Update

Over the last week, I have been working on the actual hologram rig. Due to the open sculpture studio hours, the adhesive taking a day to dry, and releasing ammonia it has been a very slow task. As of right now the final adhesive is curing and should be complete and installed onto the pedestal by today.

Hologram Rig V4

So after I got my computer back I was able to work more on my script. Last night I had a dream that made me realize a fault in my script. If someone is planning on using the rig with the display above the pyramid, then the images wont sync up correctly when it is displayed on the hologram pyramid. With that in mind I rewrote part of my script, almost doubling it in size. There is now a beginning dialog box that allows the user to choose ahead of time which rig to use that suits their needs. All I had to do was recreate the rig with a different type of camera to achieve the desired results. Thusly Hologram Rig Version 4 has been written and completed.

weekend update...or lack there of.

Sadly I will not be able to get any work done this weekend because tcnj internet broke my laptop. It is currently being worked on at the apple store and I will hopefully be able to get it fixed this weekend.

Update

Sadly through my research and with the help of Prof. Kim, we were unable to find a solution to the problem I am having with combining the two scripts. It seems that the MEL scripting language and Maya in general does not like playing with the combination of MEL, Bash, and PHP scripts. As of right now, until I find a work around I will have to leave it as two separate scripts, which isn't a deal breaker. I have also acquired a old LCD monitor that I am going to use to make a installation rig for the thesis. The bad news is that it is broken, so I will have to take a look on the inside to see if there is anything I can do to fix it.

Update

As of right now, the MEL Script and the PHP are done. I have gotten Maya to call the PHP through it's own terminal/ The only problem I am currently having is that I am having trouble polishing up the code in a way that we can have it cleanly be called with ease. I have tried linking the PHP to the MEL Script, and that just ended up erroring out or just initiating the code too quickly.  This weekend I plan on grabbing an old monitor to try to start planning out a new rig.

Code Update

As of now the rig code is almost 100% complete, aside from tweaking.
The PHP code is also done, but it needs to be polished up a bit. Having Maya call the file and the set up for it is a bit tedious and confusing especially for a new user.

The camera rig has been changed from a simple camera to a camera with aiming. It had to be changed due to the fact that renders wont look good with my original hologram idea so this is the closest thing to a fix for it for now.

Early prototype

I realized that I never posted my original prototype on my blog.