Week 4 Progress - Export functionality

So far this week I have finalized implementing the basic export functionality. I solved last week's texture issue where sometimes the secondary blend colors would bleed into the final texture when running Maya's 'Convert to File Texture'. 

To address it, I baked the diffuse channels from the layered textures on the torso and the legs separately, use the resulting files to replace the layered texture nodes and then run the 'Convert to File Texture''. This way, the command does not need to worry about nested layered texture and factoring the alpha channel on each of their inputs.

The following video demonstrates the export process. The tool looks for a directory in Maya's default project path called 'exports', and if it does not exist, it is created. It generates a unique id for the character using the user's name and a timestamp, with the possibility of adding an optional tag to identify the character. It outputs a final diffuse color map and an FBX with the skinned mesh.

As you may notice, there is a change in the way the texture looks from the layered texture setup. If you look at the Maya swatch for the material's color and the final output, the color values match perfectly, but the way the viewport deals with the layered texture and its blending modes produces a sometimes different look from just plugging an equivalent texture. I will try to address this in the following week.

I am currently working on the functionality of the rest of the buttons (Load and Save) in particular, and expect them to be ready sometime tomorrow.