Mathias Røyrvik covers some concepts for Maya’s original shape node and how you can use it in rigging.
Autodesk Maya isn’t known as a procedural application, but it does have some procedural things in it. For example, a primitive in Maya is composed of a few nodes. That allows people to work with transforms, shapes, and shading group info on independent nodes. One node that shows up and may often get underlooked is the original shape node.
What’s This Tutorial About: Working concepts for the origShape in Maya
Important Concepts Covered: practical uses for working with the original shape node
What You Can Learn: How you can change vertex count and order using an origShape node
Maya Original Shape Nodes
When you perform specific commands on an object, like deformations, Maya makes an origShape node. It’s a linked duplicate of the object in its original state. When you think that for some calculations to happen, you need to have an initial state or a starting point for those numbers.
Using the origShape in Rigging
A new tutorial from Mathias Røyrvik covers an excellent overview of the origShape node and then moves on to how you can use it to your advantage. The tutorial covers how you can use the original shape to push model updates, and how you can change vertex count and order by using the original node. Also shown is how you can use one object to cut out shapes. Helpful tips in this video tutorial!
About Mathias Røyrvik
Mathias Røyrvik is a Senior Technical Artist at NinjaTheory and the former Lead Rigging TD at MPC_Film.
