Getting started¶
From nothing to a mirrored landmark pass saved to disk, in about ten minutes.
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Install
Where the folder goes, what the shelf button says, and the second button worth making while you are there.
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Your first landmark pass
Generate a palette, paint a head with it, mirror it, audit what you missed, and save the result.
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The interface
Every part of the window, named. The rest of this documentation points at these things without describing them again.
What you need¶
| Maya | 2020 or newer. PySide2 or PySide6, Python 2.7 or 3.x — the tool works out which it is running on. |
| A polygon mesh | Landmarks are assigned to faces. NURBS and subdivision surfaces are not supported. |
| Nothing else | No plug-in to load, no compiled parts, no dependencies beyond Maya itself. |
What a landmark is¶
A landmark is an ordinary Maya shader carrying a small tag (amLandmark) plus a
group, free-text notes and a stable id. Assigning it to faces is an ordinary
shading-group assignment: the marks are visible in the viewport, they survive
saving and reopening the scene, and any other tool that understands Maya shading
understands them.
Why a tag and not a name pattern
Finding the tool's own materials with a wildcard on the name is cheaper to
write and wrong in both directions: rename landmark_03 to jaw_line and
the tool forgets the material exists, while a material of yours that
happens to match the pattern is liable to be deleted by the cleanup pass.
The tag lives on the node, so it survives renaming and cannot collide with
anything.