Maya - Frame Counter on Maya.

[Mathias AUBRY]

As it's really important to put a frame counter on your Wip animation, here is how to do it!

First you have to download a script!

you can find some here.

Some will just work on the playblast of maya, other both in the batchrender and the playblast.

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/animation/search.php?searchtext=counter&filter=4%7C388

me I use a modified one of this one
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/feedback/frameRender-4224.html

it didn't work at first so I modified it a bit and now I love it. it's really like an object polygon so you can see it in the playblast or the batchrender. you can also hide it or delete it like a normal object.

if it doesn't work you can contact me by pm

to use a script, open your script editor, File / Source Script / and select the script.
then the script is load in maya, to activate it often you will also need the command that is usually given at the beginning of the script or in a txt file attached with the script. (you can open a script file with the notebook) then in the command line of maya (or in the script Edito) type that command and the script will run.
for the last link a sent you the command is

frameRender;

hope it was usefull!
Mathias

[david_martinez]

Great tip Mathias,

Also, for all of you using Maya 2008, you can go to:

"Display/Heads Up Display/Current Frame"

To get a small counter on the viewport. The only bad thing is that it's not gonna show up in case that you render the scene, but hey! If you are rendering it, I'm sure that you are not looking for feedback anymore.  :-)

Hope it helps!

[Drake83]

Many thanks Mathias for these scripts! Will be useful for sure!

@David : does the "rendering = not looking for feedback" applies when playblasting?

[david_martinez]

Not at all...

Once you think that your animation is final (Your mentor/director/Supervisor approved it), then it's rendered. This means that when you are rendering the scene, you are supposed to be done with it and it's a better idea to stay with Playblast while working on them.

Hope it's more clear now


David