MEL Woes On A Mac

So in the latest 3DBuzz project, When Mechs Attack, we're building a custom UI to facilitate the ease of selecting controls and animation attributes on our Mech, but I've hit a snag because I'm running Maya on a Mac. For some reason, Maya can't find the image files I need to place on the UI buttons [worse comes to worse I just won't have the fancy looking UI and will be reduced to using a boring button version- what fun is that?!

I've posted the query to a few message boards to see if anyone has a solution. The part of the code I'm referring to is where we house the images inside of "variables" to access them later for the buttons. I've triple-triple checked the file location paths to no avail:

string $MechRootFile ="/Users/adam_kaszycki/Documents/maya/projects/When Mechs Attack/sourceimages/Mech_Root.bmp";

string $RightFootFile ="/Users/adam_kaszycki/Documents/maya/projects/When Mechs Attack/sourceimages/melUI/Right_Foot.bmp";

string $LeftFootFile ="/Users/adam_kaszycki/Documents/maya/projects/When Mechs Attack/sourceimages/melUI/Left_Foot.bmp";

I've also tried creating a file node in the Hypergraph, mapping the file and copying the location Maya uses to access the file, sourceimages/melUI/Mech_Root.bmp, but that doesn't work either. It's gotta be a Mac bug and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.

Anyway, just wanted to detail my frustration here as I move along.

More Mech Shots

Modeled and Textured Mech

I've just about finished rendering out my Alien Abduction film now that all of the lighting and paint effects are complete. I do need to figure out a way to edit it all together and compress the video. So, in the meantime I'm posting the first model from the next project, "When Mechs Attack". This model has been textured as well. Enjoy and feel free to issue any comments you like.

Rough Animation for Shot 2 of Alien Abduction

Here is shot 2 for the Alien Abduction short [a project from 3DBuzz. So far this is still kind of rough and I'm trying to continue to wrestle with the Graph Editor in Maya to sort out the following:

• How to make a more fluid and lively suck up of the beach ball [I know...doesn't look like it without the textures, lights, etc. in this Playblast].
• Need to tweak out the spin when the alien launches the tractor beam.
• When the ball goes into the cockpit and causes the alien to lose control of the ship I need to work on smoothing out the rotations a tad so they aren't quite so choppy looking...subtle stuff.

Any feedback is most welcome for any other problem areas thus far.

Shot 1 Animation of Alien Abduction [playblast]

I'm currently nearing the end of Project 2, Alien Abduction, from the fantastic DVD training materials provided by Buzz3D. This is certainly the most complex piece of animation, texturing, rigging, lighting, etc. I have delved into. In this shot, the alien comes into camera and spots our home planet and plots some sort of scheme [you'll see when I post more films].

In this shot I'm primarily concerned with:
* how to get the ship to fly in without seeming to stop too suddenly defying some sort of physics out in space
* figure out with the simple rig how to convincingly get out alien to move around, look back at the earth with a moment of shock and then turn back to the camera and indicate his plotting scheme [rubbing his tentacles together]
* I also added a little wave as he blasts towards earth

There are plenty of things I could work on I am sure, but sometimes you gotta take your limited knowledge and move on to the next thing for more insight.