Polygon Modeling
Polygons are made up of faces. A single polygon face is a flat surface made when three or more points called vertices are connected. The position of each vertex defines the shape and size of the face, usually a triangle. The line that connects one vertex to another is called an edge. Some polygonal faces have four vertices instead of three, creating a square face instead of a triangular one. Polygonal faces are attached along their polygonal edges to make up a more complex surface that...
Rendering
P in any 3D animation is rendering. Although rendering isn't glamorous, proper attention to the process can improve any project. In particular, you can save time and energy by splitting up renders based on objects or shading components. You can even separate shadows from the rest of the scene or temporarily assign objects to specialized materials through the Render Layer Editor. Careful attention to rendering can also prevent such problems as raytraced black pits. Last, specialized rendering...
The Control Panel
You can load the scene file RocketModel_04.ma from the Scenes folder in the Red Rocket project to skip to this point or to check your work. Now let's create the Control panel. 1. Choose Create NURBS Primitives Sphere , set the Number of Spans to the default value of 4, and create a sphere. 2. Place the sphere where the Control panel is in the top view and shape it to the panel's general shape, as shown in Figure 5.68. Figure 5.68 Starting the Control panel Figure 5.68 Starting the Control panel...
Springs dont move the particles CVs vertices or points
Either no force is acting on the particles or the restLengthPS is turned on but you didn't set any values for it. By default, each spring's rest length equals its original length. It won't move unless an external force is applied to it. A pair of identical particle grids with springs are shown here after several frames of play. The particles on the right fail to move because restLengthPS is turned on while the default values are in use. To make the springs take effect, do the appropriate action...
Pants and Legs and Shoes
The pants are built from a cylinder. It becomes one side of the pants and is sculpted using Artisan and pulling CVs. Attach and sculpt a bit more, creasing the crotch area as shown next. Another cylinder is used for the leg, is mirrored for the other leg. Note the bunching of CVs at the knee area. The shoe is created from a sphere. Several sections are bunched up at the sides to make the bottom flat, and it is perhaps too simple a shoe, but itmll deform well enough.
Scene File Icons
The tools in the first section of the Status line deal with file operations Displays a window in which you can find and open any scene file you've saved Displays a window in which you can specify a filename and location to save a new scene or, if the current scene has already been saved and named, saves it to that location
Designing an Organic Character
This section shows you how to begin creating a 3D character in Maya by taking you through the basic preproduction design process. Some character-idea generation approaches are presented, and you are shown how to create the designs that you will later use as guides for modeling vour characters skin. The first thing you want to do when designing your character is to decide the style you want to use. At one extreme, you could design a completely stylized cartoon character at the other extreme, you...
What You Need to Know Before You Proceed
Making dialog boxes using web panels is a powerful, new feature in Maya 6 that will appeal most to MEL scripters who already know the tools and techniques to build web pages. If you are not familiar with web authoring, you may find it easier to use Maya's built-in user interface commands. For this chapter, you should know how to make a simple web page using Hypertext Markup Language HTML , what Uniform Resource Locators URLs are and how they are formatted, and how to create dialog boxes in MEL...
Objects
MEL is most commonly used to create and edit objects. This section covers the variety of commands devoted to objects. As mentioned earlier, all Maya objects are actually Dependency Graph nodes, so the process of creating and manipulating objects really involves creating and manipulating nodes. Fortunately you don't have to know the exact details of each object or node in order to use it. There are a lot of MEL commands designed specifically to access objects without your knowing their inner...
What Is the Hypergraph
The Hypergraph is, in its essence, a hypertext-like view of your scene thus the name . If you have worked with an HTML authoring tool, you will recognize the web-like appearance of linked objects in the Hypergraph. Every element visible in a scene is represented by a text box, and any linked objects have a line that connects them together, showing their connection in the scene. Passing your cursor over the line, younll see which elements of each object are connected. Besides displaying the...
Taking the Kettle Further
Try creating more detail for the kettle or experimenting with your own designs. An easy addition is a whistle cap for the spout. You can also create a matching set of teacups and saucers with subdivision surfaces. With the skills you have acquired here, you should feel confident to tackle an entire kitchen full of models. Also, try your hand at creating the models suggested at the end of Chapter 5, Modeling with NURBS, using subdivision techniques instead of NURBS. Subdivisions, sometimes...
Adding a Blend to Overlapping Clips
Partially overlapping clips create additive animation during the frames when the two clips overlap. The trouble with the overlapped section is that the animation can pop when the new clip is introduced because the values of the animated channels suddenly change. To resolve the popping problem, you can add a blend to the clips, creating a smoother alteration from the values of one clip to values of the other. To create a blend, Shift select the two clips and, with the cursor over one of the...
Cutting Up the Body
Things are going to get a bit more complicated from here on. We need to make holes for the legs, which means we need to cut the body into pieces. But first, we need to put in more isoparms in select places for smoother stitching later on. To insert isoparms, you need to select existing isoparms and specify where you want to put the 1. In perspective view, select the Select tool from the Minibar. Pick-mask Isoparm and click on the first vertical isoparm going around the nose area. In the...
Headlights
This headlight shows a lighting situation that is not dealt with by a default light. This kind of headlight has a light bulb in its center that is then bounced off a highly reflective surface. This creates a spotlight effect where the beam of light emerges, not from o point, but from the face of the light fixture. To achieve this effect in Mayo, you can use the Decoy Regions you learned about in the Light Effects section of this chapter. Put a spotlight behind the light fixture, then make sure...
Feature Disabling
Ignore all lens shaders if set to off. The default is on. Ignore all volume shaders if set to off. The default is on. Ignore all geometry shaders if set to off. The default is on. Ignore all displacement shaders if set to off. The default is on. Ignore all output shaders if set to off. The default is on. File output statements are not affected. Note that all five disable options also affect shaders installed by phenomena. This means that the phenomenon can fail if it installs cooperating...
Fig Specular reflection
The GL_SPECULAR parameter affects the color of the specular highlight. Let us see how to implement a specular lighting scheme in openGL. Typically, a real-world object such as a glass bottle has a specular highlight that is whitish. Therefore, if you want to create a realistic effect, set the GL_SPECULAR parameter of the light to a dull white. By default, GL SPECULAR is defined to be 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 for GLLIGHTO and 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 for any other light. We can modify Example6_3, by adding...
GLfloat GetLocationO return location private
GLfloat location 2 II meteor's location. location 0 x-, location - y- coordinate The location array stores the current x, -coordinates of the meteor. For this example, we let all meteors fall straight down along they-axis. The update function merely decrements the location l variable in order to make the meteor fall down. You can experiment with giving meteors an x-direction as well. The Draw routine draws a white colored point glVertex at the meteor's current location, whereas the...
UV Coordinate Space
One of the object types you will build in Maya is surfaces. While surfaces are positioned in 3D space using XYZ coordinates, they also have their own coordinate system that is specific to the topology of the surface, instead of using XYZ axes, this system uses U, V, and N, where U and v represent the two axes that lie on the surface and N is the surface normal axis that points out from the front of the surface. When you create a curve, it has a U direction that lets you measure points along the...
The structure of Factin
Like the monomers themselves, the F-actin polymer Figure 15.02 is a polar structure with a barbed and a pointed end terms coined from an early observation of how filaments appeared in electron micrographs when bound to another protein, myosin. Under physiological conditions, filaments grow more rapidly at their barbed than at their pointed ends, a feature that led to the terms plus and minus end which are used interchangeably with barbed and pointed, respectively. The F-actin filament can be...
Dynamic Relationships Editor
The Dynamic Relationships Editor lets you connect and disconnect dynamic relationships between objects and fields, emitters, and collisions. This chapter describes how to use the Dynamic Relationships Editor, including Understanding the Dynamic Relationships Editor on page 325 Making connections on page 326 Example Connecting and disconnecting gravity on page 327 Connecting to selected fields or emitters of an object on page 330
Mastering Maya Complete Cete
Courtesy of P0WDER, bookmarks added by crystal_fish John Kundert-Gibbs Peter Lee Associate Publisher Cheryl Applewood Contracts and Licensing Manager Kristine ODCallaghan Acquisitions amp Developmental Editor Cheryl Applewood Editors James A. Compton, Marilyn Smith, Jeff Gammon, Pat Coleman, Pete Gaughan Technical Editors Mark Smith, Mike Stivers Book Designers Patrick Dintino, Catalin Dulfu, Franz Baumhackl Graphic Illustration Publication Services Electronic Publishing Specialists Robin...
Fig Application clipping area
and shapes, etc. Objects within the clipping area are drawn, and those outside this area are removed or clipped from the scene. The clipping area is mapped onto a physical region in the computer display by mapping the application boundaries to the physical pixel boundaries of the window. If the clipping area defined matches the physical resolution of the window, then each call to draw an x,y point with integer values in the world coordinate system will have a one-to-one mapping with a...
Preparing Polygons
Although NuRBs surfaces are ready to render with their default uvs, polygon surfaces often need a great deal of adjustment. The use of primitives is the exception since the primitive's inherent uvs are orderly. As soon as various polygon modeling tools are applied to a primitive, however, the resulting uv texture space is cluttered and unusable see Figure 9.8 . Figure 9.8 A polygon cylinder's default UV texture space and the result of numerous modeling tools Figure 9.8 A polygon cylinder's...
Projection manipulators
The projection manipulator allows you to transform the projection to better suit your geometry. Translate along Y-axis Translate on XY plane ' You can toggle the manipulator type for a conventional all-in-one manipulator by clicking on the red T.
Shapes and Scan Converting
We are all familiar with basic shapes such as lines and polygons. They are easy enough to visualize and represent on paper. But how do we draw them on the computer The trick is in finding the right pixels to turn on The process by which an idealized shape, such as a line or a circle, is transformed into the correct on values for a group of pixels on the computer is called scan conversion and is also referred to as rasterizing. Over the years, several algorithms have been devised to make the...
Pass a Float into panelBreakup
You can change the function to accept a float parameter and pass it to the -delta setting. In the panelBreakup function header, add the following global proc panelBreakup float myDelta Figure 20.67 Results of panelBreakup script. Figure 20.67 Results of panelBreakup script. nurbsToPoly -name polyPanel -polygonType 1 -delta myDelta panel Save the script, and re-source it. If the script is in one of the Maya environment script path directories, you can simply type and execute it in the Script...
Details
From the side view, click on the head joint to highlight it. Doing so tells the tool that you want to start drawing joints from the head joint. Draw one joint for the eye and two for the jaw as follows The new head joints Rename, translate, and mirror the new joints when needed. Tip When mirroring the eye joint, make sure to set the Mirror function to Orientation so the eyes move together and are not mirrored.
Diffuse Reflectance
Surfaces with diffuse reflectance scatter light equally in all directions. The amount of light reflected is directly proportional to the angle of incidence of the incoming beam of light. Diffuse reflectance can be observed on dull objects such The exact math to calculate diffuse reflection was proposed by Lambert and so this reflectance is often referred to as Lambert reflectance. If we assume the light to have a diffuse color of R , Gz-j, Blcj and the surface to have a diffuse reflection...
Examples of using the Particle Sampler Info node
To help you use the Particle Sampler Info node we've included the following examples to help you learn how to use the Particle Sampler Info Node to achieve some commonly used effects. Refer to Set Particle Sampler Info node attributes on page 137 for complete information on Particle Sampler Info node attributes. Example Using the particles' age to color particles on page 129 Example Using the Particle Sampler Info node with rgbPP on page 131 Example Creating fading particle on page 133 Example...
LipSynching Characters
Synchronizing the lip movements of a character to match the words of a recorded voice track is called lip synching. Lip-synching a character is a lot like choreographing, but on a smaller scale. In fact, motion capture systems are designed for capturing facial and lip movements of an actor in real time. In the same way that live motion capture is not used unless the project is for a regular, repetitive, or large project, lip synching by hand is preferred by most animators who only require the...
The selfAssembly expression
Save this file in your Maya Scripts directory under the following name selfAssembly.txt Unlike reset, this expression must run once every frame greater than frame 1. Again, this condition can be tested with an if statement. This is a runtime animation expression that updates the actin assembly simulation. Diffusion, collision avoidance, and reactions are parcelled off as procedures that are called when needed from Reminder variables that have been described previously will not be given a...
Lighting Effects
Another form of shadow effect is a gobo. This term comes from the film industry and refers to a piece of metal or cardboard placed over a directional lighting source with holes cut in it to form a light pattern. Some gobos have horizontal slots to imitate light from a Venetian blind, whereas others have leaf-shaped holes to simulate forest lighting. Many animation programs offer gobos or shadow masks, which enable the artist to use a picture file for instance, a JPEG drawing of black and white...
Volume fields
You can select a volume to define the region in space in which particles or rigid bodies are affected by any field in Maya. The volume shapes you can use are cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, and torus. For example, if you create a Turbulence field and set its volume shape to cube, only particles or rigid bodies within the region of the cube are affected by the turbulence. This works with all fields in Maya, as well as with the Volume Axis field.
Operator Precedence
It is very important to understand the precedence of a given operator. Not knowing the order in which an expression will be evaluated can cause obscure bugs. The code looks right and runs just fine, but the end result is wrong. The cause is often an incorrect assumption about the order in which operators are evaluated. Take the following piece of code From mathematics you know that the multiplication should be evaluated first then the addition, resulting in 20. If the multiplication didn't have...
The Magnitude of a Vector
is also referred to as its magnitude. The magnitude of a vector is the distance from the tail to the head of the vector. It is represented as Vj and is equal to - j x2 y2 It is very useful to scale a vector so that the resultant vector has a length of 1, with the same direction as the original vector. This process is called normalizing a vector. The resultant vector is called a unit vector. To normalize a vector V, we simply scale it by the value l Vj. The resultant unit vector is represented...
Custom Installation Options
You can customize your installation of Maya so that you install 1 Insert the Maya Software CD into your CD-ROM drive. The Maya installer window appears. 2 Click Install Maya to begin the software installation and follow the online instructions. The Maya Installation Wizard appears. 3 Click Next to continue the installation. The Maya Software License Agreement and Documentation Server License Agreements appear. These agreements require your acceptance in order for the Maya software installation...
Shave and a Haircut for Maya
1998-2003 Joseph Alter, inc Patent Pending Los Angeles, CA joealteriac hotmail.com http www.joealter.com www.egroups.com groups shaveman is the address of the user group Shave and a Haircut, it's comcepts and accompanying materials are the sole property of joseph alter, inc. End Users are entitled to the use of one 1 end user license of the software per software key. Although Joseph Alter, Inc. JAI makes best effort to answer user questions and incorporate bug fixes and upgrades, this is by no...
Setting attributes with the type flag
Unlike single-value, numerical attributes like translateX, visibility, and so on some attributes must be set using the type flag and an appropriate argument. Two common examples include compound transform and string attributes etAttr myGlobe.translate -type doub1e3 5 10 15 etAttr someObject.customAttribute -type fstring someValue String attributes are rare in Maya and usually take the form of a custom attribute in which you want to store textual information. Unlike numerical attributes like...
Caustics
In this exercise, you will learn to enable Caustics and fine-tune its effects. 1 Open scene file cognacGlass_start.mb Render the scene to see the initial results using Maya Software Rendering. This is a simple scene consisting of a glass and a Spot Light. The glass and its contents have refractive materials, and the Spot Light caits Raytraced Shadows. You can see that the shadows cast by the glass are properly colored and transparent, but the image lacks the hot spots usually seen when light...
Selecting the History Node
These ore alternatives to the Channel Box and the Hypergraph window when you want to access the History nodes. In oil cases, the object must be active or tfce cursor must be over the object when accessing the marking menu. Once selected, the node will appear in the Channel Box or Attribute Editor. This Tool lets you occess the Input node of on object with history. This Selects the History Input or Output of the selected object. By defoult, this button is On. If it is turned Off, there will be...
Create mrBlahControlsmel
Open your favorite text editing program, and start building the script mrBlahControls.mel. At the top of the file, start writing the global proc mrBlahControls . global proc mrBlahControls window -title mrBlah Controls -widthHeight 450 450 MBcontrols This first command in the mrBlahControls procedure will give us the framework and title for the window. Now, let's create the static text headings to form sections for the buttons. string form formLayout string txt1 text -label Right Arm Left Arm...
Mac OS X Feature differences between Mac OS X and Windows
Threaded rendering on multi-processor systems now available on Mac OS X. The following features differ between Mac OS X and Windows versions of Maya. Features for Windows not available for Mac OS X Ability to read in pre-Maya 3.0 files Features for Mac OS X not available for Windows Threaded sound playback in time line during scrubbing AppleScript executes Maya MEL commands with results returned. See also Communicating between Maya and Mac OS X in the Release Notes and Calling MEL from...
Installation troubleshooting FAQ Linux
The following section refers to problems that may occur during installation on Linux. Conflict messages during installation you may need to uninstall a previous version of Maya for Linux before installing the new version. Follow the instructions Installing Maya on file systems other than usr on page 76. Conflict with lesstif and openMotif use the replacefiles option when installing openMotif. This overwrites previous files. If lesstif is not needed, it can be removed and openMotif installed by...
Building a Render Farm
This book is designed to take you from having no knowledge of animation to the stage where you are ready to open and successfully run your own animation studio. During this journey, you may not have much of an opportunity to work with mass-production hardware, but I urge you to use whatever opportunity may come your way to gain experience in computer maintenance and network management. Get to Know Computer Hardware Typically, when you start your own studio, you will be working alone with one...
Adjusting Interface Options
The first and most obvious place to start customizing Mayans interface to optimize your work is via the general interface options. Changing these options can make the interface cleanernallowing you to work with fewer distractionsnand also give over more space to the main scene view. Most interface options are, fittingly enough, under the Options gt UI Preferences menu. On selecting this choice from the menu, you will see a multi-tabbed window that allows you to adjust many of Mayans UI...
Long hair and dynamic curves for Maya Unlimited
Maya Unlimited 6 introduces Hair, a major new feature set that combines a dynamic curve simulation engine with a variety of rendering options for the creation of hair and other objects, such as ropes, chains, feathers and vines. The simulation engine can also be used to control NURBS curves connected to other objects, such as IK chains, surfaces, emitters, and deformers. gt Soft Modification Tool and Deformer Using Hair, you can easily and quickly create realistic hair on characters directly...
Beyond the lesson Uoh
Create dynamic hair on a surface. You can add hair to a NURBS or polygonal surface by creating or painting the hair. For polygons, UVs should be non-overlapping and fit between 0 and 1. Automatic mapping is a quick way to achieve this see Automatic UV mapping in the Mapping UVs guide . For more information, see Creating hair in the Hair guide. Before creating hair, you should determine which renderer you'll be using as this will affect what type of hair output you select NURBS curves or Paint...
Extra controls
Every animator and studio is going to be different with what they want and need for controls in a rig. bat is not even including the different needs for every creature for every shot. Just like the rest of this book's techniques, each of these steps can be customized to achieve different end results. This section will not cover how to create different types of controls, but that doesn't mean that you can't experiment and add your own favorite control into the control rig. In fact, you are...
Homogenous Coordinates and Composition of Matrix Transformations
We have seen the different vector matrix representations for translation, scaling, and rotation. Unfortunately these all differ in their representations and cannot be combined in a consistent manner. To treat all transformations in a consistent way, the concept of homogenous coordinates was borrowed from geometry and applied to CG. With homogenous coordinates, we add a third coordinate to a 2D point. Instead of being represented by a pair of numbers x,y , each point is now represented by a...
Clearing the Selection
Many scripts start off by getting a list of what the user has selected. Since many commands require that objects be selected to tell the command on what to operate, often you'll want to consider clearing the selection immediately after using the ls -sl command to get the selection list. Clear the selection with this command Once you've run this, nothing is selected. This command is equivalent to clicking on empty space in the Maya interface to deselect everything.