Help - resizing image planes - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 15-08-2007 , 02:41 AM

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Join Date: Mar 2007

Posts: 1,055

Help - resizing image planes

Hi,

I've got an image plane (well, 2) that I want to resize. In the channel box, I can increase their size by adjusting their height and width variables (which keeps them in proportion). Adjusting their x and y size does nothing. Also, I can only increase their size by a certain amount, then they won't get larger - the numbers will increase, but the size remains the same. Plus, it will ofter dissapear in another viewport - either side or front.

3 questions:

How can I resize the planes without limit? And, does it always keep them in proportion?

What are the x and y size variables for, if not to increase the plane's size?

Finally, how do I ensure that they remain visible after resizing?

Thanks,

gubar.

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# 2 15-08-2007 , 02:08 PM

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Join Date: Nov 2003

Location: Sweden

Posts: 326

Hello Gubar, you really like the channel box, ey? :p
To be honest with you I rarely have it open at all. It's useful at times like setting up image planes though. Let's say your referrence image is 800 by 640 pixels yeah, so you make a plane with the dimension 8.0 by 6.40. Add the material with the referrence image to the plane. Do the same for any other ref's etc. At this point you don't need the channel box anymore.

So now you have at least a front and side ref up yeah. Now you have several options. With the scale tool, size up or down each plane uniformly, or you can group the two planes together and scale the group uniformly. Technically you could use the channel box, but it's just slow and tedious as you have to manually calculate the new image ratio. Slow and a bit pointless.

Before you group the ref's make sure both image planes line up the way you want them. Center line and the feet with the grid for instance.

>Finally, how do I ensure that they remain visible after >resizing?
I am not sure I understand or recognize this one. Could you ellaborate?

Currently working on reclaiming Space
The Salvation Prophecy

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# 3 15-08-2007 , 07:03 PM

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Join Date: Mar 2007

Posts: 1,055

Thanks for replying,

I was just selecting the option in the viewport to import an image plane, rather than creating a plane manually and then placing the image on its material - I'll try it your way; I can see how this would give you much more control. The images are from 3d.sk, so fortunately they (generally) line up pretty well already.

Re the image plane dissapearing. When I scale my image just now, it appears to also scale the camera. In my perspective port, I can see the square representing it grow, and the line representing its LOS extend; I think when it extends too much, I am altering it's focal length. So as I move it, its focus extends beyond the plane; why it then does not show the image in extreme close up, I don't know - it seems to look "beyond" it instead. It's as best as I can describe it. I'll try your method, then I'll post up images if I still get the problem.

And yeah, I like the channel box - I've came to Maya from Lightwave and its cool the way it contains all the info about your object and its attributes!

cheers,

gubar.

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# 4 15-08-2007 , 07:36 PM

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Join Date: Nov 2003

Location: Sweden

Posts: 326

Ah I see now. Yeah Poly planes is so much more flexible. Easy to turn on and off and move out of the way. Holds image ratio flawlessly and so on. Only advantages as far as I can tell. A very handy trick is to put the planes on a layer in the layer manager and set these layers to R for referrence. Now you can't click them or accidently move them anymore. Perfect.

The few times I've tried to attach it to the camera approach I learned that Maya does not like .jpg for this. All kinds of weird things happened. Try a .tga and see if you get the same results.

Yeah 3d.sk is cool. However you do typically need to correct the referrence images a bit. 3D.sk does not do this for you. Namely barrel lens distortion that occurs with all photography (fish eye effect), straightening out the axis and possibly correcting yaw-pitch tilt distortions. Here's how:

https://forums.ego-farms.com/index.php?topic=123.0
First and foremost, Grab
Part 01 - Preparing Images for Reference Plates by Eric Maslowski.

The rest are very nice too.

Currently working on reclaiming Space
The Salvation Prophecy

Last edited by AlphaFlyte; 15-08-2007 at 07:44 PM.

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# 5 15-08-2007 , 07:47 PM

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Join Date: Mar 2007

Posts: 1,055

Thanks again.

I've been learning maya day in day out for the past two months, and this board helps so much for those specific questions that the help files don't address.

Back to it now...

cheers,

gubar.

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# 6 15-08-2007 , 08:13 PM

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Join Date: Mar 2007

Posts: 1,055

Ok,

hoped not to be back so soon. In principle, I understand how to create the plane and apply the image; in practice it's not working.

As the image shows, it is not displaying the image on a 1:1 match on the surface, although the proportions match (the image is 1008x1498, the plane 10.08 x 14.98 - a large image, but I tried making it smaller to no avail). I've tried it both as a a normal texture and as a projection (which tiled it on the object, when I scaled it to fit it was terribly blurred), on the object's colour channel.

Any idea where I am going wrong? All other values are at defaults.

thanks,

gubar.

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