WORLD OF 3D ANIMATION

2011-02-10T17:23:00.005+05:30

Animating with Deformers in Maya

2011-02-10T17:16:00.001+05:30

Although animating with deformers is a commonly used technique in the VFX industry, a lot of people don’t know about it’s benefits. Well, after this tutorial that’’s going to change. We’ll be looking at how to animate complex expressions with deformers, along with why they can be extremely useful. Enjoy!

Step 1

First of all, open Maya and import your model. For this tutorial I’ll be using a version of ZBrush’s standard head model as it will help to easily show the main benefits of deformer-based animation, however this technique will apply across all models no matter how complex. Now go to the front view, duplicate your model (Ctrl+d) and rename the new copy. Be sure to use a descriptive name as this will later become the name of your blend-shape – in this case, I’ve used Male_Head_Smiling. Position both models next to each other to make things easier to work with. Now I’m going to actually deform the second mesh to make it smile!

Step 2

First we need to setup our mesh selection tools. In the top menu, go to Modify > Transformation Tools > Move Tool > Option Box. Turn on Soft SelectFalloff radius. This is, of course, a relative value due to the fact the every model you work with will likely be different in size. In this case I want to select an area just large enough to move the cheek a little bit to create the realistic effect I’m going for, so have chosen a value of about 0.35. Now turn on the Reflection setting, lower the Tolerance to about 0.04 and set the Reflection axis to X. This enables us to easily make the same changes to one side of the model as we do on the other, saving us time! We can now start deforming! and set the

Step 3

Next, right-click on the model and go to Vertex mode, which will allow us to move the vertexes instead of the mesh itself. As I’m intending to make the model smile, I’m going to be affecting the vertexes around the corners of the mouth, so I start by dragging a selection from the right corner of the mouth, slightly to the right and then slightly upwards. As you can see below, both sides of the model are affected because of the Reflection setting we previously enabled. The brightly colored areas represent the extent of our falloff.

Step 4

So with our vertexes selected, and with our falloff in place, now activate the move tool. To make this model smile, I needed to move the affected verts slightly to the right and slightly up, and with a little bit of trial and error, this is my result :

Step 5

Now that we’’ve got our original model and our deformed model, we need to create the blend shape deformer itself, so first select the Animation menu-set and then in the top menu choose Create Deformers > Blend Shape > Option Box. In the background, first select the deformed model (in my case the smiling man), then shift click the original model (it’s very important to select the model you want to have the blendshapes implied to last of all.) Enter a name for our deformer in the BlendShape node box, for instance something like Smile.

Now we come to a very important setting – Origin. The default setting is Local, and although you may need to choose World for some rare circumstances, the Local deformer the most useful one. Just to cover it quickly, if you set the origin to World, all deformations are created as relative to the model, meaning that if you move the model around the scene, the won’t move with it! So, for now we’re going to stick to the Local setting. Leave the other settings as they are and then click Create.

Step 6

To use the blend shape we’’ve just created, go to Window > Animation Editors > Blend Shape. You should now have a single slider there (in my case Male_Head_Smiling) and if you move it up and down you’ll quickly start to understand the advantage of animating using deformers – if you move the slider halfway, you see a mix of both models, meaning that with a few blend shapes you can create literally thousands of expressions!

Step 7

To do a little animation test, go to the first frame, move the slider all of the way to the bottom and click Key. Now move forward a few frames, move the slider to the top, and click Key again. If you play back the animation you can actually see the mouth moving.

You can actually add as many blend shapes together as you want, so I’m going to add another one to control my model’s eyebrows.

Step 8

Start by duplicating your original mesh, moving it over to the left of the original, and renaming it, in my case to Eyebrows. Now repeat step 3 as above. This time I moved the area above the eyes downwards slightly, ensuring the eyes themselves remained untouched. Now go to Create Deformers > Blend Shape > Option Box, and select first your newly deformed mesh, and then shift-click the original. Give the blend shape a name and then click Create. On returning to the Blend Shape editor you can see we now have two sliders, in my case one for the mouth and one for the eyebrow expressions.

Step 9

To have more control we can do something else that you may have seen before – interactive controlling. Interactive controlling uses geometry ‘rig’ to control the motion of the blend shapes – something that can be very handy for facial expressions!

In the top menu go to Create > EP Curve Tool, and draw a curve something like that in the picture below – in my case, as this will be the eyebrow controller, I’ve styled it to match. Now go to Modify > Center Pivot, then duplicate your curve and move the duplicate to one side. Select both curves and group them by going to Edit > Group and give the group a clear name – in my case, Eyebrows_Controller. Finally select both of your curves and go to Modify > Freeze Transformations to reset their initial positions.

Step 10

We’’ll now setup the curves to control the blend shapes, using Maya’s Set Driven Keys. First of all ensure that all of your blend shapes are set to 0 – this is very important! Then go to Animate > Set Driven Key > Set to bring up the Set Driven Key window.

Open the Outliner and select your controller group. Then select it again in the Set Driven Key window, and click Load > Selected as Driver. Now back in the Outliner, right-click in the main section and deselect Show DAG Objects Only. This will allow us to see all of the nodes currently in our scene, as shown below :

Step 11

Locate your blendshape node in the Outliner – it will have the name we entered earlier on creation followed by a number, in my case Eyebrows1. Then in the Set Driven Key window, click Load > Selected as Driven. Now you should have something like the picture below :

Step 12

First all you want to work out the axis on which our controller is going to affect the blend shape. As I want the eyebrows to move up and down I’ll be using the Y-Axis, so I’m going to select Translate Y in the right side of the driver pane, at the top of the Set Driven Key window.

Now to create the keys themselves, we first need to setup the start states for the blend shape and our controller curve. I want the eyebrows to be lowered initially, so that moving the controller group up has the effect of raising them. So I’ll set the Translate Y value of my controller to 0 in the attribute editor, and then set the Eyebrows blend shape the value to 1 (lowered). When you’re happy with your initial setup, click the Key button at the bottom of the Set Driven Key window.

Step 13

With the first key created, we now need to set up the second. First of all I set the Eyebrows blend shape value to 0 in order to bring them back to their original position. I can then select the controller group and move them up on the Y-Axis to sit along side the newly raised eyebrows. When you’re happy with your second position, hit the Key button one last time.

With that done you can now close the Set Driven Key window, and try to move the curves around – your mesh is actually responding! I could now go on to apply this technique in exactly the same way to control the position of the mouth, eyes and any other object you can imagine.

So that’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I especially hope that you’ve learned some new useful techniques you can apply to your own models. Be sure to stand out and be creative!

MAYA Tutorial - Introduction

2009-11-30T10:35:00.002+05:30

Maya is the 3-D animation software that provides a number of tools for creating complex characters and animations. Maya's powerful feature set gives you an almost unlimited power to create any kind of animation. The functionality of the Maya software can be extended with the use of MEL (Maya embedded language). MEL can be used to customize the user interface and write scripts and macros. In Maya, you can create objects, lights, cameras and textures. Any object, light, camera, or just any entity can be animated by changing the value of its parameters in time. We can use Maya, to create effects or animations or movies, commercials, architectural animation and forensic animation. Maya can be used to achieve far more complex effects and animation is as compared to other software is on the shelf. This tutorial is aimed at teaching a newbie, the basic concepts and functionality of the Maya software.

MAYA Tutorial - MAYA Interface

2009-11-30T10:34:00.001+05:30

Maya user interface looks very complex at first. However, this large number of functions and the scope to add more functions to the user interface provides the real flexibility to the program. Other than the functions common for all the various aspects of a 3d graphics software application, there are set of functions dedicated to a more specific task like modeling, texturing, animation, rendering etc. The default Maya user interface can be divided into the following sections.

Main Menu Bar
Status Line
Shelf
Tool Box
Workspace
Panel Menus
Time Slider
Range Slider
Command Line
Help Line
Channel box
Layer editor

Fig 1-1 Maya User Interface

The Menu Bar

There are different menu sets in Maya that correspond to the more specific aspects of the application like Animation, Modeling, Dynamics, Rendering, cloth and Maya Live. The cloth and Maya Live are available with Maya unlimited version. These Menu sets can also be accessed using the hot keys F2, F3, F4 etc.

The menus in the menu sets behave similarly as a normal window menu. Other than the menu sets, there are common menus like File, Edit etc.

Any Menu item that has double lines over it can be dragged of the menu bar to create a min-toolbox so that the commonly used tools can float on the desktop.

You can hide or display different UI elements from the Menu item Display-> UI Elements.

Fig1-2 Menu Bar

The Status Line

The commands available on the status line are mostly use for the purpose of modeling. On the extreme left we have mode selector that helps us to change modes between modeling, animation, rendering or dynamics etc.

A collapser is a clickable switch for hiding a section of the Status Line. Collapsers can be used to hide or display sections of the status line and adjust the number of available functions at an instance.

Fig1-3 Status Line

Selection Mask lets us select the masking preset so that certain types of objects can be ignored while making selections in a 3d panel. The icons to the right of the list box show the masking selections that have been made. The selection mask list box acts as a preset for the buttons in the Select by Type area farther to the right. These buttons correspond to Hierarchy, Object and Component mode. These functions can be used to select entire objects and mask the selection to pick only particular type of objects such as surfaces, lines, cameras etc.

Component Selection mode enables you to adjust subcomponents of an object, such as letting you select a certain portion of an object such as a box or a sphere and deform it. The hierarchy selection mode is used to select only the parent or only the children objects, this comes in handy when setting up object hierarchies.

A selection can be locked by pressing the Lock Selection button. This helps in avoiding accidentally de-selection of an object. Next is Highlight Selection Mode button, a toggle to highlight the selected object in the display.

We use snap tools to ease modeling and modifying objects by making it seem as though an object or part of an object is drawn toward another.

You use the Operations List buttons to view upstream and downstream connections and enable or disable them. Next is Construction History toggle and Maya uses this to record construction. History is not related to the Undo operation. Having Construction History enabled can make files large and slow to load, however, so you might opt to turn it off sometimes.

Next we have the Quick Render, Interactive Photorealistic Renderer(IPR) and Render Globals button. Quick Render and Interactive Photorealistic Renderer is used to render a scene at full quality. IPR rendering is slower, but when finished, it can update the rendering in nearly real time. Next is the Render Globals button, which controls the size of the rendering and many other parameters.

The last we have Numeric Input tool. It can operate in different types of modes. It is used to type in a prefix or common letters and select all the objects you want quickly, rename the currently selected object, and enter an exact value for the current highlighted transform.

Shelf

Shelf contains different tools and commands. The shelf can be customized for one's specific needs. It is used to organize commonly used functions and tools into groups. You can create different shelves for different functions like modeling, animation, texturing etc with the required tools for each function.

Fig1-4 Shelf

Tool Box

Maya Tool Box contains common tools as well as Layout buttons for changing views and layouts. The first one is the select tool. As the name explains itself, while this option is selected, you can use the mouse pointer to click over a particular object to select it. You can also click and drag over a number of objects to select them all together. The lasso tool is also used for selection in a way that you can draw a free hand border around the objects to be selected.

The move, rotate and scale tools are used for transforming objects in Maya. The soft modification tool is used to select the sub-object elements and modify them by moving, rotating or scaling in a way that the neighboring sub-objects also get affected by this deformation with the effect being an inverse of distance from the primary selected sub-objects.

Fig1-5 Toolbox

The last selected tool section shows the last used tool for easy access.

The single perspective view button lets you view the workspace as a single large view from a single perspective. The Four views can be used to view the workspace in four sections with each section containing the three orthographic views top, side and front and a perspective view respectively.

The other combination options below these tools are used to divide the workspace into different section in such a way that one section contains the view of the scene and other contains an animation or rendering editor so that you can edit the attributes and watch the results simultaneously.

Workspace

The Workspace displays by default in a perspective window or panel. The purpose of using workspace is to view your scene. You can display various editors and arrange the workspace panels in different layouts. The workspace can be divided into sections to accommodate the orthographic and perspective views of the scenes as well as the different editors for animation, texturing and rendering etc.

Time Slider and Range Slider

The Two Sliders are for controlling the frames in your animation. The Time Slider includes the playback buttons and the current time indicator. The Range slider includes start and end times and allows animators to focus on a specific part of the animation.

Fig1-6 Time slider and Range slider

Command Line

The command Line lets you enter the MEL (Maya embedded Language) commands to perform various functions. The MEL is a powerful feature of Maya that provides us with a vast flexibility and a scope to exploit the Maya tools beyond the user interface.

The left side is where you can type MEL commands and the right half displays system responses, error messages, and warnings. For a longer series of commands, use the Script Editor. The right side can also show echoes of all commands if you turn on Script> Echo All Commands from the Script Editor.

Fig1-7 Maya Command Line

Help Line

Like several other applications, you can look at the help line for descriptions, instructions, and other useful information. While a tool is selected, the helpline gives out a brief description for "how to" and "what for".

Panel Menus

Every view panel you work in has a common set of menus at the top. The panel menu that appears in a 3d scene, shown here with lighting menu selected. If the panel menus do not appear, you can enable them in Window> Settings/Preferences> Preferences, and then click the Interface entry under the Categories list on the left side of the dialog box.

Under the View menu, you'll see options for Look at Selected, Frame Selected, and Frame All. These options are helpful for finding an item and focusing on it.

Under the Shading menu, the first two entries are Wireframe (hotkey: 4) and Smooth Shade All (hotkey: 5).An important option to note is the NURBS detail mode. When you're working with NURBS, you can display them in three detail levels: low (hotkey: 1), medium (hotkey: 2), or high (hotkey: 3). These hotkeys work only with NURBS.

Fig1-8 Panel Menu

The Lighting menu has an option for using existing lights in the scene (hotkey: 7) with this panel's Shaded mode. Normally, Shaded mode is automatically illuminated (with "default lights") in a crude way that serves to get some light in the scene for viewing or rendering a new model.

Use the Show menu to selectively hide all entities of a certain type. For example, you often use it to hide cameras and lights, just to clean up the view so that you can focus on objects. At the bottom of this menu is an option to hide the grid, which is useful when you want to simplify the view.

Under the Panels menu, use the top three options to select what the panel is seeing in a 3D view.

The next three options let you change the entire layout of the panels. The Panel item displays options for switching the selected panel to some other window, such as a rendered view or the Graph Editor. Next is Layouts, which determines how the view area is split into windows. Below it is Saved Layouts, which is similar to the Quick Layout buttons below the toolbox.

Hotkeys

Hotkeys are also known as keyboard shortcuts. There are several default hotkeys. You can change these hotkeys and assign new ones using the Hotkey editor by

Selecting Window>Settings/Preferences>Hotkeys.
Select the category and command,
In the assign new Hotkey area, specify the key combination .You can see a list of which keys are unmapped by clicking List All.

Fig1-9 Hotkey Editor

Viewing hotkey lists

Click List All to view a list of mapped and unmapped keys.

Fig1-10 Hotkeys reference

The Hotbox

Maya's Hotbox is a utility to get quickly to the menus that are available in the menu bar. It pops up when you press and hold spacebar. Once you customize the Hotbox, it provides quick access to the menus you use, hiding menus that are irrelevant to your work. It has five zones with special options. Five zones are North, South, East, West and center.

To see the entire Hotbox, click in the Hotbox Controls section on the right-hand side of the window, and drag your cursor over the Show All option. You might want to come back to this same Hotbox option and disable the Cloth and Live menus if you won't be using them.

Fig1-11 Hotbox

In order to disable the Hotbox, Select window>Settings/Preferences > Hotkeys. The Hotkey Editor window opens. From the editor window select Hotbox in the list of Categories. Select Show Hotbox from the list of commands, Select space from current Hotkeys, and then click on the Remove button. This turns off the hotkey functionality. Click the Save button and then the close button.

MAYA Tutorial - Transforms in MAYA

2009-11-30T10:32:00.001+05:30

"Transform" of an object means three functions: position, rotation, and scale. Each function has three components—for X, Y, and Z. So transform contains 9 variables in total 3 defining each function. When you create a scene entity, its transform appears in the Channel Box. Here you will learn how to scale, rotate, and move your objects. Whenever you give a command in Maya to create an object, it is created using default transform which defines the position to be in the center of the scene at 0,0,0 coordinates, or origin.

In order to customize the object transform, you need to move, rotate, and scale the object to place it in the position you want. You can Move, scale, and rotate the primitive object into its final position either by direct manipulation or by entering numeric values through an editor.

You can also Duplicate the primitive objects to create multiple copies of the original or create different variations from your original primitive object.

When you create a new primitive in Maya, it becomes the selected object. In the Channel Box, you can access the object's creation parameters, the ones used most often to modify a new shape.

The ToolBox

In order to manipulate an object's transform, the basic tools required from the toolbox are select tool, lasso serves a similar purpose, move tool for changing the position of the object, rotate tool for changing the orientation of the object and the scale tool for changing the scale of the object.

Fig2-1 The basic transform tools

Selecting Objects

There are many ways to select objects in Maya.

You can select object individually.
You can select all objects in the scene.
You can select objects of a specified type.
You can select objects of a specified name.
You can select all objects in a set.
You can select all objects in a display layer.

Inverting a Selection

Use Invert Selection to select all objects in the scene that are not selected. For example if you select two of five objects in a scene and then select Edit>Invert Selection, the other three objects are selected instead. This only works on objects not components.

To select all displayed objects

Select Edit > Select All

To deselect all objects

Click anywhere in the view.

Using Transforms

When you are in the Move (hotkey: w), Rotate (hotkey: e), or Scale (hotkey: r) mode, you have several options for transforming the object . Generally, if you click and drag on the surface of a selected object, or on the center point for the manipulator handles, you can freely move or rotate the object. In Scale mode, the object scales uniformly. You can also click and drag on any of the handles to have the action constrained to that axis.

The Move Tool

Click the Move Tool icon in the Tool Box and then select the object you want to move. Maya displays a manipulator with four handles-one to move along each axis and one to move anywhere with in the planes.

Fig2-2 The move tool

Click one of the handles, as indicated above. The selected handle changes color when active .The default color is yellow. If you double-click on the Tool Box icons for move, rotate, and scale, you get options for the tools (none appear for scale, but at least an empty dialog box appears). A useful option in this dialog box is snap spacing.

The Rotate Tool

It use the Rotate Tool to rotate objects about any or all three axes. Click the Rotate Tool icon in the Tool Box. Select the object you want to rotate. Maya displays a rotate manipulator consisting of four rings plus a virtual sphere enclosed by the rings or handles. The colors correspond to XYZ axes.

Fig2-3 The rotate tool

Click one of the handles, as indicated above. The selected handle changes color when active .The default color is yellow. Use the X, Y, Z rings to perform constrained rotations. Use the outer ring to rotate relative to the view.

When you rotate a component, Maya rotates it about a temporary pivot which is initially set to the center of the component's bounding box. In the rotate options, you can find the option to set snaps, which is helpful when you want to rotate objects in discrete increments. A good setting might be 15 degrees to make it easy to rotate objects to precise 30-, 45-, 60-, and 90-degree positions. Note that this snapping happens only when you use a manipulator's axis handle.

The Scale Tool

Use the Scale Tool to change the size of the objects by scaling proportionally in all three dimensions. You can also scale non- proportionally in one dimension at a time.

Click the Scale Tool icon in the Tool Box and select the object you want to scale. Maya displays a scale manipulator consisting of four handles. The color corresponds to XYZ axes.

Fig2-4 The scale tool

Soft Modification Tool

This lets you push and pull geometry .By default, the amount of deformation is greatest at the center of the push/pull, and gradually falls off further away from the centre. However, you can control the falloff of the deformation to create various types of effects.

You can use this tool on NURBS surfaces, polygonal surfaces, subdivision surfaces, curves, particles or any object with components.

Show Manipulator Tool

This Tool lets you edit the construction history of an operation or the attributes of an object itself. This tool lets you access the input node of an object. A manipulator is a good way to access the history of a surface created with the construction history. Several manipulators can be active at one time.

Undoing and Redoing

Undo reverse the last action you performed on a selected object. This action transform an object to its original position.

Select Edit>Undo

Select Edit>Redo to perform the last action you reversed.

Duplicating Objects

Sometimes, you need to copy an object many times to create a complex object. Maya's object duplicator is under Edit > Duplicate on the menu. The default is to duplicate an object in place; you can do this with the hotkey Ctrl +d. The new duplicate appears by default exactly over the original object, so you normally follow a duplication with a transform.

Sometime, you want to create more than one duplicate. Use the Edit > Duplicate Option box to modify how duplicates are made.

Instancing

Another way to copy object is instancing. Maya redisplays the geometry being instanced. Since instances are not actual copies of the original geometry.

There are certain demerits of using instancing

Instances share the same shader as the original geometry and can not be assigned as independent shaders.
Instanced lights have no effect.
When you create an instance of an already instanced node, Maya does not create a new level.
Functions like extrude and insert can not be used on instanced items.

Snapping

The Snap options let you control an object or component's position by attaching it to a grid, point, curve or view plane. As you draw, rotate, resize or drag the objects ,it snap to the grid, point, curve or view plane.

Fig2-5 Snapping options

Snap to grids

This option snaps a vertex or pivot point to a grid corner. If you select snap to grids before you create a curve, its vertices snap to the grid corners.

Snap to curves

This option snaps a vertex or pivot point to a curve or curve on surface.

Snap to points

This option snaps a vertex or pivot point to a point.

Snap to view planes

This option snaps a vertex or pivot point to a view plane.

Snapping hotkeys

x for grid snap

c for curve snap

v for point snap

How to use the grid Snap HotKey?

Select the object you want to snap and click the Move tool icon. Press and hold down the c key while click-dragging on the curve you want to snap with the middle mouse button.

Similarly you can use rest of the keys

Outliner

You can use outliner to examine the structure and components of the scene. It also displays shape nodes, connections and attributes. With the outliner you can make an object the child of a parent object. It selects and renames an object. Last but not least it reorder nodes.

To open the Outliner in the window

Select Window > Outliner

Fig2-6 The outliner

Grouping

Sometimes, you have groups of objects in your scene that are related to each other without being connected as a single entity. Any collection of objects can be selected and made into a group by choosing Edit>Group on the menu. Note that the objects are not tied up into this bundle; you can still select them independently. There's simply a new object that stands for the collection.

Parenting and Grouping

Parents and children in hierarchies work as follows: Where the parent goes, the child must follow, but the child is otherwise free to roam. The child objects can still be animated independently, however, without affecting the parent .With groups, the group node can be animated and all the members of the group follow the group node, but the group's members can still animate independently of the group. When you group several objects, Maya creates the group transform node, which can't be rendered.

You can directly assign hierarchical relationships to objects by selecting the child object(s), Shift-clicking to select the parent, and then choosing Edit >Parent (hotkey: p). Any transform applied to the parent is then reflected in the child. You can also break this bond by using Edit>Unparent (hotkey: Shift+P). This works only when the child object or objects are selected.

Channel Box

This is used to modify an object's attribute values. You can change multiple attribute values of multiple objects. It takes up less much less space in the window. With this you can control construction history. It appears in the Maya Window only it you choose to display it. The information displayed in the Channel Box varies, depending on what kind of object or component you have selected. If you haven't selected an object, the Channel Box region is blank.

In order to display the channel box

Turn on Display> UI Elements > Channel Box/Layer Editor.

MAYA Tutorial - Nurbs Curves and Surfaces

2009-11-30T10:18:00.004+05:30

Maya offers a powerful modeling system known as NURBS—Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines. NURBS modeling is not simply putting objects together. Unlike fixed polygons , NURBS create 3D objects from curves and surfaces. Therefore, NURBS can be modeled in a variety of ways.

NURBS modeling is considered a better alternative to SUBd modeling as it gives you more precise control. They have their own rules and limitations for how you can build, attach, and cut them, but in general, they are quite flexible. The faceted, low-resolution look that often occurs when creating curved surfaces with polygons is easily handled in NURBS models, which can display curved surfaces as virtually any number of polygons.

To make it a little simpler, however, NURBS are simply a variation of splines, which are used to define a curve. Curves are the basis for the underlying mathematical structure of what makes up a NURBS surface. Nurbs modeling has capability for creating:

organic ,flowing surfaces such as animals, human bodies and fruits.
Industrial surfaces such as automobiles, clocks and toasters.
Smooth surfaces adjustable over broad areas with few control points.

Nurbs Primitives

Nurbs primitives are common geometric objects such as spheres, cubes and cylinders. They are often used as the foundation for other shapes.

Sphere

Select Create > Nurbs primitives >Sphere. After you set the options ,click the Create button.

Pivot

By default, the pivot is set to Object and the primitive is created at the origin. If you set Pivot to User defined, you can enter values in the Pivot point X, Y and Z boxes to position the pivots.

Axis

Select X, Y or Z to specify a preset axis direction of the object. Select Active View to create the object perpendicular to the current orthographic view. The Active view option has no effect when the current modeling view is a camera or perspective view.

Sweep Angles

These options let you create a partial sphere by specifying a degree of rotation. Degree values can range from 0 to 360 degree.

Radius

Sets the width and depth of the primitive.

Surface Degree

A linear surface has a faceted appearance : a cubic surface is rounded.

Sections

Set the number of surface curves created on the sphere in one direction. These curves are also called isoparms, show the outline of the surface shape.

Fig 3-1 Sections

Spans

Set the number of surface curves created on the sphere in the direction that crosses the section direction.

Fig 3-2 Spans

Cube

A cube has six sides, each of them is selectable. You can select a side of the cube in the view or click its heading in the outliner.

Width, Length and Height sets the cube dimensions.

Cylinder

You can create a cylinder with or without end caps. End caps is a unique feature to the creation of the cylinder. You can create caps for either, both or no ends of the cylinder.

Cone

You can create a cone with or without a cap on its base.

Plane

A plane is flat surface made up of specified number of patches .

Torus

A torus is a 3d ring.

Circle

A circle is a curve not a surface. Its features are similar to the sphere.

Curves

The foundation of a Nurbs surface is a curve. Surfaces are web of interconnected curves. The curves help you create and modify surfaces. Proficiency at drawing and editing curves is an important part of Nurbs modeling.

You can not render curves. With Nurbs curves ,you can position points on a curve or surface exactly where you want them and reshape the curve or surface by moving just a few control points that lie on or near the curve. Examples of NURBS primitives are spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones and planes.

A major advantage of modeling with NURBS in Maya is that you can convert any NURBS object to Subdivision Surfaces (also called "SubDs") or polygons at any time.

Using NURBS can have its drawbacks, however. When modeling a character that needs to be animated, you might notice seams, or even visible gaps, between NURBS surfaces .As a result of the way NURBS are constructed, you rarely come up with an object composed of a single surface, and the surfaces must meet together exactly to avoid these problems.

Elements of a Curve

The elements of a curve follow:

A curve point is an arbitrary point on the curve. It can have the same position as a CV or edit point.

CVs are control vertices ,These points often lie away from the curve.

Edit points are also called knots. You can move these points to reposition a specific point on the curve. You can't move the edit points of a surface.

The start of a curve is the first point of the curve created when you draw the curve.The end of the curve is the last point of the curve you create. You need to know which points are the start and end points for certain modeling operations.

The curve direction is displayed as a small letter u.

A hull is a network of straight lines that connects CVs. Hulls are mainly visual aids to see where interconnected CVs exist.

A span is the point of a curve between the two edit points. If you add extra edit points to a curve enhance your control of its shape, you increase the number of spans. you don't select and manipulate a curve span directly.

Fig 3-3 Elements of curve

Tools for Creating Curves

There are three tools for creating curves

Create > CV Curve Tool
Create > EP Curve Tool
Create > Pencil Curve Tool

CV Curve Tool

This Tool creates the curve's CV exactly where you click them. It creates edit points based on where you create the CVs. When it turns white, you have created enough CVs to complete the curve. You must create at least four CVs when you use the default option settings.

EP Curve Tool

The EP Curve Tool creates the curve's edit points exactly where you click them. It creates CVs in positions based on where you create the edit points. EP stands for edit points. You must place at least two edit points to create the curve.

Pencil Curve Tool

The Pencil Tool lets you draw a curve by dragging the mouse or by using a digitizing pen and tablet. When you create a curve using the Pencil Curve Tool, you can not delete curve segments by pressing the Backspace key.

Maya creates a trail of edit points and sometimes several curves where you drag the mouse or pen. The CVs created with this tool might seem to pose efficiency and control problems, you can simplify the curves with Edit Curves > Rebuild Curve.

Attaching curves

Use Edit Curves > Attach Curves to create a single curve from two curves.

Attach Method

Connect joins the curves with minimal curvature smoothing at the joint point.

Blends smooths the curvature at the joint point based on the blend Bias value.

Detaching Curves

Use Edit Curves > Detach Curves to break a curve into two curves or to open a closed curve.

Construction Plane

Use Create > Construction Plane to create a plane as a construction aid. You can not rotate a construction plane, make it a live surface, then draw a curve on it. You can not render or animate a construction plane.

Select create > Construction Plane to open the option window.

Fig 3-4 Construction plane options

Pole Axis

Sets the orientation of the construction plane. The default is an XY plane.

Fig 3-5 Orientation of the construction plane

Size

Sets the size of the plane in grid units.

Extending curves

Use Edit Curves> Extend >Extend curve to extend a curve beyond its original creation length. To extend a revolve surface ,you can extend the curve used by the revolve operation.

Select Edit curves > Extend > Extend Curve and set the desired options.

Click the Extend button.

By default the curve is extended 2 unit at its end.

Fig 3-6 Extending curves

Reversing the curve direction

Select Edit Curves > Reverse Curve Direction.

Rebuilding curves

Use Edit Curves > Rebuild curve to rebuild a Nurbs curve or curve on surface to smooth it or lessen its complexity.

Lofting Curves and Surfaces

Lofting is used to construct a surface that passes through a series of profile curves. The curves can be curves -on -surface, surface isoparms or trimmed edges.

With the help of Loft feature, you can create intermediate areas between any two surfaces created with boundary curves. Before you begin ,you need at least two profiles curves or surface isoparms.

Pick the first curve you want to loft, then shift-click to pick subsequent curves.

Select Surfaces >Loft

You can add new curves to an existing lofted surfaces created with construction history.

Birail Tools

Birail Tools that create a surface by sweeping one or more profile curve along two rail curves. Birail 1 sweeps one profile curve, Birail 2 sweeps two, Birail 3+ sweeps three or more.

Before using Birail Tool ,you must check all workspace to make sure the profile curve (s) intersected the rail curves. Profile and rail curves can be isoparms, curves -on-surface,trim boundaries or boundary curves of an existing surfaces.

Select Surfaces > Birail >Birail n Tool.

Beveling Surfaces

Bevel is used to create an extruded surface with a beveled edge from any curve, including text curves and trim edges. You can bevel surfaces for instance, to create a ledge on a building or the rolled edge on an upholstered chair.

Click the curve you want to bevel and select Surfaces > Bevel.

Bevel width

This value specifies the initial width of the bevel as viewed from the front of the curve or isoparm.

Bevel Depth

This value sets the initial depth of the bevel part of the surface. The combination of bevel width and depth sets the bevel angle.

Extrude Height

This value specifies the height of extruded portion of the surface, not including the bevel surface area.

Bevel Corners

This options specify how corners in the original construction curves are handled in the beveled surface.

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MAYA Tutorial - Polygonal Modeling

2009-11-30T10:17:00.002+05:30

Polygonal modeling is typically used for hard-edged surfaces that don't bend or in situations where low polygon counts are important, such as modeling for games. With Maya 5, you can easily convert between polygons, SubDs, and NURBS patches. This allows you to begin the model in one format and then convert to another, if necessary, or to use the advantages of editing or rendering a model in another format.

Polygonal Primitives

There are several ways to use primitives to build objects quickly and easily. Use primitives as a starting point, then uses a combination of polygon creation and editing operations to complete a task. The most basic object type is primitive. Primitives are pure shapes that can be used as the basis of creating more complex models. There are six polygonal primitives objects---sphere, Cone, Cylinder, Cube, Plane and Torus.

Fig4-1 Polygon primitives

To create a primitive with the default option settings, select create > Polygon Primitives and choose the primitive you want to create from the menu. You can always edit the primitive from the channel Box or its Attribute Editor.

Fig 4_2 Attribute Editor

Section Radius option

The section Radius option value specifies the size of the sections .Change this value to increase or decrease the radius of sections to see the result.

Subdivision Axis

For spheres, cylinders, cones and toruses , this option defines the number of subdivisions there are around the axis defined by the Axis option. This option is also called Subdivisions Axis .Increase or decrease this value to add or take away faces around the axis defined by the Axis option.

Subdivision Height

This option defines the number of subdivisions there are along the axis defined by the Axis option. Height is equivalent to the Y directions by default.Increase or decrease this value to add or take away faces in the Axis direction.

Fig4-3 Subdivision height

Creating and Editing Text

The Poly text type creates text as Polygons .When this text type is selected, a planar trim curve is created between the curves and tessellate nodes. By default, Maya creates text as Nurbs geometry.

To create polygonal text

Select Create > Text to open the Text Curves option window and set the Type option to poly.
Type the text you want to write in the text box.
Change the default font settings if required.
Change the option settings.
Click the create button to create the text.

Polygonal Text Settings

When you create polygonal text, Maya provides option that you can set to display and create your text for subsequent polygonal-type editing.

Triangles

Three sided polygons are created. This is the default.

Tessellation Methods

Standard fit

This is the default tessellation method. It is adaptive tessellation, meaning that following option is used to determine when to stop the tessellation. The tessellation stops at the fractional tolerance value you set. If there is an edge shorter than the Minimal Edge Length, the tessellation stops on that edge. If the surface is flat enough with in the edge, the tessellation stops here.

General

Set the tessellation method to General to display the following options. Unless Use chord height or use chord height ratio is turned on, a uniform tessellation is performed. Each span is split into a number of polygons depending on the number U and V values you set.

Count

Set the tessellation method to Count to display the Following slider. Count slider is used to determine how many polygons the surface can be tessellated into.

Control points

This tessellation method converts the Nurbs model to polygons while matching the CVs of the original Nurbs surface. There are no other options for this operation.

Extruding

You can pull faces and edges out from polygonal objects using the Extrude Face and Extrude Edge commands.

Extruding Faces

You can extrude faces either interactively or directly through the option window. Select Edit Polygons > Extrude Face ,set whatever option you need and click the Extrude Face button.

If you want to extrude all the faces of an object, marquee-select the whole object to highlight the faces.
If you want to extrude certain areas of an object, shift-or Ctrl-click to select those face only.
If you want to extrude ,duplicate or extract multiple faces together, turn on polygons > Tool options >Keep Faces Together.

you are not happy with results, select Undo from the Edit menu, change the Extrusions settings in the channel Box or Attribute Editor and press Enter.

Extruding Edges

You can extrude edges either interactively or directly through the option window. If you prefer to set the options first and then extrude the edges, Select Edit Polygons > Extrude Face.

Duplicating Faces

You can duplicate and transform faces interactively or directly through the option window. Select the faces of the object you want to duplicate. Press the right mouse button and select Face or press F11.

If you want to duplicate all the faces of an object, marquee-select the whole object to highlight the faces.
If you want to duplicate certain areas of an object, click to select those face only.

You can also Duplicate Faces through Edit Polygons > Duplicate Face.

Extracting Faces

While Extracting ,Maya disconnects the selected Faces from the original shape, by duplicating the appropriate edges and vertices. The extracted faces become their own shell with in the object. This is the another way to make holes in the object while retaining their original faces.

Seperating the extracted faces creates distinct polygons out of the faces and the original object.

To extract Faces

Select the face of the object you want to extract. Press the right mouse button and select Face from the marking menu or press F11,then shift or Ctrl-Click to select the faces.
Select edit Polygons > Extract. The selected Faces are extracted.

Fig4-4 Extracting faces

Smoothing Polygons

There are three ways to smooth polygons.

Using Polygons > smooth.
Using Polygons >Average vertices.
Using the smooth operation of the sculpt polygons Tool to average the values of painted vertices to produce a smoother surface.

Polygon Selection

With Edit Polygons > Selection menu, you can constrain the selection of components to a specified area of a polygonal model and perform operations on those components in that specified area only without disturbing the rest of the model.

Select Edit Polygon > Selection >Grow Selection Region to increase the number of components you initially selected.

Selecting Boundaries

You use Edit Polygons >Selection >Select Selection Boundary to define the boundary of the current selection region. It is a quick way to select the boundaries of whatever is currently selected.

Selection a band of edges

Use Edit Polygons > Selection > Select Contiguous Edges to select a contiguous band of edges around model. With this you can select one edge, choose select Contiguous Edges, and it will select the rest of the edges in the center automatically.

Max 2d Angle ,Max 3d Angle

These settings determine how far the selection continues based on the angles between edges. The 2d angle refers to angle made by the surface topology, regardless of the surface's shape. The 3d angle refers to angles made by the surface's shape, as measured in world or local space.

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MAYA Tutorial - Texturing and Shading

2009-11-30T10:15:00.002+05:30

Materials are a critical part of creating attractive images and animation in a 3D program. Materials interact with lights, so lighting drives some material choices; for example, if your overall lighting is bright, you might need to make your scene materials somewhat more matte and light absorbing so that they don't blow out when hit by bright lights.

What do we mean by "materials"? It's a catch-all term to describe all aspects of what a surface looks like. At first glance, beginners usually notice the surface color—red, wood brown, metallic silver. To an artist, however, there are many other factors: An object isn't just metallic silver, for example—it's a mirrored smooth finish that relies on the reflected surroundings for its appearance. In addition to factors of color, shine, and reflection, Maya also considers transparency, incandescence, translucency, refraction, bumpiness, and many other user-controlled parameters. Attention to these details gives your rendered results more subtlety and complexity.

Hypershade

Maya's Hypershade is one of the first and most important areas you should take the time to explore. It provides a quick and easy way to create,edit, and connect rendering nodes, such as textures, materials, lights, rendering utilities and special effects.

Hypershade uses a free-form approach to material design. Swatches connect to one another to create effects; for example, a brick image might connect to the Bump attribute of a material to create bumps in the pattern of bricks. Hypershade also doubles as a kind of browser so that you can view and select existing scene lights, cameras, materials, and other elements.

To open Hypershade, choose Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade (hotkey: Alt+h).

Fig 5-1 Hypershade

Hypershade displays each node as an icon, sometimes called a swatch, that represents the characteristics of the node. When you edit a node's attributes or assign textures or special effects, that swatch updates in hypershade.

Create Bar

At the left is the Create Bar, which displays all the material types you can create for a selected category. Simply click on a type to create that item in the Work Area. To select a category, click the down arrow on the Create Bar; the options are Materials, Textures, Lights, Utilities, and All Nodes.

Tab Panels

The top tab shows existing materials, and the bottom tab is used to create and edit materials. After you become familiar with Hypershade, you can customize the tabs to your liking and even add Work Area tabs to simultaneously edit several materials.

Top Tab

This area displays all the elements that are already part of the current scene file in these tabs: Materials, Textures, Utilities, Lights, Cameras, and Projects. In this tab, you can duplicate, edit, select objects assigned to shading groups, link lights, import and export materials, and a number of other functions

Bottom Tab

This area is usually used as the Work Area—the assembly point for new materials.

Basic Material Types

Lambert

Lambert is a flat material type that yields a smooth look without specular highlights. It calculates without taking into account surface or reflectivity, which gives a matte, chalk-like appearance. Lambert material is ideal for surfaces that don't have highlights: pottery, chalk, matte paint, and so forth. By default, any newly created object is assigned the Lambert shader.

Phong

The Phong material takes into account specular reflectivity to create highlights across an object surface. The algorithm can be customized for surfaces such as plastic, porcelain, and glazed ceramic.

PhongE

PhongE is a faster rendering version of Phong that yields somewhat softer highlights than Phong.

Blinn

The Blinn material calculates highlights on surfaces similarly to Phong; however, Blinn can achieve a more accurate representation of the soft tinted highlights you see on metallic surfaces. Because Blinn is a versatile material type and doesn't cause flickering with bump maps.

Anisotropic

The Anisotropic material type stretches highlights and rotates them based on the viewer's position. Anisotropic materials are ideal for materials such as hair, feathers, brushed metal, and satin.

Ramp Shader

The Ramp Shader material consists of built-in ramp graphs to offer more advanced control and simplify the shader network.

Ocean Shader

The Ocean Shader material has several items in the shader's attributes that control how the material behaves over time, and it has graphs to add detail to the base shader. Attributes include Wave Speed, Wave Height, Wave Turbulence, and Wave Peaking.

Layered Shader

The Layered Shader lets you combine several materials to create a more complex material.

Shading Map

The Shading Map material is primarily designed to let you get a "cel" look in 3D, like typical animated cartoons.

Surface Shader

The Surface Shader is used when you want to control a material's color, transparency, and glow with something else in Maya.

Use Background

The Use Background shader cuts a "hole" in the image's alpha channel where objects with the material appear. This material is useful for combining separately rendered images in a compositing program to create the final results.

Material Settings

To edit material settings, double-click on any material in Hypershade's top or bottom tabs. Usually, you create a Blinn material in the Work Area of the bottom tab panel, and then double-click it to edit it in the Attribute Editor.

Fig 5_2 Material settings in the attribute editor

Notice the material name at the top of the Attribute Editor, which Maya sets to blinn1 for a default starting name. Maya increments the number if you create more Blinn materials. Next is the Common Material Attributes section, followed by the Specular Shading section. These two sections, displayed by default, are used the most in material editing.

Color

The default material color.

Transparency

If the transparency value is 0(black),the surface is totally opaque; if the transparency value is 1(white),the surface is totally transparent. If you change transparency from the default black ,the background of the material's hypershade swatch becomes a checked pattern .This is not a visual aid and is not rendered.

Ambient Color

Uses Black by default. As the ambient color becomes lighter, it affect's the material's color by lightening it and blending the two colors.

Incandescence

The color and the brightness of light that a material appears to be emitting. The default color value is 0.

Bump Mapping

Makes the surface appear more rough or bumpy by altering surface normals according to the intensity of the pixels in the bump map texture. A bump map does not actually alter the surface.

Diffuse

Gives the material ability to reflect light in all directions. The diffuse value acts like a scaling factor applied to the color setting-the higher the diffuse value, the closer the actual surface is to the color setting.

Translucence

Gives the material the ability to transmit and diffuse light. Light falling on a translucent surface is first absorbed beneath the surface and then diffused in all directions. The slider range is 0 to 1.

Surface Material Attributes

Specular color

The color of shiny highlights on the surface. A black specular color produces no surface highlights. The default color value is 0.5.

Reflectivity

Gives the surface the ability to reflect its surroundings or the reflected color. The default color value is 0.5.

Reflected color

Represents the color of light reflected from the material. This can be used to tint a reflection.

Surface Material

Fig 5-3 Surface Materials

Anisotropic

Represents surfaces with grooves, such as cd or feathers etc. Anisotropic material (such as Phong or Blinn)reflects specular light identically in all directions.If you spin an isotropic sphere, its specular highlight remains still.

Roughness

Determines the overall roughness of the surface. The range is 0.01 to 1.0.The default is 0.7.Smaller values correspond to smoother surfaces and the specular highlights are more concentrated.

Fresnel Index

A fresnel is a flat lens consisting of a number of concentric rings that reduces spherical abnormalities. The Fresnel index for water is 1.33.Value range from 1.0 to 20.0.

Anisotropic Reflectivity

If on, Maya automatically calculates Reflectivity as a fraction of roughness. Reflectivity is on by default.

Blinn Attributes

Color The base color of the surface.

Transparency Adjusts the surface opacity. You can use colors to create a tinted glass effect.

Ambient Color Adds to and blends with the color value.

Incandescence A simulation of emitted light. At low values, it tints and self-illuminates the material, and at high values, it overtakes the material's color and becomes self-illuminated.

Diffuse By default, it's set to 0.8, which dulls down the color value you've set.

Translucence A special effect in which light is absorbed and scattered as it passes through an object, useful for simulating materials such as frosted glass.

Translucence Focus Controls how light scatters from the surface.

Eccentricity The width of the highlight, simulating how polished or rough the surface appears.

Specular Roll Off The brightness/intensity of the highlight.

Specular Color The color of the highlight; usually set to white or a gray value.

Reflectivity The strength of reflections on the object. Reflections can be raytraced or use texture maps.

Reflected Color For Blinn, the color swatch and slider have no effect. However, when a texture map is applied, it appears to be reflected by the material.

Lambert

Represents matte surface(such as chalk,matte paint,unpolished surfaces) with no specular highlights. The initial shading group uses a lambert material.

Layered Shader Attributes

Represents a single surface material composed of several different surface materials layered on top of one another.

Transparency

By default the material is semi-transparent.

Compositing Flag

Composites the layers using a layered shader or layered texture mode.

Hardware color

Helps you distinguish the objects assigned to a layered shader in the views.

Phong Attributes

Represents glassy or glossy surfaces with a hard specular highlight.

Cosine power

This feature is available to the phong material. Controls the size of shiny highlights on the surface. The default value is 20.

Phong E Attributes

A simpler version of the phong material. The specular highlights on the Phong E surfaces are softer than those on Phong Surfaces and Phong E surfaces render faster than Phong surfaces.

Roughness

Controls the specularity focus.

Highlight Size

Controls the amount of specular highlight.

Whiteness

Controls the specular highlight color. The default value is white. You can also map a texture to this value.

Shading Map Attributes

Represents a color map you apply to surfaces after they are rendered.The shading map material is useful for creating non-photorealistic effects(cartoon shading)or to highlight threshold values in a rendered image.

Shading Map Color

Defines the color of the material. The default is gray.

Shader

You can map any material to the shading Map material.

Surfaces Shader Attributes

A wrapper node, meaning you can connect any keyable attribute to this shading group and then connect the shading group to an object.

Out color

The color of the material .The default is black.

Out Transparency

The transparency of the material. The default is black.

Out Glow Color

The glow color of the material. The default is black, without glow.

Use Background

You use it to set the object's Matte channel to 1 or 0, or create a matte for shadows and reflections on the surface. This material applies the same color as the objects in the background image to stand -in-surfaces.

Attributes

Adjust the Use Background material's to the light ,shadows, reflections and the geometry placement in the scene.

Texture Mapping

Normally, a texture refers to applying a 2D image around a 3D surface, rather like wallpapering a curvy surface. Because a 2D image can be stretched, wrapped, and projected onto a surface in many different ways.

Mapping Coordinates

Mapping coordinates, also known as UV coordinates. For NURBS, parametric mapping is inherent to the surface and this is typically what's used. Parametric mapping is the 0 to 1 coordinate system that NURBS uses to map textures across its surfaces. It makes sure that the textures stay mapped to the surface like a decal, even if the geometry is deformed.

For polygon surfaces, mapping is normally applied by projecting 2D maps across the 3D surface in one of several ways: planar, cylindrical, spherical, and a special method called automatic mapping.

Fig 5-4 Mapping projection

Procedural Maps

In addition to applying an image or movie to a surface, Maya has other texture types called procedural textures. Many patterns, such as bricks, tiles, and gradients, are so repetitive that they can easily be represented by an equation. By using special forms of seemingly random values, many natural effects can be simulated mathematically: Marble, leather, water, granite, and many other complex and random textures are included with Maya as procedurals.

Maya's procedural textures come in two varieties: 2D and 3D. You can think of the 2D procedurals as a calculated form of a bitmap.When 3D procedurals are applied, however, they exist throughout 3D space, and object surfaces define where you see the texture. It's like carving the object from a block of the material.Procedural textures have several benefits. Because they are formula based, their parameters can be adjusted to instantly synthesize all kinds of different effects.

2D Procedurals

Maya's 2D procedurals can be divided into two categories: regular patterns and noise patterns. The regular patterns include Grid, Checker, Bulge, Cloth, and Ramp. With these patterns, you can create tiles, bricks, and many other man-made repeating effects. Noise patterns include Fractal, Mountain, Noise, and Water. These psuedorandom textures are excellent for creating the complex "dirty" surfaces common in nature.

3D Procedurals

All the 3D procedurals but snow are random types. Some, such as wood and marble, clearly imitate nature. However, all are excellent for synthesizing random effects.

Assigning material to surfaces

The following lists a few quick ways to assign a material to a surface.

In the view,select the surface to which you want to assign the material.
From Hypershade, MMB-drag the material swatch over the selected surfaces.

In the view ,shift-select the object to which you want to assign the material and in hypershade,click the material swatch.
While the cursor is over the material swatch in hypershade,RMB -click-drag to select assign material to selection from the pop-up menu.

MMB-drag and drop a Hypershade swatch onto an object in the IPR Render view.

To apply a material to several surfaces from with Hypershade

Select the surfaces in a view.
In Hypershade,RMB-click over the material swatch and select Assign material to selection from the pop-up menu.

To apply a material to a group of faces on a polygonal surface

Select the surface.
Press the RMB while over the surface,select face from the marking menu,then choose the select by component type icon.
Select the face you want to map.
While the faces are highlighted in the view, in hypershade,LMB-shift-click over the material swatch you want and press theRMB and select Assign material to selection from the pop-up menu.

Custom Search

MAYA Tutorial - Cameras and Lighting

2009-11-30T10:10:00.002+05:30

When Maya starts, you have four cameras by default: front, side, top and perspective. Three of them are orthographic—flat, non-perspective views—and have visible icons you can use to translate or rotate the camera. The icon for the perspective camera is, by default, invisible. These four cameras are utility views that assist you in modeling and laying out your scene. When you're ready to pick the final rendered viewpoint of your scene, you should create a scene camera. If you're shooting a series of stills, you can create many cameras, one for each shot.

The camera placement determines exactly what will be seen and is used to frame specific portions of the scene, in the same way illustrators or photographers use composition to frame certain elements in their paintings and drawings. Other key variables for cameras are focal length, rotation (orientation), and angle of view. Focal length is directly linked to angle of view; if one goes up, the other goes down. With angle of view, as the angle of the lens widens, you must move the camera closer to the subject to keep it at the same relative size in the frame. The wider the angle, the higher the value for the Angle of View setting.

Creating Cameras

Create > Cameras > Camera

There are three types of perspective cameras in Maya. As with Maya's lights, you can change a camera to any other camera type in the Attribute Editor.

Camera

With this camera type, you see only the camera icon. In general, because this camera freely rotates and loses track of its "up" vector, you should use it only when you're linking the camera to another object for movement and animation, or when you're placing a camera in one fixed spot.

Camera and Aim

This camera includes a camera target and an aim handle for adjusting the camera target. In addition, this camera automatically stays level in relation to the horizon, so it's the one you'll use most often. You can make this camera roll if you want, but by default, it stays level except at extreme straight-up or straight-down orientations.

Camera, Aim and Up

This camera type includes two handles: the aim handle, described for Camera and Aim, and an up handle for banking (leveling) the camera. This camera type is useful when you want to bank the camera during your animation.

Fig6-1 Camera types

Camera Settings

These are the key settings for cameras under the Camera Attributes section:

Fig 6_2 Camera Attributes

Controls In this drop-down list, you can quickly select the camera type you want.

Angle of View and Focal Length Controls the amount of perspective exaggeration. Raising the Angle of View attribute lowers the Focal Length attribute.

Camera Scale You can change the camera size in relation to your scene, which affects scene objects when you render. Camera Scale is like a multiplier for the Angle of View setting. For example, decreasing Camera Scale to .5 halves the camera's view area, but makes objects in the scene look twice as large.

Clip Planes Only objects located within the values specified for the camera's clip planes appear in the scene. If distant objects are not showing up in your scene, raise the Far Clip Plane value. If nearby objects seem to be appearing in cross-section or not appearing at all, lower the Near Clip Plane value.

Depth of Field Enable distance blur with this attribute. It can be a render-intensive effect, but yields a nice cinematic result because objects close to and far away from the focus point are progressively blurred.

Background Color The background fill color for images rendered from this camera; you can also use this section of the Attribute Editor to add an image or shader as the background.

Orthographic Views Switches the camera to an orthographic view. You can create perspective cameras, rotate them into position, and then set them to orthographic to get a "flat" view for projecting textures onto an object.

Animating the Camera

When you first begin animating the camera, it helps to follow the rules of videography, such as avoiding jarring camera motions—rapid pans, zooms, or rotations of the camera. In addition, you should usually give the camera the impression of having mass. The virtual camera, by default, starts and stops moving instantly, which looks unrealistic and abrupt to viewers. To avoid this problem, adjust the tangents for the camera position's start and stop keys in the Graph Editor so that motion begins and ends gradually . Do the same for the camera's aim point keys and any other animated camera attributes.

Lighting

Lighting design in Maya is similar, but not completely identical, to how it's done in the real world. You have several types of lights to choose from in Maya; each one has unique attributes and benefits, and you'll learn what each type is best used for. When you know how to work with lights, scenes that once rendered dull can take on a new radiance. Most of the time you're trying to get a realistic effect with your lights, and Maya's virtual lights do not work in a realistic way—in particular, beams of light within Maya do not reflect off surfaces. In the real world, even a single light source can fully illuminate a room because its beams reflect from surfaces to reach areas under desks and shelves .In Maya, however, those areas are completely dark, so one solution is to simulate diffuse reflection by adding many low-level lights.

Creatively, lighting defines the scene's mood. If you're trying to create a chilling, spooky effect, you'll probably want dim lighting in the scene. For a feeling of suspense, you might decide to have flickering lights. Lighting in a scene creates the shadows, influences colors, and directly affects the appearance of materials. The results of a well-lit scene are worth the effort and time. Skillful lighting creates contrast between objects, enhances the colors in your scene, and gives you more control over the scene's shading.

Light Types

Several different lights are available in Maya 5, each with its own properties and uses: Ambient, Directional, Point, Spot, Area, and Volume lights.

Fig 6-3 Types of Lights

Ambient Light

The Ambient light type creates light on all surfaces. It is in no way comparable to the real-world ambient light that creates the diffuse reflection of surfaces. Instead, it's a kind of auto-self-illumination that brightens all parts of your scene equally. For this reason, this light type should be used sparingly or for special cases only, or it can give your scene a washed-out or flat appearance. Maya's Ambient lights can also cast shadows. In essence, these features allow you to use Ambient lights as though they were Point lights, with a variable "shine everywhere" setting. This setting is called Ambient Shade, and the light behaves more like a Point light as this value approaches 1.

Directional Light

The Directional light is the default light used when you create a new scene. This light is good for emulating rays of light coming from the sun and does a fine job of lighting the entire scene instead of just targeted areas.

Point Light

Unlike the Directional light, which has light rays that are parallel to each other, a Point light casts rays of light evenly in every direction from a point. Point lights are sometimes used for simulating omni directional light sources, such as light bulbs.

Spot Light

The Spot light's area of illumination is defined by a cone, and within the cone's specified range, light is cast evenly. Starting from an infinitely small point in space, a Spot light spreads as it moves farther from the origin. Spot lights are useful when you're trying to create beams of light from, for example, a prison watch tower, a lighthouse, and so forth.

Fig 6-4 Attribute Editor

Area Light

With Area lights, you can have a source of light that doesn't just come from an infinitely small point in space. The Area light emits rays from a rectangular area in space and can be scaled larger or smaller. This makes an Area light a great choice when you're looking for realistic lighting, but be forewarned that it takes longer to render. By using an Area light, you'll get shadows that soften as they're cast farther from the shadow-casting object. Maya uses only two-dimensional flat Area lights that are rectangular.

Volume Light

Volume lights have a visible range of influence that allows you to see exactly where the light dies out. By default, the light intensity falls off linearly from the light's center point to the visible outer boundary. This type of light is ideal for interior lighting, because you usually want lights to fade with distance if they're primary sources of light.

Fig 6-5 Light Attributes

Light Attributes

Intensity

A light's Intensity attribute controls the brightness of the source. You can set it to any value, positive or negative. If the intensity is raised, more light is emitted from the source . Usually, you set the value between 0 and 1 for a medium-intensity fill light. For sunlight effects, you might go as high as 1.5 or so. With Decay Rate added , the light's Intensity value might need to be set much higher because the strength can fall off rapidly with distance. All Maya's default lights have no decay rate and illuminate objects at full intensity, regardless of distance.You can also use negative values for the Intensity attribute. By setting a negative value, the light actually "absorbs" other light. If you have an area of the scene that you want to be pitch-black but have light illuminating it, you can use a light with a negative Intensity setting to help eliminate the problem.

Illuminates by Default

By default, lights automatically illuminate all objects in the scene. When you disable the Illuminates by Default check box, the light is removed from the default Light Set and affects only objects it's linked to. Light linking is handled in the Relationship Editor for lights (Window > Relationship Editors > Light Linking). In this dialog box, you can select a light and then choose which objects it illuminates .

Fig 6_6 Relationship Editor

Emit Diffuse and Emit Specular

The Emit Diffuse and Emit Specular attributes are not available with Ambient lights. Emit Diffuse is particularly useful for creating soft fill lights to simulate light reflection; you need to disable the Emit Specular attribute so that no highlights are generated. Emit Specular can also be useful for lighting metal objects (such as chrome logos) when you want to add specular highlights to the metal without brightening other areas.

Color

Each light can have its own color assigned, and modifying the color of a light follows the same procedure and uses the same Color Chooser dialog box you see when modifying color for a material. You can also map textures to a light's color, causing the light to project the texture like a slide projector. Or if you animate the texture variables or use a movie as the source, the light acts as a movie projector.

Decay Rate

Specific to Spot, Area, and Point lights, this attribute determines the rate at which the light intensity fades (decreases) at a distance. Several types of decay are available in the Attribute Editor's Decay Rate list box.

No Decay The light does not diminish with distance; it reaches all objects in the scene.

Linear The intensity of emitted light decreases at a constant (linear) rate as distance from the light source increases. Linear decay is the most frequently used type because it's easier to control; you don't need to raise the light's Intensity attribute to enormously high values to compensate.

Quadratic A physically accurate mode of decay, also known as inverse square. Quadratic decay is determined by proportionally decreasing the light intensity along the square of the distance. Light intensity generally must be raised substantially with this mode.

Cubic Decreases the intensity of light faster than the rate seen in reality. Cubic Decay is evaluated by a decrease in intensity that's relatively proportional to the cube of the distance. The lit area falls off almost instantly with Cubic Decay. This type of decay can be used to create a lit area that seems as though it's burning within surrounding darkness.

IPR rendering is a helpful tool for interactively adjusting light decay; it's hard to visualize otherwise.

Shadows

Shadows in Maya can be turned on or off. The default setting for lights is to have the shadow set to off. Surfaces illuminated by the non-shadow–casting light are still shaded by it, but won't cast shadows onto other surfaces. That means the part of an object that's exposed to light is illuminated, and the object's opposite side fades to a darker tone. An object's shadow can identify its size, position, and orientation in space, so by adding shadows to your scene, you can more clearly define the spatial relationships between objects. Without shadows in a scene, the render looks flat and lacks depth. Shadows add depth and realism to the scene, especially indoor scenes.

Shadows tend to wash each other out as you add more shadow-casting lights that illuminate the same area. With Maya, you have a lot of control over the way shadows are cast in a scene, which can help you reduce render times, add contrast to your renderings, and create a better-looking overall result. There are two types of shadows in Maya: depth map and ray traced shadows.

Depth Map Shadows

Depth map shadows are produced through an image map. The depth map is calculated immediately before the actual render takes place. Using calculations for the distance of light to a specific point on an object, depth information is stored in the map and then passed on to the rendering engine to produce a "simulated" shadow effect. The depth map tells the rendering engine which areas of the scene are illuminated by light

Depth map shadows usually give good results without having to worry about a huge increase in render time. They are usually slightly softer, too, which is more natural than harsh-edged ray traced shadows. If you want, you can achieve almost the same level of sharpness as ray traced shadows. Depth map shadows work in a unique way for Point, Ambient, and Area lights: Because a square bitmap is required to create the shadow, and these light types cast light in all directions, they must create multiple maps to cover the area. Maya uses cubic shadow maps for these light types—that is, six depth maps are cast for the six sides of a cube. This process requires six times the RAM, which could be a concern for large map sizes.

The main drawback to depth map shadows is that they don't take materials' transparency into account.

Depth Map Attributes

Shadow Color Applicable to both types of shadows in Maya. Changing the Shadow Color attribute changes the shadow's color seen in the render. It's often a good idea to bring shadow colors a little brighter than pure black, to add to the simulation of diffuse light reflection. You can also map an image file or a texture to the Shadow Color, just as you would map an image to a material.

Dmap Resolution Specifies the resolution (accuracy) of a depth map shadow. The maps are square, so if you set this attribute to 1024, the shadow map is produced as a 1024x1024 pixel image. When setting Dmap Resolutions, try to use values that are powers of 4, such as 128, 256, 512, and 1024. These numbers are easier for Maya to calculate with and can result in faster render times. At very large sizes (4096+), RAM consumption can become a problem. Increasing the resolution also reduces the jagged effect, but creates a sharper shadow edge.

Dmap Filter Size Directly affects the edges of a depth map shadow by making them softer. This attribute, combined with the Dmap Resolution, can smoothly and gradually soften a shadow's edge. Be aware that increasing this value increases render times. Use values between 1 and 3, unless you truly need to go higher.

Dmap Bias When depth map shadow–casting lights are casting long shadows, they can sometimes separate from the objects. This setting allows you to adjust the placement of the shadows, and you usually need to adjust it only for very low light angles (such as a setting sun).

Raytraced Shadows

Raytraced shadows are generally slower to compute, but offer the advantage of lower RAM requirements, soft shadows, and properly cast shadows for objects that have transparency, such as windows. To make raytraced shadows appear in your renderings, you must go to the Render Global Settings window and enable raytracing. Like the Area light, the Spot, Directional, Ambient, and Point lights can cast area shadows. In this case, the soft shadows are created by having the light cast from a circular source. Non–Point light sources create soft shadows (known as penumbral shadows) because a variable amount of the non–Point light source is blocked as an object passes in front of the light.

Transparent objects can affect shadows if the shadows are raytraced. However, the color values do not affect shadow color. To cast colored raytraced shadows, you must set or map the transparency color for the material.

Raytraced Shadow Attributes

Light Radius Sets the imaginary size of the circular Area light effect.

Shadow Rays Controls the sampling of soft shadows. If you use a low number, the shadows look speckled, but render faster. This is similar to the way that Dmap Filter Size works with depth map shadows, in that increasing the Shadow Rays setting reduces the shadow's graininess.

Ray Depth Limit This setting enables you to limit the number of times a light bounces from reflective and refractive materials. You can raise this value if you want to allow raytraced light rays to bounce around the scene before eventually creating a shadow.

Area Light Shadows

If you set Area lights to cast raytraced shadows, the shadows are calculated from the rectangular Area light icon, based on its size. The results are similar to circular Area lights. As with circular Area lights, more Shadow Rays soften the shadow, but result in substantially longer render times.

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MAYA Tutorial - Basics of Animation

2009-11-23T00:49:00.003+05:30

In Animation, there's more to animate than simple movement. Animation requires thinking about motion, timing, and smoothness of action. Almost anything in Maya with a number attached to it can be animated. Maya simplifies your work in creating the essence of animation---timing and motion. With maya , you can animate virtually anything you can imagine, no matter how surreal.

Animation Control and Interface

With Maya's animation controls, you choose how to key and play an animation. Two components of Maya's user interface are specific to animation: the Range Slider and the Time Slider. You can also quickly access and edit animation preferences from the animation controls area.

Fig 7-1 Animation controls

Between the Range slider and the Animation Preferences button are the current character control features and the Auto Key button.

Time Slider

The Time Slider is a vital part of the animation interface in Maya. The Time Slider Controls the Playback range, keys and breakdowns with in the playback range.

Fig7-2 Time slider

Click in the Time Slider area and drag left and right to "scrub" the animation back and forward in time.

Key Ticks

Key Ticks are red marks in the Time Slider where you set a key for the selected object. Breakdowns are a special type of key .The visibility of Key Ticks can be turned off or on in the Preference window. The current Time indicator is a gray block on the Time Slider. You can drag it to move forward and backward in your animation.

Current Time Field

A black line indicates the current time field. When keys have been set for the currently selected object, thin vertical red lines appear in the Time Slider area to indicate the times for those keys.

Range Slider

The Range Slider controls the playback range reflected in the Time Slider. The Range Slider sets the total length of the animation in frames. You can also use the Range Slider to temporarily limit the range of playback and set the playback start and end frames.

Fig 7-3 Range slider

You can toggle whether the Range Slider is Displayed or hidden by selecting Display>UI elements>Range Slider.

Animation Start Time sets the start time of the animation.

Animation End Time sets the end time of the animation.

Playback Start Time This shows the current start time for the playback range. You can change it by entering a new start time.

Playback End Time This shows the current end time for the playback range. You can change it by entering a new end frame.

Range Slider Bar This lets you control the playback range of your animation up to the limits of the Animation start/end settings.

you use the Preferences dialog box to change values for the animation timeline and playback. You can also set the total time for your animation, the size of the timeline , and other related features.

Fig7-4 Preferences dialog box

Terms in Animation

Frame Rate

Frame rate is the first aspect of animation. By default, Maya sets your animation to Film, which plays at 24fps.You use 30fps in the United States and 25fps in other countries.

Range

The range of an animation determines the total length in frames. Then, multiply the animation's length in seconds by the frame rate .For e.g in this case you are using 24fps and animation length is of 2seconds.

24fps X 2secs =48 Frames

Setting Keys

You can set a Key by selecting Animate >Set Key. The attributes set by this menu item depend on the set Key option settings.

Animation Types

There are following types to animate your scene.

Path Animation

In this method, you create a NURBS-based curve and then attach an object to it in your scene. The object then follows the curved path to simulate motion. You can choose at which time the object is positioned at any point along the path, so the object can reverse itself, pause, or oscillate, if you want. The object automatically rotates from side to side as the curve changes directions. If the object is geometry, it can also be automatically deformed to follow the contours of the curve.

Select Animate>Motion paths>Attach to Motion path

To Animate an object along a surface

Choose create >Nurbs Primitives > Plane to create a Nurbs plane.

Select Modify>Transformation Tools>Proportional Modification Tool to introduce contours on the plane.

Select Modify > Make Live ,then draw a curve on the plane.

Create an object to animate along the path , and shift -click on the curve on surface to select it.

Select Animate>Motion Paths >Attach to Motion Path option window. Ensure that follow is on ,and set the up direction to normal so that the object will stay normal to the surface.

Click play to see your animation.

Flow Path Object Function

The Flow Path Object function creates a lattice around an object .

Select Animate>Motion paths>Flow Path Object

Keyframe Animation

Keyframe animation is the standard animation method. In this method, you set keys for an object's extreme positions and let the computer fill in the in-between motion. A key is an anchor point for a particular attribute at a designated time. When the animation reaches that specified time, the object's attribute will be at the value you set. As you set keys, you specify the time at which those changes in the attribute's value take place.

To set keys with the auto keyframe method, you click the Auto Keyframe button in the Range Slider (it turns red to indicate that it's enabled). With auto keyframing, you can animate quickly by simply dragging the Time Slider to a given frame and then changing an attribute.

Nonlinear Animation

Nonlinear animation is a more advanced method of animation. Unlike keyframing, nonlinear animation is completely independent of time. You blend and layer animation sequences—called clips—to set up the motion for objects. You can also use this method to explore variations in parts of the animation without losing your previous work or affecting other parts of the animation. For example-you can make the walking part of the animation a clip and then adjust the leg motion without affecting the way the rest of the character moves.

Graph Editor

The Graph Editor is a helpful tool for tweaking values for keys you have set. It gives you a visual representation—a curved line—of the attributes that are animated. The animation time goes from left to right, and any keyed variable appears as a line that ramps up or down to indicate its value over time. It can help you visualize how things are changing and how fast. You can pan and zoom this panel like any other.

Fig7-5 Graph Editor

To use it as a free-floating window, simply open it from the Hotbox (Window >Animation Editors> Graph Editor).

Graph Editor's Components

Menu bar

The Graph Editor menu bar contains tools and operations for manipulating animation curves and keys with in the graph view of the Graph editor. The Edit menu is similar to the one in text editors or word processors, except that you're working with keys instead of text.

Fig 7-6 Menu Bar

The Edit Menu

The menu items appear under Edit menu behave in a similar fashion to the main Edit menu in the modeling view.

The View Menu

This menu controls which components are visible, and therefore editable, in the graph view of the Graph Editor.

The Select Menu

These options control which component of an animation curve are available for selection and editing.

The Curves Menu

The Curves menu gives you control over how the curves are set up with the keys in your scene.

The Keys menu

This menu includes Tangents which causes the manipulation of an in or out tangent handle.

The Tangents Menu

This describes the entry and exit of curve segments from a key.

The List Menu

This menu Loads the objects.

Toolbar

The toolbar gives you quick access to functions for modifying animation curves and keys.

Fig 7-7 Toolbar

Buffer curves Use Buffer Curve snapshot and swap Buffer curves to compare changes to the current animation curve with its previous shape.

Break Tangents Allows manipulation of the in and out tangent handles individually so you can edit the curve segment entering the key without affecting its opposite handle.

Unify Tangents causes the manipulation of an in or out tangent handle to affect its opposite handle equally. It retains the relative position of the tangent handles even after tangents are individually adjusted.

Lock Tangent Weight specifies that when you move a tangent ,only its angle can be changed.

Free Tangent Weight specifies that when you move a tangent ,only its angle can be changed. This allows the weight of a tangent to be adjusted as well as the angle.

Clamped tangent creates an animation curve that has the characteristics of linear and spline curves. The key's tangents will be spline unless the value of two adjacent keys are very close.

Step tangent creates an animation curve whose out tangent is a flat curve.

Flat Sets the in and out tangents of the key to be horizontal.

The Dope Sheet

The Dope Sheet is another animation editor in Maya that is similar to the Graph Editor. Instead of displaying curves, the Dope Sheet displays key times as colored rectangles and lets you edit event timing in blocks of keyframes and synchronize motion to a sound file.

To open the Dope Sheet

Select Window > Animation Editors > Dope Sheet

Fig7-8 Dope sheet editor

To Place the Dope Sheet in a View

Select the view.

Select Panels > Panel > Dope Sheet.

Keyframe Animation

Nonlinear Animation

Graph Editor

Fig7-5 Graph Editor

To use it as a free-floating window, simply open it from the Hotbox (Window >Animation Editors> Graph Editor).

Graph Editor's Components

Menu bar

Fig 7-6 Menu Bar

The Edit Menu

The menu items appear under Edit menu behave in a similar fashion to the main Edit menu in the modeling view.

The View Menu

This menu controls which components are visible, and therefore editable, in the graph view of the Graph Editor.

The Select Menu

These options control which component of an animation curve are available for selection and editing.

The Curves Menu

The Curves menu gives you control over how the curves are set up with the keys in your scene.

The Keys menu

This menu includes Tangents which causes the manipulation of an in or out tangent handle.

The Tangents Menu

This describes the entry and exit of curve segments from a key.

The List Menu

This menu Loads the objects.

Toolbar

The toolbar gives you quick access to functions for modifying animation curves and keys.

Fig 7-7 Toolbar

Buffer curves Use Buffer Curve snapshot and swap Buffer curves to compare changes to the current animation curve with its previous shape.

Break Tangents Allows manipulation of the in and out tangent handles individually so you can edit the curve segment entering the key without affecting its opposite handle.

Lock Tangent Weight specifies that when you move a tangent ,only its angle can be changed.

Free Tangent Weight specifies that when you move a tangent ,only its angle can be changed. This allows the weight of a tangent to be adjusted as well as the angle.

Clamped tangent creates an animation curve that has the characteristics of linear and spline curves. The key's tangents will be spline unless the value of two adjacent keys are very close.

Step tangent creates an animation curve whose out tangent is a flat curve.

Flat Sets the in and out tangents of the key to be horizontal.

The Dope Sheet

To open the Dope Sheet

Select Window > Animation Editors > Dope Sheet

Fig7-8 Dope sheet editor

To Place the Dope Sheet in a View

Select the view.

Select Panels > Panel > Dope Sheet.

MAYA Tutorial - Dynamics and Special Effects

2009-11-21T12:48:00.002+05:30

Dynamics

Dynamics in Maya can be applied to objects using rigid-body or soft-body settings. With simple dynamics, also known as rigid-body dynamics. You can use NURBS or polygonal objects in dynamics simulations, but you must consider the objects' surface directions.Objects that interact can be active or passive. Passive objects, although they can be keyframe-animated, remain stationary; they can cause collisions , but aren't affected by them. Objects that are going to react to collisions must be set to active. You can switch an active object to passive and vice versa by setting the Active attribute in the Channel Box to on or off. You can also use Maya's Dynamics mode to simulate reality in how objects behave—for example, animating the way bowling pins react when struck with a bowling ball.

Soft Body Dynamics

Soft-body dynamics are handled in Maya by creating a set of particles that surround the object and influence it. When these particles collide with something or are moved by fields, the connected geometry moves with them. This is ideal for creating effects that mimic cloth and organic flexible materials. To get a realistic response, you must add goals or springs. Goals give the object a target shape to move toward, like a rubber squeeze toy that un-squeezes back to its original shape. Alternatively, springs add a lattice of tensioned springs throughout the geometry, like adding a box spring of rigidity to the object.

Creating a Soft-Body System

Any polygonal or NURBS object can be made into a soft body .You usually make an object soft with Bodies > Create Soft Body> option box, and then determine whether the object simply becomes soft or is duplicated to keep the original object as a goal. Normally, you choose the latter method so that the soft body tries to configure itself back to the shape of the original object. In either case, the object is then soft, but doesn't collide with other objects in the same manner as with rigid-body dynamics.

Soft /Rigid Bodies > Create Soft Body >
Sets the options when creating a soft body.
Make Soft

Converts the object to a soft body.

Adding Springs

When the object must be more resilient than a soft cloth, you can add the Springs attribute to give the object a kind of support structure. This attribute creates a virtual spring object between each particle. Wire Walk Length setting. parameter connects springs not only between a particle and its neighbor, but also the neighbor's neighbor, and so forth. The default setting is 2.

Active and Passive Bodies

Objects that interact can be active or passive. Passive objects, although they can be keyframe-animated, remain stationary; they can cause collisions but aren't affected by them. Objects that are going to react to collisions must be set to active. You can switch an active object to passive and vice versa by setting the Active attribute in the Channel Box to on or off.

You can set values for Initial Velocity and Initial Spin for active objects .

Fig8-1 Dynamics settings for active rigid bodies

Fields

Fields are localized or global forces that act on objects. You can simulate the motion of natural forces with dynamics fields.Fields have their own icons in a scene, so it's easier to select them if you want to animate a field or change its attributes. These fields are included with Maya.

Stand-alone fields influence objects from a stationary or moving position in the workspace. It's not owned by geometry.

Object Field are owned by an object and exert influence from the object. You can add fields to polygons, Nurbs curves or surfaces, particle objects, lattices or curves on the surface.

Volume Fields You can select a volume to define the region in space in which particles are affected.

The following fields are included with Maya:

Air An air field simulates the effects of moving air. The objects you connect to the air field accelerate or decelerate so their velocities match that of the air as the animation plays. A "push" type of field, it comes with presets for Wind, Wake, and Fan.
Drag a field that slows the momentum over time of objects within its reach. A drag field exerts a friction or braking force on an object that's animated with dynamic motion.
Gravity The most commonly used field, it causes objects to move and accelerate in a given direction. You can limit its reach to create localized gravity fields. It simulates the Earth's gravitational force.
Newton Similar to gravity, but operates in a spherical manner. A newton field pulls object towards it. Objects are attracted to Newton fields more strongly depending on their mass and their distance from the Newton field.
Radial A radial field pushes objects away or pulls them toward itself, like a magnet. Like the Newton field, but it doesn't take mass into account. It can be set to diminish with distance, as with the Gravity and Air fields, and it can be set to push or pull.
Turbulence Makes the object's motion or deformations more random. Turbulence is usually applied to soft bodies or particles to create the impression of wind or waves.
Uniform A field that pushes objects in a specified direction. Like the Gravity field, but without the progressive acceleration that Gravity includes.
Vortex A kind of rotating gravity, the Vortex field pulls objects in a spiraling motion that's centered on the field's icon. Often used to create galaxies, whirlpools, or tornados with particle systems.
Volume Axis A complex field that lets you specify a volume shape (cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, or torus) and then create effects that work within the shape. You can use the Volume axis field to create effects such as particles flowing around obstacles ,solar flares, mushroom clouds, explosions, tornadoes, and rocket exhaust.

Constraints

Constraints are used to restrict an object's motion. After you apply constraints, they are connected to the object they're associated with. Maya includes the following constraints:

Nail Ties an object to a point in the scene. The object behaves as though it's tethered by a solid rod, but it can orbit anywhere around the tie point as it collides with objects or is affected by fields. You can not use a Nail constraint on a passive rigid body.
Pin This type of constraint requires two objects that are tied together to a separate pivot point. You can use a pin constraint to create effects such as link in a chain or robotic arm.
Hinge As the name implies, you get free rotation constrained to an axis. You can make active objects hinge to a point in space, to another active object, or to a passive object.
Spring This constraint is similar to the Nail constraint, but it also has a telescoping characteristic that allows it to extend its length. As with the Hinge, you can use the Spring to tie an active object to another active object, to a passive object, or to a point in space.
Barrier Blocks objects from going beyond a planar boundary. You can assign this constraint to only one object. Objects can deflect, but not bounce, from the Barrier constraint, so it's recommended for objects that block other objects, such as walls or floors

Partiles

Particles can be particularly helpful when you want to create and animate dozens, hundreds, or thousands of similar objects that vary slightly in their geometry or animation. You can also use Maya's Dynamics mode to simulate reality in how objects behave—for example, animating the way bowling pins react when struck with a bowling ball. Another feature in Maya's Dynamics mode is the ability to create "soft-body" effects, in which objects deform as though they were made from rubber or gelatin. Dynamics and particles—work together to create animation. With rigid-body dynamics, the idea is to simulate physics so that objects collide with each other and deflect. With soft-body dynamics, objects change (deform) as a result of their collisions. With particles, you can easily control the animation of large numbers of objects.

What are Particles

A Particle object is a collection of particles that share the same attribute. In maya , Particles are points you display as dots, streaks, spheres, blobby, surfaces etc. You can animate the display and movement of particles with various methods, for instance, Keys, expressions, and field such as gravity. Particles are ideal for animating difficult effects, such as explosions, swarms of bees, and galaxies of stars.In maya, we use particles for creating special effects.

Creating Particles

To create particles in your scene, you can use drawn particles or particle emitters. To paint particles in your scene, choose Particles > Particle Tool > option box. Another method called Particle Grid is available, which you use to define the corners of a 2D rectangle that's filled with particles. Particle grids can be helpful for visualizing the effect of fields as you create them.

In Maya, the source that particles emanate from can be many things.
Point - omni An emitter that sprays particles from a point in all directions.
Point - directional An emitter that sprays particles in a linear or conical direction from a point.
Volume Particles are created from multiple points within a defined volume, which can be a cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, or torus.
Surface You can define one of your scene's NURBS or polygon objects to create particles from its surface.
Curve Any NURBS curve can emit particles.

Animate the Particles

You can animate particle motion in several ways.
Set the position, velocity or acceleration attributes of particles. You can set keys to animate an entire particle object's translate, scale and rotate attributes.
Apply fields , such as gravity to particles.
Turn geometry into a collision object and bounce particles off it.
Make the particles follow a moving goal object.

Particle Types

In Maya, there are two types of particles: hardware rendered and software rendered. Hardware particle render much faster using your graphics card's on-board hardware. Hardware particle types must be rendered with the hardware-rendering system (Window> Rendering Editors >Hardware Render Buffer), because the particles don't appear in the normal software render.

The Hardware Render Buffer has an option for masking any particles that fall behind scene objects. Another issue is that, by default, hardware rendering looks jagged . Maya handles ant aliasing similarly by multisampling in the Hardware Render Buffer, which is enabled by choosing Render>Attributes on the Hardware Render Buffer menu.

Hardware-Rendered Particles

Point The default particle type, designed to render as a spot. You use the render settings in the Hardware Render Buffer, under Render> Attributes.After you add attributes for a particle render type, you can change the render type and add its default Particle Render Type attributes.

Multipoint Like the Point particle type, but creates clusters of points to get a denser, clumpier appearance.You can use this render type to create dust, cluds,most or other gaseous emissions.

Streak Similar to the Point, but creates a streaking line instead of a dot. This type does not render until the particles are moving and you attempt to hardware-render a frame with particle motion. The Streak length is based on the velocity of the particles, so if the particles are stationary or moving slowly, you won't see the particles.

Multistreak Like the Streak particle type, but creates clusters of streaks to get a denser look.

Sprites Render type lets you display a texture image or image sequence at each particles.Each particle can display an identical or different image.Asprite appears as a small rectangle until you map a texture image to it .

Spheres These are three-dimensional spheres and render type displays particles as opaque spheres.

Numeric This particle type displays a number for each particle. It's particularly useful for troubleshooting stray particles.By default, Maya displays particle ids for the numeric render type.

Hardware-rendered particles cannot cast shadows or appear in reflections or refractions:

Software-Rendered Particles

The following particle types render as part of your scene when you render a frame. They are able to reflect, refract, and cast shadows.

Blobby Surface A particle form of metaballs, the blobby surfaces look like spheres until they approach another, at which point they reach for each other like drops of mercury. They appear only in software rendered images.

To set Blobby Surface render type

Select the particle object. In the attribute editor ,set Particle Render Type to Blobby Surface. Apply a shading group to the particle object and then add a light to the scene. Software render the scene.

Cloud The cloud render type displays particles as blurred or cloudy metaballs. This particle type works specifically with the Particle Cloud material type and doesn't render with typical object "surface" materials.

Tube As the name implies, the source object type is a kind of uncapped cylinder. You can define the radius at the two ends and renders only with volumetric material types .

Instanced Geometry If you want to have an object stand-in for the particles, you should use Maya's Instancer, which enables you to use any kind of geometry or textures you like.

AddingReflctions, Refractions and shadows to Software - rendered particles

Select the particle object. In the attribute editor turn on---visible in reflections, visible in refractions and cast shadows.

Collisions

Any particle system can collide with any scene geometry, but you have to set each collision up separately. To do so, you select the particles, Shift-select the geometry they will collide with, and choose Particles > Make Collide. The particles then collide if they hit the object.

Goals

Particles can also be set to have goals, meaning that the particles try to move to a specific configuration, shape, or location. You can create goals by selecting the particle object you want to be affected by the goal. Shift-select the object you want to.

MAYA Tutorial - Rendering

2009-11-21T12:03:00.002+05:30

The process of creating an image or sequence of images from a scene. During rendering, Maya generates a two-dimensional image, or series of images, from a specific view of a three-dimensional scene, and saves it as an image file.

You can control the properties of rendered image files according to your post-production or presentation requirements.

Maya software Renderer

Maya's software renderer is an advanced, multi-threaded renderer. It is based on a rendering technology that is built directly into Maya's dependency graph architecture, which means its feature nodes can be intimately connected with any other feature in Maya. It is a hybrid renderer, offering true raytracing plus the speed advantages of a scan-line renderer.

The Maya software renderer supports all of the various entity types found within Maya including particles, various geometry and paint effects and fluid effects. It also has a robust API for the addition of customer-programmed effects.

Rendering an Animation

When you're ready to render a finished animation, open the Render Globals button on the Status Line, just to the right of the IPR Render button. You can also activate it with Hotbox >Window > Rendering Editors > Render Globals.

Render Global Settings

Fig 9-1 Render Globals

You can select the Maya Software (or standard) renderer, the Maya Hardware renderer, Mental Ray, or the new Maya Vector renderer from Render Global Settings window. In all renderers, however, the information in the Common tab remains nearly the same. The settings for Start Frame, End Frame, and By Frame are activated if you choose a movie file output format or a filename numbering extension for your saved files. A Frame Padding setting of 3 or 4 works for almost all situations. This setting determines how many digits are added to the end of the filename, so setting Frame Padding to 4, for example, results in files being numbered as filename.0001.TGA, filename.0002.TGA, and so forth.

The default animation render length is set to frames 1 through 10—a short animation.

The Resolution section is where you set the image size; you can use the Presets list box to choose from a range of resolutions. Most of your tests will be at a lower resolution, typically 320x240 or 640x480.

The second tab changes its name depending on what renderer you've selected. If the only renderer options you see are Maya's software and hardware renderers. The Anti-aliasing Quality setting has a big impact on rendering speed and image quality. Images that are poorly antialiased have a jagged appearance, particularly visible where different-colored objects overlap or in areas of high contrast.For tests, you'd select the Preview Quality setting in the Presets list box; for final rendering, use the Production Quality setting, and select the Gaussian or Quadratic B Spline Filter in the Multi-pixel Filtering section for smoother-looking images.

Render the scene using raytracing

The Raytracing section is where you configure raytraced reflections, refractions, or shadows to appear in the rendering; it's disabled by default, so you need to expand that section to enable the options. Raytracing can also slow your rendering time dramatically. The numbers for the Reflections, Refractions, and Shadows attributes refer to the depth of raytracing—the number of bounces allowed for a ray. As the ray strikes reflective or refractive objects, it ricochets through the scene. If the number of bounces reaches the limit set here, no further raytracing is done, and the pixel is colored based on the contribution of the previous bounces added to black.

Rendering a Still

When you want to render a test frame, you simply activate the panel of the view you want, and click Hotbox > Render > Render Current Frame. The settings in the Render Global Settings window determine the resolution, ant aliasing, and raytracing, but only one frame renders, and it's saved as a temporary .iff (or whatever image format you've chosen as the default) file in the Images directory of your project. When the rendering is finished, you can save the rendered image to a permanent file by right-clicking on the Render View window and choosing File | Save Image in the Save dialog box that opens.

For images you have rendered and saved, you can view them with Maya's FCheck utility.

To cancel the render

Press Esc.

Rendering Engines in Maya

Maya 5 has added new rendering engines called Mental Ray and the Vector renderer. You can access these new renderers plus the Maya software and hardware renderers in the Render Global Settings window. With these new rendering options, Maya can quickly produce cartoon or web-like media with the Vector renderer and photorealistic renders using Global Illumination or HDRI in Mental Ray.

MAYA Tutorial - Creating a Robot

2009-11-21T10:40:00.002+05:30

In this chapter, we are going to summarize the knowledge learnt from the previous chapters. We shall be taking up an exercise to model a Robot in Maya. The process is simple and is designed to help a beginner to understand the concepts of modeling in Maya.

Our Robot shall be based on a set of primitives. We shall go through the usage of transform tools and few other modeling techniques.

To start, open a new scene in Maya using File>New Scene.

Select Modeling Menu set from the status line or press F3 as the keyboard shortcut.

We shall start the modeling by creating a polygon cylinder primitive by accessing Create>Polygon Primitives>Cylinder.

Fig 10-1

Now we need to switch to the component mode in order to make changes to the primitive cylinder that we just made.

Press F8 to go to the component mode and select the point option.

Fig 10-2 Component Mode options

Select the top vertices as shown yellow in the given figure. Use the Scale transform tool and using the middle yellow cube, click and drag the mouse to increase the scale.

Fig 10-3 Editing the primitive in component mode

Let us call this object that we modeled, “limb unit”. We shall be using this object by making copies of it and resizing them and then fixing at the required locations. This unit will form the limbs of our Robot. You can use the Move Transform tool, and Rotate Transform tool to position the object in the scene.

If you are already in component mode, press F8 to come out of it. First of all start by creating a copy of the existing object by pressing keyboard shortcut Ctrl D. Use the Move transform tool to move the new created object to a side.

Use the Scale tool to downsize the newly created limb unit and then use the Move tool and rotate tool to get both of the objects in the shape, orientation and position as shown in the given figure.

Fig 10_4

Use the Copy, move, scale and rotate tools to make 4 more limb units out of the original one and resize, position and orient them to form the 3 fingers and 1 thumb of the Robot.

Using the similar techniques explained above, this time create a polygon sphere primitive and use its copies to form the joints of the limbs as shown in the given figure.

Fig 10-5

Next, we need to make another similar limb structure as shown in Fig10-5 in order to form the other arm. You can rotate both the arms to be a bit inclined outwards from the elbows. Match the orientation and position of the two arms with the one shown in the following figure.

Fig 10-6

Now, that we have both the arms of the Robot ready, we are not far from developing the complete humanoid. We can continue developing the legs of the robot in exactly the similar manner that we have used till now. After completing the legs, the robot will somewhat look like in the figure 10-7. However, at this point of time you may want to use your own creativity and try different looks for the Robot.

Fig 10-7

In the next step we shall use few more spheres and a cylinder to make the torso of the robot as shown in the next figure.

Fig 10-8

The process had been pretty simple so far. We have been using just two basic polygon primitives i.e., cylinder and a sphere. Now, lets make use of another primitive i.e., Torus. Create a Torus from the create Menu. Resize and position it to form the elements of the Neck. You can go a step ahead by using the cylinder primitives to form the camera like structure that are substitute for the eyes in our Robot. A real small radius cylinders can be used to form something that can act as an antenna receptor. The final modeled structure of the Robot is shown in this rendered image.

Fig 10-9 The complete model

Now, we shall texture this Robot. Lets start by opening the Hypershade , Windows>Rendering Editors>Hypershade. Select the Blinn material and name it to Robotexture.

Create a Blinn Material - Create (on the Hypershade menu)...>Materials...>...Blinn, or use the side bar. Double-click the new material to open the attribute editor. Change the material name to Robo_Blinn or so. Click the box next to the color slider, a new option window opens. Choose Normal and click File to assign a bitmap as the material color.

Fig 10-11

You can select any metal texture image for the purpose. I have included one that we are going to use now with the accompanying source file for this tutorial.

Repeat the procedure to assign the same file to the specular color. Now, on the perspective view shading menu choose smooth shade all and turn on Hardware texturing.

Select the robot, shift select the Material in the Hypershade, right-click-it and "assign material to selection". Your robot is now textured.

Now, before we render out our robot, we need to setup a simple light rig for the purpose.

Create a point light Create>Lights>Point Light, open the attribute editor (control-a), expand the shadows options and turn depth map shadows on. Press 7 to view the lighting in the view port, duplicate the light 2 or 3 times and move them around the robot until you get the desired look.

Open the render globals window from Window>Rendering Editors>Render Globals. Select the anti aliasing quality to production. Ready to go, Render out the scene.

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2009-09-14T11:22:00.002+05:30

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WHAT IS ANIMATION ?

2009-09-14T11:13:00.003+05:30

In addition to its ingest for entertainment, aliveness is thoughtful a modify of art. It is ofttimes displayed and celebrated in flick festivals throughout the world. Also utilised for educational purposes, aliveness has a locate in learning and instructional applications as well.

Cartoon aliveness is ofttimes thoughtful to be aliveness in its classic form. The animated cartoon prefabricated its debut in the early conception of the 20th century and calls for the ingest of 24 different drawings per second. In traditional animated cartoons, frames are hand drawn.

Animation is both time-consuming and costly to produce. For this reason, most of the aliveness prefabricated for broadcasting and flick is produced by professorial studios. However, there are also many autarkical studios. In fact, there are many resources, such as lower-cost aliveness programs and organisation networks, that attain the work of the autarkical animator much easier than it was in the past.

When aliveness is utilised for films or movies, each frame is produced on an individual basis. Frames crapper be produced using computers or photographs of images that are either worn or painted. Frames crapper also be generated by altering a help unit in small ways and using a primary camera to take pictures of the results. No matter what method is used, the flick or movie that results fools the eye into sight constant movement.

Persistence of exteroception is ofttimes sticking as the reason the eyes crapper be fooled into sight constant movement that isn't really happening. Basically, the mentality and the eyes cooperate, storing images for a plain fraction of a second. Minor jumps or blips are automatically ironed out by the brain. Since aliveness frames are shot at very fast rates, most individuals see the movement without stoppages.

Keep in nous that enduringness of exteroception is a theory and not a proven concept. Many flick academics and theorists accept its relevance to animation. However, there are some scientists that call the theory a complete myth.

Though the work of producing animated movies and cartoons crapper be intense and laborious, computer aliveness crapper attain the impact much faster. Computer technology is steadily improving, and professionals are healthy to create life-like characters using computers and primary aliveness software. However, complete animators are ease needed for producing calibre animations. After all, computers are not still capable of making artistic choices and transfer actual passion to simple images.

ANIMATION PRINCIPLES

2009-09-14T11:12:00.002+05:30

#1 SQUASH AND STRETCH

This state gives the illusion of weight and intensity to a case as it moves. Also squash and stretch is useful in invigorating dialogue and doing facial expressions. How extremity the ingest of squash and stretch is, depends on what is required in invigorating the scene. Usually it's broader in a short call of represent and subtler in a feature. It is used in all forms of case animation from a bouncing ball to the embody weight of a person walking. This is the most important element you will be required to master and will be used often.

#2 ANTICIPATION

This shitting prepares the audience for a field state the character is about to perform, much as, play to run, jump or modify expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards change occurs before the forward state is executed. The backward change is the anticipation. A comic effect can be done by not using anticipation after a series of gags that used anticipation. Almost all real state has field or secondary anticipation much as a pitcher's wind-up or a golfers' back swing. Feature animation is ofttimes less panoptic than brief animation unless a scene requires it to develop a characters personality.

#3 STAGING

A pose or state should clearly communicate to the conference the attitude, mood, reaction or intent of the character as it relates to the news and continuity of the news line. The trenchant use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in informing the story. There is a restricted turn of time in a film, so apiece sequence, environs and frame of film must relate to the coverall story. Do not confuse the conference with too many actions at once. Use one state clearly stated to get the intent across, unless you are animating a environs that is to depict clutter and confusion. Staging directs the audience's attention to the news or intent existence told. Care must be taken in scenery organisation so it isn't obscuring the aliveness or competing with it due to immoderateness discourse behind the animation. Background and aliveness should work unitedly as a pictorial organisation in a scene.

#4 STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION

Straight ahead animation starts at the first art and works art to art to the end of a scene. You crapper retrograde size, volume, and proportions with this method, but it does hit spontaneity and freshness. Fast, wild state scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more designed out and charted with key drawings done at intervals throughout the scene. Size, volumes, and proportions are controlled meliorate this way, as is the action. The lead animator module turn charting and keys over to his assistant. An assistant crapper be meliorate used with this method so that the animator doesn't hit to entertainer every art in a scene. An animator crapper do more scenes this artefact and concentrate on the thinking of the animation. Many scenes use a taste of both methods of animation.

#5 FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION

When the important embody of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the important accumulation of the character, much as arms, daylong hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, disc ears or a daylong cut (these study the path of action). Nothing stops all at once. This is study through. Overlapping action is when the character changes content while his clothes or material continues forward. The character is going in a newborn direction, to be followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the newborn direction. \"DRAG,\" in animation, for example, would be when Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes do not keep up with his legs. In features, this type of action is done more subtly. Example: When Snow White starts to dance, her coiffe does not begin to advise with her immediately but catches up a few frames later. Long material and birdlike cut module also be handled in the same manner. Timing becomes critical to the power of drag and the overlapping action.

#6 SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN

As state starts, we hit more drawings near the play pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the incoming pose. Fewer drawings attain the state faster and more drawings attain the state slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like. For a gag action, we haw omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the assail element. This module give more snap to the scene.

#7 ARCS

All actions, with some exceptions (such as the aliveness of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially genuine of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give aliveness a more natural action and better flow. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even receptor movements are executed on an arcs.

#8 SECONDARY ACTION

This state adds to and enriches the important state and adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the important action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward added character. The achievement is forceful, aggressive, and nervy leaning. The leg state is just short of a stomping walk. The alternative state is a some strong gestures of the blazonry working with the walk. Also, the possibility of dialogue being delivered at the same time with tilts and turns of the nous to accentuate the achievement and dialogue, but not so such as to distract from the achievement action. All of these actions should work together in hold of one another. Think of the achievement as the primary state and arm swings, nous snap and every other actions of the body as alternative or supporting action.

#9 TIMING

Expertise in timing comes prizewinning with undergo and personal experimentation, using the trial and nonachievement method in refining technique. The basics are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings attain the state faster and crisper. A difference of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement. Most aliveness is finished on twos (one art photographed on two frames of film) or on ones (one art photographed on apiece frame of film). Twos are used most of the time, and ones are used during camera moves such as trucks, pans and occasionally for subtle and quick dialogue animation. Also, there is timing in the acting of a character to found mood, emotion, and reaction to added character or to a situation. Studying shitting of actors and performers on stage and in films is useful when invigorating manlike or animal characters. This frame by frame examination of flick footage will aid you in discernment timing for animation. This is a great way to see from the others.

#10 EXAGGERATION

Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, ferocious action every the time. It¹s same a impersonation of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Action traced from live action flick crapper be accurate, but stiff and mechanical. In feature animation, a character must move more broadly to countenance natural. The same is genuine of facial expressions, but the action should not be as panoptic as in a short humor style. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye shitting or even a head turn will give your flick more appeal. Use good taste and ordinary sense to keep from decent too melodramatic and excessively animated

#11 SOLID DRAWING

The base principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the deceit of three magnitude apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life. You transform these into colouration and shitting giving the characters the deceit of three-and four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is shitting in space. The fourth magnitude is shitting in time.

#12 APPEAL

A springy entertainer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean meet being artful and cuddly. All characters hit to hit attractiveness whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will getting and involve the audience¹s interest. Early cartoons were basically a series of gags strung unitedly on a main theme. Over the years, the artists hit scholarly that to display a feature there was a need for news continuity, character development and a higher calibre of graphics throughout the whole production. Like all forms of news telling, the feature has to attractiveness to the mind as well as to the eye.

Beginner should be knowing basics of key frames, break downs and inbetweens, basic knowledge most principles and their covering and an eye for poses... for these guys, after working really hard, their animations look acceptable.. and a copule of principles are applied well, altho some of the others are goofed up.. these guys requirement to think most every thing at every initiate and they are commonly confused....
Intermediate would be doing the same things listed above with meliorate covering of principles but their characters dont yet come alive.. except occassionaly.... To these guys, their impact needs just that extra to make it look awsome.. they have to strive to get the principles into their work... but they atleast know where they fall and they try not to... with the guidance of experts, they can pull soured enthusiastic shorts pretty quickly... these represent most of the people.. the intermediate is a wide arrange of people, commonly consisting of feature animators and broad end mettlesome animators, to top quality students... The elite of this group are animators in places same Pixar and blue sky and ILM.. grouping same Rick O Conor, bobby beck, choreographer kelly, and the prizewinning here, would alter the line between intermediate and expert... this arrange covers the play feature animators and lowly animators to senior Game animators and feature animators... The alter between intermediate and expert is filled up by grouping same the Animation Supervisors or Character supervisors in the bounteous studios...
Expert is some digit the stature of Eric cartoonist or Glen Keane, where they dont *think* most principles at all.. they have them coming naturally, and every they think of is the action of the character...these guys struggle with clog same acting choices, case portrayal and stuff..
This is not a enthusiastic way to categorize but, Im pretty bright with it.. im still a originator at this.. and wish to impact another 2 to 3 years to accomplish the originator intermediate stage.. no digit knows when you become an expert, it suddenly happens and every digit notices... there are just a handful of experts..
Now, lets impact our asses soured to get out of the stinkin originator stage...

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Future of 3d Animation and Video Games

2008-07-26T09:35:00.000+05:30

The recording game and aliveness industry is about to verify another
leap nervy in the development calibre graphic images and animation.
The current crop of recording games run to apply low poly models in the
gaming environment. In the near future, more modern recording cards
will allow the ingest of more broad poly models. The differences module be
astounding. Other earth innovations are underway which module allow
artists to create visual simulations that module embellish a genuine virtual reality to the users. One such technology is used in the popular graphics software
Maya. In Maya, the creator can ingest a plugin titled Blast Code, by FerReel
Animation Labs, Inc. to create graphic explosions within the CG realm.
The program actually allows the creator to devastate and form actual
geometry on the fly. This has not been previously possible, and every the
explosions in recording games have been canned. Other technologies that
support these newborn innovations abound. Realflow is added technology
that speeds up practicality in CG. Here, liquid states and gelataneous states
of matter are simulated in a most convenient way. When you think of
how such of the uncolored surround is immersed in liquids, and
interracts with them, it is no wonder why this technology had to be
developed. Most people have played a recording game and have said to
themselves: \"Wow, that case is realistic!\" Imagine doing that when
the case has uncolored looking tears and droplets of sweat emitting
from pores in their CG skin. The technology for modern recreation is tied
directly to the innovations that are occurring in the earth of animation.
The motion represent industry module spend as such money on digit animated
movied as the US government module spend on immunodeficiency investigate during a given year. This vast amount of money is allowing companies like Alias, XSI,Discreet, and Newtek to spend large amounts of top on investigate and
development. This driving force is behindhand many of the innovations that
have prefabricated movies like "Finding Nemo" and "Shrek" staples for shildren
everywhere. New movies with even more modern and arguably better
animation calibre are enroute. Pixar's newborn movie "Cars", which is set for
a 2006 release date, may be a frontrunner to pass many fo these new
technologies and techniques. The lodging trusty does it justice. Another
fascinating movie that is existence prefabricated is titled "Delgo". It is existence made by Fathom studios, a rather small studio on the East coast. This may
indicate that digit of the earth innovations of aliveness technology, is the
new ability of smaller oranizations, and even eventually individuals to make
feature unification films. Some aspiring individuals and groups are already putting
this theory into practice. Many of these films are available on the internet
and are free to analyse and enjoy. Many sites have these films posted. A site
for every types of films is http://www.ifilm.com Thsi is a huge site with alot
of different films that you can watch. Another one, that is more specific to
animation, is http://www.3dexcellence.com Both of these sites module have
examples of the conception that exists discover there. When you look at some
of these films and recording game sequences, you module see that the newborn crop is tending to have more and more elaborate textures and models. The
lighting is decent more excited and realistic. The models are nto yet
high poly in recording games, but they are tending to be in animation. Soon
we module every have whatever very nice entertainment to look nervy to. I look
to the day when John histrion module again verify to the silver concealment and
say "saddle up".

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