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...
Getting the Dimensions Right
One huge problem with mapping separate parts of the body like this is that Maya, while powerful, is unpleasantly consistent as far as the relative sizes of the maps it creates. It always makes the maps as large as possible within the UV texture space regardless of how large the area being mapped in the view space is, leaving you to try to scale the map down by eye with varying results. By taking the original height of the full body projection and dividing it into the height of the projection of...
Variables Loops and Branching
Now that we have looked at the basics of how to use MEL, let's take a closer look at how to create more sophisticated scripts using the language. If you've done any programming at all, you've probably been waiting for this point the main reasons to program are 1 to create flexibility and 2 to take care of repetitive tasks. Flexibility comes through variables and branching repetition is made possible through looping. It's actually much easier to see what a variable is than to talk about it. Type...
PerParticle Array Attributes
Animating particles can lead to giving one a bit of a god complex, but that's okay. They're only pixels, so you can't cause too much damage. Up until now we've been looking at the attributes of our particles on sort of a group or ant-hill level. When we start adding per-particle attributes, it's as if we are moving to the level of controlling the lives of the individual ants. In other, less metaphorical terms, the two levels of control we have are at the particle shape node or group level and...
Sharing Clips in a Scene
You can share clips between characters within a single scene by copying and pasting clips from one character to another. If you have the simple project from the previous sections, you can continue to use it. If not, create a simple character consisting of a geometric primitive, and create two or three animation clips for one of the characters. When one character is animated with clips, create a second, similar character and move it away from the first character in your scene. You can share...
Creating and Animating Cameras
In Maya you can create three types of cameras with which you can render your scene. The cameras themselves are essentially the same, but they come with different types of controls A single-node camera is identical to your perspective camera. In the Create menu it is just called Camera. A two-node camera is a camera with a second external control that aims the camera. In the Create menu this is called Camera And Aim. A three-node camera is a camera with separate, external controls for aiming the...
Incremental Saves
Incremental saves are a highly recommended safety feature for your scene files. As your scenes grow, they become more complex, which means they are more prone to errors Nothing is worse than accidentally losing a crucial part of your scene or, worse, unintentionally corrupting your scene file. Incremental saves automatically create backups of your previous saves when you save a current scene. Figure 2.1 The New Project window allows you to organize all the files your Maya scenes use. Figure 2.1...
Finishing the Template
We now have a 3D template made of linear NURBS curves. We can, if need be, begin modeling here, but a little extra work at this stage will reap enormous timesaving benefits down the line. Currently, the lines are flat to the orthogonal planes, and this flatness is a problem in that it does not always accurately reflect the actual points on the figure where the contour will turn away. This problem can best be seen in the wrist area. In the top view, the arm bends a little back from the center...
Modeling Machismos Body
We have a good plan, and we have a great base from which to work. We are now ready to create the model. We will be using relatively few tools. First we will generate a cube primitive that we will edit into the shape of Machismo's body using Maya's extensive polygonal editing toolset. All directions in the following tutorials assume that all tools start from their default settings. We will adjust them as needed. Figure 3.13 Moving the pivot point of the front view group. Notice how holding down...
Gaps
You use the options in the Gaps section in the brush Attribute Editor to create intervals along the stroke path, much like a dotted line see Figure 17.30 . Open the scene used in the previous section, glow01.mb, and display the Gaps section in the Attribute Editor. View Figure 17.30 Gaps and pressure mapping make strokes look more realistic. Figure 17.30 Gaps and pressure mapping make strokes look more realistic. the scene in the Paint Effects panel, rendered mode this allows you to see the...
Start Current and Rest Positions
A follicle has three positions Start, Current and Rest. Throughout your work flow, you will constantly switch between viewing each of these states, accessed by choosing Hair Display. The Start position displays the shape of the hair at the beginning of the simulation. This display mode allows you to easily select individual active follicles for adding constraints or altering per-follicle attributes. The Start position can be set to whatever the current state of the hair is by selecting the...
Lighting and Shadows
The final step in using software rendering for hair is properly casting self-shadows. Shadows really add to the realism of the Paint Effects hair. Typically, you want a key light with a high intensity 1.5-2.0 to create nice contrast between light and shadow. In the Shadows section of the light's attributes, turn on Use Depth Map Shadows, since Maya cannot raytrace Paint Effects shadows. For optimal visual results, turn off Use Mid Dist Dmap and alter the Dmap Filter Size to get smoother-looking...
AntiAliasing Quality Section
The Anti-Aliasing Quality section in the mental ray tab of the Render Settings window controls the quality of an image by specifying the color values for each pixel during the render phase see Figure 14.5 . Anti-aliasing is accomplished by sampling colors within a certain region, comparing them with a contrast threshold value, and filtering the result to provide smooth transitions from one color area to another. When an area in a scene needs to be placed within the space of a single pixel, you...
Additional Options
The options in the IPR Options and Paint Effects Rendering Options sections control the shading, shadow, and motion blur for IPR renders and Paint Effects rendering. Turning off unneeded options in the IPR section will increase the speed of IPR renders and save disk space, though obviously at the cost of reduced fidelity to the final image. In the Paint Effects options, if Enable Stroke Rendering is off, Maya will not render Paint Effects strokes. This is a global control you can use when you...
Hot Keys
Hot keys are keyboard shortcuts that can access almost any Maya tool or command. You have already encountered quite a few so far in our exploration of the interface. You can create even more through the Hotkey Editor, shown in Figure 1.45. Through this monolith of a window, you can set virtually any key combination to be used as a shortcut to virtually any command in Maya. Since so many tools already have hot keys assigned by default, it is important to get to know them first before you decide...
Modeling the Drive Wheel with the Circular Fillet and Trim Tools
We will find the next level of complexity in the drive wheel. The drawing calls for a five-spoke hubcap, but the spokes have a modern styling that differs from the standard cylindrical spoke on most wheels. This is the perfect opportunity to use and discuss the Circular Fillet and Trim tools. First, however, we need to set up the drawing so the drive wheel is centered on the grid. 1. In the top view, select DrawPolyGeo. 2. Move the drawing's pivot point to the exact center of the front view of...
Adding Fur to the Tail
Now we need to add fur to the muskrat's tail. 1. Duplicate the MM_Arms fur description and rename it MM_Tail. 2. Make sure the fur grows down the length of the tail, as in Figure 22.46. 3. Set Density to 35,000, and set Length to 0.12. Set Noise Amplitude to 0.2 to create a good amount of randomness to the tail fur. 4. Set Inclination to 0.75, and run a test render to make sure the density and length settings look good with the rest of the fur on the character. To see a complete version of the...
Using Particles for Effects
The first exercise will be creating a simple laser sword effect. We are going to use particles to create a beam of vibrating light that forms the blade of the sword. This exercise will introduce you to a typical work flow for using particles and emitters to create a visual effect. 1. Open the laserSwordl.mb file from the CD. 2. Play the animation. You will see a NURBS curve grow from the handle of the sword. The sword then rises to the air and takes a couple of slashes. We need to get some...
Light Manipulator
The Light Manipulator is a visual display on the Maya Heads Up Display HUD that allows you to control light attributes interactively it is useful for precisely positioning targets, decay regions, and other light effects. To enable a Light Manipulator control, select a light and choose Display Show Light Manipulators or select the Show Manipulator tool from the Tool Box. You will then see a series of extra controls surrounding your light. Below the light's handle, you should see a control called...
Reading Textures Using the Hypershade
To finish the MacGizmo, you will import a file containing materials for the cockpit glass, the wheel wells, and the pilot's chair. With MacGizmoShadeFinal.mb still open, import MacGizmo_matFinishPack.mb from the sourceimagesshaders directory on the CD. Go ahead and assign Chair_mat to SeatGrp, Glass_mat to WindShieldSrf, and Tire_mat to TireGeo, LFrontWheelGrp TireGeo, and RTireGeo. Also, assign the appropriate WheelWell_mat to the correct L-, R-, and Drive-WheelWellGeo. Test-render to your...
HandsOn Animating Joe Generic
Before we start animating, let's look at a video for direct reference of a jump. We can learn from it to animate our hero, Joe Generic. Open JumpReference.mov in the Chapter 9 folder on the CD. This movie shows one of the authors jumping up onto a short ledge. In the QuickTime Player application, you can press the Left and Right arrow keys to step forward and backward frame by frame. You can use this feature to select key poses or extremes for your animation. Ideally, you should play...
Reflectivity Tweaks
For most highly polished, metallic painted cars, reflectivity actually decreases as the surface turns and faces the viewer. This reduction in reflectivity is what allows all the sparkly, shiny bits, which are buried beneath the paint's surface, to show to the viewer. We will add those bits when we add the color component later in the chapter. For right now, however, we want to make the surface facing us less reflective. We will do this by using the Facing Ratio attribute of the sampler info...
Additional D Brush Settings
By now you have gained a good fundamental understanding for creating 2D and 3D paint effects. The following sections examine additional settings for controlling brush appearances. These include color controls as well as controls for blending brushes, as you would with traditional painting. In addition, we look at creating a tileable texture for a 3D surface as well as directly painting textures on surfaces. The ability to paint directly on surfaces is extremely powerful, especially for creating...
The Multilister
As the Outliner and Hypergraph list the objects in the scene, the Multilister and Hyper-shade see the next section windows list the render nodes of your scene textures, lights, cameras, and so on. In Maya terminology, adding textures and such to objects is called shading called surfacing in Lightwave-speak, for example . And as with the Outliner and Hypergraph, these windows approach presenting the shaders of your scenes differently to accommodate the best of options in your work flow. You will...
Checking the Animation
When you first get your scene with your animated character, it is important to quickly examine the animation and the character's deformations. We will be looking for any areas that might cause us a problem during simulation. Many times a character's animation as seen through the shot camera can look great, but if you look more closely, there can be small issues that can get in the way of a cloth simulation. For example, cloth solvers don't do a good job handling limbs going through each other...
Final Gather
Final Gather determines the light and color effects that objects have on each other. You can use Final Gather as a means for lighting a scene and or as an additional way to improve the lighting. The main advantage of Final Gather is that it examines irradiance in the scene based on surface color values and does not use lights for illuminating objects. Final Gather is the process of casting individual rays from a hemispherical region around points on a surface, known as Final Gather points and...
Cylindrical Mapping of the Arm
Mapping the arm involves a different procedure because Maya's cylindrical mapping maps best in the Y direction. You cannot set it to map on any other axis by default. Therefore, the projectionHeight doesn't help us much. We will need to derive that value 1. In the perspective view, pick-mask Face on the body geometry, and select the faces in the arm. Exclude the gloved hand as you did the boot. Remember that the glove extends about halfway up the forearm. Because of the way the glove overlaps...
Attaching the Engine
Let's attach the engine that we built earlier to EngineWngSrf by circular filleting. First, however, we will need to make some changes to CowlSrf. 2. Translate and scale EngineGrp into position as shown in the drawing from the front and side views. Scaling this group to 0.572 should bring it into alignment. Unfortunately, going to the generic side view in the hotbox is useless as the drawing polygon obscures the side view. But using the View Compass in the perspective view lets you view from...
Working with Fields and Impulses
Once you create an active rigid body, you can control its movement in a few ways. You can set values directly for its impulse, initial velocity, and spin attributes, as you'll see later this chapter. You can also control movement secondarily through collisions with other active or passive rigid bodies. In addition, fields affect the movement of active rigid bodies by exerting a specific force on them. For example, if a shot calls for particles of dust to blow around in a scene, you can use an...
Input and Output Connections
The two icons to the right of all the filters list the input and output connections of an object, and the third icon toggles on off construction history. Objects in Maya can connect with each other for any variety of purposes, from animation to rendering. When an object is influenced by any attributes of another object or node in Maya, that object has an input connection. When a node's own attribute s is influencing another object, that node has an output connection. Now these icons aren't used...
What Is a Polygon
Simply put for our purposes, a polygon is a 3D mathematical construct composed of three or more sets of points having X, Y, Z coordinates in 3D space. These points not only have positional values, they are also connected in a particular order, which determines the way the polygon is said to face. We'll explore this in the next section. This facing direction is shown by a polygon's surface normal, as Figure 3.1 shows. Polygons are the oldest modeling paradigm their pedigree extends back decades....
V
Specify regions of illumination on your Spot light by using Decay Regions. Fog, discussed later in this chapter, was added to the light to better illustrate the regions. You can control hard-edged boundaries of your Spot light by using Barn Doors. Specify regions of illumination on your Spot light by using Decay Regions. Fog, discussed later in this chapter, was added to the light to better illustrate the regions.
Using Multiple Fields with Particles
Open the file snowGnomel.mb from the CD. You'll find a pathetic little garden gnome whose life is about to get a little worse. The gnome is a single polygon object. 1. Create a volume emitter by switching to the Dynamics menu set and choosing Particles Create Emitter . 2. Name the emitter snowStorm, and set the emitter type to Volume. Set the rate to 100, and click the Create button. 3. At the origin you'll see a cube or a sphere. This is the volume emitter see Figure 19.8 . Move the emitter 7...
EyebrowUp
Set nodeStates of the three eyebrow joints to HasNoEffect, and translate them up and back on the head in Y and Z. This will cause the geometry to crinkle where the influence conflicts with the brow joints. Raise the three brow joints along the vertical line of edges on the brow. The hairline as well as the top of the head will move with them. Select the Add Paint Operation and paint the influence of HeadBaseJNT to counteract this effect. It is good for the hairline to move, but the top of the...
Modifying Clips
Although creating and reusing clips can be useful, modifying the clips to produce varying animation is even more valuable. Figure 10.8 shows a clip in the Trax Editor. The numbers on the blue line above the clip show the in and out points of the clip in the main scene Timeline. The middle of the clip itself shows the length of the clip, the name of the clip, and the percentage of the original clip length this current incarnation fills. The two numbers on the left side show the clip in point top...
Collisions
When animating hair in a complex scene, you can temporarily turn off collisions to get the correct general motion and dynamics of hair and to save computation time. Turn off collisions by unchecking Collide in the hair system's attributes. When a good basis of the dynamics is in place, enable collisions again to get accurate results. When testing hair motion with collisions enabled, it is best to use a low Collide Over Sample value. If the hair noticeably penetrates the collision surface,...
Irradiance
Irradiance is a term that describes the total incoming light intensity at a given point from the scene. You can also think of irradiance as the overall contribution of light from object shaders or photons in the scene cast upon a specific point. To further clarify, this relates to measuring light influence for every point in the environment from its surroundings. Each shader in Maya has an Irradiance and Irradiance Color attribute in its mental ray tab. This attribute is used with indirect...
Using Brushes in D
As with all brush settings, you can choose whether to adjust values for the template brush, or you can adjust settings for an existing brush in the Attribute Editor. With respect to painting in 2D, these settings always need to be applied on the template brush since strokes on canvas don't create brush nodes that can later be adjusted. Let's examine some of the brush features while painting onto the canvas note that they work the same way while painting in 3D. Open the Paint Effects Brush...
Fur Attribute Maps
Where do these maps get saved out In your project folder structure you will notice a fur folder with its own set of subfolders called furAttrMap, furEqualMap, furFiles, furImages, and fur ShadowMap. These folders hold all the fur images and maps that Maya needs to describe and render your fur. The maps you bake or paint become IFF image files and are called fur attribute maps, or fur attrs for short. Whenever you save your scene file, Maya appends the filename to the fur attr file and places it...
Render Layers
Like display layers, render layers control what objects are on which layers so that you can separate your renders into different layers or passes. Rendering in layers is powerful for later editing in a compositing package such as After Effects or Shake because it gives you ultimate control over the objects in your scene and how best to color correct or even place them. To see the render layers in your scene, click the Render Radio button to toggle away from the display layers. Creating and...
And Now the Right Side
Now we need to create the right side blend shapes after cleaning up our work to this point. 1. Create a new layer called HeadBlendsLyr and assign all 22 targets to it. Optionally, while the targets are selected, you can change the wireframe color by choosing Display Wireframe Color, choosing a separate color for the left side heads, and clicking Apply. 2. Set HeadBlendsLyr to Reference to prevent accidental selection of the targets. 3. Show MoldLyr as we will need to select MoldGeo. 4. Select...
Shelves
Choose Window Settings Preferences Shelf Editor to manage your shelves see Figure 1.44 . You can create or delete shelves or manage the items on the shelf with this function. Adjusting the colors of your UI elements, The Shelves window windows, and scene objects is easy. Adjusting the colors of your UI elements, The Shelves window windows, and scene objects is easy. You can easily add any menu item or Toolbox item to your shelf To add an item from the Toolbox, simply MMB drag its icon from the...
The Dynamic Simulation Section
The Dynamic Simulation section of the Attribute Editor allows control over the physical simulation of fluids in a container. The basic control, Gravity, determines how a fluid is pulled in the scene. At the default 9.8 , gravity pulls the fluid upward toward the top of the container at a sedate speed. If Gravity is made negative, it will pull the fluid downward instead. The magnitude determines how rapidly the fluid will rise or fall within the container. Viscosity determines how much each...
The Contents Method Section
In the Contents Method section below the Container Properties section are several popup controls that determine how the fluid behaves within the container. For the default 2D fluid case, Density and Velocity are set to Dynamic Grid Temperature, Fuel, and Falloff Method are set to Off and Color Method is set to Use Shading Color. A dynamic grid updates its conditions over time, which allows the simulation to run. If you turn either Density or Velocity to Static Grid instead causing the...
Contrast Threshold
The settings in the Contrast Threshold section control which sampling level, between the Min Sample Level and Max Sample Level, is used to calculate the value of a given pixel. These settings act as a metering device to compare contrast between two sampled colors neighboring sampled blocks within a sample region . As long as the contrast between sampled colors exceeds the values in the Contrast Threshold section in other words, more contrast than permitted mental ray continues to increase the...
Area Light
Area lights tend to be more computationally expensive yet yield softer lighting. Rather than shining a single light ray along a vector, Area lights shine according to a two-dimensional area. The number of rays emitted from the light are controlled by the size of the Area light's rectangular area. Therefore, if you scale the light larger, the light will become brighter. Use Area lights when you want light to emanate from a large area, such as a white wall, rather than a single bulb. Figure 11.6a...
Mirrors
Go to almost any animation studio, visit an animator's desk, and somewhere you will find a mirror. Using a mirror, the animator, who in many cases will also be a frustrated actor, can act out a sequence and view it in real time. Good animators have excellent kinesthetic awareness that is, they are supremely aware of the position of their body and its parts in space. They translate this into an understanding of how the character moves onscreen if they know how their bodies move, they can more...
Paint Effects and Animation
Paint Effects provides several settings and ways to achieve brush animation. We will look at ways to mimic natural motion using the Behavior section in the tutorial at the end of this chapter. Another great place to achieve brush-based animation is in the Flow Animation section, which provides a way to animate brush growth over time for example a flower sprouting from the ground or lightning coming down from the sky . Other ways to animate or deform Paint Effects include using springs,...
Paint Effects
One of the primary challenges that both 3D software and computer developers face is re-creating natural phenomena such as trees, plants, rain, and gushing lava. These tasks require re-creating the seemingly chaotic patterns of organic forms with realistic motion rather than sterile 3D graphics such as those seen when 3D was first introduced in films such as Tron. In the past, natural phenomena could only be created with dynamic simulations rain, snow, water or with procedural modeling, thus...
Refining Your Animation
The refining phase represents the last 10 percent of the animation, which can take an enormous amount of time to complete. In this phase, you install details that can make a decent animation great. Here, art takes over and we depart from the reference video. It is situational in that the moves we create here will be unique to this particular animation. Up to now, we have been creating a generic archetype for a jump in this stage, we create the extra motions that make this animation special. In...