com, partially as a way to learn Vray and partially just for fun. I was working off of my laptop for the entire project, since I was in California at the time and didn’t have access to more powerful machines at home. Being out in California for the summer, I brought as little stuff with me as possible.

One of the things I decided to leave home was my backup Time Machine drive. “Oh, I won’t need this over the summer, what are the odds of file corruption or harddrive issues anyhow? I’ll be fine”, I thought to myself.

Which means, of course, that halfway through the summer a bunch of my files got corrupted and were therefore lost forever, and of course that block of lost data included my in-progress GH House project. NEVER ASSUME THAT YOU DO NOT NEED BACKUP.

What follows are some random in-progress renders that survived through being in posts I made to Facebook and Tumblr.

Here are a series of small in-progress renders showing shading and lighting tests:

I also started playing with some ideas for the interior:

…and finally, some larger in-progress renders. These renders represent where the project was when I lost all of the data:

In the end, the fact that I lost the project isn’t as important as the fact that I learned quite a lot from tinkering with this project. However, losing all of the data for this project was definitely a major bummer. But, lesson learned: BACK UP ALL THE TIME.

For my Computer Animation class’s final, I decided to go for a change in pace and work in 2D instead of in Maya. I want to tweak a few things before I post the finished animation, but I have two more finals to get through first. So for now, here are some stills:

I learned a sweet trick from fellow Penn CIS student Alexey Komissarouk’s blog today: the ‘go’ command!

So in a standard *nix bash CLI, you have you’re typical cd command. We all know how to use cd.

But have you ever accidentally cd’d a file? “cd /stuff/blah.txt” makes no sense and just gets you a “Not a directory” error. So then you have to backtrack and use vim or emacs or nano or whatever… blarg. If you’re using emacs or vim, you like efficiency and you’ve already lost efficiency by wasting a perfectly good moment trying to cd into a file.

Enter the ‘go’ command!

Add this bit of code to your .bashrc file and replace $EDITOR with the CLI text editor of your choice:

go()
{
if [ -f $1 ]
then
$EDITOR $1
else
cd $1 && ls
fi
}

and you’re all done! Now when you go to a directory, bash will cd and when you go to a file, bash will fire up vim or emacs or whatever.

As a side note, it might be fun to modify the ‘go’ command even further to automatically launch actions for other filetypes as well, like run javac whenever a .java is encountered or launch .jar files or run gcc or make whenever C++ makefiles are encountered. That’s left as an exercise to the reader though!