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LAYOUT EDITOR v1.0
by Bora Dayioglu

http://www.borafx.com
boradayioglu@gmail.com

layoutEditor lets you create a squence`s layout by setting the shooting angles and timings in a single Maya scene with a continuous camera throughout the sequence. So you can easily edit the layout, change its timings, playblast a full sequence, or export each shot to individual Maya scenes for animating.

[ download mel script: layoutEditor.mel ]*

image1 - the interface

The cameraList section shows all the cameras in the scene. Naming of your cameras should be in this format; camera# , or camera#_description If you add a new camera or change a camera`s name you will need to refresh the camera list using refresh cameraList button. If you double click on any of the cameras in the list, it will set your active viewport to show that camera`s view. You can also pick a camera from the list, and hit delete key to remove it from the scene. SET KEY You can hilight a camera from the cameraList and click SET KEY button to set a cut to the hilighted camera at that frame. When you play the animation you will notice _layoutCAM will be showing the keyed camera between those keyframes. add/rem frames This is used for adding or removing giving number of frames from all the animated objects in the scene at that frame. So if you need to add 2 more frames after frame 20, goto frame 20, type 2 in this field and hit enter. To remove frames, just type negative numbers. select layoutCAM Selects the layoutCAM, so you can see the cut points in the timeline. You can also edit these cut points from the timeline. toogle info Toogles the visibility of the information text, which shows the active camera`s name, frame number and time code, and the frame length of the current shot.

pick info
Lets you to pick the information text, so you can move it around the screen. Make sure you position it while looking through the _layoutCAM to avoid any clipping issues you might get if it get too close to the camera.

toogle cameras
Toogles the visibility of all the cameras in the scene, so you can get better playblasts from your scene.

EXPORT SHOTS
When you done editing your cuts, you can use this button to export each shot with its own camera and timings as individual Maya scenes. Select a location and a base filename with the filebrowser, and script will export each shot with proper shot number padding and file extension. It also sets the timelines for each shot, so when you open any of them you will see the correct start and end frames in the timeline.

RESET layoutCAM
This will delete the _layoutCAM with all its keyframes, and create a new one.

REMOVE layoutCAM
Every layoutEditor related thing will be deleted from the scene.

If you having troubles, please feel free to drop me a line. Stay tuned for more tutorials/tricks.

Bora Dayioglu
http://www.borafx.com
boradayioglu@gmail.com

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*To install, download and copy the script to your maya scripts folder ( ex. my documents / maya / scripts ) and restart Maya. Run `layoutEditor` in Maya`s command line to execute the script