hb Isolator - Maya Animation Script.

I'd like to share a Maya script I've created for animators.  

Hb Isolator lets you create bookmarks of objects in a scene and then isolate them as you choose in all viewports.  Bookmarks are saved with the scene. 

I use it a lot while animating to focus on one character at a time, or to show only facial controls and the mesh while working on facial animation.  Great for focusing on what's important, only being able to select the right things, and performance gains from having less visible.  I find using this tool is much more efficient than using Display Layers.

Written in Python, tested in Maya 2015-2016, but should work in older versions as well.  Give it a spin!

Download hb_isolator - v1.10

To run the script, place it in your maya scripts folder, and make a shelf button with the following Python code:

import hb_isolator;
reload(hb_isolator);
hb_isolator.gui();

Maya Parallel slow with Dynamics

Working on a shot with dynamic components in the rig and it's running really slow in Maya 2016 with Parallel evaluation?  If you tried running the scene through Profiler to identify bottle-necks and you see SetDirty all over it, it could be caused because nDynamics currently don't seem to be optimized for Parallel.  You'll also notice the HUD says *Disabled* by Parallel Evaluation.

Here's a quick script to toggle the Dynamic Evaluation in Maya - when it's off you should see a huge speed boost on certain rigs.   Autodesk warns that this feature should be used with caution and is unsupported, but I haven't had any issues with it.  Oddly, dynamics still appear to run fine and evaluate with it off.

Bonus tip: Putting commas at the end of print statements prints out the text to the little command line at the bottom of the Maya window.