Further Practice
Lighting professionals in the CG field are called on to find the most efficient way to light a scene and bring it to the peak of its beauty. Again, this only comes from experience. The best way to learn about lighting is to light some scenes. The file still_life_v01.mb in the Lighting project on the CD contains the scene of the still life with no lights so you can play with lighting and shadow methods as well as light linking to create some extra focus on some parts of the frame. The file...
The Scene Setup
It's important to keep animation in mind as you build a model. In particular, making a good scene hierarchy is crucial to getting a smooth animation workflow going. That's why, when you built the locomotive in Chapter 4, you used the Outliner to make sure the objects in your scene were grouped logically. Now you're going back in there to make sure we have good organization for animation before setting to the task of rigging this thing for animation. Figure 8.38 shows the organization of the...
Saving Your Work
Now save your work, unless you like to live on the edge. Saving frequently is a critical habit to develop. Power failures and other unforeseen circumstances such as your pet jumping onto your keyboard may not happen often, but they do happen, and usually just at the wrong time. As mentioned in the sidebar Saving Multiple Versions of Your Work and Incremental Saving, Maya's Incremental Save feature makes it easy to maintain backups of your work. Because you created this as a new project, the...
Creating Alien Fingers
The next step is to elongate the individual fingers and widen the knuckles. Let's begin with the index finger. Follow these steps 1. Select the top node of the hand, and create a new lattice as before. It will form around the entire hand. Although you can divide the lattice so that its divisions line up with the fingers, it is much easier and more interactive to scale and position the entire lattice so it fits around the index finger only. 2. Simply moving and scaling the selected lattice will...
Starting the NURBS Pump
First, create a new project called Locomotive, or copy the Locomotive project from the CD to your hard drive and set it as your current project. To start the locomotive pump, follow these steps 1. Create a NURBS cylinder with no caps by choosing Create NURBS Primitives Cylinder . Under Caps in the Option box, select None to create an open-ended cylinder. Set Axis to Z to create the cylinder on its side, and then click Create. 2. Size the cylinder down to 0.72 in X and Yand to 0.9 in Z. 3. Now...
The Boiler Engine
The most prominent part of a steam locomotive is the steam engine, or boiler. Take a look at its shape. You can start with a simple cylinder and work from there. To start building the boiler, follow these steps During this exercise, you will be switching a few times between the Polygons and the Surfaces menu sets to access the required functions. 1. Create a polygonal cylinder by choosing Create Polygon Primitives Cylinder. Leave all the creation option settings at their defaults do not enable...
Summary Xsy
In this chapter, you learned how to create dynamic objects and create simulations. Beginning with rigid body dynamics, you created a set of pool balls that you animated in the simulation to knock into each other. Then, you learned how to bake that simulation into animation curves for fine-tuning. Next, you learned about particle effects by creating a Figure 12.49_ steam effect for the locomotive animation using nParticles. Finally, you learned a little bit The cartoon wagon about Maya's Paint...
Basic Relationships Set Driven Keys
A favorite feature for character riggers is the set driven key SDK . A set driven key establishes a relationship for objects that lets you create controls that drive certain features of a character or an object in a scene. Before you can use an SDK, you must create extra attributes and attach them to the top node of a character. These new attributes drive part of the character's animation. The term character is used broadly here. For example, you can set up a vehicle so that an SDK turns its...
Setting the Feel for the Materials
Because the material look and feel on the real wheels differs quite a bit between the rim and the tire, we will have to tweak both the White Rim shader and the Black Tire shader. Again, the rim is a smooth, glossy white, and the tire is a bumpy black with a broad specular. 1. Let's set up a good angle of view for our test renders. Position your persp view to resemble the view in Figure 7.60. Render a frame. 2. Select the White shader and set the Eccentricity to 0.05 and the Specular Roll Off to...
Converting to Subdivisions
Once you complete the base polygon model for the kettle, you can convert it to a subdivision surface to round it out and make it smooth. To convert the kettle, follow these steps 1. Select the kettle and choose Modify Convert Polygons to Subdiv. Then select the lid and convert it as well. 2. Select the converted kettle and the lid, and press 3 to view them in High-Resolution mode. Position the lid on top of the kettle. Now your model should be similar to that in Figure 5.94. 3. The only items...
The Poly Extrusion Tools
The most commonly used poly editing tool has to do with extrusion. You can use Extrude to pull out a face or an edge of a polygon surface to create additions to that surface. The tool itself is accessed at Edit Mesh Extrude. Maya will distinguish between edge or face Extrude based on whether you have selected edges or faces. Follow these steps 1. Select a face or multiple faces of a polygon, and choose Edit Mesh Extrude. The regular manipulator will change to a special manipulator, as shown in...
Binding the Hand Smooth
Now try skinning the hand with Smooth Bind. Load your prebound hand or poly_hand_skeleton_v02.ma from the Poly_Hand_Anim project on the CD. Now follow these steps to smooth bind the hand 1. Select the root at the wrist and the top node of the hand if you are using the hand from the CD, make sure you have the nails as well . Choose Skin Bind Skin Smooth Bind. 2. Try rotating some of the knuckle joints to see how the fingers respond. Go back to the bind pose when you're done. 3. Rotate the middle...
Animating with Deformers
Now it's time to animate the arm coiling back, using the winch's timing as it is driving the arm. Because the catapult's arm is supported by a brace, and the whole idea of a catapult is based on tension, you have to bend the arm back as the winch pulls it. You'll use a nonlinear deformer just as you did in the Axe Head exercise in Chapter 5, Modeling with NURBS, Subdivisions, and Deformers, but this time you'll be animating the deformer to create the bending of the catapult arm. Follow these...
The Split Polygon Tool
Another way to create detail is to use the Split Polygon tool, which does exactly what its name suggests. As you've seen, when you choose Edit Mesh Split Polygon Tool, your cursor changes to a triangle. Use this cursor to select two points along two edges of a face. This creates a straight line from the first to the second point, which serves as a new edge to divide the face into two halves as shown in Figure 4.32. Notice in the lower left in the Help line that there is a percentage readout...
Using Photoshop Files The PSD File Node
Maya can also use Adobe Photoshop PSD files as image files in creating Shading networks. The advantage to using PSD files is that you can specify the layers within the Photoshop file to different attributes of the shader as opposed to importing several image files to map onto each shader attribute separately. This, of course, requires a modest knowledge of Photoshop and some experience with Maya shading. As you learn how to shade with Maya, you will come to appreciate the enhancements inherent...
Raytraced Shadows
To enable raytraced shadows, turn on the light's Use Ray Trace Shadows setting in the Attribute Editor see Figure 10.27 earlier in this chapter and enable the Raytracing check box under the Raytracing Quality heading in the Render Settings window. Choose Window - Rendering Editors - Render Settings or click the Render Settings icon fjj in the Status line. Figure 10.30 shows the Spot light from Figure 10.29, this time rendered with a raytraced shadow. Notice that there is not much difference in...
Binding the Hand Rigid
Because you'll want definitive creases at the finger joints, you'll use Rigid Bind for the hand. Load your hand and positioned skeleton, or use the file poly_hand_skeleton_v02.ma from the Poly_Hand_Anim project on the CD. Now follow these steps to Rigid Bind the hand 1. Select the skeleton's root at the wrist, and Shift click the top node of the hand. If you are using the file from the CD, select the hand's top node handTopNode to make sure you select the fingernails as well, as shown in Figure...
The Orient Constraint
An orient constraint will attach the source's Rotation attributes to the target's Rotation attributes. Select the target object s first, and then Shift click the source object. In the Animation menu, choose Constrain Orient . The Offset parameter allows you to set an offset in any axis. Otherwise, the source will assume the exact orientation of the target. In the case of multiple targets, the source will use the average of their orientations. Figure 9.53 shows the cone's orientation following...
Project Curve on Surface
The ability to project a curve onto a surface allows you to cut holes in the surface using the Trim tool choose Edit NURBS Trim Tool . It also allows you to create, using history, another surface that is attached, following the outline of your projected curve, as you saw in the section Combining Techniques earlier in this chapter. Similar to drawing a curve on a surface, projected curves project an existing curve onto the selected surface. That curve on surface is now useful for patch modeling...
The Phong E Shader Type
The Phong E shader type expands the Phong shading model to include more control over the specular highlight. A Phong E surface reflects light much as a regular Phong does, but it has more detailed control over the specular settings to adjust the glossiness of the surface. See Figure 7.5. This creates a surface with a specular that drops off more gradually and yet remains sharper than a Blinn. Phong E also has greater color control over the specular than do Phong and Blinn, giving you some more...
Emitter Attributes
You can control how particles are created and behave by changing the type of emitter and adjusting its attributes. Here are the most often used emitters Omni Emits particles in all directions. Directional Emits a spray of particles in a specific direction, as shown in Figure 12.17. Volume Emits particles from within a specified volume, as shown in Figure 12.18. The volume can be a cube, a sphere, a cylinder, a cone, or a torus. By default, the particles can leave the perimeter of the volume....
Bulge Cloth Checker Grid and Water Textures
These textures help create surface features when used on a shader's Bump Mapping attribute. Each creates an interesting pattern to add to a surface to create tactile detail, but you can also use them to create color or specular irregularities. When used as a texture for a bump, grid is useful for creating the spacing between tiles, cloth is perfect for clothing, and checker is good for rubber grips. Placing a Water texture on a slight reflection makes for a nice poolside reflection in patio...
Adjusting an Existing Axe Model
In this exercise, we will take an existing NURBS model of an axe, and fine-tune the back end of the axe head. In the existing model, the back end of the axe head is blunt, as you can see in Figure 5.56. You will need to sharpen the blunt end with a nonlinear deformer. Open the AxeHead_ v01.ma file in the Scenes folder of the Axe project on the CD, and follow these steps. 1. You will need to select the top group of the axe head's back end. Open the Outliner and select axeHead_Back Figure 5.57 ....
Making the Bolts
Now we'll make a bolt for the handlebar in these continuing steps 1. Create a poly cylinder with the following options Axis Divisions 6, Height Divisions 1, Cap Divisions 2, Axis set to X. See Figure 6.82. 2. Select the inner faces of the cap facing forward, as shown in Figure 6.83, and move them back into the cylinder to create a depression. 3. Select the back vertices of the cylinder and move them closer to the front to shorten the cylinder as shown in Figure 6.84. It's still a rather large...
Selection Handles
Using selection handles makes selection easier and work flow faster, so turn on selection handles for each of the groups you're animating. Select the wheel groups in the Outliner, and then choose Display Transform Display Selection Handles. Select the wheel arm groups, and turn on their selection handles as well. Figure 8.42 shows the selection handles enabled for the wheel, pump arm, and wheel arm. How selection handles work depends on Maya's selection order. Selection order, which you can...
mental ray for Maya
mental ray for Maya has become a standard for rendering through Maya, supplanting the Maya Software renderer due to its stability and quality results. The mental ray for Maya rendering method also can let you emulate the behavior of light even more realistically than the other rendering methods, as you saw in the previous chapter's Physical Sun and Sky exercise. Based on raytracing, mental ray takes the concept further by adding photon maps to the light traces. That is, it projects photon...
Volume Lights
Volume lights emit light from a specific 3D volumetric area as opposed to an Area light's flat rectangle see Figure 10.19 . Proximity is important for a Volume light, as is its scale. A Volume light can have the following attributes Light Shape A Volume light can be in the shape of a sphere, a box, a cylinder, or a cone. You select a shape from the Light Shape drop-down menu. Color Range This section of attributes sets the color of the light using a built-in ramp. The ramp from right to left...
Creating the Profile Curve
We'll begin the first wheel by creating a profile curve to match the cross-section of the wheel on the wagon. This is where coloring between the lines in kindergarten comes into play. You did color inside the lines, right 1. Select Create CV Curve Tool. In the top view, lay down the first CV on the grid. As you will notice, the first CV is displayed as a closed box. Lay down the second CV a little bit lower in the Z-axis, and you'll see the second CV displayed as an open-sided box. This display...
Replacing an Object
Aside from the need to model objects and texture them, there is the task of animation setup. Check your pivots, your geometry, and your grouping to make sure your scene will hold up when you animate it. It's also common practice in setup to animate a proxy object a simple stand-in model that you later replace. The next exercise will show you how to replace the simple axe you already animated with the fully textured NURBS from the previous chapter and how to copy an animation from one object to...
Previewing Your Render The Render View Window
The Render View window automatically opens when you test render a frame. To open it manually, choose Window Rendering Editors Render View. Your current scene renders in the Render View window. Figure 11.9 shows the important icons in this window. Redo Previous Render Renders the last-rendered view panel. Render Region Renders only the selected portion of an image. To select a portion of an image, click within the image in the Render View window and drag a red box around a region. Open Render...
Creating the Floor
To begin the floor of the wagon, follow these steps 1. In the top view, create a polygonal cube and scale and position it to fit the bottom of the wagon body using all the views as reference, as shown in Figure 6.72. 2. Using the Insert Edge Loop tool, insert edge loops at the ends of the wagon's floor at about the same thickness as the side panels as shown in Figure 6.73. 3. Select both the new faces created on top of the floor, and choose Edit Mesh - Extrude to pull up the ends to just under...
Project Overview The Solar System
This project focuses on familiarizing you with the fundamentals of navigating Maya, object creation, hierarchy, and pivots, all of which are important concepts for scene manipulation and animation within Maya. In this exercise, you will create and animate a simple simulation of our working solar system. You may have done this in school using coat hanger wire and Styrofoam balls. This time-tested tutorial is great practice for getting used to object creation, hierarchies, scene manipulation, UI...
The Scale Constraint
A scale constraint will attach the source's Scale attributes to the target's Scale attributes. Select the target object s first, and then Shift click the source object. In the Animation menu, choose Constrain Scale . Figure 9.53 The cone's rotations will match the sphere's rotations. A cone point that is constrained to a sphere follows that sphere's position. Figure 9.53 The cone's rotations will match the sphere's rotations. Figure 9.54 The cone will now match the sphere's scale. Figure 9.54...
User Preferences
All the customization features are found under Window Settings Preferences, which displays the window shown in Figure 3.30. The Preferences window Figure 3.31 lets you make changes to the look of the program as well as to toolset defaults by selecting from the categories listed in the left pane of the window. You've already changed some settings in this window when you set the Attribute Editor window to open in a separate window. The Preferences window is separated into categories that define...
The Extract Tool
The Extract tool is similar to the Extrude tool, but it does not create the extra faces. Select the face s , and choose Mesh Extract to pull the faces off the surface Figure 4.42 . If the Separate Extracted Faces option is enabled, the extracted face will be a separate poly object otherwise, it will remain as a part of the original. You can use the Extract tool to create a hole in an object and still keep the original face s . When you use this tool with the Split Polygon tool to make custom...
Creating the Pool Table and the Balls
You will create a simple pool table as a collision surface for the pool balls. To create the table, follow these steps 1. Create a polygonal plane for the surface of the table. Scale it to 10 along its height and length. 2. To create the pocket holes, you'll make two simple holes in opposite corners. The easiest way is to duplicate the tabletop plane and offset it slightly in both directions, as shown in Figure 12.3. This will create a pair of square holes in the corners for the ball to drop...
Wireframe and Shaded Modes
When you're working in the windows, you can view your 3D objects as either wireframe models as in Figure 3.12 or as solid, hardware-rendered models called Shaded mode see Figure 3.13 . Wireframe mode is the fastest because it makes fewer processing demands on your computer. However, Shaded mode can be pretty quick too, depending on your graphics card and your system processor. NURBS display smoothness Shaded NURBS display detail NURBS display smoothness Shaded NURBS display detail Within Shaded...
The Main Menu Bar
In the Main Menu bar, shown in Figure 3.2, you'll find a few of the familiar menu choices you've come to expect in many applications, such as File, Edit, and Help. One difference in Maya, however, is that menu choices are context sensitive they depend on what you are doing. By switching menu sets, you change your menu choices and hence your available toolset. The menu sets in Maya Complete are Animation, Polygons, Surfaces, Rendering, and Dynamics Maya Unlimited adds the Cloth and Maya Live...
Hdri
As you saw in the Final Gather section, FG rendering is based on the illumination in the scene from lights as well as the brightness of objects in the scene, such as a light dome. In the previous section, we used an incandescent dome to light the still life scene. But what if we were to use an image instead of just white for the light dome Furthermore, what if the image we used was an HDRI High Dynamic Range Image In Chapter 1, we briefly discussed HDR images. Several photos at varying...
Introduction to Paint Effects
One of the tools in Maya's effects arsenal is a tool called Paint Effects. Using Paint Effects, you can create a field of grass rippling in the wind, a head of hair or feathers, or even a colorful aurora in the sky. Paint Effects is a rendering effect found under the Rendering menu. It has incredible dynamic properties that can make leaves rustle in the wind or trees sway in a storm. Although it does not use the same dynamics engine as particles or rigid bodies, Paint Effects uses its own...
Shaping the A Panel
We'll start with the first side piece marked A in Figure 6.17. Follow these steps 1. Enter the Polygons menu set. Create a default poly cube, and place it in the side view in front of the A piece, as shown in Figure 6.18. We will build the wagon in this order. You can use the following hot keys to toggle between menu sets Place a poly box for the first side. You can use the following hot keys to toggle between menu sets 2. RMB click on the cube, and select Vertex from the marking menu to enter...
Volumetric Lighting
How do you create an effect such as a flashlight beam shining through fog This lighting effect is called volumetric lighting, and you can use it to create some stunning results that can sometimes be time-consuming to render. You cannot apply volumetric effects to Ambient and Directional light types. To add a volumetric effect to any of the other types of lights, select the light and, in the Attribute Editor under the Light Effects section, click the checkered Map button to the right of the...
The Polygon Tool
You use the Polygon tool switch to the Polygons menu set, then choose Mesh Create Polygon Tool to create a single polygon face by laying down its vertices. When you select this tool, you can draw a polygon face in any shape by just clicking down the position of each point or vertex. Aside from creating a polygon primitive by choosing Create Polygon Primitives, this is the simplest way to create a polygon shape. Figure 4.7 shows some simple and complex single faces you can create with the...
The Hotbox
The Hotbox gives you convenient access to Maya's menus and commands. Figure 3.27 shows the Hotbox configured to show all the menus in Maya 2009. To display the Hotbox, press and hold down the spacebar in any panel view. All the menu commands that are available from the Main menu bar are also available through the Hotbox. To access a command, simply click it. You can display some or all of the menu headings to give you quick access to whatever commands and features you use most by clicking...
Editing a Rigid Bind
Having a rigid bind doesn't mean your creases always have to be this hard. With flexors basically lattices, as discussed in Chapter 6, Building the Red Wagon , you can smooth out specific areas of a joint for a better look. This is useful at shoulder joints or hip joints, where a crease such as on an elbow is not desired. In this case, it will help smooth out the knuckles so the geometry doesn't fold over itself, as in the previous graphic. 1. Choose Skin Go to Bind Pose to reset your skeleton....
Modeling
Modeling, the topic of Chapters 4 through 6, is usually the first step in creating CG. It is the topic that garners a lot of coverage in publications and captures the interest of most budding CG artists. You most often start a CG scene by creating the objects you need to occupy your space. It can end up taking the majority of the time in your process. This is why downloading or purchasing models from the Internet can often cut down the amount of time you spend on your project. This, of course,...
Working with UVs
Mapping polygons can involve the task of defining UV coordinates for them so that you can more easily paint an image map for the mesh. When you create a NURBS surface, UV coordinates are inherent to the surface. At the origin or the beginning of the surface, the UV coordinate is 0,0 . When the surface extends all the way to the left and all the way up, the UV coordinate is 1,1 . When you paint an 800 x 600-pixel image in Photoshop, for example, it's safe to assume that the first pixel of the...
SavingLoading an Image
Although you typically use the Render View window to test a scene, you can also use it to save single frames by choosing File Save Image to save in all Maya's supported image formats. Likewise, choose File Open Image to display any previously rendered image file in this window. If your task in Maya is to create a single frame, this is the best way to render and save it. IPR rendering lets you fine-tune your textures and lighting with near realtime feedback.
Maya Shading
After you model your objects, Maya assigns a default shader to them with a neutral gray color. This is to allow them to render and display properly. If no shader is attached to a surface, an object cannot be seen. Shading is the proper term for applying a renderable color, surface bumps, transparency, reflection, shine, or similar attributes to an object in Maya. It is closely related to, but distinct from, texturing, which is what you do when you apply a map or other node to an attribute of a...
naming objects and keeping the scene organized
In Maya and most other CG packages, keeping things organized and as clean as possible is more important than you probably realize. Picking up a scene from a disorganized colleague is annoying because it is very time consuming to figure out exactly what is in their scene and how everything works together. Many professional studios have strict naming procedures and conventions to minimize the confusion their artists may have when working in a pipeline. These procedures and conventions are...