IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | Hi! I'm George Maestri and I'll be
your instructor for this lesson. Today,
| | 00:04 | we're going to learn the basics of
Autodesk Maya 2008. Now, this is a 3D
| | 00:10 | modeling, rendering and animation
package. Maya has been around for about ten
| | 00:15 | years and actually it's been around
for longer than that, because before that
| | 00:19 | the company that created it, Alias
and Wavefront, both had packages that
| | 00:23 | stretched back into the late 80s.
| | 00:25 | So there is about 20 years of
development behind Maya, and so as such, it's a
| | 00:30 | very, very deep package. There is a
ton of features. You can do a lot. It's
| | 00:35 | used for motion pictures, games,
television, motion graphics, you name it, Maya
| | 00:42 | has probably done it and we're going
to scratch the surface of Maya today.
| | 00:46 | We're going to get you up and
running in Maya, but there is a lot more to
| | 00:49 | learn, every single module of Maya is
very deep and we can spend a long time
| | 00:54 | learning Maya.
| | 00:55 | So let's get everything
started and we'll go from there.
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| Starting Maya 2008| 00:00 | Starting Maya is fairly easy, but
before you even start Maya, you need to get a
| | 00:04 | copy of Maya. There's three basic
versions of Maya. One is called Maya
| | 00:10 | Complete, which is probably the most
common version that people have, and
| | 00:13 | that's $1,995. You can get those through
Autodesk retailers. There is also Maya
| | 00:18 | Unlimited, which I think is $6,495, and
that has a bunch of extra features such
| | 00:25 | as Clock, and it has Fluids, and some
of the more advanced features which you
| | 00:29 | may not need. So go ahead and check
the feature list to see which one you
| | 00:33 | would actually want.
| | 00:33 | There is also a Maya Personal
Learning Edition, which is free, and you can
| | 00:38 | actually get that through the Autodesk
website. All you have to do is go find
| | 00:42 | Autodesk Maya page, somewhere on
there. Here it is, Download the Personal
| | 00:47 | Learning Edition. Just click on that,
go through the procedure and you'll have
| | 00:50 | a free version of Maya.
| | 00:51 | Now, the thing about the Personal
Learning Edition is that it will render with
| | 00:56 | a watermark and I think the files are
tagged so that you can't load them into
| | 01:00 | the normal versions of Maya. But it's
perfectly good for learning, and if you
| | 01:05 | want to learn Maya, this is a great way
to start. If you want to see if Maya is a
| | 01:09 | package you want to buy,
again, it's a great place to start.
| | 01:12 | So once you've downloaded it and
installed it according to Autodesk's
| | 01:16 | instructions, it will put in the icon
there on your Desktop or something in
| | 01:20 | your Start menu, and all you have to do
is double-click and Maya will come up.
| | 01:25 | As Maya comes up, it will bring up
these Essential Skills movies. If you want
| | 01:31 | to even go through these, and these
are actually little movies that give you
| | 01:35 | some of the basics of Maya, similar
to what we're showing you. If you don't
| | 01:38 | want it to show that at startup,
you can just click that and close that.
| | 01:44 | And here we are in Maya.
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| Understanding Mac and PC differences| 00:00 | Now for those of you who are using
the Macintosh, the interface is pretty
| | 00:05 | consistent between Windows and Mac but
there is a difference in the keyboard.
| | 00:09 | The Macintosh keyboard is actually
physically different than the PC or the
| | 00:14 | LINUX keyboard. So on the PC, I will
be hitting the Alt key and then using my
| | 00:21 | mouse to navigate through the scenes.
Now, you do not have an Alt key on the Mac
| | 00:27 | keyboard. So, in that case, you would
substitute the Option key. The other
| | 00:32 | major difference is the Insert key. So
when I am moving a Pivot, I would hit
| | 00:39 | the Insert key. On the Macintosh, we
don't have an Insert key so you would be
| | 00:44 | using the Home key. For this, I will
try and call these out in the lessons but
| | 00:49 | just be sure that you remember the Alt
key is the Option key and the Insert key
| | 00:54 | is the Home key and pretty much everything
else should line up between Windows and the Mac.
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| Using a three-button mouse| 00:00 | The other thing that's really
important for using Maya is to go get a
| | 00:05 | three-button mouse. Now, most PCs come
with a three-button mouse. Apple still
| | 00:11 | hasn't gone over quite to the three-
button mouse, so if you don't have one
| | 00:14 | on your system, let me show you
a picture of what one looks like.
| | 00:17 | It's got three buttons. Now this is
critical for navigating within Maya.
| | 00:21 | You really just don't want to use one.
Here's another three-button mouse. I like
| | 00:25 | the ones with the scroll wheels in the
middle, because that also allows you to
| | 00:29 | zoom in Maya, but at least get
a three-button mouse like this.
| | 00:33 | They are only five, ten bucks at the
local office store, so just make the
| | 00:38 | investment and get one. It will save
you a whole lot of headaches when you are
| | 00:41 | using Maya.
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| A Note about Hardware Texturing| 00:00 | Now, before we actually get into Maya,
I do want to show you one more thing
| | 00:04 | and that's called hardware texturing.
This is how you can turn on and off
| | 00:09 | textures within Maya. Now, Maya uses
OpenGL based graphics cards, but in order
| | 00:15 | for those graphics cards to show the
textures you do need to turn it on in the
| | 00:19 | viewport within Maya. So actually I'm
going to go ahead and open the scene here.
| | 00:24 | This is the plane that we're actually
going to build in the tutorials, and one
| | 00:30 | of the things with this plane is that
as I load it up, you'll see that the
| | 00:33 | textures aren't on the airplane. Now,
sometimes when you load a file, you'll
| | 00:38 | see that the textures aren't showing
up and everything is gray. Well, don't
| | 00:41 | freak out. All you have to do is go
into Shading here in the viewport and turn
| | 00:47 | on Hardware Texturing and then that
will actually display the textures.
| | 00:52 | Now, the reason they do that is
because sometimes you really don't want to
| | 00:56 | show the texture because it will slow
down the display a little bit. It does
| | 01:00 | take a little extra processing power to
put those textures onto the objects and
| | 01:03 | display them. So if all you're doing
is animating, maybe you don't need the
| | 01:07 | textures.
| | 01:08 | You can see as I go into this four-
pane view that turning it on in one view
| | 01:13 | does not turn it on in other views. So
from in the top view I would still have
| | 01:17 | to go Shading > Hardware
Texturing to turn it on there.
| | 01:20 | Now, there is one more thing I want to
show you and that's how to adjust the
| | 01:24 | quality of these textures. We can do
that by going into Settings/Preferences
| | 01:31 | under Window and go into Preferences.
This basically brings up preferences for
| | 01:37 | all of Maya and we'll be using this a
little bit as we go through the lessons.
| | 01:42 | But the one I want to show you here
today is Display. And what this does is it
| | 01:47 | actually tells Maya how
to display these textures.
| | 01:51 | Now, there's a couple of things. One is,
do you want maximum texture display
| | 01:55 | resolution, which is how big is one of
the textures is going to be. Typically,
| | 01:59 | we just bring that up fairly high.
I typically bring it up to 2048, or 4096.
| | 02:04 | It depends on your graphics card. If you
have a fast graphics card just max it out,
| | 02:08 | because you'll be using
more of the memory of the card.
| | 02:12 | The other one is called Baked Viewport
Textures. Now what that is is how the
| | 02:16 | textures show up in the viewport.
If you're getting pixelation in your --
| | 02:21 | this one doesn't have pixilation, but if
you're getting pixelation in your textures,
| | 02:25 | and you want to see it more clearly,
turn this up. But if you turn it up
| | 02:29 | really high to High Quality, it can
significantly slow down Maya. So I
| | 02:35 | typically put this up to like one or
two. I usually just do it one notch at a
| | 02:39 | time until it looks good enough.
| | 02:42 | Then also, Maximum resolution for
swatches. And again I tend to put this up to
| | 02:46 | about 2k; you can put it higher. Again,
those are how big are the textures.
| | 02:50 | If you have more memory in your video card,
then you can put those higher.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to hit Save here. Those are some
of the things that you need to look at
| | 03:01 | when you're working with textures in Maya.
| | 03:03 | So as you go through the lessons, if
you have gray objects, just go ahead and
| | 03:08 | turn on Hardware Texturing. And if
your textures are pixelated, go ahead and
| | 03:12 | turn up the resolution.
So with that let's move on.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | Now, before we actually get into the
lesson, let's go ahead and talk about the
| | 00:04 | exercise files. As we work through
these lessons, I'm going to be pulling up
| | 00:09 | examples from these exercise files,
and you can find those on the lynda.com website.
| | 00:15 | This is actually the Maya 8 Training,
but the Maya 2008 will look pretty much
| | 00:19 | the same, and you'll have a SIT file
for the Mac, a ZIP file for the PC and for
| | 00:25 | Linux. Just go ahead and download that,
extract it and then just put it on your
| | 00:29 | Desktop so you have an
exercise files folder on your Desktop.
| | 00:33 | In that we have actually separate
folders for each chapter. If you go into
| | 00:39 | those, these are actually what we call
Maya projects and I'll talk about that
| | 00:43 | in a little bit, but each one of these
has a standard directory structure and
| | 00:46 | we put our scenes in the same
folders in each one of these.
| | 00:50 | So each of these is a Maya project
folder and then we have the big exercise
| | 00:54 | files, which actually has all of those.
So go ahead and install those on your
| | 00:59 | machine and then we'll get
started with the lessons.
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|
|
1. Interface EssentialsUnderstanding the Maya workflow| 00:00 | Now, before we actually get into the
hands-on, let me just show you a little
| | 00:03 | bit about the Maya workflow, about how
things are created in Maya. First thing
| | 00:09 | that happens is modeling. What we do
is we start with things like primitives,
| | 00:14 | primitive objects. We select them, we
put them into the scene and we reshape
| | 00:19 | them to create objects. In fact, I'm
going to go ahead and open the scene here
| | 00:25 | and this is actually the project that
we're going to do. We are actually going
| | 00:27 | to build an airplane.
| | 00:29 | So what we do is we actually start
modeling and we actually model the shape of
| | 00:34 | an object out of either NURBS or
polygon surfaces and I'll explain those as we
| | 00:40 | go. There's actually two types of
surfaces in Maya. And then once we've built
| | 00:46 | everything for our object, we tie it
all together into a hierarchy using the
| | 00:52 | Outliner. So now I've got my airplane
and I've got all my stuff for my airplane
| | 00:56 | within what's called the hierarchy.
Then after I've got everything built, then
| | 01:02 | I can put the texture on it, OK.
| | 01:05 | So once we've built it, once we sculpt it,
we paint it, OK, and so basically we
| | 01:11 | paint it by putting textures on it.
This is very similar to the real world
| | 01:15 | process and we take that gray airplane,
such as this, and we put images on it
| | 01:25 | and make it look pretty.
| | 01:28 | Then once we've got everything modeled
and textured, we start adding lights to
| | 01:33 | the scene to light it much like you
would in a photography studio and you can
| | 01:38 | put cameras into the scene, again much
like photography, and then once we have
| | 01:42 | all that done, we can animate.
| | 01:48 | Once we've got it all lit and ready
to render, we can start to animate the
| | 01:52 | scene. So again the steps are we model,
then we texture, then we light, then
| | 01:59 | we animate, then we render. Lighting
and animation actually can occur in
| | 02:03 | different order, but that's the order
that we'll go through these lessons in.
| | 02:07 | So now let's go ahead and actually
get into the meat of learning Maya.
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| Understanding the Maya interface| 00:00 | By now you've installed and have loaded
Maya and have it up on your screen. Go
| | 00:05 | ahead and do that if you haven't. For
those who are brand new to Maya, opening
| | 00:10 | it up for the first time probably is a
bewildering experience, because there is
| | 00:14 | a ton of buttons and a ton of little
controls here and there. It looks like the
| | 00:17 | cockpit of a 747 sometimes. But
everything is fairly logically arranged. So,
| | 00:23 | let me just kind of go over the general
map of where everything is at in Maya.
| | 00:29 | Along the top, you'll see a very
familiar File, Edit, Modify series of menus
| | 00:34 | and that actually just goes on over to
the right here. There is a set of these
| | 00:39 | first five, or actually first six, are
actually constant. File, Edit, Modify,
| | 00:44 | Create, Display and Window are all the
same, no matter what. But the other menus
| | 00:49 | can actually change, depending
upon what menu set you have selected.
| | 00:55 | So for example, up here in the
Animation menu set, you'll see after Window you
| | 00:59 | have Animate, and all these other sets
of menus for animation tools. If I go to
| | 01:06 | a modeling one, such as for Polygonal
modeling, you'll notice these change to
| | 01:10 | Mesh-based tools. Surfaces. Again, if
you go to this different menu set you'll
| | 01:16 | see tools for modeling NURBS
Surfaces, and so on. You can also create your
| | 01:22 | own custom menu sets.
| | 01:24 | Now these menus here can also be torn
off. Anytime you see a double line here,
| | 01:28 | you can just click on that double line
and it will tear off. So that way you
| | 01:33 | can go through any of these menus. You
can also go through these sub-menus and
| | 01:36 | tear those off as well.
| | 01:38 | Now, again I did mention the menu sets
here, but also we have another toolbar
| | 01:45 | along the top. Now, before I go on, I
do want to mention that I'm working at a
| | 01:50 | reduced rate, a reduced screen size.
I'm working at 1024x768, which is actually
| | 01:56 | about a notch lower than what Autodesk
recommends. 1280x1024 is probably the
| | 02:02 | minimum screen size you'll want with
Maya. I'm going to be a little crunched
| | 02:05 | during this lesson, so I'm going to
have to move windows around so bear with
| | 02:09 | me for that. But we have to record it
at a slightly lower resolution so that
| | 02:13 | way we can stream it over the Internet.
| | 02:15 | So here, along the top we've got a menu
bar and we've got once here for create
| | 02:21 | new scene, open scene, so on and so
forth. Notice how when I put my mouse over it,
| | 02:25 | a little Help menu does come up.
So if you don't know what a button does,
| | 02:28 | just put your mouse over
it and it will tell you.
| | 02:31 | We also have some tools here for
looking at the scene in different ways. If you
| | 02:35 | want to look at the scene from modeling,
you'll put it in Component Mode, this
| | 02:39 | is an Object Mode, this is Hierarchy
Mode. We'll go through those as we work.
| | 02:43 | We also have what are called,
here we have what are called, Selection Masks.
| | 02:48 | So basically we can turn off certain
types of objects in the scene so that you
| | 02:53 | don't accidentally select them. So if
you're working with say, the bones of a
| | 02:57 | character, you can turn everything
else off and only select those animation
| | 03:01 | joints or whatever. We also have a Lock
Selection here, so if you actually have
| | 03:05 | something selected you can
lock it so you don't de-select it.
| | 03:08 | We also have some Snap tools, so if
you were moving objects you can snap them
| | 03:13 | to each other or to the grid. We also
have little Render buttons here and
| | 03:19 | almost all of these are replicated in
the menu system. We also have Render,
| | 03:25 | Render Curve Frame, we have a Render
Settings window. We'll get into all these
| | 03:29 | as we go through rendering.
| | 03:30 | Now, over here on the very far end,
we have a set of three buttons here and
| | 03:35 | these control what happens on the right
side of the screen. Now typically, this
| | 03:39 | will come up with the channel box.
If I actually left-click on this airplane
| | 03:42 | you'll see, these are the attributes
for this airplane. This told me where it
| | 03:47 | is in terms of translation and
rotation and so on and so forth.
| | 03:51 | This is called the Channel Box. If
I want to, I can hide that by just
| | 03:56 | double-clicking on this. This is when
it goes with the Channel Box, one at the
| | 03:59 | far right. This one here opens up Tool
Settings. So if I go into a particular
| | 04:04 | tool such as the Move tool, it gives me
all the settings for that tool. The one
| | 04:08 | that we are actually going to use a lot
is the one on far left here and that's
| | 04:12 | called the Attribute Editor.
| | 04:13 | What the Attribute Editor does is allow
us to get into very specific attributes
| | 04:18 | for the airplane, such as how it
shaded, any modifiers that we've put on the
| | 04:22 | airplane and we'll go through that
again. But just know that we can get the
| | 04:25 | Attribute Editor by hitting this
button or by hitting Ctrl+A and that will
| | 04:30 | always get you into the Attribute Editor.
But typically I usually work with the
| | 04:34 | Channel Box active, so I'm
going to go ahead and bring that up.
| | 04:37 | Now along the top here, we also have
what's called Shelves. Now, these kind of
| | 04:43 | just come with Maya and what they are
is iconic representations of what's in
| | 04:48 | the menu system. So if we go here to
Surfaces, you can just left-click and drag
| | 04:53 | and create a sphere or whatever you
want. You can create any type of object.
| | 04:59 | Then there's other tools for Animation,
Dynamics, Rendering, PaintEffects
| | 05:03 | and so on.
| | 05:03 | You can also create your own custom
shelves. Well, I'm not going to show you
| | 05:07 | how to do that right now, but you can
create your own custom tools and make
| | 05:10 | your own tool shelves here. So that
way you can be more efficient. In other
| | 05:15 | words, you can do things like macros.
So if you do a set of operations
| | 05:19 | repeatedly, you can create your own
buttons so you can do those operations
| | 05:24 | again and again.
| | 05:26 | So here I have my Selection, Move and
Scale tools and we'll be getting into
| | 05:30 | those in the other lessons. Now, this
one down here allows us to change how we
| | 05:35 | view the scene and change our
viewports to different types. Again, we'll get
| | 05:39 | into viewports a little bit more.
| | 05:41 | I just want to give a brief overview
here. And along the bottom here we have a
| | 05:45 | time slider so that we can scrub
through our animation and add some additional
| | 05:50 | tools down here for MEL commands,
which are basically commands that you can
| | 05:54 | type into Maya. So that's the
general layout of the Maya interface.
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| Working with files and Maya projects| 00:00 | Maya has a very specific way to manage
files. It uses a series of directories
| | 00:05 | called Projects that it likes to use to
place all the things that are required
| | 00:10 | to create a Maya scene. So you probably
should get used to using Projects. Let
| | 00:14 | me show you the basics of that. I'm
going to go ahead and minimize Maya here,
| | 00:18 | and we're going to go into our exercise files,
which should be on our Desktop here.
| | 00:22 | Now I've got all of these folders and
each folder has a series of directories.
| | 00:28 | Now, each of these directories has some
very specific names: scenes, textures,
| | 00:34 | images and so on. What it is these
files are named this because that's what
| | 00:40 | Maya likes them to be called. So what
I need to do is before I start any of
| | 00:44 | these lessons, I'm going to actually
load in here. I'm going to go ahead and
| | 00:47 | we're going to set what's called a Project.
| | 00:49 | So go File > Project > Set, and what I
can do is I can go onto my Desktop, into
| | 00:56 | my exercise files, and I just pick the
project that I want. We're actually in
| | 01:02 | Chapter 1. So I'm going to go ahead
and select 01 and hit OK. Once I do that,
| | 01:07 | when I go File > Open Scene, it will
actually put me into my 01 scenes directory.
| | 01:14 | Now let's take a look a little bit
about what's involved in a Project. We go
| | 01:19 | Project. If we want to, we can create
a new project and what this does, if we
| | 01:26 | use the defaults here, they'll tell
you what the name of the scenes file is,
| | 01:29 | where images are, source images, such
as backing plates for matching to live
| | 01:35 | action, sound, where do we want to
render our scenes at, where do we want
| | 01:40 | images at. Basically just everything
that it needs for creating the project.
| | 01:48 | So what's going to happen is that Maya
is going to look in these places first
| | 01:52 | for its data. So it's always best to
work with projects because everybody who
| | 01:57 | uses Maya, if you have to pass your
work off to somebody else, they'll probably
| | 02:00 | want to have their work come in
the project directory structure.
| | 02:05 | So as we start every chapter, before
we start loading files I'm going to
| | 02:10 | probably ask you to set your project
and that's what I'm talking about. So,
| | 02:14 | once you've got that set,
everything else should flow smoothly.
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| Navigating viewports| 00:00 | Now that we've set our project, let's
go ahead and open a file. Now I've got my
| | 00:05 | project set to exercise files/01.
Let's make sure we've done that. Now, let's
| | 00:13 | go ahead and open a scene. Let's go
ahead and open Plane01.mb, which is that
| | 00:20 | airplane and it's all textured and pretty.
| | 00:22 | Now, actually as I have shown you,
I actually just zoomed in on that and let
| | 00:28 | me show you how to navigate these
viewports within Maya. The key is that Alt
| | 00:34 | key on the keyboard or the Apple/
Command key on the Macintosh keyboard and
| | 00:39 | this is where the three-button
mouse comes in very, very handy. How you
| | 00:43 | navigate a viewport in Maya is you
hold down the Alt key and then you left
| | 00:48 | click. If you left click, you rotate
around your view. If you middle-click,
| | 00:54 | you pan. so you can drag it left, right,
up and down. If you right-click, you zoom.
| | 01:01 | OK. So basically you've got three
buttons and three actions, one, so left,
| | 01:07 | middle, right, OK. So go ahead
and play with that for a little bit.
| | 01:16 | Once you get the hang of it, let me
show you a little bit more about viewports.
| | 01:21 | Viewports in Maya, we have a couple of
different types. As I have showed you
| | 01:26 | along here we can actually switch
from our main Perspective viewport to a
| | 01:32 | four-view. What this four-view does is
gives you a top/front/side view. We can
| | 01:38 | also do some other things. We can go in
Perspective and Outliner and I'll talk
| | 01:42 | about the Outliner in a little bit.
But there are many different ways to view
| | 01:46 | things to view your viewports in Maya.
| | 01:49 | Now, the one thing I do want to point
out is that there's really two classes of
| | 01:53 | viewports. We have this Perspective
window which allows us to rotate, but in
| | 01:58 | the top, front and side viewport,
these are what we call orthographic
| | 02:02 | viewports. They don't allow you to
rotate, so you can only zoom or pan; you
| | 02:08 | can't rotate. See how it says
that negative, don't do that sign?
| | 02:12 | We also have this little box here and
this allows us to change our views within
| | 02:19 | the viewport. So if I click here,
I've got my front view. I can click down
| | 02:23 | there to get to my bottom view, left
view. If I click here, I can rotate that
| | 02:30 | view and I can make an orthographic view,
so on and so forth. So I can actually
| | 02:36 | change my viewport just by clicking on that box.
| | 02:40 | There is another way to change viewports.
In fact, I'm going to go ahead and go
| | 02:45 | back into my Perspective viewport. Now,
you can switch between viewports just
| | 02:52 | by hitting the Spacebar. So if I click
in the Perspective viewport, and I hit
| | 02:56 | the Spacebar, I can toggle between
that and the previous layout. So I can go
| | 03:03 | from full screen to my four-view,
just by hitting the Spacebar, OK.
| | 03:08 | Now, if you hit the Spacebar and Home
you're going to get a menu and I'm going
| | 03:12 | to talk about that a little bit later.
So what you have to do is just tap that
| | 03:16 | Spacebar. So if you tap it, it works,
if you hold it, you get what's called the
| | 03:20 | hotbox, and I will talk
about that a little bit later.
| | 03:22 | Now, when you're in a viewport, you
can also change the type of viewport. You
| | 03:26 | can change it by hitting this little
box here. But you also can just go Panels
| | 03:30 | and then you can change it. So if I
wanted to actually do a front viewport I
| | 03:34 | can just go into Orthographic, and do a
front viewport, or if I want to go back
| | 03:39 | into my Perspective viewport I can do it there.
| | 03:42 | You can also make these viewports into
any other type of window. So as we go
| | 03:48 | through Maya, you're going to be
working with things like the Outliner, the
| | 03:51 | Graph Editor, the Dope Sheet, the
Texture Editors, and all of these different
| | 03:56 | types of editing programs. You can
actually stick them in a viewport, so that
| | 03:59 | it makes it easier to work.
| | 04:01 | So for example, if I was in this four-
view, I could actually makes this one
| | 04:06 | what's called a Hypershade window,
which would give me tools to -- I'm really
| | 04:12 | tight here, but this will give me
tools to work with the textures that I
| | 04:15 | put on the airplane.
| | 04:16 | Now, another thing you can do is, if
you're in one of these multi-views, if you
| | 04:21 | put your mouse over the panes here,
you can actually slide them and make them
| | 04:27 | bigger or smaller. So you can actually
rearrange the orientation of these. I'm
| | 04:33 | going to go back into my
Perspective window here.
| | 04:37 | There's also some other options here
for shading. If we go here to Shading, we
| | 04:41 | can view in Wireframe, we can view in
Smooth Shaded mode. Now when you're in
| | 04:46 | Smooth Shaded mode, in order to see
textures, you need to have this little
| | 04:50 | button clicked. Now, typically this is
off, this is called Hardware Texturing.
| | 04:54 | If you just go into Shaded mode, it
will show you the rough shading of the
| | 04:59 | object. If you want to see the actual
textures on the object, you need to make
| | 05:04 | sure you turn Hardware Texturing on.
| | 05:08 | There's also some other ones here. You
can Flat Shade it, and what Flat Shading
| | 05:12 | does is it basically shows you the
facets of the object. I like Smooth Shade.
| | 05:18 | You can also do Wireframe on Shaded,
and that shows you the actual wireframes
| | 05:24 | of your object over your shaded model,
and that's a really good way to see
| | 05:28 | where the detail is on your model.
| | 05:30 | I'm going to turn that off. We can also
do what's called X-Ray. What X-Ray does
| | 05:35 | is basically allows you to do see
through. So if you select an object, you can
| | 05:38 | actually see through it and model it,
but still kind of see the shape of the
| | 05:43 | object. So those are some
of the basics of Shading.
| | 05:47 | You can also change Lighting, you can
use the Default Lighting, you can use
| | 05:50 | what's called All Lights. So if there
are lights in the scene, which there are
| | 05:54 | in this one, it will actually show you
how the lights affect the object. You
| | 05:59 | can also use Selected Lights, so
actually what you have to do is go out and
| | 06:03 | select a light, in order to see how
that light is affecting the scene. Again,
| | 06:07 | it's really great for lighting. I
have to see for working with lights.
| | 06:15 | You can also turn on whether or not you
want to have shadows or not. Now here,
| | 06:21 | we can also turn on what's called Show.
In fact, I'm going to tear this menu
| | 06:25 | off. I'm going to click on this double
line here. What Show does is allows us
| | 06:30 | to turn on and off certain types of
object. So you can turn off Polygonal
| | 06:36 | objects, you can turn off NURBS
Surfaces. I can hide the Cameras, the Lights,
| | 06:44 | anything.
| | 06:44 | I can actually hide things in my scene,
so that way I don't even see them in
| | 06:48 | this particular viewport. So I can hide
the Grid, that's something I do a lot.
| | 06:54 | So that's kind of nice. So you can
only show specific objects. This is really
| | 06:58 | great for narrowing down your scene.
If you're working with a certain type of
| | 07:01 | object, you can hide everything else.
So that way you're only working with
| | 07:05 | what's needed.
| | 07:06 | You can also do Default or High Quality
Rendering. Now, High Quality Rendering
| | 07:12 | will slow down the viewport a little
bit. So typically, I just do Default
| | 07:16 | Quality Rendering. So those are some
of the basics. Under the View menu,
| | 07:21 | there's a couple of other things here.
One of the ones I like to use is under
| | 07:25 | Camera Settings, you can use what's
called a Film Gate or Resolution Gate and
| | 07:29 | this will show you exactly what you are
rendering when you actually do go to render.
| | 07:34 | You can also have couple of
options here, such as Frame All and Frame
| | 07:38 | Selection. So if have an object
selected and it's all the way over there,
| | 07:42 | I can actually just frame my selection.
I could zoom in and frame whatever
| | 07:46 | objects are currently selected.
| | 07:48 | So those are the basics of viewports.
Now let's go ahead and move on from here.
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| Using the hotbox| 00:00 | Now, I give you a sneak peak at that
menu called the hotbox and let me show
| | 00:04 | you little bit more about it. When you
hit the Spacebar, if you tap it, it will
| | 00:08 | switch between different types of
viewports in Maya. But if you hold it down,
| | 00:12 | it will bring up a menu called the hotbox.
| | 00:14 | Now, this is great way to get to your
main menu items while you are in the
| | 00:18 | middle of Maya, you don't want to have
to move your mouse all the way up here
| | 00:22 | to get to any one of these menus. So
what you do is you hit your Spacebar and
| | 00:26 | hold it, you can get your File, Edit,
Modify, Create. All these menus along here.
| | 00:32 | You can actually get to them
right at the mouse, which is really nice. So,
| | 00:36 | all of these options are available at the mouse.
| | 00:39 | Now, there are some other additional
options that you have and one is called
| | 00:43 | Recent Command. So anything that you
have done before, you can just go here and
| | 00:46 | just find that last command and just
repeat it. You can also hit the hot key of
| | 00:50 | G and that will also repeat the command.
Let me talk a little bit more about
| | 00:55 | the hotbox.
| | 00:56 | If you click in the middle here, you
can actually change what view you have. So,
| | 00:59 | for example I'm in the Perspective view,
if I want to I can go into my top view
| | 01:03 | just right here. OK, so basically it's
almost like a gestural thing. You can
| | 01:10 | just hit the Spacebar and just move
your mouse just a little bit and let go and
| | 01:15 | you can almost immediately go from
view to view. It can get very fast if you
| | 01:20 | really kind of build in the muscle
memory for doing that. It makes it very fast.
| | 01:24 | Now if you go over here, we have hotbox
controls and this basically says which
| | 01:27 | menu set you want to show. Now,
remember we have all these different menu sets here.
| | 01:33 | If I want to, I can go back into
my hotbox and say well, I want to Show
| | 01:37 | Surfaces rendering. I can Show All or
I can show any one these. So let's go
| | 01:41 | ahead and do Show All.
| | 01:43 | When you do that, it basically shows
all of your menu sets, which is kind of
| | 01:46 | nice because you don't have to keep
to switching menu sets up in Maya and I
| | 01:50 | personally just leave my hotbox on
Show All. So that way I can just get to
| | 01:55 | every single menu very quickly
without having to switch between menu sets.
| | 01:59 | So that's the basics of the hotbox. Go
ahead and play with that, learn how to
| | 02:03 | use it and we are going to go
ahead and move on from here.
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| Working with Marking Menus technology| 00:00 | Another type of menu that you can have
at your mouse is called a Marking Menu.
| | 00:05 | Let me show you how those works.
| | 00:06 | Let's go ahead and open that scene we
had before Plane01. And I'm going to do
| | 00:12 | zoom in here. I'm going to hold down
the Alt or the Command key and right-click and
| | 00:15 | zoom in and use my Left Arrow to rotate.
| | 00:19 | Now the Marking Menu basically is a
context sensitive menu that occurs when you
| | 00:24 | right-click over something. So if I
right-click over this object here, which is
| | 00:29 | a polygonal object, you will see I have
kind of a menu here where I can go into
| | 00:33 | those sub-objects for this airplane body.
| | 00:36 | So if I wanted to enter the vertices
of this body, I can do that. I want to
| | 00:40 | edit the face, faces of this object I can.
If I want to go back into Object mode, I can.
| | 00:47 | Now, if I go over a different type of
object, like for example this propeller
| | 00:51 | or this cowl. Actually, let's go over
this cowl of this airplane, which is
| | 00:54 | actually a NURBS surface. If I right-
click over this, you will see that these
| | 00:58 | are different because the
type of surface is different.
| | 01:01 | So instead of vertices, faces and
edges, I have Isoparms, Control Vertices,
| | 01:07 | Hulls, and so on. So you actually have
those tools for editing that particular
| | 01:12 | type of object. All of these will have
an Object mode, which kind of gets you
| | 01:15 | out of that mode and as we get into
modeling, we will be using this a lot.
| | 01:20 | Now, each of these menus also has some
additional options here. Again I'm just
| | 01:25 | right-clicking here. You can go into
Paint options. If I want to, I can go to
| | 01:30 | 3D Paint. I can sculpt it, and we will
get into those as we go through the lessons.
| | 01:34 | We also have actions. So for example
you can template an object and what
| | 01:38 | templating does is it makes the object
so you can't select it. So basically, it
| | 01:44 | creates a template. So you can
actually use it as a kind of as thing to model
| | 01:47 | over. So you don't accidentally
select it. If you want to, you can also
| | 01:51 | un-template that.
| | 01:55 | We also can also assign materials from
this. So if I want to, I can assign a
| | 01:59 | different type of material, as we get
into the Material Editor and doing texturing,
| | 02:03 | you will be using a lot of these.
And we can also assign existing
| | 02:07 | materials to it.
| | 02:08 | So there are a number of options
under the Marking Menus. Now, each type of
| | 02:12 | object will have different Marking
Menus. But just note, if you right-click
| | 02:16 | over it, you will get the Marking Menu
that's appropriate for whatever it is
| | 02:19 | you are working with.
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| Working with layers| 00:00 | Another way to organize your data in
Maya is to use layers. Now, layers are
| | 00:05 | something that we'll probably be using
a little bit later in the chapters as we
| | 00:09 | start creating more and more complex
scenes, but let me show you some of the
| | 00:12 | basics of it.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to go ahead and open a scene,
and we are going to open the scene
| | 00:17 | called Kitchen.mb. What this is is
basically just a standard kitchen scene. If
| | 00:23 | we wanted to, we could actually
segment this into what we call layers.
| | 00:27 | Now, if we go into our Channel Box here,
you will notice that there are three
| | 00:32 | buttons here. There is one that says
Show Channel Box, Show Layers or Show
| | 00:37 | Channel Box And Layers.
| | 00:39 | Now that's the default to Show Channel
Box And Layers. And what we have here is
| | 00:43 | we have a Window that allows us to
essentially organize the scene by layer.
| | 00:48 | Let me just show you how this works.
If I click here, and I go Create Empty
| | 00:52 | Layer, what it does is it creates a
layer in the scene. Now, I can select the
| | 00:56 | objects in the scene, and I can add
those selected objects by right-clicking
| | 01:06 | over the layer. I just go Add Selected Objects.
| | 01:08 | So now I have a layer with the table
and chairs in it. If I Double-click on
| | 01:13 | this, I can just call this say,
Furniture. And now, I have a layer that just
| | 01:20 | includes the Furniture in the room.
| | 01:22 | Now, I have some options here. I can
turn those on or off. Actually, I didn't
| | 01:25 | select everything there. OK, I just
selected the tabletop and not that actual table.
| | 01:29 | Well, what I can do is, I can turn
those on and off. I can template those, and
| | 01:35 | so I can manage these. And you can
also set these up, so that you have render
| | 01:39 | layers, so you can render things out to
separate files depending upon the type
| | 01:43 | of object.
| | 01:44 | So typically in a scene, I'm actually
going to open a scene here from another
| | 01:49 | lesson here. I'm actually going to go
out into Lesson 9, and there is actually
| | 01:56 | a scene here called Plane02.
| | 01:59 | Now, this is actually going to be a
little bit -- it's more of a complex scene
| | 02:08 | here, because what we've used is
the feature called Paint Effects.
| | 02:13 | This is a good use of layers. Here is
our airplane in a big field, and what I
| | 02:18 | have done is I have actually put the
Paint Effects on to a layer, so that way I
| | 02:23 | can turn off all the foliage which is
what, will drag down your scene. So when
| | 02:27 | you are interacting all of this
foliage, can actually add a lot to your
| | 02:30 | interactivity.
| | 02:31 | So you can turn that off, and then I
put the plane and I put the background on
| | 02:35 | separate layers as well. So as you
can see layers can be very useful for
| | 02:39 | organizing your scenes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Manipulating ObjectsSelecting objects| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going to learn
how to select and manipulate objects,
| | 00:05 | such as move, rotate, and scale them.
So let's start with some basic selection,
| | 00:11 | how to select objects in Maya. Because
we are in a new chapter, we are going
| | 00:15 | to start by setting a new project.
| | 00:17 | So I'm going to go File > Project > Set
and then I'm going to scroll down to 02,
| | 00:24 | which is our chapter number, and hit OK.
| | 00:29 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and open a
file. So we just go to Open Scene, and if
| | 00:34 | you notice here we are in Exercise Files/02,
and under Scenes, select Kitchen Table,
| | 00:43 | which is the only file out there
right now. And you will notice, it's a
| | 00:48 | table and chairs with some stuff on the table.
| | 00:51 | So in this scene, we have a number of
different objects. If I want to, I can
| | 00:56 | select one or more of these objects, so
I can do stuff to them. Like I can move
| | 01:01 | them, rotate them, I can apply textures.
In Maya you are going to be selecting
| | 01:05 | objects all the time.
| | 01:06 | So let's go through some of the basics
of how to do that. First thing you can
| | 01:09 | do is, just left click on an object.
So if I want to select this chair, just
| | 01:13 | left-click on it, and it highlights.
You can even see the name of the object here.
| | 01:17 | This object is called Chair1. If
I left click on this chair, notice it's
| | 01:22 | just called the Chair. Click here and
it's called Chairforbox. If I click on
| | 01:28 | this one, that's called Orange and so on.
| | 01:31 | Now, if I want to select multiple
objects, you can Shift-select as you can in
| | 01:36 | most applications. So I can select this
chair by left clicking on it. Hold down
| | 01:40 | the Shift key and select another chair,
select the spoon, some of the oranges,
| | 01:48 | whatever.
| | 01:48 | Now one thing you should notice is,
as I'm selecting these objects, always
| | 01:53 | notice the very last one I
select is highlighted in green.
| | 01:58 | So as I select things, you will
notice that the last thing selected goes to
| | 02:02 | white, and then when I currently
select, goes to green. So let's try that
| | 02:06 | again. So I select this chair, and you
notice how the chair is highlighted in green.
| | 02:11 | If I Shift-select the other chair, now
that other chair is highlighted in green
| | 02:17 | and the original chair is highlighted in white.
| | 02:19 | Now why is that important? In Maya, a
lot of times the order that you select
| | 02:24 | things, is important when you've got a
model or texture or lightings. There's a
| | 02:30 | number of places in Maya where the
operation will happen on the last thing
| | 02:34 | selected. So knowing that the last
thing selected is green, will help you in
| | 02:40 | those situations, and we will get into
those as we go through Maya, and as we
| | 02:43 | get deeper into Maya.
| | 02:45 | So there are other ways in addition to
Shift-selecting, you can just left click
| | 02:49 | and drag and rubber band things. So I
can select everything in the scene. I can
| | 02:53 | select just this part of the scene,
and what happens with the left click and
| | 02:59 | drag is anything within the box. So
anything that touches over the box gets selected.
| | 03:06 | There is also a Lasso tool. So if I go
over here to my toolbar, I can click the
| | 03:11 | Lasso tool, and I can select that way
as well. So you can see, you can actually
| | 03:17 | Lasso things. And this is really handy,
if you are like, really want to just
| | 03:22 | select a few things and not everything else.
| | 03:24 | You can also use the Ctrl key. So if I
hit Ctrl, I can deselect a new object I
| | 03:31 | want. You can also hit Shift. If you
hold down Shift, you can select and
| | 03:36 | deselect those ones. But if you
hold down Ctrl, it's only Deselect.
| | 03:41 | So Ctrl is really handy if you
want to just rubber band and deselect a
| | 03:44 | bunch of things. If I hold down Shift
and I select and then I hold down Shift
| | 03:49 | and rubber band again, then I'm
going to be selecting and deselecting.
| | 03:54 | With Ctrl, you actually deselect everything.
| | 03:57 | So now that we understand a little bit
about how to select objects, let's go
| | 04:01 | ahead and move on to moving,
rotating, and scaling objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Move tool| 00:00 | Once you know how to select an object,
then you can do stuff with it, such as
| | 00:04 | move it, rotate it, scale it.
Let me show you how to do that.
| | 00:07 | We are going to open actually that same
file we had KitchenTable in 02\Scenes.
| | 00:15 | And this is our little kitchen table.
So let's select an object and move it around.
| | 00:20 | Now, one of the things I want to tell
you right before we get into selecting,
| | 00:24 | moving and rotating and all that, is
that there are some really great keyboard
| | 00:27 | shortcuts and those are called the
QWERTY tools actually because they are the
| | 00:31 | top row of the keyboard. Q, W, E and R
are the real handy ones. So Q is Select,
| | 00:39 | which is what we've just learned about,
W is move, E rotate, and R is scale.
| | 00:48 | So as you work through Maya, you are
going to become very familiar with these
| | 00:52 | keyboard shortcuts. So Q, W, E, and R.
Select, Move, Rotate, Scale. So let's
| | 00:56 | say I want to move something.
| | 00:58 | Well, I can select it by hitting Q or
going over here to my Select tool, or I
| | 01:05 | can just hit W, which puts me in the
Move mode, and when you are in Move mode,
| | 01:10 | you can also select. So any one of these
Move, Rotate, and Scale tools are also
| | 01:18 | allow you to select objects.
| | 01:19 | So if I want to move things around, I
just click on it and then up comes this
| | 01:23 | little gizmo, which allows us to move
the object in the three dimensions. So we
| | 01:30 | have X, Y and Z. So R, G and B stand
for X, Y, and Z. So let me click off that
| | 01:36 | and click on it again.
| | 01:37 | You will notice how these are three
colors R, G, B. R, G, B equals X, Y, Z. So
| | 01:45 | this is X, Y, and Z. And if you have
your Channel Box up, you will notice here
| | 01:50 | that this also has your X, Y, and Z
values here. But, if you want to move it,
| | 01:55 | you just literally can select this middle one
and you can move it in all three dimensions.
| | 02:01 | If you select one of these, so for
example if I just select the red one,
| | 02:06 | I'm moving it in X. If I select the blue
one, I'm moving it in Z and of course
| | 02:12 | green is Y, which is up and down. So
that makes it very easy to precisely
| | 02:18 | position your objects because you know
that you are moving it along one of the
| | 02:23 | axes when you've got just
one of these arrows selected.
| | 02:28 | Now also notice here, when we have our
Channel Box active, what's the Channel
| | 02:32 | Box, let's go through this again. We
have got the Attribute in there, and we
| | 02:37 | have got our tool Settings,
and here we have the Channel Box.
| | 02:40 | Now, what the Channel Box is, is it
gives us all of the values for the objects.
| | 02:45 | So this object is at -4.5 in X, 3.5
something in Y, and 3.995 in Z. So as I
| | 02:55 | move them, you will notice
how these numbers change.
| | 02:57 | Now, if I want, I can just type in a
number, and actually position it very
| | 03:03 | accurately. I can left click, drag,
and select all of these and just type in
| | 03:09 | one number and they are all equal to same.
| | 03:10 | So for example, if I want to move
this to 0 which is the origin. I can just
| | 03:16 | select all of these, and hit 0, and
then I will move it to the origin of the
| | 03:22 | scene, which is 000. And we move
that back up, so we can see it.
| | 03:30 | Now, another thing you can do, and
this is a great little trick, is that you
| | 03:34 | can select one of these values in the
Channel Box, really any of these values,
| | 03:38 | and this is another reason I have a
three button mouse is if you middle-click
| | 03:43 | and drag, it will change that value.
| | 03:47 | So if I want to translate it in Y for
example, I highlight this, go put my
| | 03:52 | mouse over the Viewport, middle-click
and drag, and then it will move it up
| | 03:56 | and down. And I don't have to be on
the object. You don't have to use it just
| | 04:00 | for rotation. There are a lot of
values that show up in the Channel Box that
| | 04:03 | you can use this for. Morph targets or
any values for shaders, really anything.
| | 04:09 | And it's a great tool to be able
to just middle-click and drag that.
| | 04:12 | Now, moving multiple objects, we can
always just Shift-select and select
| | 04:18 | multiple objects and we can also move
multiple objects as well. OK, let's move
| | 04:26 | on to rotate and scale.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating and scaling| 00:00 | So now that we understand the basics
of move, let's look at rotate and scale.
| | 00:04 | You will know that they are very, very similar.
| | 00:07 | Well, let's go ahead and open a scene,
KitchenTable, which is going to be the
| | 00:11 | same scene that we have been using.
Let's work with this chair and really go
| | 00:14 | ahead, and select this chair. And if I
wanted to move it again, what do we do?
| | 00:17 | We hit W or you can hit the Move tool
here. Also there is Transformation > Move
| | 00:22 | Tool is up here too. So we've got three
different places where we can find that.
| | 00:29 | So we have selected that, and instead
of moving it, say if I wanted to move it,
| | 00:32 | I can do that, or I can rotate it.
So I'm going to hit E and notice how my
| | 00:36 | tool changes to the Rotate tool. This
gizmo is very similar to the Move tool,
| | 00:41 | in that we have R, G, and B. So we can
rotate around X, Y, and Z. So if I grab
| | 00:49 | this red one, it rotates around the X
axis. If I grab the green one, Y axis,
| | 00:57 | and so on.
| | 00:58 | Now, there is also an outer ring here,
and that just rotates around the view
| | 01:03 | that you are looking at it. So whatever
direction I'm looking at, this rotates
| | 01:08 | around that direction, which can be very handy.
| | 01:12 | Also, if we grab inside one of
these like quadrants, I just have a free
| | 01:17 | rotation. And as with the Move tool,
you can select any of these in the Channel
| | 01:22 | Box, obviously type it in or middle-
click and drag within the Viewport and we
| | 01:27 | can change that value to whatever
we want, just by middle-clicking.
| | 01:31 | Now, let's also go through Scale, which
is this tool, or if you want to you can
| | 01:36 | just hit R and you can scale objects
along X, Y, and Z axes. Now, one thing
| | 01:45 | that's nice is that you can scale
negative. So if I wanted to mirror of this
| | 01:50 | object, all I have to do is just click
and drag and just scale it negative,
| | 01:55 | for example, if I scale it negative one,
it would be exactly the opposite.
| | 02:03 | Now, if I wanted to, I could also just
type in one here to select all of these, X,
| | 02:07 | Y, and Z. Type 1 into the last box
there and it just puts it back to normal.
| | 02:13 | So in Maya, a scale of one would
also be 100%. I don't know if other 3D
| | 02:18 | applications use 100, but in Maya, one
is the default scale for anything. So,
| | 02:25 | let's move on to some other topics.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating pivots| 00:00 | Now that we understand how to move,
rotate, and scale objects, I want to
| | 00:04 | introduce the concept of pivots. Now
what a pivot is it's simply the axis
| | 00:09 | around which you rotate or scale an
object. It's probably easier just to show
| | 00:14 | you how that works.
| | 00:15 | Let's go ahead and open up the scene.
In fact, we are going to open that same
| | 00:17 | scene, KitchenTable, and let's just
zoom in here. And we are going to go in and
| | 00:26 | let's select this spoon and I'm going
to hit W for move and you can see that
| | 00:32 | when that's Move gizmo comes up, it's
centered around this kind of like the mid-
| | 00:37 | point of the spoon handle. So I can
certainly move it but when I go to rotate it,
| | 00:42 | I hit E to rotate. You see it
actually rotates around that same point.
| | 00:48 | But that brings up an issue. What if I
don't want to rotate it around that point?
| | 00:52 | What if I want to rotate it around say
this end here and I want to kind of flip
| | 00:56 | it up, so it's standing up? I can change
that by changing the pivot of the object.
| | 01:00 | Now this is done very simply. All you
have to do is hit the Insert key. Now if
| | 01:05 | you are on the Mac keyboard, the
actual official Mac keyboard doesn't have an
| | 01:08 | Insert key; I believe it's the Home
key. But anyways, you hit that key,
| | 01:12 | Insert or Home, and that icon changes
and what it changes to is basically the
| | 01:18 | Move Pivot gizmo, which kinds of
looks like the Move one, except it doesn't
| | 01:22 | have the little arrows at the end. So
what I can do is I can actually just move
| | 01:25 | this and place it. In fact if I want,
I can go into my top viewport, place it
| | 01:32 | there. Make sure it's also placed in
my side viewport. So you can actually
| | 01:40 | precisely place it and then all you
have to do is hit Insert or Home again and
| | 01:44 | that toggles it off.
| | 01:45 | You hit it once and it goes into Move
Pivot mode. Hit it again and it brings
| | 01:50 | you back out. So now once I'm out, that
is how now I can pivot this around the
| | 01:56 | tip of the spoon. As you can see it
makes it very easy to change the pivot
| | 02:01 | point of the object and you can see
how this could be very important in
| | 02:04 | animation. Pivots are also important
for scaling objects. So if I go into Scale
| | 02:09 | by hitting R, you can see now that
it's scaling around that pivot point as well.
| | 02:14 | So if I were to change that pivot
point and scale it again, you can see
| | 02:21 | how it scales around that point. So
you can see how pivots are important.
| | 02:26 | Now another thing you can do, I'm
going to change this pivot point one more
| | 02:30 | time at the back end here so you
can see how this next thing works.
| | 02:34 | There is a way to automatically
change pivot points and that's called
| | 02:38 | center pivot. Now what center pivot
does is it basically calculates the outside
| | 02:43 | of the object and it just puts that
pivot point right smack dab in the middle.
| | 02:48 | So if you go Modify > Center Pivot, it
just puts it right in the middle of the
| | 02:52 | object. Now this can be very
important if you are modeling because a lot of
| | 02:57 | times when you model, Maya will
put the pivot point at the origin.
| | 03:02 | So you may draw something way over
here and you got the a point that's at
| | 03:07 | the origin so Center Pivot at least
gets it to the middle of your object and at
| | 03:12 | least puts it somewhere close to where
you are working and then you can always
| | 03:15 | hit Insert or Home and move the pivot
to the exact point where you need it. So
| | 03:20 | that's the basics of pivots. Let's move on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Channel Box| 00:00 | Now let's talk about the Channel Box.
We touched on it briefly when we were
| | 00:05 | working with the Move, Rotate and
Scale tools and the Channel Box is actually
| | 00:09 | this area over here. Now let's go ahead
and open a file and then I will go head
| | 00:14 | and Open Scene, KitchenTable. Now, if
I select an object, you will notice how
| | 00:20 | all of this stuff comes up in the Channel Box.
| | 00:23 | Before we get into it, there's also,
this area of the screen can be a couple of
| | 00:29 | different things. So if we click here
we will get the Channel Box, we can turn
| | 00:33 | it on and off. Click here, you get the
settings whatever tool you are using.
| | 00:38 | So for example, if I using the Move
tool -- you can actually have a lot of
| | 00:41 | different options for that. And we also
have another thing called the Attribute
| | 00:46 | Editor, which we will get
into a little bit later.
| | 00:49 | Let's go back over to the Channel Box.
If you also notice the Channel Box has
| | 00:53 | underneath it a thing called the
Layer Editor. Again we will look into that
| | 00:57 | in a little bit. Well what the Channel
Box does is it has all of the parameters
| | 01:04 | for the object. So for example, it has
Translate, Rotate and Scale.
| | 01:10 | If I want to, I can type in numbers to
rotate. For example, if I type zero in that
| | 01:15 | Rotation, it will just rotate so it's
facing us. And if I want to, again I can
| | 01:22 | just click in, highlight any one of
these values, middle-click and drag and I
| | 01:28 | can rotate that just by dragging.
| | 01:30 | Now, there are some buttons up here
that allow us to affect the operation of
| | 01:37 | the Channel Box. We can show just the
Channel Box and that means hide layers.
| | 01:42 | We can show just layers or we can show
both. This one here allows us to use the
| | 01:50 | manipulators in the scene. We can turn
off or we can turn off manipulators and
| | 01:58 | just use the Channel Box. So there is
really a couple of ways of doing this. So
| | 02:02 | if I click this so that it's black
and white, only the Channel Box is
| | 02:07 | active. If I click this so this is off,
I actually can't use these rotate things.
| | 02:16 | Notice how this actually just moves the object.
| | 02:19 | So that kind turns off this action of
being able to middle-click and drag when
| | 02:24 | that X is available and this makes
it only Channel Box. So that way that
| | 02:30 | middle-click and drag is the only
option. In case we have three options.
| | 02:34 | Either Gizmo and Channel Box,
Channel Box only, or Gizmo only. Now this one
| | 02:39 | here basically just says how fast does
the slider move when I middle-click and
| | 02:46 | rotate. Does it do it a lot, does it
do it a little, does it do it medium and
| | 02:53 | so on. And this one here that switches
between linear or hyperbolic channel.
| | 02:58 | So what is linear? Well, linear means
that for every inch I drag my mouse,
| | 03:03 | it goes exactly the same. But hyperbolic
says that as I drag my mouse faster, it's
| | 03:10 | going to accelerate the rate of change.
So this is great if you change your
| | 03:15 | values and need to change value very
quickly, you just switch it to hyperbolic
| | 03:19 | and it will go very fast if you just
snap your mouse over to the side and
| | 03:23 | you will get a really large value. OK,
so those are some of the basics of the Channel Box.
| | 03:29 | Now a Channel Box can also do more
than just rotate, scale, translate and
| | 03:35 | visibility. We select some of these
objects, in fact if I select this orange
| | 03:40 | right here, this one here is called
Orange 01, you will notice here that we
| | 03:45 | also have what it called inputs. What
the inputs are are the tools that are
| | 03:50 | used to actually create the object.
Now as we get into modeling, for example,
| | 03:55 | you will start with this sphere and
then you may deform that sphere to make
| | 03:59 | something else and what Maya will do
is it will actually keep the history of
| | 04:03 | all the things you have done to create
the object and that history can appear
| | 04:07 | in the Channel Box.
| | 04:09 | So what I can do is I can actually
select this particular orange. You will
| | 04:16 | notice it's still got the makeNurbSphere
options available and I can
| | 04:21 | actually change some of these parameters.
Say for example, I can make it half a
| | 04:29 | sphere. Just by typing in that value,
I can change the number of sections and
| | 04:34 | the number of spans. I can actually
change the detail of that object and so on.
| | 04:39 | If I selected for example this plate,
here underneath this cake, you will
| | 04:44 | notice it actually has two inputs. It
has one for creating the cylinder and
| | 04:49 | then another for actually for
smoothing that cylinder, which actually creates
| | 04:52 | those edges. But we are getting a
little ahead of ourselves into modeling. But
| | 04:56 | just know that these values are here in
the Channel Box and so you can actually
| | 05:03 | change a lot more than just
the position of the object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Attribute Editor| 00:00 | Now let's take a brief look at the
Attribute Editor. This is a window you can
| | 00:04 | use a lot in Maya. Especially once
you get into modeling and texturing and
| | 00:08 | modifying objects. The Attribute Editor
has almost all the parameters available
| | 00:14 | for creating the object
and texturing and all of that.
| | 00:16 | So actually let's just go back into
the scene that we have been playing with,
| | 00:20 | KitchenTable.mb and let's select the
plate on the table. Let's select this
| | 00:25 | yellow plate. So I'm just going to left-
click on that and we kind of touched on
| | 00:31 | this when we looked at the Channel Box
and that's that we have some of these
| | 00:35 | parameters here for creating, for
example, the cylinder that creates the plate
| | 00:39 | and so on and so forth, but we can get
a better look at that by going into the
| | 00:43 | Attribute Editor.
| | 00:45 | So if I move my cursor here and just
click on that, or you can just hit Ctrl+A
| | 00:51 | and that will also bring that up
and also if you want you can make the
| | 00:56 | Attribute Editor a floating window as
well. But I tend to just keep it docked
| | 01:00 | over here. If you notice the
Attribute Editor has a couple of ways to
| | 01:06 | navigating it. You have got these
tabs here, which are basically the things
| | 01:12 | that modify the objects.
| | 01:15 | So we have got a cylinder, that's
smooth and then we have got a texture on it.
| | 01:21 | So this phong26 is that yellow color.
This is the actual cylinder itself, so how
| | 01:28 | many subdivisions it has. In fact, you
can change these values and if I go into
| | 01:32 | polyCylinder here and change the
subdivisions... So as I change the number of
| | 01:44 | subdivisions, it's actually changing
how the object is made. So we could also
| | 01:51 | change the number of caps on that
cylinder that I use and I can change the
| | 01:55 | radius of the cylinder and so on and
so forth. The height. OK, all of these
| | 02:03 | parameters can be changed because I
still have my history attached to this
| | 02:08 | particular object.
| | 02:09 | But as we go through and work with
objects, you will notice that you are going
| | 02:13 | to get a lot of these tabs across here
that you can use, that are going to be
| | 02:18 | basically the things that have been
done to that object to turn it, to model
| | 02:21 | it, or texture it, or animate it or any
number of different things. So you can
| | 02:26 | navigate this by just hitting these
side arrows and this basically just steps
| | 02:31 | through these tabs if you have more
tabs in display, you can just go this way
| | 02:36 | or that way or you can just
highlight the tabs and go through that.
| | 02:41 | So I just wanted to introduce you to
the Attribute Editor so you know where
| | 02:45 | it's at and a little bit about what it does.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Outliner| 00:00 | So now let's take a look at the Outliner.
The Outliner is a window that allows
| | 00:05 | you to look at the objects in your
scene by name and also allows you to sort
| | 00:10 | and select objects as well as
create hierarchies of objects.
| | 00:15 | So first of all, let me show you how
to get into the Outliner window. There's
| | 00:18 | actually two places. You can make it a
floating window. So along the menu bar
| | 00:22 | here just go Window > Outliner and
there it is. Or you can make it part of
| | 00:27 | viewport. The easiest way is just to
click here on this little hot key here
| | 00:32 | Perspective/Outliner. That puts the
Outliner up and gives you perspective
| | 00:36 | window. Or if you get want to --
let's say if you have a Four View, you can
| | 00:40 | make any view an Outliner just by
going Panels and making that panel a
| | 00:45 | Outliner. You can also make it all
sorts of other things. So I can make that an
| | 00:49 | Outliner, if I want. Or I can just
make it Perspective view. Whatever.
| | 00:53 | So let's look at this in practice now.
We are going to go ahead and open a
| | 00:56 | scene. We are going to open that same
scene KitchenTable.mb and let's take a
| | 01:04 | look at what these look like in the
Outliner. I like to use the floating
| | 01:09 | Outliner so you kind of have to bear
with me and do it my way. So let's take a
| | 01:14 | look at the objects in the scene.
| | 01:15 | We have got the oranges and see we have
those, we have a bowl, we have a plate,
| | 01:23 | frosting on the cake, and the chairs
and the table and so on. Now the Outliner
| | 01:29 | window itself has a couple of features.
First of all it has a movable tab. If I
| | 01:34 | go all the way down at the bottom
notice how my window changes and I just left
| | 01:37 | click and drag and I can actually make
a second window pane in there. This is
| | 01:42 | great, if you have got really
complicated scenes, you can either take a look at
| | 01:46 | two parts of your scene at the same
time. If you middle-click and drag it to
| | 01:49 | the bottom, it gets rid of it.
| | 01:51 | You can also sort by names. So if I
just wanted to see the oranges in the
| | 01:54 | scene, all I have to do is to just
type Orange and then hit the asterisk. So
| | 01:59 | anything with orange in the name is
what shown and everything else is not
| | 02:03 | shown. That makes it easier to locate
object again, especially in large scenes
| | 02:08 | and just by erasing that I
can go back to my normal view.
| | 02:11 | There's also some Display options
here. We can display different types of
| | 02:16 | option, but the one that I really like
is the Show. So for example, I can show
| | 02:20 | by type of objects. So let's say I'm
just lighting my scene right now, I can
| | 02:24 | show just the lights in my Outliner,
but right now there are no lights in my
| | 02:29 | scene. But I can also show just the
NURBS Objects. So I can see just oranges
| | 02:37 | and the bowl all are made out of NURBS.
We will get into what NURBS and polygons
| | 02:41 | are later, but we can also show different
types, which are just polygonal objects.
| | 02:48 | So again, you can sort by object type,
you can sort by name, you can also Show
| | 02:52 | All. So it makes it much easier to
kind of organize and go through your scene
| | 02:58 | and be able to pick stuff in your scene.
Now you can pick things just by left
| | 03:02 | clicking on it. So if I left click on
spoon, it picks the spoon, then left-click
| | 03:06 | on the orange, it picks the orange.
You can also use Shift and Ctrl to select
| | 03:11 | objects within the Outliner. So if I
hit Shift and I go down here to the bottom
| | 03:15 | of the list, it selects everything in
between those two. It's kind of that
| | 03:20 | standard convention.
| | 03:22 | If I hold down Ctrl, let's do that again.
I click on orange and hold down Ctrl
| | 03:26 | and I go down at the bottom of the list,
it will only pick those objects that I
| | 03:30 | click on. So Shift picks everything and
Ctrl picks one at a time. You can also
| | 03:37 | left-click and drag and just go down
and select a bunch of things that way.
| | 03:43 | So that's the basics of the Outliner.
You can also use the Outliner to create
| | 03:47 | hierarchies and we will
do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating hierarchies| 00:00 | Now let's go a little bit deeper into
the Outliner and talk about hierarchies.
| | 00:04 | Now what a hierarchy is, it's a way
to connect the objects in your scene so
| | 00:08 | that when you move or rotate one,
the others go along for the ride. It's very
| | 00:13 | important in animation and organizing
your scene. Let me show you how it works.
| | 00:18 | We will go ahead and open that same
scene, KitchenTable.mb, and let's take a
| | 00:24 | look at this.
| | 00:25 | First of all let's take a look at it
in the Outliner. We will go to Window >
| | 00:30 | Outliner, and we actually already do
have a hierarchy set up. If you notice here,
| | 00:39 | look at the Outliner as I select the
legs of the table. Notice how we have this
| | 00:44 | object here called Table and that
actually anything I select within that
| | 00:49 | just highlights the table. But if I
hit this little Plus sign, you will notice
| | 00:54 | there is actually a bunch of different
objects within this table. We have this
| | 00:59 | ChamferBox, which makes the table
top, and these legs were all made out of
| | 01:04 | spheres. Initially they were
spheres and then we sculpted them.
| | 01:08 | So actually this table is just kind of
a placeholder that holds all of these
| | 01:15 | other objects, so when I actually
move this the whole table moves, but if I
| | 01:21 | select any one underneath it like one
of these legs, I can just move those
| | 01:27 | separately. Now you can get around
this by up here, right under your menu bar
| | 01:33 | here, we have got this little button
here that says, Select by hierarchy and
| | 01:37 | combinations. And normally
we are here just Select by object.
| | 01:41 | But if we go by hierarchy, Select by
hierarchy and combination, let's bring
| | 01:45 | that little that menu up again.
Select by hierarchy and combinations.
| | 01:48 | If we click that, then whenever I click
anywhere on that, it goes up to the top of
| | 01:54 | this hierarchy and it allows me select
this table. So if you leave that toggled
| | 01:58 | then you can select the entire
hierarchy. I can go down into that and select
| | 02:03 | just individual objects in the
Outliner, if I want and still move them.
| | 02:08 | But if I click in the viewport on any one
of those, it selects the entire hierarchy.
| | 02:13 | So now we know what a hierarchy is,
let's show you how to make one. Let's go to
| | 02:20 | that bowl of fruit on the table and if
you notice here we have got a couple of
| | 02:24 | objects. We have the bowl and then we
have all of the oranges that are in the
| | 02:29 | bowl. Right now they are all kind of
at the same level. So if I move the bowl
| | 02:35 | the oranges don't go along for the ride.
Let's just select one orange and how
| | 02:40 | you create a hierarchy is
you middle-click and drag.
| | 02:42 | Now if you middle-click and drag, let's
look how this works. There is a double
| | 02:48 | line, when it's over the other object
and there is a single line when it's in
| | 02:53 | between. So for example, if I took
this Orange00 and move it in between Table
| | 02:58 | and Orange04, nothing would happen.
But if I middle-click and drag over,
| | 03:05 | you are going to get that double line there
over Bowl, then you get the little Plus
| | 03:09 | sign and now that particular orange is
now a child of the bowl. So I select the
| | 03:16 | Bowl and that one orange actually moves
with it. So I can just multi select,
| | 03:21 | I can Shift-select all of the other ones.
Middle-click and drag again, you want
| | 03:26 | to get that double line and now
they are all part of the Bowl.
| | 03:29 | Now I can continue to do that by
taking the Bowl and making it part of the
| | 03:36 | table. So I can go middle-click and
drag the Bowl and over the Table and so
| | 03:41 | now when I select the Table, the Bowl
goes with the Table. You can see how this
| | 03:49 | can work and how it can make your life
a whole a lot easier when moving things around.
| | 03:53 | Let's take a look at this cake. So we
have got this plate, we have got the
| | 04:00 | layers of the cakes with frosting on
them and they are, again, all at the same
| | 04:04 | level. So if I want to I can start
making a really deep hierarchy. I can take
| | 04:10 | the frosting, middle-click and drag at
over that Cake01 layer. Take the Cake01
| | 04:15 | layer with the frosting, make it
part of the frosting underneath it, and
| | 04:22 | essentially what I'm doing is
I'm creating a little stack there.
| | 04:25 | So I have got a cake and on top of
this piece of cake here and on top of this
| | 04:31 | piece of cake is a frosting and on top
of the frosting there is another layer
| | 04:35 | and on top of that layer is some more
frosting, and we take all of that and
| | 04:39 | stick it on the plate and now
we have got an entire hierarchy.
| | 04:43 | So if I take that and move it, it works
if I take just the cake. Now again,
| | 04:52 | sometimes you are not going to have
to select this in the Outliner, so if I
| | 04:54 | wanted to just move the cake off the
plate then I have to go into the Outliner,
| | 05:00 | select that cake and move it and again
I can take that plate and make it a part
| | 05:05 | of the table and I can do that as
well with that spoon that we have.
| | 05:09 | So now I have got everything on the
table. It's part of the table and I can
| | 05:15 | move that around. So you can see
how hierarchies can be very useful in
| | 05:22 | organizing in your scene. Now I have
got this scene. It's much more organized.
| | 05:25 | Look at that the table and two chairs
and that's basically all I have in this
| | 05:31 | scene and that makes it much
easier to organize your scene.
| | 05:34 | Now let's go ahead and move on to the
Hypergraph, which is another way of doing
| | 05:37 | hierarchies and looking at your scene.
So let's go ahead and take a look at that next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Hypergraph| 00:00 | The Hypergraph is another way to look
at your scene. We have looked at the
| | 00:04 | Outliner and the Hypergraph is kind of
a graphic version of the Outliner. But,
| | 00:08 | it also has a lot more features.
| | 00:10 | So let's look at some of the basics of it.
We're going to get more into it as
| | 00:13 | we get into modeling and texturing.
But let's look at the basics of the
| | 00:16 | Outliner. Well, I'm going to go ahead
and open a scene. We are going to open
| | 00:20 | that same scene, which is dealing with
this KitchenTable scene. And let's take a
| | 00:27 | look at what the Hypergraph is.
| | 00:29 | If we go onto a window, we have two
options for Hypergraph. One is Hierarchy
| | 00:34 | and one is Connections. Right now,
we are just dealing with objects and
| | 00:38 | Hierarchy. So let's take a look at the
Hierarchy version of it, and that just
| | 00:41 | shows you the objects in your scene.
| | 00:44 | Now, the Connections version shows you
how objects are connected. So if I have
| | 00:50 | a texture on an object, if I'm
animating an object, if I have modeling
| | 00:55 | techniques applied to an object, you
can actually see how the object is created
| | 01:00 | node by node. This actually shows you
how the scene is created object by object.
| | 01:06 | So navigating this window is as easy as
navigating any Maya viewport. You hold
| | 01:11 | down the Alt or the Option key, and
then you just use your middle-clicks and so
| | 01:17 | on to drag and zoom. Now, you can't rotate
around this window because it's a 2D window.
| | 01:22 | Now, if I right-click and zoom-in,
you can notice here how I've got this
| | 01:28 | hierarchy, I have got the table, and
all of the boxes and spheres and all that,
| | 01:33 | that I use to create that table. You'll
also see how I have all of the oranges,
| | 01:40 | and the bowl and so each object in
this appears as kind of a little box and
| | 01:45 | actually it's called a node.
| | 01:46 | Now, what I can do in the Hypergraph
is I can actually create hierarchies
| | 01:52 | graphically. So if I wanted to,
I could select all of the oranges,
| | 01:55 | middle-click, just like in the
Outliner, drag over to bowl, and now I've
| | 01:59 | created a hierarchy, and you can
actually visually see your hierarchies,
| | 02:03 | which is kind of nice.
| | 02:04 | So if I wanted to for example do what
I did with the cake, I could take that
| | 02:10 | cake, this frosting layer, put it on
the cake, take the cake, put it under the
| | 02:16 | frosting and so on and so forth. And I
can actually build a hierarchy by just
| | 02:21 | middle-clicking and dragging.
| | 02:26 | So I can take the bowl and the plate,
and the spoon. I can just Ctrl-select all
| | 02:32 | of those. Where you actually Shift-
select all of those. So you Shift-select and
| | 02:36 | drag to select all of these objects,
and middle-click and drag them to the table.
| | 02:45 | So you can see how I can easily create
hierarchies in the Outliner, and you can
| | 02:51 | actually visualize to your hierarchies.
Sometimes for visual person, such as
| | 02:55 | myself, this makes a lot more sense.
| | 02:59 | There are some other options with the
Hypergraph. One is you can Frame All;
| | 03:05 | you can frame just what you're selecting.
You can frame the hierarchy that you
| | 03:11 | are working with, and then you also
have these two other options here, Scene
| | 03:17 | Hierarchy, which is what we are
working with now, or Input/Output Connection.
| | 03:22 | So for example, if I select Plate and
hit Input/Output Connections, it will
| | 03:26 | show me exactly how that plate has built.
| | 03:31 | Now remember how we looked at this
plate in the Attribute Editor. So I'm going
| | 03:36 | to hit Ctrl+A and bring up the
Attribute Editor. So for example here, if I
| | 03:49 | click on that, that's the shader that
I use to shade that plate. I don't know
| | 03:52 | if you can see it all right now. So
I'm going to kind of switch it up there.
| | 03:57 | You can see the plate is yellow, and
I have this yellow shader on there.
| | 04:01 | This is how I created the actual
shape of the mesh. I have got a cylinder,
| | 04:06 | which has been smooth, and so this
is my Smoothing options and so on. So
| | 04:11 | everything I use to build that object
is in this Show Connections. OK, this may
| | 04:18 | be a little confusing at first, but I
just wanted to show you that it's there.
| | 04:22 | Now if we go back to see in hierarchy,
we can see all of the objects. So
| | 04:25 | basically what this does, is it takes
this plate for example, and it expands it
| | 04:30 | even further one in a time of course.
So I can see exactly how this object has made.
| | 04:36 | This can be very important when you
get into complex modeling, rigging,
| | 04:41 | animation, all that sort of stuff.
You will spend a lot of time in the
| | 04:44 | Hypergraph, reconnecting things.
| | 04:46 | And there are also some additional
options here. So for example, Frame All, a
| | 04:50 | lot of these are duplicates of this
button. So you can also create a bookmark,
| | 04:54 | which means, again, if you have a
complex scene you can just kind of save out
| | 04:58 | or snapshot out your current
view, which would be a bookmark.
| | 05:02 | This is how we graph things again Input/
Output Connections or Hierarchy. How we
| | 05:07 | want to show rendering options, such as
do you want to show the lights and the
| | 05:12 | textures in the scene and so on,
and some other display options.
| | 05:16 | We also have a Show option, just
like we have in the Outliner. So we can
| | 05:21 | manifest by different types of objects.
So we can just say, I want to see just
| | 05:25 | the lights in my scene or I want to
see just the polygonal objects and so on.
| | 05:30 | So that's the basics of the Hypergraph
window and we are going to be using this
| | 05:34 | a lot more as we get into modeling, and
rigging, and animation and all of that
| | 05:39 | other stuff. Let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Grouping objects| 00:00 | The next thing I want to talk about is
grouping. Now, what grouping does is it
| | 00:04 | just a real quick way to create a
hierarchy. Let's take a look, in fact let's
| | 00:09 | just keep going into that same scene.
Let's go into our KitchenTable and let's
| | 00:16 | take a look at what grouping does.
What a group does is essentially creates
| | 00:21 | a hierarchy of multiple objects. So if
I selected, if I Shift-selected all of
| | 00:26 | the oranges in that bowl, I can create
a group by just doing Edit > Group or
| | 00:31 | you can do Ctrl+G. That's what I usually do.
I just do Ctrl+G. That creates a group.
| | 00:37 | In fact, let's take a look at what
happened in the Outliner. If you are looking
| | 00:40 | in the Outliner. Here, I have this
group called group2 and that contains all of
| | 00:44 | the oranges and so what it's done is it
actually created a empty node, kind of
| | 00:49 | a placeholder called a
group. Now, it's not an object.
| | 00:53 | Remember how we took the oranges and we
drag them underneath the bowl to create
| | 00:58 | a hierarchy? This creates a hierarchy
without having to drag it underneath
| | 01:02 | another object. The group itself is
just the blank node. So we can call that
| | 01:07 | Oranges or whatever we want. So now I
select this, I select all of the oranges.
| | 01:12 | Makes it much easier, again,
for our scene organization.
| | 01:16 | Now, if I want to I can simply select
the group and I can also do -- I believe
| | 01:20 | it's under Edit > Ungroup and that just
gets rid of that particular group. So,
| | 01:26 | Ctrl+G groups it. Ungroup you have to
go into the menu there or you can set a
| | 01:32 | hot key if you wanted to go into menu
settings or whatever. There are some
| | 01:36 | options with group and how do you want
to group it and how do you want to pivot it.
| | 01:42 | You want to pivot it
in the origin or the center.
| | 01:44 | Now, this can be really handy again,
we were talking about pivots before. If I
| | 01:50 | group this what that does is it gives
me another pivot point. Now, this is
| | 01:58 | actually pivoted at the origin, so if
I want to I can just to Modify > Center
| | 02:05 | Pivot or when I created this, when
you did create group, you could actually
| | 02:10 | pivot it at the center as well.
| | 02:12 | And what this does now, it gives me a
universal way to move it and rotate it
| | 02:20 | and so on and so forth. Now, another
little trick you can do with grouping, is
| | 02:25 | you can actually create multiple
pivots. You can just group an object to
| | 02:28 | itself. Let's say I wanted to take this
particular object and I just hit Ctrl+G
| | 02:33 | and group it to itself. You see here I
have got this group3 but I also have the
| | 02:38 | spoon. So if I select the spoon I have
got a pivot here. I go up to the group,
| | 02:42 | I have got a pivot there. So
actually I can have multiple pivot.
| | 02:46 | So if you had like an object that
needed to rotate around more than one axis,
| | 02:50 | you just group it to itself and move
the pivots around to the appropriate
| | 02:54 | places and you can do that. It makes
it much easier again to have multiple
| | 02:59 | pivots on your objects.
| | 03:00 | So that's the basics of grouping and
I'm sure you can see the benefits of that.
| | 03:04 | So let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating layers| 00:00 | Now, let's talk about layers. Layers
is just another way to organize stuff in
| | 00:05 | your scene. We are going to go ahead
and open the scene that we have been
| | 00:08 | working with, KitchenTable, and what
layers does is it allows you to basically
| | 00:14 | organize your scene into layers. So
a typical example would be a character
| | 00:19 | animation. You put the skeleton of the
character on one layer and the mesh of
| | 00:23 | the character on another and in just a
normal Maya environment you can put the
| | 00:26 | lights and the cameras on the layer.
We can put the background on a separate
| | 00:30 | layer. Just kind of almost like you do
in Photoshop or Illustrator or any other
| | 00:34 | package, you have the ability to
segment out parts of the scene.
| | 00:37 | Now, in this scene, a good way to
use layers will be maybe to take the
| | 00:41 | furniture and then the objects on the
table and make them into separate layers.
| | 00:45 | We will go over here to my Channel Box,
in fact I can just click here on that
| | 00:51 | to make sure I have got my Channel Box
up. You should have your Layer Editor
| | 00:55 | up. If not, you can just click here
or here that just brings up the Layer
| | 00:59 | Editor. Well, well that brings up
the Layer Editor and the Channel Box.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to bring up both because
that's kind of the default way that Maya
| | 01:07 | presents it, and I'm going to go ahead
and drag this up a little bit just so
| | 01:10 | you can see better what we are doing.
So what we can do is we can select the
| | 01:15 | objects. Let's go ahead and select.
I'm going to select by hierarchy here,
| | 01:18 | I'm going to select the table, Shift-select
the chair and both chairs. So I want to
| | 01:26 | select the table and all of the chairs.
| | 01:28 | What I can do here is if I go and hit
the Layers button it says Create Layers
| | 01:33 | and if it say Create an empty layer,
and I right-click and I say Add Selected
| | 01:39 | Objects. Now what it's done is it's
actually created a layer of those objects.
| | 01:45 | If I hit this button here, I can
visualize it turning on and off. If I
| | 01:49 | double-click here I can give it a new
name. So let's call it Furniture, hit
| | 01:56 | Enter. So now my Furniture is on a
separate layer. So if I want to, I can just
| | 02:03 | left-click and drag and box select
all of these. Left-click, Create Empty
| | 02:08 | Layer. Select that layer by left-
clicking. Right-click, Add Selected Objects.
| | 02:14 | Now, if I want to, I can double-
click and just go let's call it whatever,
| | 02:18 | StuffonTable. So now we have got the
stuff on the table and the furniture and
| | 02:26 | we can actually turn those on and off.
Now, this is great for when you are
| | 02:29 | working with complex scenes, so you
can like turn all of the background stuff
| | 02:33 | off and just work with what
you really need to focus on.
| | 02:36 | Now, there are some other options here.
We can also do what's called templates.
| | 02:41 | So if I click here, I can template the
objects, which means I can see them in
| | 02:45 | the scene, but I can't select them. So
it's kind of a nice way to kind of keep
| | 02:51 | your references. So if I template the
table and the furniture, it means I can
| | 02:56 | still animate this and not have to
worry. So I won't be able to select that
| | 03:00 | furniture. You can also turn it on and
off and there's also other options. We
| | 03:08 | can make the layers current. Add New
Objects, so if it creates new objects,
| | 03:12 | you can always add those to it.
| | 03:13 | And the current layer, so if I start
modeling or start creating new things,
| | 03:17 | whatever layer is highlighted that's
where the stuff will go. We also have some
| | 03:24 | options here called Membership and that
would basically just tell you what's in
| | 03:29 | each layer. It's called the
Relationship Editor and that actually will show you
| | 03:35 | what's in your layers. And Attributes
for a specific layer, OK. Do you want to
| | 03:45 | show Shading, do you want to show
Texturing, just ways to display. How do we
| | 03:49 | display this particular layer? I will go
back to my Channel Box in my Layer Editor here.
| | 03:56 | So those are the basics of layers and
you can use those as you create more
| | 04:00 | complex scenes to organize your data.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with selection masks| 00:00 | Now let's talk a little bit about
Selection Masks. Selection Masks are a way to
| | 00:04 | block out what it is that you can and
can't select in a scene. They are right
| | 00:10 | here up along here. It's actually these
little buttons here and what they do is
| | 00:14 | allows us to turn on and off.
Handle objects, joints, which are used in
| | 00:19 | character animation. Curve objects
which we used to modeling surfaces, which
| | 00:24 | are the surfaces that we actually see
in Maya. Deformation such as lattices,
| | 00:29 | those sorts of thing. Particle systems,
dynamic objects and rendering objects,
| | 00:34 | such as lights and
cameras and textures and so on.
| | 00:37 | Now, let me show you how this works.
What we can do is we can actually toggle
| | 00:40 | these on and off. So I don't have
to select any one of these particular
| | 00:45 | objects. So let's show you how that
works. I'm going to open a scene. Let's go
| | 00:49 | ahead and open our KitchenTable scene,
and let's go ahead and just do all
| | 00:55 | objects off. So if I do that that
means I can't select anything in the scene,
| | 01:03 | because I have masked out everything
that I can possibly select in this scene
| | 01:08 | is not selectable.
| | 01:09 | Now, if I want to -- if I left-click
here, it just toggles it. If I right-click
| | 01:14 | I can turn on very specific things. So
I click off, for example NURBS Surfaces,
| | 01:20 | means I can select everything but
the bowl and the oranges and the table
| | 01:25 | because those are made of NURBS.
Everything else in this scene is made of
| | 01:28 | polygons. So by doing that I can
actually just say I don't want to select the
| | 01:32 | NURBS, I just want to select the
polygons. If I turn that off, it means I can
| | 01:38 | select everything. If I zoom out
though, I may have a light in the scene.
| | 01:41 | So I can under Rendering Objects, we
can say I just want to turn on just the
| | 01:46 | Lights. I just want to do my rendering
objects. So it means I can't select my
| | 01:50 | Polygonal or my NURBS objects but I
can select the light that I put into the
| | 01:54 | scene. As you can see, this is a real
nice way to just mask off stuff that you
| | 01:59 | want to be able to select or not
select in your scene and it's a very quick
| | 02:04 | way to make selections easier.
| | 02:07 | Now, there is also another thing that
we can look at in our viewports here and
| | 02:11 | that is we can also do Show. So
actually we can just turn off in our viewport,
| | 02:16 | very specific things. So if I don't
want to see NURBS Surfaces in this
| | 02:20 | viewport, it will turn that off. It's
just kind of handy if you are working
| | 02:25 | with lighting for example. You could
turn off, turn on or off the lights in the
| | 02:29 | scene and so on.
| | 02:32 | So that's the basics of Selection Masks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Polygonal ModelingUnderstanding polygonal primitives| 00:00 | Now, we are ready to dive into
modeling in Maya. Maya has two types of
| | 00:05 | modeling, Polygonal Modeling, which
involves polygons, and NURBS based
| | 00:09 | modeling, which involves
patch based or NURBS surfaces.
| | 00:14 | Right now, we are going to explore
Polygons and I'm going to show you a little
| | 00:17 | bit about the Polygon toolkit.
| | 00:20 | The first place we are going to stop in
exploring this type of modeling are the
| | 00:24 | basic primitive objects that we can
create within Maya and these are located
| | 00:30 | actually in two places. If you have
your shelves active, just click on Polygons
| | 00:35 | and bring up the Polygon shelf and
you'll notice we have got all of the basic
| | 00:39 | primitives here. We have got spheres,
polygon, cubes, cylinders, cones and so on.
| | 00:45 | If you don't want to use shelves,
there is a Create menu and we have Polygon
| | 00:49 | Primitives here, sphere, cube, cylinder,
cone, pretty much the same thing. I
| | 00:55 | like to use the Shelf because it's
very interactive. So that's what we are
| | 00:58 | going to do to begin with, and let me
show you the basics of creating some of
| | 01:01 | these primitives.
| | 01:02 | Let's start with the basic sphere. So
all I have to do is click on Sphere and
| | 01:06 | it prompts me, it says drag on grid. OK,
well, I will just left-click and drag
| | 01:12 | and there is my polygon primitive.
There is my sphere. So if I want to, I can
| | 01:17 | hit the 5 key and shade it.
| | 01:22 | If you notice here over on this side
now, I have got a very small screen. So
| | 01:26 | you are going to bear with me here,
but if we go over to the Channel Box, and
| | 01:30 | if you don't have the Channel box up,
just click this until you get it.
| | 01:34 | You will notice here that we have
got the sphere itself, which is called
| | 01:38 | pSphere for polygonal sphere, and we
have got our position, information, which
| | 01:42 | we have learned about. But down here,
we have what's called Inputs and this is
| | 01:46 | essentially what we use to create a sphere.
| | 01:49 | So this is the radius of the sphere,
the number of subdivisions, and the number
| | 01:54 | of subdivisions for the height. So
what we can do, is if we click on these,
| | 01:58 | remember if anything in the Channel box,
if we click it and middle-click and
| | 02:02 | Drag left and right, we can change that.
So if I want to change the number of
| | 02:06 | subdivisions, I can change that, the
subdivisions and the height and so on and
| | 02:12 | so forth. So I can actually
change these parameters interactively.
| | 02:15 | Another way to change these parameters,
is as we create it. So if I go over to
| | 02:20 | the Create menu, this is probably a
good reason to be using this, because if we
| | 02:23 | go here, you will notice that under
sphere, we have one of these little Options
| | 02:27 | boxes, and I just click on that and I
can set the divisions, the Height and
| | 02:32 | Radius right here, as I create it.
| | 02:35 | So if I wanted to create one with only
four subdivisions, I can create a very
| | 02:42 | primitive, primitive. And I can go
over here to that second sphere and if I
| | 02:47 | didn't like that, I can certainly
make it a little bit more spherical.
| | 02:53 | OK. So I'm going to go ahead and
select those and delete them. And let's go
| | 02:58 | through some of the rest of these
primitives and just show you how they are
| | 03:02 | created. We have a polygonal cube, and
what you do is you just drag the base,
| | 03:07 | and then you drag to set the height.
| | 03:09 | OK. Now, you can do this in multiple
Viewports as well. If I hit the Spacebar,
| | 03:14 | I will go to my Four view and I can
drag in my top view, so that where you can
| | 03:19 | precisely position it and I can drag
in any one of these views to set the height.
| | 03:23 | So you can actually switch between
Viewports as we create these. I'm going to
| | 03:27 | go ahead and maximize my perspective
window and delete that cylinder, very much
| | 03:33 | the same. Just create the base and the
height. And again with this, you've got
| | 03:38 | all of your creation parameters that
you can either access before you created
| | 03:42 | or afterwards which we are doing here,
and just middle-click and drag, select
| | 03:47 | one of these, little click and drag,
and we can change all sorts of parameters here.
| | 03:52 | What else, we have got a cone. Now
that's pretty easy. Now, a cone can very
| | 03:58 | easily become a pyramid. All we have
to do is just make it a three to four
| | 04:03 | subdivisions and that cone
becomes kind of like a pyramid.
| | 04:09 | And a plane, well that's pretty easy,
and the only thing really here is the
| | 04:13 | number of subdivisions that you can
add to it. And a torus, just kind of a
| | 04:18 | doughnut shape. What you do is you
drag once to set the outside radius and
| | 04:26 | then you drag second time to basically
make the thickness of the doughnut. So
| | 04:32 | the diameter of the doughnut and then
how big around it is and then we've got
| | 04:36 | a couple of other ones, Polygonal
pyramid, OK, so actually we do have a
| | 04:39 | pyramid. OK, but that's essentially,
it's almost like a cone. But, they only
| | 04:44 | has 3, 4, 5 number of size, so
it's specific. And what else?
| | 04:58 | The pipe, which is essentially a tube.
Basically you drag, drag, drag. OK,
| | 05:05 | let's try that again. I will show you
exactly how. So basically, you drag the
| | 05:09 | outside radius, the height, and then
the thickness or the inside radius, and
| | 05:20 | these are all very simple polygonal pyramids.
| | 05:22 | Now, as we go to start modeling, you
are going to be using these primitives as
| | 05:27 | kind of like your raw material for
modeling. So if I wanted to model something
| | 05:32 | that's tubular, I would use this
primitive. If I wanted to model something
| | 05:36 | that's kind of based on a sphere,
I will just start with the sphere.
| | 05:39 | So what you need to do is think of
these objects as kind of like clay and
| | 05:45 | what sort of shape you want to start
with in order to model what you want.
| | 05:50 | Let's go ahead and move on to
actually editing the shape of these objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding polygonal components| 00:00 | Now, that we understand the basics of
how to create polygonal primitives, let's
| | 00:04 | go a little bit deeper and
learn how to reshape those objects.
| | 00:07 | Let's go ahead and just create
something here. I'm going to go ahead and click
| | 00:10 | on Polygonal Cube and just create one.
And actually, I do want to get a bit in
| | 00:15 | more detail. I'm going to shape this.
I'm going to hit 5 and shape this. Let's
| | 00:19 | go over here to our Channel Box polyCube,
and then I'm just going to left-click
| | 00:24 | and drag and highlight all those,
and then middle-click and give it some
| | 00:27 | subdivisions. I think three should be fine.
| | 00:29 | Now, let's select this object. Now,
this object is made of polygons. A polygon
| | 00:38 | is a three or four sided plane. Now,
what polygonal modeling does is it
| | 00:43 | collects all those planes together
and makes an object. So the smaller the
| | 00:48 | polygons, the smoother the object looks.
| | 00:51 | Now, typically when we model a
polygonal object, we start with very low
| | 00:56 | resolution objects, and then we add
detail as needed. But what I really want
| | 01:00 | to show you here is the different
types of components that create a polygonal object.
| | 01:06 | You notice we have the polygons,
which are the squares, and then in between
| | 01:10 | those, we have these little lines.
Those are called edges. And then where the
| | 01:16 | edges intersect, we have vertices.
So in effect, we have components that
| | 01:21 | represent all of the three dimensions.
| | 01:23 | So a vertex is a point, which is one
dimension, an edge is a line, which is a
| | 01:29 | two dimensional object, and then those
lines or those edges determine a plane,
| | 01:35 | which is a three dimensional object.
| | 01:37 | So by manipulating all of these
different components, we can reshape the
| | 01:41 | object. Let me show you. In order to
select the component, we can do one of the
| | 01:47 | two things. We can hit F8, which puts
us into Select By Component Type, or if
| | 01:56 | we wanted to, we can just hit this
button. Then we can say well, I want to
| | 02:00 | select Vertices, I want to select Edges,
I want to select Faces or, and I think
| | 02:09 | this is much easier,
| | 02:11 | you can right click over the object
and a Marking menu will come up, and this
| | 02:15 | will allow you to select any one of
those components. So for example, if I
| | 02:21 | select the vertex, vertices will appear,
and then I can left-click and drag,
| | 02:26 | and select that vertex, and shape it,
or I can select a bunch of vertices and
| | 02:31 | reshape it, or I can right click over
that, and select edges. And then I can
| | 02:38 | just select the edges, I can Shift-
select, hold down the Shift or I can left
| | 02:41 | click and drag.
| | 02:42 | Now, selecting these is really just the
same as selecting any object. But, what
| | 02:46 | you do is you are selecting the
components or the parts of an individual
| | 02:51 | object. So if I select these
edges, I can manipulate these.
| | 02:58 | You can also do Faces. So if I right
click here, go Face, I can select any one
| | 03:04 | of these faces. This will probably a
little bit easier. I can move that face to
| | 03:10 | reshape the object as well. So
this does have practical applications.
| | 03:19 | In fact, if you want to, we can load an
object and we can show you a little bit
| | 03:22 | about how to reshape an object. So if
I want to, I can set my project because
| | 03:27 | we haven't done that yet.
| | 03:28 | So I'm going to go ahead and set my
project to Chapter 03, which is what we're in,
| | 03:35 | and then I'm going to go ahead and open
the scene. Let's go ahead and open the
| | 03:40 | file called Head. So this is in
Exercise Files, 03, Scenes, Head. And this is
| | 03:48 | just a simple character, head.
But, it's modeled out of polygons.
| | 03:54 | So if I wanted to, I can reshape this
very easily by right clicking, and let's
| | 04:00 | select vertices, and I can go in and
let's say, I want to give him a big long
| | 04:07 | nose or something like that, I can
just again, reshape it. If I want to give
| | 04:12 | him a bigger chin, I can do that as well.
| | 04:14 | If I want to, I can select faces, and I
can Shift-select, or I can Area Select,
| | 04:25 | I can Lasso Select, any of these
selection tools work just fine. And I can
| | 04:31 | Shift-select the faces.
| | 04:35 | Now, one of the things is that this
little gizmo here, it can't get in the way.
| | 04:39 | So like for example, if it's actually
over something, sometimes you have to
| | 04:44 | kind of angle around it. But again,
you can just move these and adjust it
| | 04:51 | however you want.
| | 04:54 | So those are the basics of
selecting and modifying components within a
| | 04:59 | polygonal object, and you can see how
that's a great way to reshape an object.
| | 05:04 | Now there are additional tools in Maya
to add, subtract, geometry, which
| | 05:08 | is what you are going to need to do if
you are going to build a complex model.
| | 05:11 | So let's go through some of those tools as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Edge Loop feature| 00:00 | Now when you start working with
polygonal objects, one of the things people are
| | 00:04 | going to start talking a lot about are
Edge Loops. Now what Edge Loops are
| | 00:08 | really is just connected loops of edges
on a model and a lot of modeling is
| | 00:14 | centered around creating and moving
and manipulating these loops of edges.
| | 00:20 | Because what that does is it creates
real uniform models and it makes it a much
| | 00:25 | easier way to form an object, like for
example a character or something like
| | 00:30 | that and Maya has a number of tools for
selecting edge loops and I want to show
| | 00:34 | you some of those tools.
| | 00:35 | I will move ahead and create a sphere
just so that you kind of see some of the
| | 00:39 | basics of how this tool works and I'm
going to show you that. In fact, I'm
| | 00:42 | going to turn off the Grid here so you
could see this fully and then I'm going
| | 00:48 | to select the edges. I'm going to
right click, Edge and I'm just going to
| | 00:52 | select one edge.
| | 00:53 | Now here's the trick. The Up, Down, Left,
and Right Arrow keys, help you select
| | 00:59 | Edge Loops. So for example, if I hit
the Up key, it selects all of these edges
| | 01:03 | that go radially around the sphere. If
I select the Down Arrow, it will move
| | 01:11 | that selection. Now if I hit Left and
Right Arrows, it will select Longitude
| | 01:22 | lines, Latitude lines and move those around.
| | 01:27 | So you can see how you can select
basically by just hitting the Up and Down
| | 01:31 | keys. You can just play with that. You
can very easily get a feel of how this
| | 01:35 | works. So that's how it works on a
sphere. Let's go ahead and open that File
| | 01:40 | with character Head.
| | 01:42 | Now I will show you how this works on a
little bit more of a complex model. So
| | 01:45 | let's select that model and we are
going to zoom-in just a little bit and I'm
| | 01:50 | going to go ahead and right click and
select Edges. We will select, oh let's
| | 01:56 | see, let's hit this Edge here on his
forehead. If I hit the Right arrow, it
| | 02:00 | selects basically that whole line along
his forehead. If I hit the Up and Down
| | 02:06 | arrow, it selects the other ones. So
I'm going to hit the Left arrow to select
| | 02:10 | that again and then I can hit right
and left and I can move and down, so it
| | 02:14 | makes very easy to select
all parts of the character.
| | 02:16 | Now if I want to I can hit for example
Scale and I can actually make his face
| | 02:21 | broader or narrower. And you can see
how you can select lots of detail along
| | 02:26 | the character. Edge Loops are really
important like around the eyes and the
| | 02:31 | mouth of the character. So for example,
if I select this top lip and I hit the
| | 02:36 | Right arrow, then I have got the whole
line around the lip and if I wanted to,
| | 02:40 | I can basically scale his lips. Or if
I start going with the Left and Right
| | 02:46 | keys, I can actually select
inside and outside that lip.
| | 02:49 | If I click on the bottom lip here,
let's say I click down here and I hit the
| | 02:53 | Right arrow, you will see how this
works. What it does is it actually goes
| | 02:58 | through -- so let's try this again.
I select that one and then I hit the right arrow.
| | 03:03 | Now what this does is it just goes and
walks along. Let's say every time there
| | 03:08 | is a -- basically whatever it's called
a four way junction where we have one
| | 03:12 | vertex that connects four different
edges, keeps going. When it hits a non four
| | 03:19 | way junction, so in this case this is a
three way junction, it stops. So that's
| | 03:24 | the key. It basically just walks the
four way junctions until it hits a three
| | 03:28 | or a five. Anything other
than four way, it stops.
| | 03:32 | So for example here, I select that one,
hit the Right arrow, it will go all the
| | 03:37 | way around. If I hit the Left arrow,
you will see it stops right there. Hit the
| | 03:42 | Right arrow, it goes back to that one,
Right arrow again, and you can see how
| | 03:47 | it basically limits the selection
because of the way that the character is built.
| | 03:52 | Now typically when you model a
character or really anything you want to
| | 03:56 | try and keep these loops of edges
connected with these four way junctions
| | 04:00 | because it makes it much easier to
select large parts of the character. You can
| | 04:03 | also insert edge loops and there are
a lot of tools for that as well. Let's
| | 04:07 | move on to some other tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating edge loops| 00:00 | So let's take edge loops one step
further and learn how to insert and add edge
| | 00:05 | loops into an object. Let's just start
with a real simple object, let's just
| | 00:09 | start with a cylinder. I'm going to
go ahead and click here, left-click and
| | 00:13 | drag and then let go and left-click and
drag again. OK and then I'm going to go
| | 00:20 | ahead and shape this, hit 5. In fact
I'm going to go over here over the Inputs
| | 00:26 | on my Channel Box and I'm going to
give it a few more Sub-divisions in Height
| | 00:30 | so I have some stuff to work with.
| | 00:31 | And maybe some Sub-divisions on the Caps,
there we go. So now we have got some
| | 00:38 | detail to work with. Let's take a look
at some of these Edge Loop tools. When
| | 00:42 | we start editing polygons in Maya, we
are going to be using the Polygon menu
| | 00:47 | aets. So I click here and I find
polygons. And you then even go from Animation,
| | 00:52 | these menus change here. So let's go
to Polygons and we have got a couple of
| | 00:56 | ones here, the two most
important are Mesh and Edit Mesh.
| | 01:00 | Now the difference between these has
always confused me until I kind of figured
| | 01:03 | it out. What Mesh does is it works on
the entire Mesh. So any one of these will
| | 01:10 | affect the entire mesh. So when your
script is selected in Object Mode, that's
| | 01:16 | where these tools kick in. So for
example, Combine, Separate, Smoothing, all
| | 01:20 | these sorts of things, we will get into
some of these as we go through the lessons.
| | 01:24 | And Edit Mesh works on components. So
if I right click here and I select Edge,
| | 01:29 | Vertex or Face then Edit Mesh will work
on those. For example, Extrude, Edges,
| | 01:37 | those sorts of things. So
let's start working with Edges.
| | 01:42 | I'm going to select this object here,
and I'm going to go into Edge Mode here.
| | 01:50 | Now I'm going to tear this off, so I'm
going to click here on this double line
| | 01:55 | and tear that off so that we won't have
to keep pulling it down in front of the
| | 02:00 | model that we are working with. So I
have got a couple of tools here. We have
| | 02:03 | got Insert Edge Loop and Offset Edge
Loop, we also have Slide Edge. All of
| | 02:10 | these work on edges or Edge Loops, OK.
| | 02:13 | So Insert Edge Loop is a way to add
details and a way to add Edge Loops to an
| | 02:18 | object. So if I click here and all I
have to do is I click on the edge, now
| | 02:24 | here is the trick here, I click on
the edge that's perpendicular to where I
| | 02:28 | want to add. So if I want to add
radially I click on the vertical ones. If I
| | 02:33 | want to add a horizontal edge
essentially, I click on a vertical edge, if I
| | 02:38 | want to add a vertical edge,
I click on a horizontal.
| | 02:41 | So in this case let's add detail around
this cylinder. So I click here and you
| | 02:48 | notice now I can just slide this and I
can actually add that detail in. So now
| | 02:53 | I have got more detail in the object.
| | 02:57 | If I want to I can also do what's
called Offset Edge Loop and what that does is
| | 03:02 | it takes an Edge Loop and it splits it.
So let's show you that. Click on that,
| | 03:09 | then I can create an Offset -- let me
undo that and I will show you that one
| | 03:12 | more time. So with the Insert Edge
Loop what I'm doing is I'm selecting a
| | 03:20 | vertical line to create a horizontal one.
With Offset Edge Loop I'm selecting a
| | 03:25 | horizontal one and I'm bracketing it
or I'm actually creating two horizontal
| | 03:30 | lines on either side.
| | 03:32 | Again it will work for either vertical
or horizontal no matter what correction
| | 03:36 | the Edge Loops are going but just kind
of a good way to take a look at it. So
| | 03:39 | if I click here and it just adds more
Edge Loops that way. So that's a great
| | 03:46 | way to add details. So if for example,
if I wanted to add a little bit of a
| | 03:50 | slice there, I can just do that and
that will essentially slice it for me.
| | 03:56 | Now the last one I want to show you is
the Slide Edge tool. What that does is
| | 04:02 | it selects an edge and it says -- right
here it actually prompts you Drag with
| | 04:06 | MMB to Slide. If I can select an
edge and if I drag with the middle mouse
| | 04:10 | button(MMB), it will slide that edge
along my object but it will maintain or
| | 04:17 | try to maintain the shape of the object.
| | 04:19 | So this great for working with Edge
Loops. So if I hit the left or the right
| | 04:23 | key, I can select a whole loop of edges,
do Slide Edge tool, middle-click and
| | 04:30 | then I can reposition that Edge Loop
without really changing the shape of the
| | 04:35 | object. So that means I can push
detail around on an object without actually
| | 04:41 | having to remodel it.
| | 04:42 | Let me show you how this works a little
bit -- probably better to show you this
| | 04:46 | on a more complex model. So for example,
let's go ahead in Open Scene, in fact
| | 04:50 | let's open that Head, our file, Head
_01.mb, I don't want to save this.
| | 04:57 | So, let's say I wanted to add some
detail because I want to make his eyebrows
| | 05:01 | more prominent or something like that.
So what I can do is I can just go in the
| | 05:04 | Edge Mode, click on that edge, hit the
right arrow and now what I can do if I
| | 05:11 | want to, I can do an Offset Edge or
actually I can do a Slide Edge, right.
| | 05:14 | So if I middle-click on slide you can
see how I can slide that and it pretty
| | 05:20 | much tries to maintain the details.
So if I click here, hit right click and
| | 05:27 | middle-click, you can see how I can
actually -- it's a great way to like slide
| | 05:31 | detail around on a model without really
reshaping it. So what it's trying to do
| | 05:37 | is it's trying to keep that parallel
to the surface without changing the
| | 05:41 | surface. Now that can be really good.
So if I want to move it there and let's
| | 05:45 | say I want to add a little bit more
detail, so I can do Insert Edge Loop, click
| | 05:49 | there and so on and so forth. So,
what you can do is you can start adding
| | 05:53 | detail to your model to reshape it.
| | 05:57 | Now again when you start adding
detail to a model, you have got to be very
| | 06:01 | careful because one of the things with
Polygonal modeling or NURBS modeling or
| | 06:05 | any modeling for that matter is that
you want to try and get the least detail
| | 06:08 | to create the most shape because when
you go to animate it, you want that model
| | 06:12 | to be as light and as efficient as
possible. So you want to just add just
| | 06:17 | enough detail to make it the shape
that you want without any extra detail.
| | 06:21 | That's just a general tip I'm throwing
out at you there. So let's move on to
| | 06:25 | some more tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding polygon extrude| 00:00 | Now let's look at the Extrude tool.
Extruding is probably one of the most
| | 00:04 | common modeling operations you will
come across. It's very versatile, it's a
| | 00:08 | great way to add detail. So let me
show you some of the basics of that.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to go ahead and create --
let's start with a Polygonal Cube. So I'm
| | 00:17 | just going to create a cube. So I'm
going to left-click and drag and drag again
| | 00:26 | on my Perspective window and I want a
little bit more detail. So I'm going to
| | 00:29 | go into my Channel Box here and just
going to left-click and highlight all
| | 00:33 | these and just add some more
subdivisions. I'm going to make it a 3x3 cube
| | 00:39 | essentially is what I have
got. So the Extrude tool.
| | 00:43 | Now the Extrude tool works on all
three components, it works on Faces, it
| | 00:48 | works on Edges and it works on Vertices.
So it's kind of unique in that way.
| | 00:53 | Typically people use it to extrude
faces, that's probably the most common,
| | 00:58 | although, edges are another
really good way to create detail.
| | 01:02 | Let me show you how it works. We are
going to go ahead and right click over
| | 01:06 | this cube and select Face and I'm just
going to select one of these faces. Then
| | 01:10 | I'm going to go Edit Mesh > Extrude and
a little gizmo pops up and what I can do
| | 01:17 | is I can just left-click and drag
and I can extrude that detail or I can
| | 01:24 | basically extrude it out or I can
extrude it in to create a hole either ways.
| | 01:29 | So I'm going to extrude this one out
and that creates that additional details.
| | 01:33 | Basically what I have done is I have
added detail to my model and you can see
| | 01:39 | how very easily you can use this to
create all sorts of things. So for
| | 01:42 | example, if I was creating a character
I can extrude out the arms on both sides
| | 01:46 | and the legs from the bottom. If I want
to extrude again, I can hit extrude or
| | 01:55 | two little tricks here, you can hit
the G key and that repeats the last
| | 01:59 | command, there you go or if you hold
down the Spacebar and go into your Hotbox
| | 02:06 | you can go Recent Commands and just
repeat it that way. So there are a couple
| | 02:10 | of ways we are doing it.
| | 02:10 | Now another thing you can do with this
tool is you have got these little scale
| | 02:15 | gloves here. So if I grab these boxes
at the edges of this X, Y and Z, I can
| | 02:19 | actually scale that or I can push that
back in. So you can actually scale your
| | 02:29 | detail as you model it. So that's very handy.
| | 02:35 | Now we have been playing with faces
but there is another way to extrude and
| | 02:40 | that's extruding edges. Now probably
the best way to extrude edges is along an
| | 02:47 | open edge. Now what I'm going to do is
I'm going to select that face there and
| | 02:51 | then I'm going to hit the Delete key
and what I have done is I have created a
| | 02:53 | hole and around that hole are open edges.
| | 02:57 | So now I want to extrude some edges. So
I'm going to right click here, Edge --
| | 03:00 | let's just do one edge and I will show
you how it works and then I will show
| | 03:05 | you why I have created that hole. Let's
just start with one edge. So I'm -- if
| | 03:08 | you are going to go Edit Mesh > Extrude
and we are going to extrude this edge.
| | 03:14 | As you can see what it does is it
creates a plane. So it just adds enough
| | 03:19 | detail to create a plane. Then I'm
going to undo that. I'm going to hit Z, undo
| | 03:23 | and Z again to get rid of the
Extrude operation. So I hit Z twice there.
| | 03:29 | Then I'm going to hold down the Shift
key and I'm going to select everything
| | 03:33 | around that edge. Now this is
probably the way that most people model with
| | 03:40 | extruding edges is that they will
take an open edge of an object, this is
| | 03:44 | really handy when you are modeling,
for example, the face of a character, you
| | 03:47 | could take the lower edge of the lip
or the upper edge of the lip and extrude
| | 03:51 | it up to connect with the
eye and stuff like that.
| | 03:55 | Well, let me just show you. So I hit G
to redo my extrude operation and there
| | 04:01 | we go. Now extruding essentially the
two and I can scale and do all sorts of
| | 04:07 | stuff with them and I can repeat that
and you can see also if this goes off at
| | 04:12 | an angle, you can have problems. So
sometimes what I do is I will extrude it
| | 04:18 | just a little bit and then I will move
it. So what I did was I just extruded
| | 04:24 | it and then instead of using that tool
that Maya provides, let me show you how
| | 04:30 | I did that again.
| | 04:30 | So for example, if I select this open
edge, I will extrude and if that gets
| | 04:40 | kind of weird, what happens is that
this extrude has already taken place, as
| | 04:44 | soon as you hit Extrude it's already
there, so you can just hit W for move and
| | 04:50 | just move it rather than use that Extrude tool.
| | 04:54 | Now let me show you Vertices as well.
So I'm going to hit Vertex, select just
| | 05:00 | one vertex, Edit Mesh > Extrude and you
can see how you can extrude a vertex.
| | 05:06 | Now what that does is it creates detail
and extrude out and creates additional
| | 05:11 | detail. So we work from this to this.
So you can see very easily how that
| | 05:18 | works, it kind of creates this
diamond shape around the vertex.
| | 05:24 | So there is one more thing I want to
show you about extruding and that is we do
| | 05:29 | have an Options menu here. That's
for Extrude Vertex. Let me show you for
| | 05:34 | Extrude Face. Actually that's
probably the best one. So I'm going to right
| | 05:38 | click here on Faces, select any face it
doesn't matter. I just want to show you
| | 05:44 | these options. So if I go here and
click on Options, the Extrude Face Options
| | 05:49 | we have a couple of them,
one is how many Divisions?
| | 05:53 | So when I extrude something how
many times is it going to subdivide it.
| | 05:58 | Typically that's one but we can do
three or four. The one I really wanted to
| | 06:02 | show you was Use selected curve for
extrusion. Now what that does is it allows
| | 06:07 | you to extrude along a curve. So we
haven't gotten into curves, for example,
| | 06:13 | for NURBS surfaces. So you would draw
a NURBS curve, select the Face, select
| | 06:18 | the curve and then you can actually
use that curve as a path to extrude.
| | 06:25 | So those are the basics of the Extrude
tool. Let's move on to the next set of tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Keep Faces Together feature| 00:00 | Now I'm going to show you another tool
that firstly relates to the Extrude tool
| | 00:04 | and that's called Keep Faces Together.
It's right here in the Edit Mesh menu,
| | 00:08 | so we go to Polygons > Edit Mesh.
You'll notice this little checkbox here, it
| | 00:12 | says Keep Faces Together. It's very
important, particularly when you are
| | 00:16 | extruding objects. I'm going to tear
off this menu here, so I'm going to
| | 00:20 | double-click here or single click there
and let's go ahead and create a sphere.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and create a
Polygons Sphere, Polygonal Sphere and I'm
| | 00:30 | going to select some faces, so I'm
going to right-click Face and then
| | 00:37 | Shift+Select four faces, anywhere, it
doesn't really matter. And I'm going to
| | 00:44 | extrude those, I just hit Extrude and
I'm going to go ahead and pull them out.
| | 00:52 | And if you notice when I extrude these
all of these faces are basically kept
| | 00:59 | together and what that is that's
because this is checked Keep Faces
| | 01:04 | Together. Let me un-check it, in fact
I'm going to select four polygons on the
| | 01:09 | other side.
| | 01:10 | So I've selected four faces on the
other side of this and I'm going to click
| | 01:26 | this off and let me do the extrude
again. Click that blue one. If you notice
| | 01:34 | look at the difference. When I turn
this off, when I turn Keep Faces Together
| | 01:40 | off it doesn't keep them together and
look what it does, it adds a lot more
| | 01:46 | geometry, instead of creating kind of
a monolithic extrude, it extrudes each
| | 01:53 | face individually.
| | 01:55 | Now this can be very handy. For example,
if you are creating characters hand
| | 01:59 | then you wanted the fingers to be
separate, just turn that off and extrude of a
| | 02:05 | box, for example, or if you wanted to
create like a really spiky kind of thing,
| | 02:09 | again this works very, very easily.
For example, if I wanted to select all of
| | 02:14 | these and do an extrude with that of,
you could very easily create something
| | 02:20 | like that.
| | 02:23 | So that's what this Keep Faces
Together does, let me do that there, it keeps
| | 02:32 | the faces together. That was simple as
I can say it, but it's better to see it
| | 02:36 | and see it in action. So that's a very
important thing to know and typically,
| | 02:41 | when I model, I keep that checked, but
just know what that tool does. So let's move on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Cut Faces tool| 00:00 | Now we are going to go a little bit
deeper into some tools that affect faces
| | 00:04 | and those are the Cut Faces and Split
Polygon tool. They basically do the same
| | 00:11 | thing, just a little bit differently
though. So let me show you how that works.
| | 00:15 | So I'm just going to create a box.
I'm just going to create a polygon cube.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to shape that and let's just do
Cut Faces. What Cut Faces does is it says
| | 00:31 | click-drag to cut. So what that does
is basically you click and you drag and
| | 00:38 | when you drag, it creates this line.
What this line does is it cuts the
| | 00:43 | polygon, the face where you drag it.
Notice how it kind of cut that right
| | 00:48 | there. So just try that again, so if
I click-drag here for the cut here.
| | 00:58 | So what it does is it cuts in straight
along. Basically what it does it creates
| | 01:04 | a knife that is projected along that
line. So sometimes it's best to use this
| | 01:11 | tool in a top or a front or an
orthographic viewport because that way you can
| | 01:18 | get really straight cuts. I'm going to
go ahead and delete that and let's go
| | 01:25 | ahead and do another one, and
that is the Split Polygon tool.
| | 01:30 | So the Split Polygon tool, what that
does is allows you to kind of, almost kind
| | 01:34 | of manually draw an edge loop. So
what you can do is you click on one edge,
| | 01:40 | this is where I want to start cutting
and then I want to cut to there and you
| | 01:44 | can literally just mark your way
around the object. You don't have to go, you
| | 01:52 | can go over here, whatever. A lot of
times what I do is I'll go around this
| | 01:57 | way, and in order to create my own edge
loop or if you wanted to add into like
| | 02:04 | a character or like extra detail in
there. That's a great tool as well. OK, so
| | 02:11 | that's Cut Faces and Split Polygon.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Poke and Wedge Faces tools| 00:00 | So let's do a few more tools that deal
with faces and that would be Poke and
| | 00:04 | Wedge Faces. Again I'm going to start
with just a box, so I'm going to click
| | 00:10 | box and just create a box, and again I
want some more divisions, so I'm just
| | 00:15 | going to make it 3x3 box, highlight
those, middle-click and drag and you've got
| | 00:21 | it, OK. So let's do Poke Faces first.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this, right-click and hit Face, and then
| | 00:29 | left-click to select the Face, and
let's just see what Poke Face does.
| | 00:37 | What it does is essentially, it
basically just kind of triangulates that face.
| | 00:42 | Now if I wanted to do it for multiple
faces, it will go ahead and triangulate
| | 00:53 | all of those faces.
| | 00:54 | Now there are some other options here
and that is how much do you want that
| | 01:02 | middle vertex to put in middle to be
offset. So in other words, what I did here
| | 01:06 | is I just clicked and dragged to
offset that, I could have just automatically
| | 01:11 | done that with the Poly Poke tool.
| | 01:16 | Now let's took a Wedge. Wedge is a
little bit more interesting in the way that
| | 01:21 | it works. What Wedge does is it
actually uses an edge as a hinge to kind of
| | 01:27 | rotate a series of faces around. So
let me show you how to do this. It's a
| | 01:31 | two-step process, first, you need to
select the face then you need to select
| | 01:37 | the edge, and then you can use the tool.
So let's go ahead and select the Face,
| | 01:41 | left-click.
| | 01:42 | Now here's the trick, right-click over
this, I need to select an edge. So go
| | 01:48 | over in your marking menu to Edge, hold
down the Shift key, don't let that get
| | 01:53 | unselected, hold down the Shift key,
left-click and select your Edge.
| | 01:58 | So now what I've done is I've
selected two separate types of components, I
| | 02:01 | selected the Face and the Edge. Now I
can go to Wedge Face and there it goes.
| | 02:15 | So as you can see this rotated that
face out around that edge, and if I go into
| | 02:24 | my Wedge Face tool, you can see that
OK, this is the angle and this is the
| | 02:29 | number of divisions, so what 90
degrees and had four divisions
| | 02:33 | Now here's a the little trick, I've
done this Wedge Face here but I can go here
| | 02:40 | into my INPUTS and actually change that,
so I can change my number of Divisions
| | 02:45 | by middle-clicking and dragging and
also change my Wedge angle. In fact, this
| | 02:51 | is what we call the history or the
history of the object, OK. So as I model, it
| | 02:58 | actually created my poke, the two
pokes that I did, and the Wedge Face. So I
| | 03:04 | can actually walk through all the
things I did to this object and change the
| | 03:10 | parameters, very handy.
| | 03:16 | So that's the basics of Poke and Wedge Face.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Object History| 00:00 | Most of the time when you model you
start with a primitive and then you start
| | 00:04 | adding detail, tweaking detail,
reshaping things, and you start doing all of
| | 00:09 | these operations on a basic object. Now
as Maya works, by default, it turns on
| | 00:16 | a history, which is essentially, it
keeps track of everything that you do. Now
| | 00:20 | this can be very important when
modeling to know that this history exists and
| | 00:25 | how to work with it. So let me show you
a little bit of the basics about this.
| | 00:29 | Let's just take a simple cube. OK, we
are going to model on to that cube a
| | 00:35 | little bit. I'm going to take that
cube, select some Subdivisions, add some
| | 00:40 | Subdivisions here in the Channel Box.
Select Faces and just Shift-select a few
| | 00:48 | faces and I'm going to Extrude those
and then I'm going to Extrude those again,
| | 00:58 | I just hit the G key. Now I'm going to
Extrude those again, G these ones here.
| | 01:07 | What I'm doing is I'm creating some
modeling tools and then let's do something
| | 01:12 | else. Let's do a Poke Face here and
extend that and then just take that face
| | 01:23 | and extrude it. OK.
| | 01:25 | So now I have done a bunch of
different things to this basic box, OK. I can
| | 01:34 | select the box and if I go over into
my Channel Box here, you'll notice under
| | 01:39 | Inputs everything that I have done to
this basic box has been reported. So I
| | 01:45 | start with a polyCube, just left-click
on these, and I have all these different
| | 01:50 | Subdivisions for Height and what I can
do is if I change them... Let's say for
| | 01:55 | example, I change the Height of the
original height of the cube, you can
| | 01:58 | actually go back and work with your history.
| | 02:02 | Now if I go in here and I start
adding Subdivisions, what I'm doing is I'm
| | 02:07 | actually adding detail in here.
That's going to change the way that that
| | 02:11 | Extrude works. For example, if I change
the number for Subdivisions for Depth,
| | 02:15 | it actually starts moving those
Extrudes around because the polygon that it
| | 02:19 | extruded is actually
moving around on the object.
| | 02:24 | But I can't change the fundamental
parameters of this, and I can walk my way
| | 02:29 | through this. So I can go into that
Extrude Face that I originally did and I
| | 02:34 | can go for example to anyone of these.
Like for example that last Extrude that
| | 02:38 | I did, I could add some more divisions
to it. You can actually go through and
| | 02:45 | just say, "Well I don't want to
change the translation of it". For example
| | 02:49 | here, I can go in and you can
actually just go through anyone of these.
| | 02:53 | If you change the Translation or the
Pivot Points of these. You can change the
| | 03:00 | number of divisions. So what happens
is as you model, you can actually go
| | 03:06 | through and walk your way through this
history to change the parameters that
| | 03:12 | you used to create the object.
| | 03:14 | The one thing that you have to also be
careful of is that, it does keep this
| | 03:18 | history so as you model something you
get a history list that's several hundred
| | 03:23 | operations long. You could actually
create very, very, very deep history list
| | 03:27 | and what happens is that starts to slow
down the system. It complicates things
| | 03:32 | because every time you select this
object, it has to go through and apply these
| | 03:37 | operations, over and over, and over again.
| | 03:39 | So if you have a list with dozens or
hundreds of operations, then it's really
| | 03:45 | going to start slowing the system down.
So what we have in Maya is we have a
| | 03:49 | way to get rid of that. So if we go
over into Edit, we have got Delete by Type,
| | 03:54 | History. So there's two of these, we
can delete the history of the entire
| | 03:59 | object and just collapse it all down to
just a raw point of an object or we can
| | 04:05 | collapse just Non Deformer History,
what that is, is that's anything other than
| | 04:11 | animation deformers.
| | 04:12 | OK, so if you have got a character
animation or skin build or something like
| | 04:16 | that, it won't delete that. You can
also delete all sorts of other things from
| | 04:21 | the object. But history is the most
important thing. You can also do a Delete
| | 04:25 | All by Type, History and that will
delete history on every single object in the
| | 04:29 | scene. Be careful when you use them.
But if I delete history on this object
| | 04:33 | here what happens is all of those go
away and now it just becomes just a raw
| | 04:39 | object with no history and you can't
go and scroll through all of that, OK.
| | 04:46 | Real basic but it's very
important in the way that you model, OK.
| | 04:51 | So be aware that you do have that
history and every once in a while when you
| | 04:55 | get to a milestone in your model and
you really like it, you can go ahead and
| | 04:59 | delete the history before you
move on to the next major step.
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| Understanding the Polygon Bevel tool| 00:00 | The next tool I want to show you is
Bevel. Typically, Bevel is used to kind of
| | 00:04 | round off the edges of objects. Let's
go ahead and create a polygonal cube and
| | 00:11 | shape that, I'm going to
show you the basics of Bevel.
| | 00:15 | Let's start with the edges because
that's probably a thing that people bevel
| | 00:19 | the most. What Bevel does is
basically create around at corners. We go Edit
| | 00:24 | Mesh > Bevel and there it goes. I'm
going to undo that, and let's take a look
| | 00:30 | at some of these options here.
| | 00:31 | So basically what you want to do is
you want to create, what type of Bevel do
| | 00:36 | you want to create and how many
Segments, that's really important. Let's do 3
| | 00:40 | or 4 segments and hit Bevel,
and you can see how that works.
| | 00:45 | Now that's very nice to particularly
if you are doing something like text or
| | 00:48 | something like that you want to go with
the edges of text on something. You can
| | 00:52 | also bevel faces, so for example, let's
take this face here, in fact I'm going
| | 00:59 | to turn off Show - Grid, I'm going to
turn that off. So if I wanted to bevel
| | 01:04 | say the bottom of this object here,
to select the face go Bevel and there,
| | 01:10 | well, it will also adjust bevel those faces.
| | 01:13 | So actually here, let me show you that
a little bit more succinctly, let's just
| | 01:19 | go ahead and create a new box and if
you want, you can just go Face, select all
| | 01:26 | the faces and then just Bevel them
and that just bevels the whole object.
| | 01:32 | Now again we're playing with history
here, we can actually change the number of
| | 01:37 | segments that you want to bevel up with.
So I've my cube, going to Object mode
| | 01:46 | and I could find my inputs here. I have
my basic cube, I'm going to have my bevel.
| | 01:50 | If I wanted to change my number of
segments here, I can just do that, I can
| | 01:55 | also change how round I wanted
to be and so on and so forth.
| | 02:00 | One more thing here is you can also
bevel vertices well, and typically people
| | 02:07 | don't do that, but let me just show
you, I'm going to select the vertices
| | 02:11 | around the top edge of this rounded
cube and just do a bevel on that, let's
| | 02:19 | just make it 1 Segment, hit Bevel,
and you can see how a vertex bevels, And
| | 02:27 | typically, you are going to want to
bevel faces or edges. So that's the Bevel tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding Polygon Chamfer| 00:00 | For vertices there's another tool
kind of similar to Bevel and it's called
| | 00:04 | Chamfer and let me just show you how
that tool works. It's a very simple tool,
| | 00:09 | but it will be very handy. I'm going
to go ahead and draw a sphere and then
| | 00:14 | let's just right-click over that, go
to Vertex and just select the Vertex and
| | 00:18 | let's see what the tool does. Edit Mesh >
Chamfer Vertex and as you can see what
| | 00:26 | it does is just expands that out along
the edges and chamfers it. So what it
| | 00:33 | does is create a nice little chamfer.
| | 00:38 | I select a bunch of them, bunch of
vertices, and chamfer those. You'll see it
| | 00:46 | creates this kind of a pattern. Now
one thing you can't do with Chamfer,
| | 00:51 | actually I do use this a lot with
modeling is you can Edit Mesh > Chamfer and
| | 00:58 | remove the face after you chamfer. So
if you hit Apply, what that does is it
| | 01:03 | actually creates a little hole. Now
this can be a great base for modeling. So
| | 01:08 | for example if I select those edges, I
could extrude those and create something
| | 01:23 | off of that, OK. So that's the
basics of the Chamfer Vertex tool.
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| Understanding Polygon Bridge| 00:00 | Now I want to show you one last tool
and that's the Bridge tool and what that
| | 00:05 | does is allow you to take and create
bridges between two open edges of an object.
| | 00:10 | We are going to work with just a file
here, we are going to open a scene, we
| | 00:15 | are going to open the scene called Cup_
01. What this is, this is a coffee cup.
| | 00:20 | Now how I built this, this is actually
kind of like one of the last steps of
| | 00:24 | creating this coffee cup. What I did
was I created this kind of tube shape,
| | 00:30 | I did some extrudes and I created the
handle by doing an extrude in shaping this
| | 00:38 | handle, actually extruded to a curve.
| | 00:43 | Now what I did here was I chamfered
this vertex and I've got these two open
| | 00:48 | edges and I need to connect the bottom
part of this coffee cup. I can use the
| | 00:53 | Bridge tool to do that, so let's go to
Edge mode, what I need to do is select
| | 00:57 | the open edges and then Bridge
will create a bridge between them.
| | 01:01 | So what I can do is I can just select
one of these edges here, hit the Right
| | 01:06 | Arrow key and that selects my edge loop.
Now for the other one, I'm going to
| | 01:09 | have to hold down the Shift key
and I'm going to just lasso select or
| | 01:14 | rubber-band select all of these.
| | 01:17 | Notice how it selected the whole open
edge but also selected a couple of other
| | 01:22 | edges here. It selected this one and
then of course one on the opposite side.
| | 01:26 | So all I can do is hold down the Ctrl
key, rubber-band over those and it will
| | 01:31 | de-select those.
| | 01:32 | Now let's just go into this, we've got
Open Edge. Open Edge, as long as you've
| | 01:37 | got those selected, you just go
Edit Mesh > Bridge and it bridges that.
| | 01:43 | Now let's look at the Bridge options
here, which is how do you want to bridge
| | 01:49 | it, do you want to bridge a Linear,
Smooth path and how many divisions do you
| | 01:54 | want and the smoothing angle, I'm
going to go ahead and just close that,
| | 01:57 | because we already bridged it. And if
we go over to our Channel box you'll
| | 02:02 | notice that I've these same tools
here. So I can actually left-click on
| | 02:05 | Divisions and then middle-click and
drag and just change the number of
| | 02:09 | divisions there and so on and so forth.
| | 02:15 | So that's Poly Bridge and as you can
see now I've got a completely connected
| | 02:20 | handle here and that makes it a very
easy way to connect those sorts of things.
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| Understanding Polygon Booleans| 00:00 | Now let's talk about some tools that
deal with entire meshes. Up to this point
| | 00:05 | we have been working with components
such as vertices and faces and edges, now
| | 00:10 | let's work with some of these tools
under the Mesh menu, which deal with entire
| | 00:14 | polygonal object.
| | 00:15 | The first one we are going to work
with is Booleans. Now Booleans, for those
| | 00:20 | who are not familiar with it, is a
modeling tool that allows you to add and
| | 00:23 | subtract objects together. A lot of
people like to use Booleans, I kind of got
| | 00:28 | to be careful though because it can
create geometry that's really not very
| | 00:32 | deformable. So I always recommend that
use Booleans for objects that are just
| | 00:36 | kind of sit there, like I would
recommend it for character where the character
| | 00:40 | deforms or something like that.
| | 00:43 | Anyways, let me show you how this
works. We are going to go ahead with
| | 00:45 | polygonal sphere. Let's just with the
sphere, one of my favorite objects and
| | 00:51 | let's do a cylinder. Can we make that
cylinder taller than the sphere and let's
| | 00:58 | shape them. So we can see what we have
got here. Booleans allows us to use one
| | 01:02 | object to basically cut into or add to another.
| | 01:08 | Now the one thing about Booleans is
sometimes it's sensitive to the order that
| | 01:11 | you select things. Let's remember the
order that we select these objects as we
| | 01:16 | go through this. So I'm going to select
the Sphere and I'm going down the Shift
| | 01:19 | key and select the Cylinder and then
let's go Mesh Booleans. We have three
| | 01:25 | options here. In fact, I'm going to
tear this off. I'm just going to click on
| | 01:29 | that double line there and these
are my Booleans options, I have Union,
| | 01:34 | Difference and Intersection.
| | 01:36 | So let's just go through these top to
bottom. So I have selected both of those
| | 01:41 | and when I hit Union, it actually
makes this one object. It cuts away all of
| | 01:49 | the access. In fact, if I did a shading
here, you will see that cylinder is cut
| | 01:54 | off. Normally, it was in entire
cylinder that went down to the origin and now
| | 01:59 | it's just attached to
this object, to this sphere.
| | 02:04 | Now I'm going to go ahead and undo that.
So I have got two separate objects. So
| | 02:08 | I just hit the Z key to do that. Now
let's go ahead and do Difference. So I'm
| | 02:13 | going to select the cylinder first,
hold down the Shift key and select this
| | 02:18 | sphere. Now the last object we
selected is always green. So we know we have
| | 02:22 | selected the sphere last. So what this
is going to do is we are going to hit
| | 02:26 | Difference and what that does is it
subtracts the sphere from the cylinder.
| | 02:31 | So if we go, we go over there we can
see that the sphere is kind of cut into
| | 02:37 | the cylinder. Let's go ahead and undo
that and now let's select the cylinder
| | 02:43 | second. So now we will select that
sphere and the cylinder second. This is
| | 02:47 | opposite order from what we did and
now this time when we do Difference, we
| | 02:52 | have subtracted the cylinder. The
last item selected is subtracted from the
| | 02:57 | first one selected and so now you can
see we have created the cylindrical hole
| | 03:03 | in that sphere. So you can see the order
of selection sometimes does make a difference.
| | 03:10 | So let's do the last one Intersection
and what that does is that basically is
| | 03:14 | only the parts of the object that
overlap. So whatever overlaps which is
| | 03:20 | basically the outline of that cylinder
to the edge of that sphere. So those are
| | 03:26 | basics of Booleans.
| | 03:29 | So now we are going to show a kind of
more practical application of Booleans.
| | 03:33 | Just go ahead and create a simple
object like for example a barbell. So we can
| | 03:38 | create a polygonal sphere. Click on
Sphere, create polygon sphere and now we
| | 03:44 | are going to go into another viewport
and let's just go into my Front viewport
| | 03:48 | and I'm going to duplicate that sphere.
Now I can just do Edit > Duplicate or it
| | 03:52 | can hit Ctrl+D and what that
does is that duplicates that sphere.
| | 03:58 | Now I want to also create a cylinder
that goes between those two spheres. So
| | 04:03 | what I'm going to do is going to my
Top view and I'm just going to keep it in
| | 04:07 | the four view right now and then just
select and drag my cylinder and then just
| | 04:15 | drag it to set the height. So what I
can do is I can position that cylinder so
| | 04:27 | it's pretty much centered amongst the
bar bell. So you can see here in the Top
| | 04:31 | view it centered and what I'm going
to do is I'm going to use to combine
| | 04:36 | operation. So I'm going to select the
sphere and the cylinder then we will go
| | 04:40 | Mesh > Booleans > Union. What that does
is that creates that. Now if I select the
| | 04:48 | other sphere and I do the same thing
it now creates one object that is of the bar bell.
| | 04:55 | The thing is I wanted to do at this
way because I'm actually going to create
| | 05:00 | the same object in another way in the
next couple of lessons and what this does
| | 05:05 | now as if you zoom-in here you are
going to see that there is a lot of little
| | 05:09 | edges here, noticed that. I don't get
these two wind up exactly right. You are
| | 05:16 | going to have what's called non-
regular edges here, non-regular geometry. So
| | 05:21 | these edges don't really lined up and
sometimes getting even with Booleans. As
| | 05:26 | I getting everything to line up
properly just kind of hard. So with this, just
| | 05:31 | kind of shows you some of the downfalls
of Booleans. If I wanted to smooth this
| | 05:36 | or round off these corners,
it's not going to happen.
| | 05:40 | If you build the object another way you
can get a lot better results. Let's go
| | 05:45 | into some of these other tools and I
will show you how to get more regular
| | 05:50 | types of objects.
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| Combining objects| 00:00 | We just looked at Booleans, which allow
you to take multiple objects and bring
| | 00:04 | them together. There is another set of
tools in Maya that allow you do that and
| | 00:08 | that's called Combine and Separate.
What they do is they allow you to take
| | 00:12 | multiple polygonal objects and
combined them or Separate, which allows you to
| | 00:17 | take an object and break it apart into
multiple objects. So let me show you how
| | 00:22 | that works. I'm going to start with
Combine. I'm going to take a polygonal
| | 00:27 | sphere and I'm going to create a sphere.
| | 00:31 | Now I'm going to go ahead and duplicate
that. I can do Edit > Duplicate, but I'm
| | 00:36 | just going to hit Ctrl+D and that
duplicates it. Then hit W to move it and
| | 00:42 | again what I'm doing is I'm doing
very similar to what we did in the last
| | 00:44 | lesson, which was, create
just kind of barbell structure.
| | 00:47 | Now what I want to do is I want
create a barbell that's a little bit more
| | 00:51 | regular in geometry. So what I have
here is I have two polygonal spheres and
| | 00:57 | the geometry is pretty much lined up.
I just need to connect them in some way
| | 01:02 | or what we can do is we can use Combine
and Separate. I can take this sphere, I
| | 01:08 | can hold down the Shift key, select
the second sphere and then we do Mesh >
| | 01:13 | Combine. What that does is it brings
them together and now Maya views these as
| | 01:19 | one object.
| | 01:21 | So when I select it, it's one object.
This is great for just connecting things
| | 01:25 | together. It's a little bit more
streamline in something like group or
| | 01:30 | hierarchies, particularly, if you
don't need the objects to animate. You can
| | 01:34 | always just combine them, but combining
also helps you with modeling especially
| | 01:39 | when you are conducting multiple objects.
Let's take a look at this. Let's say
| | 01:44 | I wanted to make a barbell. What all I
have to do is extrude part of this up to
| | 01:49 | there and connect them in someway.
| | 01:51 | Well let's just go ahead and start by
taking one of those spheres and selecting
| | 01:56 | all the faces along that top couple of
rows. Well, you can see here I have got
| | 02:01 | these. I'm going to hold down the
Shift key and select all of these. So those
| | 02:05 | are the ones I want and what I can do
here is actually I'm just going to hit
| | 02:10 | the Delete key and I'm going to make a
little hole there and what I can do is I
| | 02:14 | can do the exact same thing on the
other side, creating the other hole.
| | 02:24 | Now to connect these two holes, all I
really have to do is use a tool called
| | 02:28 | Bridge. Let me go into Edge mode here.
Now what I want to do is I'm going to
| | 02:32 | select all the edges just around, move
it up here. So what I can do is actually
| | 02:39 | I can hold this and then just use my
right and left arrow keys to select that.
| | 02:43 | Actually hit my left arrow there to
select that and then I have to select all
| | 02:49 | of these. So I can just Shift-drag
that selects all of those then I can Ctrl
| | 02:56 | and select those ones that are kind of
sticking down. So now I have got just
| | 03:00 | the front edges of those connected, I
can use Edit Mesh > Bridge. What that does
| | 03:07 | is it actually creates geometry that
bridges those two holes and if I go over
| | 03:14 | to my History here I can see that I can
have the Taper to it or I can Twist it
| | 03:22 | and I can also add the
number of Divisions I want.
| | 03:27 | So now what I have got here is I have
got some tools that allow you to really
| | 03:32 | connect these very cleanly. So when I
go to smooth it, when I go to animate it,
| | 03:39 | everything is connected. This is a very
simple, simple, simple way of doing it,
| | 03:43 | but you can also do a little bit more
complex vertex at a time and I will show
| | 03:48 | you that in just a little bit. But as
you can see Combine allows you to take
| | 03:54 | two objects and put them together. So
that way you can use the Edit Mesh tools
| | 03:58 | on them. So I have a mesh, two meshes,
Actually I combine them. Then I go to
| | 04:04 | over and I can use Edit Mesh tools
such as Bridge to connect them together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Merging vertices| 00:00 | Now in addition to Bridge, there is a
couple of other ways to connect open
| | 00:05 | edges on a polygonal model and one of
those is Merge, which is normally used
| | 00:10 | with the vertices. In some ways it's
kind of the old fashioned way of doing
| | 00:14 | things but it's very effective and let
me open a scene here. I'm going to open
| | 00:20 | Geometry_01 and it basically just has
a cylinder and a box and they have two
| | 00:29 | open edges here. Now what we are going
to do is we are going to connect the two together.
| | 00:33 | One of the things I did is when I model
this I make sure in fact let me select
| | 00:36 | both of these. Make sure that it has a
same number of edges and vertices around
| | 00:43 | these open holes, so that makes it very
easy to connect the two. As you modeled
| | 00:48 | you need to kind of plan for stuff
like that, but let me show you how to do
| | 00:52 | this. I'm going to select both of them
just left-click and drag and rubber band
| | 00:56 | select them and we are going to go to
Mesh > Combine and what that does is that
| | 01:01 | makes them into one it's like
an mesh, as I showed you before.
| | 01:05 | What I want to do is snap the vertices
of this box to the open edges of this
| | 01:12 | cylinder. So what I'm going to do is I
right click, go into Vertex Mode and I
| | 01:17 | grab a vertex and I move it and I want
this lined up there, well, that's not
| | 01:23 | easy because you really want to line those
up exactly. This is where Snap comes in handy.
| | 01:29 | Snap to points is what we want to do.
These are all of our Snap tools up here.
| | 01:34 | So Snap to points and you will
notice how that turns to round which means
| | 01:38 | that a little round instead of square
means it will snap to any points, which
| | 01:43 | is any one of these vertices and let's
snap it right there. Then all we have to
| | 01:47 | do is just grab, move and snap my way
all the way around this. Make sure I get
| | 01:59 | the right ones here. There we go and
I just work my way around and snap them all.
| | 02:12 | Now once these are all snapped, there
is still one more thing to do. It looks
| | 02:17 | like this is all connected and
actually it looks really nice, but if you
| | 02:22 | actually tore this apart, in fact, I
can do that by selecting Face and moving
| | 02:27 | this, turning on snap right here, turn
it off and you can see that if I move
| | 02:33 | that Face these edges are not
connected. They are still open they are still
| | 02:37 | actually two parallel edges
along each of these lines here.
| | 02:44 | So what I need to do to combine those
is Merge. So I go right click, I go into
| | 02:49 | Vertex Mode and I need to select all
of vertices around these open edges. So
| | 02:54 | I'm actually going to go into a Front
viewport and then left-click and drag and
| | 02:59 | just box select all of those. Let's
make sure that just go back in the
| | 03:03 | perspective. Yeah, they are all
selected and then just do Edit Mesh > Merge and
| | 03:09 | what that does is it merges all of
those vertices and snap together.
| | 03:12 | Now let me give you a little background
about how Merge works. What Merge does
| | 03:18 | is it takes any vertices within a
specified range and it merges them together
| | 03:23 | into one. Now snapping them, which is
what we did, actually make sure they are
| | 03:29 | right on top of each other. But merge
does have, in fact, let's just take a
| | 03:33 | look at that. Merge has a threshold value here.
| | 03:36 | So if the vertices aren't quite aligned
they will still kind of wrap together.
| | 03:43 | If they are not exactly aligned and
that threshold will determine how that
| | 03:47 | works. Now, let's see if this work. I
will take this Face and I move it and now
| | 03:52 | it and now you can see those are all connected.
| | 03:56 | So we have got a really good
connection here. So now this is all one surface.
| | 04:01 | Before it was two surfaces, now it's all in one
surface. So that's how Merge Vertices works.
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| Merging edges| 00:00 | Now I'm going to show you one more way
to attach surfaces together and that's
| | 00:04 | using the Merge Edge tool. Very
similar to Merge Polygons. We are going to
| | 00:09 | actually open that same scene called
Geometry and again the cylinder and a box
| | 00:14 | and both of these have open edges and
we are going to merge those together. So
| | 00:19 | what I have to do. First thing I have
to do is combine them, so they are at the
| | 00:22 | same polygonal object and then we can
actually attach the surfaces. So I'm
| | 00:27 | going to left-click and rubber band
select both of them. Mesh > Combine and now
| | 00:34 | I can use the Merge Edge tool.
| | 00:37 | So we take that Merge Edge tool, what
it does is it actually changes my cursor.
| | 00:41 | Notice I have got this kind of
pointing cursor here. What I can do is I can
| | 00:45 | just select an open edge and you can
see how that's highlighted in kind of a
| | 00:50 | brown color and I select the
corresponding edge and I have got these two edges
| | 00:56 | selected, hit Enter and then I can just
go over that tool again. I can hit G to
| | 01:03 | reactivate that tool and basically
I'm just touching it all together.
| | 01:08 | So again G, which is repeat last
command. Select and select Enter and you can
| | 01:15 | work your way around. Again, it's very
similar. Now notice how this is a little
| | 01:19 | bit different because what this does is
it actually deforming this geometry of
| | 01:24 | the cylinder and that's because what it
does is it actually meets in the middle.
| | 01:29 | So let's do one more, do that and that.
So what it does is it actually pops
| | 01:37 | together right in the middle. So
that's why it's kind of pointing this geometry out.
| | 01:41 | So that's the Merge Edge tool.
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| Separating polygonal objects| 00:00 | Now I want to show you Separate, which
is the complementary tool for Combine.
| | 00:05 | So we combine objects together, we can
also separate them. Let's just take the
| | 00:09 | lid off of a polygonal cylinder, for example.
| | 00:12 | Create a polygon cylinder, let's say we
wanted to make a box or something like
| | 00:17 | that, we wanted to have a lid. So I
take that polyCylinder and I'm just going
| | 00:20 | to actually add a few Subdivisions for
the height and let's shade this Smooth Shade All.
| | 00:26 | Now let's say I wanted to take off the
top of this. All I have to do is create
| | 00:33 | kind of a series of open edges along
this. So what I can do, probably the
| | 00:38 | easiest thing to do is just to insert
an edge loop here, somewhere just right
| | 00:43 | there, just a really tiny edge loop
and then I can delete the faces of this
| | 00:50 | that are created by that edge loop.
Hit Enter, then just go into to Face mode
| | 00:56 | here, and then I'm going to select
these little faces here, OK, see these ones
| | 00:59 | right along there let's hit Delete.
| | 01:05 | So now once I have that and I have
this completely separated from the other
| | 01:08 | object I can go back in the
Object mode, select the object just by
| | 01:14 | left-clicking on it, Mesh - Separate,
and because these are separated the
| | 01:19 | services are not connected in anyway,
that's the key with this. I can now
| | 01:23 | separate them. So now I have a little
lid for this box. Very, very simple!
| | 01:29 | I wanted to combine them or separate
them much as I wanted to. So I could
| | 01:34 | combine or separate. And again in some
ways you can use this almost like as a
| | 01:40 | grouping tool, because if you have
one object that's made of a bunch of
| | 01:45 | different parts, but you don't really
ever want to animate those different
| | 01:48 | parts, you can just combine them and
just make them one object, makes it lot
| | 01:52 | easier, a lot organizationally it
makes a lot easier within Maya to do that.
| | 01:58 | One example here, let's go ahead and
open one scene. That would be the Teapot,
| | 02:02 | which is kind of like the standard
teapot that we see in computer graphics,
| | 02:06 | this is actually made of four separate
surfaces. Normally we just want to put a
| | 02:10 | teapot on the table, we don't need to
take the lid off the teapot, we don't
| | 02:16 | have to animate it, but it's all one
object. So if we did Mesh > Separate you
| | 02:22 | can see how this is constructed, it's
actually 1, 2, 3, 4 separate surfaces.
| | 02:29 | Select them all, hit Combine and now
that's just one object which is really
| | 02:35 | actually makes a lot easier just to
move it around. Otherwise I'd have to
| | 02:39 | create a hierarchy and just put them
all together and I have got four objects
| | 02:44 | floating around my outline rather
than just one and it's just a lot more
| | 02:48 | complex. So for objects like this,
polygonal objects like this, Combined and
| | 02:53 | Separate can be used as a grouping tool.
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| Using Smooth Proxy tools| 00:00 | Now the lesson I'm going to show you
is Smoothing. We have been playing a lot
| | 00:04 | with basic polygonal objects, but the
real trick for Polygonal Modeling is you
| | 00:10 | are modeling a very low-res object
that will be smoothed into a higher-res
| | 00:15 | object. Now there are two competing
forces that we have with Polygonal
| | 00:21 | Modeling. One is you want to keep
the object light, so that it animates,
| | 00:25 | particularly in things like character
animation where a character is deforming.
| | 00:29 | You want to keep the character or the
object as simple as possible so that way
| | 00:34 | it's easy to model, it's easy to
change the model, it's easy to deform, it's
| | 00:38 | easy to animate. But the other
competing force is you want it to be smooth. You
| | 00:44 | want it to be organic looking, you
don't want to see straight lines, you want
| | 00:49 | to see curved lines and
that requires a lot of detail.
| | 00:54 | So, what we have are these two
competing forces of you want the object to be
| | 00:57 | light, but then you need it to have a
lot of detail to render nicely. And so
| | 01:03 | what we have is we have some tools
that allow us to take rough polygonal
| | 01:07 | objects and smooth them down into
organic looking objects and those tools are
| | 01:14 | called Smoothing tools. Now, Maya has
two tools for Smoothing, let me show you them.
| | 01:19 | Let's just take a simple cube here. I'm
going to take a Polygonal Cube and I'm
| | 01:27 | going to Shade it, hit 5 to shade it
and I'm going to go over to the Channel
| | 01:31 | Box, polyCube and I'm going to select
all the Subdivisions and I'm going to
| | 01:35 | make it a 2x2 Cube. Now I'm just going
to do one thing here, I'm just going to
| | 01:42 | go Mesh > Smooth and what that does
is it takes each one of those faces,
| | 01:51 | remember that we had 2x2, so it's 4
polygons on each face. In fact I can undo
| | 01:55 | that, hit the Z key to undo. This one
polygon becomes one, two, three, four
| | 02:04 | plus what happens is that it cuts
the corners here to smooth it out.
| | 02:08 | Now this is great because what you
can do is you can model something very
| | 02:12 | low-res and then smooth it up to make
it an organic object. The only problem is
| | 02:19 | that when you smooth it using this
method Mesh > Smooth, the detail added you
| | 02:25 | really can't go back. Once you have
added this detail, once you have smoothed
| | 02:31 | these faces, you really can't go back
and modify your original object. It kind
| | 02:37 | of locks in the Smoothing. Now this is
good for -- as a modeling tool you kind
| | 02:42 | of rough something out then you
smooth it then you go to the next level of
| | 02:45 | detail and you kind of rough that out.
| | 02:49 | When you get into animation and stuff,
you really want to be able to go as low
| | 02:53 | as possible in terms of detail and then
smooth it out. There are another set of
| | 02:57 | tools that allow you to actually smooth
interactively and that's called Proxy.
| | 03:03 | So next to Edit Mesh we have the
Proxy tools which are Subdiv Proxy and a
| | 03:08 | couple of other ones.
| | 03:10 | Let me show you how those work, in
fact let's just delete this and let's just
| | 03:14 | do the same thing again. Then I
create a box, a cube and make it 2x2. So,
| | 03:24 | select that cube and I'm going to go
Proxy > Subdiv Proxy. Bingo! What do we
| | 03:32 | have? We have got two objects. In fact
if I look in my Outliner, you can see
| | 03:40 | what it's done. It's created the
SmoothProxyGroup and in there we have got the
| | 03:44 | original cube and another
cube that's been smoothed.
| | 03:51 | So, essentially what it does is it
takes the original cube, smoothes it but
| | 03:55 | leaves the original one behind, so that
way you can remodel with it or you can
| | 04:01 | deform it or you can animate it. You
can do whatever you want with it and then
| | 04:04 | this one will just kind of follow
along. Let me show you how it works. I'm
| | 04:08 | going to minimize by Outliner. So I'm
going to select pCube1 here and I'm just
| | 04:15 | going to go and select a Vertex.
Select some Vertices, hit W to move and you
| | 04:21 | can see how now when I move that and I
deform it and I model it, the Proxy goes
| | 04:27 | with it.
| | 04:29 | So, if I were to for example select a
face and do Edit Mesh > Extrude, I could
| | 04:37 | extrude that face and you can see
here I have got my low-res Cage. A cage
| | 04:43 | affects the Smooth Mesh. So I can
extrude it again. Now also notice how when
| | 04:50 | these Edge Loops are tied, the
curvature of this is much less. So as I move
| | 04:56 | this out it kind of gets -- the
curvature goes more, because what's its doing
| | 05:00 | is it's actually rounding off the
corner from here to here. Now the other thing
| | 05:06 | you can do, is you can change the
resolution of this Proxy. If I go into Object
| | 05:13 | Mode here and I select this Proxy,
sometimes it's hard to select, so I can't
| | 05:18 | select it here you can always go
into the Outliner and select it.
| | 05:23 | And you'll notice here, we have got
one input into this object here, which is
| | 05:27 | PolySmoothProxy. Now the one parameter
you really want to look at or the one
| | 05:32 | attribute that you really want to look
at is called Exponential Level and what
| | 05:36 | that does is it tells you how many
times it smoothes it. So with an Exponential
| | 05:42 | Level of 1 it's exactly same as hitting
Mesh > Smooth, one time. I don't want to
| | 05:49 | hit that. If I put in a number of two,
it smoothes it twice. Now remember when
| | 05:57 | I smooth it once, it goes from 1-4.
When I smooth it twice it goes from 4-16.
| | 06:05 | Next time if I smooth it -- three time
it goes from 16-64 to 56 and so on. So
| | 06:13 | one face in the original polygonal
model in the cage can very easily become
| | 06:19 | many, many faces in your smoothed object.
| | 06:22 | So, what I'm saying here is be careful
with this number because what can happen
| | 06:27 | is that if it gets too high, you get
a really dense Mesh and if it gets too
| | 06:33 | dense, let's say you put it up to a
fairly large number, you are going to go
| | 06:39 | exponentially that many times more
faces and it can get very quickly if you go
| | 06:45 | to a number like 10 or whatever. It
will get to the point where you blow up
| | 06:50 | Maya and essentially you get to the
point where you have so many faces that you
| | 06:54 | run out of memory.
| | 06:55 | So be careful with this number, don't
go too high. 3 is probably a good number,
| | 07:01 | 2 or 3 is usually a good number and
don't go too far above 4 or 5. Anyway, so I
| | 07:07 | just wanted to let you know about that.
Now there is another little trick that
| | 07:12 | you need to do and that is when you
actually go to render this. Now we haven't
| | 07:17 | gotten into rendering or anything like
that but what you have to do is when you
| | 07:22 | render this, you have to hide
your cage and expose your objects.
| | 07:28 | Now one of the ways we are doing that
is just to use some hot keys. Under Proxy
| | 07:34 | we have Toggle Proxy Display and that's
with our Tilde, I think it's called the
| | 07:40 | Grave symbol, I'm not sure exactly
what the name of it is. On my PC keyboard
| | 07:45 | it's next to the 1 key. So it's kind of
the top-left corner of the keyboard are
| | 07:52 | these two keys. So if we hit the
key itself, it toggles between the two
| | 07:57 | objects. If you hold down the Shift
key and toggle that key you can turn them
| | 08:01 | both on.
| | 08:02 | So the key by itself toggles, Shift
and that key turns them both on. So again
| | 08:11 | it's a very handy tool. So let me show
you one practical way of using this and
| | 08:18 | that would be in Character Animation.
So I'm going to go ahead and open that
| | 08:23 | head of that character Head_01.mb and
select it and I'm just going to do Proxy.
| | 08:32 | So what you can see here is the
original character which is kind of what we
| | 08:39 | would animate would be -- has a very
simple geometry. In fact, the head of the
| | 08:43 | character is almost geometric in
shape but once we smooth it the character
| | 08:49 | actually comes out fairly smooth looking.
| | 08:53 | So, when we go to render, so if I were
for example to hide that and render you
| | 09:00 | can see how I have got a much
smoother display. In fact I can take this and
| | 09:05 | create an Exponential Level of it.
It's a lot higher. So now, when I actually
| | 09:09 | go to render this I have got a very
smooth character. So as you can see this is
| | 09:23 | a very powerful, powerful tool
and something that's used a lot.
| | 09:28 | So learn how to use it and learn how
to model four Subdivision Surfaces by
| | 09:33 | toggling on the Smooth Proxy modeling
cage and looking at the results in
| | 09:38 | the Proxy. So that's about it for
Polygonal modeling and then we are going to
| | 09:42 | move on to NURBS modeling in the next chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. NURBS ModelingIntroducing NURBS Modeling| 00:00 | NURBS Modeling is the other form of
modeling in Maya. So far we have been
| | 00:06 | dealing with Polygons, which have
essentially edges, which are straight lines.
| | 00:11 | NURBS are different in that the edges
are curves and so these curves form what
| | 00:17 | we call patches and NURBS Surfaces
are comprised of these patches which are
| | 00:22 | kind of like a flexible, you know sheet
of rubber or something like that. First
| | 00:26 | thing I'm going to do is I'm going to
create a polygonal object. Let's just
| | 00:29 | create a polygonal sphere, and I'm
going to hide my Grid here. I'm going to go
| | 00:36 | over to Surfaces here and then I'm
going to create a NURBS Sphere. You can also
| | 00:42 | create that by going NURBS
Primitive, Sphere, is that same process.
| | 00:48 | Now here is the difference, I'm going
to Shade that. If you look, we have got
| | 00:54 | two types of surfaces here. We have
got a Polygonal Surface, which is what we
| | 00:58 | just did in the last chapter, and we
have a NURBS Surface. Now the NURBS
| | 01:04 | Surface, if you notice the edges here
are comprised of curves and so these
| | 01:09 | curves allow you to have a lot
smoother surface with less detail. Notice here
| | 01:16 | how we have got a lot of detail in this
Polygonal Surface. We have got 20 or so
| | 01:23 | Subdivisions and if you zoom in you
can still see all of this straight lines.
| | 01:29 | You can see this kind of jaggedness of
this edge. If we zoom into a Polygonal
| | 01:33 | Surface, you see a lot less of that
jaggedness. Now the one thing that you have
| | 01:38 | to realize is that a NURBS surface
eventually does resolve to a Polygonal
| | 01:44 | Surface when it renders. So when you
send this NURBS Sphere to render for
| | 01:49 | example, Maya internally is going to
calculate Polygons it needs to render that
| | 01:56 | surface smoothly.
| | 01:57 | So, in lot of ways a NURBS Surface
and a Polygonal Surface can be the same
| | 02:01 | because ultimately they do both render
as Polygons, but the NURBS Surface is a
| | 02:07 | lot easier to work with in some ways
because you have less detail. So let's go
| | 02:13 | through some of the basics of NURBS
Surfaces and how to create them and we will
| | 02:18 | give you a general overview of
the NURBS Modeling tools in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding NURBS Primitives| 00:01 | The first thing I want to do is go
through some of the basic NURBS Primitives
| | 00:05 | that we have available and those are
kind of - in lot of ways just like with
| | 00:12 | polygonal objects they would be
building blocks of a lot of different type of
| | 00:16 | surfaces. Now with NURBS you also can
build surfaces out of curves and I'll
| | 00:22 | show you how to do that later. But
let's just go through some of the basic
| | 00:24 | Primitives here. Now the very first
one I want to show you is the NURBS Plane
| | 00:29 | or the NURBS Patch. I'm using my
shelves here but you can also create any one
| | 00:34 | of these by going into the Create menu
and going in NURBS Primitives and they
| | 00:38 | are all right here.
| | 00:40 | In fact, if you want to you can click
on Options here and get some more options
| | 00:44 | for those. We are just going to create
some of the default ones here. So let's
| | 00:47 | start with this NURBS Plane and I'm
just going to click and drag that on the
| | 00:53 | Grid and I'm going to shade it so we
can see, in fact I'm going to move it
| | 00:56 | above that grid, so we can see it a
little bit better. So what we have here is
| | 01:02 | we have a NURBS Plane. Now just like
with the Polygonal Primitives if you go
| | 01:08 | over here into your Channel Box you can
access some of the creation parameters.
| | 01:12 | So for example if I wanted to, I
could left-click and highlight these and
| | 01:16 | middle-click and drag and add more Patches.
| | 01:19 | Now in a Polygonal Object these would
be known as Polygons, Vertices and Edges,
| | 01:26 | but in a NURBS surface these are
Patches and these are Curves and these are
| | 01:32 | what are called Control Vertices, we
are going to get into that in the next
| | 01:35 | lesson. But the one thing I really want
to show is that all NURBS Surfaces are
| | 01:40 | basically comprised of a four-sided
Patch. Now want that means is that any of
| | 01:47 | these primitives here such as the Sphere,
the Cube, Cylinder and so on are all
| | 01:53 | comprised of patches which are either
distorted or tied together to create
| | 02:00 | these objects.
| | 02:02 | So that's the big key about our NURBS
Surfaces that every surface is a Patch
| | 02:10 | and then what you do in order to
create more complex surfaces is that you tie
| | 02:15 | together many patches to create a
complex object, very different from Polygonal
| | 02:21 | Modeling which is you just take one
object and you add more complexity to it.
| | 02:24 | With NURBS you can take a bunch of
simple objects and kind of tie them together
| | 02:29 | to make them more complex objects.
So let me go through some of these
| | 02:34 | Primitives. Now I will kind of show you
a little bit how that works. So, we are
| | 02:37 | going to delete this and I'm just
going to click and drag a Sphere.
| | 02:45 | Now again we have got the sphere and
it looks like a sphere but if you notice
| | 02:48 | we have got one of these little edges
here. One of these little Isoparm, its
| | 02:53 | kind of a little thicker, a little
brighter and that's because it's actually a
| | 02:56 | double line and that's the scene.
That's where Maya has taken a flat
| | 03:03 | rectangular patch just like the Plane
we saw and just kind of wrapped it around
| | 03:08 | and kind of gift-wrapped a
sphere with a basic piece of paper.
| | 03:12 | Now think about it, if you were to gift
-wrap a bowling bowl or a basket ball
| | 03:17 | with regular gift wrap paper how would
you do it? You would wrap it around like
| | 03:22 | a cylinder and then you kind of crunch
up the edges almost like how hard-candy
| | 03:26 | is wrapped.
| | 03:27 | And that's kind of what Maya does.
They actually just wrap this sphere with a
| | 03:32 | Rectangular Patch and we can actually
unwrap it -- if we want to we can go into
| | 03:37 | these creation parameters here in
our Channel Box and I can take this End
| | 03:41 | Sweep, left-click on that, middle-
click and drag and I can actually open that
| | 03:46 | up. Now what you can see here is that,
this is actually a patch that's been
| | 03:52 | kind of wrapped around this and it's
all bunched up here at the top. So that's
| | 03:58 | how a NURBS Surface works.
| | 04:00 | It's basically a four-sided patch
that's just been distorted. So let me go
| | 04:05 | through some of these other Primitives
and I will show you how those are build.
| | 04:09 | So we also have the Cube. Now a cube
is a little bit different. You really
| | 04:14 | can't wrap a cube with a four sided
patch. To create this cube, it actually
| | 04:19 | makes four patches and ties them
together. So if I click on this, you can see
| | 04:23 | one, two, three, actually six patches,
four, five, six and so on and if we go
| | 04:28 | into my Outliner, you will see I
have a group here called nurbsCube. If I
| | 04:35 | expand up, I think this plus sign,
you'll see I actually have a bunch of
| | 04:40 | different four-sided patches, and if
I wanted to I can select one of those
| | 04:45 | patches and just move it, out of the way.
| | 04:49 | So if you are creating a Cube
especially NURBS Cube, you need to be aware of
| | 04:53 | this. So that way you know that you
actually have multiple surfaces to create
| | 04:58 | that. So I'm going to select all of
these and delete them and let's just go to
| | 05:02 | our Cylinder. So I'm going to click on
Cylinder here, drag, just like it did
| | 05:06 | with the Polygonal Cylinder here.
| | 05:09 | So just like the Cube, the Cylinder is
actually made up of several surfaces. In
| | 05:13 | fact, we can go back into our Outliner,
Window > Outliner. You can see here I
| | 05:18 | have got this NURBS Cylinder and we
have got the shape or the Outline of the
| | 05:23 | Cylinder, we also have a bottom and a
top cap which are all separate patches.
| | 05:27 | But also if you want to look at it,
we have also - there is one patch that
| | 05:31 | creates the outside or insides of the
Cylinder is actually and again just a
| | 05:37 | patch, it's a square patch. If I
deleted this top and bottom patch you could
| | 05:43 | see how, this is a four-sided patch
and we can take that and wrap it up and
| | 05:52 | then if I selected the top and
twisted them up I would make a sphere. Very
| | 05:56 | similar for the Cone.
| | 06:01 | Again we have got a four-sided patch
here that creates the Outliner Cone. It's
| | 06:09 | pinched up at the top, but not at the
bottom. So basically it's a same typology
| | 06:13 | as the Cylinder on the bottom, a
Sphere on the top and then we also have a
| | 06:17 | bottom cap, which again is a separate
patch. Now the last one I want to show
| | 06:21 | you is the Torus because that's
actually a really interesting one. So we are
| | 06:25 | just going to select that and drag and
create my Torus, there we go. You have
| | 06:34 | to drag twice, you set once to set the
Outline, the next one is set the Radius.
| | 06:38 | So if we go over here into my Creation
Parameters in my Channel Box, you can
| | 06:43 | see actually I have two sweeps here, I
have got the Start and End Sweep. So,
| | 06:48 | basically what it is it's a flat
patch that's made into a cylinder and then
| | 06:53 | that Cylinder is wrapped around into
that donut or torus shape. What you can
| | 06:58 | see now I have got a four-sided patch
and it winds it around and then it winds
| | 07:04 | it around again.
| | 07:07 | So those are some of the basic
Primitives that we have in NURBS and hopefully
| | 07:11 | through looking at these, you can kind
of get a general concept as to how NURBS
| | 07:15 | Surfaces are built. So let's move on to
editing NURBS Surfaces and working with
| | 07:21 | the actual components
that create a NURBS Surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with NURBS components| 00:01 | Let's take a look at some of the
components that make up a NURBS Surface. Now a
| | 00:05 | Polygonal surface as you recall is
made up of three types of components which
| | 00:11 | are Vertices, Edges and Polygons.
Now NURBS Surface has similar types of
| | 00:17 | components but they are named
differently and they do slightly different
| | 00:21 | things. Let's take a look at these. I'm
going to click here and create a NURBS
| | 00:24 | Sphere. I'm going to shade it and then
I'm going to actually turn off my Grid
| | 00:29 | here. Now I can get into Component Mode,
just like I can with polygonal objects
| | 00:35 | by right clicking here and bringing up
a Marking menu. Now you notice we have
| | 00:38 | some different types of objects here. We
have Control Vertex, Isoparm and so on.
| | 00:42 | I can also get into it by going into
Component Type and then just clicking on
| | 00:48 | what type of object like a Patch or
Edge or whatever. But actually I really
| | 00:53 | like working through the Marking menu
since it's a lot faster. Let's just start
| | 00:58 | with Control Vertex. A Control
Vertex is very similar to the Vertex in a
| | 01:03 | Polygonal object in that it's a point,
but if you notice here these Control
| | 01:07 | Vertices actually lie off of the
surface. So if you take a look at it, these
| | 01:15 | can actually -- and they affect more of
the surface. It's kind of more of like
| | 01:20 | sculpting with the putty or something
like that when you move these. And I can
| | 01:24 | actually move this around and reshape
your surface, do whatever you want with
| | 01:28 | them, select the ones that are
at the top here, move them in.
| | 01:31 | You can do a lot of different modeling
techniques just by tweaking this Control
| | 01:37 | Vertices. Now there are some other
ones here. One is called the Isoparm. So
| | 01:43 | let's right click here. So I'm going
to click off of this and go Isoparm. Now
| | 01:49 | what Isoparm is these lines that
are around the surface here. These are
| | 01:54 | essentially like edges or more like
Edge Loop. So if I left-click and drag, you
| | 02:02 | see I can actually just slide. It's
almost like sliding an Edge Loop around and
| | 02:07 | if I let go here that creates a
place where I could do something. I'm not
| | 02:13 | actually doing anything here. I can at
that point insert an Isoparm or cut the
| | 02:19 | surface or do any number of things.
| | 02:22 | So what this does is it actually just
sets a point for a future action and we
| | 02:26 | will be using this as we go through
some of the other tools. Let me show you
| | 02:31 | another one, a Hull. Hull is kind of
like Edges. It's more like Edges on an
| | 02:38 | Isoparm because if you look at this,
you can actually see that this is very
| | 02:43 | similar to that Subdivision Surface
or that Subdivision Proxy Cage that we
| | 02:50 | created around the Polygonal Surface.
It's the kind of a cage that define a
| | 02:55 | surface. So this would be like for
example, a polygonal sphere and then when
| | 02:58 | you smooth it all down you get the
surface. In fact, mathematically that's
| | 03:04 | almost exactly what happens.
| | 03:07 | A smoothed proxy surface actually
almost becomes a NURBS Surface when it is
| | 03:12 | smoothed to infinity. So if I wanted
to take a Control Vertex here and move
| | 03:17 | it, you can see how I can also take a
look at that Hull. I can actually select
| | 03:22 | these Hulls and you can move them
around. Then there is also our Surface
| | 03:29 | Patch. Now these are patches, these
are essentially similar to polygonal
| | 03:36 | objects or polygonal faces, but they
are patches. So they are four-sided
| | 03:40 | patches. And those are basically
the ones that you want to deal with.
| | 03:45 | So Control Vertex, Hull, Isoparm,
Patches. Now I spend a lot of time
| | 03:50 | personally working with Control
Vertices, it's great way to sculpt it. So,
| | 03:54 | those are your basic components. So now
as we get into the modeling tools, you
| | 03:59 | will know what those are. So
let's move on to some other stuff.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with NURBS Curves| 00:00 | Now, we are going to talk about NURBS
Curves. Curves can be used for a number
| | 00:05 | of purposes, one of which is to build
NURBS Surfaces. You can also use them as
| | 00:10 | animation paths or paths for Extrudes
on Polygonal objects. There are a lot of
| | 00:15 | ways that you can use curves. Now we
are going to use them mostly for modeling
| | 00:20 | in this chapter. So let's take a look
at how to create them and what they are
| | 00:25 | all about.
| | 00:26 | Our curves are created -- actually we
have our Curves menu here and we have a
| | 00:31 | couple of default Curve shelves like
for example, a Circle or a Square and we
| | 00:36 | can also create curves through the
Create menu. Now there are two basic ways to
| | 00:40 | create a NURBS Curve and that's using
the CV Curve tool or the EP Curve tool.
| | 00:48 | There is also a Pencil Curve tool which
allows you to kind of sketch. So let's
| | 00:52 | go into an Orthographic viewport. So
I'm going to actually hit my Spacebar
| | 00:57 | here and I'm going to go into -
let's just go into the Front viewport.
| | 01:02 | So, I'm going to Spacebar there and
let's go in the Front viewport. Let's
| | 01:07 | start by creating a CV Curve because
that's the most traditional type of NURBS
| | 01:12 | Curve. Anybody who has worked with
NURBS before will probably be more familiar
| | 01:16 | with this. So, what you do is you use
that tool and your cursor changes to a
| | 01:21 | cross, which means we are creating
this Curve. So I just left-click to start
| | 01:26 | laying down points. So I will left
click, left-click, left-click and notice
| | 01:31 | here how we are actually creating
essentially a Hull around this and also
| | 01:36 | notice how the curve itself doesn't
come up until we hit one, two, three, four.
| | 01:42 | Once you hit the fourth point then the
Curve shows up. So you need a minimum of
| | 01:47 | four points to create a NURBS Curve.
Now, well I can continue past there and
| | 01:52 | just -- basically just draw whatever
type of curve I want. Now one thing I want
| | 01:58 | to show you here is as I create this
curve, we have got three different types
| | 02:02 | of Vertices here. We have got the
Start Vertex, which is this open square, we
| | 02:09 | have got the U Direction, that's
like a little U and basically that's the
| | 02:13 | direction of the curve, it
starts here and it goes this way.
| | 02:17 | So, if you were going to use this as an
animation path for example, this would
| | 02:21 | be the start point of the animation
and then every point past that is just a
| | 02:26 | standard Control Vertex. Now this
direction of this can have implications when
| | 02:31 | you start building surfaces. So
sometimes your curve direction needs to be the
| | 02:36 | same way. So just know that these two
special Control Vertices actually tell
| | 02:42 | you what direction your surface is in.
Once I click off of that, then I can
| | 02:47 | just move the curve. Now also notice
that when you draw a curve, now this gets
| | 02:52 | important when we start doing things
like Revolve, the actual pivot point of
| | 02:57 | the curve is always at the origin. So
if I wanted to change that I would hit
| | 03:01 | Insert and or a Center Pivot
or whatever to move that pivot.
| | 03:05 | So, I'm going to actually zoom out a
little bit and move this out of the way
| | 03:08 | because we are going to create the
second type of curve which is the EP Curve
| | 03:12 | tool. Now EP Curve is just really a
different entry method. So if I click here,
| | 03:19 | click here, you can see now it's
almost creating almost like a Bezier type of
| | 03:23 | curve. So actually by the time I get
to my third point we are onto my fourth
| | 03:26 | point and also notice that the curve
goes through the points, whereas with the
| | 03:32 | EP Curve tool, the points were more
like the NURBS Surfaces where it was off of
| | 03:38 | the points. so that I can create those.
So now I can create those and then
| | 03:42 | once I'm off of that I can move on the
next tool which is the Pencil Curve tool
| | 03:49 | and that's essentially just a
pencil, so you just draw a curve.
| | 03:51 | So you can actually just kind of sketch
but the curve that you create with this
| | 03:57 | tool can be very rough, so if you are
looking for a really smooth curve, you
| | 04:01 | want to draw that with points because
your hand is going to be shaking as you
| | 04:05 | move across the desk with the mouse
or whatever. So that's the three basic
| | 04:10 | methods for creating NURBS Curves.
Let's move on to the next lesson after this
| | 04:15 | and we will show you how to edit those Curves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating NURBS Curves| 00:00 | So now that we know how to create curves,
let's move on to actually create
| | 00:06 | two types of curves and we are going
to show you how to edit those. So I'm
| | 00:09 | actually going to use my CV Curve tool,
so go Create > CV Curve and just sketch
| | 00:15 | out, remember the fourth vertex is the
one where the curve comes up. And let's
| | 00:22 | create another using the EP Curve tool.
Now remember how this one creates it
| | 00:26 | through the points and let's take a
look at those and how we edit those in
| | 00:34 | Component mode. Again we can use F8 or
we can select by component type to get
| | 00:40 | into that or we can right
click and use the Marking menu.
| | 00:44 | So, for example if I want to I can put
a Curve Point or Hull or go to Control
| | 00:49 | Vertex. Now the components for a curve
are very similar to the components for a
| | 00:55 | NURBS Surface. We have a Control
Vertex and again these are off of the curve,
| | 01:03 | very similar. Now also let's take a
look at this one. Now this one we drew this
| | 01:09 | with the EP Curve tool. When we
actually go to Control Vertex, you'll notice it
| | 01:13 | reverts back to the type of curve we
drew using this CV Curve tool. So the
| | 01:22 | method that you used to create the
curve is inconsequential to how you are
| | 01:26 | going to edit that curve.
| | 01:28 | So if you are comfortable creating
using the EP Curve tool where the Curve goes
| | 01:31 | through the points, great. But when
you go to edit it, you are still going to
| | 01:35 | get, as we go into Control Vertex mode,
you are going to get the same curve no
| | 01:41 | matter how you entered it. Even if you
used the Pencil tool you are still going
| | 01:44 | to get this type of curve. So that's
one reason why I like to use the CV Curve
| | 01:50 | tool because what I enter is
basically what I'm going to edit later.
| | 01:55 | Anyway let's take a look at some of
these components. We have got Control
| | 02:01 | Vertices, very similar to what we have
with NURBS Surfaces. Again it just allows
| | 02:05 | to shape that curve. We have a Curve
Point. Now that's again, it's similar to
| | 02:11 | the NURBS Surface and its similar to
the Isoparm of a NURBS Surface and
| | 02:15 | what we can do is left-click and drag
and we can create a Curve Point. Now what
| | 02:20 | this Curve Point does is just like
the Isoparm, it's a place to do a future action.
| | 02:26 | So, for example if we are going to
split this curve in half, we would set a
| | 02:29 | Curve Point and then do a Detach or a
Split or if we wanted to insert more
| | 02:35 | vertices, we would create a Curve Point
and then insert those vertices at that
| | 02:39 | point. So what it is, it's just kind
of placeholder for future editing tools.
| | 02:44 | We also have Hulls. Again very
similar to the Hulls in a NURBS Surface and
| | 02:51 | those are basically it. Typically, when
you edit this curve you are going to be
| | 02:55 | working with Control Vertices.
| | 02:57 | So those are the basic components
that you have with a NURBS Curve.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing NURBS Curves| 00:00 | Now let's look at some of the tools to
edit curves. I'm going to draw a simple
| | 00:05 | curve and I'm going to go into a front
viewport here, zoom on a little bit and
| | 00:10 | I'm just going to create a CV curve.
| | 00:12 | Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going
to create a curve that's kind of almost
| | 00:16 | closes in on itself. So we have
a little bit of almost a circle but not quite.
| | 00:20 | Now the first tool I'm going to show
you is essentially a tool that will help
| | 00:24 | you open or close curves. It's
actually called Open/Close Curves. Now take a
| | 00:29 | look at this curve as I hit this button,
so if I hit Open/Close Curves, what
| | 00:34 | happens is it draws a segment
that closes those two curves off.
| | 00:40 | Now, one of the most important things
you need to know about this in fact, if I
| | 00:42 | go into Control Vertex mode and right
click bring up my Marking menu is that it
| | 00:47 | closes the curve at that first point.
Remember, how we talked about the curve
| | 00:52 | starts at this kind of open square
point and then it goes in the direction of the U.
| | 00:57 | When you Open/Close Curves, it always
breaks it at that point. So if I have
| | 01:03 | this curve, I'm going to go back in the
Object mode, and I open it. So I have a
| | 01:08 | closed curve now. Now let's say I
wanted to open it, it's always going to open
| | 01:13 | it at that same point.
| | 01:14 | OK, so let's look at some other tools.
One of the things you may want to do is
| | 01:20 | you may want to break a curve in half
and you can do that by using Detach.
| | 01:25 | There is actually a tool
here called Detach Curves.
| | 01:29 | Let's take a look at that. We are
going to create a point where to detach the
| | 01:33 | curve. Now this is where Curve Point is
coming handy. So I right click over my
| | 01:37 | curve, in my Marking menu, I select
Curve Point. Then I left-click on the curve
| | 01:43 | and this little red dot
goes spinning around the curve.
| | 01:46 | So where do I want to break this
curve in half? Right here. So what I do is
| | 01:51 | Edit Curves > Detach Curves. What that
does is now it detaches the curves and it
| | 01:57 | splits the curve in half and it
actually creates two curves. Very simple.
| | 02:04 | Now there is a complementary tool there,
what you can do is you can take two
| | 02:08 | curves and you can attach them. Now
what it does -- again this is where these
| | 02:13 | start and end points of the curve come
in handy. What it's going to do when you
| | 02:16 | attach a curve, it's going to go from
the end point of the first curve you
| | 02:21 | select to the beginning point of
the second curve you select, OK.
| | 02:25 | So I actually go back in the Object
Mode, select both curves, Edit Curves >
| | 02:29 | Attach Curves. So what it does now is
it basically takes that CV and this CV
| | 02:36 | and it brings them
together and makes a new curve.
| | 02:38 | There are some other nice little tools
here. One of the ones I like is Offset.
| | 02:44 | Now what Offset does is it allows you
to create a copy of the original curve
| | 02:49 | with an Offset. Now this is great for
if you want to create like an outline or
| | 02:53 | something like that. Let's say you're
creating a picture frame and you wanted
| | 02:56 | to make it one inch wide.
| | 02:58 | So you draw the inside of your
picture frame and then you can use Offset to
| | 03:03 | create the other one. So what we have
here is when you Offset the curve, you
| | 03:08 | actually have a distance. So if we go
into our Channel Box and select that
| | 03:11 | offsetted curve, I can right click and
drag or just type in the Offset number.
| | 03:17 | And so I can create a curve
that's dependent on this other curve.
| | 03:21 | Now the nice thing about this is that,
if you keep History turned on, this
| | 03:25 | curve will always be offset. So if I
right click here and I go Control Vertex,
| | 03:30 | and I move this, that will always be
connected to this other curve. Now why is
| | 03:38 | that? Well, that's because this offset
is live. In other words, I don't have
| | 03:43 | History turned on. This offset is
actually connected to this curve.
| | 03:47 | So until I delete History, we're still
going to have a connection between the
| | 03:51 | two. That's very important when you
go into deeper and deeper into NURBS
| | 03:57 | modeling because what you can do is
you can create surfaces out of curves and
| | 04:00 | then just tweak the original
curves and the surfaces follow along.
| | 04:05 | Go back into Object Mode, I'm going to
delete that curve, select it again and
| | 04:13 | there are some other ones here. One
here is Smooth Curve, and basically what
| | 04:17 | that does is it smoothes out a curve.
This is really handy when you use that
| | 04:20 | Pencil tool and you get kind of real
jagged curve, you can smooth it out.
| | 04:24 | You can also Insert Knots. That one
again uses Curve Point. So, if I wanted to
| | 04:29 | add detail, let's say I wanted to add
some detail in between this point and
| | 04:33 | this point. What I can do is go to
Curve Point mode and say I want to add in a
| | 04:38 | Knot. A Knot is essentially a CV or
Control Vertex. So I can insert a Knot
| | 04:44 | right there and now when I right click
and I go Control Vertex, I've got some
| | 04:48 | additional detail right there. Very simple.
| | 04:52 | So those are some of the tools. The
last tool I want to talk about is Reverse
| | 04:56 | Curve Direction. Now we've talked a
little bit about Curve Direction before. We
| | 04:59 | go into Control Vertex mode here, I
have got a curve direction here, this is
| | 05:05 | the start of my curve and then it goes
towards the U and towards the end there.
| | 05:10 | Now if I wanted to, I can reverse
that curve direction by using the Reverse
| | 05:15 | tool. So I go back in the Object Mode,
right-click there, select the curve,
| | 05:21 | Edit Curves > Reverse Curve Direction.
Now the curve looks exactly the same,
| | 05:26 | but when I go to edit it, now the
first point is down here. So this can be
| | 05:30 | really important to us especially
when you're connecting curves together or
| | 05:34 | you're using a lot of curves to build
the surface. You kind of want them all to
| | 05:37 | be going in the same direction.
| | 05:40 | So those are some of the basic
tools for editing curves in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing NURBS Surfaces| 00:00 | A lot of those same procedures that we
just learned about with curves can also
| | 00:05 | be used with surfaces. So we can do
some similar things to NURBS surface that
| | 00:10 | we can do with curves. So
let me show you how that works.
| | 00:13 | I'm just going to create a sphere to
play with and let's just take a look at
| | 00:20 | some of these tools. Now under Edit
NURBS, we have a bunch of tools here. Some
| | 00:25 | of these we'll get to but Attach/Detach,
these are the ones we want to talk about.
| | 00:30 | Now just like with NURBS Curves, we
can detach a surface. So in other words
| | 00:35 | with a curve we detach it, it breaks it
in two, we can do the same with a NURBS
| | 00:39 | Surface.
| | 00:40 | Now we do that very similarly. In the
curve we used a Curve Point, in a surface
| | 00:46 | we use an Isoparm. So I'll right click
over the Surface, find my Marking menu
| | 00:51 | and go to Isoparm.
| | 00:53 | Then I left-click and I drag out an
Isoparm. Now an Isoparm really is just a
| | 01:01 | marker, like I said before for a
future action. So this is where I'm going to
| | 01:06 | do something to the surface. In this
case I'm going to detach the surface.
| | 01:11 | So I'm going to go Edit NURBS > Detach
Surfaces, boom! Now what happened? Well,
| | 01:18 | I actually basically cut that lid off
of that sphere. So what I have done is I
| | 01:23 | have actually created now two surfaces.
So essentially I pop the top and I
| | 01:29 | have two surfaces and they
actually line up pretty well.
| | 01:32 | Now just like with NURBS curves, I can
also reattach those surfaces. So I go
| | 01:37 | Edit NURBS > Attach Surfaces, boom.
Now what happened here, is it actually
| | 01:44 | created a copy of that surface and
essentially it just went through and all the
| | 01:51 | curves that make up that surface, it
attached them together. So I actually have
| | 01:56 | the original surface and
now the attached surface.
| | 02:00 | Again, I believe with this, we also
have History turned on. We still have the
| | 02:07 | original surfaces are still affecting
this particular new attached surface. Now
| | 02:15 | if I want to, I can get rid of that
just by going to the By Type History and
| | 02:20 | then that kind of breaks that connection.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to delete this. I'm going to
delete that too. So let's just play with
| | 02:32 | this NURBS surface here. So another
thing we can do is we can insert detail
| | 02:36 | into a surface. Again, we're going to
do that using an Isoparm. So I'm going to
| | 02:40 | right click over this surface go to
Isoparm and then just left-click and drag
| | 02:46 | out some sort of align
right around here near the top.
| | 02:50 | What we can do is we can actually
insert Isoparms. So if I insert an Isoparm,
| | 02:55 | what that does is it inserts another
line of detail. So if I go into Control
| | 02:59 | Vertex mode, I'm going to get another
row of control vertices in polygonal
| | 03:04 | terms that would be -- it's almost
like inserting an Edge Loop in polygon. So
| | 03:08 | if you go to Hull, you'll see I have
got additional detail put in there.
| | 03:16 | Another tool that we can use is Offset.
Just like how we offset a curve using
| | 03:24 | some of the my tools, we also have an
Offset Surfaces tool and again what that
| | 03:28 | does is very simply, it offsets that
original surface. If I go here, I can
| | 03:35 | create how much I wanted to offset just
by going over to the Channel Box, some
| | 03:39 | little clicking and dragging, I can
actually create my Offset here. If I want
| | 03:44 | to I can move it out, it doesn't really matter.
| | 03:46 | Again, because I have History turned
on these surfaces do mirror each other.
| | 03:51 | Now the last one I want to show you,
I'm going to delete this again and I'm
| | 03:58 | going to turn off my Grid here, so
we can see this a little bit better.
| | 04:01 | Now, the one thing I haven't talked
about is that just like how curves have
| | 04:06 | direction, a NURBS Surface also has a
direction. So if I go into Control Vertex
| | 04:11 | model, I'll see that we actually
have if I go down here to the very, very
| | 04:16 | bottom of this sphere, I'll see I
actually do have a U right there and it's
| | 04:24 | kind of hidden there. But I do have a
first vertex there and a U. So this is
| | 04:30 | where these curve start to create this surface.
| | 04:36 | So if I want to, I can actually reverse
that surface direction. Let's just try
| | 04:41 | it again, Edit NURBS > Reverse Surface.
Now I want to go into Control Vertex
| | 04:45 | mode. You'll notice here that that U
direction is now up along the edge, rather
| | 04:51 | than down here. So what it
did was it reversed this curve.
| | 04:53 | Now, also if you notice there is
another direction for a surface. Because the
| | 04:58 | surface has two dimensions, we have the
direction of the curves going this way
| | 05:03 | and we also have a direction for the
curves going radially around it and
| | 05:07 | that's called the V Direction.
| | 05:09 | So a surface has a U and a V Direction.
Think of it like the X Y direction in a
| | 05:16 | standard Bitmap file. So because we
have two sets of curves to make that
| | 05:21 | surface, we do have to
have a U and a V direction.
| | 05:25 | So those are some of the basic editing
tools of NURBS. Now, let's look at how
| | 05:29 | to build surfaces from curves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using NURBS Revolve| 00:00 | Now, let's look at how to use NURBS
Curves to create surfaces. I'm going to
| | 00:06 | start with Revolve and what that does
is it essentially revolves a curve around
| | 00:11 | to create a radial surface like a wine
glass or a bowl or something like that.
| | 00:16 | So let's do that. I'm going to go into
my front viewport and I'm going to draw
| | 00:19 | a curve. Now the key here is you want
to get that curve locked to 0 at the top and bottom.
| | 00:27 | So I'm going to turn on Snap To Grids
right there and then I'm just going to
| | 00:33 | create a CV Curve. So let's just create
a bowl. So I'm going to click here and
| | 00:39 | as you can see I'm going to start
sketching out. You can see now as I do this,
| | 00:43 | it's snapping to those grid points. So
because I've turned on that Snap To Grid.
| | 00:51 | So now I'm just basically sketching
out kind of the outline, kind of like the
| | 00:58 | edge of the surface of the bowl. The
reason I did this is because when you
| | 01:03 | create a NURBS Curve, the pivot point
of that curve is always at the center of
| | 01:10 | the scene. So it's always at 0,0,0.
| | 01:11 | So by snapping these to 0, I've ensured
that these are at the point where it's
| | 01:19 | going to revolve around. So what I can
do now is I can just select this curve
| | 01:24 | and do Surfaces > Revolve. Now there are
some options with that, if I want to I
| | 01:29 | can go in here and just say, around
which axis am I going to revolve this?
| | 01:34 | Well, X, Y, Z, Y, Y is up, I want to
revolve around that. Yeah let's just do it
| | 01:39 | with Y. What sort of surface do I want?
How much do I want to sweep this? Do I
| | 01:43 | want to go full 360? Do I want to
only revolve it half the way and how many
| | 01:48 | segments do you want this to revolve for?
| | 01:50 | So, I'm just going to go ahead and hit
Revolve and there it is. In fact I can
| | 01:55 | shape that and take a look at that in
my viewport. OK, now because I revolved
| | 02:01 | it around 0, that center point is --
they are all snap. Now if this was off by
| | 02:06 | a bit, then I may have a hole in the
middle or may have overlapping surfaces.
| | 02:10 | So that's one of the keys with Revolve
is that you do want to snap to 0. Now
| | 02:14 | that curve I created is still alive.
So if I select that curve and I go into
| | 02:21 | Control Vertex, I can actually reshape
that curve and in fact they still have
| | 02:25 | Snap turned on, let me turn that off
there. And I can reshape that curve to
| | 02:30 | reshape the surface.
| | 02:31 | If I select the surface, you'll see I
do have in my History here, in my Channel
| | 02:38 | Box, I do have a Revolve and I can
go through and change those parameters
| | 02:42 | later. Remember we have looked at those
when we created the surface but we can
| | 02:47 | always go back and change those if we have History
enabled and then the Sweep so on and so forth.
| | 02:55 | OK. So that's the basics of the Revolve tool.
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| Using NURBS Extrude| 00:01 | Extrude is another way to turn NURBS
Curves into surfaces and what it does is
| | 00:07 | it takes an outline and extrudes it
along a path. Now, it's great for creating
| | 00:12 | things like hoses or whatever.
Let me show you how it works.
| | 00:15 | We're going to just create two simple
curves. I'm going to actually go into my
| | 00:21 | top viewport and I'm just going to
draw a curve up. I will just use the EP
| | 00:25 | Curve tool here and I'm just going to
draw a basic -- it doesn't really matter,
| | 00:32 | just a basic curve.
| | 00:34 | So that's the path along which I'm
going to extrude something. Let's just
| | 00:38 | create a simple circle. So I will
actually go into go into my Side viewport
| | 00:45 | and I'm just going to go here and
select NURBS Circle and just click and drag
| | 00:50 | and that just creates a NURBS Curve
that's already designed to be a perfect circle.
| | 00:55 | Then, I'm going to position that right
towards the end of that path. I'm going
| | 01:01 | to select the circle, Shift-select the
path, Surfaces > Extrude and there it is.
| | 01:12 | Now, if you notice, it's a little bit
off from the path and that's really our
| | 01:15 | creation parameters. In fact, let's go
ahead and undo this and let's go through
| | 01:20 | here and do Extrude again, but let's
look at some of these options here.
| | 01:24 | Now we have, what type of Style are
we going to have? Is it Flat, Distance,
| | 01:29 | Tube? Well, we're creating a tube. The
Result Position is at the profile or at
| | 01:34 | the path? I think we want the Result
Position at the path. We want this to
| | 01:38 | follow the path. Where do you want the
Pivot point? And where do you want the
| | 01:42 | orientation to be? So let's extrude that again.
| | 01:45 | So now it extrudes it along the path.
By default, it extrudes along this
| | 01:49 | profile outline. So it starts the
extrude here, instead we started the extrude
| | 01:55 | at the path. Now if I go into
Wireframe mode, I can actually track down and
| | 02:01 | select that curve. If I can zoom in
enough here, let's see, there it is.
| | 02:07 | So, if I select that curve -- again
now I have a deformable kind of a hose
| | 02:12 | shape. I can Smooth Shade All and if I
wanted to I could edit the components of
| | 02:18 | that curve. So if I take the curve
itself, I can reshape my curve and reshape
| | 02:26 | my hose.
| | 02:27 | So now that hose is going to go
wherever that curve goes. So you can see how
| | 02:33 | this can work very easily to create
some very nice surfaces that can also be animated.
| | 02:39 | So let's move onto some new tools. Now,
I'm going to show how to use some of
| | 02:43 | these tools to build a more complex
object. I'm going to go ahead and over the
| | 02:47 | next few lessons we're going to build
this chair. Let's go ahead and set our
| | 02:53 | Project to 04. Then, I'm going to go
ahead and open a scene called Chair_01.
| | 03:01 | Now, this is just the basic outline of
the skeleton of the chair. We can use
| | 03:08 | the Extrude command to basically build
the frame of the chair. So how do we use
| | 03:14 | Extrude. Again, we select the outline,
so let's select this Oval shaped outline
| | 03:19 | and then we select the path. So I
would Shift-select the path, Surfaces >
| | 03:25 | Extrude, and there's the arm of my chair.
| | 03:28 | Let's do that again for the support
structure. Select the Outline, then the
| | 03:33 | Path, Extrude and right now you should
have it memorized, Outline Path, Extrude
| | 03:42 | or we can hit the G key to repeat last
command. All sorts of tricks are allowed.
| | 03:46 | Well, we've got three-fourths of it
done, we still need to create the other
| | 03:51 | arm. Now I can do that by creating just
another curve but I'm going to show you
| | 03:55 | another trick here. What we can do is
we can duplicate it and just scale it in
| | 03:58 | the negative direction.
| | 04:00 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to hit Ctrl+D for Duplicate. This is
| | 04:04 | called extrudedSurface1. When I hit
Ctrl+D, it makes a copy of it called
| | 04:09 | extrudedSurface4. 1, 2, 3, 4, but it's
in the same place. What we want to do is
| | 04:16 | we want to scale it in exactly -1. So
what we can do is just type in -1 and now
| | 04:23 | I have got a mirror image of that.
| | 04:25 | So I have the basic frame of my chair.
So let's go ahead and save that out and
| | 04:31 | we'll go from here.
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| Using NURBS Loft| 00:00 | The next tool we're going to look at
is Loft. What Loft does is it takes
| | 00:05 | several curves and it basically draws a
skin between them. Let me show you how
| | 00:10 | that works.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to go into a front viewport
and I'm going to create a CV Curve. So,
| | 00:20 | in fact I'm going to create a closed
curve. So I'm going to sketch this around
| | 00:23 | -- doesn't really matter what the
shape is and I'm going to stop right about
| | 00:27 | there. Select the Curve > Edit Curves >
Open/Close. So now that has closed the curve.
| | 00:36 | So now I have a closed curve. What I
can do now is take this curve and use it
| | 00:41 | as the basis for a Loft. Now what I
usually do when I do this is I just
| | 00:46 | duplicate the curves. You can
certainly draw multiple curves and just sketch
| | 00:51 | them out, but I'm just going to
duplicate. I'm going to hit Ctrl+D to Duplicate
| | 00:57 | and just hit that a few more
times and let's make four of these.
| | 01:00 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+D three
times to make four copies of this and if I
| | 01:07 | want, I can go through and I can
reshape it and just take some Control
| | 01:11 | Vertices, reshape them, right click
there. So essentially what we have, we're
| | 01:18 | creating kind of an outline here.
| | 01:20 | We're going to create a surface over
this. So for example if you took a piece
| | 01:24 | of cloth and use these as ribs and
wrapped it. So let's select all of these
| | 01:28 | curves, just left-click and drag and
select the curves, Surfaces > Loft and turn
| | 01:35 | on Shading. You can see there is my surface.
| | 01:39 | Now what the surface does, is again it
takes these curves and basically just
| | 01:43 | draws a surface along these. Now the
key is, is that it actually draws one
| | 01:50 | Isoparm per Control Vertex on the curve.
| | 01:56 | Now if I wanted to -- again just
like with the Revolve, if I took these
| | 01:59 | original curves if I selected that
end curve there, right clicked, went to
| | 02:03 | Control Vertex, I could reshape
the curve and reshape the surface.
| | 02:10 | Now this can be really handy. In
fact if you just move the curve, you can
| | 02:13 | change the surface. Now, you can see
how this could have implication with the
| | 02:16 | animation. You could actually make a
surface just by animating the curves, you
| | 02:21 | can reshape a surface or if you
actually reshape the curves themselves, you can
| | 02:27 | affect the shape of the surface.
| | 02:30 | So that's the basics of Loft. So, now
let's continue on with our chair, now
| | 02:36 | that we know the basics of Loft. I'm
going to go ahead and open the scene
| | 02:40 | Chair_02. Now this has those support
structures in place, the extrudes that we did.
| | 02:48 | Now I have created some additional
curves to create the cushions, and we can
| | 02:53 | use Loft to do that. So all I have to
do is select all of these cushions, now
| | 02:58 | if I just select, grab it like that, it
may or may not work because you have to
| | 03:03 | select them in order. Let's just do
a quick Loft to see how that works.
| | 03:06 | So what happened is that I didn't
select them in order and so that's not going
| | 03:12 | to work. So I'm going to go ahead and
undo that and what we need to do is
| | 03:16 | select them very precisely, so we have
got the 1, hold down the Shift key, 2,
| | 03:20 | 3, 4, 5, 6. So you need to select
them front to back or back to front, it
| | 03:26 | doesn't matter just as long as you
select them in order. And then you do a
| | 03:31 | Loft, and there we go.
| | 03:33 | Perfect. Now we've got the outside of
our cushion, but we're going to do the
| | 03:37 | insides in the second step here which
will be the after we do it later. So
| | 03:41 | let's go ahead and do this one, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Again you have to select them in order, Loft.
| | 03:50 | So, there are the basics of that. Now
we still need to do the faces of this,
| | 03:54 | but that requires a little bit more
learning and so we're going to go ahead and
| | 03:58 | do that in the next lesson.
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| Using NURBS Planar| 00:01 | The next tool we are going to look at
is Planar which projects a curve onto a
| | 00:05 | plane and trims it away to create kind
of an irregular flat surface. Let me
| | 00:10 | show you how that works.
| | 00:11 | Instead of a standard curve, we can
obviously do this with any sort of curve.
| | 00:15 | But I want to show you another way of
creating curves and that's by using the
| | 00:18 | Text tool.
| | 00:20 | So, we go over here to Text and I go
over to my Options Box here. Let's just
| | 00:26 | use the letter M for Maya and we can
create that as a curve, so just hit
| | 00:32 | Create. So now I have a nice M.
| | 00:34 | What I can do is if I want to
actually render that but I wouldn't get it
| | 00:41 | because it's just a curve. But if I
wanted to like fill in that shape, what I
| | 00:45 | can do is I can do Surfaces > Planar.
So what that does is it takes that curve
| | 00:52 | and again what we did is we just used
the Text tool to create a curve, right here.
| | 01:00 | Essentially what it does is it takes a
plane and it uses this curve to trim out
| | 01:06 | the plane. So if I wanted to I could
take the Control Vertices of this M and
| | 01:12 | move it, and reshape it.
| | 01:15 | Now, if I wanted to, if I actually
clicked on the surface -- so if I click in
| | 01:17 | this gray spot in the middle, you'll
see actually a surface come up underneath
| | 01:22 | this. If I right click and go Control
Vertex, you will see -- or actually
| | 01:27 | probably a better way to look at is go
Hull, you will see that it's actually a
| | 01:31 | rectangular patch, like a plane. That's
why they call it Planar because what it
| | 01:37 | does is takes that curve
and projects it onto a plane.
| | 01:41 | Now this also brings up the one error
message that you almost always get when
| | 01:46 | using this and that is that if these
Control Vertices of the original curve are
| | 01:52 | not aligned perfectly in a plane, the
tool will not work. So the best thing to
| | 01:58 | do is just draw it in an
Orthographic viewport like a Front viewport or
| | 02:02 | whatever and make sure that you don't
move anything out of plane because then
| | 02:07 | that tool won't work.
| | 02:07 | Now this is also a great way if you
wanted to use this tool again, you can also
| | 02:11 | use it in conjunction with a Loft to
create and extrude it later. So let's
| | 02:16 | select this curve, Curve 1 which is the
M, Ctrl+ D to Duplicate that curve and
| | 02:24 | if I select both of these curves, I
can actually -- let me show it to you in
| | 02:28 | the outline, if I select both of these
curves, I can actually do a Loft and now
| | 02:34 | I have got kind of an extruded text there.
| | 02:37 | Now this extruded text is actually
two surfaces. Remember how we get Loft,
| | 02:41 | which just essentially creates a
surface between two curves, and Planar, which
| | 02:46 | uses one curve to create the face. So
if you were to, for example, extrude a
| | 02:52 | cylinder and you wanted to cap it,
what you do is you take that cap piece and
| | 02:56 | you do a Make Planar. The
same with this extruded text.
| | 03:03 | So, let's move on to some more tools.
Now that we know some of the basics of
| | 03:07 | Make Planar, let's show how you use it
in the real world. One of the best ways
| | 03:12 | to use Make Planar is to cap surfaces.
For example when you cap a cylinder
| | 03:16 | typically what Maya does is
you can use a Make Planar.
| | 03:19 | Let's go ahead and just open that
scene with the chair, Chair_03.mb. This is
| | 03:26 | where we've left it off. Now we did
the Loft but we actually still have those
| | 03:29 | holes in the front of that surface.
So we select either the surface or the
| | 03:34 | curves that comprise the surface. So
make sure you select that curve. In fact
| | 03:39 | if you will go in the outline you'll
see that this is called curve13. Now I
| | 03:44 | actually grouped that. But go ahead and
take either curve8 or actually curve13
| | 03:49 | is the one we want.
| | 03:51 | So, select that and all you have to do
is go to Surfaces > Planar and that caps
| | 03:56 | my cushion, and then I can just do
that for all of those. Planar, planar, one
| | 04:07 | more, there we go.
| | 04:10 | Now the other thing is if you notice,
these little tubes here also don't have
| | 04:15 | ends to it and you could basically
just extract the curve here and do a Make
| | 04:19 | planar. In fact, let me just show you
that. So what you can do here is you can
| | 04:22 | just do -- go into Isoparm and select
the very end of that tube and then what
| | 04:30 | we have to do is go Edit Curve >
Duplicate Surface Curves, and then you can go
| | 04:36 | Planar and that will cap that.
| | 04:38 | That's if you want to do that, I mean
in terms of how you see it. If this is
| | 04:43 | always on the ground, you'll never
see the under side of that. So you don't
| | 04:46 | have to worry about it, if that's the case.
Typically with 3D, if you don't see it, don't build it.
| | 04:51 | So, there are some of the tools
in a more practical application.
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|
|
5. Advanced ModelingCreating curves on a surface| 00:00 | One of the neat things about Maya and
NURBS Modeling in general with almost any
| | 00:05 | NURBS package is that it allows you
to actually create a curve on a surface.
| | 00:10 | So you can actually draw a curve
and have that curve remain locked to a
| | 00:15 | surface. We saw a little bit of that
with the Planer tool, but you can actually
| | 00:19 | draw on a surface and have the curves locked.
| | 00:21 | Now, this is great for trimming away
the surface. It's also really good for
| | 00:27 | creating a base to attach other surfaces.
So let's take a look on how to do that.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to create a surface. I'm
going to go here on my Surfaces shelf and
| | 00:37 | just go NURBS Sphere, and just drag it
on the grid, make it kind of big. And
| | 00:43 | I'm going to shade that by hitting 5,
and now I want to draw a curve on this.
| | 00:50 | Well, I can't just draw a curve on it,
because if I just use the create like a
| | 00:55 | CV curve tool, it will just draw it
wherever and I don't want to do that. So
| | 01:00 | what I need to do, is select this
object and make it live. We do that by
| | 01:04 | hitting this little magnet right here.
That says Make The Selected Object Live.
| | 01:10 | So we click on that, and
the color of it changes.
| | 01:13 | Now, I can do Create CV Curve tool,
and I can start drawing. Notice how that
| | 01:19 | Control Vertices stick to the surface,
and the curve itself also sticks to the surface.
| | 01:26 | So once I'm done with that curve, I
can just click off to that by hitting the
| | 01:29 | Select tool, and if I want to, I can do
Edit Curves > Open/Close Curves, and now
| | 01:34 | I have a closed curve. Also notice how
this curve is blocked to this surface.
| | 01:40 | So if I were to select a Control
Vertex on this curve, I can hit W, enable my
| | 01:47 | Move tool, and I can move it along the surface.
| | 01:52 | Now, notice how this gizmo from the
Move tool is only 2 Dimensional. Normally,
| | 01:58 | we would have RGB, would have 3
little arrows on this. But we only have 2,
| | 02:04 | because it's locked to that surface.
| | 02:08 | Now, if I want to, I actually deform
the surface itself. I need to kind of get
| | 02:12 | out of this live node. So what I do here,
is I just click off of that, and then
| | 02:16 | I can select my NURBS sphere.
| | 02:20 | Now, another thing I want to do is
actually just right click over this sphere
| | 02:23 | itself, so I get the parameters for
that, and just go Control Vertex on the
| | 02:28 | sphere, not on the curve. And I select
some CVs here, and if I move them, you
| | 02:34 | can see how, no matter how I move the
surface, everything sticks in place. Now,
| | 02:43 | this is really handy because I've got
this curve totally stuck to the surface.
| | 02:50 | We can use this curve for some of
different tasks, which I'll show you in
| | 02:54 | following lessons. But before I do
that, I'm going to show you one more tool
| | 02:58 | for getting curves on to a
surface and that's called Project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Projecting curves on a surface| 00:00 | The next way to create a curve on
surface is to project it. Let me just show
| | 00:05 | you how to do that.
| | 00:06 | Again, we are going to create a
simple object. Let's just create a sphere
| | 00:10 | again, and I'm going to shade that,
and then we are going to create another
| | 00:13 | curve. In this case, I could draw a
curve, but we're going to create the curve
| | 00:18 | outside of the sphere before we
actually hit this magnet, and made the object
| | 00:24 | live and drew the curve on the surface.
| | 00:27 | Now, we're going to create a separate
curve, and project it on to the surface.
| | 00:32 | So probably easiest way to create a
curve is, let's go in to our Text tool, I'm
| | 00:36 | going to just select my Options here,
and I'm just going to make the letter M.
| | 00:39 | We are going to go Create, and if I go
in the Wireframe mode, you can see I've
| | 00:46 | created a letter M, and let's position
that M in front of our sphere, so we can
| | 00:54 | project it.
| | 00:55 | Now, what projecting does, in fact I'm
going to scale it up a little bit. What
| | 00:59 | projecting does is it actually kind of
-- well, it basically projects it like
| | 01:04 | a projector. Now projections work in
the view that you do the projection. This
| | 01:10 | is really important to know. So if I
put it to project in this view, at this
| | 01:16 | view, it would just kind of project
exactly as we see it; which means that
| | 01:21 | heart of the M would be off of the sphere.
| | 01:26 | So typically when I project, I like to
project in orthographic Viewports. In
| | 01:30 | this case, the Front Viewport works,
good. So what I'm going to do is I'm
| | 01:35 | going to select the Sphere, then the
Text, and then I'm going to go Edit NURBS >
| | 01:41 | Project Curve on Surface,
OK. Now watch what happens.
| | 01:46 | It's actually taking it from that
Front Viewport, and it's projected that
| | 01:50 | curve, and anywhere that curve
intersects the surface from that Front Viewport,
| | 01:56 | it creates a curve on surface. If I
shade that, you can see now I've got two
| | 02:02 | curves on surface, and these are
exactly like the curves that we had before,
| | 02:09 | except they are obviously
related to this text object.
| | 02:14 | If we keep History active, it will
project in real-time. So until I delete
| | 02:21 | history, that will be a live connection.
So if I change the shape of this or
| | 02:27 | if I change the position of it, it
will change the projection on the sphere.
| | 02:32 | OK. So now, that we have created two
types of curves on surface, let's see how
| | 02:36 | these work in real life.
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| Trimming NURBS Surfaces| 00:00 | Now, that we've learned a couple of
ways to create curves on the surface, let's
| | 00:05 | use those curves on surface to do
some new things with NURBS surfaces.
| | 00:09 | One of the first tools I want to talk
about is Trim. Now, Trim essentially
| | 00:15 | does what that Planer tool did,
which is it trims away parts of the NURBS
| | 00:19 | surface we don't want and just renders
the parts that we do want. But what we
| | 00:24 | have to do is we have to tell it
what we want and what we don't want.
| | 00:27 | So, now we are going to open a file,
but first I need to set my project. So we
| | 00:32 | are going to go ahead and go Project,
Set and I'm going to set it to 05. Now,
| | 00:41 | I'm going to go ahead and open a scene,
and we are in 05, Scenes, and we are
| | 00:47 | going to open a file called Text_01.
| | 00:49 | Now, all we need to do here, in fact
I'm going to hide my grid, so we can see a
| | 00:57 | little bit better, is we need to use
a Trim tool. Let me show you how that
| | 01:02 | works. I'm going to go
Edit NURBS > Trim tool.
| | 01:06 | What that does is it gives us a
wireframe representation. What we can do is
| | 01:10 | we can click on the part of the
surface that we want to keep, and then we hit
| | 01:16 | Enter. So when we smooth shade it,
it shows you the surface that we have
| | 01:22 | connected.
| | 01:22 | Now, there is a little bit of a
rendering, area there, and that's just a
| | 01:26 | Viewport display problem. But again,
there is still a sphere underneath this.
| | 01:32 | If I actually go Control Vertex mode,
you'll see all of the vertices, a bit
| | 01:36 | better way to see it would be to go
into Hull. But you can see there is still a
| | 01:42 | NURBS sphere underneath that, but
that's creating the surface for this to exist on.
| | 01:50 | Now, we can do this in the opposite way.
Let's just go ahead and reopen that
| | 01:54 | file. I'm just going to open Text_01,
and let's try this doing in the other way.
| | 01:59 | So let's go Edit NURBS > Trim tool,
and this time I'm going to click on the
| | 02:04 | surface outside of the letter M, and
notice how now we've created a hull in it.
| | 02:10 | So you can see it's a pretty easy way
to kind of like cut hulls and surfaces.
| | 02:17 | We can also use these curves as
attach points. So if I wanted to attach one
| | 02:23 | surface to another, I can attach it to
a curve on the surface. So let me show
| | 02:28 | you how to do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using NURBS Fillet tool| 00:00 | Now, let's look out how to attach
surfaces together using the Fillet Blend tool.
| | 00:06 | What I'm going to do is-- actually
I'm going to show you the basics of
| | 00:10 | this tool.
| | 00:11 | First thing I'm going to do is just
create two NURBS planes. I'm just going to
| | 00:15 | go into my shelf, Surfaces, create
the plane, click and drag, and create a
| | 00:23 | second plane. OK, in fact I'm going to
turn off this Grid here, so we can see.
| | 00:30 | And I'm going to shade these.
| | 00:33 | So, I've got two basic planes. What
I'm going to do is use Fillet Blend to
| | 00:38 | connect these two surfaces. Let me
show you how that's done. We go into Edit
| | 00:43 | NURBS > Surface Fillet > Fillet Blend.
| | 00:47 | Now that procedure here is a little
different than most normal Maya tools. You
| | 00:52 | have to hit Enter twice, so you just
left-click on the edge of one surface, hit
| | 00:58 | Enter, left-click on the edge of
the other surface, and hit Enter.
| | 01:04 | What this does is it creates a third
surface called a Blend Surface. Now, if I
| | 01:10 | select any one of those first two
surfaces, I can move them, and the Fillet
| | 01:16 | Blend will always be attached. This
is great. I mean you can see how very
| | 01:21 | easily you can use this for all sorts
of things, for connecting objects or
| | 01:27 | strange surfaces together.
| | 01:28 | Now, this Fillet Blend Surface itself
does have a few attributes. In fact, if I
| | 01:34 | go Ctrl+A, and go to my Attribute Editor,
and find a Fillet Blend Surface, you
| | 01:40 | can see I've got a couple of things
here to reverse the surface, and also to
| | 01:46 | kind of zipper it up. So it gives us
start and a stop position for that. OK,
| | 01:50 | I'm going to go back in my Channel Box here.
| | 01:54 | Now, let me show you a little bit more
complicated way that we can use the same
| | 01:58 | tool. So I'm just going to open a file
called Blend_01.mb. Now, this is just a
| | 02:05 | simple sphere, and a cylinder. Now,
what we can do is we can use Blend to
| | 02:10 | create a bridge surface between the two.
| | 02:13 | Now, the difference between this and
the planes that we used was that this
| | 02:19 | sphere doesn't really have a place to
attach the surface from the cylinder. So
| | 02:25 | what we are going to have to do is
create a curve on surface, kind of as an
| | 02:29 | anchor point for that.
| | 02:31 | So, I'm going to make a projected curve.
So first thing I need to do is get a
| | 02:36 | curve that's the same shape as the
cylinder. So I'm going to right click over
| | 02:41 | the cylinder, go into Isoparm mode,
left-click, and drag it out, so I have this
| | 02:48 | red line is at the very end of that cylinder.
| | 02:51 | Now, I'm going to take that Isoparm,
and I'm going to duplicate it as a surface
| | 02:55 | curve by going Edit Curves >
Duplicate Surface Curves. And now, I've got a
| | 03:00 | separate curve, that I can project
onto the surface. OK, and that curve is
| | 03:07 | exact same with as the cylinder.
| | 03:10 | So, if you had a strange shape like an
arm or an elbow or something like that,
| | 03:14 | it would still be the same shape by
extracting that curve. So in order to
| | 03:19 | project it though, I need to
project it from the Front Viewport.
| | 03:22 | So I'm going to go into this Front
Viewport and I'm actually going to select
| | 03:30 | this sphere, and then I'm going to
Shift-select the curve, and then I'm going
| | 03:37 | to highlight my Front Viewport and I'm
going to go Edit NURBS > Project Curve on
| | 03:43 | Surface.
| | 03:46 | So now, in the perspective view, you
can see I've got a curve on surface that
| | 03:51 | pretty much matches that cylinder. So
now all I have to do is use this curve
| | 03:56 | as the basis for the Fillet Blend.
| | 04:00 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go to the Edit NURBS > Surface Fillet >
| | 04:03 | Fillet Blend tool. Then, I'm going to
click on this Isoparm here, and I'm going
| | 04:09 | to make sure it's at the very end, and
hit Enter. Then, I'm going to click on
| | 04:15 | this curve on surface,
hit Enter, and there it is.
| | 04:19 | So now I've got a connection between
the two. And if I want to, I can move
| | 04:25 | this, and it will automatically
adjust. Now, why is this adjusting? Well,
| | 04:32 | because this curve here, this curve
that I have extracted the using duplicate
| | 04:37 | surface curve is still has history
that attaches it to the cylinder.
| | 04:43 | So when I move that, this moves
because it has history, and this because I
| | 04:49 | still have History turned on with the
projected curve, it also affects the
| | 04:56 | positioning of that curve on the surface.
If I deleted history, then this would
| | 05:01 | all kind of freeze, so it
wouldn't be live like it is now.
| | 05:04 | Now, you can see there are a lot of
opportunities and a lot of creative
| | 05:08 | possibilities using these tools in
this manner. OK, so we are going to stop
| | 05:13 | here and we are going to
move on to one or two more tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Stitching NURBS Surfaces| 00:00 | Now let's talk about Stitch. Stitch is
similar to a Fillet in that it connects
| | 00:05 | surfaces together, but while a Fillet
creates a third surface, Stitch connects
| | 00:12 | the surfaces directly together. Let me
show you very quickly how that works.
| | 00:17 | Now what we would use a stitch for to
be like connecting characters together. A
| | 00:22 | lot of times people use it to connect
the parts of a character's face together
| | 00:25 | for example, but let me just
show you the basics of this tool.
| | 00:27 | We are going to start with the NURBS
plane, we are going to shape that, move it
| | 00:35 | up so we can see it. In fact, I'm
going to take this plane and give it a few
| | 00:40 | more subdivisions, so we would kind
of see it a little bit better. Then I'm
| | 00:42 | going to duplicate it using Ctrl+D
and then just move that and look those
| | 00:49 | together.
| | 00:50 | Now there are three ways to do a
stitch and let's go through all of them. In
| | 00:54 | fact, if I want to I can tear off
this menu just by clicking on this double
| | 00:58 | line, that will give us all three
options that we can play with. So we have
| | 01:02 | Stitch Surface Points, Stitch Edges and
Global Stitch, so let's start with the top.
| | 01:09 | Stitch Surface Points basically
stitches the surface together at a point at a
| | 01:14 | time. Now, it's definitely the most
tedious method but it gives you more
| | 01:19 | control. So you can actually just
stitch parts of a surface together, if you
| | 01:23 | don't wanted to stitch the entire edges
together, you don't have to. So let me
| | 01:27 | show you how this works.
| | 01:29 | We need to go into Component Mode here
and then what we do is we just select
| | 01:34 | pairs of CVs, let me go and stitch
surface points. Now what that does, is it
| | 01:40 | actually connects together those points.
It snaps them together and holds them
| | 01:45 | together no matter what. So if I move
this surface, I actually take one of
| | 01:50 | these surfaces like an object mode
here and move it. You can see how it
| | 01:56 | basically connects those surfaces. I
can certainly go down and down the line
| | 02:01 | and connect more of these points
together. So if I wanted to do that one Stitch
| | 02:06 | Surface Points and so on and so forth.
| | 02:14 | Once these are connected again, these
surfaces are stuck together. Now this is
| | 02:22 | great. Stitch Surface Points is great
for these fine tuning places that we can
| | 02:27 | play with, but if we want to, we can
also use one of the other tools which is a
| | 02:32 | little bit more global and works a lot
faster that's called Stitch Edges. What
| | 02:36 | I'm going to do is I'm going to go
ahead and create another plane exactly the
| | 02:39 | same, I'm just going to start from
scratch here, give it some subdivisions.
| | 02:44 | Ctrl+D to duplicate it and now we have
got two planes, so we have two edges.
| | 02:49 | Now Stitch Edges basically just takes
two edges and stitches them together.
| | 02:53 | Very similar to have a Fillet Blend work.
So what we do is we will select both
| | 02:58 | of our surfaces. Use Stitch Edges,
select one, select the other and there it
| | 03:05 | goes and then I have this little
zipper. I call it the zipper that kind of
| | 03:11 | determines where the stitch starts.
Once those edges are stitched, it looks
| | 03:16 | like one surface or it acts like one
surface. So I select this surface here and
| | 03:21 | I move it and the other one
connects to it, very simple.
| | 03:28 | Now the last tool I want to show you
is called Global Stitch and I'm going to
| | 03:33 | delete these. Global Stitch is
actually really nice because we can take a lot
| | 03:37 | of surfaces and just snap them all
together at once. Probably, the easiest way
| | 03:42 | to show you how this works is just by
creating a simple NURBS cube, because you
| | 03:46 | remember how a NURBS cube is actually
made of separate surfaces. So if I select
| | 03:53 | this cube here, in fact let's give it
some more Patches so we can kind of see
| | 03:57 | the details in each one of these.
| | 03:59 | When you create a NURBS cube, it
actually creates six separate surfaces. If I
| | 04:03 | go into the Outliner, you can see I
have got this NURBS cube, but underneath
| | 04:08 | this group, I have got one, two, three,
four, five, six. One for each side of
| | 04:13 | that cube and just selecting any one
of these surfaces allows you to kind of
| | 04:20 | break the cube open, but if we use
Global Stitch, we can correct that problem.
| | 04:26 | Because what Global stitch does is it
takes a series of surfaces and it just
| | 04:31 | kind of figures out which edges
are closest to each other or actually
| | 04:35 | overlapping. They have to be actually
fairly close. We are going to Global
| | 04:39 | Stitch, in fact, let's just select all
of these and then go to Global Stitch
| | 04:44 | here and click this little box here.
| | 04:46 | What this does here is this gives you
a maximum separation of those edges and
| | 04:51 | then I will just use some other options
here and then we just hit Global Stitch
| | 04:56 | or we can just hit Global Stitch to
use the defaults. Now once that happens,
| | 05:01 | all of these edges were stitched
together and now when I move one of those
| | 05:05 | planes, you can see how the edges
hang on to each other and so now my cube
| | 05:11 | doesn't break apart and you can use
that for really any other type of character
| | 05:17 | or object that needs to deform. That
is the great way to get complex surfaces
| | 05:23 | out of NURBS Patches is that you stitch them
together and it's almost like a garment.
| | 05:27 | You can move it around and the seams won't break.
| | 05:31 | So, those are the basics of Stitch.
Now, let's move on to one more tool.
| | 05:36 | We'll go from that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sculpting surfaces| 00:01 | The last tool we are going to discuss
in this chapter is the Sculpt Geometry
| | 00:06 | tool. Now this works both for
Polygonal and for NURBS surfaces. I'm going to
| | 00:10 | show it to you on a NURBS surface.
What it does is it allows you to push and
| | 00:14 | pull a surface almost like clay. It's
highly interactive and it can even use
| | 00:19 | pressure sensitive tablets with it.
Let me show you how it works.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to create a sphere. I'm going
to shape that and then I'm going to go
| | 00:29 | to my Channel Box, go to makeNurbSphere,
select Sections and Spans and pump it
| | 00:36 | up a lot, I want about 50 or so.
Just to add more enough detail so I can
| | 00:41 | actually sculpt this.
| | 00:44 | So now, once I have that detail up, I
can go Edit NURBS > Sculpt Geometry tool,
| | 00:51 | go over here and click that little box
or get the options and this brings up
| | 00:55 | the Artisan interface. Now this
interface will be used throughout Maya, so it's
| | 01:00 | best to get to know it and this is a
great place to get to know how to work
| | 01:04 | this interface because you will see
these tools in same kind of interface in
| | 01:08 | paint effects, in texturing, there is
a lot of places where you can use this
| | 01:12 | in skinning characters.
| | 01:14 | Now, what this does is it changes
your cursor to a brush and as I move that
| | 01:21 | brush over the surface, you can see
this little red line. Now if I left-click
| | 01:26 | and drag, you can see I can push the
surface. So I can actually sculpt this
| | 01:32 | surface. Now, we have a number of
controls here for the radius of the brush so
| | 01:38 | if I want to make my brush smaller,
I can do that or if I want to make my
| | 01:42 | brush, change my brush size, I can
just hold down the B key as in brush and
| | 01:48 | left-click and drag and I can
just make it whatever size I want.
| | 01:52 | Now you can also change the Profile of
your brush which is essentially how much
| | 01:59 | it will fall off to a solid brush, to a
square and you can actually Browse for
| | 02:04 | brushes if you want and we also have a
number of sculpt operations, right now
| | 02:08 | we are pushing, but we can also pull.
So we can pull the surface out. Let's say
| | 02:14 | I want to create whatever. I can also
Smooth the surface, so you can kind of
| | 02:24 | get rid of what you did, kind of smooth
it back to where it was and I can Relax
| | 02:31 | the surface. What that does is it
relaxes the geometry. It's kind of like
| | 02:37 | smoothing, but it's a little bit
different and you can also erase. Now what
| | 02:42 | erase does is it actually puts
the surface back to where it was.
| | 02:46 | Now what we are doing here is we
are not actually kind of painting a
| | 02:52 | deformation map on to the surface. So
when we erase, we are actually painting
| | 02:56 | into a bitmap that's locked to the
surface and by erasing or smoothing, we are
| | 03:01 | actually kind of doing the same sort of
operations we do in paint package, such
| | 03:05 | as Photoshop. Now here we have got our
maximum displacement so let's go back to Pull.
| | 03:13 | So when I Pull how much am I pulling.
Am I got to pull just a little bit, if I
| | 03:18 | make that down I will just make that
little bit or am I can make that to pull a
| | 03:24 | lot. That's kind of like our strength
and you can also have a Flood. One of the
| | 03:30 | things we can also do as we go down to
the Stroke which is one of our roll outs
| | 03:35 | here. We can also do Reflection. We
can reflect around a certain axis X, Y, Z
| | 03:41 | and so if you want to just paint
symmetrically on to your object, you could. So
| | 03:52 | if you were like for example, if
you are painting a character's face or
| | 03:56 | something like that, you can do that.
| | 03:59 | And there is also some options down
here for Stylus Pressure, so what do you
| | 04:05 | want to, if you have a stylus. This
particular computer doesn't have a stylus,
| | 04:10 | but what would you map the pressure of
the stylus to and that would be right
| | 04:14 | here. It's grayed out
because I don't have a stylus.
| | 04:18 | Anyways you can see how this tool can
work very nicely. One of the things I use
| | 04:22 | it for a lot is for kind of fine-
tuning of model. You know, typically what
| | 04:28 | you will do is you will use gross
modeling tools, broad modeling tools, and
| | 04:34 | just pull vertices around the edges or
control vertices or whatever and then
| | 04:40 | once I have got my shape of my
character pretty much in line then I will start
| | 04:45 | using Artisan and start kind of
painting or it don't even have to be a
| | 04:50 | character, whatever type of
object you are using or building.
| | 04:53 | So that's the basic of Artisan and
some of the basics of NURBS modeling, so
| | 04:59 | let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with nonlinear deformers| 00:00 | Maya does have a number of other
tools that you can use to shape and deform
| | 00:05 | surfaces. Some of these are actually
found under the Animation menu and they
| | 00:10 | include things like Lattices and
Nonlinear Deformers such as Bend and Twist.
| | 00:16 | Let me show you how to work those.
Now these are actually are under the
| | 00:19 | Animation menu, but they don't
necessarily have to be used for animation.
| | 00:23 | Obviously, you can use them to model
with as well. So let me show you how to
| | 00:27 | work with some of these.
| | 00:28 | Let me go to the Animation menu and
under Create Deformers we have a bunch of
| | 00:32 | these such as Lattice, Wrap, Nonlinear
Deformers such as Bend, Flare and so on
| | 00:40 | and so forth. So let's now create
some geometry and we will play with that
| | 00:44 | actually how to use some of these tools.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to create a polygonal cube,
so I will go to Polygons Create and then
| | 00:52 | just create a cube, I will make it
actually a taller cube and then once I
| | 00:56 | create this basic cube, I'm actually
going to add some detail to it. So I'm
| | 00:59 | going to go here into polyCube in my
Channel box and left-click here and
| | 01:06 | middle-click in the middle to give it
some more Subdivisions. We will give
| | 01:09 | about 12 and then give it some
more Subdivisions in Width and Depth.
| | 01:14 | Actually I'm going to shape that. So
now we can have something to play with. So
| | 01:18 | let's start to take a look at some
of these deformers. Let's start with a
| | 01:21 | Nonlinear Deformers. In fact, I'm
going to tear off this menu here so we can
| | 01:25 | just put it right there and we can see
how they all work. The first one is Bend
| | 01:29 | and if I apply a Bend to that box you
can see here in the Channel box, I have
| | 01:35 | this bend input. You can also see that
in the Attribute Editor if you want. But
| | 01:42 | actually the one we are more concerned
with most is Curvature. So if I select
| | 01:47 | Curvature and middle-click to change
that value, I can change the curvature of
| | 01:51 | that and give this a nice bend.
| | 01:53 | You can also use these Manipulators. So
if I click here, left-click here I will
| | 01:58 | see this Manipulator tool here and it
has three little dot that I can use and
| | 02:03 | if I drag the dot in one direction or
the other, in fact I can drag it left to
| | 02:07 | right, up or down it will do that
and then these top and bottom once
| | 02:11 | determined, where the bends starts. So
if I want to bend to effect the whole
| | 02:17 | object I can do that or if I want to
effect just part of the object, I can do
| | 02:20 | that as well. So I can for example,
bend the top and not bend the bottom. So
| | 02:28 | that's Bend.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to go ahead and
straighten this out. So I'm going to turn my
| | 02:34 | Curvature to zero and now I'm just
going to go ahead and just do an Edit > Delete
| | 02:40 | History. So that way I can apply the next one.
| | 02:43 | So another one is Flare and again we
have options here and if you want you can
| | 02:50 | also use the Manipulator and what
that does is it basically just flares the
| | 02:53 | object down. We also have a Curve
value here, which allows you to create a
| | 03:01 | curvature for it. So you can actually
flare out this object. So I'm just going
| | 03:09 | to undo that.
| | 03:11 | Another one is Twist, I'm going to go
actually go out of both of here because
| | 03:16 | Twist is a real important one. So Twist
basically, it's great for creating. If
| | 03:22 | you want to create a machine screw or
something like that, you can use a Twist.
| | 03:26 | That will be real easy way to do that.
So again and if you want to use those
| | 03:31 | manipulators you could. I'm
going to get undo my way out of this.
| | 03:36 | Another one is Sine, which creates
essentially a sine wave. So it basically
| | 03:42 | gives you a kind of an S shape and
again, I'm just playing with these
| | 03:46 | manipulators. You can also go here and
change the Amplitude and the Wavelength
| | 03:51 | and whatever in the INPUTS and
again I'm doing my way out of it.
| | 03:59 | Squash is basically squash is stretch.
So as something squashes or stretches.
| | 04:06 | So basically again that's the
operation of it. Very simple tools. But again,
| | 04:12 | you can see how these are could be
helpful when modeling something. You can
| | 04:16 | also see how they could be helpful when
animating something as well. Again I'm
| | 04:19 | doing my way out of it.
| | 04:22 | So the last one is Wave. What this does,
it actually, it's kind of like sine in
| | 04:27 | there. It creates a wave form through
an object. So we can just select some of
| | 04:32 | these tools here. I can select this
manipulator here. How much we can do here.
| | 04:44 | It's a little tricky to grab this, but
what you do is you can grab this and you
| | 04:47 | can kind of see this. In fact, if I
turn on Wireframe here, you kind of see how
| | 04:51 | this creates a wave form that goes through.
| | 04:54 | So this is actually working on the
vertical axis of this box. It will probably
| | 04:57 | be better if you applied it to the
other axis and you can do that through as
| | 05:02 | well, this box here or actually just
take the manipulator itself and turn it
| | 05:09 | and there is one thing you can
also do is turn this manipulators.
| | 05:12 | So if I change that, then I can
change the Wavelength and change the
| | 05:17 | orientation of this. So all of these
manipulators, this is one very important
| | 05:22 | thing, is that all of these
manipulators actually do come up as a separate
| | 05:26 | object in the Outliner. So I do have
this Wave object here and I can actually
| | 05:32 | move that and change it, which is
another way. You can do that with the Bend,
| | 05:36 | the Twist, you can do with any of
these manipulators. They are actually are
| | 05:39 | separate objects in the Outliner.
| | 05:43 | So that's the basics of Nonlinear
Deformers and now let's move on to some of
| | 05:48 | the other deformers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with Lattices| 00:00 | Another animation deformer that's
really handy for modeling is the Lattice and
| | 00:06 | let me show how that works. It's a
really very simple tool and I'm sure anybody
| | 00:12 | has done 3D work has
worked with Lattices before.
| | 00:14 | I'm just going to create a sphere and
then let's going to go Create Deformers >
| | 00:18 | Lattice. Now, actually I'm going to
move over here and I'm going to show you
| | 00:21 | some of the options here. Now the
options are, basically the options are from
| | 00:26 | the number of divisions. How big do you
want this Lattice to be. So for example
| | 00:30 | if I do 4X4X4, it will create-- let me
close that. It will create a lattice
| | 00:36 | around your object that's 1, 2, 3, 4
vertices by 4 vertices by 4 vertices. Now
| | 00:43 | what this Lattice does, is it enables
you to use these points in the Lattice to
| | 00:48 | deform your object.
| | 00:50 | A Lattice is just like any other object.
If you right click over it, it will
| | 00:53 | give you that components or the objects
and in this case, we only have Lattice
| | 00:57 | Points. So if I click Lattice Points,
I can actually select those, hit W and
| | 01:04 | move them to deform this object. So if
I grab a bunch of them I can start using
| | 01:10 | that to shape and bend my object.
| | 01:13 | Now this is really good for global
deformations to an object. Obviously with
| | 01:18 | the sphere you can probably just do
the same thing with the NURBS Sphere and
| | 01:22 | just after you see these, but if you
had a complex object like a character's
| | 01:26 | head or something like that you can use it.
| | 01:29 | In fact, let's load up an object, I'm
just going to go ahead and go File > Open
| | 01:33 | Scene and we do have a Head here and
this is a much more complex object. So
| | 01:39 | lets say we wanted to kind of globally
reshape this and create a new character
| | 01:44 | out of the existing character. But
then what we can do is just create another
| | 01:48 | Lattice and we may want to create it
with a little bit more detail. Let's just
| | 01:51 | double the detail here. Just do 8X8X8,
Create and now I have got enough detail
| | 01:58 | here to start resculpting my character.
| | 02:02 | In fact, I want to, I can going to a
side viewport and click over the Lattice
| | 02:08 | and find the Lattice Points. For example,
I could take this and I can make his
| | 02:12 | nose bigger or I could give him a
stronger chin and again what I doing is I'm
| | 02:17 | just moving these Lattice Points. I
could make his head taller and again I'm
| | 02:23 | just, it's preserving kind of the
shape and all I'm doing is only just
| | 02:26 | deforming the space around my character.
| | 02:30 | So now I can actually start to
globally effect what happens to this geometry.
| | 02:38 | So I'm actually effecting geometry
globally. So you can see how this could be a
| | 02:43 | really handy modeling tool and that's
why I wanted to show you in the advance
| | 02:47 | modeling section.
| | 02:48 | So that's the basics of Lattices and
again let me show the Lattice itself. Just
| | 02:55 | like with any other of these deformers,
it is a separate object. You have to be
| | 03:01 | aware of that as you model, that these
are separate objects. Anyway so that's
| | 03:06 | Lattices and let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting NURBS to polygons| 00:01 | As you start modeling in Maya, you
are going to realize that there are some
| | 00:06 | surfaces that are best modeled using
polygons and there other surfaces that are
| | 00:10 | best modeled using NURBS. The curving
surface of a car body would be a perfect
| | 00:16 | surface for NURBS for example. But
there are times when you need to convert one
| | 00:21 | type of surface to another, the most
common example would be gaming. A lot of
| | 00:26 | game engines required that you give
them polygons. So you may want to model
| | 00:31 | your current NURBS, but ultimately you
will have to make it into a polygonal
| | 00:35 | surface. So Maya does have
tools to convert NURBS to polygons.
| | 00:40 | Now, you can't go back, you can't go
from polygons to NURBS, because a NURBS
| | 00:45 | surface is a higher order surface. You
can only go down, you can only make the
| | 00:49 | surface, give the surface less stuff.
Because our NURBS surface has all of this
| | 00:54 | curvature information, which you are
going to lose when you go to a Polygonal
| | 00:58 | surface. But with that in mind, let
me show you how to convert surfaces.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to create a simple NURBS
Sphere. Right here I'm going to shade it and
| | 01:10 | this surface is very simple, it has 8
Sections and 4 Spans so it's very light.
| | 01:15 | It's actually the default that Maya
will give when you create a sphere and we
| | 01:22 | can convert that into a polygonal
object by using NURBS to Polygons. Now there
| | 01:27 | are bunch of the other ones here, we
can go NURBS to a Subdivision surface,
| | 01:31 | Polygons to Subdivision surface.
Subdivision surface to NURBS, couple other
| | 01:36 | ones down here, but the one that you
are going to use most commonly used NURBS
| | 01:38 | to Polygons.
| | 01:40 | So let's take a look at that effect.
Let's look at the options for that. I'm
| | 01:42 | going to click this little box here and
bring up the Options. Let's positioned
| | 01:48 | that so we can see what's going on. So
there are a couple of ways to convert
| | 01:53 | it. The first option is the Type of
conversion. Now we are going to output this
| | 01:58 | as Triangles or Quads.
| | 02:01 | So if my output is Triangles, let's
just do that. I'm going to hit Apply and
| | 02:07 | then I'm going to move that aside here.
So what this does, is that it actually
| | 02:10 | takes this surface and subdivides it
and makes it into a triangular surface.
| | 02:17 | Let's go again and let's take a look at
this and let's do this as Quads. So I'm
| | 02:21 | going to change that to Quads and then
just hit Tessellate and you can see now,
| | 02:29 | its taken away those triangular art
effects and just make this a Quad polygon
| | 02:33 | surface or everything is four sided.
| | 02:37 | Now this is probably the best way to
convert to polygons, because a four-sided
| | 02:41 | polygonal surface is best for
deformations and smoothing and all of that.
| | 02:47 | Typically this is where you go, but
there are some game engines that require
| | 02:50 | triangles. So again check with what
your surface is going to need. You wanted
| | 02:56 | to like model a character and then
bring it down to polygons and then animated
| | 03:01 | it, I suggest Quads, if you are
going to do car or something that doesn't
| | 03:05 | deform Triangles will be perfectly fine.
| | 03:06 | So lets take a look at these other
options. Now in addition to let's go Modify >
| | 03:13 | Convert > NURBS to Polygons, so in
addition to the Triangles versus Quads, there
| | 03:20 | is a Tessellation method. General
works on the number of Iso params that you
| | 03:26 | have on the surface. So if for example
you have 8 iso params around here, this
| | 03:31 | is going to be 3 per iso params. So
it's just going to divide each one of these into 3.
| | 03:36 | You can also do Secondary Tessellation
control on this General one. So if your
| | 03:42 | curvature of your object gets a little
bit finer, it will add more detail. You
| | 03:46 | can do it by the number of count. So
this is perfect for a lot of gaming
| | 03:51 | applications. If you restricted to
the number of polygons you have, you can
| | 03:54 | just say this particular object is
only going to be 200 polygons and just do
| | 04:00 | your best to make that happen. You can
also do a Standard Fit which is kind of
| | 04:05 | a default or you can do Control Points.
So again, let's take a look at how some
| | 04:11 | of these works. A Standard Fit is what
we did before, that Standard Fit take
| | 04:17 | this and let's do NURBS to
Polygon, just do General.
| | 04:22 | So we can do per surface number of iso
param. Let's just do per span instead of
| | 04:30 | per surface. Let's do per span and
just say 3, in fact we can do, let's do 5
| | 04:37 | per span and just say Tessellate and
you can see now this is view for every one
| | 04:42 | of these spans, it gives 5. So you can
again adjust your Tessellation and in
| | 04:48 | fact right here, if you take this
polygonal object and go back into your INPUTS
| | 04:54 | here, you will say well, I don't want 5,
I want 3 or I want 2 or I want 1 and
| | 05:00 | if you go here and you keep this live,
you are on to this Control Vertex and
| | 05:06 | modify it and it will
modify those original ones.
| | 05:09 | So that's kind of a nice way to
actually have a polygonal object and still have
| | 05:14 | the NURBS object as kind of a control,
that's kind of a cool way to do that.
| | 05:19 | Convert NURBS to Polygons wanted some
of the other ones. a Count, let's just do
| | 05:22 | Count. Let's just bring the Count way
down, let's just make it like a 22 or
| | 05:27 | whatever 30, 29 count sphere and so
here is a sphere with only 29 polygons.
| | 05:36 | Pretty cool and what was
the last one that we have.
| | 05:43 | We have Control Points, let's just see
what that one does and again that just
| | 05:47 | takes basically what it does is every
control point in that sphere. So actually
| | 05:54 | what's a Control Point? Control Points
are the tips of the hulls. So if I take
| | 05:58 | a look at the Hulls, you will see that
this object basically is what you get
| | 06:04 | when you do Control Points.
| | 06:06 | So those are the various ways of
converting a NURBS surface to a Polygonal
| | 06:12 | surface. So hopefully that will help
you when you start moving between the
| | 06:17 | different surface types.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: the body| 00:00 | By now we should have a basic
understanding of the modeling tools within Maya.
| | 00:05 | So let's use our new found knowledge to
go on to some more complex objects. We
| | 00:13 | are going to build an airplane and
let me show you that. First thing, let's
| | 00:16 | make sure our project is set. So we are
going to go Project > Set, I'm going to
| | 00:20 | make sure that's at 05 and then
we are going to go View Image.
| | 00:24 | The View Image basically into the
Textures directory but that's where we want
| | 00:29 | to go in. We want to go in 05,
textures and we have three view of this
| | 00:35 | airplane, we have Front, Side and Top.
I'm going to open the Side just to show
| | 00:39 | you. So this is the airplane that we
are going to build. In fact, I have got
| | 00:43 | this already in Photoshop, that's set
up here. So let's take a look at those.
| | 00:47 | There is the Front, there is
the Top and there is the Side.
| | 00:51 | Now, one of the things I did was when
I made these images was I put them on a
| | 00:56 | square canvas. This will make it lot
easier when we actually go to use this as
| | 01:01 | reference, OK. Let me show you how that
works, I'm going to minimize Photoshop
| | 01:07 | here, I'm going to close my FCheck
which is what I viewed my airplane in. And
| | 01:12 | what we need to do right now is get
ahead just a little bit, because we need to
| | 01:18 | do a little bit of text stream, we are
actually going to learn that in the next
| | 01:22 | lesson, but lets just bear with me and
follow along and I will show you very
| | 01:26 | quickly how to map one of those images
to a plane so we can use it as reference
| | 01:31 | for modeling.
| | 01:32 | First thing we need to of course is
create a plane. So I'm actually going to go
| | 01:36 | into a Side viewport and I'm going to
create a NURBS Plane. So I'm going to go
| | 01:41 | Surfaces, click on Plane and create a
NURBS Plane. Now, the size of the plane
| | 01:48 | doesn't really matter. It obviously
needs to be somewhat the size of what you
| | 01:52 | want to make it for your real world
airplane, but you can always scale that up
| | 01:57 | and down, just as long as it's relatively
the same size that's all that really matters.
| | 02:02 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and NURBS
Plane here and the one thing I want to do
| | 02:05 | is make sure that that Length Ratio is
one, because what that does is it makes
| | 02:09 | that a perfect square. And once I do
that, and also I'm going to center this.
| | 02:13 | I'm actually going to click on Snap
here and center this. So actually, see
| | 02:17 | right here I click on Snap
to Grids and then center that.
| | 02:22 | Click off Snap to Grids. Now, I need
to map that image to this plane. So what
| | 02:28 | I'm going to do is I'm going to shape
this, so I can see what I have got and
| | 02:33 | then I'm going to my Rendering shelf.
Now, this is the part that you haven't
| | 02:36 | learned yet. So Rendering, and then
I'm just going to click on one of these
| | 02:40 | little balls, actually I'm going to
click on the one that says Lambert. What
| | 02:43 | that does is it creates a non shiny
shader and right now it's gray, but we want
| | 02:49 | to pick the color of this and
change it to that bitmap I showed you.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to click here on this
little checkerboard right next to that
| | 02:56 | color, very well and make sure this is
set to normal. OK, we will learn about
| | 03:01 | that later, just make sure it's set
there and we are going to hit the thing
| | 03:05 | that says File and now that gives us a
little image loader here and I click on
| | 03:11 | that and now what I have to do is go
into my Desktop and into my Exercise
| | 03:19 | Files, 05, textures, Plane_Side. OK,
you can see little airplane right there in
| | 03:28 | the sample. It's not showing up in the
viewport, well that's simple, we have
| | 03:32 | to do a Shading, Hardware
Texturing and there it is.
| | 03:36 | OK, so now you know how to do one of
them, now you can do all three of them. I
| | 03:42 | have actually done those for you. So
if you don't want to go through all that
| | 03:45 | effort, we can Open Scene and I have
one here called Plane_0 in 05/scenes. OK,
| | 03:54 | and that I have just basically repeated
that three times, one for each of those
| | 03:59 | images, and then I have lined them up
to make sure that everything is kind of
| | 04:04 | all in the same lane. So we have everything
kind of it's lined up and ready to go, OK.
| | 04:11 | So now let's start modeling, OK the
first I'm going to do is I'm going to make
| | 04:16 | the body. Now, I'm going to build this
airplane out of combination, well we are
| | 04:21 | going to start with NURBS and then we
are actually going to finish the airplane
| | 04:24 | as polygons. I'm going to show you
some of the differences between NURBS and
| | 04:28 | polygons and show you how you to use
them together. So the first thing I'm
| | 04:32 | going to do is let's go ahead and
start with the body of the airplane.
| | 04:35 | Now, if we look at it from the front,
you can see that it's pretty much a tube.
| | 04:41 | So we can use that to know that we can
use a Revolve for that. In fact let's
| | 04:45 | start with this cowling. This is
probably the easiest thing to do. So what I'm
| | 04:50 | going to do is I'm going to start by
creating a curve, so going to our Surfaces
| | 04:54 | menu here, Surfaces, and
then we go Create CB Curve.
| | 04:59 | OK, now I want to sketch this out. So
actually I know that this is actually
| | 05:06 | going to be open on this end and
open on this end, because it's kind of a
| | 05:09 | hollow cowling. So make sure I'm going
to start in a little bit here and then
| | 05:14 | just draw this and then this little
nub here, I'm just going to go one, two,
| | 05:22 | three. And 5:23 a little bit of a
dug and we are going to tweak that one.
| | 05:27 | So basically what I have done is I
have created this curve which is hopefully
| | 05:32 | the outline of this. If we want to,
we can right-click here, into Control
| | 05:37 | Vertex and tweak that if we want, we
can also tweak it later. We don't have to
| | 05:43 | tweak it now, because let's go ahead
and do the Revolve. So from the Surfaces
| | 05:48 | menu, go Surfaces > Revolve.
| | 05:50 | Now, let's go ahead and click on our
Options and make sure everything is set
| | 05:53 | properly. Then we want to revolve
around this axis, the axis that's going this
| | 05:59 | way and obviously that's the X Axis.
So let's make sure that's clicked on X,
| | 06:04 | yes it is and how many Segments do we
want. Well, let's just leave it at the
| | 06:09 | default, with 8. That sounds about
right. Let's hit Revolve, OK. Well, that's
| | 06:13 | our first little bit, that's our cowling.
| | 06:16 | Now, if you don't like the shape of it,
you can always go back to the original
| | 06:21 | curve and change that if you want. I'm
going to leave that the same or if you
| | 06:28 | want, you can change the surface itself.
Now, let's go ahead and do the body of
| | 06:34 | the airplane. Now, the one thing
about this body is it has this little hump
| | 06:37 | here for the cockpit. But what I want
to do is actually I want to try to get
| | 06:41 | this curve, this is probably a better
curve to get and then we can remodel that
| | 06:48 | into the cockpit here.
| | 06:49 | So what we want is to try and
duplicate this curve along the bottom of the
| | 06:54 | airplane, OK. Now, I'm going to use
another Revolve. So what I have to do is
| | 06:59 | make sure that because I want the back
of this to be closed up, I want to make
| | 07:04 | sure that back of this herb is at 0.
And how do I do that. I can view snap, so
| | 07:10 | I'm going to go ahead and hit Snap
to Grids and I'm going to go create CV
| | 07:19 | Curve. Now, this is going to
snap to that one grid there, OK.
| | 07:24 | Now, I don't need to snap anything
else to grids, so I will make sure, I turn
| | 07:28 | that off and then draw the rest of my
curve. Now, this is actually a little far
| | 07:31 | back. But I can always model that, I
can always reshape the curve once I have
| | 07:37 | that. I'm just going to go ahead and
go here. now, the one thing I'm going to
| | 07:41 | also pay attention to is this cockpit
here, because I want to make sure that I
| | 07:45 | have detail around here to create
that when we actually convert that to
| | 07:50 | polygons and also I want to have a
little bit of detail to model those wings.
| | 07:56 | OK, and you will see why I'm doing this
as we get into this, and then a little
| | 08:01 | bit of a bump there and then there we
go. So I'm going to hit Enter and let's
| | 08:10 | go ahead and select our curve and I'm
going to actually go right here into
| | 08:13 | Component Type and I'm going to move
these, I'm just going to move those, so
| | 08:19 | that's right about there and then I'm
going to select this one. I'm going to
| | 08:28 | select some of these here and then I
will make sure that these are a little bit
| | 08:35 | closer to that curve there.
| | 08:37 | OK, so now I'm going to go back in the
Object Mode, I'm right-clicking here,
| | 08:41 | right-click Object Mode and now that I
have got this all pretty much set, I'm
| | 08:47 | just going to do another revolve.
Surfaces > Revolve, I have already set it to X,
| | 08:50 | so let's just do that. Hey! That's
pretty close, OK. But it's a little bit
| | 08:56 | off, but actually if I move this up a
little bit, it looks like -- yeah, it's
| | 09:01 | pretty close. Right here is where we
actually have a little bit of a problem.
| | 09:06 | So again, I'm zooming in here. If you
want to, you can go into X-Ray mode, so
| | 09:12 | go Shading, X-Ray, and that will
give you little bit of better view.
| | 09:16 | So I'm actually selecting the original
curve that created this and I'm going to
| | 09:21 | into Control Vertex and now I'm
going to go ahead and see this has came a
| | 09:27 | little bit to -- I need to square that
off a little bit, so you can see by just
| | 09:32 | changing that original curve, you can
still change the surface. That's one way
| | 09:36 | to model the surface. Now, I can also
model the surface, I can go back to the
| | 09:41 | Object Mode here and select my surface
just by clicking on it and if I want, I
| | 09:46 | can go into Control Vertex mode here
and then I will start reshaping this surface.
| | 09:53 | So it's like, well I need definitely
need it to be higher along this area, so
| | 09:58 | I'm going into Control Vertex and start
moving this up to get the back of this
| | 10:05 | airplane. And then I'm going to play
with -- you may need to play with this to
| | 10:12 | get this tail correct.
| | 10:16 | Now, another thing you want to do is
insert some detail, because I really do
| | 10:21 | want to get kind of a better curve
here especially around that window. So we
| | 10:26 | can right-click here, go in the
Isoparm mode and just left-click and drag and
| | 10:32 | kind of just position that
right where we want new detail.
| | 10:35 | If we want to do that, we can just go
Edit NURBS, once that's selected and then
| | 10:39 | we just do Insert Isoparms and that
actually adds more detail. You can do the
| | 10:46 | same here, I will just go right-click
on Isoparms mode, I'm going to do one
| | 10:50 | right around the back of that airplane
and when you go again Edit NURBS > Insert Isoparms.
| | 10:58 | Now, another way to move this detail
around is to just go on a Control Vertex
| | 11:03 | mode and just start moving the CVs
around that's another way to do it, but this
| | 11:11 | looks pretty good. Now, the one thing I
may want to do is I may want to add a
| | 11:16 | little bit more detail, because I
need more detail for the wings in the
| | 11:19 | airplane and we will see how that works
as we go. So what I can do is I can go
| | 11:23 | to this Revolve, this original Revolve
and instead of 8 sections, let's make it 12.
| | 11:29 | So now, this is the part where we
continue to reshape this and make sure that
| | 11:34 | it's right. We can also reshape it from
our Top viewport as well and make sure
| | 11:38 | that that works as well from the Top
viewport and from the Front viewport as
| | 11:44 | well and it looks like we are pretty
close on all that. So I'm going to go
| | 11:48 | ahead and save this out and then we
will pick this up. We are going to start
| | 11:52 | working on the wings and
the tail of the airplane.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: the wings| 00:00 | Now, let's start working on the rest of
the airplane, the wings and the tail.
| | 00:05 | I had saved out what I had before as
Plane_1.mb and this is the basic body. Now,
| | 00:17 | actually what I'm going to do is I
want to trim this down little bit. We are
| | 00:22 | not going to need this front viewport.
I'm going to select this and go to
| | 00:24 | Display > Hide > Hide Selection and
that just hides this front viewport.
| | 00:29 | We can always bring that back later,
but I kind of want to get a clearer view
| | 00:34 | of this. And now what we want to
do at this point is we have got our
| | 00:39 | NURBSsurface and it's kind of nice,
because it has created a curvy surface that
| | 00:44 | we really like to use for airplanes.
But now I want to turn this into a
| | 00:50 | polygonal surface. So what I'm
going to do is I'm going to select my
| | 00:56 | revolveSurface.
| | 00:57 | In fact, let's go ahead and double-
click. I will just give this a name.
| | 00:59 | We will just call this NURBS_Body, so
that way we have more descriptive name.
| | 01:06 | You can also click on this and we will
call this the Cowl. OK, so let's select
| | 01:11 | our NURBS_Body, we are going to convert
that to polygons. I'm just going to go
| | 01:15 | Modify > Convert > NURBS to Polygon. So now
let's go ahead here and see some of the options.
| | 01:22 | Now, I'm going to make this General,
Quads, a U type Per span of iso parameters
| | 01:31 | and Per span of iso parameters in
U and V and I don't want any additional
| | 01:37 | detail. I just want to make sure we
have, we just do a 1 to 1 value here. So
| | 01:42 | I'm just going to go Tessellate. Now,
that creates another surface called
| | 01:45 | nurbsToPoly. In fact if we go into our
Outliner, you can see I have my NURBS_Body
| | 01:54 | and nurbsToPoly. I'm going to select
my NURBS_Body and I'm also going to go
| | 01:59 | Display > Hide > Hide Selections.
| | 02:01 | Now, all I have got is my polygonal body.
Now, this is a pretty low-res polygon
| | 02:07 | object, but if you smooth it, it will
smooth up into a nice one. In fact if I
| | 02:13 | go into my Polygon menu here, Mesh >
Smooth, you can see how this will smooth up
| | 02:20 | pretty well. I'm going to hit Undo at
this point because we really don't want
| | 02:23 | to be doing this right now. Now, one
of the things I want to do is I want to
| | 02:27 | make sure I have enough detail to
extrude the wings, OK. Now, I'm going to
| | 02:34 | actually go into X-Ray mode here, I'm
going to go Shading > X-Ray, so I can kind
| | 02:38 | of see what I have got here.
| | 02:40 | So you can kind of see the wings. So
it looks like I have got detail for the
| | 02:44 | wings and what I need to do is Extrude
part of this body to create the wings
| | 02:50 | and I think I can do it right along
the under side of this. So what I'm going
| | 02:55 | to do is actually let me turn off X-Ray.
I'm going to select this surface and
| | 03:01 | I'm going to move that down.
| | 03:02 | OK, because I really want to use this
from the Top viewport anyway, so I don't
| | 03:08 | need it here. So I'm going to select
the part of the body that represents the
| | 03:14 | wings, but what am I selecting, I'm
selecting Faces. So I will right-click
| | 03:19 | Face, then I'm going to click on these
dots and then Shift-select all of these.
| | 03:25 | We are just going to do one side, we
are not going to both the sides, because
| | 03:29 | actually what we are going to do put
them on half the airplane and then mirror
| | 03:32 | it. OK, so that's the base of the wing,
that's where the wing attaches to the body.
| | 03:38 | Now, we need to start creating the wings.
What first thing we are going to do,
| | 03:41 | is I'm going to go Edit Mesh > Extrude.
OK, that brings up my Extrude icon and
| | 03:49 | actually I'm going to go into my Front
viewport here and just Extrude that out.
| | 03:53 | So we can see where that is. Now,
actually I'm going to Extrude it out a little
| | 03:57 | bit more than I need. OK,
because I want some room to work.
| | 04:02 | Now, once I have got that extruded, I
can hit E and rotate it. What I want to
| | 04:08 | do is rotate it about 90 degrees,
because really what I want to do is Extrude
| | 04:12 | this straight out and then I'm going
to hit R for scale. I'm going to scale
| | 04:16 | these so that they are pretty much flat.
Then I'm going to hit W for move and
| | 04:21 | move those up right about where I need
them to be. So what I have done is by
| | 04:27 | doing E and R or by rotating in
scaling modes, I pretty much made a flat surface.
| | 04:33 | So when I start extruding, it's going
to extrude straight out. That's kind of
| | 04:37 | important. Now, I have got the nub
of this wing, but the outline of this
| | 04:42 | doesn't really look like a wing,
because this is all square and the wings are
| | 04:47 | flat on the bottom and then they are
curved on the top. So what I can do at
| | 04:51 | this point is right-click, Vertex and
I can just sculpt the outline of that wing.
| | 04:59 | And really what I'm doing is I'm trying
to maintain the horizontalness of this.
| | 05:06 | So really, what I'm trying to do is
maintain the straightness this way, and so
| | 05:12 | all I really want to do is start
moving these down. So I'm going to start the
| | 05:15 | end, move that down and just move it
essentially, and what I'm going to do is
| | 05:24 | rough out the kind of the wing shape
here. Now, I need to get this before I
| | 05:36 | start making the rest of the wing,
because everything I extrude is going to be
| | 05:40 | based on that shape.
| | 05:41 | So that's essentially a wing shape
there. They can obviously tweak this more.
| | 05:47 | We are going to go a little bit
faster. So some of this might be a little
| | 05:50 | rough. OK, I'm just trying to give
you concepts here. So I might not be an
| | 05:55 | absolutely perfect one, I model some of this.
| | 05:58 | So let's go back to Face mode and we
are going to select these Faces and we are
| | 06:01 | going to Extrude the rest of the wing.
An easiest way to select the Faces is go
| | 06:05 | back into my Front viewport and just
select all of those. OK, now you can see
| | 06:12 | I have got just by doing that, I
actually selected these Faces. Now, one of
| | 06:17 | things I also can see is that by
tweaking those vertices, I have kind of got a
| | 06:21 | jaggy line here. You can kind of see that.
| | 06:23 | So first thing, before I extrude that,
I'm going to go back to scale and I'm
| | 06:28 | going to just scale that as flat as I
can. I can do that in the Top viewport as
| | 06:32 | well. OK, so now if that's flat, I can
Edit Mesh > Extrude and I'm just going to
| | 06:41 | extrude the wing. OK, now there are
two kinds of theories on how to do this.
| | 06:47 | One is you extrude all the way out.
So basically extrude all the way out to
| | 06:51 | here and then you just insert edge
loops to add the detail. We can do it that
| | 06:57 | way or we can Extrude that little bit above.
| | 06:59 | So we are going to Extrude here, then
I'm going to Scale this just a little
| | 07:03 | bit. I'm actually not going to Scale
that. Let's just extrude again, I'm going
| | 07:07 | to hit G, to repeat last command and
Extrude again. Now, if I want to, I can
| | 07:13 | turn on X-Ray to kind of see this laid
against my model. OK, well that looks
| | 07:18 | pretty good. Now, let's go ahead and
just do some rough shaping on the wing. So
| | 07:24 | I don't want to add a lot of detail at
this point. I'm going into Vertex mode here.
| | 07:28 | What I was saying is I don't want to
add a lot of detail at this point, because
| | 07:34 | what I'm doing here is I'm trying to
get this shape as straight as possible.
| | 07:38 | The more detail I have, the less
straight it's going to be, the more of a
| | 07:42 | chance for bumps and all that sort of
stuff. So you only just want one in the
| | 07:45 | middle and one at the end.
| | 07:46 | So I'm going to hit Scale and I'm going
to Scale this down until it's about the
| | 07:53 | right length and I'm going to actually
be moving between Scale and Move. And
| | 07:58 | what I'm trying to do is to get that
and that pretty much aligned. OK, I have
| | 08:03 | got that. Let's do that the same for this one.
| | 08:06 | Now, the reason I'm using Scale is
because it moves all the vertices equally
| | 08:10 | and I really want the geometry of this
to be fairly equal. Now, the one thing
| | 08:15 | I'm noticing is that there is kind of
like a little scene here, and so if I
| | 08:19 | want to, I can match that by just
rotating this detail, just a little bit and
| | 08:25 | then if I want to, I can move some of
this up like that. But we are really
| | 08:30 | trying to keep this as scaled as possible.
| | 08:33 | Now, this last one here, we can do it
again. OK, so again, I'm trying to get
| | 08:42 | this leading edge of that wing as
straight as possible. And now this curve of
| | 08:50 | the wing we can get, we have to
insert some detail to get that. So I'm just
| | 08:58 | trying to get the end tip of this
wing. And if you notice, this is also a
| | 09:08 | little bit curved. So I'm going to
rotate that detail just a little bit.
| | 09:14 | OK, so that's pretty much -- well we
are kind of still a little off here, but
| | 09:20 | this is a point where we need to start
inserting edge loops, because I really
| | 09:24 | wanted to get this curve here and I
don't have enough detail to do that. So
| | 09:28 | this is where I start adding details.
So I'm going to go into Object Mode,
| | 09:33 | select this. Go Edit Mesh > Insert Edge
Loop tool. Then I'm just going to click
| | 09:39 | here and insert the edge
loop where I want that to be.
| | 09:43 | So I'm going to insert an edge loop
here and then I'm just going to right-click
| | 09:47 | and go back into Vertex mode, and then
I'm going to start modeling. So now, you
| | 09:55 | can see what I'm doing here, I'm just
kind of getting some of this detail just
| | 09:59 | to get that curvature of the wing. Now,
I can add more detail if I want, but it
| | 10:03 | actually looks like this is pretty close.
OK, now as we smooth this out, we can
| | 10:10 | give it more detail.
| | 10:11 | Now, one thing is that the end of this
wing is actually really fat, the wings
| | 10:16 | do get thinner as they go out. So I'm
going to go ahead and just scale these
| | 10:21 | wings a lot smaller. In fact, I do
need more detail here probably too -- well
| | 10:29 | may be not. OK, and this is a point
where I might want to bring in my Front
| | 10:35 | viewport, because the wings do tend
to angle up just a little bit. OK, but
| | 10:43 | that's good for now, I'm just
going to give you the basics.
| | 10:46 | Now, that we have that, we can do the
exact same thing for the tail. Let's go
| | 10:52 | ahead and do a vertical tail fin.
That's the one I really want to work on. Now,
| | 10:56 | if you notice it starts right about here,
and it goes all the way down to about
| | 11:01 | this endpoint here. Now, it goes along
with top series of edges, so what I can
| | 11:08 | do is -- I don't want to extrude the
whole, these two Faces, what I want to do
| | 11:16 | is make a mounting point for
the tail along with top edge.
| | 11:21 | So let me show you how to do that. I'm
going to go ahead and select Edge and
| | 11:27 | then I'm going to select, one, two,
three edges. OK, so see what I have
| | 11:32 | selected, I have selected these three
and those are going to be the root of my
| | 11:37 | tail. Alright, I don't want to Extrude
the edges, what I really want to do is I
| | 11:41 | want to Chamfer those to give me a
little bit more room to actually Extrude
| | 11:46 | that tail.
| | 11:46 | So let's go to Edit Mesh > Bevel, I'm
going to Bevel that and I'm just going to
| | 11:50 | leave it at the default. And what
that does, let's go ahead -- I'm going to
| | 11:55 | undo that, and I'm going to turn on X-
Ray mode again so you can see how this
| | 12:00 | works. So you see this edge here, Edit
Mesh > Bevel. Now, what that did, if you
| | 12:08 | can scroll in here, it created, picked
that one edge and splitted and expanded
| | 12:16 | it to make a Bevel. Now,
you can see that Bevel here.
| | 12:21 | So when it's done, it has created some
Faces that we can use to extrude for the
| | 12:25 | tails. I'm going to go ahead and right-
click here, Face, I'm going to select,
| | 12:28 | one, two, three, four and this little
one right here and that one right in
| | 12:40 | there five. OK, so I have selected these,
in fact you can kind of selected now,
| | 12:46 | and that's where I'm going to extrude,
so Edit Mesh > Extrude and there is the
| | 12:53 | base of my tail. OK, now, I have
got to do a little bit of work here.
| | 12:58 | I need to make it wide in the front and
skinny in the back just like I did for
| | 13:05 | the wing. OK, so I need to maybe make
it a little bit skinnier back here, a
| | 13:09 | little bit wider and let's go ahead and
do that. I'm going to just go ahead and
| | 13:12 | select this Face and Scale that a
little bit, make that skinny and Scale that
| | 13:21 | just a little bit, Scale that. So
what I'm doing, so I'm just scaling these
| | 13:27 | Faces to give kind of a nice profile
for this tail. OK, that looks about right.
| | 13:32 | So we got to select these Faces. Now,
one thing about this is we need to make
| | 13:38 | sure that this one Face stays out, OK
so that's one thing that can happen when
| | 13:45 | you extrude, and sometimes these faces
can cross over each other. So I'm going
| | 13:49 | to make sure that that Face stays out
and we are going to go ahead and in fact
| | 13:54 | I'm just going to hide Cameras here, OK.
| | 13:56 | So now I'm going to take that ten,
again what I'm doing here is just moving
| | 14:07 | some detail around, just so that I
have a good base to create that tail from.
| | 14:13 | So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying
to sweep this up. So let me just do a
| | 14:20 | quick extrude of the rest of these
Faces and then we are going to leave it to
| | 14:26 | that. And then we will leave you to
tweak the shape a bit. I already did it
| | 14:31 | with the wing. So you can
kind of see how it works.
| | 14:35 | So OK, so I have selected those five
Faces and then I'm just going to extrude,
| | 14:39 | I'm going to hit G hopefully that will
repeat that last extrude, yes it does.
| | 14:44 | So now I'm going to extrude and extrude
again, and I'm going to do some scaling
| | 14:53 | here and go in the Vertex mode and
this is the point where you reshape everything.
| | 15:01 | So what you do is basically you
reshape and if you need more detail, go ahead
| | 15:06 | and grab that by using edge loops and
there we go. OK, so you can see how I'm
| | 15:13 | roughing this out. Again, this is just
sculpting. This is where your sculpting
| | 15:19 | class in college comes in really
handy. It gives you a sense of form. Now,
| | 15:27 | I'm going to need little bit more
detail to get this curve properly, but as you
| | 15:32 | can see, we have roughed in the tail.
| | 15:35 | Now, we can also do the other part
of the tail, this horizontal part, just
| | 15:39 | exactly the same way we did the wing.
So I'm going to leave it at that and let
| | 15:43 | you work on that and I'm going to go ahead
and finish this and then we will pick it up.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: the landing gear| 00:00 | So now let's take a look at where we
are at. We are going to open this scene,
| | 00:04 | Plane_02.mb. You see this is the
airplane and I finished off the tail. It's
| | 00:09 | kind of hard to see, so let me actually
show you a little trick here. I'm going
| | 00:12 | to select all through them, Shift-select,
one, two, three all of these planes.
| | 00:18 | Then in the Channel Box, I'm going to
make sure my Layers is available and I'm
| | 00:22 | going to left-click here
and go Create Empty Layer.
| | 00:26 | OK, so it creates this layer. Now
you left-click to highlight the layer,
| | 00:30 | right-click to add selected objects.
Now, what this has done is it's added
| | 00:35 | these three planes to the layers that
I can toggle off my Reference. So I can
| | 00:42 | just go one, two, and then it just
toggles it On and Off. So let's select this
| | 00:46 | plane and hit this
airplane and see what we have got.
| | 00:50 | Now, what I did was I added in some
Edge Loops here and just sculpt the tail
| | 00:56 | and then I also Extruded some phases
along the bottom here to create this rear
| | 01:02 | tail, this horizontal stabilizer.
So now I have got, basically have the
| | 01:06 | airplane, but there is still one more
little piece I need to do which is the
| | 01:09 | landing gear. So let me show you how
that works. I'm actually going to turn on
| | 01:13 | my Reference here, and I'm actually
going to move this bottom one out of the
| | 01:17 | way so we can underneath this
airplane and I'm going to select my airplane
| | 01:21 | mesh, my body mesh.
| | 01:22 | You will notice here, I don't have
enough detail here to make this come out of
| | 01:28 | the front. So I need a little bit of
detail in here, and if we go from the side
| | 01:34 | here, we will see that I probably
actually do have enough detail, maybe for the
| | 01:40 | side view. So actually I want to take
a face along here extrude it down more
| | 01:45 | detail in this range.
| | 01:47 | So I'm actually going to go into my
Front viewport and un-show the Camera
| | 01:55 | there, OK. So actually what I want to
do is create some Edge Loops here so I
| | 02:00 | can Extrude this landing gear. So we
go to Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop tool,
| | 02:06 | click on one of these edges here, one,
two. So it's going to be right in there,
| | 02:14 | hit Enter. I'm just going to into
Select mode here. So right there, I can
| | 02:23 | actually extrude the landing gear.
| | 02:24 | But actually it might need a little
more detail to create this. I think I'm
| | 02:29 | actually going to insert another
Edge Loop. So I'm going to go Edit Mesh >
| | 02:33 | Insert Edge Loop tool and I'm going to
insert one here so I have a little more
| | 02:39 | detail to sculpt. So this way we can
have more right surface doing this way.
| | 02:44 | OK, I'm going to go back into Select
mode here and now I'm just going to
| | 02:51 | right-click and go into Faces.
| | 02:54 | Now, I want to select this, this,
this and this. OK, and I believe those are
| | 03:08 | right Faces. Make sure to have
everything OK. One of the things when you select
| | 03:14 | these things, you got to make sure you
don't have additional Faces selected. So
| | 03:19 | you need to make sure that when you
select something, you only select what you want.
| | 03:24 | OK, so that's where the landing gear
is coming. It's kind of like the root of
| | 03:29 | the landing gear, let's extrude that
down, and I'm just going to hit G and I'm
| | 03:37 | just going to extrude it a few more
times. This gives me enough to create that
| | 03:44 | landing gear. OK, that's enough. Now, I
go up to my Reference and I'm going to
| | 03:50 | turn on X-Ray mode here and go into
Vertex and basically it's sculpting time.
| | 03:58 | So again, we are just going to sculpt
this. In fact, I'm just going to sculpt
| | 04:13 | this, we are going to pause. You
pretty much get the idea of how to sculpt
| | 04:16 | these things. So I'm going to go ahead
and pause this and then we will pick it
| | 04:21 | up, I will just show you what I have
got. OK, it took about ten minutes and I
| | 04:25 | just sculpted this out. As you can see,
it's basically just the same shape as
| | 04:33 | what we had, pretty close, and
still tweak this a little bit.
| | 04:38 | Now, the one thing I'm noticing is
that this drawing is not accurate front to
| | 04:43 | back. So I had to pick whether I was
going to use the side or the front version
| | 04:48 | of the landing gear. So I decided
to take the side view of it, which is
| | 04:52 | actually a little bit longer than the
front view. So now what I want to do is I
| | 04:57 | want to extrude in a little bit of a
well for the wheel, the actual wheel
| | 05:02 | itself. So I want to make
some a little bit more detail.
| | 05:05 | So I'm going to go into Face mode here,
select the bottom four faces of this.
| | 05:10 | Now, one thing I did was I wanted to
make sure that these are exactly flat. So
| | 05:14 | I'm going to hit Scale and make sure
that those are -- I'm going to scale them
| | 05:19 | just in Y to make sure they are very,
very flat. Then I'm just going to go Edit
| | 05:25 | Mesh > Extrude and instead of extruding
them down, I'm going to extrude it up.
| | 05:32 | So what I want to do is I'm going to
kind of make like the little wheel well
| | 05:37 | essentially. But I need to make sure
that this is slightly smaller. So I'm
| | 05:41 | going to scale this in the X and the Z
direction just to make sure that this
| | 05:47 | kind of goes in sort of kind of you
can see how that goes. OK, and then I'm
| | 05:53 | going to Extrude it one more time,
just a little bit. And again, do the same thing.
| | 05:59 | Now, we are making this model so that
basically we are making it for smoothing.
| | 06:10 | So actually we are still making it
fairly low as mesh here. We are making it so
| | 06:14 | that we can smooth it later. OK, that
looks pretty good. Now, we are going to
| | 06:18 | put the tire underneath of it
should cover up the rest of that.
| | 06:21 | We shouldn't have to do the whole landing
gear in there. OK, so that's the landing gear.
| | 06:29 | OK, so now we have pretty much got the
airplane done. I'm going to turn this
| | 06:33 | off here. Now, I want to show you how
to duplicate the wings and stuff to the
| | 06:38 | other side. We are going to
do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: mirroring the wings| 00:00 | OK. So let's go ahead, and take a look
at where we are at. I'm going to open
| | 00:04 | Plane_3. This is our airplane.
| | 00:09 | Well, it's half of our plane actually.
We need to now create wings on the other
| | 00:15 | side of the airplane. We have got
pretty much everything we need, except for
| | 00:21 | the wings. Now, how we're going to do that?
| | 00:23 | One of the best thing to do is to just
kind of -- let me show you. I will show
| | 00:27 | you exactly how we are going to do
this. We are going to take this, we are
| | 00:30 | going to select this body, we are
going to Edit > Duplicate Special, and I'm
| | 00:33 | going to go into this little box
here. What I want to do is I want to
| | 00:39 | duplicate it, but I also want to scale
it in a negative direction, so that way
| | 00:44 | it flops over.
| | 00:46 | So actually, I'm looking here. I want
to mirror this across the Z axis. You can
| | 00:52 | kind of see my little Z axis here. So
I want to scale it, to mirror that, I
| | 00:56 | want to scale it by negative one.
Now this Duplicate Special is actually
| | 01:00 | pretty cool, because you can do stuff
like instancing, you can actually make
| | 01:04 | more than one copy. You can do all
sorts of stuff. But all I want to do on this
| | 01:09 | particular instance is scale it
by negative one and Z. And I hit
| | 01:13 | Duplicate Special, and now I have
got a mirror image of my airplane.
| | 01:18 | But again, it's only a mirror image of
half the airplane. What I need to do is
| | 01:24 | I still need to attach the wings on
this half to this half, and also get rid of
| | 01:30 | that body. So the first thing I want
to do is go into this body, and start
| | 01:36 | getting rid of the faces that
represent the parts that we don't want to keep.
| | 01:42 | So probably the easiest thing to do, I
find is just to go ahead and drag. I'm
| | 01:48 | selecting all the faces on the wings,
and the tail, and then I kind of have to
| | 01:54 | go in, and Shift-select, and kind of
fine tune. So basically what I'm doing is
| | 02:02 | I'm selecting everything
I want to keep actually.
| | 02:04 | Then, I'm going to, we're going to
input that selection. Let me show you how
| | 02:09 | this works. So what we are doing here
is we are selecting all of the parts that
| | 02:14 | we want to keep. I want to make sure I
have got everything. So I have got the
| | 02:18 | wings and the tail, that part of
the tail. I'm going to get that face.
| | 02:22 | So all the faces that we want to keep.
Here is one. Let's make sure we've got
| | 02:27 | everything.
| | 02:29 | Now, I want to throw away everything
else. So what I'm going to do is I'm
| | 02:34 | going to Edit > Invert Selection. Then
that selects everything I want to get rid
| | 02:38 | of. Well, if I want to get rid of it,
what do we hit? The Delete key. So I'm
| | 02:41 | going to hit Delete, and there it is.
| | 02:43 | OK. But now -- Go back into Object Mode
here. And I want to create -- now if I
| | 02:55 | actually move this in, I still have
faces here, that are closed. And I need to
| | 03:01 | open those up, because I have an open
edge here and an open edge here. I need
| | 03:06 | to create open edges here, so
that I can weld everything together.
| | 03:11 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to move this in, so I kind of see where
| | 03:14 | this is at. But still, I'm just going
to leave it far enough away, so I can
| | 03:19 | kind of work. So let's go in the
Face mode and I'm going to select, start
| | 03:25 | selecting faces along here, and
deleting those faces that are the root point
| | 03:31 | for the attachment of the wings.
| | 03:33 | So I'm going to delete that. I don't
want to delete too many. I just want to
| | 03:37 | delete exactly the ones I need to
attach those wings. These two here in the
| | 03:44 | back for the tail.
| | 03:47 | So now I have those open edges. I want
to attach the wings, but in order to do
| | 03:52 | that, they all have to be part of the
same surface. I'm going to go on Object
| | 03:56 | Mode again, right click here, Object Mode,
and I need these wings to be part of that.
| | 04:05 | The first thing I want to do is I
want to actually put these in the position
| | 04:07 | here. So I'm going to select this and
in my Translate Z, I'm going to make sure
| | 04:12 | that actually X, Y, Z, I'm going to
make sure all of those are zero (0). When
| | 04:16 | those are zero, that snaps it right
back to where it was, when it mirrored.
| | 04:19 | But, it's still a separate object. So
I can select these. I need to combine
| | 04:25 | these into one object.
| | 04:26 | So left-click and drag select everything.
Go Mesh > Combine. Now what that does
| | 04:34 | is it combines all of those into one
object. Now, you are saying hey! It's
| | 04:40 | done. Well, it's not really done,
because I still have these faces that have
| | 04:45 | not been attached. You can see here,
that I still have these open edges. These
| | 04:50 | are just all perfectly lined up. It's
just -- my open edges aren't quite well to get.
| | 04:56 | Well, what I can do is just go into
Vertex mode, and I can just select all of
| | 05:03 | the vertices around here. I can just
literally, just globally select as many
| | 05:08 | vertices as I want, and then just go
Edit Mesh > Merge. What that does is it
| | 05:14 | merges only those vertices that are
close. It doesn't merge everything, and
| | 05:18 | just those ones that are close.
| | 05:20 | I'm going to Face mode here, you can
see now, I have attached those faces. So
| | 05:25 | now everything is attached. Now I
have a symmetrical airplane. Very cool.
| | 05:31 | Now, I can take a look at that and like
OK, that's pretty cool. Let's go Mesh.
| | 05:36 | I'm just going to do this smooth, and
see how it looks when it's smoothed. That
| | 05:41 | looks pretty good.
| | 05:42 | OK. I'm going to undo that smoothing,
and I'm going to save this out. Now, we
| | 05:47 | are going to do a few more little things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: the engine| 00:00 | So now let's take a look at where we
are at. We are going to open to scenes
| | 00:03 | Plane_4.mb. Now we have got the shape
of the airplane pretty much done. So
| | 00:10 | let's start working on some of the
other details. Let's start with the engine.
| | 00:13 | Now I don't really have a drawing of
the engine. So we are just going to free-
| | 00:17 | hand something. It shouldn't be too
hard. We just need something that to just
| | 00:21 | fill that space to make it look
like there is an engine in there.
| | 00:24 | So I'm just going to make a really
rough six-cylinder airplane engine. Now an
| | 00:29 | airplane engine is air cooled so that
means it's going to be like a motorcycle
| | 00:33 | engine and there it's got these
cylinders with fins on them. Let's figure that out.
| | 00:38 | So I'm actually going to go on my Top
viewport and I'm going to go cylinder
| | 00:41 | this will be one of the cylinders of my
engines. We are going to make it about
| | 00:46 | like that. Then maybe a side or a front
viewport I'm going to drag that up. So
| | 00:53 | that it is almost the height of that cowl.
| | 00:57 | That's almost it. I'm actually going
to go in here and make it a little bit
| | 01:02 | thinner and maybe a little bit taller.
That's better right there actually.
| | 01:11 | Now I want to make fins on this, so I
need some Subdivisions here to make those
| | 01:16 | fins. So I'm going to select this
Subdivisions Height and I'm going to
| | 01:20 | middle-click and drag and add
a few more. That's about 12.
| | 01:26 | Now I need to make the fins. So what
I'm going to do is right click over this
| | 01:31 | and going to Face mode and then I'm
going to select every other row of faces.
| | 01:37 | There we go. And Leave some at the
bottom. You can see where I have this in a
| | 01:47 | Perspective view.
| | 01:49 | Now I just need to make some fins.
I'm just going to Edit Mesh > Extrude and
| | 01:53 | extrude all those faces. Now I'm have
got the cylinder head there. Then I'm
| | 02:01 | just going to go back in the
Object mode and now that's one cylinder.
| | 02:05 | So I'm actually going to move that up.
So it's up above the cowling, we are
| | 02:09 | going have another engine case there.
I want to make five more of these,
| | 02:15 | because I need a six cylinder engine.
So what I'm going to do is I'm just going
| | 02:19 | to duplicate this and rotate it around.
In order to rotate it properly I need
| | 02:23 | this Pivot Point here which is right
down in the middle of the object to be at
| | 02:27 | the origin.
| | 02:27 | So I'm move going to move this up to
where I want this. Then I'm going to hit
| | 02:31 | Insert, move the Pivot Point down,
Insert again and then I'm going to go Edit >
| | 02:39 | Duplicate Special, go in here. Now I
have already have these parameters set,
| | 02:43 | because I have already tried it once
just to make sure it will work. What I'm
| | 02:46 | going to do here is I'm going to go I
need to rotate this around the X axis. I
| | 02:52 | need to rotate it by 60 degrees and I
need to make one copy. So that's all I'm doing.
| | 02:59 | As I'm duplicating with the 60 degree
rotation, Duplicate Special. Now all I
| | 03:05 | have to do is hit G to repeat last
command four more times. Now I have got the
| | 03:12 | basics of my engine, but I still need
something in the middle to hold that
| | 03:17 | altogether. So what I'm going to do is
just go back into my front viewport and
| | 03:23 | left-click and drag -- its
way over here, make a cylinder.
| | 03:32 | Now we are just going to move that
cylinder up. So that it becomes part of that
| | 03:37 | engine. So now I have got that basic
engine. So I can just select all of these
| | 03:45 | and then I'm just going -- if I want
to I can actually make that all one
| | 03:48 | object. I can just select them all
just go Mesh > Combine them. Probably the
| | 03:53 | easiest thing to do and the move that.
| | 03:56 | Well, I also need to at this point go
Modify > Center Pivot. That will center my
| | 04:02 | pivot and I like to move that into my
body cavities. Now it looks like I have
| | 04:07 | an engine in the front of that airplane.
| | 04:09 | Now all I need to do is make a
propeller shaft. Well, again I'm going to just
| | 04:13 | create another propeller shaft. It
has to be a cylinder in order to work
| | 04:18 | properly. So I'm just going to go back
in here, left-click and drag out another
| | 04:24 | cylinder. I have to do this at the
origin. Move that up, so that I have got
| | 04:33 | basically a cylinder.
| | 04:38 | If I want I could actually duplicate
that. I'm just going to hit Ctrl+D to
| | 04:44 | duplicate this. I have got another
cylinder. I'm going to use this for -- take
| | 04:50 | that original cylinder. This one
here will be the propeller and the one I
| | 04:55 | originally created still has its
creation parameters. I can give it more
| | 05:00 | subdivisions in its height. Make it a
little bit shorter and I can increase the
| | 05:06 | radius just a little bit to create that
shaft that we are going to be using to
| | 05:12 | hold the propeller.
| | 05:17 | So that will be basically that's
actually holding the body of the propeller.
| | 05:21 | I can certainly tweak this a little bit
more. So that's where the propeller is
| | 05:25 | going to be attached to the
propeller shaft. Something like that.
| | 05:31 | So that's the basics of the engine.
There we go. So I'm going to save this out
| | 05:37 | then next we will do the propeller.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: the propeller| 00:00 | Now, let's create the propeller for
the airplane. I'm going to go ahead and
| | 00:04 | open the scene that we had, Plane_5.
I'm going to go ahead, and turn on those
| | 00:11 | layers there, so we can kind of see
what the propeller looks like. OK, well we
| | 00:17 | are just going to kind of rough this out.
| | 00:18 | Propeller is a wing shaped, so it's
kind of fat in the front, skinny in the
| | 00:21 | back, and it twists. So first of all,
let's make that wing shape. I'm going to
| | 00:26 | start with the circle. Let's go into
our Top Viewport. I'm going to turn off
| | 00:32 | X-Ray here. I'm going to build this out
here away from this so we have a clear
| | 00:36 | space to move. I'm going to go to my
Curves Shelf, and select a NURBS Circle.
| | 00:42 | OK, we've got to make it about that
size. It's not going to be too big. It's
| | 00:47 | just like a little tiny NURBS circle.
| | 00:49 | Then, I'm going to go right click over
that, and go into Control Vertex, and
| | 00:54 | start scaling. I'm going to start
scaling these just to give it that fat front,
| | 01:00 | skinny back. This is not going to be
seen all that much. So we don't have to be
| | 01:05 | too accurate with it, just as
long as it kind of looks the same.
| | 01:09 | Sometimes that's the secret of
Modeling, is just get it close enough.
| | 01:13 | So that's what we are doing today. Now,
I have got that, in fact I'm going to
| | 01:17 | make just the whole thing a little bit
thinner. There we go. That's perfect.
| | 01:23 | Now, I need to make some outlines.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to go into my Front
Viewport here. I'm going to start, and I need
| | 01:30 | to know how tall that is. So actually
I'm going to kind of move this over here.
| | 01:34 | So it's going to be from there. So I'm
going to go ahead, and again I'm going
| | 01:38 | to move this out in the clear, so
that way you can see what I'm doing here.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+D to duplicate,
and I'm going to move this up every
| | 01:48 | couple. I want to make enough, so that
I can have detail in my model as I work.
| | 01:57 | Now, as the propeller gets
towards the top, it does thin out.
| | 02:02 | So now I can lay these over. So I can
just select these, and lay these over
| | 02:06 | there. So as it gets towards the top,
it is going to thin out, and it is a
| | 02:11 | little bit thinner at the bottom.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to take these and I'm
going to scale them. Not all of them, just
| | 02:17 | the top one. I'm going to scale the
bottom one too. Again, I kind of want to
| | 02:24 | get that shape.
| | 02:25 | Now, for the very top, again I'm
going to go ahead and duplicate that. I'm
| | 02:30 | going to make two. I'm going to make one,
about like this. And, I'm going move
| | 02:38 | that forward just a little bit. Then,
I'm going to make one that's zero
| | 02:43 | (0)size. So I'm going to Ctrl+D,
duplicate this top curve, and then I'm going
| | 02:49 | to start scaling this down. I'm going
to move it right about there. I'm trying
| | 02:54 | to think what the center of that is. Now,
I'm going to make this exactly zero.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to left-click here, and
highlight all the scales for that curve,
| | 03:04 | and then I'm just going to hit the Zero
key and Enter, and that type zero into
| | 03:08 | all of those. Now, I have got a zero
one at the top. I have got to close my
| | 03:13 | surface at the very top.
| | 03:14 | So I'm going to Shift-select all the
way down. Now, I have to select these in
| | 03:18 | order. So top to bottom, select them,
and now we are going to go into our
| | 03:23 | Surfaces menu, Surfaces > Loft.
| | 03:27 | There is my basic propeller. Now,
some of this is off. So what I need to do
| | 03:34 | here, is first thing I want to do is
modify center pivot that centers the
| | 03:39 | pivot of that propeller. And I'm
going to move that off, so I can see these
| | 03:44 | curves. Now, I'm going to go ahead, and
kind of move these curves a little bit,
| | 03:49 | so that way I have got the
propeller looks a little bit more.
| | 03:55 | So as I adjust these curves, you can
see how it adjusts. So what I want to do
| | 04:00 | is get a fairly straight shape there.
OK, that looks pretty good. It is a
| | 04:06 | little squat, the one that I have here.
| | 04:09 | OK. So now, we are actually going to
make this just a little bit taller, like
| | 04:13 | that. So again, I'm trying to match this
and make maybe a little bit skinnier,
| | 04:19 | OK, something like that. Now, the
thing about a propeller is though, it is
| | 04:24 | curved, it is twisted.
| | 04:27 | So first thing I need to do is make
this go flat like this. So I'm going to
| | 04:32 | rotate that 90 degrees, and now I'm
going to put a twist modifier on it, to
| | 04:37 | give it that twist that a propeller has.
So that's in our Animation menu. So
| | 04:42 | I'm going to go Animation,
Create Deformers > Nonlinear > Twist.
| | 04:48 | And that puts a twist
deformer on to that surface.
| | 04:54 | So all I have to do is go into my
INPUTS here, and just move my End Angle, so
| | 05:00 | that the propeller looks about right.
Something like that. Actually like that.
| | 05:07 | Let's just make this 60, OK.
| | 05:14 | So now I have got this propeller, and
I have got, it's all twisted, and It's
| | 05:19 | all looking pretty good. Now, I move
it and look what happens. Well, that's
| | 05:24 | because this twist modifiers actually
depends on where the surface is. So now
| | 05:29 | that I have the surface kind of the way
I wanted. I think I'm just going to go.
| | 05:33 | Now, this is a point where you may
want to save, just to have a copy of it.
| | 05:39 | But, I'm not going to do that, I'm
just going to delete History on that
| | 05:42 | propeller. Trust that it's
OK. Now, I can move it in.
| | 05:48 | What Delete History does is we've got
rid of that. Now, we are going to rotate
| | 05:51 | that on the angle of 90. There we go. So
| | 05:52 | now I have got this propeller in the
right place, and there it is it. So there
| | 06:01 | is my propeller.
| | 06:02 | Now, we need to just make a few more
things, to kind of finalize all of this.
| | 06:08 | So let's go ahead and create another
cylinder here as kind of like the base for
| | 06:12 | this propeller because we usually have
those little -- most propellers have a
| | 06:19 | little attachment that allows the
propeller to twist to get more angle onto the
| | 06:25 | air. So let's go ahead
and just create a cylinder.
| | 06:28 | We need to make that about as big as
face of that propeller. Click here, Drag
| | 06:32 | Up the Height, and move that in. We are
just kind of making -- we can probably
| | 06:40 | model this a little bit more
efficiently, but this looks pretty good.
| | 06:44 | OK. Now, what we are going to do is
we need to duplicate this propeller, and
| | 06:48 | this little connector there. So what
I'm going to do is I'm actually going to
| | 06:52 | select both of them, and I want to just
rotate these 90 degrees, but if I just
| | 06:57 | rotate them here, they are
going to rotate kind of funny.
| | 07:01 | So the best thing to do is just to
group them. So we are going to Edit > Group.
| | 07:05 | I will select them both Edit > Group.
Now, that actually puts the group at the
| | 07:10 | center, at the origin. And that's
good, because now what I can do is hit
| | 07:14 | Ctrl+D to duplicate that group, which
includes those two objects, and then
| | 07:19 | rotate that group to 180 degrees. Now,
I have got my propeller. Beautiful.
| | 07:27 | OK. Now, the only thing we need to
do is make that front hub for the
| | 07:30 | propeller. OK, so what I'm going to
do is I'm just going to create a NURBS
| | 07:33 | sphere, and I'm going to go ahead
and move that in to the front of my
| | 07:40 | propeller, if I need to rotate this,
and just rotate that 90 degrees.
| | 07:49 | Now, the thing is this is only going
to be -- now in fact let's go ahead and
| | 07:55 | make the radius a little
bit smaller. There we go.
| | 08:08 | Now, what I need to do is cut off the
front of this. How do I do that? I can
| | 08:12 | just go into Isoparm Mode, left-click
and drag, just figure out where the cut
| | 08:18 | point is, somewhere right around there.
Go into my Surfaces menu, Edit NURBS >
| | 08:25 | Detach Surfaces.
| | 08:26 | Now, I have got two surfaces. I delete
the back surface, hit that one, scale
| | 08:35 | this so it's kind of more pointy. Now
you can scale it down a little bit, then
| | 08:40 | move it in, right there. OK, that's
pretty good, OK. So actually I can probably
| | 08:53 | scale that just a little bit more.
There we go. OK. So there we go. There is
| | 09:08 | our propeller.
| | 09:10 | OK. So that's basically it for the
airplane. We still need to work a little bit
| | 09:14 | on the canopy, and we still need to do
the wheels. So let's just go ahead and
| | 09:19 | finish those up in the last lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling an airplane: finalizing the model| 00:00 | OK, let's finish this airplane up. Now,
we are going to open up Plane_6, which
| | 00:05 | is basically the airplane, and first
of all let's do tires and all tires are
| | 00:10 | very simple. I'm going to make those
out of help of NURBS Torus. I will just
| | 00:14 | click and drag somewhere around there.
That's essentially where it's going to
| | 00:21 | be. So something like that, and we
move it down, maybe scale it just a little
| | 00:30 | bit to make it little bit wider
and duplicate those, so that we have
| | 00:36 | symmetrical, perfect.
| | 00:39 | OK, so now we have got tires and the
canopy. Well, the canopy -- well, let's
| | 00:44 | take a look at what the model looks
like, I'm going to turn on X-Ray and I'm
| | 00:48 | turning on that layer there. So what we
can do for the canopy is essentially I
| | 00:53 | just want to create some geometry
around that area. We are just going to use a
| | 00:57 | texture map to define most of that
and we will do that in our next lesson.
| | 01:02 | So what I'm going to do here is I'm
going to go into Vertex mode and I'm going
| | 01:05 | to start moving some of this detail
around. I want to put some detail here and
| | 01:10 | again think of where this scene is. And
so I'm going to try and make this kind
| | 01:17 | of match. So what I want to do is take
this here, OK so maybe move that down
| | 01:24 | just a little bit and move this down
and then move this up. So what I'm doing
| | 01:35 | here is I'm actually kind of creating
geometry that matches where -- I will
| | 01:41 | keep on selecting Hair. He
doesn't need that right now.
| | 01:48 | So what I'm trying to do is actually
create some detail that matches that. So
| | 01:55 | let's take a look at what this looks
like here. Now, you can see here that as I
| | 02:03 | kind of move this detail around, it is
kind of messing with the curvature of
| | 02:06 | this. So I need to select these and
scale them as well. So that's basically my
| | 02:13 | windshield. So, what I want to do is
make sure that that's -- I have kind of
| | 02:22 | got my windshield coming in here and I
may have to kind of fudge this just a
| | 02:26 | little bit.
| | 02:27 | Then what I want to do is also create
some sort of edge here, so that I can
| | 02:35 | use, that actually will define the edge
of this surface. Now, the one thing I'm
| | 02:41 | probably going to -- I need to do,
like looking at this here I need to pull
| | 02:48 | those down just a little bit. This is a
point where I probably should smooth my
| | 02:53 | model, because I want some additional
details, so I can start modeling this a
| | 02:57 | little bit more effectively.
| | 03:00 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
go back in Object Mode and this is the
| | 03:05 | point where I'm going to add detail.
Now this is something you should not do
| | 03:09 | lightly because once you add detail in
this manner, you do not go back. So this
| | 03:16 | is the point where you save to make
sure you have a copy so you can go back. So
| | 03:20 | I'm going to go to Polygons and go Edit
Mesh > Smooth. I'm just going to smooth
| | 03:26 | it once, so we are going to go here
just one level, Smooth. Now, what I have
| | 03:31 | done here is I have just quadrupled
the number of polygons on this airplane.
| | 03:35 | OK. But it's also smoothed it out.
| | 03:39 | So you can see now, it looks much nicer
from a aerodynamics standpoint and all
| | 03:45 | of that. So it is a good thing to do
to smooth it, but I don't want to smooth
| | 03:50 | it too much because when I do that it
will add so much detail, it'd be hard to
| | 03:55 | animate.
| | 03:56 | But also, if you notice when I have
smoothed it, it's also kind of squashed
| | 04:02 | everything. So what I need to do at
this point is reshape this, our canopy. So
| | 04:14 | now I have a little bit more detail
that I can use to shape this canopy of this
| | 04:21 | airplane. Now, what I can do here is
go into Face Mode and select all these.
| | 04:31 | Now, this I'm going to turn off that
layer. Now, that is the canopy of my
| | 04:36 | airplane, OK. And that's what I'm
going to Texture Map for the canopy. Now,
| | 04:44 | that looks pretty good actually.
| | 04:46 | So what I want to do at this point is
detach this and actually make that canopy
| | 04:51 | separate. So that way it actually is a
separate canopy. So what I can do is I
| | 04:56 | can do basically what I did before,
which is I can, if we just go Mesh > Extract
| | 05:05 | and what that does is it makes these
all separate. But the one thing about this
| | 05:13 | is it actually extracts them together.
So now I have got -- if I go into Object
| | 05:18 | Mode, I actually have a
separate canopy now for the airplane.
| | 05:22 | Now, what I can do is go Modify >
Center Pivot and just move that into place.
| | 05:34 | Now, I can texture that separately and
I have a separate little object here in
| | 05:40 | case I want to take that canopy off
and also as I smooth this I can -- there, OK.
| | 05:52 | So that's my airplane, there it is. OK,
so that's it. So let's go ahead and
| | 05:57 | stop here and let's move on to the
next chapter. I'm going to go ahead and
| | 06:01 | save this out so you have a copy of it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Applying TexturesUnderstanding the basics of materials| 00:00 | Now that we are all experts in modeling,
let's move on to adding Textures and
| | 00:06 | Shaders to Maya objects. So first of
all, let's just start off by setting our
| | 00:11 | project. Let me go File > Project >
Set and we are going to set our current
| | 00:15 | Project to 06 which is the one that
we are working in. Now, all of your
| | 00:20 | Texturing and Materials tools are in
the Rendering menu set. So make sure that
| | 00:25 | that's selected. So go over here,
select Rendering and you will see the menus
| | 00:29 | will change and what we will be
working with is under Lighting/Shading and
| | 00:33 | Texturing here and the first thing you
need to do is understand the different
| | 00:38 | types of materials.
| | 00:39 | So we have under Lighting/Shading, we
have Assign New Material, and we have a
| | 00:43 | bunch of ones here and then down here
we have a lot of ones. All these ones
| | 00:46 | that start with M, these are all from
Mental-Ray which we are going to get into
| | 00:50 | a little bit later. But the main ones
are right here and if you go to your
| | 00:55 | Rendering tab or your Rendering shelf,
you will also see that you have some
| | 00:59 | preset ones for the major types of
materials. Now, the differences between
| | 01:04 | these materials is the way
that it calculates the shading.
| | 01:07 | Now, the top five and these little
ones that are most commonly used are
| | 01:10 | Anisotropic, Blinn, Lambert, Phong and
Phong E. Now, the big difference if you
| | 01:18 | notice is the way it calculates this
specular highlight. So an Anisotropic
| | 01:24 | creates a non circular highlight and
Blinn and Phong, you can see that there is
| | 01:30 | a little bit of difference between
the way that those highlights are
| | 01:33 | calculated. In fact let's just go ahead
and create a surface and we will apply
| | 01:37 | a material to it.
| | 01:38 | I'm going to create a nurbsSphere and
I'm going to hit 5 to shade that and now
| | 01:43 | I'm going to apply a Shader to it. In
fact before I do that let's go into the
| | 01:48 | Attribute Editor. I'm going to hit Ctrl+
A and one of the things you will notice
| | 01:52 | is that every object in Maya is
already textured with a default material and
| | 01:58 | that's always called lambert1. So if
I go into my Attribute Editor, I can
| | 02:03 | scroll all the way to the end here, I
can go left and right here, I go all the
| | 02:06 | way to the end, you will see
lambert1 is always my default texture.
| | 02:10 | This is important because what a lot of
people will do is they will change this
| | 02:14 | and then they will say why are all
my objects coming up with these weird
| | 02:17 | texture. Well, because lambert1 is
kind of your default. So we don't really
| | 02:20 | want to use that. We don't want to mess
with that. So let's apply a new texture
| | 02:24 | to it. We can do that in a couple of
ways. How we are going to do is we are
| | 02:27 | going to select the object and then
either from the Lighting/Shading menu, we
| | 02:31 | will select one of these or from your
shelf you can press this button and just
| | 02:36 | select a material.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to go ahead and apply a
Blinn material. This is probably the most
| | 02:41 | common shading algorithm that people
use in Maya, and it's one I like to use a
| | 02:46 | lot, because its pretty
versatile and it renders really nicely.
| | 02:49 | Now, if you notice here if I deselect
and reselect my object you will notice
| | 02:54 | that I have got now instead of a
lambert1, I have got the blinn1 shader
| | 02:59 | applied. This is just a shader or
material actually, I keep calling it shader,
| | 03:03 | it's a material and what the material
is, is think of it as like how you are
| | 03:06 | painting that surface. Now, I can have
a material that has brick or stone or
| | 03:11 | grass or a character skin, any sort of
surface type and texture and quality and
| | 03:19 | I can apply one shader or one
material to multiple objects.
| | 03:23 | So if I have a house with four brick
walls, I can make one brick material and
| | 03:28 | apply that to all four walls. So now we
have this material called blinn1 and we
| | 03:34 | can start playing with it. Now, I'm
kind of tight on space here because of the
| | 03:38 | way we record, you will probably see a
lot more of this, but now I have to do
| | 03:41 | some scrolling.
| | 03:42 | So just bear with me as we go through
this. The first thing we can do is change
| | 03:46 | the color of it. So if I want, I can
just click here and it brings up my little
| | 03:50 | Color Chooser and I can make this
whatever color I want. Let me see how that
| | 03:55 | shows up in my viewport.
| | 03:56 | Now, another thing we can do is change,
obviously Transparency. You can change
| | 04:01 | what's called the Ambient Color
which is kind of almost like the
| | 04:04 | self-illumination of how much it glows.
You can see how it changes it here in
| | 04:09 | this material sample. Sometimes it
won't change it here in the viewport,
| | 04:13 | because the viewport doesn't
reflect all of the changes to a material.
| | 04:16 | You can also do Incandescence which
does show up, Bump Mapping which we will
| | 04:21 | get into, the Diffuse of the object
which is kind of the shading of it along as
| | 04:26 | it goes out of the light.
Translucence and so on and so forth and then
| | 04:31 | Specularity, which is that spot, that highlight.
| | 04:34 | Now that highlight is very
important in creating a material because the
| | 04:38 | highlights are really what show you
how bumpy or smooth a surface is. Think
| | 04:44 | about like a bowling ball versus an
orange. Now, bowling bowl has a very slick
| | 04:50 | surface and so this highlight will be
very slick. If you have an orange which
| | 04:54 | kind of has a modeled, kind of bumpy
surface, this highlight will be bumpy.
| | 04:59 | So the type of highlight really
determines how you view the character of the
| | 05:04 | surface. So this is very important.
Now I'm going to back up here and one of
| | 05:09 | the things we can do in any of these
shaders, is we can change the type of shader.
| | 05:13 | So right now I have these as a Blinn
shader and I don't have to be a Blinn
| | 05:18 | shader, it can be Anisotropic shader.
Now, notice how the anisotropy of this
| | 05:21 | shader doesn't show up in my viewports,
it only shows up in my material sample.
| | 05:25 | What an Anisotropic shader does is it
has non-circular highlights or actually
| | 05:30 | has, you can control the circularity of
the highlights. So you have an X and a
| | 05:35 | Y control over the Specularity of this
object. Now, this is great for creating
| | 05:39 | samples like Brush Metal which has
kind of like horizontal streaks in it or a
| | 05:44 | hair on a character or something like that.
| | 05:47 | There are a lot of different types of
surfaces which have Anisotropic types of
| | 05:51 | highlights. Now, the other ones we will
look at is Anisotropic, Blinn, Lambert
| | 05:56 | is the other one. Now, Lambert is a
shader which has no highlight. So it's kind
| | 06:01 | of for Matte surfaces. So anything that
doesn't really reflect light would be a
| | 06:06 | good candidate for Lambert surface.
| | 06:08 | Then we have Phong and Phong E. Now
Phong is kind of looks like the first type
| | 06:13 | of shading algorithm that came out
early, early, early in computer graphics,
| | 06:17 | way back when it was developed, and
it's just a real simple type of shader and
| | 06:22 | it kind of gives a plastic-y kind of
almost artificial looking type surface
| | 06:27 | which is great for certain applications.
| | 06:29 | The other type is Phong E, which has a
little bit more of a softer highlight,
| | 06:34 | and again the big differences between
these is the Specular shading algorithm.
| | 06:38 | So let me show you the difference
between Phong and Phong E. So Phong
| | 06:42 | Specularity has this one called Cosine
Power, Specular Color and Reflectivity.
| | 06:48 | Go to Phong E, let's see I have more, I
have Roughness, Highlight Size. So this
| | 06:54 | is what changes when you
go from one to the other.
| | 06:56 | The basic attributes of Color
Transparency, Ambience all these pretty much stay
| | 07:02 | the same. The big thing that changes
is the Specularity of these. Now, one of
| | 07:07 | the things you will notice is, and we
are going to get into this a little bit,
| | 07:10 | is that each one of these has this
little kind of checkerboard next to that and
| | 07:13 | what this means is that I can
actually insert maps into those to create
| | 07:18 | variations of color. Like, if I wanted
to add a bitmapped texture to this color
| | 07:22 | channel, I could just
click here and change that.
| | 07:26 | So in the next lesson let's show
you how to add maps to some of these parameters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and applying maps| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basics of
how to apply a material, let's get little
| | 00:04 | bit deeper into changing on a material
using maps. Let's start by creating the
| | 00:09 | surface here. We would just kind of
start with the sphere and let's apply a
| | 00:15 | material to it, let's create a new
material. I'm just going to do a Blinn, I'm
| | 00:18 | just going to create a Blinn material
by clicking here on the shelf and that
| | 00:21 | creates a new Blinn material and
it gives us all of these options.
| | 00:25 | Now, let's go ahead and apply a map to
this to change the color. Now, if you
| | 00:29 | notice almost all of these parameters
have these little checkerboard buttons
| | 00:33 | right next to them. If you click on
those, you can apply a map into any one of
| | 00:36 | these slots. Transparency, Color, whatever.
| | 00:39 | Let's play with Color right now.
Let's take a look at that. So I'm going to
| | 00:43 | click here and this is going to bring
up our Create Render Node window and what
| | 00:47 | this does is it allows us to pick
what we want to put into this little slot
| | 00:52 | here. So what we have is we have a
number of 2D Textures. Now, a 2D Texture is
| | 00:59 | almost like a paint job. So for example,
you just paint this over the surface
| | 01:04 | and if you broke the surface you
wouldn't have any texture inside of it. It's
| | 01:08 | almost like wrapping paper.
| | 01:09 | We also have 3D Textures. Now 3D
Textures actually calculate the texture all
| | 01:14 | the way through the surface. So if you
think of like a granite block, if you
| | 01:18 | chip away some of the granite block,
there is still going to be more granite
| | 01:21 | texture inside of it as opposed to a
box that's painted on the outside. If you
| | 01:26 | chip away part of that box, you are not
going to see paint on the inside of the
| | 01:29 | box. That's kind of the difference
between 2D and 3D Textures. Let's play with
| | 01:34 | 2D Textures right now.
| | 01:36 | When we do a 2D texture, again we are
putting it on the surface of the object.
| | 01:40 | So there are couple of different ways
to put that on the surface. One is Normal
| | 01:44 | which just uses the default mapping
parameters of the surface and that's what
| | 01:48 | we are going to use. There is also
projection, which we will get into a little
| | 01:52 | bit later and that allows you to adjust
how the mapping is applied. Then there
| | 01:56 | is also a stencil, which allows you to
use textures as the cut out in almost
| | 02:01 | like as a stencil.
| | 02:02 | So we also have a number of different
types of procedural textures such as
| | 02:07 | Bulge, Clock, Grids, Checkerboards and
so on, Ramps which are gradients. We can
| | 02:13 | also put files in there, such as
Bitmaps or Photoshop files and Photoshop
| | 02:18 | files, Maya does support layers in a
Photoshop file. But right now we are just
| | 02:21 | going to deal with procedural textures,
right now because I want to show you
| | 02:25 | kind of how they work and then we will
get into applying bitmap files in the
| | 02:29 | next lesson.
| | 02:30 | So first thing I want to do is just
apply the most simple one which is the
| | 02:34 | Checkerboard. So let's go ahead and
just click Checker and that brings up our
| | 02:37 | checker sample and then actually
applies it to our object. Now we don't see it.
| | 02:42 | Why don't we see it? Because, we
haven't set our viewport so that we can see
| | 02:45 | it. So I will go into Shading here. Go
to Hardware Texturing, click on that and
| | 02:51 | there it is.
| | 02:52 | Now, some of the more complex values
still won't show up in the viewport and if
| | 02:56 | you want to you can use the IPR
renderer which we will get into later to
| | 03:00 | interactively update shaders as we go.
But for right now we will just use this
| | 03:04 | Hardware Texturing. So I have applied
the checker map to the color channel. So
| | 03:10 | here is my checker map. I have got two
colors black and white. So let's change
| | 03:15 | the white, we can just click on this
and we can change it to any color we want.
| | 03:19 | So if I want it to be red, green
whatever. So if I want it to be green and
| | 03:22 | black I can just change it to green
and black and just hit Accept. So now I
| | 03:26 | have green and black checkers. But also
notice here that each one of these has
| | 03:31 | its own little slot that I can put
additional materials in. So I don't have to
| | 03:37 | have a just solid color, I can
have it a color and another texture.
| | 03:41 | So if I click here next to this
black one, I can put in another type of
| | 03:46 | texture. Let's just choose this Cloth
one, it's a real simple one and what this
| | 03:50 | does is now, it replaces black with
this Cloth texture and you can see this
| | 03:55 | Cloth has its own color. So I can
change the color of the thread or the Cloth
| | 03:59 | or whatever and you can see how that
updates on my object. We can also change
| | 04:04 | things such as the width of the
threads and so on and so forth. I mean, there
| | 04:08 | are all sorts of parameters that you can change.
| | 04:11 | But also notice how even these have
their own slots, where you can add
| | 04:16 | additional maps. So you can see very
quickly how you can create layer upon
| | 04:20 | layer of stuff to make these
procedural maps very, very complex, very, very
| | 04:25 | quickly. But let me show you, you
also have to be able to navigate these
| | 04:28 | procedural textures. So let me show
you how to do that. We have got two
| | 04:32 | different buttons here, next to each
one of these, there are two buttons, one
| | 04:35 | goes down and one goes up.
| | 04:37 | So if we go up it brings us up to the
one that's above it. We go up again,
| | 04:42 | brings us up to our main one. So we
have a Blinn or if we click off here we
| | 04:47 | click here we can still get to our
Blinn in our Attribute Editor. But if you
| | 04:51 | notice next to the Blinn, we have got
one that goes down and one that goes up.
| | 04:55 | So next to each one of these maps we
may have multiple maps applied here. We
| | 05:01 | can go down and up again. So for
example for Color, if I go down one, it puts
| | 05:06 | me on to the Checker. If I go down on
this Color 2 it goes to that Cloth. Now,
| | 05:12 | if I want to get back up I just go this way.
| | 05:14 | So those are some of the basics of
how to create and navigate procedural
| | 05:19 | texture. Now, let's take a look at
how to do bitmap textures and we will do that next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using bitmaps| 00:00 | Another way to apply texture to an
object is to use bitmapped textures and
| | 00:05 | that is probably one of the more common
ways to do it. It will allows you to kind
| | 00:10 | of paint your own textures and make them
very rich and robust. So let me show you
| | 00:13 | how to do that. Again, we are just
going to work with spheres here. So I'm just
| | 00:17 | going to create a simple NURBSSphere
and I'm going to go to Rendering shelf and
| | 00:22 | I'm just going to apply a basic
material, Lambert, in this case. It doesn't
| | 00:26 | really matter and again we are
going to use the Color channel.
| | 00:29 | So I'm going to click here on these
little checkerboards next to it and I'm
| | 00:32 | going to choose File. Now, there is
two ways to put a file in there. You can
| | 00:37 | use File or you can use PSD, which
just loads a Photoshop file. We are just
| | 00:42 | going to use a JPEG in this case so
let's just go to File. Now what it does is
| | 00:46 | it creates a little dialog box here in
our Attribute Editor, and right here we
| | 00:51 | have where we can type in the image
name or just select it by clicking on the
| | 00:54 | little folder and I'm on my Desktop,
exercise files\06\textures, that's where I'm at.
| | 01:02 | Let's us just choose leopard, which
is nice leopard skin texture. Now, this
| | 01:07 | isn't showing in our viewport and
that is because we don't have Hardware
| | 01:11 | Texturing turned on. So let's go on
our viewport, Shading > Hardware Texturing
| | 01:16 | and there it is. So there is our
leopard skin texture on our object and it's
| | 01:21 | really as just as simple as that. Now
let me show you how this works. We are
| | 01:24 | going to go back up and this brings us
up to our original Lambert shader and
| | 01:29 | again in the Color channel,
we have the bitmap texture.
| | 01:33 | Now, if I scroll down here, you will
see I have some other options. I have
| | 01:38 | options for Color Balance. So what I
can do is I can actually add a gain to
| | 01:41 | this color, so I can actually change
the balance of this bitmap and do a
| | 01:45 | Offset which actually brightens it or
you can give a color, you can see how you
| | 01:49 | can actually add color to it. You can
play with those. Alpha Gain, there is an
| | 01:54 | Alpha channel in it and then other
effects such as Filtering and so on and so forth.
| | 01:58 | I would like to play with these Color
Gains, because sometimes your texture
| | 02:01 | doesn't look exactly right. So you can
very easily brighten and darken these,
| | 02:05 | and again each one of these you can
have a map. So I can do a Color Gain
| | 02:09 | that's checker colored for example and
you could actually imprint a checkerboard
| | 02:13 | pattern on to that.
| | 02:15 | OK, so those were some of the basics of
how to apply a bitmap into a color or a
| | 02:21 | transparency or any one of
the channels in a material.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Hypershade window| 00:00 | Now, there are times when you are
going to want to create one material and
| | 00:05 | apply it to multiple objects. Say, you
had a factory and you had a nice metal
| | 00:10 | texture, and you wanted to apply that
metal texture to a number of different
| | 00:13 | parts of a machine, stuff like that.
| | 00:16 | So let me show you how to do that.
First thing let's do is let's create a
| | 00:20 | surface. I'm just going to create a
sphere again, and I'm going to shade it,
| | 00:24 | and I'm going to turn on Hardware Texturing.
| | 00:26 | Now, normally up to this point, what
we have done is to create a shader or a
| | 00:30 | material, is we have gone to this
Rendering tab, and we have kind of click one
| | 00:34 | of these and we've applied the material,
and we have changed the color and so on.
| | 00:40 | Let's create another object here. Let's
create a Polygonal cube. And again, we
| | 00:46 | can do a very similar thing, we can
create this Phong shader, and make that one
| | 00:51 | blue. What we have done here is every
time we create a new object, and let's
| | 00:57 | just do one more. So we can create a
cylinder, and just put the anisotropic
| | 01:03 | shader on it, and make it yellow.
Again, what we are doing here is we are
| | 01:08 | creating multiple objects and multiple
materials on object. Every time we hit
| | 01:13 | one of these buttons, it creates a new material.
| | 01:16 | Now there are going to be times where
you kind of want to shade things the
| | 01:19 | same. So what we want to be able to
do is apply one material to multiple
| | 01:22 | objects. Let me show you how to do that.
| | 01:24 | A lot of that is done through the
Hypershade window. There are actually two
| | 01:28 | windows here, I'm going to Window >
Rendering Editors, there is the Hypershade
| | 01:32 | and the Multilister. Let's look at the
Hypershade first, that's one that most
| | 01:37 | people use.
| | 01:38 | Now, the Hypershade window, it's
actually kind of big and complex, and if you
| | 01:42 | want to, you can actually make that
part of a Viewport if you want. You don't
| | 01:46 | have to have it as a floating window.
But, we are going to do that for this
| | 01:49 | particular demonstration.
| | 01:50 | So if I want, I can look here and I can
see I have all of my different shaders.
| | 01:54 | I have the Anisotropic Shader, the
yellow one that I've applied to the
| | 01:58 | cylinder, the one I've applied to the
sphere which was that Blinn Shader, I
| | 02:01 | have got this Phong shader which I've
applied to the box, and I also have my
| | 02:05 | default shader. Remember, how I talked
about lambert 1, is always the default shader.
| | 02:10 | So when you create a new object, you
will always apply lambert1 to that object.
| | 02:15 | Now, let's say I wanted to apply this
red shader to more than one object. All I
| | 02:20 | have to do is select that object,
let's say I select this cylinder, and I can
| | 02:24 | just right click over that in the
Hypershade window and say, Assign Material to
| | 02:29 | Selection. So whatever objects I have
selected will now have that material
| | 02:34 | applied. So I can take this material,
I can just double-click on this and it
| | 02:37 | brings up the Attribute Editor
for this particular material.
| | 02:40 | So if wanted to, I could click on that
Color, I can change the color to green,
| | 02:44 | whatever I want, and accept that, and
the material changes and the objects that
| | 02:50 | contain that material change as well.
| | 02:52 | So what I can do is I can start
creating libraries of shaders, and start
| | 02:55 | applying them to multiple objects. Now,
there is another way to look at shaders
| | 03:01 | as well in the Hypergraph window. Let's
take this Blinn Shader, and let's do a
| | 03:04 | little bit more with that.
| | 03:05 | I'm going to click here, and I'm going
to put a map into one of these channels.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to make sure it says, Normal,
and I'm going to put a checker map on
| | 03:13 | there. You can see how the checker
map has applied to these objects.
| | 03:18 | What I really want to show you is
I want to show you how the shader is
| | 03:20 | constructed. Now, if we go into our
Attribute Editor, you can see I have got
| | 03:25 | this Blinn, and remember how we click
here, and we go down to the next level,
| | 03:29 | and we can see our Checker1, and if
we want, we can go back up. So we have
| | 03:33 | actually our Blinn and our Checker here.
| | 03:34 | There is another way to look at that,
and that is through the Hypershade
| | 03:38 | window. Now, I'm going to Maximize
this so you can see what I'm doing. I'm
| | 03:42 | going to get this Work Area, so we
can see it. What I'm going to do is I'm
| | 03:46 | going to left-click on this Blinn
Shader that I created with the checker
| | 03:49 | pattern, and then I'm going to right
click over it, and I'm going to say, Graph
| | 03:52 | Network.
| | 03:53 | Now what this does is it shows me all
of the nodes that affect the shader. So
| | 03:59 | if I have a checker pattern going into
my Blinn, and the place 2D texture which
| | 04:05 | is how this particular texture is
mapped is affecting the checker pattern.
| | 04:09 | Let's do something a little more complex.
I'm going to minimize this Hypershade
| | 04:12 | window for just a second. And let's go
back, and do something we did before.
| | 04:16 | I'm going to take one of these Color
channels. Let's take this black color
| | 04:19 | channel, and I'm going to click on this
and I'm going to add another map to
| | 04:23 | it. Let's add Bulge.
| | 04:26 | So now I have this Bulge map in the
black channel of this checker shader. Now,
| | 04:31 | let's go back into our Hypershade
window and let's re-graph this. I'm going to
| | 04:35 | select Blinn and I'm
going to say, Graph Network.
| | 04:37 | Now, if you notice, it's more complex
now. We have got the Bulge, is now going
| | 04:42 | into, in fact if you click over one of
these lines, it will tell you exactly
| | 04:46 | what's happening. The Bulge1.outColor
is going into the checker1.color2. So the
| | 04:52 | second color channel of checker is
getting the output color of Bulge. Click
| | 04:57 | over here would say, the output color
of the checker is going into the Blinn
| | 05:02 | color channel.
| | 05:03 | So you can basically see how the whole
shader or the whole material is built by
| | 05:09 | looking at all of these different
nodes. Now, what we can do is we can
| | 05:12 | actually re-wire and re-
connect these if we want to as well.
| | 05:15 | We can also build our nodes this way.
So if I, for example, if I wanted to, I
| | 05:19 | could actually take a Cloth and I
could click on that and add a Cloth to it.
| | 05:24 | Let's say I wanted to take the output
color of the cloth. So I Double-click on
| | 05:29 | cloth, bring it up here, and then if I
look at this little button here, this
| | 05:32 | will tell me what I can
connect coming out of this.
| | 05:35 | So if I click here, left-click here,
then with the Output Color, the Whole
| | 05:39 | Color. You can just do R, G or B, but
I'm going to do the whole color here, and
| | 05:42 | I'm going to connect it to the input
here, left-click and hold color1. So the
| | 05:47 | Bulge was connected to color2,
this will be connected to color1.
| | 05:50 | Now, you can see how that shader
changes. So what we can actually do, is
| | 05:54 | literally wire our shaders however we
want. OK, so you can kind of see how this
| | 05:59 | works, so if I wanted to, I could
attach it to transparency or whatever. But
| | 06:03 | you can see how powerful
this Hypershade window is.
| | 06:05 | You can manage your shaders, you can
build shaders, you can create new shaders.
| | 06:10 | If I wanted to create a Blinn or
Anisotropic or a Phong shader or a Phong E, I
| | 06:15 | just click here, and it creates a
whole new shader. And this shader isn't
| | 06:19 | attached to any specific object, but
I can certainly build the shader how I
| | 06:23 | want, and then just apply it to the
objects that need that particular material.
| | 06:29 | So those are the basics of the
Hypershade window, and you can see how valuable
| | 06:33 | this window is with editing
materials. So let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Multilister| 00:00 | There is another way to manage
materials in Maya, and that is using the
| | 00:05 | Multilister. Now, the Multilister is
actually kind of a historical artifact of
| | 00:09 | Alias which was a package that preceded
Maya about 10 years ago, and it's kind
| | 00:14 | of stuck-around because actually it
is a pretty, easy and efficient way to
| | 00:18 | manage materials.
| | 00:19 | So let me show you how that works.
It's under Window > Rendering Editors >
| | 00:23 | Multilister. Now, what the Multilister
window has is it's kind of a stripped
| | 00:28 | out version of the Hypershade window.
It has room for basically the materials
| | 00:32 | and the textures that create those materials.
| | 00:36 | Let's just create a blank material here.
I'm going to go to my Rendering Tab,
| | 00:39 | and let's just create a Blinn. If you
notice, when I click that Blinn button,
| | 00:44 | it creates an empty Blinn material
here, and that also brings it up to my
| | 00:49 | Attribute Editor, so I can
change my color to whatever I want to.
| | 00:52 | Now if I wanted to place a texture map
in there, I can put a checker in there
| | 00:57 | or whatever. So now, if you want to,
you can create as many of these as you
| | 01:00 | want. If I want to create an
anisotropic material, I can do that, or you can
| | 01:05 | also create materials
from within the Multilister.
| | 01:08 | So if I go here to Edit, I can also do
Create. What I can do is I can create a
| | 01:13 | new material. Now normally, this
brings us up to the Textures Tab here. Let's
| | 01:17 | Create Render Node. This window would
come up if I hit any one of these checker
| | 01:22 | buttons in the Attribute Editor. But,
if you look in this Create Render Node,
| | 01:26 | it actually has a number of different
tabs here. If I go over to the Materials
| | 01:30 | Tab, I have buttons that can
create basically the same thing.
| | 01:33 | So what I did, was I did Edit > Create,
this window came up, go to Materials,
| | 01:38 | and I can create any type I want. So
let's say, I create a Phong E. OK, so
| | 01:42 | there is a number of places
where you can create materials.
| | 01:44 | So now I have all these materials
sitting around, and I need something to apply
| | 01:48 | them to. So let's go ahead and
create a surface. I'm Just going again to
| | 01:52 | Surfaces, create my favorite sphere
here, and I'm going to shade it, and turn
| | 01:57 | on Hardware Texturing.
| | 01:59 | Now, what I can do is I can take
any one of these. Let's click on this
| | 02:02 | anisotropic, and you can assign it.
You can go to Edit > Assign, and that
| | 02:06 | assigns the material to the object or
objects that you have selected. You can
| | 02:11 | also do this by right clicking over the
particular material, and you have your
| | 02:16 | file edits, like display have all of
those menu options, you'll Edit > Assign
| | 02:20 | from here. If I wanted to, I could
assign that checker pattern for example.
| | 02:24 | Now also notice how the Textures come
up here. So I have this checker pattern
| | 02:29 | in the Blinn, and its corresponding
texture is right here. So I can actually
| | 02:34 | Double-click on that and affect those colors.
| | 02:38 | So I don't really have that node
by node operation that I have in the
| | 02:43 | Hypershade window, but I do have the
individual nodes or individual textures
| | 02:48 | that I use in this little
area of the Multilister window.
| | 02:51 | Now there are some other options here,
you can actually import materials,
| | 02:56 | shading groups from other Maya scenes,
you can Export, you can do key framing
| | 03:01 | that sort of stuff, and
some display options as well.
| | 03:04 | But, I just wanted to show you the
basics of the Multilister, and I find I
| | 03:08 | generally use the Multilister to assign
the textures within my scene. So let's
| | 03:13 | move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Performing texture mapping on NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | As you start working with maps, you
are going to very quickly want to be able
| | 00:04 | to place those maps precisely. How you
place the maps can depend kind of on what
| | 00:09 | type of surface that you have. NURBS
and polygonal surfaces map differently in
| | 00:15 | some ways. In some ways you can map
them the same and I'll show you all the
| | 00:18 | different ways with mapping.
| | 00:20 | Let's start with the basics of mapping
a NURBS surface. Actually I'm just
| | 00:24 | going to create a really simple surface.
I'm going to create a plane, and I'm
| | 00:28 | going to shade that, I move that up a
little bit here, so I can see it. And the
| | 00:33 | reason I'm showing you a plane is
remember how all NURBS surfaces are
| | 00:37 | essentially patches, and a plane is a
perfect example of a patch, and what a
| | 00:42 | Patch is, is essentially a four-sided
object and it's almost like wrapping
| | 00:47 | paper. So remember how a sphere is
just a plane wrapped around and then
| | 00:52 | squished up at the top and the
cylinder is just rotated around and the Taurus
| | 00:56 | is rotated in both directions. But
all NURBS are essentially based upon
| | 01:01 | patches, which are four-sided objects,
just like this plane, which is why I
| | 01:05 | drew this.
| | 01:06 | So what we are going to do is we are
going to apply a texture to it, it doesn't
| | 01:09 | really matter I'm going to apply Blinn.
I'm going to put something in the Color
| | 01:12 | Channel, OK, it doesn't really matter.
I'm going to put a bitmap, in fact, I'm
| | 01:16 | just going to put that leopard
texture, so I clicked on File, Image name,
| | 01:20 | leopard, and it's not showing here
because I don't have Hardware Texturing, so
| | 01:26 | let's turn that on.
| | 01:27 | OK, so as you can see the texture that
we have which is this square patch of
| | 01:33 | leopard skin is mapping corner-to-
corner exactly to this patch. If I had
| | 01:39 | applied this to a sphere, again it
would apply it exactly corner-to-corner
| | 01:43 | effect, let's just do that, let's
just apply that to a sphere, let's just
| | 01:47 | create a sphere, and again, I'm just
going to create another new texturing and
| | 01:53 | just do the same procedure here to just
Color - file, leopard. And I notice how
| | 02:01 | essentially that texture is the same
on this, except -- you can see very
| | 02:04 | cleanly how it's crunched up at the
poles, OK, because what happens is that the
| | 02:08 | corners of this patch kind of meet
at a point here, it gets crunched up.
| | 02:13 | So why I'm showing you this is because
this is how all NURBS surfaces map, they
| | 02:18 | just map the flat bitmap image, the 2D
image of the bitmap to the 2D corners of
| | 02:25 | the patch. So now once we have mapped
this we can go in and we can actually
| | 02:29 | change how it's mapped. Let's select
this plane, go over to our blinn1 shader
| | 02:36 | that we created and in the Color Channel,
let's go down and there is our bitmap
| | 02:42 | that's what we applied.
| | 02:43 | Now once you are in here, you'll
also notice that there is another node
| | 02:47 | attached to this which is called
place2dTexture, what we can do is we just
| | 02:52 | click on that and these are the
parameters we can use to place that texture.
| | 02:57 | The first one I wanted to show you is
actually down here that's called Repeat,
| | 03:01 | this is how many times is this
texture going to repeat, this is great for
| | 03:04 | tiling a texture.
| | 03:06 | So if I made this instead of one, I
made it two, you can see how it now maps it
| | 03:11 | twice along the patch, so it doubles
the tiling of it. We can obviously type-in
| | 03:16 | any number that we want here. You can
also rotate that, and this doesn't show
| | 03:20 | really well in the hardware shading,
it depends on your Graphics Card, but
| | 03:24 | typically doesn't show up well there.
If you want to see something like this
| | 03:28 | you can always just do a quick render,
so right here we have two buttons, one
| | 03:31 | is to render current frame and the
other one is called IPR, let me show you
| | 03:35 | render current frame. Now this has no
lighting or anything on it, but you can
| | 03:38 | just see how that renders.
| | 03:40 | The other one is IPR, and we'll get
little bit more into that as we get into
| | 03:44 | rendering, but let me just quickly
show you how to do IPR. Click on IPR, what
| | 03:48 | this does is it renders it, but it also
keeps a buffer, so we can actually see
| | 03:53 | how this renders as the scene changes.
So if I left-click and drag-and-drop box
| | 03:59 | around this it will update the contents
of that box if I change the parameters.
| | 04:04 | So for example if I change my tiling,
it will automatically update. So
| | 04:09 | sometimes if you don't see it in the
viewport, you can use IPR or just render
| | 04:14 | frame to get a quick view of
what your object looks like.
| | 04:17 | OK, let's get back to these parameters
here. So we have Repeat, Offset, you can
| | 04:22 | also add Noise. The other one is
Coverage, so what Coverage is, is how much of
| | 04:27 | this patch is covered, so if I do it 0.5,
I'll see that only half of the patch
| | 04:32 | is covered, I can do that both
in the U and the V direction.
| | 04:36 | Now remember how patches have U and V
directions as bitmaps have an X and a Y
| | 04:41 | direction and those pretty much
correlates, so X and Y correlate to U and V.
| | 04:46 | We can also rotate the frame, so we can
actually see how it rotates, just with
| | 04:50 | one reason why I'm doing it on a
flat patch, so you can see that. We can
| | 04:54 | actually mirror this, the other option
is this Interactive Placement, when I
| | 04:58 | click that, what it does, it changes my
cursor, it gives me this kind of delta
| | 05:03 | shaped cursor, and if I middle-click
and drag on any one of these little dots,
| | 05:07 | I can move this frame, I can scale
the frame and I can rotate frame.
| | 05:15 | So this is a great way to place
textures, and this works just on NURBS
| | 05:19 | surfaces. Again one of the key things
for NURBS is that these patches correlate
| | 05:24 | very well to a bitmap because they are
both four-sided objects, so Maya takes
| | 05:29 | advantage of this when
texturing these particular objects.
| | 05:32 | So those were some of the basics of
texturing, just the standard texturing of
| | 05:36 | the NURBS surface.
| | 05:37 | Now let's move on to
some more texturing methods.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Projecting textures| 00:00 | Now, I'm going to show you another way
to apply and map textures on to objects
| | 00:06 | and that's using projections. Now,
this works one both NURBS and Polygons and
| | 00:11 | it allows you to basically project an
image from a plane or sphere, cylinder
| | 00:16 | and so on. Let me show you how it works.
Again, we are just going to start with
| | 00:20 | a simple object, we are just going to
create a nurbsSphere. I'm going to shade
| | 00:23 | it and I'm going to turn on Hardware Texture.
| | 00:27 | Now, we are going to apply a material
and add a map. So I'm going to just do a
| | 00:31 | lambert material and I'm going to in
the color channel add a map. Now, here is
| | 00:36 | the key when you create this, it
defaults to normal. Now, what I want to do is
| | 00:42 | I want to create this as a projection.
So this is actually attached to this
| | 00:46 | particular map and then I choose the
type of map I want. In this case, I'm
| | 00:51 | going to use a Checker map.
| | 00:53 | So now what it does is it applies that
to the object and it creates a -- I have
| | 00:58 | to go in a Wireframe mode to show you
this. What it does is it creates this
| | 01:01 | little projection icon and this is what
is projecting the map on to our object.
| | 01:08 | Now, if I go into my Outliner, you
can see, I have actually have a separate
| | 01:13 | object called place3DTexture and
what this does is this object actually
| | 01:17 | represents the map or the Checker that
we have and it actually projects along
| | 01:24 | this line here, if you can see there
is a little green line right there on to
| | 01:27 | your object.
| | 01:28 | So obviously this is lot smaller than
we need it. So if I want to, I can select
| | 01:32 | this and I can just go Fit to
Bounding Box. OK, so if I hit Fit to Group
| | 01:36 | Bounding Box, that will make it bigger,
I can turn on Shading again and you can
| | 01:40 | see how it's projecting on to this. Now,
the one thing is that I have got my
| | 01:45 | settings turn down pretty low. So this
is showing up pretty fuzzy. So let me
| | 01:48 | show you another trick. I showed you
how to render this, but let me show you
| | 01:51 | another trick for seeing this more
clearly in the viewport. We have to go into
| | 01:55 | Window > Settings Preferences >
Preferences, then we go Display. So what I want
| | 02:03 | to do is I want to display
my textures more high quality.
| | 02:06 | Now, the thing is this big
viewport textures slider here, I just want to
| | 02:10 | run it up one or two notches, because
if you go all the way to High quality
| | 02:14 | then that can actually drag your system
down pretty much. So I'm just going to
| | 02:17 | turn it up, maybe 40%, hit Save. Now,
what I can do is I can adjust this, now
| | 02:22 | you see how that snapped into a nice --
so I can actually see what the texture
| | 02:25 | looks like. So now that that's
displaying properly, I can grab the edges of
| | 02:30 | this texture icon and
change the way the mapping works.
| | 02:34 | So if I move it, you can see how I'm
actually placing this texture on the
| | 02:39 | object. Isn't that cool? OK, now what
I can also do is I can change how the
| | 02:43 | texture is applied. So what I do is I
click on the object, go into my shader,
| | 02:48 | into lambert, go down into my Color
channel and in here I have a little
| | 02:53 | projection icon. What I can do is I
can change the Projection Type. So if I
| | 02:58 | want to I can adjust it. I can fit it
to the bounding box of the object, which
| | 03:02 | means just to fit it, so that it
all fits directly around the object.
| | 03:06 | I can also change the way it projects.
So right now it's set to Planar. If I
| | 03:11 | want to, I can go Spherical, which is
essentially Spherical mapping and again I
| | 03:15 | have controls that allow me to change
the way that maps and this works for both
| | 03:19 | NURBS and Polygons by the way.
Cylindrical, OK, so it projects along the
| | 03:25 | cylinder. Again very easy, you can see
how that works. Ball, now what Ball does
| | 03:30 | is it scrunches the texture up at
one end as opposed to Spherical, which
| | 03:36 | scrunches the texture up at both ends.
| | 03:38 | OK, so it's really just how does it
deal with the pole of that. So it's kind of
| | 03:42 | almost like a planer projection going
this way and then it is all scrunched up
| | 03:46 | on this side, that's what Ball does.
Cubic pretty obvious, projects from six
| | 03:52 | points of a cube. TriPlanar, almost
kind of like Cubic, but little bit
| | 03:58 | different. So you got three planes
instead of six sides of a cube. Concentric,
| | 04:03 | kind of weird, and Perspective, which
just gives you a perspective viewport of
| | 04:09 | that, OK.
| | 04:10 | So anyone of these can be used to map
your object. Now the one thing about this
| | 04:15 | is that, it does have that separate
plane there. So if I move this projection
| | 04:20 | plane, it will affect the way that
map works. Once I move the object though
| | 04:25 | it's OK, but if I move that plane
it's going to effect the mapping. So
| | 04:29 | typically what I do is I get my mapping
set correctly to the object and then I
| | 04:35 | select all of my texture objects,
group them and either hide them or put them
| | 04:40 | on their own layer. So that way
I don't accidentally touch them.
| | 04:43 | So those are the basics of projecting
a texture, and so let's go on to some
| | 04:48 | other methods.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Performing texture mapping on polygonal surfaces| 00:00 | Now let's talk a little bit about
texturing polygons or polygonal objects.
| | 00:04 | Let's first start with Mapping. Now
Mapping on polygonal objects can be done
| | 00:09 | via the whole object or you can do a
part at a time. So I can actually texture
| | 00:14 | different parts of the objects using
different techniques. So let me show you
| | 00:18 | how that works.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to open the scene here. We
have a scene here in 06 scenes, called
| | 00:23 | CoffeeCup and it's just basically a
coffee cup. So let's create a map and apply
| | 00:28 | that. So I'm actually just going to
go into Rendering here and just create,
| | 00:32 | let's just create a Lambert and I
want to put a texture on there that I can
| | 00:35 | see. I'm just going to a Checker board
on there, turn on Hardware Texturing and
| | 00:41 | you kind of see the default mapping of
that, which isn't all that great, but
| | 00:47 | how I create Textures for a polygonal
objects or texture mapping on a polygonal
| | 00:52 | object, I can do the projection mapping
in the texture or in the material, like
| | 00:57 | I just showed you or you can project
using the polygonal object basically on a
| | 01:02 | curved face basis on the polygonal objects.
| | 01:05 | So what we have to do to do that is go
into a Polygon menu and we have a whole
| | 01:10 | menu set here, it says Create UVs. In
fact I'm going tear this off. What this
| | 01:15 | does, it allows us to map the UVs of
our objects. So for example, I just start
| | 01:20 | with Planar Mapping. A Planar Mapping
on there you can see is very similar to
| | 01:24 | the projection mapping that we just did
and what it does is it creates a plane,
| | 01:28 | that I can use to map this object.
| | 01:31 | Now the difference is that when
you use the standard projection mapping,
| | 01:35 | you get the actual projection map
shows up in the Outliner. It's actually a
| | 01:38 | separate object. With Polygonal,
Create UVs Planar Mapping, the map itself is
| | 01:44 | actually attached to the object. It's
actually an Input into the object. So if
| | 01:48 | I select the object itself, you can see
here is the Planar Projection and if I
| | 01:53 | click on that Input, I get my little
icon there so I can move it around. You
| | 01:59 | can also move it around by using these
parameters. So you can actually animate
| | 02:04 | those if you want. Now there is a bunch
of different types of mapping for this.
| | 02:07 | So if I want to I can do Planar Mapping,
I can do Cylindrical Mapping and you
| | 02:11 | can see how it creates a cylinder and
I can do Spherical Mapping. So again it
| | 02:16 | creates a sphere.
| | 02:18 | Now the center of the sphere isn't
aligned so what I can do is I can always
| | 02:21 | just move this Projection Center along
X or Y of that object here. Just go in
| | 02:27 | the Object Mode, going to my spherical
projection and I can change my center
| | 02:31 | here. We also have a level called
Automatic Mapping, now what that does, it's
| | 02:35 | kind of like cubic mapping and what
it does is it projects it from six
| | 02:38 | directions and the closest face,
the face that's most parallel to the
| | 02:43 | projection gets the texture. So you can
kind of see how that works and you also
| | 02:48 | have a level called Create UVs Based
On Camera. What that does is it just
| | 02:51 | projects according to whatever the
camera position is at the time. This is
| | 02:56 | great for mapping objects, we have to
match them to a background, plane or
| | 03:01 | something like that.
| | 03:01 | Now one of the other things you can do
is you can actually map on a per face
| | 03:05 | basis. So if I go into my Object,
like I'm going to go Edit > Delete History
| | 03:11 | just to kind of clear out all of these
Inputs and I'm going to right click here
| | 03:15 | and go into Face Mode and I'm just
going to select Faces and so what I can do
| | 03:20 | is I can actually apply a different
mapping to that face. So I just want those
| | 03:25 | face to be planar map. So if I
select only those faces and I hit Planar
| | 03:30 | Mapping, I get a Planar Mapping icon
for those particular faces. So for the
| | 03:37 | faces of the handle of the coffee cup,
only those faces are mapped using this
| | 03:43 | icon and notice how it draws. These
are little lines around the border where
| | 03:48 | the other texture mapping starts.
| | 03:51 | Now another thing you can do with
polygonal mapping is you can apply textures
| | 03:54 | on a per face basis. So let's say, I
wanted this checker board to be on my
| | 03:59 | coffee cup itself but actually wanted
the handle to just be a solid color. So
| | 04:04 | what I do is I click off of this and I
in fact, let's just go into Rendering
| | 04:09 | Editors, Multilister and I'm going
to click off and make sure this isn't
| | 04:13 | selected. I'm just going to create an
empty blinn material and I'm going to
| | 04:18 | color that and make some bright colors
so that we can see what it looks like.
| | 04:21 | So let's going to make colored blinn
shader. What I can do now is I can select
| | 04:25 | my coffee cup, right click, go into
Face mode again and just select those faces
| | 04:31 | that represent the handle of the coffee
cup. Now what I can do I can select my
| | 04:36 | blinn shader and just go right click
over there Edit > Assign and now it's
| | 04:40 | assigned blinn1 to those faces.
So you can actually modify effects.
| | 04:46 | Let's go back in the object mode here.
You can see now this one object actually
| | 04:50 | has two different materials on it. So
you can see how this can be very helpful
| | 04:54 | in building polygonal objects because
you can assign multiple mappings to the
| | 04:59 | objects itself. So those are some of
the basics of applying materials to
| | 05:05 | polygonal objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Performing live-action integration with the Use Background shader| 00:00 | Now, I want to show another type of
material and that is called Use Background.
| | 00:05 | Now, this is mostly used when you have
a background image and you want to matte
| | 00:10 | something in. So if for example, if you
are animating against live action, you
| | 00:14 | would be using this particular
material a lot. So let me show you how this
| | 00:18 | works. Now, I have already setup a
scene for you, since we haven't really gone
| | 00:22 | into lights and cameras and all of that,
we are going to get into that in the
| | 00:25 | next chapter.
| | 00:26 | I have already setup a scene that has
lights in it, we are going to go and Open
| | 00:29 | Scene and I have a scene called
UseBackground. What this is, is essentially, if
| | 00:35 | I zoom out here, you see I have a
light and we actually have a camera in this
| | 00:39 | scene called camera1 and if I hit the
Render button here, we are under current
| | 00:44 | frame, you will see that the scene is
just setup to create a simple lighting
| | 00:49 | model where the light cast the
shadow on to the plane. So we have those
| | 00:53 | cylinder casting a shadow.
| | 00:55 | Now, what I want to do is integrate
that cylinder into a live action scene.
| | 01:00 | Well, the first thing I need to do is
load up the background image for that
| | 01:05 | particular scene. So in my camera,
I'm going to make sure I'm in my camera
| | 01:09 | viewport and then I'm going to go View,
Image Plane, Import Image and I'm going
| | 01:16 | to go to my Desktop, find exercise
files, chapter6 and textures, and there
| | 01:24 | should be a file out there called
Background.jpeg. And this is a picture of
| | 01:29 | desert landscape that I took outside
the Palm Springs. It is right next to
| | 01:33 | those giant dinosaurs. Anyway, so I
want to get this object into the scene,
| | 01:38 | this cylinder.
| | 01:40 | So what we can do is we can actually
move our camera, so that the perspective
| | 01:44 | matches. What you can do is, just to
use your camera move tools, hold down the
| | 01:47 | Alt key and middle and left-click and
get that all position. Now, if I were to
| | 01:53 | render this right now, what happens is
it looks like it is in the scene but I
| | 01:58 | still have this plane that's accepting
the shadow. What I can do is I can use
| | 02:02 | the Use Background material to make
this plane into essentially a matte.
| | 02:08 | So let me show you how that works. You
select the plane and you click on Use
| | 02:13 | Background. Now what this does is it
applies that particular material to the
| | 02:17 | scene and you have just a few options
for this. One is the Reflectivity of it
| | 02:22 | and whether or not it will accept
the shadow. The Shadow Mask is how much
| | 02:26 | shadow it will accept. And then what
you can do -- I'm trying to go back over
| | 02:30 | to my Channel Box so we can see this --
is you can just render it. So what that
| | 02:34 | Use Background does, is it takes
the pixels, you see how that works.
| | 02:38 | So now I have got this object in the
scene casting a shadow. Now, what you can
| | 02:44 | see here is that this plane uses the
pixels behind the plane for its color
| | 02:51 | information. So the color of the
material is actually the color of this
| | 02:56 | background image. So that's how Use
Background works and then it also allows
| | 03:02 | you to cast shadows and reflections
and do all that sort of thing. So you can
| | 03:05 | see how very easily you can lock an
object into a scene. So that's the basics
| | 03:12 | of Use Background.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Performing displacement and bump mapping| 00:00 | Bump and Displacement Mapping allow
you to put roughness on to a surface. Now
| | 00:05 | they both do the same thing but they
are fundamentally different in the way
| | 00:09 | that they work. Bump Mapping basically
simulates the roughness of a surface so
| | 00:14 | we have like bumpy surface. You can
use a map to create that, Displacement
| | 00:19 | Mapping actually changes the surface
itself and actually makes more geometry.
| | 00:24 | I'm kind of talking in thin air here,
so let me just show you how that works.
| | 00:29 | Now we are going to create two
surfaces, actually I'm going to create a
| | 00:32 | nurbsSphere and then I'm going to
duplicate it, I'm going to hit Ctrl+D and
| | 00:37 | duplicate that, so we have two
identical spheres. Now I'm going to select the
| | 00:42 | sphere on the left here and I'm just
going to apply a Blinn Shader or a Blinn
| | 00:47 | Material. Now if I scroll down you
will see there is actually a slot for Bump Mapping.
| | 00:52 | So let's go ahead and just put a
simple map into that slot, I'm going to put
| | 00:58 | Cloth; that's a nice one to do Bump
Mapping with. Let's go ahead and render
| | 01:03 | this; now this is something that won't
show up in the viewports, you do have
| | 01:06 | to render it. Now we actually have a
couple of controls here, we have one for
| | 01:10 | the Bump Depth and we also have one
for the value of the Bump Map which is
| | 01:15 | actually controlled by that Cloth
Map; get back to the palette there.
| | 01:20 | But let's go ahead and just render
what the default is and you can see that
| | 01:24 | this actually creates a simulation of a
bumpy surface. Now the reason you know
| | 01:29 | it's a simulation is because it's on a
sphere and you can see the edges of this
| | 01:34 | actually still are a sphere because
what this does is it doesn't actually
| | 01:39 | change the geometry, it just changes
the way the surface renders. Now a Bump
| | 01:43 | Map is great for almost all types of
surfaces, you typically will use Bump Maps
| | 01:48 | before you ever get to displace the maps.
| | 01:51 | But what Bump Maps are great for is
anything where you really don't need to see
| | 01:55 | the edge or the Bumps are so solid, the
edge won't really be noticeable. But if
| | 01:59 | you really have something where you
need to define edge, then you have to go to
| | 02:04 | a Displacement Map. Let me show you
how that works, I'm going to close this
| | 02:08 | Render window and I'm going to select
this second sphere. I'm going to apply a
| | 02:12 | new blend material to it.
| | 02:15 | Now what we want to do is create a
Displacement Map. We don't have an option
| | 02:20 | here in the actual shading material to
create a Displacement Map that's because
| | 02:27 | this is just what shades the surface of
the material. It is like the paint that
| | 02:32 | you spray on to the sphere, we need to
actually change the sphere itself. So
| | 02:38 | what you will notice here is that we
have our Blinn Shader here but we also
| | 02:42 | have another tab here
called blinn2SG for shader group.
| | 02:47 | Now you can get to that either by
clicking on this tab or by going to my input
| | 02:53 | connection or going up in my hierarchy
here. Now what we can see here is that
| | 02:57 | we have got this Surface material
blinn2, that's this right here; that's the
| | 03:02 | material that we have been playing
with. But we also have a couple of other
| | 03:06 | slots here, we have the material, we
have the Volume material, this is for
| | 03:11 | volumetric effects, for special effects.
We also have a Displacement material
| | 03:15 | and that's what we are interested in. OK,
now this is why every once in a while
| | 03:19 | I call these things the shaders because
I'm talking about the Shading Group and
| | 03:22 | within the Shading Group
we have these materials.
| | 03:25 | So anyways let's go to the Displacement
material and I'm going to actually add
| | 03:29 | a map into that slot. Again I'm just
going to do the same thing, I'm going to
| | 03:34 | add just the default Cloth and now I
have got the Cloth material here and I
| | 03:39 | have got a displacementShader. So
what I can do is; let's just go ahead and
| | 03:43 | render this and you will see instantly
the difference between the two. What I
| | 03:47 | have here is on the left, I have the
Bump Map, and you notice the edge of this
| | 03:51 | is still a sphere.
| | 03:53 | In the Displacement Map however we
have an actual change in the geometry
| | 03:59 | itself. So it's actually adding
geometry and giving it enough detail so that
| | 04:03 | you can actually render a real
surface that is displaced. So you may say to
| | 04:08 | yourself well obviously Displacement
Mapping is better than Bump Mapping
| | 04:12 | because look it does the edges and
everything. Yes it is, it is better in that
| | 04:17 | way but it does this at
the expense of render time.
| | 04:22 | So any Displacement actually adds a lot
more geometry to your scene, adds a lot
| | 04:27 | more calculations to the render and it
will slow down your render. So if you
| | 04:32 | don't need it, don't use it; typically
90% of the time you can get away with
| | 04:37 | the Bump Map if you absolutely need
the Displacement Map you can use it. Now
| | 04:42 | let me show you a little bit more
about Displacement Mapping; so if you want
| | 04:46 | more control over our Displacement
Map we can actually have to go into the
| | 04:50 | object itself. So I click on this object,
this nurbsSphere and if I go into my
| | 04:56 | nurbsSphere shape I have a couple of
tabs here for the sphere itself, which is
| | 05:01 | our translation, and then the
actual shape, which is our NurbsSurface
| | 05:05 | information.
| | 05:06 | If I go down here I have got a
Displacement Map option and this gives me my
| | 05:11 | sample rate for displacement and
what it means is that how much will it
| | 05:16 | subdivide this surface to get the
displacement it needs; the higher the number
| | 05:21 | the more geometry it adds. So you
really don't want this number to be too big
| | 05:26 | but if you want it to be much a more high
resolution, you can certainly add that
| | 05:30 | in. So those are the basics of
Displacement and Bump Mapping.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying transparency| 00:00 | Now let's talk about some of the other
map types and how maps work for some of
| | 00:04 | these other parameters. I'm going to
create a surface, our favorite surface
| | 00:08 | here and let's just apply a Blinn
Shader to it. We are going to shade it and
| | 00:15 | Hardware Texture it. I'm going to go
over to this Blinn tab and let's play with
| | 00:19 | some of these other parameters. We have
Color, which we can obviously play with
| | 00:23 | and we have been doing that for lot of
this lesson. But we also have other ones
| | 00:27 | like Transparency and Ambient
Color, Incandescence and so on.
| | 00:32 | Lets take a look at Transparency, this
is one that you will probably use a lot
| | 00:36 | is to make Transparency to cut surfaces
up. Let's just put a simple Checker on
| | 00:41 | there and let's take a look at how this
renders. I'm going to do an IPR Render
| | 00:49 | on this and as you can see only half
of this object is transparent because
| | 00:56 | obviously it's checkered. So it has a
checkered transparency; now one of the
| | 01:00 | things you need to know is which color
makes Transparency. So what we can do
| | 01:06 | actually here; lets just take a look
at that and say well actually its white
| | 01:09 | that creates Transparency and why is that.
| | 01:12 | Well, because what we are doing is we
are creating a Transparency value and so
| | 01:16 | white is the highest value on a gray
scale, black would be zero and white would
| | 01:22 | be 255. So in other words we have a
range of Transparency from zero to pure
| | 01:29 | white and pure white at 255 is purely
transparent. So anything less than white
| | 01:35 | is less than transparent and that's
the same for most of these, for actually
| | 01:40 | for any of these parameters. For Bump
Mapping, for example, white is as high as
| | 01:45 | the bump will get because white is the
highest value and it's the same for all
| | 01:50 | of these.
| | 01:50 | So let's take a look at some of these
other ones, Transparency, Incandescence,
| | 01:55 | Ambient Color, all of those white will
actually add more to it. In fact you can
| | 01:59 | even see it here with Ambient Colors
that as this gets whiter, the object
| | 02:05 | itself gets more of that ambient color.
So that's really what I wanted to show,
| | 02:09 | now all of these other parameters
here Eccentricity, Specular Color all of
| | 02:14 | those, they are all based on that principle.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the 3-D Paint tools| 00:00 | Now I want to show you one more thing
and that's Maya's 3D Paint feature. Now,
| | 00:05 | it is not the best 3D Paint in the
world. But it can be used for a number of
| | 00:09 | different things; let's create
something to paint on. Shade it, turn on Hardware
| | 00:15 | Texturing and what we can do is we
can actually just apply a texture here,
| | 00:21 | apply a map and material. Under
texturing we do have a 3D Paint tool, what we
| | 00:26 | need to do is click the Options box
here to the right of that and that brings
| | 00:31 | up essentially our artisan interface.
| | 00:33 | Now what we can do is we can Assign/
Edit Textures to this object, so what we
| | 00:40 | can do is actually create new Bitmaps
that will be used to hold the paint that
| | 00:45 | we will be painting. So let's create
Assign/Edit Textures and we can create
| | 00:49 | this at any size we want. So let's do
a 512 by 512 map and let's store it as
| | 00:55 | whatever format. Let's store it as for
example a Targa file and we can assign
| | 01:00 | that and now once I have this I can
actually start to paint. So if I scroll up
| | 01:05 | here I can give it a color, lets say I
wanted to paint in red and I can just
| | 01:10 | start painting on this object.
| | 01:12 | Now this will use the default mapping,
so whatever mapping you have applied to
| | 01:17 | the object will be what is used to
paint that map. So sometimes you may
| | 01:22 | actually have to apply a mapping
beforehand and then paint onto it. Now one of
| | 01:28 | the things about this paint package is
that, it doesn't have a ton of features,
| | 01:32 | you can't paint patterns for example
you really can just paint color and you do
| | 01:37 | have some control over the Brush and if
you do have a pressure sensitive tablet
| | 01:42 | you can use that as well. You can paint
Opacity, you can do Flood Paint and you
| | 01:48 | can do some simple things such as Smear.
| | 01:50 | You can actually Smear Paint if you
want, you can raise, you can clone and so
| | 01:56 | on. But what a lot of people use this
for is just to mark places on the mesh.
| | 02:02 | Lets say you have got some, you have
got more complex object so may be a
| | 02:06 | complex polygonal object and you just
want to know where on the object your
| | 02:12 | painting is, so that way you can bring
it into Photoshop. Let's for example,
| | 02:16 | take a look at that lets save these
textures, yes I'm going to go ahead and
| | 02:20 | save my scene. I'm just going to call
it test, Save and then let's go back into
| | 02:29 | our 3D Paint tool and let's just
go ahead and save our textures.
| | 02:35 | Now once I have saved my textures, I
can go into Photoshop and I can go into
| | 02:44 | 3dPaintTextures. This is in my
Project File; this is on my Desktop under
| | 02:48 | exercise files, 06. Go into
3dPaintTextures, you will see the name of the scene
| | 02:53 | test and you will see my
nurbsSphereShape1_color. OK that's the name of the
| | 02:58 | object and the channel color, so open
that up and you will see that's what I
| | 03:03 | painted. Now one of the things you
can see is actually painted over a seam
| | 03:07 | here, I select this object here you
will see right there is the seam of that
| | 03:13 | particular nurbsSphere. In fact if I
wanted -- if I took that Sweep up, you can
| | 03:20 | see that's the seam.
| | 03:21 | That is where those, that patch that
creates our nurbsSphere connects. So if I
| | 03:26 | looked in my Photoshop file you will
see that, that's my texture. Now if I
| | 03:31 | wanted to I can actually start
painting into this texture. I can go into
| | 03:34 | Photoshop and just start painting and
just go to File > Save and that will show
| | 03:42 | up on my object because what I have
here is I have this particular map in my
| | 03:49 | color channel. So I have that Blinn
Shader, go in to my color channel and you
| | 03:53 | can see I have that.
| | 03:54 | Now what I need to do here is
actually hit Reload and what that does is it
| | 03:58 | reloads the texture and you can see
now whatever I painted in Photoshop comes
| | 04:02 | up in my object itself. Now you can do
this for any sort of texture but what
| | 04:08 | you can see is how I can actually use
this as a way to walk off part of my
| | 04:14 | object and I can go into Photoshop here;
one of the things I could do is for
| | 04:17 | example is create a layer over here and
if I wanted to I could actually really
| | 04:23 | paint the eye. I could go in here
with my tools and I could really paint. I
| | 04:27 | could cut and paste texture I can do
whatever I want and then when I'm done
| | 04:32 | either hide that original layer or save
it as a Photoshop file and Reload it or
| | 04:37 | I'm just going to flatten
this image and then save it.
| | 04:40 | Then you go back into Maya and you
just Reload it and you can see what I
| | 04:44 | painted down. So you can use this
as a way to create reference, you can
| | 04:48 | actually use it to paint texture there
is a number of ways you can use it but
| | 04:51 | it can be very, very handy.
| | 04:54 | So those are some of the basics of 3D
paint, now one of the things I also want
| | 04:58 | to show you in this 3D Paint tool is
that you can paint other channels other
| | 05:03 | than Color. So if you want to you
can paint Transparency, you can paint
| | 05:08 | Incandescence, Bump Maps, Displacement
Maps, anything. So any one of these maps
| | 05:13 | you can paint and it will show up and
automatically be applied to the material
| | 05:19 | that's applied to that particular
object. OK, so that's some of the
| | 05:23 | fundamentals of 3D Paint.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Texturing an airplane| 00:00 | OK, now let's use the tools that we
have learned in this texturing chapter to
| | 00:06 | texture our airplane. So first of all
let's set our project, make sure we are
| | 00:10 | in Project 06, and let's open up Plane
in 06 scenes Plane_00. This is the plane
| | 00:22 | that we've had.
| | 00:23 | Now I'm going to go ahead and show you
an image here, let me just do View Image
| | 00:29 | and I'm going to go into 06 - images.
And here's a quick render of how we are
| | 00:38 | going to texture our airplane, just
so you have kind of a rough idea. So
| | 00:41 | basically we are going to make it
kind of grey, may be go with white and we
| | 00:45 | will lighten it up a little bit, and
then we are going to put a texture on the
| | 00:48 | canopy, we're also going to put
numbers on the wings and then we are going to
| | 00:52 | do some texturing up here for wooden
propeller and then may be a gradient here.
| | 00:57 | So let's start with the general color
of the airplane. So I'm going to go ahead
| | 01:02 | and select the body and we are just
going to go ahead and apply a Blinn
| | 01:07 | Material. So I apply that, and then
we are just going to make it kind of a
| | 01:11 | light grey, and let's go ahead and
just give that a name, just call that
| | 01:16 | BodyColorGrey, so that's
the first color that we have.
| | 01:22 | Now first thing I want to do is let's
go ahead and texture this canopy, I'm
| | 01:27 | going to go back into my channel box
here. And for the canopy there is a
| | 01:32 | texture out there, in fact, I'm going
to show it you, I'm going to go View
| | 01:36 | Image and in the textures directory
there is an image called Plane_Canopy. What
| | 01:44 | that is is just a simple bitmap that
has the kind of a structure of the canopy
| | 01:49 | and what we are going to do is
project that from the side so it will affect
| | 01:53 | those sides. So we are going to
select this and we need to create a new
| | 01:58 | material for this. Let's just go
ahead and make it a Blinn, and we can name
| | 02:03 | this Canopy, and let's just go ahead
and in the Color field we are going to put
| | 02:09 | a file, and we are going to go up
towards desktop into 06 - textures - Canopy,
| | 02:19 | OK, there it is.
| | 02:19 | Now you can see that this isn't
mapped correctly, and now this is polygonal
| | 02:26 | object, so what we need to do is map
it going this way from the side. So we
| | 02:32 | need to map it along the Z axis. So
what I'm going to do is I'm going to go
| | 02:37 | Create UVs > Planar Mapping, and we
want to project this along the Z axis.
| | 02:45 | There we go. Now that's actually
pretty close, but if we want we can adjust
| | 02:50 | this, and we can actually adjust that
to make sure that it's correct, that is
| | 02:56 | pretty darn correct, so let's just
leave it; that must be a good thing. So now
| | 03:02 | we've got the canopy.
| | 03:03 | Let's go ahead to the front of the
airplane and I'm going to go back in the
| | 03:09 | Object mode here, and I'm going to
select that Cowl and we want to put a
| | 03:13 | gradient texture on there.
| | 03:17 | Now if you remember in the picture
that I showed you it went from red to
| | 03:21 | basically almost the same color, so
it's kind of a light grey. And so what I'm
| | 03:25 | going to do is create another Blinn,
and let's just call this Cowl and in the
| | 03:33 | Color Channel go ahead and turn on the
Ramp. So once I put the Ramp on there
| | 03:38 | you can see it goes -- this default one
goes from red to blue. You can see how
| | 03:44 | it goes radially around the Cowl and
that's not what we want, we want it go
| | 03:49 | front-to-back rather than around.
| | 03:51 | So remember how NURBS surfaces have a U
and a V direction. Well, this is called
| | 03:56 | the V Ramp, obviously what we want is
the U Ramp which goes front-to-back. So
| | 04:02 | we know here now that the front is
what was blue, the back is what is red. So
| | 04:07 | what we need to do is change these
colors. Now I'm really tight on this because
| | 04:11 | of my screen size, you'll probably see
the whole thing here. But I want to make
| | 04:15 | what's red is actually going to be kind
of the white in the back. So what I can
| | 04:18 | do is just select any one of these and
you can see, as I select them the colors
| | 04:23 | down here change. So what I'm going to
do is select the red and just make it
| | 04:27 | kind of the -- actually I'm going to go
to HSV here, I'm going to make it kind
| | 04:31 | of light grey. So I'm going to turn
down Saturation and just make it that light
| | 04:35 | grey, and I'm also going to select
this green and I'm also going to make it
| | 04:40 | that kind of same light grey.
| | 04:41 | Now the thing is that I really want
this to fade towards the back here, so what
| | 04:47 | we can do with this Ramp is we can
actually select these and move them up and
| | 04:51 | down, and that's how I move it back,
you can see how it kind of moves that
| | 04:56 | towards the back of the Cowl.
| | 04:58 | Now what I want for the front is I
want that front to be red, so I'm going to
| | 05:02 | highlight that little box there the
blue dot and I'm going to turn it into a
| | 05:07 | red dot by changing the color. But I
want that transition to be a little bit
| | 05:11 | more swift. So what I can do here is
if I click anywhere below here it will
| | 05:17 | sample this color and then I can just
move that color all the way down to make
| | 05:22 | that transition a little bit better.
So anytime I click anywhere in this
| | 05:26 | surface it creates a dot here that I
can use to add more ramp. So if I hit that
| | 05:30 | little X it deletes it. So what I can
do is take that and just adjust them so I
| | 05:36 | have that color, OK, that's good. So
I'm going to actually take this engine,
| | 05:42 | now the engine is made up metal and a
really good shader to use for metal or
| | 05:47 | material to use for metal is the Anisotropic.
| | 05:49 | So I kind of just wanted to be almost
like a dark or medium grey, almost like
| | 05:55 | default color and that will be that,
and then for the propeller we can actually
| | 06:01 | apply that same texture. So what I can
do I've already created that texture for
| | 06:06 | -- in fact, let's go ahead and select
this. This is my engine, if I do Ctrl+A
| | 06:10 | you can see I have my
Anisotropic. Let's just call that Metal.
| | 06:15 | So now if I select this structure here,
it selects the whole structure, it
| | 06:20 | selects everything in the hierarchy
as well but I can Window > Rendering
| | 06:24 | Editors I'm just going to go into the
Multilister which makes it easy and I'm
| | 06:28 | going to scroll down and find that
one that says, engine, but actually it's
| | 06:32 | anisotropic. So I'm just going to go
Edit > Assign. So what it does is assigns
| | 06:38 | that to that propeller. So now the
propeller has that same texture as the engine.
| | 06:44 | When I apply the texture to that drive
shaft you'd notice here the drive shaft
| | 06:51 | actually contains both of the props
and the nose cone. Now I actually want to
| | 06:57 | texture those props as wood, so
what I need to do is Shift-select those
| | 07:01 | separately, and let's apply a Phong E
to it, and in that Color Channel I'm
| | 07:07 | going to go ahead and put a file,
and the file is called Plane_Wood. And
| | 07:15 | actually that maps pretty well, I
don't have to mess with that at all.
| | 07:19 | For the nose cone I'm going to go ahead
and select that, and I'm just going to
| | 07:22 | apply a Blinn and make it red, I'm
going to try, match that color, close
| | 07:30 | enough. Now the final thing is
actually we've got one more thing, we have got
| | 07:35 | the tires, Shift-select those tires and
I'm going to apply a Lambert, and then
| | 07:40 | I'm just going to turn that
down, make it kind of black.
| | 07:44 | Now the last thing we need to texture
are the wings. Now what I want to do is
| | 07:49 | just put red on the outside of the
wings, I'd leave the inside of the plain
| | 07:54 | kind of the original color. So what we
have to do is we have to select those
| | 07:59 | faces and apply a texture to just those
faces. So I'm going to go ahead into my
| | 08:04 | top viewport, zoom out a little bit,
right-click over this and go Face. Now I'm
| | 08:10 | going to Lasso+Select the faces on
this side of the wing and then Shift+Lasso
| | 08:17 | Select the faces on the other side of
the wing. Now I need to apply a texture
| | 08:22 | to it, I'm going to apply a Blinn, and
then in the Color Channel of that Blinn
| | 08:27 | I'm going to put a file. That
file is called Plane_Numbers.
| | 08:34 | Now if you notice this doesn't map all
that well. In fact, I'm going to go in
| | 08:40 | Object mode, you can see that if I go
into this Blinn here, you can see that
| | 08:46 | those are the numbers I want to appear
on the wings but they are not appearing,
| | 08:49 | they are actually mapped all kind of
funky. So what I need to do is remap on a
| | 08:55 | poly by poly basis. So what I'm going
to do first of all, I'm going to select
| | 08:59 | one side of the wing and I'm going
to select those faces again. So again
| | 09:02 | Lasso+Select just these faces, probably
don't see them, but they are selected,
| | 09:09 | and then I'm going to go Create UVs >
Planar Mapping. But I need to know what
| | 09:13 | direction I'm Planar Mapping. If I look
here I'm mapping in the Y axis, so I'm
| | 09:18 | going to go Project, and what that
does is it actually creates a separate
| | 09:24 | object that I can use to place this
texture but it's rotated the wrong way. So
| | 09:29 | in my Attribute Editor I can just
rotate that 90 degrees, tug that in, and I
| | 09:35 | can position this however I want, perfect!
| | 09:40 | And we can do the same for the other
side. So let's repeat that procedure if in
| | 09:44 | case you weren't following. I'm going
to go to Lasso+Select those faces, there
| | 09:49 | we go, Create UVS > Planar Mapping
in the Y axis Project. Now from our
| | 09:58 | Attribute Editor I'm going to rotate
that 90 degrees and then just grab these
| | 10:05 | in position, how we want, there we go.
| | 10:08 | Now we do have one little problem,
because we selected all of these faces we
| | 10:13 | are projecting all the way through
this. So if we look on the bottom of the
| | 10:16 | airplane the numbers are backwards.
So we can do one of two things, we can
| | 10:22 | either reverse the numbers or we can
just make the bottom red. I think I'm just
| | 10:26 | going to make the bottom red to show
you one more little trick that I know
| | 10:30 | here. So I'm going to go in the front
viewport here and we are going to do
| | 10:35 | pretty much the same as what we did. We
are going to select Face and I'm going
| | 10:38 | to Lasso+Select just the bottom of
the wing. So let's go to the Perspective
| | 10:44 | window, so we can see what we've got
here. I'm going to Lasso+Select just these
| | 10:48 | faces here. I didn't get all of them,
all I really need to do is get the ones
| | 10:53 | with the numbers on them, and then I'm
going to do one more Planar Mapping >
| | 10:57 | Create UVs, but this time I'm going
to scale it up and move it so that the
| | 11:03 | numbers are actually off of the wing.
So all I've got is red because that's
| | 11:08 | just a solid color you are not going
to notice any pixilation if you make it
| | 11:12 | too big because it's just all solid red.
So it's always going to interpolate
| | 11:16 | it's red, and so now I've just made the
bottom of the wing, solid color, let's
| | 11:20 | do the same for the other one.
| | 11:22 | All I'm going to do here is I'm going
to Lasso+Select the bottom part of this
| | 11:27 | wing and we're going to go ahead and
go Create UVs > Planar Mapping, and now
| | 11:38 | here you can see that, make
that big and just move it off.
| | 11:42 | Now I did do one little thing here and
when I selected the underside of this
| | 11:49 | wing I actually selected way too
much here. So I need to kind of put this
| | 11:53 | landing gear back. So I'm going to go
ahead into Face mode one more time and
| | 12:00 | just Rectangle+Select just these,
here we go. I don't want to get in any of
| | 12:05 | that wing, so I just want to -- I
actually got these two and for those I have
| | 12:17 | to reassign, and there we go, OK. So
that's pretty good, as you can see that's
| | 12:29 | kind of the texturing work-flow for
texturing this airplane, so we are going to
| | 12:34 | move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Rendering in MayaUnderstanding Render settings| 00:00 | Rendering in Maya is where you
bring together all of your elements and
| | 00:03 | everything you've created and you make
your final image. Now, rendering is a
| | 00:08 | lot like photography in that you work
with lights and cameras and then you
| | 00:14 | create a final image. In photography,
you would develop the image or in digital
| | 00:19 | photography, you would create a
digital image file, and that's the same in
| | 00:23 | Maya, is that you actually
ultimately create a digital image file.
| | 00:27 | Now, rendering in Maya can come in
several different forms. Actually Maya has
| | 00:31 | several different renders that it can
use to create an image, and let me show
| | 00:35 | you just a little bit about that. Most
of our rendering buttons are right up
| | 00:39 | here, we have Render View, and this
one would just render the current frame.
| | 00:43 | This will open what's called the IPR
window, which we'll get to and that stands
| | 00:48 | for Interactive Photorealistic renderer,
and what that does is it allows you to
| | 00:52 | render on the fly as you change
parameters. I think we used that little bit in
| | 00:57 | the Texturing chapter.
| | 00:58 | But this is the one that I want to show
you is Render Settings window. You can
| | 01:01 | also get to this through Window >
Rendering Editors > Render Settings, the same
| | 01:06 | window, OK. Now, this Render Settings
window is where we setup our parameters
| | 01:12 | to render the image. We can render
using a number of different renderers.
| | 01:17 | If I just use this pull-down menu here,
I've got the Maya Software renderer,
| | 01:20 | which is the default renderer and
that's what we'll be using mostly in this
| | 01:24 | chapter. There is also a Maya
Hardware renderer, which is used mostly for
| | 01:29 | particle systems. There is also a
vector render, which will render out
| | 01:33 | vector-based images more like flash
animation and stuff like that. There is
| | 01:37 | also a Mental Ray, which is an
advanced renderer, and we'll talk a lot about
| | 01:41 | that in the next chapter.
| | 01:43 | Let me show you some of the basics of
the Render Settings window, so that as we
| | 01:47 | start rendering things, you'll know how
to change these parameters if you need
| | 01:51 | to. We don't have anything here to
render, so let me just quickly run through
| | 01:54 | some of the basics of the window and
then we'll be using it consistently as we
| | 01:58 | go through these lessons.
| | 02:00 | The first one is Image File Output. Now,
if you want you can give it a name,
| | 02:04 | otherwise it will use the same scene
name. This is the naming convention, so if
| | 02:09 | we have a single frame, or if you use
one of these, ones with the little number
| | 02:12 | on them, then you can see we have
name with the frame number and then the
| | 02:16 | extension. There is a couple
of different iterations of this.
| | 02:20 | You can also see here that this is
how the file naming will be. It will
| | 02:25 | actually kind of list it. Then if we're
using a numbered sequence here, you can
| | 02:30 | give your start, your end frame and
you can also use this one here which is
| | 02:34 | called Frame padding, and that gives you,
as you notice here, if I turn this up
| | 02:40 | to three, this will force this to be
a three-digit number in the file name.
| | 02:44 | We can also tell it what camera to
render and as we get in cameras, I will
| | 02:48 | explain that a little bit more, and
you can also set the Image Size here. We
| | 02:53 | have a number of Presets, plus we can
obviously type in the numbers if we want.
| | 03:00 | So those are the basics. Now for each
renderer that you have, you also have a
| | 03:03 | number of parameters here. So there are
actually two tabs, there is one common
| | 03:07 | for any renderer, which is the name and
the size of the image, but then we also
| | 03:11 | have one here for the individual
renderer. So as this changes if this goes to
| | 03:15 | Mental Ray, then that tab changes to a
Mental Ray tab. If I go to Maya Hardware
| | 03:20 | renderer, it changes to that, but we're
going to use the Maya Software renderer.
| | 03:23 | Now, when you render, one thing really,
it's pretty simple, basically you just
| | 03:29 | use Production quality and that will
give you a pretty decent quality. If you
| | 03:33 | just do Preview quality it will render
fast, but it will kind of had jaggies
| | 03:37 | along the edges, and won't look as
good. But if you're doing quick render
| | 03:40 | tasks, Preview quality is perfectly fine,
but when you go into final rendering,
| | 03:45 | just put that on Production quality.
| | 03:47 | There is a lot of parameters here that
you can change, such as Shading, and how
| | 03:53 | it renders Particles, how it filters
the edges of the image, those sorts of
| | 03:57 | thing. You also have options here for
Fields. If you're going to be rendering
| | 04:01 | to fields and other ones such as
Motion Blur, and we'll be getting into those
| | 04:05 | as we work through the lessons, OK.
| | 04:07 | So that's the basics of the Render
Settings window and rendering in Maya, and
| | 04:11 | now we're going to move on to
actually creating and rendering some scenes.
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| Understanding the basics of lights| 00:00 | The first step in the rendering process
is to add light to the scene. Just like
| | 00:05 | a photographer works with light,
when you render you also work a lot with
| | 00:09 | light. Now, lighting in the real world
versus the Maya world is a little bit
| | 00:15 | different. You can do some things in
Maya that you simply can't do in the real
| | 00:19 | world, like I can say, for example,
that a light won't shine on a specific
| | 00:24 | object. You can turn shadows off for
lights and you can't do that in the real
| | 00:28 | world, but there are some things in the
real world that are difficult to do in
| | 00:32 | Maya, such as, bounce lighting
and soft kind of ambient lighting.
| | 00:36 | So let me show you some of the basics
of lights, we're just going to go through
| | 00:39 | the basic lights in Maya, and I'll show
you how they work, let me show you some
| | 00:44 | of the basic parameters of lights.
First thing I'm going to do is set my
| | 00:48 | projects, so I'm going to go Project,
Set, and we're in chapter 07, so I'm
| | 00:53 | going to go in my exercise files folder
and hit 07, hit OK. Now, we're going to
| | 00:58 | open a scene. I'm going to open a
scene called Table.mb, and that's just a
| | 01:07 | little table and chair scene.
| | 01:09 | Now, I'm going to create a light in
Maya. I can do that by going to my
| | 01:14 | Rendering shelf here, and I've got my
basic types of lights here, OK let's go
| | 01:18 | through and we have Ambient Light,
Directional, Point Light, Spot Light, Area
| | 01:24 | Light, and Volume Light. We can also
create these using the Create menu, so I
| | 01:30 | can just go create lights
and they're all right here.
| | 01:35 | So let's start off with a Point Light.
So if I click that, you'll notice that
| | 01:40 | it comes up here at (0,0), the origin,
and that's how all lights are created in
| | 01:45 | Maya. We can't just point and click and
place your lights, they always start at
| | 01:49 | zero and then you have to
move them into position.
| | 01:52 | Now, if you want to see your lighting
in the scene or see a rough approximation
| | 01:57 | of how the lighting is working in
the scene, you can change it in your
| | 02:00 | viewport. So I go here to Lighting and
I say Use All Lights, or you can say Use
| | 02:05 | Selected Lights and we are going to Use
All Lights, 7 is the hot key for that.
| | 02:10 | Once I do that, you can see how a light
actually affects the scene. So I've got
| | 02:15 | a Point Light in the scene. Now
what is a Point Light? A Point Light is
| | 02:19 | essentially the bare light bulb in the
room. It emits light in all directions.
| | 02:24 | So you can see how that works. Now,
let's take a look at some of the lighting
| | 02:29 | parameters that we can use for this.
| | 02:31 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+A, I can go
into my Attribute Editor for that light.
| | 02:36 | So I select the light, hit Ctrl+A,
and that should bring up this Attribute Editor.
| | 02:40 | Now, you've got a number of
parameters for the light. We have Point Light
| | 02:44 | Attributes here, also I have a little
sample here that shows what the intensity
| | 02:48 | of a light is and all that sort of stuff.
Then we've got a number of roll outs
| | 02:52 | here for Shadows, Light Effects,
Mental Ray options and a bunch of that. But
| | 02:57 | what I want to do is just focus on
just the basic attributes of the light.
| | 03:01 | The first one is the Type of light. I
can actually change this light to any
| | 03:05 | other type of light, just by pulling
down this menu. So if I wanted this to be
| | 03:09 | a Spot Light, I could do that, or I
wanted to be Ambient Light or whatever, OK.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to put it back to Point
Light so we can just play with this one.
| | 03:18 | We'll get to those other
lights in just a moment.
| | 03:21 | Let's talk about the basic parameters.
First one is Color, so I can change the
| | 03:26 | color of the light. So that brings up
a color picker and I can make it a red
| | 03:30 | light, blue light, yellow light,
whatever. So you can change the color of a
| | 03:35 | light, you can also change the
Intensity of the light and that is how bright is
| | 03:41 | that light. If you turn it up, you
can see how you can quickly blow up the
| | 03:44 | scene here, or you can turn it down.
| | 03:48 | Now, one thing about Maya lights is
you can have lights that are negative. So
| | 03:52 | if I type the negative number in here,
I can actually have a light that sucks
| | 03:56 | light out of the scene, OK. Now, you
can find this very handy in a place where
| | 04:00 | maybe you've got a part of your scene
is overexposed and the rest of it is lit
| | 04:04 | really nicely, you could actually
just shine a light at that overexposed
| | 04:07 | portion, and put a negative intensity
on it and it would actually subtract
| | 04:11 | light out of the scene.
| | 04:12 | Now, we've got some other options here
for Illuminate by Default, does it Emit
| | 04:17 | Diffuse or Specularity. You can
actually have a light that doesn't emit
| | 04:20 | highlights. It doesn't show up in
specularity. This is something you can't do
| | 04:24 | in real life. So you could actually
just add a general lighting without having
| | 04:28 | those really hot point highlights on
an object, you can just take that off.
| | 04:32 | We also have what's called a Decay Rate.
Now, by default, lights in Maya don't
| | 04:37 | decay. So if I put this light right
next to the table, or far away from the
| | 04:43 | table, where the light hits it, it's
still going to illuminate it equally. So
| | 04:47 | no matter how far I bring this light
away, the illumination is still pretty
| | 04:51 | constant, obviously some of it is
dependent on angle, but generally the light
| | 04:56 | is going to be constant.
| | 04:57 | Now, in the real world, lights follow
up with the square of the distance, OK.
| | 05:03 | So you have a flash light you shine it
right in your face, it's really bright,
| | 05:07 | you shine it across the street, it's
not going to illuminate much. That's
| | 05:10 | because the light fades with distance,
the power of the light goes off with the
| | 05:14 | square of the distance.
| | 05:15 | So what I can do is I can actually
set a Decay Rate. I can set it to Linear,
| | 05:19 | which falls off linearly. I can set it
to Quadratic, now what Quadratic means
| | 05:25 | is that, that's real world lighting,
that falls off with the square of the
| | 05:28 | distance. If I set it to that, then I
kind of have to turn my Intensity up a
| | 05:32 | lot more, in fact I may have to type
in a number here to get that lighting up
| | 05:36 | to the point where it actually will
illuminate. But if you notice, if I bring
| | 05:39 | it closer it gets brighter, bring it
far away, it gets dimmer, OK. So that's
| | 05:45 | Quadratic, which falls off
with the square of the distance.
| | 05:47 | If I do Linear, that means it just
falls off one-to-one, essentially. OK, which
| | 05:54 | is not the square of the distance. I
can actually go more, I can go Cubic,
| | 05:57 | which just falls off with the cube of
the distance. So if you want to have a
| | 06:01 | light that really falls off quickly,
then you do Cubic. Now, a lot of times
| | 06:05 | I'll use Quadratic lighting, because
the nice thing is it that the lights do
| | 06:08 | fall off. So if I'm lighting a really
big scene, you don't want the light on
| | 06:13 | the far end of the scene to affect
something on the other end of the scene. You
| | 06:17 | kind of want to contain your lighting.
So a lot of times I use fall off to make
| | 06:21 | my lighting a little bit more realistic.
| | 06:24 | For this purpose, I'm just going to
turn on No Decay, and put that Intensity
| | 06:28 | down to about 1. Now, 1 is kind of a
standard value for light. So if you have a
| | 06:33 | light in the scene with no Decay and
its Intensity is 1, it should evenly
| | 06:38 | illuminate the scene. If you have
three lights in the scene, then their
| | 06:42 | Intensity shouldn't be much more than 1,
that's again if they have no decay. If
| | 06:47 | you're putting in Quadratic fall offs,
obviously you'll have to have more
| | 06:50 | intensity to your lighting.
| | 06:52 | So that's the basics of lighting, so
let's go through the other types of light
| | 06:55 | in the next lesson.
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| Understanding lighting types| 00:00 | So now that we understand some of the
basics of the parameters of lights, let's
| | 00:04 | go through some of the other types of
lights outside of the point light. I'm
| | 00:07 | going to open that same scene again,
I'm going to open Table.mb, and let's put
| | 00:14 | another type of light in here.
| | 00:15 | The second most common type of light is
Spot Light, I use Spot Lights a lot, so
| | 00:19 | I'm just going to hit this Spot Light
button. It brings up a little Spot Light,
| | 00:23 | you can see it down there again at the
origin. Now, I can move this around, OK,
| | 00:27 | I'm going to turn on Lighting, Use All
Lights, so we can see how this works.
| | 00:32 | Now, if you want, you can see how this
moves around, if you rotate it, you can
| | 00:36 | rotate it so that it shines on specific
objects, but this is kind of hard, it's
| | 00:41 | kind of hard to manipulate this, just
by moving it around this way. So there is
| | 00:46 | another way to affect lights in Maya
and that's using the Manipulator tool. So
| | 00:51 | if I go over here to my side bar
here and go Show Manipulator tool, what
| | 00:56 | happens is I get two little objects so
that I can move, one is the target for
| | 01:00 | the light and the other is the light itself.
| | 01:03 | So what I can do now is I can just
move my light, my Spot Light, and keep it
| | 01:07 | focused on that one point, which is
kind of nice. Now there is also a little
| | 01:11 | clicker here, if you click on this
object here you can actually change other
| | 01:17 | parameters of the light. Now, fourth
Spot Light, I'm going to go Ctrl+A and go
| | 01:22 | into that.
| | 01:22 | So let's go ahead and select that, and
now for the Spot Light we do have some
| | 01:26 | additional affects. So if you go Spot
Light Attributes, you'll see we have,
| | 01:30 | what we have at the point light we
have Color and Intensity and Decay Rate,
| | 01:33 | which all lights have. But now the
Spot Light has some additional parameters;
| | 01:37 | one is what's the Cone Angle. If you
actually zoom in on that light a little
| | 01:42 | bit, you can see that as I change this,
the cone of the Spot Light gets wider
| | 01:47 | or narrower. So how focused is that
beam of light that's coming from that Spot Light.
| | 01:52 | In fact, if I want to, I can render
this to a quick render here. We can see
| | 01:56 | what that looks like. OK, you can see
how that Spot Light is shining. We also
| | 02:00 | have what's called a Penumbra Angle,
and what that is that's the soft edge of
| | 02:05 | the light. So if I make that positive
that will add a little bit extra cone to
| | 02:10 | the light, and make it fall off over
the course of about five degrees. So if I
| | 02:14 | do a quick render there, you can see
now I've got a softer edge to that light,
| | 02:19 | so that way it's not such a hard edge.
| | 02:22 | We can also have what's called the
Dropoff and that's how much the light drops
| | 02:26 | off. OK, so that's almost like a
Falloff affect, almost like a Decay affect. So
| | 02:31 | that's the Spot Light, so let's go
ahead and delete that and let's bring up
| | 02:35 | another light. Let's use the
Directional Light. So I'm going to bring that in
| | 02:39 | and again you can see it comes in
at 0,0 and again I'm going to use the
| | 02:42 | Manipulator tool to move that around.
So I'm just going to click that and move
| | 02:46 | it around.
| | 02:47 | The Directional Light is a light
that actually does point in a specific
| | 02:52 | direction, but unlike the Spot Light,
the Directional Light does not have a
| | 02:56 | cone. So the Directional Light is a
great way to have light coming from a
| | 03:00 | specific place, it's great for things
like the sun. So what you can do is you
| | 03:03 | can have a Directional Light coming
from a specific angle, it can totally
| | 03:08 | illuminate the scene and the light
is all coming from the same direction.
| | 03:11 | Now, the one thing about the
Directional Light is that it will have problems
| | 03:14 | with things like shadows. I know a lot
of people who instead of using a Spot
| | 03:18 | Light, they'll just take a
Directional Light in scene, but they can have
| | 03:21 | problems with shadows, especially with
depth map shadows, which we'll get into,
| | 03:25 | because, the way that Maya calculates
shadows So sometimes a Spot Light will be
| | 03:30 | more appropriate because it can
actually focus the light in a very specific way
| | 03:34 | and also focus the shadow a little
bit more efficiently. So that's a
| | 03:38 | Directional Light.
| | 03:39 | The next type of light we have --
let's just do the Ambient Light. So let's
| | 03:43 | click on Ambient. What Ambient Light is,
is essentially just the ambient light
| | 03:49 | in the room. So it's basically just
kind of a non-directional, just the general
| | 03:55 | lighting in the room itself. Now,
Ambient Lighting, I usually use at a very low
| | 04:00 | Intensity and what I do is if I don't
want the room to be completely dark and
| | 04:04 | have the shadows completely dark, I
usually toss an Ambient Light in the room
| | 04:09 | and just give it, just kind of like
a 0.1 Intensity or something not too
| | 04:13 | bright, and that will make it look
like the room is just kind of evenly
| | 04:16 | illuminated and it kind of simulates
the effect of down sliding. So that's the
| | 04:21 | basics of an Ambient Light. It's
really very simple, I'm going to select that
| | 04:24 | and delete it.
| | 04:25 | The next one is an Area Light. Now,
what an Area Light does, again I'm using
| | 04:30 | the Manipulator to move this around. An
Area Light creates light from an area.
| | 04:36 | So for example, I've got this little
box here, it's almost like a soft box, in
| | 04:41 | terms of how it works. I don't know
if you've ever used the soft box in
| | 04:45 | photography, but what that is, is the
big, giant box that you put a flash in it
| | 04:50 | and what it does is it softens the
light. It's very similar to overhead
| | 04:54 | fluorescent lightings and those big
fixtures with the diffusers. What they do
| | 04:58 | is they create a very soft even light.
Light from a point can create very harsh
| | 05:03 | lighting. So sometimes an Area Light is better.
| | 05:05 | Now, the one thing about Area
Lighting is it can give you a bit of a render
| | 05:09 | hit, especially when you start
calculating shadow. So you have to be careful
| | 05:13 | when putting Area Lights in the
scene because you can blow your rendering
| | 05:17 | overhead. OK, so be careful
with that, let me delete that.
| | 05:20 | The last one is called a Volume Light,
and what a Volume Light is it's a light
| | 05:25 | that goes within a specific volume.
Actually, it can go two ways, so here let's
| | 05:30 | take a look at the Volume Light
parameters. We have the Shape of the light, so
| | 05:33 | we can have Box, Sphere, Cone,
Cylinder, and so on. OK, I'm going to put it
| | 05:40 | back to Sphere.
| | 05:42 | What you can do, is you can actually
direct the light. We can change the color
| | 05:45 | of it, and we can also direct the
light either Outward or Inward. So if I put
| | 05:50 | it Inward and just tick it, right over
that table there, maybe even scale it up
| | 05:56 | a little bit. It will only illuminate
those things within the volume. So what I
| | 06:00 | need to do is actually bring that
Inward and make the Color white, and you can
| | 06:10 | kind of see, you can kind of make it out.
Again, if we do it Outward, there we
| | 06:16 | go, that's what look better.
| | 06:17 | So the light is actually going Outward,
but it's also if you see here it's
| | 06:21 | very, very dim, but it's also
constrained by the volume, OK. You can also have
| | 06:27 | a Penumbra and these are actually ways
to create custom fall offs, so we can
| | 06:32 | actually create a curve here, for
example, the Penumbra, the Penumbra doesn't
| | 06:36 | have to be just a strict 0 to 1 fall off,
we can actually have a bit of a curve
| | 06:40 | to that. So that's the
basics of the Volume Light.
| | 06:43 | So those are the main types of light
that you can put into a Maya scene. So
| | 06:48 | let's move on and talk about
some more lighting parameters.
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| Adding depth-map shadows| 00:00 | If you want to add more realism to
your scene, you probably want to start
| | 00:04 | working with shadows. Shadows tend to
lock objects to surfaces. It gives you a
| | 00:08 | sense of where a light is coming from.
It can also set things like mood and
| | 00:13 | create a lot of dramatic effects.
| | 00:14 | So I'm going to go ahead and open
that file we've been working with, the
| | 00:17 | Table.mb, and we're going to light
this and put some shadows into it. So I'm
| | 00:23 | going to use a Spot Light. So I'm just
going to click here, and on my shelf, I
| | 00:28 | can create a spot light, which comes in
at (0,0), and I'm going to click on the
| | 00:31 | Manipulator tool and put that light up.
So I want to see what's going on here.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to go Use All Lights, and
I'm just going to position this light so
| | 00:42 | that it's above the table, and kind of
coming from the front just a little bit,
| | 00:48 | almost like the hero light, that sort
of thing or the a Hollywood light here.
| | 00:54 | I can actually do a quick render, see
what that looks like. Now, if you look at
| | 00:58 | that you say when you know that tables
kind of just floating above that floor,
| | 01:02 | because there is nothing locking it
to the floor. Well, that's why we need
| | 01:06 | shadows. So I have my light selected,
I'm going to hit Ctrl+A and go into my
| | 01:12 | Attribute Editor, and if you go up here
to Spot Light Attributes and you scroll
| | 01:16 | down, you'll see a roll out here that
says Shadows. Now, my screen is a little
| | 01:21 | tight here so I'm going to have to do
some scrolling, you'll probably see a lot
| | 01:24 | more on your screen than you see here.
| | 01:27 | But we have two types of shadows, we
have Depth Map Shadows, and if I scroll
| | 01:32 | down here, you'll see I also have
Raytrace shadows; two different types of
| | 01:37 | shadowing. Let's go through Depth Map
Shadows first, that's probably the more
| | 01:41 | common type of shadows, the type of
shadow that you wouldn't most likely use,
| | 01:45 | because it actually renders a lot faster.
| | 01:47 | Now, all you have to do is click it on,
and in fact, let's just take a quick
| | 01:51 | render here and see what it looks like,
there we go, there is a nice shadow,
| | 01:55 | OK. So now you can see how that locks
those objects into the scene. Shadows are
| | 02:01 | very important, when you're doing
lighting. Now we can affect something, if we
| | 02:05 | can actually change the shadow color.
Well that shadow is a little bit dark, so
| | 02:09 | if I bring this shadow up a little bit,
I can see it's a less dense now, it's a
| | 02:14 | little less black.
| | 02:15 | Now, let's talk a little bit about
how Depth Map Shadows work. They work by
| | 02:20 | creating a bitmap. What they do is
they actually look through the light, in
| | 02:24 | fact, if I wanted to, I can here in
fact let's go into four-viewport here, and
| | 02:28 | in fact, you can actually select your
light and you can actually under Panels
| | 02:34 | say, Look Through Selected and I can
see where my light is shining. This is
| | 02:39 | actually looking through that Spot
Light, we put in our scene. I did Panels,
| | 02:43 | Look Through Selected and this shows me
exactly where my Spot Light is shining.
| | 02:48 | So what it does is it goes through and
basically snaps a bitmap image of this
| | 02:52 | and it calculates where the objects are,
including the light, and it uses that
| | 02:56 | to create a bitmap to create the shadow.
Now, what happens with that is that
| | 03:01 | this bitmap has to be of specific size,
and that's what this Resolution is. So
| | 03:05 | if I dial this down to make it a low
resolution, let's say I make it like 64.
| | 03:09 | If I make it a very low resolution,
you can actually see that bitmap. So this
| | 03:15 | is a bitmap that it's calculating to
create the shadow. If I make it a high
| | 03:19 | value, something like that, you'll
see the shadow is very, very sharp.
| | 03:27 | So what I can do is I can use this
Resolution to actually create softer-edged
| | 03:31 | shadows. So if I make this 64 and
render it, you see well, I'm still getting
| | 03:37 | jaggies here. But what you can do is
there is also a thing called Filter Size
| | 03:41 | and what the Filter Size does is it
blurs that shadow. So if I bring that up to
| | 03:46 | say 4 or 5, it's going to totally blur
that. In fact, 5 might be too much, now
| | 03:53 | let's bring it down to 3. What that
does is it softens the edge of those shadows.
| | 03:58 | Now, I could also bring my Resolution
up to say 128 or whatever. Now, I'm using
| | 04:02 | multiples of 64, because that's how
Maya works, is that it will actually use
| | 04:07 | its buckets to create the shadows. So
if you had a shadow that's 65 it will
| | 04:12 | still use a bitmap that's the same size,
so I tend to work in multiples of 64.
| | 04:16 | So you can see how the shadow now of
this Filter Size actually blurs the edge
| | 04:23 | of that shadow. So what you have to
do here is you have to balance the
| | 04:26 | resolution of your shadow versus the
filtering of it. So low resolution will
| | 04:32 | make that edge more jaggy and the
Filter Size will blur it. So what you need to
| | 04:38 | do is kind of balance the resolution of
the Depth Map against your Filter Size.
| | 04:42 | Now, there is a couple of other
parameters here, one is Bias and what Bias does
| | 04:47 | is it actually moves the shadow a
little bit away from the object, because
| | 04:52 | sometimes if you have a Bias of 0 and
you have some really thin surfaces, this
| | 04:57 | shadow will appear in front of the
object. Again, that's just kind of an
| | 05:01 | artifact of the way that these
shadows are calculated. So typically we have
| | 05:05 | just a very small amount for that
Bias, but if we find that things are
| | 05:08 | shadowing a little in front of where
they should, you can increase that number
| | 05:12 | a little bit.
| | 05:13 | So that's the basics of Depth Map
Shadows, let's move onto Raytrace Shadows in
| | 05:18 | the next lesson.
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| Using raytrace shadows| 00:00 | The next type of shadow is Raytrace
Shadows. Now Raytrace Shadows introduce
| | 00:04 | another concept, and that's the
concept of Raytracing. Now what Raytracing is
| | 00:09 | normally used for is rendering
surfaces that are reflective, such as glass or
| | 00:13 | refractive, but it's also good for
shadows and one of the reasons you use
| | 00:17 | Raytrace Shadows is so you can render
semi-transparent surfaces. Now, we're
| | 00:22 | going to get a little bit deeper into
Raytracing later as where reflections and
| | 00:26 | refractions, but let's look
at how it works for shadows.
| | 00:29 | So I'm going to open up this scene,
scene, Table.mb, and we're going to put a
| | 00:36 | light in there. Let's just go ahead and
put a Spot Light in there, I'm going to
| | 00:39 | use the Manipulator tool here, and
position that so that you cast some shadows
| | 00:50 | there. OK, so let's do a quick
render and see how that looks, perfect.
| | 00:56 | OK, so we've got the light selected,
I'm going to hit Ctrl+A. Now, let's go
| | 01:00 | down, let's scroll down, open up our
Shadows and scroll down to Raytrace
| | 01:05 | Shadows. I'm going to turn that on
and I'm going to do a quick render the
| | 01:08 | current frame and there are no
shadows in there. Well, you think there is
| | 01:12 | something wrong. Well, there is because
we haven't turned on Raytracing. These
| | 01:17 | are Raytrace Shadows, we need to turn
on Raytracing in the renderer. So let's
| | 01:22 | go to our Render Settings window,
right here, and go to our Maya Software
| | 01:27 | renderer tab here and go down to
Parameters here, and the moment we will look
| | 01:32 | at here is Raytracing Quality.
| | 01:34 | Well, we don't need to worry so much
about the quality, we just need to turn it
| | 01:37 | on. So let's turn on Raytracing, and
we can close this window now. We have to
| | 01:43 | click on Raytracing for Raytrace
Shadows to work, that was the big key there.
| | 01:47 | So let's go ahead and do a render now.
Now, it renders those shadows. Also
| | 01:52 | notice how this is kind of slightly
reflective. That's where Raytracing is
| | 01:55 | kicking and see how that's kind of
reflective surface a little bit. But what I
| | 01:58 | want to look at here is the shadow. So
notice how the shadows are actually very
| | 02:02 | crisp, instead of creating a bitmap it
actually casts rays of light through the
| | 02:07 | scene and uses those to create the shadow.
| | 02:11 | Now, the big reason you want to use
Raytrace Shadows is that it will shadow
| | 02:14 | transparency. So if you have a
glass object or something and you want a
| | 02:18 | semi-transparent shadow or let's say a
stained glass window, Raytracing will
| | 02:23 | render the proper shadows for those
types of objects. Let's take this table for
| | 02:28 | example.
| | 02:28 | I'm just going to select it and I'm
going to go in my Attribute Editor. I'm
| | 02:32 | going to go over to this Table_Color
and this is just a color that I've used
| | 02:35 | for the table. Now, if I want to I can
add transparency for this. So let's make
| | 02:39 | it a glass table and just add 60-70%
transparency to this and let's do another render.
| | 02:45 | Now, what you can see here is that,
obviously the table is now transparent, but
| | 02:50 | also the shadow is transparent, and
that's one of the big reasons why you want
| | 02:55 | to use Raytrace Shadows. I'm actually
going to turn down Transparency there.
| | 02:59 | The thing about Raytrace Shadows is it
does create kind of harsh edge shadows
| | 03:03 | and lot of people don't like it
because they want the softer edge shadows.
| | 03:07 | So if I select my light, I'm going to
go back out here, and find my light,
| | 03:11 | there it is, select it, one of the
things you can do in Maya is actually add a
| | 03:17 | radius to the light so that the rays
that are casting those shadows are coming
| | 03:21 | from more than one place. If the rays
are casting shadows, all come to a place,
| | 03:26 | you're going to have a very sharp edge.
But again, think of the soft box where
| | 03:30 | you have the light coming from the area.
We can do that with Raytrace Shadows
| | 03:34 | by just turning up this Light Radius.
| | 03:35 | So if I turn it up to a larger number,
and also I have to increase the number
| | 03:39 | of Shadow Rays, because if I just cast
one ray, it's still going to create a
| | 03:44 | sharp shadow. I need to cast multiple
rays. So let's bring that up to like 16
| | 03:48 | and a bigger Light Radius. The one
thing this will do is it will ramp up our
| | 03:51 | render time. So let's do a quick
render of that and see what it looks like.
| | 03:55 | You can see here now, we're getting a
little bit of a soft edge to our shadow.
| | 03:59 | That's because we have a bigger Light
Radius and more Shadow Rays. If I wanted
| | 04:03 | to, I could make the Shadow Radius
bigger, add more Light Rays. Now, the number
| | 04:07 | of rays is really just going to affect,
in fact, let's pick that radius too and
| | 04:11 | do a quick render here.
| | 04:12 | Now, the number of Shadow Rays is
going to affect the quality of this edge
| | 04:18 | here. You can notice this is kind of
a little speckley, it's kind of got a
| | 04:21 | little bit of a dithering effect to it,
and that's because I have 16 Shadow
| | 04:26 | Rays. If I want to get rid of that I
would have to add more. But again that's
| | 04:30 | at the expense of more render time.
But you can see how Raytrace Shadows do a
| | 04:35 | few different things than Depth Map
shadows, particularly transparency and you
| | 04:40 | can see where you might want to use them.
| | 04:42 | So let's move on to some other
features of Maya's rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the basics of cameras| 00:00 | The next step in the rendering process
is adding in cameras. So once we have
| | 00:04 | our lit our scene, we add cameras so
we can photograph it. Now, we have been
| | 00:08 | doing rendering and we have been
rendering through the Perspective window and
| | 00:12 | that actually technically is a camera
in Maya, but it's not a camera that's an
| | 00:16 | object in the scene that we can
manipulate. In another words, it's not what we
| | 00:19 | would call a real camera and we can
create those in Maya through our shelf
| | 00:24 | here. So we can actually just click
there to create a camera. We can also
| | 00:27 | create them using Create > Cameras and
you will find there's actually three
| | 00:32 | types of Cameras, there's Camera,
Camera and Aim, Camera, Aim and Up. In fact,
| | 00:36 | I'm going to tear off this
menu, let's go through those.
| | 00:39 | Well, the first one is just Camera, so
what that is, is just a basic camera and
| | 00:43 | we can just move that around and rotate
it however we want and with any camera
| | 00:48 | once you create it, you can actually
look through it by just going, look
| | 00:51 | through the Perspective window and
looking through that camera and that is
| | 00:55 | actually what our camera sees. In fact,
you can see the camera in the scene as
| | 01:00 | I zoom out, you can see how I move
this camera around using my standard Maya
| | 01:04 | controls. So what is it, Alt and left-
click to Rotate, right-click to Zoom,
| | 01:10 | middle-click to Pane. So just using
those standard navigation controls, I'm
| | 01:15 | actually physically moving the camera.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to go back into my
Perspective window and let's create the other type
| | 01:23 | of camera. Let's create Camera and
Aim. What that does is it creates the
| | 01:26 | camera and it creates what is called
an aim point. So what I can do is I can
| | 01:31 | actually move the camera and it will
always be pointed at that aim point. If I
| | 01:36 | move the aim point, the
camera will always point at that.
| | 01:39 | Now this is great for if you really
need your camera to track something. You
| | 01:43 | can take this aim point which is
actually a separate object, if I go into
| | 01:47 | Outliner here, you can see there is
my first camera, my second camera is
| | 01:50 | actually a group with the camera
itself and the aim points. So I can actually
| | 01:54 | take that aim point out of the hierarchy,
link it to another object. So if you
| | 01:58 | wanted to follow the airplane flying
through the scene, you can just put that
| | 02:02 | aim point on the airplane and link it
to it and the camera would automatically
| | 02:06 | follow the airplane.
| | 02:08 | Now the third type is called the Camera,
Aim and Up and what that does is it
| | 02:13 | creates the camera, create the aim
point and it also creates this third little
| | 02:19 | node here which is the up point and if
you notice here, this actually rotates
| | 02:24 | the camera around the axis. So you can
actually tilt the camera by moving this
| | 02:29 | particular object. So those
are the basic types of cameras.
| | 02:33 | Now, let's get in to the Camera
Attributes and how to affect a camera itself.
| | 02:38 | So let's open a scene, let's open the
scene called Kitchen.mb and we are in our
| | 02:44 | Perspective window and obviously we
can look at the scene that way. But let's
| | 02:48 | go ahead and put a camera in the scene.
I'm just going to do it from the shelf
| | 02:52 | here, Create Camera, and now once I
have got that camera in the scene, the best
| | 02:57 | way to position the camera
is just to look through it.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to Perspective, camera1
and now I'm looking through that camera I
| | 03:04 | created and I can just use my
standard Maya navigation controls to move my
| | 03:08 | camera around. So I'm just holding
down the Alt key and left and right-click
| | 03:13 | all that stuff.
| | 03:15 | Now, when you are looking through
this camera, you can also see a number of
| | 03:19 | things. If we go here, we've got some
options here. One is we can actually
| | 03:23 | select the camera itself. OK, so if I
wanted to do something with the camera, I
| | 03:27 | can just go View > Select Camera and
that selects this current camera. In this
| | 03:31 | case, it's camera1.
| | 03:33 | We can also go into the Camera
Attribute Editor which gives us all of the
| | 03:37 | parameters for this camera which we
will get to in a second. We can also go
| | 03:42 | into Camera Settings. Now, what this
does is it gives us a couple of options
| | 03:46 | here, for example, Resolution Gate.
| | 03:48 | Let's take a look at what that is.
Now what the Resolution Gate does is it
| | 03:52 | shows us exactly what we will render.
So sometimes your viewports are little
| | 03:56 | bit wider, taller than what we are
rendering and so the Resolution Gate
| | 04:00 | actually tells you exactly where you
are going to render. We also have what's
| | 04:05 | called a Film Gate which shows us what
the film we'll see, if we are rendering
| | 04:09 | for film for example and that actually
will be, usually will be a little bit
| | 04:13 | less than the Resolution Gate. We can
also put up a Field Chart so we can see
| | 04:17 | exactly if we are animating with a
standard animation type of Field Chart. I
| | 04:22 | will turn that off.
| | 04:23 | We also have Safe Action and Safe Title
which we can also turn on and off. Now,
| | 04:28 | I'm going to leave Resolution Gate on
so we can see exactly what the camera is
| | 04:33 | seeing. Now, let's go over to the
Camera Attributes window. I have selected my
| | 04:38 | camera. I will go and Select Camera and
my Attributes window comes up. Now, the
| | 04:42 | first control we have is
actually what type of camera.
| | 04:45 | So all those camera that we created
using the Create menu, we can actually
| | 04:49 | between them. So we create a regular
camera. We can change that to a Camera and
| | 04:53 | Aim or Camera, Aim and Up. I'm going to
leave this a Camera. Now, the next one
| | 04:57 | is actually pretty important. This is
the Angle of View. This is the type of
| | 05:01 | lens that we have on the camera.
| | 05:03 | Now, anybody who has used 35
millimeter photography or has used the motion
| | 05:07 | picture camera knows that the length
of the lens really affects how the scene
| | 05:12 | is shot. So if length of lens is
shorter, the Angle of View goes wider. In
| | 05:17 | fact, watch how when I change 1,
the other one changes. These two are
| | 05:21 | interlinked. So the shorter the lens,
the wider the Angle of View. That's why
| | 05:26 | they call them wide angle lenses.
| | 05:27 | So for example, if I used a 12
millimeter lens, which is kind of almost a
| | 05:31 | fisheye lens, you can see I can get a
real fisheye type of a effect because I
| | 05:35 | have a very wide angle lens. If I go
long, let's say I use like a 135 which is
| | 05:42 | kind of a telephoto type of lens, you
will see that it actually compresses the
| | 05:46 | scene. Look at how the Perspective
changes as I lengthen or shorten the lens or
| | 05:51 | increase or decrease the Angle of
View. Wider angle lenses give us more
| | 05:56 | distortion and a longer lens or a
longer focal length lens, more telephoto lens
| | 06:02 | actually compresses our scene.
| | 06:06 | So typically, the standard lens, I
don't know, if anybody has used 50
| | 06:09 | millimeter lenses, but that's typically
the standard lenses anywhere from 40 to
| | 06:14 | 80 millimeter lenses is kind of a
standard for a 35 millimeter photography. But
| | 06:19 | again, whatever works for your scene.
Now, if you are matching your camera to
| | 06:23 | something in live action probably the
best thing to do is just make sure you go
| | 06:28 | on Settings and kind of record the
camera settings because that's the best way
| | 06:31 | to do it. If not, you just sometimes
will have to just, kind of, make it
| | 06:34 | happen, there are also third party
applications that can help you derive the
| | 06:38 | camera angle from the footage that you get.
| | 06:41 | The next thing I want to go through
is Clipping Planes. Now what Clipping
| | 06:44 | planes does is it allows you to see
only parts of the scene. So what you can do
| | 06:50 | is by reducing the Clipping Plane, you
can actually reduce what gets rendered.
| | 06:54 | So let's just go ahead and just take
this Clipping Plane and bring it down to
| | 06:58 | say 1. If I bring it to 1, well
actually it's I'm not going to see anything.
| | 07:01 | What that means is my
camera only sees out 1 unit.
| | 07:05 | If I make that higher, let's say I
will make it 40, you can see that this
| | 07:08 | camera only sees out 40 units or if I
make it 35, you can see how the camera
| | 07:14 | only sees out that many units. So as I
zoom in and out and actually dolly, the
| | 07:20 | camera, you can see that, that little
grey blob is 35 units away. So what you
| | 07:27 | can do is you can actually use
this. I use this as a modeling tool.
| | 07:30 | Sometimes if I don't want to see the
vertices on the opposite side of what I'm
| | 07:34 | modeling, I set the Clipping Plane to a
low amount and that way I'm only seeing
| | 07:39 | those vertices that are directly in
front of me. You can also use this as a
| | 07:43 | rendering tool to render things and
layers if you want to. I'm going to put
| | 07:47 | that back up to a 1000 which
is kind of the default value.
| | 07:52 | Now, there's also a few other options
here for our cameras. One is the Film
| | 07:56 | Gate and what that is, is basically
what type of film. If you are animating two
| | 08:02 | motion picture film, you are going to
be using this a lot. If you do Anamorphic
| | 08:06 | and so on and so forth. So this is
what type of film are you using and all of
| | 08:11 | that. How do you fit this Resolution
Gate? You go, Fill it, Horizontally,
| | 08:15 | Vertically, do Overscan and so on and
so forth. I always just keep it on Fill
| | 08:21 | and then there is some other options
here which we will get to. Some are for
| | 08:24 | Mental Ray, some are for
creating Depth of Field.
| | 08:27 | One more, I want to show you is
Environment and this is actually the default
| | 08:31 | color that you render. So if I zoom
out here and I have got nothing around,
| | 08:36 | this is the only objects in my scene,
if I render that, you will see that it's
| | 08:40 | surrounded by black and why is that
black is because that's the background
| | 08:44 | color. If I turn this up to white and
I do a quick render, you will see it's
| | 08:47 | surrounded by white. I obviously can
change it to any color I want. If I change
| | 08:52 | it to red, it will render in red. I'm
going to put this back to black here.
| | 08:57 | Another thing you can do is create
what's called an Image Plane. Now, what an
| | 09:00 | Image Plane is, is just a bitmap that's
attached to the camera. Now, typically
| | 09:06 | it's used for matching background
images to your 3D scene. Actually, we did use
| | 09:12 | Image Planes a little bit when we did
the Use Background Shader in the previous
| | 09:16 | chapter. What we did was we loaded that
picture of the desert scene and we put
| | 09:21 | an object in that scene to render that.
| | 09:23 | Now, this is where we did that. We
actually created an Image Plane here and
| | 09:27 | what that will do is that will just
create a background image. In fact, let's
| | 09:30 | just go ahead and do like create an
Image Plane and Image Name. But that was
| | 09:35 | actually in my previous chapter, so I
have to go up to 06, go to textures and I
| | 09:41 | believe it's Background.jpg and that's
our background image that we have. OK so
| | 09:46 | that's my Image Plane. So now when I
render, I will render that Image Plane.
| | 09:52 | So those are the basics of cameras.
Now let's move on to some camera effects
| | 09:57 | that we can do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding depth of field| 00:00 | The next thing I want to show you is
depth of field. Now, in normal photography
| | 00:05 | if you were to shoot something with
your lens fairly open, you would typically
| | 00:10 | have your subject in focus and your
background would be out of focus and this
| | 00:15 | is called Depth of Field. We can
simulate Depth of Field in Maya and let me
| | 00:19 | show you how to do that.
| | 00:20 | We are going to go ahead and open the
scene DOF.mb and it's a simple scene with
| | 00:28 | a cube and a cylinder, which we render
that and see what that looks like. In
| | 00:33 | fact, I'm going to do a little trick
here, I'm actually going to render this at
| | 00:36 | 320x240, so that it will render a
little bit faster, because once we start
| | 00:41 | using depth of field, it will actually
take a little while for me to render.
| | 00:45 | So what I can do for Depth of Field is
I need to select my Camera. So what I
| | 00:50 | can do is either Select Camera or just
go to Camera Attribute Editor and that
| | 00:54 | will give me, the attributes for the
camera. So if I want to, I can scroll down
| | 00:58 | and you will see, I've got a Depth of
Field roll-out here. If I turn that on,
| | 01:03 | it enables Depth of Field and I've got
a couple of things here. I've got the
| | 01:07 | Distance that this camera focuses. I've
got the F Stop, which is how wide open
| | 01:12 | that lens is. The more wide open the
lens, the more blurring you get. And then
| | 01:16 | you have another one called Focus
Region Scale, which is how much of the scene
| | 01:21 | is in focus or out of focus.
| | 01:24 | So let's just turn this on, and use
the defaults and let's just do a quick
| | 01:27 | render and see what happens and what
happens is that, everything is out of
| | 01:31 | focus. So, what we need to do is use
this Focus Distance to put the cube in
| | 01:37 | focus, which is what I want to be in focus.
| | 01:39 | Now, I need to figure out, how far
that cube is from the camera. Now, I could
| | 01:44 | measure that, I can just know where
the pivot point is of the cube, and the
| | 01:48 | camera and do some math to figure that
out. But I find a real easy short hand
| | 01:52 | way is just to use my Clipping Plane.
So what I can do is just take my Clipping
| | 01:56 | Plane and just type in a number, let's
say 05 was the number we had and that's
| | 02:01 | obviously too close,
because everything is blocked out.
| | 02:03 | Let's go a little bit higher, let's go
15 and you can see well, maybe 15 is a
| | 02:07 | good number, because that's kind of
been in the middle of that cube. If we did
| | 02:11 | like 12 or something like that, you
can see that that's about where the cube is.
| | 02:15 | It's somewhere between 12 and 15.
So I'm going to type in a big number back
| | 02:20 | in there, by Clipping Plane back to normal.
| | 02:22 | So now I know it's somewhere between 12
and 15, it is where the center of that
| | 02:26 | cube is. So let's just put this at say
14 or something like that and do a quick
| | 02:32 | render. So when I do a quick render,
you can see that the cube is pretty much
| | 02:37 | in focus and what's behind it,
which is that cylinder, is out of focus.
| | 02:42 | So now we are getting our Depth of
Field affect. If I want to, I can bring this
| | 02:46 | F Stop down and get more blurring. If
I do that, you can see I've got more
| | 02:51 | blurring on the background. If I bring
my F Stop up high, then I kind of get
| | 02:58 | rid of that effect. So
this determines the blurring.
| | 03:01 | Now, I'm going to put this right around
4 or 5, somewhere around there and now,
| | 03:04 | this Focus Region Scale determines,
how wide the focus area is. So if I bring
| | 03:10 | that up to say 4 and I do a quick
render, you can see that it's actually not
| | 03:15 | blurring as much. If I bring it down
to say 2, it wasn't 1, I'm getting more
| | 03:21 | blurring, bring it down to
1, get even more blurring.
| | 03:28 | So again this determines the width of
my focal range. So those are the basics
| | 03:32 | of Depth of Field in Maya and there is
also another type of Depth of Field and
| | 03:37 | that's using Mental Ray, which
calculates the Depth of Field differently.
| | 03:40 | So in the next chapter, when we go
through Mental Ray, I will show another way
| | 03:44 | to do Depth of Field from that renderer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Raytracing reflections and refractions| 00:00 | We talked a little bit about raytracing
in terms of shadows, but raytracing can
| | 00:05 | also be used for creating reflections
and refractions, in fact that's probably
| | 00:09 | the prime reason for using raytracing
in the Maya Software renderer. So let's
| | 00:14 | take a look at a scene and we'll show
you how to setup raytracing and some of
| | 00:18 | the parameters involved with it. I'm
going to open a scene called Bowl.mb,
| | 00:23 | a very simple scene; it's a bowl
with a sphere in it on a table.
| | 00:27 | So let's take a quick render of
that and see what it looks like.
| | 00:31 | It's essentially what we see. It's a semi-
transparent bowl with a sphere on it on the table.
| | 00:37 | Now, if I want to create reflections,
first thing, I have to do is turn on
| | 00:42 | Raytracing. So I'm going to go into
my Render Settings window, go to Maya
| | 00:46 | Software renderer and if I scroll down
here, I'm going to go into Raytracing
| | 00:51 | Quality. There is actually a checkbox
here where I can turn on Raytracing, lets
| | 00:55 | just turn that on, I'm going to close
that and do a quick render. And you can
| | 01:01 | see pretty quickly, when I turn on
Raytracing, how the table becomes reflective
| | 01:06 | and actually almost everything in
this scene is reflective. In fact I can
| | 01:09 | probably zoom in a little bit more and
do another render so we can see this a
| | 01:13 | little bit more closely. And you
can see how everything reflects off of
| | 01:17 | everything else.
| | 01:18 | Now, why is that? Why all of sudden
did the table become reflective? If I
| | 01:22 | select the table and I hit Ctrl+A
to go into my Attribute Editor, I can
| | 01:27 | go over here to my Shader, which is
always the last tab, and I can see that this
| | 01:32 | is a Phong Shader, this is the Color.
But what I'm really looking for is if I
| | 01:36 | go down to Specular Shading, I'll see
the Reflectivity value. If I bring this
| | 01:41 | down to 0, the table doesn't reflect;
if I bring it up high, it does reflect.
| | 01:49 | When you have Raytracing turned on,
the reflectivity of your shaders affects
| | 01:55 | how the particular object is reflected.
| | 01:59 | So we also have some options in our
Render Settings window. So if we go back
| | 02:04 | over to Render Settings, we do
have options that determine, how many
| | 02:07 | reflections are we Raytracing. So
right now we're only Raytracing one
| | 02:12 | reflection, which is the reflection
of the bowl and everything else off the
| | 02:15 | table. If I turn this up, you can
have reflections of reflections; so I can
| | 02:20 | have a reflection in the bowl of the
bowl's reflection on the table and so on
| | 02:24 | and so forth.
| | 02:25 | Now, when you go towards production
quality, remember how we have this Quality
| | 02:30 | pull down here in the Maya Software
renderer; if I go to Production quality,
| | 02:35 | which is typically, what you will use
for your final renders; you will notice
| | 02:39 | how it automatically pumps up the
Reflections and Refractions to 10, which will
| | 02:43 | give you a higher degree of rendering.
Sometimes, though you may not want that
| | 02:48 | many reflections, so you can always
turn that down. But let's go ahead and see
| | 02:51 | how that looks with that Production
quality rendering. Now, it will take a
| | 02:54 | little bit longer to render, but you
can see how the reflections are pretty nice.
| | 02:58 | Now, the other thing I want to talk
about is Refractions. Now, Refractions is
| | 03:03 | kind of the lens effect that you get
when you look through a semi-transparent
| | 03:07 | object, how it kind of distorts the
objects behind it. So what I'm going to do
| | 03:11 | is I'm going to actually move this a
little bit, so we can kind of see through
| | 03:14 | this bowl.
| | 03:15 | Now, I have Refractions turned on here.
Obviously, I'm Raytracing up to 10
| | 03:20 | refractions, but if I render it; it
doesn't really show up, and you're see
| | 03:24 | pretty much straight through the bowl,
you're not seeing any sort of refractive
| | 03:28 | effects here.
| | 03:29 | Now, why is that? Well, it's because
refractions also have to be setup in the
| | 03:34 | material on the object. So I can select
my bowl and go into my Attribute Editor
| | 03:39 | and select the Shader for that bowl,
which is this phongE2, and if I scroll
| | 03:45 | down you can see I have my Reflectivity,
but if I scroll down further, you'll
| | 03:49 | see I have Raytrace Options here and
in order for Refractions to calculate I
| | 03:56 | have to turn it on.
| | 03:57 | Now, this is on a per shader basis, so
obviously the shader would be applied to
| | 04:02 | any number of different objects. But I
also have a Refraction Limit here, which
| | 04:06 | is 6 which is typically a good number
to use, but again in the render I have
| | 04:10 | it at 10. So I can actually bring it up
if I want to. I can bring it up to 9 or 10 or
| | 04:14 | whatever and I also have a Refractive Index.
| | 04:17 | So this is how much of a lens effect
do I have, so if I do click render of
| | 04:21 | this. With Refractions turned on, you'll
see that with the Refractive Index of 1
| | 04:26 | I still don't have any effect. So
let's turn that Refractive Index;
| | 04:30 | let's turn that like about 1.6.
| | 04:32 | When I do that, you can see here along
the edge of the bowl now, I'm getting
| | 04:37 | that Refractive effect, I'm getting
that lens effect as a light from the object
| | 04:43 | behind it goes through. If I turn it up
way high -- in fact let's get a little
| | 04:48 | bit lower there so you can see that.
You can see how the effect works.
| | 04:55 | Now if I go negative this becomes,
instead of a concave lens, it becomes a convex
| | 05:00 | lens and so it changes it again. So
again the negative Refractive Index will
| | 05:07 | affect it differently than a positive
Refractive Index. So you can see how it's
| | 05:12 | refracting differently.
| | 05:13 | Now there's one more thing I do want
to show you and there is some additional
| | 05:16 | parameters here for Refractions like
how much does that surface absorb light.
| | 05:21 | So as light transmits through a
surface it does lose some energy, so this can
| | 05:26 | simulate that. We can also calculate a
Surface Thickness. So if you only have a
| | 05:30 | one-sided object, then you can actually
create a kind of a pseudo thickness for
| | 05:35 | that. We can also attenuate
shadows as they pass through the object.
| | 05:39 | So those are some of the basics of
Raytracing within Maya and the Maya Software
| | 05:44 | renderer. So let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Motion Blur| 00:00 | Let's discuss Motion Blur. For those
who are not familiar with it, Motion Blur
| | 00:04 | is the blurring that occurs in a still
image or a motion picture image, when an
| | 00:09 | object moves while the shutter is open.
| | 00:12 | If you have ever taken a photograph
where you have slow shutter speeds and the
| | 00:16 | subject moves while you take the
picture, you're pretty much going to be
| | 00:19 | assured that you are going to have a
blurry image. And to some degree, as
| | 00:23 | anything moves in front of the camera,
it's going to blur in that way. And so
| | 00:27 | adding Motion Blur to a scene will give
it an extra sense of realism, a realism
| | 00:32 | being that it was photographed. OK,
that's the photographic realism that we are
| | 00:36 | looking for.
| | 00:37 | So, we can do Motion Blur both in
the Maya Software, and the Mental Ray
| | 00:41 | renderers. Let's look at how the Maya
Software renderer handles Motion Blur.
| | 00:47 | I'm going to open a scene, the scene
is going to be called Plane.mb, which is
| | 00:51 | that airplane.
| | 00:52 | Now, in order to do Motion Blur, we
actually do need something in motion, which
| | 00:58 | means we need to animate something, and
we really haven't gotten to that point
| | 01:01 | yet in learning Maya. So, I've already
animated the propeller of this airplane,
| | 01:07 | and if you scrub the time slider
down here, you can see it moving.
| | 01:10 | So, if we want to, we can just zoom in.
In fact I'm going to go ahead and go
| | 01:14 | Camera Settings, and put on my
Resolution Gate. So I know exactly where my
| | 01:19 | camera is because I'm going to get in
kind of close of that propeller, so we
| | 01:23 | can take a look at it.
| | 01:24 | So, if I want to turn on Motion Blur;
I can go into my Render Settings window
| | 01:29 | here. So, we go in here, and I go to
the Maya Software Tab and I scroll down,
| | 01:35 | I'll see a little roll out here called
Motion Blur. Now, by default, it's not
| | 01:39 | turned on. In fact I'm going to leave
it off, and we are just going to do quick
| | 01:43 | render here.
| | 01:43 | So, I'm going to just click here,
render the current frame and there is my
| | 01:48 | image. Now, the image is not Motion Blur,
and you can see the propeller is just
| | 01:53 | still, even though the propeller is
animated, and so we kind of lose that sense
| | 01:57 | that the propeller is in motion. We
can turn on Motion Blur, and you will
| | 02:01 | notice there's a couple of settings.
There is a 2D and a 3D setting.
| | 02:06 | Now, let me explain the difference
between them. 2D Motion Blur is for objects
| | 02:11 | that are moving left to right, up
and down that are moving kind of
| | 02:15 | perpendicular to the camera. That's
kind of a 2D Motion Blur, and what it does
| | 02:19 | is it just blurs it left to right or
up and down. It just blurs it in two
| | 02:23 | dimensions. For many applications, 2D
Motion Blur will render just fine and
| | 02:28 | it's a lot more efficient
in terms of render time.
| | 02:31 | So, let's play with that at first. OK.
So we click on 2D, and we have Blur by
| | 02:35 | frame, blur length, how long is the
Motion Blur, how sharp is the Motion Blur,
| | 02:40 | and then a smoothing value that kind
of blurs it, and then whether it will be
| | 02:44 | smoothed by Alpha channel or Color,
and this is actually really important.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to do a quick test with it,
set on Alpha, and the rest of them at
| | 02:51 | the default. And you will notice, this
is kind of ugly. Well, this is because
| | 02:57 | this is rendering against an Alpha
channel, and it's trying to blur this using
| | 03:02 | Alpha, and so I'm not going to use that.
| | 03:04 | So we switch over to the Color, switch
here Color, and render it again. Much,
| | 03:09 | much, better, and I wanted to show
that to you, because a lot of people will
| | 03:13 | turn that on and then it gets broken.
But, actually it's not, it's just a
| | 03:17 | different type of setting. So, as you
can see now we've got blurring on the
| | 03:21 | propeller.
| | 03:22 | Now, we can adjust that; if we want to,
we can certainly up the Blur length, so
| | 03:27 | that makes it pretty big. But also
notice here, now this is where we can start
| | 03:31 | to see some of the differences in
this. If you notice, this is actually
| | 03:34 | blurring horizontally. We are not
getting the roundness of the propeller
| | 03:37 | spinning, it's just kind of
giving a much more horizontal effect.
| | 03:41 | So that's kind of one of the downfalls
of this 2D Motion Blur. Let's go ahead
| | 03:44 | and switch over to 3D Motion Blur, and
what we've got is we've only got one
| | 03:48 | setting here, which is Blur by frame,
which is how many frames back do you want
| | 03:53 | to calculate the blurring. So, the
higher the number, the more the blurring.
| | 03:56 | So let's just keep it on 3D and try it
again. OK, much better, very different
| | 04:02 | quality of Motion Blur. It has kind of
a more dithered aspect to it, obviously
| | 04:08 | both can work.
| | 04:08 | Now, the difference between these
two is that a 3D Motion Blur works much
| | 04:13 | better for objects that blur within
themselves. So, a 2D Motion Blur would work
| | 04:18 | of this propeller, because it's
blurring along the edges. But, let's say you
| | 04:21 | had a complex object, and it was
tumbling, and it was rotating. Well, that's
| | 04:26 | where a 3D really comes in handy,
because what it does is it actually
| | 04:29 | calculates the actual Motion Blur and
3D Motion Blur is a lot more accurate at
| | 04:34 | the cost of render time.
| | 04:35 | So those are the basics of Motion Blur,
and let's move on to some other topics.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using interactive rendering with IPR| 00:00 | As you start lighting and rendering
scenes, you are going to need to go back
| | 00:05 | and forth a lot, you are going to
change the parameter of light or texture or
| | 00:10 | something like that and then you are
going to want to see the results in a render.
| | 00:14 | Now, typically this can be a very back
and forth and time intensive process. So
| | 00:19 | to help you along with this process
Maya has a feature called IPR, which stands
| | 00:24 | for Interactive Photorealistic
Rendering and this is a little button here that
| | 00:28 | says IPR Render. Let me show you how
that works. I'm going to open a scene.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to open Kitchen.mb and
that's our basic kitchen scene. I'm going to
| | 00:38 | go ahead and turn on my Resolution Gate,
so you can see what I have got and I
| | 00:42 | want to add a light into the scene.
| | 00:44 | Let's start lighting this scene. I'm
going to put in the Spot Light into the
| | 00:48 | scene and I'm going to turn on the
Manipulator here so we can actually
| | 00:52 | manipulate the spot light. And I can do
a rough lighting test here, by doing Use
| | 00:56 | All Lights to kind of show how that
light works. But it really doesn't show
| | 01:01 | exactly how it's going to render. In
fact, I'm going to zoom-in here a little
| | 01:04 | bit and I can go into a four view
here so we can kind of see everything.
| | 01:09 | So, if go into my Render Settings
window and actually, I want to render a
| | 01:14 | smaller frame here. I'm just going to
render 320x240. So if we highlight the
| | 01:20 | Perspective window and do a quick
render here, just using Render at the current
| | 01:24 | frame, you can see that we need to
widen up that spot light and change some
| | 01:28 | parameters there.
| | 01:29 | So lets go ahead and use IPR. Let me
show you how this works. I'm going to go
| | 01:33 | ahead and instead of clicking Render
Current Frame, I'm going to go to IPR
| | 01:36 | Render the current frame, left-click on
that and again it just renders it, but
| | 01:42 | down here you see in yellow it says,
Select a region to begin tuning.
| | 01:46 | So what I can do is left-click and
drag and just box out what I want to
| | 01:51 | update. Now, anything inside this red
box will automatically update as the
| | 01:56 | scene changes. So if I select this
light here, I can go Ctrl+A, go into my
| | 02:02 | Attribute Editor here and I can start
changing my Light Parameters. So for
| | 02:06 | example, I can make my spot light
broader. So just by changing my Cone
| | 02:11 | Angle, I can change the intensity of
the light. I can make it brighter or
| | 02:15 | darker and notice how this is
updating in real time in this window. I can
| | 02:20 | also do stuff like add shadows to the window.
| | 02:22 | Now when I do something like add shadows,
I do need to re-render this. Some of
| | 02:26 | these things actually do need to be re-
rendered. So, if I'm in here and I turn
| | 02:31 | on Shadows and the shadows don't come
on, that means I need to re-render this
| | 02:35 | window, which means redo previous IPR
Render. So hit this button or I can hit
| | 02:40 | this button again, either one do the
same thing. What this does, is it will
| | 02:43 | render it now with shadows and again,
I can highlight this and now, once the
| | 02:48 | shadows are in the IPR, I can
start changing the parameters.
| | 02:53 | So for example, I can change the shadow
color, exactly the much lighter shadow,
| | 02:57 | if I wanted to and I can also, I
think I can change the Filter Size of the
| | 03:01 | Shadow to get the blurriness of that
shadow as well. Now, there are some
| | 03:06 | parameters that won't go with IPR and so,
you just have to experiment, but for
| | 03:11 | general lighting it's a great tool,
it's a really nice tool. You can even
| | 03:16 | adjust the positions of the lights.
| | 03:18 | So, if I select this light here and I
select this source using that Manipulator
| | 03:22 | tool, I can move the light all the
way over here and you can see how this
| | 03:26 | affects the way that this lighting
works. So again, we have got a lot of
| | 03:32 | options here. Now this is a really
nice tool for quickly scoping out the
| | 03:36 | rendering of a scene. Let's
move on to some more tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rendering in batches| 00:00 | Up until at this point we have been
working mostly with still images, single
| | 00:04 | frames and when you render a single
frame, you can just save it out however you
| | 00:08 | want. But as we get into animation and
creating image sequences, you're going
| | 00:14 | to have to start using the batch render.
| | 00:16 | Now there are several different ways to
render multiple images in Maya. You can
| | 00:22 | also do Command Line rendering. So
you can scripts that you render. You can
| | 00:25 | also use third party render managers,
there are a number of them out there. I'm
| | 00:30 | not going to show you them here, but
the one we use here is called Smedge,
| | 00:34 | which is actually free for the first
license and then it's fairly inexpensive.
| | 00:38 | And there are a number of other ones
out there and what they do is they allow
| | 00:41 | you to manage the whole network render.
| | 00:44 | So, let me show you batch rendering,
which is actually kind of a nice little way
| | 00:48 | to render multiple files. So we are
going to go ahead and open a scene,
| | 00:51 | actually I put a scene out there
called Plane01.mb and that's that same
| | 00:58 | airplane scene we had and I just added
a little bit of motion to the airplane,
| | 01:02 | so that way it will fly past the scene
and so we will have some animation to render.
| | 01:07 | So, if I want to render this into
multiple frames, the first thing I need to do
| | 01:10 | is make sure that my Render Settings
are set up properly. So, I go over here,
| | 01:14 | click Render Settings and I will need
to make sure that this is set up for multiple
| | 01:18 | frames. Now, this is all determined
right here, where Frame/Animation extension.
| | 01:25 | If it's on either this on or this one,
it's only going to render one frame.
| | 01:29 | Now, if it goes any one of these, it
will render multiple frames. It will render
| | 01:34 | animation. So, what I like doing is I
like this setting here, which is named
| | 01:39 | with the number of the frame and then the
extension. You can see up here, it says
| | 01:43 | file name Plane011 to Plane0110. So
the name of this file is Plane01. So it's
| | 01:50 | actually using that scene name. I can
also put in any name I want. So I can go
| | 02:03 | PlaneFlyby or whatever.
| | 02:03 | So, now it's PlaneFlyby 1-10, but I
wanted to actually go 01 or 001. So, let's
| | 02:05 | just go ahead and bring up this Frame
Padding, what that does is 001-010 and
| | 02:11 | I've got 48 frames in this scene here.
And which camera do I want to render?
| | 02:16 | Now, here is where we can decide which
camera? So, actually I'm going to select
| | 02:19 | camera1 which is that camera that I
want to render and what type a file? That's
| | 02:24 | the last one is what type of
file do we want to render to?
| | 02:27 | Now, we can't render to an AVI file.
Now, I usually don't recommend rendering
| | 02:32 | to motion files because what happens is
that in order for that to take effect,
| | 02:37 | you have to render in this case all
48 frames and then Maya at the very end
| | 02:42 | puts it together into the AVI file.
| | 02:44 | Now, what happens is that maybe
somebody-- this has happened to me. Somebody
| | 02:48 | kicks out the plug on frame 47 and
it never gets to frame 48. So it never
| | 02:53 | completes the AVI file and what happens
is you have to start from scratch. So,
| | 02:58 | typically I render to image files,
still image files and then I go into
| | 03:03 | Premiere, Final Cut, After Effects, any
one of those, any image motion editing
| | 03:08 | program and I just them together there.
| | 03:11 | So, I'm just going to render these as
JPEGS and I'm going to render from 1-48
| | 03:15 | and let's just do this at 320x240. So,
now once I have this all set, all I have
| | 03:20 | to do is go into Rendering, Render >
Batch Render and there is a little option,
| | 03:25 | click here and this says, do you want
to use all available processors? How many
| | 03:30 | do you want to use? Some of this
depends on your system. Now with all these
| | 03:34 | quad-core processors, I have seen some
of the new Mac's have as many as eight cores.
| | 03:38 | So, you can use up to eight cores.
Although you can use just four of them or
| | 03:44 | six of them and leave a couple free,
so you can continue to animate while the
| | 03:48 | scene renders. So this actually allows
you to specify, how much of your system
| | 03:52 | do you want to use. If you click this
it uses every available processor and
| | 03:56 | just kind of dominates the whole
system until it's rendered. And then all you
| | 04:00 | have to do is just hit Batch Render
and it goes. Now if you look down here on
| | 04:04 | this whole status line, it will tell
you what's happening. It will say, Result:
| | 04:07 | Rendering with Maya Software and then
it will go through and it will kind of
| | 04:11 | collect up all the data and then it
will calculate things like shadows and now
| | 04:14 | it will start rendering.
| | 04:16 | Now it's actually rendering pretty fast.
It seems like it's rendering about a
| | 04:19 | frame every couple of seconds here and
if I want to I could minimize this as I
| | 04:24 | render. I'm going to go off to my
Desktop and go into my exercise files. Now,
| | 04:27 | those files, they are going be put
into my project folder in the images
| | 04:31 | directory. So, if go here, I find
Images, you could see here are my images.
| | 04:36 | So, if I want to, I can view by
thumbnails and here it is and you can see it's
| | 04:40 | just adding frames at a time. So,
it's actually rendering pretty fast.
| | 04:44 | Now, let me -- as this renders, let
me just tell you another reason why you
| | 04:47 | want to render single frames at time.
If you are going to use a render farm or
| | 04:51 | something like that, you will want to
dedicate one machine per frame and so
| | 04:55 | that way you can divide up the
rendering. If you are rendering an AVI file it
| | 04:59 | has take up just one machine and one
machine only, you can't distribute the load.
| | 05:03 | So, let's take a look at these. So,
here is my PlaneFlyby, if I just bring that
| | 05:07 | up in one of my viewers, I can just
see how that works. So there it is. There
| | 05:12 | is my animation, beautiful. So
once that's done, I think Maya has just
| | 05:17 | completed, it will say, Maya
Completed and then it actually will write out a
| | 05:20 | render log to see if there were any
problems or anything like that. So, that's
| | 05:24 | the basics of batch rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Command-Line rendering| 00:00 | Command line rendering allows you to
type in your rendering commands from a
| | 00:05 | shell. On the Mac or in Linux system
that would be a UNIX shell or Linux shell.
| | 00:10 | In the PC that would be a DOS shell.
I'm on a PC. Unfortunately we are going
| | 00:15 | to have to use DOS, but let me show you
some of the basics of command line rendering.
| | 00:20 | Now, command line rendering, obviously,
takes place from a Command Prompt. If
| | 00:24 | we are on DOS, you can basically just go
Start > Run and then just type in the
| | 00:30 | word cmd and that will bring up the
command line. Now, what happens is we have
| | 00:35 | a command out there called Render. So
we can just say render and if we do that
| | 00:38 | it say Missing file name. What we
have to actually do is give it the name of
| | 00:42 | the file that we want.
| | 00:44 | So what we can do is either CD to that
directory or we can just find the name
| | 00:49 | of the file. Usually what I do is I
like to go into the directory, because it
| | 00:54 | makes a lot easier, because I don't have
to keep typing long file names. Here is a
| | 00:57 | little cheat that I use in DOS is I
actually go into my directory here.
| | 01:01 | So let's say I want to render
something out of 07 and so I go into
| | 01:05 | exercisefiles\07\scenes, this is where
all the scenes are that I'm using for
| | 01:09 | this rendering stuff. So now here is
the name of that directory. So all I have
| | 01:13 | to do, is highlight that, hit Copy and
then in my command window I just go cd
| | 01:17 | space and then I right-click over the
menu bar here, Edit > Paste and so it
| | 01:23 | says cd to that path, which is
right there, hit Return. There I am.
| | 01:30 | So if I hit Dir or if you are on UNIX,
you would hit LS. So on DOS, it would be
| | 01:36 | Dir, in UNIX it will be LS and this is
the name of all my files. So I have the
| | 01:41 | Kitchen file, those two ones with the
airplanes in them. So all I have to do is
| | 01:46 | type render and the name of file, Plane
.mb, in UNIX particularly, it is case
| | 01:54 | sensitive; DOS really isn't but
UNIX is. So make sure you get your
| | 01:57 | capitalization correct, hit Return and
it starts rendering and it will give all
| | 02:02 | the stuff that it needs in order to render.
| | 02:05 | If I want to, I can also set a lot
of options for that render. So If I do
| | 02:10 | render_h, h is for help. I think I can
expand this. Yes, I can and if you hit
| | 02:17 | Return from there, you can actually
see all of the options. There is a ton of
| | 02:23 | them and this is how it works, render
any one of these options and the file name.
| | 02:27 | So I can say render_renderdirectory,
give it a path; render_im give it a file
| | 02:34 | name, starting frame, end frame, you
can turn on Alpha. Almost, all of those
| | 02:39 | rendering options that you have in
the render settings window, can be
| | 02:43 | configured here. You can set your
Motion Blur options, you can set really
| | 02:47 | anything. So this is a really nice way
to totally control you rendering from
| | 02:52 | the command line, but more importantly,
it's a way to control rendering from a
| | 02:56 | script.
| | 02:56 | So if you go into something like
Notepad or any other editor, what you can do
| | 03:03 | Is you can actually start creating a
batch file. Now, what a batch file is
| | 03:08 | essentially just a list of the
commands that you would normally type in these
| | 03:12 | directories. For example, you type
render and then the name of a file.
| | 03:18 | So we could say render the name, we can
say render Plane01.mb and then you can
| | 03:28 | say, render -- what are some other
ones Kitchen.mb. OK, so what you can do Is
| | 03:36 | you can start typing all of these
commands in there, and if you want to, you
| | 03:39 | can say, render this with specific
options here and so on and so forth, and
| | 03:45 | what we can do is create a whole list
of the files that we want to render and
| | 03:48 | then what we can do is save that out
in DOS that would be a .BAT in file. In
| | 03:53 | UNIX or Linux, you can just save it
with any name, but what you have to do is
| | 03:57 | you have to go ahead and change your
permissions using change mod, chmod and
| | 04:02 | then you just change the permissions
to 755 or +X or something like that, so
| | 04:07 | that you can execute the file.
| | 04:09 | In DOS, you will just save it with .
BAT extension, which means it's a batch
| | 04:13 | file and then you execute this file
and then it will just go through and feed
| | 04:17 | these commands to the operating
system and it will render you scenes.
| | 04:21 | Now, obviously here, we want to make
sure we get output directories and that
| | 04:25 | sort of thing. We can do that in our
scenes. So if I set a scene up with my
| | 04:30 | Render Settings and I actually give it
a name and an extension and a scene name
| | 04:36 | and so on and so forth, then all of
these options, this is what it will default
| | 04:39 | to. So typically, what I do is I try
and set it all here, so I can see it and
| | 04:43 | then in my batch file, I just try
to keep it as simple as possible.
| | 04:49 | Now, the batch file is a great way to
render multiple files. But if you are
| | 04:53 | going to be rendering lots and lots and
lots of files or using a render farm or
| | 04:57 | anything like that, look into some of
the third party render managers for Maya.
| | 05:01 | Those will probably save you a lot of
headaches. But if you are good with the
| | 05:05 | operating system and writing scripts,
it's a great way to very quickly render a
| | 05:10 | lot of files.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting a room| 00:00 | So now let's show you how to use the
rendering tools to actually light and
| | 00:04 | render a scene, and we're just going to
do a very simple scene. We're going to
| | 00:07 | do the kitchen scene that we have
been playing with. If we just hit Render,
| | 00:14 | right here, we're just going to do a
quick render and we'll see what happens
| | 00:18 | and basically what it is, is not much
happens because it's got the default
| | 00:22 | lighting in the scene. If there isn't
any light in the scene Maya will put a
| | 00:27 | light into the scene to just give you
kind of a general light for rendering and
| | 00:31 | that sort of stuff for tests and stuff,
but we want to actually light this.
| | 00:35 | So let's take kind of a quick look at
the scene and see where do we want the
| | 00:38 | light coming from. I think I want
some light coming in from this kitchen
| | 00:42 | window, streaming into the kitchen,
plus some general overall lighting. So
| | 00:46 | we're going to keep it fairly simple,
not a whole lot of lights and typically
| | 00:49 | you can light a scene with not too
many lights. Always try and only add light
| | 00:55 | when you need it, because every time
you add like you are adding brightness to
| | 00:58 | the scene. So you really want to start
from a dark scene and then just work you
| | 01:01 | way up. Also, I want to put in the
camera and frame the scene, so let's start
| | 01:06 | with the camera.
| | 01:06 | We are going to go into, let's just do
Create > Cameras and let's just create a
| | 01:10 | basic camera. Then I want to look
through it. So I'm going to go Perspective >
| | 01:14 | camera 1, and go into that view and
let's just go ahead and frame it. If I'm
| | 01:19 | going to frame it accurately, I do
need to turn on a Resolution Gate so that
| | 01:23 | way we can see exactly what that looks
like. So I'm going to frame it because
| | 01:29 | this is really only a two-sided set
so you really can't shoot the other two
| | 01:32 | walls anyways. So that's pretty good.
So let's just go ahead and meet that
| | 01:36 | there for now. Now let's
work with some lighting here.
| | 01:39 | I want a light that comes through this
kitchen window. Now, if I look at this
| | 01:43 | set, in fact I'm going to go into a
Perspective view, not the camera1 view,
| | 01:47 | Perspective view, which gives me a
little bit different view and I'm going to
| | 01:50 | go ahead and shade that. If you want
a light to come through this window,
| | 01:54 | basically what you need to do is get a
light, a spot light that has a cone that
| | 01:59 | kind of fits right there. We don't want
to overshoot this; we don't want light
| | 02:02 | spilling over the top or anything like
that. So let's go ahead and put a light
| | 02:06 | in the scene and let's do this
from the Rendering menu here.
| | 02:09 | I'm just going to stick a Spot Light in
the scene. Now, if we look at that Spot
| | 02:13 | Light, we see it facing the wrong way.
If we want we can move it just by
| | 02:17 | rotating it or we can use the
Manipulator and that's my favorite way to use it.
| | 02:21 | So let's go ahead and do that, and
let's get this light going in through that
| | 02:26 | window. You can see the window a little
bit here, in fact, if I can shade that
| | 02:29 | you can see a little bit better. So you
can see it coming here, but because we
| | 02:32 | have created the light at the origin,
we have to move it up. Now, I like using
| | 02:36 | this Manipulator because this line
shows me exactly where the light is going.
| | 02:40 | So if I put that there, move that a
little bit forward, you can play with this
| | 02:45 | a little bit. We can see that that
light is coming through that window. Now,
| | 02:51 | I'm going to go into my camera view and
let's just do a quick render. In fact,
| | 02:56 | if we want we could use IPR, but I
think this will be just as fast. OK, so it
| | 03:00 | is lighting the scene, but I'm not
really getting what I want because I really
| | 03:05 | wanted to create shadows. So I still
need to keep the light selected and in
| | 03:10 | Spot Light Attributes, I need to go
down to Shadows and we need to use Depth
| | 03:15 | Map Shadows.
| | 03:16 | So let's just turn that on, this basic
light here, and let's just see what that
| | 03:21 | does. Again, notice how I'm starting
from black. I just want to get that
| | 03:25 | shadow, that's when I'm getting is that
light streaming through that window. So
| | 03:30 | if I want to I can play with these
shadow parameters a little bit, maybe make
| | 03:33 | it just a little it blurrier so maybe
up my Filter Size by 2 and maybe it gives
| | 03:38 | a little bit better view, OK.
| | 03:40 | So that's my light through the window,
that all it's really doing is creating
| | 03:44 | that shadow. Now, I need a general
light and I'm just going to create another
| | 03:47 | Spot Light in the scene and my
Manipulator tool is still on. This is actually
| | 03:53 | the camera that I'm using, because
the camera is coming from this side, I
| | 03:57 | really want a light from kind of over
the cameras left shoulder pretty much.
| | 04:01 | So this is the camera that I have in
the scene, so this is where I'm going to
| | 04:05 | put the light. I want the light to
come fairly from above, because most
| | 04:09 | kitchens are lit by a kitchen with
a kitchen light. So we can take a look
| | 04:13 | at that, see how that renders. OK.
| | 04:16 | This little pool of light looks
pretty good, but we need a bigger pool of
| | 04:20 | light. And how do we do that? We
adjust the Cone Angle of the light. In fact,
| | 04:25 | if we want to, we can go into Lighting >
Use All Lights and that will show us
| | 04:30 | the Cone Angle. Little bit better, so
let me just bring it up to about 80 or 90
| | 04:35 | somewhere in that range, just isn't big
enough. OK, we actually need little bit bigger.
| | 04:38 | So if we want to, we can use IPR here.
So you can see we still have got a
| | 04:44 | little bit of a black edge there.
So if we make it a little bit bigger,
| | 04:47 | 00:04:49, there it goes.
| | 04:50 | So now I've got this light completely
lighting the kitchen, but again I want to
| | 04:56 | get shadows. So let's go ahead and turn
on Shadows and again I'm going to turn
| | 05:01 | on Depth Map Shadows. But this time, we
got one kind of a soft lighting effect.
| | 05:05 | So I'm going to turn down the
Resolution of the map and turn up the Filter
| | 05:09 | Size. So I make it 256 and 4 and then
I'm going to make the shadow Color kind
| | 05:14 | of like a dark gray, not black, just
dark gray and let's see what that does.
| | 05:19 | OK, so now you see you're getting a
little bit of shadow under there. I think
| | 05:24 | my Filter Size might be a little bit
too high because you're getting this
| | 05:27 | little effect here. So I'm going to
actually turn that down to maybe 3 or 2.
| | 05:31 | Let's see how that does. Again, OK,
actually if you look at it, I'm getting a
| | 05:37 | real bit of moir? pattern, here on the
shadow, and that's because the shadow is
| | 05:42 | really dispersed of a very long range.
So I think I'm actually going to have to
| | 05:46 | bring up my shadow map again.
| | 05:48 | This is again part of tweaking lights
is adjusting the shadow maps. I'm just
| | 05:51 | still getting a little bit of that. So
what we may want to do is actually bring
| | 05:54 | it up to 1024, because what we have
is we have a light, a spot light that's
| | 05:58 | casting its shadow across this big wide
area and so it does have to distribute
| | 06:03 | a big one bitmap over that area. That
looks a little bit better. So let's go
| | 06:07 | ahead and turn on a little bit more
blurring and let's see what that does.
| | 06:12 | Yeah, that's a little bit better. We
still get a little bit of that pattern.
| | 06:18 | But as you can see it's working pretty
good. Let me make the shadow a little
| | 06:22 | bit less dense. Turn up that Bias;
let's see what that Bias does. There we go.
| | 06:33 | OK, so what I did to actually fix that
was I turned up the Bias on the light.
| | 06:38 | Another thing that would help is
actually we can go into our Render Settings
| | 06:42 | window here, if we want to see it
little bit better, we can go from Low quality
| | 06:47 | to Production quality and that will
filter the shadows a little bit more. OK,
| | 06:53 | so there is our basic room, but there
is still little dark under here. You can
| | 06:59 | see here that underneath the table,
it's a little bit dark and we're not really
| | 07:02 | doing anything with down sliding. So
let's just take and put a little bit of an
| | 07:07 | Ambient Light in the room. I'm going to
go back out to a regular viewport here
| | 07:11 | and I'm going to create an Ambient Light.
| | 07:15 | Now, position of the Ambient Light,
really it doesn't matter, because all that
| | 07:19 | light has to do is be in the room
somewhere. It's too bright right now with
| | 07:23 | Intensity of 1. So we can turn it down
a little bit. I'm going to turn about
| | 07:27 | 0.25 or 0.30, somewhere in that range,
0.248 is what I've got here. So let's
| | 07:32 | take a look at that. Again, this is
in the Perspective window, I just hit
| | 07:35 | Render in the Perspective window.
That's looking better. In fact, let's take a
| | 07:38 | look at it in our actual camera view.
So go Panels, Perspective, camera1, and
| | 07:45 | this is the actual scene that
we're lighting, take a look at that.
| | 07:48 | Now, I'm saying that because we've got
Ambient Light in the room, we have got a
| | 07:52 | little bit of hotness coming in here
from the light coming in from the window.
| | 07:57 | So what we need to do is probably
turn that down just a little bit because
| | 08:00 | every time we add light, it's going to
tend to burn things out. I'm going to go
| | 08:04 | into my top viewport here and I'm going
to go ahead and select this light, the
| | 08:08 | first one that we drew, and I'm going
to turn down the Intensity to about half
| | 08:12 | of what it is, maybe 0.4, 0.496,
0.5 somewhere in that range, OK.
| | 08:17 | Now that looks a lot better, because
you can see here that it's not blowing out
| | 08:23 | the scene. OK, so now we have a fairly
well lit kitchen, but we still have the
| | 08:27 | windows are dark; you can see there is
blackness behind them. So we need to put
| | 08:31 | some sort of sky texture or something
like that. We can use a bitmap or another
| | 08:36 | thing to do is just to put a
gradient in there and that's probably the
| | 08:39 | cheapest, easiest way to put a sky
in there. So I'm going to go ahead and
| | 08:42 | select camera1, which is the camera
we're going to shoot this scene through.
| | 08:46 | OK, so we can do that by going into
the Camera Attribute Editor, and this is
| | 08:50 | where we'll put our sky. We'll go down
and find Environment, and in that we can
| | 08:55 | create an Image Plane. So actually
let's go ahead here, create an Image Plane
| | 08:59 | and there are two types of Image Plane.
Normally, we're just going to put an
| | 09:02 | Image File in there and that would be
like a picture of the sky or something
| | 09:06 | like that. But we can also create a texture.
| | 09:09 | So if you want to, you can just click
here instead of Image File, hit Texture
| | 09:13 | and this one lights up and we can
insert our texture here by just hitting this
| | 09:17 | little checkerboard and we want to put
a Ramp. Ramp is essentially gradient and
| | 09:22 | actually if I rendered this right now,
you would see what it just did, which
| | 09:26 | is essentially put this green to red
to blue gradient in there. So all that
| | 09:30 | green is now behind the window,
well, we need to make that blue.
| | 09:34 | Well, the top one is blue, so let's
just go ahead, and let me show you how this
| | 09:37 | works. I'm going to have to scroll a
little bit here. What you do is you pick
| | 09:41 | one of these little dots, OK. So if I
pick the green dot, turns green, and the
| | 09:46 | color turns red, if I pick the red dot.
So I select that and I say, what's the
| | 09:50 | color of my sky at the very bottom, OK.
So basically, I just try to find the
| | 09:55 | color I like. OK, what's the color of
my sky in the middle? Well, it's going to
| | 10:00 | be another bluish kind of color.
Again, I'm going to try and make the sky
| | 10:05 | fairly light. Then at the very top --
actually this is a little too light here,
| | 10:11 | so let's darken this just a hair.
| | 10:17 | Then at the very top, I think that's a
little too saturated. So let's go ahead
| | 10:21 | and take that. That's like pure blue,
we don't want that. There, here is my
| | 10:26 | general sky. OK, you can play with that,
or you can put a bitmap in there if
| | 10:29 | you want, but this is such a small
window you probably won't even see 90% of
| | 10:33 | that bitmap. So this should work just fine.
Do a quick render, and that looks pretty good.
| | 10:39 | So you can see the general overview of
the lighting that we have, which is you
| | 10:43 | start from darkness and then you
just add light and you have to watch out for
| | 10:47 | things that are blowing out and I like
to add an Ambient Light just to give it
| | 10:51 | kind of a general brightness to the
scene if it's a daylight scene like this
| | 10:55 | one. So there we go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Rendering with Mental RayIntroducing Mental Ray| 00:01 | Mental Ray is the other renderer that
Maya uses. Mental Ray is an industry
| | 00:06 | standard renderer and it's used
throughout special effects, animation, motion
| | 00:11 | graphics, really anywhere Maya is used,
people do use Mental Ray. The reason
| | 00:15 | they use it is that Mental Ray has a
number of additional features on top of
| | 00:20 | what the Maya Software renderer has.
Most importantly is the ability to do
| | 00:24 | global illumination and caustics which
are advanced lighting models and I'll go
| | 00:28 | ahead and show you those in a little bit.
| | 00:31 | Mental Ray is also used by other
Software packages. 3ds Max has a mental
| | 00:36 | ray implementation and Softimage also
has one, and there are other packages
| | 00:42 | that also support Mental Ray. So
Mental Ray has kind of become a defacto
| | 00:46 | standard in the business and so
understanding Mental Ray will allow you to use
| | 00:51 | it in other packages as well. So let
me show you some of the basics of Mental Ray.
| | 00:57 | First thing you need to do is you
have to load Mental Ray. Typically, it is
| | 01:01 | loaded, but if not let me show you how
to do it. We're going to go into Window >
| | 01:06 | Settings Preferences > Plug-in Manager.
Now this manages all of the plug-ins
| | 01:11 | that Maya can use. Here's all sorts of
things here, but the one I want to make
| | 01:18 | sure that we have setup here is
Mayatomr.ml, go ahead and click both of those
| | 01:25 | on and it will load Mental Ray every
time it loads Maya. Now, there are some
| | 01:29 | additional ones here. Some of these
you may or may not want to use, but we're
| | 01:34 | not going to get through those at the
moment. So just make sure that Maya and
| | 01:37 | Mental Ray is on.
| | 01:39 | Then let's go ahead and set our project
first. We are going to go ahead and set
| | 01:43 | to project 08 and let's go ahead
and open a scene. Let's open the scene
| | 01:49 | Kitchen.mb. Now, this is the kitchen
we're playing with in the last lesson, and
| | 01:54 | if I want to I can just render it.
Now, this is actually done with a Maya
| | 01:59 | Software renderer, so
there is the render of that.
| | 02:01 | Now if we want, we can just switch it
over to the Mental Ray renderer. We can
| | 02:07 | do that just here, going Render using,
and pull that down to Mental Ray and
| | 02:12 | notice that Mental Ray tab now comes up
and if we click on that we can go into
| | 02:19 | all of the options we're using for
Mental Ray. The only thing I'm going to do
| | 02:23 | is just go ahead and turn this to
Production and I'm going to turn off Ray
| | 02:28 | Tracing. Then we're going to
go ahead and do another render.
| | 02:31 | Now, you'll see that this scene does
look different. This shadow is a little
| | 02:38 | bit different and some of the anti-
aliasing of the scene is different. But
| | 02:42 | generally, the reason I wanted to show
you this is that seems pretty much do go
| | 02:46 | across from the Maya Software renderer
to Mental Ray. So most of the techniques
| | 02:53 | that you use in terms of lighting, and
particularly, texturing do come across
| | 02:58 | very, very easily.
| | 03:00 | So those are the basics of how to get
into the Maya Software renderer. Now,
| | 03:04 | let's in the next lesson look at
some of the differences between them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Mental Ray materials| 00:00 | One of the big differences between
Mental Ray and the Maya Software renderer is
| | 00:05 | the number of materials that you can
use. Mental Ray actually has a lot more
| | 00:10 | surface types that you can apply to
objects. Let's start by creating a surface.
| | 00:15 | I'm just going to go ahead and create
a sphere here. I'm just going to smooth
| | 00:19 | shade that, and then actually I'm
going to drop a light into the scene. I'm
| | 00:22 | going to go in my Rendering tab and
just drop a Directional Light. I'm going to
| | 00:27 | hit the Manipulator tool and I'm just
going to go ahead and get that light into
| | 00:33 | the scene. I'm going to just Use All
Lights, so I can kind of see my lighting
| | 00:39 | here. OK, so now I've just got a
sphere that I can apply some textures to.
| | 00:43 | Now, in the Rendering menu set, under
Lighting/Shading, Assign New Material,
| | 00:49 | you can notice that we have all of
the standard materials that we've been
| | 00:52 | using, such as Phong Phong E, Blinn,
and so on and so forth. Now, if you scroll
| | 00:57 | down past this little divider line here,
you'll see all of these. These are all
| | 01:02 | Mental Ray shaders, and so all of
these Mental Ray materials and shaders do
| | 01:09 | different things that the standard
Maya Software renderer ones won't do.
| | 01:14 | So these are basically bonus materials
that you get when you use Mental Ray.
| | 01:18 | One of the nice ones is, for example, a
car_paint_phenomenon here. Put that one
| | 01:23 | on there, in fact, if you go over here
to the tab here, you can see all of the
| | 01:27 | options here, you can have color, Base
color, you can have a Lit color, so if
| | 01:31 | we click a sample, a lot of car
materials are -- they put one color underneath
| | 01:37 | and then do a clear code over it so
that has kind of like a translucent effect.
| | 01:42 | So you can actually change those colors here.
| | 01:44 | You can also put a Specular parameters
in there, you can also put metal Flakes
| | 01:48 | in it. In fact, let's just go ahead and
take a quick render of this. Well, that
| | 01:52 | didn't render. Why didn't it render?
Well, it's because we are using the Maya
| | 01:55 | Software renderer. These materials
will not render in the Maya Software
| | 02:00 | renderer, you have to turn on Mental Ray.
| | 02:02 | So I can do that by going into my
Render Settings window and just go Render
| | 02:08 | using Mental Ray, and then just go
ahead and do render again. There it is, and
| | 02:13 | you can see the character of the surface.
You can also change the render here,
| | 02:16 | which is what I did. And you can just
update, just by hitting that. So that's
| | 02:22 | another way to do it.
| | 02:23 | If I change to Maya Software, there is
a render Mental Ray, there it goes, OK.
| | 02:30 | So you can see you can get a nice
looking surfaces using that. There is a
| | 02:36 | couple of others, I'm not going to go
through all of these, I'm just going to
| | 02:38 | go through some of my favorites. One
of my favorites is just fast_skin_maya,
| | 02:44 | and what that is just a skin shader,
and what it's really called is that this
| | 02:50 | skin shader will do what's
called Subsurface scattering.
| | 02:53 | So what it will do is actually
simulate the movement of light beneath the
| | 02:57 | surfaces scattering from slightly below
the surface. This is great for the skin
| | 03:01 | of a character, but you can also use
it for things such as marble, which are
| | 03:06 | slightly translucent or anything
that's slightly translucent can be used with
| | 03:10 | this skin shader. In fact, let's go
ahead and do another render of that.
| | 03:13 | There you can see, it's kind of got
that skin texture to it and we've got a
| | 03:19 | bunch of parameters here, such as
the Epidermal Scatter Color, OK, the
| | 03:24 | Subdermal Scatter Color. So what is
the color of the skin slightly underneath
| | 03:29 | the skin? What's the Back Scatter Color?
In fact, if I turn this down you might
| | 03:33 | get a little bit better shading model
on this and let's go ahead and take a
| | 03:37 | quick look at this. Yeah. Anyway, so
that's that one, I can select this and
| | 03:43 | let's go ahead and do a few more here.
| | 03:45 | Another one that I really like is the
Dgs_material. What this one does is it's
| | 03:53 | kind of a really good, kind of a glassy
surface effect. If you put transparency
| | 03:59 | on it, you can get a nice refraction,
it's really good for doing glass. So if
| | 04:03 | you just do a quick render on that.
You can kind of see how that works and
| | 04:07 | usually with glass, you need something
behind it to kind of see how the glass
| | 04:11 | effect works, but just trust me
this is a really good material.
| | 04:14 | So those are some of the basic
additional materials used in Mental Ray. So
| | 04:19 | let's go ahead and move on to
some other features of Mental Ray.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with Mental Ray lights| 00:00 | Now let's go over some of the differences
in lighting between the Maya Software
| | 00:05 | renderer and Mental Ray. One of the big
differences is in area lights. The area
| | 00:10 | light in Maya, so if I click here and
just create an area light, that will not
| | 00:15 | render in the Maya Software renderer,
it won't render as a point light. So in
| | 00:22 | order to change that, what we have to
do is go into the Attribute Editor for
| | 00:26 | the light and then scroll down and
you'll find a Mental Ray roll-out. Now in
| | 00:31 | this, you'll find a lot of options here.
You'll find an option for Area Light,
| | 00:36 | Caustic and Global Illumination, Shadows,
some more of a stuff for Shadows and
| | 00:42 | Custom Shaders.
| | 00:43 | For the Area Light, what you want to
do is just go ahead and say Use Light
| | 00:47 | Shape, and keep it as a Rectangle. Once
you've clicked that on, this ArLa light
| | 00:55 | becomes a Mental Ray area light. Now,
the other big difference is in Shadows.
| | 01:02 | You can't calculate shadows differently
in Mental Ray than you can in the Maya
| | 01:06 | Software renderer.
| | 01:07 | I'm going to go ahead and open the
scene and that's called Shadows.mb, and what
| | 01:14 | this is, is a simple scene with a light.
I'm going to go ahead and select this
| | 01:18 | light. But first I'm also going to just
do a quick render. Now, we're rendering
| | 01:23 | this with the Maya Software renderer,
so you can see the basic shadow. I want
| | 01:27 | to click that over render in
Mental Ray, I can do that as well.
| | 01:34 | You can see the shadow pretty much
follows what is going on in the Maya
| | 01:39 | Software renderer. Let's go ahead and
make sure we have the Spot Light selected
| | 01:43 | and I'm going to go into my Attribute
Editor by hitting Ctrl+A. If I scroll
| | 01:50 | down you'll see that there is an
option here under Mental Ray, in Mental Ray
| | 01:56 | there is one for Area Light,
here's the one for Shadows.
| | 02:00 | There is an option here for what type
of Shadow Map Format do you want to use.
| | 02:06 | One is Regular Shadow Map or do you
want to use the Mental Ray shadow map
| | 02:11 | overrides. In other words, do I
want to use the Maya Software rendering
| | 02:17 | shadows, in other words these here,
which are the standard resolution of the
| | 02:22 | bitmap, Filter Size, Bias and so on; we
went through that in the last chapter.
| | 02:28 | In this case, by Regular Shadow Map, we
can actually change that for Maya. Now,
| | 02:34 | we can change the Resolution of that
bitmap, just like we can in Maya. We also
| | 02:40 | have a Softness control, rather than a
Bias we have a Softness control, we also
| | 02:44 | have a number of Samples. So the
higher the Samples and the higher the
| | 02:48 | Softness, the softer the shadow will be.
| | 02:51 | So I can go ahead and re-render that,
and you can see I'm going to be getting a
| | 02:56 | softer shadow right here. OK, so
another big difference between lighting. Now,
| | 03:02 | some of the other differences is
called Caustics and Global Illumination. Now,
| | 03:08 | those actually allow you to create
lighting models that bounce light throughout
| | 03:12 | the scene and actually
simulate real world lighting.
| | 03:15 | So we're going to go ahead and
get into those in the next section.
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| Understanding depth of field in Mental Ray| 00:00 | One of the nicer features about
Mental Ray is that it does have much more
| | 00:04 | robust type of field than the standard
Maya Software renderer. So let me show
| | 00:09 | you a little bit about how to use that.
We are going to go ahead and open a
| | 00:12 | scene called TableChairs01 and that's
basically this table and chair scene.
| | 00:21 | So if I want to, I can select my
Camera Attribute Editor, just like I can in
| | 00:27 | Maya, and if I scroll down you'll see
I can do Depth of Field several ways.
| | 00:35 | I can do the standard Depth of Field
that I normal would do in Maya that I just
| | 00:40 | showed you. In fact I already know the
parameters for this. So I'm just going
| | 00:44 | to go ahead and type those and I know
that I want to focus on this chair which
| | 00:47 | is eight units away and I'm going
to give it a Focus Region Scale of 2.
| | 00:52 | OK, and so what we can do is we can
just go ahead and do a quick render of
| | 00:57 | that. So there is the render and it
has a pretty good character. I like the
| | 01:04 | character of Mental Rays to feel a
little bit better, but actually one thing
| | 01:07 | I'm going to do is just so this
renders faster, I'm going to make my Preset
| | 01:12 | down this 320?240. So that
way this will render faster.
| | 01:16 | Now there are other ways of doing
Depth of Field in Mental Rays. So I'm going
| | 01:19 | to turn this off and I'm going to go
this Mental Ray tab for the camera that we
| | 01:25 | have selected. Now under this we have
what are called shaders. So shaders for a
| | 01:30 | lens or for a camera are little bit
different than shaders for an object, but
| | 01:34 | they do similar things and that
they affect the way that it operates.
| | 01:38 | So the one I want to look at here is
Lens Shader. We also have Environment
| | 01:42 | Shader which allows you to create
things fog and those sorts of affects; the
| | 01:45 | Volume Shader for volume affect; but
Lens Shader is what I'm looking at, and
| | 01:49 | I'm going to go ahead and hit this
little checkerboard right next to it and
| | 01:54 | pull up my Create Render Node window,
which actually kind of comes all the way
| | 01:58 | up here, and as our Mental Ray tab and
these are all materials and different
| | 02:02 | types of shaders and I need to scroll
all the way down until I get to lenses.
| | 02:08 | OK, now there is a lot of stuff in
here. So you may take a lot of find, but
| | 02:12 | once you find it you'll notice we have
a lot of different things that we can
| | 02:15 | add to the lens of our camera, just
like we can add to the lens of our real
| | 02:19 | world camera.
| | 02:20 | The first thing I'm going to do is
just add the one called Physical Lens DOF,
| | 02:24 | OK, that's DOF for Depth Of Field.
There is also some other ones allow you to
| | 02:29 | control exposure and clamp the values
that are coming out of the render and
| | 02:34 | those sorts of things, but let's just
go Physical_lens_dof, and that brings up
| | 02:40 | the parameters for that. And again we
have the plane that we want to focus in
| | 02:44 | and again I know that this is -8 and
the radius of the focus. So let's go ahead
| | 02:51 | and do a quick render of that.
| | 02:52 | As you can see it looks pretty good.
There are some additional parameters that
| | 02:59 | we can use, and the quality of this
is pretty much the same as what you are
| | 03:02 | getting out of the standard Depth of
Field. But I really just wanted to show
| | 03:05 | you how to use a Lens Shader. So I
want to show you one more and that's the
| | 03:11 | Bokeh (sp) Lens Shader. So what I'm
going to do is I'm just going to go ahead
| | 03:15 | and reopen this scene. TableChairs01.mb
and this time we are going to go ahead
| | 03:23 | and select our camera and go into the
Attribute Editor. If I want I can also
| | 03:28 | just go Camera Attribute Editor from
this Camera 1 window. And I'm going to go
| | 03:34 | right over to Lens Shader again, and
this time I'm going to go and scroll down
| | 03:38 | to lenses here and I'm going to find Lens Bokeh.
| | 03:42 | Now what that does is it brings in a
more sophisticated depth of field. Now
| | 03:49 | what Bokeh is it's the way that a lens
actually creates Depth of Field. Camera
| | 03:55 | manufacturers are really interested in
the bokeh of their lenses and how their
| | 04:01 | lenses actually blur the background.
So what this plug-in does or what this
| | 04:06 | shader does is it allows us to really
control that. So what we can do is we can
| | 04:11 | change the plane of this and again I
know that that's chairs eight units away
| | 04:16 | and we can also change the radius.
| | 04:18 | I'm going to make 0.25, and then we can
also do a number of samples to increase
| | 04:27 | the quality of it. Bias, we can also
increase the number of blades in our
| | 04:32 | camera and the angle of the blades. So
we can actually change a lot of these
| | 04:37 | parameters to give this a more
realistic affect. So I'm going to go into Render
| | 04:42 | menu here and again I'm just going to
make this 320?240, so that way we render
| | 04:48 | fairly quickly. Let's
take at what this looks like.
| | 04:51 | OK, so that's another way of doing
Depth of Field. So you can obviously play
| | 05:01 | with these parameters and you can get
a lot of really great effects. So if I
| | 05:05 | increase the Radius of this for example,
I'm going to get a lot more blurring
| | 05:10 | in the background. OK, so those are
several ways of doing Depth of Field in
| | 05:17 | Mental Ray.
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| Using Motion Blur in Mental Ray| 00:00 | Motion Blur in Mental Ray is also a
little bit different than the Maya Software
| | 00:04 | renderer. Let me show you how that
works. We are going to open a scene,
| | 00:08 | Plane01.mb which is essentially
that same scene we had before.
| | 00:14 | Now if I render this with the Mental
Ray renderer, you'll see there is no real
| | 00:19 | blur on this, this plane is actually
moving. So I want to get some blur on that
| | 00:25 | propeller. So how I do that is I go
into my Render Settings window and I go
| | 00:30 | over to the Mental Ray tab and I
scroll down and you'll see a roll out that
| | 00:34 | says Motion Blur.
| | 00:36 | Now in Mental Ray there are two types
of Motion Blur. One says No Deformation.
| | 00:41 | Now what that is for objects that
don't deform. So if you have something like
| | 00:47 | the propeller of an airplane that's
what you use. If you do Full Deformation
| | 00:52 | what it does is it actually calculates
the shape of the object and calculates
| | 00:57 | Motion Blur within the shape. So if you
have like a blob of water, that's kind
| | 01:02 | of changing shape as it's moving,
you want to Motion Blur the whole shape
| | 01:07 | actually in between the shapes. We
don't need to do that, we can just do No
| | 01:11 | Deformation.
| | 01:12 | Now there are also another two
options here. One is called Calculation and
| | 01:17 | that basically adjust the scales the
Motion Blur. So a higher number means more
| | 01:22 | Blur, a lower numbers means less Blur.
This is the number of Motion sets to
| | 01:27 | calculate the deformation. So how
many in betweens am I going to do to
| | 01:31 | calculate that deformation. Since we
are not deforming, we are just going to
| | 01:35 | leave this at 1.
| | 01:36 | And then we also have Shutter Open and
Shutter Close. So this is basically when
| | 01:41 | does the motion start and stop within
the frame. So if you close your shutter
| | 01:47 | earlier, you are going to get less
blur, if you open shutter later, you are
| | 01:51 | going to get less blur, but also the
blur will be kind of move towards the back
| | 01:57 | -- sort of kind of be weighted towards
the back. And then the number of Time
| | 02:01 | Samples and that just determines the
quality of the render. I'm going to put
| | 02:06 | that at 3 and let's just do a quick
render here and see what that looks like.
| | 02:10 | OK, that looks pretty good, but it's
going to grainy and the reason is that
| | 02:16 | Maya does have some Presets here. And
these presets allow you to do Draft and
| | 02:21 | which is kind of the default, but if
you want to just go to Production: Motion
| | 02:25 | Blur and that will up the Anti-Aliasing
of the render and it also increase the
| | 02:31 | number of Time Samples in the Motion
Blur. So let's take a look at that.
| | 02:36 | Take a little bit longer to render
because we are definitely doing higher
| | 02:41 | quality render, but there is
the Motion Blur on that propeller.
| | 02:45 | So those are the basics
of Mental Ray Motion Blur.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Global Illumination in Mental Ray| 00:00 | Now let's talk about Global
Illumination. This is a technique that Mental Ray
| | 00:05 | uses to calculate real world lighting.
It calculates the way a light scatters
| | 00:10 | and bounces throughout a room. It's
really great for creating soft lighting,
| | 00:14 | for creating realistic lighting. It
does take a little bit longer to render,
| | 00:19 | but let me show you some of
the techniques for creating it.
| | 00:23 | We are going to go ahead and open a
scene called TableChairs02. In fact I'm
| | 00:30 | going to highlight that and bring it
up, it's basically just the table and
| | 00:34 | chairs in a room. So I'm going to go
ahead and render that using just the
| | 00:38 | standard Mental Ray renderer. And
basically what it is, it has one light in the
| | 00:43 | scene and that light is casting kind of
a window paned effect over the chairs.
| | 00:51 | One of the things in this is that it's
very dark. We have this wall here, we
| | 00:56 | have all the shadows underneath. We
really don't have any bounce lighting in
| | 01:01 | this room. So let's go ahead and
add that in using Global Illumination.
| | 01:05 | Now Global Illumination works by
emitting what are called photons from the
| | 01:11 | light. Now what photons are, they are
essentially a secondary light source to
| | 01:15 | the initial illumination source that
the light provides and what photons do is
| | 01:20 | they bounce around the room and they
create that additional bounce lighting. So
| | 01:25 | we have to set this up in two places.
We have to set it up in the light and
| | 01:30 | then to emit the photons and then we
also have to set it up in the renderer to
| | 01:35 | accept the photons and to render them.
So I'm going to go ahead out to my top
| | 01:39 | viewport and there is only one light
in the scene it's called spotLight1 and
| | 01:43 | I'm going to select that hit Ctrl+
A to get into my Attribute Editor.
| | 01:50 | So I'm going to scroll down to mental
ray right here. Open that up and open up
| | 01:55 | Caustics and Global Illumination and
when I do that we've got basically one
| | 02:01 | little checkbox here that says Emit
Photons, and we have a Photon Intensity and
| | 02:07 | an Exponent. So the Photon Intensity
is essentially the brightness of this
| | 02:12 | secondary lighting. The Exponent is how
this secondary lighting fall off, again
| | 02:17 | that's very similar to the fall off
we have on regular lights, we have
| | 02:22 | quadratic which is falls off with the
square of the distance. Well, this is an
| | 02:26 | Exponent and 2 is the square of the
distance. So this will fall off with this
| | 02:31 | square of the distance.
| | 02:32 | So let's also set this up, we're going
to go into our Render Settings window
| | 02:36 | and this is where we set up the
renderer to accept these photons that are being
| | 02:40 | emitted from the light. We go into the
Mental Ray tab. Go down to Caustics and
| | 02:45 | Global illumination and all we have to
do is click on Global Illumination and
| | 02:51 | that will go ahead and accept those
photons and combine them in the renderer.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to go ahead and Close
that now. I'm going to highlight my
| | 02:59 | Perspective window and let's do a
really quick render. Now this may take a
| | 03:03 | little bit of time because it does
have some extra calculations. But it looks
| | 03:09 | like it's actually going pretty
quickly, and the thing is that we are not
| | 03:13 | seeing a lot of additional light here.
| | 03:16 | So I'm going to go back and select
this Spot Light and hopefully we will go
| | 03:23 | right back into Caustics and Global
Illumination. So I want more bounce
| | 03:26 | lighting. So that means I need to
increase the intensity of the photons. So I'm
| | 03:31 | going to bring that up to a much
higher number, let's bring it up to say
| | 03:35 | 64,000. I'm bringing it up to a really
high number and then I'm just going to
| | 03:40 | redo my previous render. And we will
see what happens. Oh, look at that.
| | 03:46 | So now that I have redone my
previous render with a much higher photon
| | 03:50 | intensity. You can see how the bounce
lighting is actually a lot higher. The
| | 03:55 | fact I think it might be too much.
Let's go ahead and bring that down. I'm
| | 03:58 | going to bring it down to say 40,000,
and let's do another quick render.
| | 04:04 | That looks a lot better. Now you can
see how this bounce lighting, you can now
| | 04:12 | see underneath the chair, you can see
the corner of the room and that looks a
| | 04:16 | lot more realistic.
| | 04:18 | Now the one thing that I'm noticing
here is that there is a little bit of
| | 04:20 | splotchy-ness on the walls. Now how
photons work is it actually emits a
| | 04:26 | specific number of photons. If we go
into the light there is actually little
| | 04:31 | value here that says, how many Global
Illumination Photons are available? Now
| | 04:36 | if that doesn't come up you have to
click off the light and then select it
| | 04:40 | again because it doesn't update
until you do that. So if you turn on Emit
| | 04:44 | Photons, this won't come up. So if
that happened you just click off light and
| | 04:47 | click back it on and then you will see it.
| | 04:49 | Anyways, so what I can do is I can
change the number of Global Illumination
| | 04:53 | photons. What that does is it
effects the granularity of the solution, of
| | 04:58 | course more photons means longer
renders. Let me show you how photons work
| | 05:03 | actually, it's probably a good idea.
I'm actually going to type-in a lower
| | 05:05 | number. I'm going to type-in the number
500, and then we are going to do really
| | 05:10 | quick render.
| | 05:10 | Now what this does is it actually
shows you what the photons are. It bounces
| | 05:17 | 500 photons throughout the room and you
can see that each one of these photons
| | 05:22 | can be a light source for
this secondary lighting.
| | 05:24 | Now if I bring this up to a high
number these photons get smaller, more
| | 05:28 | granular and the solution is much more
pleasing to the eyes. So let's go ahead
| | 05:34 | and put in 50,000 instead of 500.
Now this may take a while to render.
| | 05:41 | Home machines are getting faster this
didn't take me too long to render, and
| | 05:45 | you can see now with more photons you
get a much more pleasing result here in
| | 05:50 | the secondary lighting solution.
| | 05:52 | So those were the basics of Global
Illumination, and so just remember the key
| | 05:57 | points is that you emit photons from
the light. You have to accept them in the
| | 06:01 | renderer and the intensity of the
photons determines the brightness of the
| | 06:06 | secondary lighting. OK, those are the
main points that you need to remember
| | 06:11 | with this. And then once you
understand that you can just start tweaking
| | 06:14 | parameters to get the results you want.
| | 06:18 | Now let's move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Final Gather to enhance Global Illumination| 00:00 | Now I want to talk about another way
to smooth out the results of a Global
| | 00:04 | Illumination and that's using Final
Gather which is kind of a process that
| | 00:10 | actually smoothes out the result,
and it actually can render things a lot faster.
| | 00:15 | Let's go ahead and open a scene,
actually I saved out that scene that we had
| | 00:19 | before, TableChairs03.mb, and actually
let's just do a quick render. So what I
| | 00:27 | can do is just select this light and
actually I'm going to turn down the number
| | 00:32 | of photons. I'm going to go into
Attribute Editor by hitting Ctrl+A and I'm
| | 00:36 | going to go down to Caustic and Global
Illumination instead of 50,000 I'm just
| | 00:40 | going to make it 1,000. So I'm
looking to use 1,000 photons in this scene.
| | 00:46 | So if I do a quick render, what's
going to happen is you are going to see the
| | 00:50 | photons, and so that's certainly not
acceptable. Well, what we can do is we can
| | 00:55 | actually smooth out that result using
Final Gather. So let's go into our Render
| | 01:02 | Settings window and if I go into
Mental Ray and scroll down I'll find Final
| | 01:08 | Gathering.
| | 01:09 | Now what Final Gathering does is it
basically smoothes out the results of your
| | 01:15 | scene. Let's just turn it on and let's
see what happens. I'm going to go ahead
| | 01:20 | and render this frame with Final Gather
on. Now Final Gather will take a little
| | 01:24 | bit longer to render because it
actually goes through a two-step process. So
| | 01:30 | what we render the scene and now goes
through and it kind of smooth things out.
| | 01:34 | So as you can see this is actually
coming out with only a thousand photons
| | 01:39 | being emitted from this light.
We have a perfectly smooth scene.
| | 01:43 | So as you can see it's always good to
click on Final Gather even though adds a
| | 01:46 | little of render time, it totally
smoothes out the result. Now one thing you
| | 01:51 | can't do with Final Gather is we can't
do this Point Interpolation, in fact,
| | 01:56 | the screen is perfect for this if you
can actually see it, it says final gather
| | 02:00 | points. Higher values smooth the
final gathering result with little cost. I
| | 02:05 | like that, with little cost which
means that we can turn this up and get a
| | 02:09 | smoother result with little cost
in rendering, which is perfect.
| | 02:15 | So it is going to be one more little
render pass here, and then I'm going to
| | 02:19 | show you another way to use
Final Gather in the next lesson.
| | 02:26 | And there is our result. Now that
looks really nice OK. So in the next lesson
| | 02:30 | I'm going to show you
another use for Final Gather.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Final Gather for soft lighting effects| 00:00 | So now I want to show you a way to use
Final Gather to render a scene without
| | 00:04 | any lights in it. What a Mental Ray
rendering can do is it can take the
| | 00:09 | illumination of an object and use that
as a light source. So I'm going to show
| | 00:13 | you how to do that, how to use that
little tidbit of information to create a
| | 00:18 | scene that essentially has no lights,
but is well lit. So we are going to go
| | 00:23 | ahead and open that same scene we had
before TableChairs03 and it's the one we
| | 00:30 | have for Global Illumination. But what
I'm going to do is I'm going to select
| | 00:33 | this light, Spotlight 1 and then I'm
just going to delete it to get rid of it.
| | 00:37 | OK, so now if I go to render it,
basically it has a default light that just
| | 00:43 | kind of goes into the scene. If there
are no lights in the scene Maya just
| | 00:46 | shoves the light in there. So I'm going
to turn that off. So what we do is we
| | 00:50 | go into our Render Settings window and
in the Common tab, I scroll down to the
| | 00:56 | bottom here and it says, Enable Default
Light, turn that off. So now I want to
| | 01:01 | render this one more time and it
should come up black, yes because there is
| | 01:07 | absolutely no light in the scene. So
let's put in our own light, OK, I'm going
| | 01:12 | to go into this Side viewport here
and I'm going to go over to surfaces and
| | 01:18 | create a NURBS Plane.
| | 01:20 | So I'm just going to click and drag
and it doesn't have to be all that big,
| | 01:24 | just again, what we are doing is
actually we are creating a soft box, OK. So,
| | 01:28 | basically, an area light source. So
however big you want that to be, just go
| | 01:33 | ahead and draw your plane of that size.
So I'm going to go ahead and position
| | 01:36 | this up and off to the side, kind of,
right about here. So if you can see it in
| | 01:44 | this viewport here, so basically it
is shining down. So I have a big light
| | 01:47 | source here, shining in. so I'm going
to have a very soft light. Now I'm going
| | 01:51 | to select that plane and I need to
put Shader on it that's going to self
| | 01:56 | illuminate it.
| | 01:57 | OK so this is a tricky part here, we
have got Lighting/Shading, Assign New
| | 02:01 | Material, Surface Shader. And I click
on that and basically what it does is it
| | 02:08 | gives me an In/Out Color. Now all I
have to do is just turn on that Out Color
| | 02:15 | so that it's totally white and it will
become a light source in the Scene, but
| | 02:21 | I do need to turn on Final Gather. So
I'm going to go into my Render Settings
| | 02:24 | window, go into Final Gathering and
just turn on Final Gather and now let's do
| | 02:30 | a quick render. When I render this
what you are going to notice is that it's
| | 02:34 | going to come up very, very dim.
| | 02:39 | So what I need to do is increase the
level of this light. I can do that by
| | 02:44 | increasing the brightness of this, so
what I do is I select my Plane, go into
| | 02:51 | my attribute editor, I Ctrl+A into that.
Go to my Surface Shader, my Out Color
| | 02:57 | isn't bright enough. Now if I hit this,
it will say, "Well, you know it's at
| | 03:01 | one. One is as bright as I can get,"
but there is a little secret here. You can
| | 03:06 | actually type in whatever number you
want. So, if I typed in the number, say,
| | 03:10 | 25, I will make that 25 times brighter
that white. OK, a nice thing that you
| | 03:18 | can do. Now if I highlight this window
again, make sure my Final Gather is on
| | 03:24 | and I do a quick render, you are
going to see a much different result and
| | 03:29 | there it goes. So now you can see I'm
actually getting some light into the room
| | 03:38 | and it's a very soft light. It's a
light that's coming from multiple
| | 03:41 | directions, so it gives a very
nice, kind of, natural look to it.
| | 03:45 | If I want to, I could select this
again and let's go ahead and really bring
| | 03:49 | that light up a little bit. Let's
bring it up to say, let's say 50, let's
| | 03:54 | double it. OK this may be a little bit
too much light, but let's see what we
| | 03:57 | have got here and then just go
ahead and render that one more time. OK,
| | 04:05 | actually that looks pretty good. Now
we are getting a little bit overexposure
| | 04:08 | here may be, we are on the verge of
over exposing, but the one thing I want to
| | 04:12 | show you here is that we are getting a
lot of specular granularity here in the
| | 04:17 | solution.
| | 04:18 | So we have got our lighting, I think
the lighting is actually pretty good, but
| | 04:22 | let's go ahead and make this rendering
solution a little bit better. We can do
| | 04:26 | that by going into Final Gathering and
going down to this Point Interpolation
| | 04:31 | and I'm just going to go ahead and
move that all the way up to 50 and then we
| | 04:35 | are going to go ahead and do one
more render pass. And what that Point
| | 04:38 | Interpolation does is it smoothes it
out more. So this may take a little while
| | 04:43 | to render and there we go. So you
can see that's smoothed out a lot more.
| | 04:52 | So that's another way to use Final
Gather and you can certainly see some
| | 04:58 | applications for that in creating soft
lighting. We don't have to - obviously,
| | 05:02 | we can take this plane and we can
duplicate it and create soft lights for many
| | 05:06 | different directions and actually
create a very soft lighting model without any
| | 05:11 | actual lights in the scene at all.
| | 05:14 | So that's one other cool things about
rendering that I really like. Anyways,
| | 05:18 | let's move on to caustics.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rendering transparent materials with Caustics| 00:00 | Now the last thing I want to show you
about Metal Ray is Caustics. Now what
| | 00:03 | Caustics is the way that light
transmits or reflects from a surface. So if
| | 00:11 | you have ever seen like a glass on a
table you will see that kind of highlight
| | 00:15 | that shows up on the table as the
light passes through it. Caustics is great
| | 00:20 | for creating reflective, refractive
effects and for adding a lot more realism
| | 00:24 | to your scene. So let's go ahead and
open a scene and I will show you how it works.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to open Martini01 and
guess what? It's a Martini glass, though we
| | 00:34 | can hardly see it, but there it is. In
fact, I'm going to go ahead and open up
| | 00:38 | this window here and if we do a quick
render of that, you will see I have got
| | 00:45 | Martini Glass with a little olive in
it sitting on a plane. So what I want to
| | 00:51 | do is actually create more
realistic lighting for this.
| | 00:55 | I can do that using Caustics. So again
with this there are two lights in the
| | 01:00 | scene. There is a light here coming in
from the Z-direction and then there is a
| | 01:04 | light coming from the side from
the X-direction. That light is named
| | 01:08 | spotLight01 and that's the one we are
going to work with. Now with Caustics
| | 01:14 | again we have to work with Photons and
just like with Global Illumination we
| | 01:19 | have to emit Caustic Photons from
the light and then we have to set the
| | 01:24 | renderer up to receive those Caustic
Photons. So the procedure is very similar
| | 01:28 | to Global Illumination. Let's go ahead
and go into the attribute editor for the
| | 01:33 | light. I have selected the light, Ctrl+
A gets us there and all I have to do now
| | 01:37 | is scroll down until I find
Caustics and Global Illumination.
| | 01:42 | Now I want to go ahead and again emit
Photons and I'm going to leave it at the
| | 01:47 | defaults here and just like we did
with Global Illumination I'm going to go
| | 01:51 | into my Render Settings window, go
to Mental Ray, Caustics and Global
| | 01:56 | Illumination and turn on Caustics.
So now I have emitted them here at the
| | 02:01 | light. I'm receiving them here at the
renderer or on the negative of the film
| | 02:07 | that we are developing, whatever you
want to call it. So I'm going to highlight
| | 02:10 | my Camera window and just do a quick render.
| | 02:16 | Now what I have got here, is I have got
-- if you can see this is barely there
| | 02:20 | is like a little faint highlight right
here and that's the Caustic effect. Now
| | 02:25 | again just like with the Global
Illumination effect the actual intensity of the
| | 02:32 | Caustic photons is going to determine
the intensity of that effect. Again, it's
| | 02:40 | just -- if I turn up the intensity, the
effect will go up as well. So I'm going
| | 02:44 | to turn that up, I'm going to triple
it. I will make it 24,000 and then I'm
| | 02:48 | going to render again.
| | 02:50 | Now you can see how the effect is
working. You can see how the light coming
| | 03:00 | through the glass is actually
creating a highlight here on the floor. I can
| | 03:06 | actually turn this up one more. In fact,
let's go ahead and make this even a
| | 03:09 | little bit more or less double it again.
Let's turn it up to 48,000. If we want
| | 03:14 | to we can actually add; again, just
like with Global Illumination we can give
| | 03:18 | it more Caustic photons to get a more
accurate solution. So let's go ahead and
| | 03:22 | turn this up. OK, now that did take a
lot longer to render and that's because
| | 03:28 | we do have more Photons. Now Caustic
Photons actually will take longer to
| | 03:33 | render because they do have go
through a Refractive phase, they do not just
| | 03:37 | bounce off of surfaces, they
actually refract through them.
| | 03:40 | So the more photons you add in the
Caustic side, the longer it's going to take
| | 03:44 | to render. But as you can see we get
that nice, nice highlight now from the
| | 03:48 | glass. So that's the basics of
how to render Caustics in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Paint EffectsIntroducing Paint Effects| 00:00 | Paint Effects is probably one of
the more powerful and also easy to use
| | 00:05 | features of Maya. Basically what it is,
is it's a paint brush interface that
| | 00:09 | allows you to paint geometry such as
trees, grass, flowers. You can also paint
| | 00:15 | special effect such as fire and
smoke and you can also use it to paint 2D
| | 00:19 | textures. So it's actually a very
powerful tool and actually fairly easy to
| | 00:23 | use. So let me show you some of the
basics of it and you can get into Paint
| | 00:27 | Effects in two ways. If you go to
your Rendering menu set here, there is a
| | 00:32 | Paint Effects series of menus right
here or there is also a shelf with most of
| | 00:37 | those tools mirrored here graphically.
So before we paint anything we actually
| | 00:41 | have to have something to paint on.
| | 00:42 | Now Paint Effects paints on NURBS
surfaces. So let's just create a NURBS plane
| | 00:50 | and I'll shade that and I'm going to
bring that above that grid so you can see
| | 00:55 | it a little bit better. OK, so now once
I have a surface. It doesn't have to be
| | 01:00 | a plane; it could be any NURB Surface.
You can make that surface paintable. Now
| | 01:05 | you can paint Paint Effects either on
a surface or basically just out in the
| | 01:10 | open. I like painting on a surface
because typically what you are going to be
| | 01:13 | doing is, like if you are painting
grass, you will be painting it on a ground
| | 01:16 | plane. So let's go ahead and go Make
Paintable. And now once it's paintable we
| | 01:21 | have to basically use the Brush tool.
So we go to Paint Effects Tool and that
| | 01:27 | brings up a brush. But before we start
creating our objects here, we need to
| | 01:33 | determine what exactly we are painting.
| | 01:35 | So we have a lot of preset brushes here
and the one I like here -- let's just go
| | 01:41 | ahead and use this Grass Clump Brush,
which basically just paints grass.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to zoom in a little bit here and
now once I have clicked on that brush,
| | 01:50 | I can start painting. And what am I
painting? I'm actually painting blades of
| | 01:55 | grass. So once I have finished that
stroke, you can see I have actually got --
| | 02:01 | and I'm going to deselect that --
little blades of grass, very cool. Now this
| | 02:07 | grass can be modified. You can
obviously grow the grass, make it bigger or make
| | 02:12 | it smaller, whatever you want. Let me
show you some of the basics of how to
| | 02:16 | paint. So let's go back to
our painting interface here.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to go back up to Paint and
it's the same as Artisan, so if you
| | 02:22 | hit the letter B on the keyboard you
can increase or decrease the size of your
| | 02:26 | brush. So I can do it that way. There
is also pressure sensitivity, which you
| | 02:32 | can set up as well if you are using a
tablet. So if I wanted to make the brush
| | 02:36 | smaller, I just hit B and make it
smaller. If I wanted to paint something else,
| | 02:41 | let's say I wanted to paint-- what's that?
That's a tree. Let's paint trees, so
| | 02:45 | I can make paint trees. Well, I want to
make the trees bigger. Hit B and I can
| | 02:50 | make them bigger, very simple.
| | 02:53 | So you can see how very easily you can
start to block out environments for your
| | 02:58 | scenes by just very quickly painting
trees, flowers, brushes. Now there is also
| | 03:03 | an additional set of brushes. Now
these brushes here are by far not the only
| | 03:08 | brushes that you have for Maya.
There are also a ton of them in the Visor
| | 03:13 | window. So what we do is we go to
Window > General Editors > Visor. Click on that.
| | 03:19 | This window comes up pretty big
here, but if we go over here there are a
| | 03:23 | bunch of tabs here. The Visor window
has a bunch of examples for all sorts of
| | 03:27 | different things, but what we really
want to do is go over to Paint Effects and
| | 03:31 | make sure we have the Paint Effects
tab selected and then you will see all
| | 03:35 | these different folders for all
these different types of brushes.
| | 03:38 | So, yes, we do have flowers and we
have trees and we have grass, but we also
| | 03:44 | have airbrushes. Just the standard
type of airbrush. We have animal fur.
| | 03:48 | So you can actually use this to create fur.
City Meshes, you can actually paint
| | 03:53 | cities here. Let's go ahead and paint
Manhattan here. So if you want to you can
| | 03:59 | bring that brush down a little bit.
Well, you can actually paint cities, OK, so
| | 04:05 | you can actually create a landscape
with buildings that sort of thing.
| | 04:10 | Electrical effects, lightening, sparks
that sort of thing, feathers, fibers, all
| | 04:15 | sorts of things. Yeah, you can paint
meat. So you can just play with these.
| | 04:20 | There are a ton of these.
| | 04:21 | Now the one thing we do need to be a
little bit aware of is that some of these
| | 04:26 | brushes actually paint meshes. Now
there are two ways that Paint Effects can
| | 04:30 | paint an object. One is just what I
would call the standard way, which is
| | 04:34 | basically -- it kind of creates it
just like a simple piece of geometry with a
| | 04:38 | texture on it. But there are also ones
that create the objects as a mesh, which
| | 04:42 | is actually what it does. It
paints geometry into your scene.
| | 04:45 | Now things like trees can get very
complicated. So we actually have two types
| | 04:50 | of trees here. We have regular trees,
but we also have trees that are created as
| | 04:54 | a mesh. Now if you notice here some
of these actually have little clocks by
| | 04:58 | them and those are kind of put up as
warnings that say, if you paint a lot
| | 05:02 | of these, your scene is going to
get pretty heavy, pretty quickly.
| | 05:04 | So just be careful with these.
| | 05:06 | Obviously, play with them as much as
you want, but just be aware of the ones
| | 05:09 | that have these little clocks on them.
They will take a little bit longer and
| | 05:13 | will drag your system down just a
little bit. But other than that the brushes
| | 05:16 | are all there and all you
have to do is have fun with them.
| | 05:19 | So let's go ahead and just start
painting and playing with these tools.
| | 05:23 | Then we'll come back and we'll learn a
little bit more about how these brushes and
| | 05:26 | how Paint Effects works under the hood.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Brushes| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basics of
painting using paint effects, let's look a
| | 00:04 | little bit behind the scenes and
see how all of those are put together,
| | 00:08 | then that will help you a lot
getting the most out of paint effects.
| | 00:11 | So first of all, I want to, again, just
create a simple surface. Let's just go
| | 00:15 | ahead and create another plane and
we'll go ahead and move that up and let's go
| | 00:22 | ahead and make that paintable. So go
Make Paintable here. OK now let's select
| | 00:27 | a brush. Again, I'm just going to go
back to a standard grass brush here, so we
| | 00:32 | can take a look at that. In fact, I'm
going to make that brush just a little
| | 00:34 | bit bigger by holding down the B key
and we are just going to paint a simple
| | 00:40 | stroke, just one stroke here.
| | 00:42 | Now we have two things going on here.
We have got the actual geometry what is
| | 00:48 | painted and that's called the Brush,
but underneath that we actually have a
| | 00:52 | curve that is painted and that's called
the stroke. So there are two components
| | 00:57 | to a Paint Effects effect and that is
the stroke, which is the shape of the
| | 01:03 | curve, and then the brush, what is
actually being painted. So if I select this
| | 01:08 | and go into my Attribute Editor, hit
Ctrl+A, you will see that I have got a
| | 01:12 | couple of tabs here. OK, I have got
one here called strokeShapeGrassClump. So
| | 01:19 | that determines the actual shape of the
curve. We can also -- here we also have
| | 01:23 | what's called the Display Quality.
| | 01:25 | So if you want to, you could just
style down because one of the things I find
| | 01:29 | with Paint Effects is that if you have
a lot of stuff in the scene, it can
| | 01:32 | drag down your interactivity, and
it can't drag down your viewport. So
| | 01:36 | sometimes what I do is I will select
the stroke and I'll turn down the Display
| | 01:40 | Quality so I know that, yeah, this is
grass, but until I actually go to render--
| | 01:44 | In fact, let's just do a quick render
here. If you do a quick render, you will
| | 01:47 | see it renders all of the grass, but
it only displays a little bit of it. OK,
| | 01:52 | so that's actually all that's being
rendered, but this all that's being
| | 01:56 | displayed. Now the next tab here is the
actual brush. In this case it's called
| | 02:02 | grassClump.
| | 02:03 | What this is, is all the parameters
that Paint Effects needs to create grass or
| | 02:08 | flowers or buildings or whatever it is
that we are painting. So let's just go
| | 02:13 | through some of these parameters here.
First thing we have is a Global Scale.
| | 02:17 | How big is the grass. OK, we can just
use that. Then we also have the shape of
| | 02:25 | the actual brush. Now again the brush
is separate from the stroke. So even
| | 02:30 | after you paint it, you can actually
make your brush wider or smaller. So I can
| | 02:34 | make the brush wider, narrower, put
softness on it, you know, all those sorts
| | 02:39 | of things. Flatness.
| | 02:41 | So you can actually change the shape
of the brush here. So you can Twist, so
| | 02:46 | this basically twists the grass or the
strokes or the tubes. Now what happens
| | 02:51 | is when you paint these it actually
creates what are called tubes and what
| | 02:55 | these tubes are essentially in this
case the blades of grass, but tubes can get
| | 02:58 | lot more complex and we'll get into
those in just a little bit. By doing this
| | 03:02 | we can actually twist the geometry
that we create and obviously give it a
| | 03:06 | randomness and twist rate and that sort
of stuff. You can also say how intense
| | 03:11 | is the mesh of what we are painting. So
if we look in here, we'll see that each
| | 03:15 | blade of grass has six, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
tubes or six segments and we have one subsegment.
| | 03:23 | So basically what you can do is if you
want to you can dial this up and make
| | 03:26 | the grass more denser or whatever. You
can also create thorns on your mesh, you
| | 03:31 | can do reflections and the next
important thing is shading - what color is the
| | 03:37 | object that we are painting.
| | 03:38 | So If I go to Shading, you can see
here I have got a couple of things. I have
| | 03:42 | got color. So I have got a couple of
colors that I can play with. So, for
| | 03:46 | example, if I change this, I can change
it to red, red at the base and yellow at
| | 03:54 | the tip. So we can make a more of a
dead grass or red type of grass. So you can
| | 03:59 | actually change the color of all these
grasses. So if you have a brush and you
| | 04:03 | don't quite like it, well just change
the color, OK. So we were in Shading, I'm
| | 04:08 | going to undo Shading here. We also
have texturing and we are not going to get
| | 04:12 | too deep into this right here, but this
is where you could actually apply maps to these.
| | 04:16 | So, for example, a good case would be a
tree. You would actually want to put a
| | 04:21 | texture map on the leaves of the tree
and on the trunk of the tree to give it
| | 04:24 | kind of a bark texture and this is
where you can actually put the textures on
| | 04:29 | there. You can also do illumination,
so, you know, you can make it glow,
| | 04:33 | perfect for sparks and electrical
effects. You can also create shadowing, OK,
| | 04:38 | we are down here to Shadowing. Now
if you want to you can turn on or off
| | 04:41 | shadows. Do you want the grass to cast
a shadow? If you want you can say do you
| | 04:45 | want to fake a shadow, which is for
something like grass it is probably the
| | 04:48 | best, because all you really want
is this general darkening below the
| | 04:52 | grass itself. Then where do you want
the type of shadow, what type of shadow do
| | 04:57 | you want, and how deep do you want the
shadow? You could also create glows and
| | 05:03 | so on, OK. So there are a lot of
parameters that we can work on.
| | 05:07 | Now the one that I really want to show
you is the one called Tubes. Now Tubes
| | 05:13 | really determines the shape and the
character of your geometry. So let's go
| | 05:19 | through some of these. So let's
start with grass and then we are going to
| | 05:23 | actually go to a tree and show you
also how a tree is created using one of
| | 05:27 | these tubes. So, for example, of this
grass we have number of tubes per step.
| | 05:32 | So how dense is the grass? Are you
doing one, two per step, are you doing one
| | 05:37 | blade of grass per step, are you are
doing ten? You can even do more than that.
| | 05:41 | What's the randomness? How many segments
per tube. So that's how dense is that geometry.
| | 05:52 | The length, how long, how short; how
long is your grass. What's the minimum and
| | 05:57 | maximum length of that grass and this
is all under creation in Tubes. Width,
| | 06:03 | how thick is the grass, how thin is it.
Does it taper to a point at the very
| | 06:08 | end or is it the same thickness all the
way through? Does it get thicker as it
| | 06:11 | goes out? Is there a
randomness value for the width?
| | 06:14 | Now there are also other things such
as width scale. What you can do here is
| | 06:19 | you can draw an outline so you can take
your width here and if I want to I can
| | 06:24 | just say well, I want it thin and I'm
just left-clicking on this line. I want
| | 06:29 | it to go thin to thick to thin. You
can actually draw an outline of the shape
| | 06:36 | of your object. Now we also have other
things such as tube direction. Do want
| | 06:41 | it along the normal, which means do you
want it sticking perpendicular to your
| | 06:45 | path or do you want it along the path
itself? And what's your elevation, how
| | 06:50 | much do you want it to stick up? You
know, do you want the grass tall, do you
| | 06:53 | want it kind of squished down? One of
the other things you can do is you can
| | 06:56 | actually use this to animate the grass
being pushed down or for example, if a
| | 07:00 | character or something else rows across it.
Now there are some other ones here for growth.
| | 07:05 | Now this is where you go from being
grass to being a tree. So we have branches,
| | 07:12 | twigs, leaves -- OK, the leaves are
getting a little big. Flowers and buds. So,
| | 07:19 | basically what you could do is you can
turn on or off all of these different
| | 07:23 | components to each of these tubes. So
if it's just branches, that means it's
| | 07:27 | just stalks or whatever. If you want
you can have branches with flowers and
| | 07:32 | that way you can actually make a flower,
leaves, so on and so forth. In fact,
| | 07:36 | let's go ahead and paint something
else. Let's go ahead and paint a tree.
| | 07:38 | I'm just going to select tree here
and let's just go ahead and paint one of
| | 07:42 | these trees and now that I have
painted that. Let's take a look at what that
| | 07:47 | looks like. This is actually pretty
small, so actually let's go up here and
| | 07:51 | let's just make our Global Scale a lot
bigger. So I'm just going to make this
| | 07:54 | bigger so we can see this tree a lit
bit more. Now I'm going to go right back
| | 07:59 | down to Growth. So here we have got
leaves, we can turn our leaves on or off.
| | 08:05 | We can also turn on Twigs, so that
means those are secondary branches. We can
| | 08:09 | also turn on Flowers and we
can turn on Buds to the flowers.
| | 08:14 | So let's take a look at some of this,
let's take a look at flowers. So we have,
| | 08:17 | again, total control. Look at all this,
from the number of petals in the flower
| | 08:24 | to the number of flowers. We also have
length of those petals. Again, we have
| | 08:32 | another one of these width scales,
which means I can shape that petal. So if I
| | 08:36 | don't want these rectangular petals,
what I could do is I can just click here
| | 08:40 | say well, I wanted to kind of taper off
and I want it to be more like pointed
| | 08:45 | leaf like this. You can also say how
much does it curl. So if you wanted to
| | 08:51 | curl in, here let's see. So basically
how much do you want that leaf to curl
| | 08:57 | and we also have soft light color.
What's the first color, so let's say if you
| | 09:01 | wanted it to be yellow you could do
that and what's the second color. It goes
| | 09:05 | yellow to green, yellow to purple,
whatever you want. Again, you can change all
| | 09:10 | of these. I'm going through this
fairly quickly but you can see how much
| | 09:15 | customization you have got.
| | 09:16 | Now let's take a look really quickly at
how you can use this for other types of
| | 09:20 | effects. I'm going to go into Visor
and I'm going to select actually that
| | 09:26 | cityMesh and I'm going to select
Manhattan, which is basically a skyscraper, and
| | 09:32 | we can see by painting that -- I'm
going to turn my brush down a little bit
| | 09:37 | here. So by painting that you can kind
of see how these buildings are created.
| | 09:42 | I'm just going to zoom in here. So
let's take a look at these, so if I select
| | 09:48 | those let's go through and see how
these are created. So I go into my brush
| | 09:55 | here, Manhattan, and what you can do is
scroll down here and you can say well,
| | 09:59 | let's take a look at texturing.
| | 10:04 | What it does is it actually
creates a texture map for that called
| | 10:08 | sandstonefacade and what that is-- in
fact if I turn on Hardware Texturing here,
| | 10:12 | you should be able to see it. If not,
I can render it and you should be able to
| | 10:15 | see it there. There it is. OK, so you
see those. There actually is a JPEG file
| | 10:20 | out there called sandstonefacade and
what that is using is it's using that
| | 10:25 | texture map to map these buildings.
Very simple. And then if you scroll down
| | 10:30 | here. Go to Creation here and you go
to Width Scale and you'll see that the
| | 10:35 | width of it is stair-stepped, very
much like the building. See how the
| | 10:40 | stair step of that Width Scale is the
same as the buildings itself and of
| | 10:45 | course, with this you are not going to
have any petals or flowers or anything like that.
| | 10:50 | So let's take a look at one more. I'm
going to go back into Visor here. Let's
| | 10:53 | look at something a little bit more
heavy. Let's look at one of these trees.
| | 10:58 | Let's get trees mesh and let's pick
oakWhiteMedium and just paint an oak tree.
| | 11:05 | You can see how much geometry that is.
That's why it kind of gives you that
| | 11:08 | warning there, but again let's take a
look at the width scale of this. So let's
| | 11:12 | go through here. The bark, the
image of that bark is oakWhiteBark.
| | 11:17 | So again it has put a texture on this
that we can actually use. So that's the
| | 11:24 | Oak Bark Texture and if we scroll down
a little bit here, width creation,
| | 11:31 | you can see how it has got kind of this
gnarled width and that's what it uses to
| | 11:35 | actually create the width of this tree
and then if we go down here you see that
| | 11:39 | it has branches, twigs,
leaves, and so on and so forth.
| | 11:47 | Now let's take a look at the leaves.
The leaves themselves are pretty simple
| | 11:52 | width, but the one thing is that the
texturing of the leave, if you go down, is
| | 11:56 | actually called oakLeaf.tif. So if we
scroll into one of these leaves, you will
| | 12:02 | see that it's actually again a
texture map. See? And so we have actual texture
| | 12:08 | maps used and flip off those leaves.
| | 12:11 | So, again, these are very
sophisticated tools. So I'm going to leave it at
| | 12:15 | that. So those are basically the
parameters that you need to create brushes and
| | 12:19 | now I'm going to teach you in the next
lesson how to save and store brushes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying Brushes to existing strokes| 00:00 | As you can see from the last lesson
there is a ton of attributes that you can
| | 00:04 | set for any of these Paint Effects
brushes. So you can spend a lot of time
| | 00:09 | creating a custom brush. Typically,
how you work with paint effects is you
| | 00:14 | start with one of many brushes that
Maya gives you. You change some parameters,
| | 00:19 | you customize it, and then you use
that custom brush to paint whatever it is
| | 00:25 | that you need to be painting.
| | 00:27 | So let me show you some other basics
of brush management. Let's go ahead and
| | 00:31 | paint some hair. I'm going to create a
sphere, I'm going to shade it, and then
| | 00:37 | I'm going to go to Paint Effects, go
Make Paintable. I'm going to go into Visor
| | 00:44 | and I'm going to scroll over to Hair.
And let's paint some hair on this sphere.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to go ahead with hairBrownThick
and I'm going to make my brush size a
| | 00:56 | little bit bigger, so I'm going to
hold down the B key while I drag and let's
| | 01:02 | just paint some hair. I'm going to
paint about four or five strokes.
| | 01:06 | Now what happens is when I paint this
hair, I'm painting separate strokes for
| | 01:11 | each of these. So each one of these is
a separate stroke and each one of these
| | 01:18 | strokes has a separate brush. Let me
show you how this works. If I'm in my
| | 01:23 | Attribute Editor, look. We have created
hairBrownThick 4, 3, 2, and 1. So each
| | 01:33 | one of these strokes has a separate
brush on it and each one of these brushes
| | 01:38 | has separate parameters.
| | 01:40 | Well what I can do is I can actually
apply the parameters from one brush, so I
| | 01:45 | can get them from one brush and
apply them to others. Let's take this
| | 01:49 | particular strand of hair. If I take
this and I scroll through here, I can look
| | 01:54 | at some of these parameters here. If I
go into Shading, I can actually change
| | 01:58 | the color of the hair. Let's make it
green hair, for example. Two shading
| | 02:03 | colors here, so let's make it kind of
greenish. So as you can see this hair is
| | 02:06 | green and the rest is brown.
| | 02:08 | So what I can do is I can actually
apply these settings to the other strands.
| | 02:13 | So I select this and then in my Paint
Effects menu, I go Get Settings From
| | 02:17 | Selected Stroke. Now what this does
is it basically loads the brush just
| | 02:23 | the same way as if I clicked here. Let's
say if I clicked on any one of these, if
| | 02:27 | I clicked on Crystals, for example, it
will load the crystal brush and where
| | 02:32 | it loads that is into what's called
the Template Brush. So if we go into
| | 02:36 | Template Brush Settings here, these
are all the settings I need to paint
| | 02:41 | whatever the current brush is.
| | 02:44 | So if I do Get Settings From Selected
Stroke that changes to whatever the
| | 02:52 | settings are for this stroke. So for
example, the Shading is now that green
| | 02:56 | hair and the waviness of the hair
and all that stuff. So what I can do is
| | 03:02 | actually go into Select mode here,
select these strands and then just go Apply
| | 03:12 | Settings To Selected Strokes. Now
what's it's doing is it is actually applying
| | 03:16 | from this template brush to that. So
what I did was I changed this brush,
| | 03:24 | did Get Brush Settings, which loaded it
into the template. It's kind of like the
| | 03:29 | clipboard, you know, when you do cut
and paste. So we loaded it into the
| | 03:33 | template and then I applied it to the template.
| | 03:37 | Now because it's the template, you can
actually use this for almost anything.
| | 03:41 | So, for example, if I selected this
hair and I went into Visor and I selected
| | 03:45 | some other hair, let's say DeepRed hair.
Now just by clicking on that I've
| | 03:50 | loaded DeepRed hair into my brush and
so what I can do now is just go Apply
| | 03:55 | Settings to those strokes and now I've
got that DeepRed hair applied to this
| | 04:01 | stroke. If I wanted to change that back,
I just select in one go, Get Settings From
| | 04:07 | Selected Stroke, which is the green
hair, and then apply that and what that
| | 04:13 | does, again, loads it into the template
and then I can apply from the template.
| | 04:16 | What I want to point out here is that
wherever you choose the brush, it always
| | 04:20 | goes into the template. Either I can
get the settings from here, from a stroke
| | 04:25 | in the scene and that loads it into the
template, or I can get it from the shelf
| | 04:30 | or I can get it from Visor. But once it
is in that template, then you can apply
| | 04:34 | it to whatever strokes you want. So
let's say we painted a whole field with
| | 04:39 | turf grass and I wanted it
to change it to clumpy grass.
| | 04:42 | Well all I've to do is just select all
those strokes in the Outliner, so each
| | 04:48 | one of these strokes and then just go
into whatever else I want, flowers, if
| | 04:56 | I want to make all of these flowers, I
will just click on that. That loads my
| | 04:59 | template brush and then I just go
Apply and that's all I need to do and now I
| | 05:05 | have got flowers on that sphere.
| | 05:08 | So those were the basics of
getting and applying brushes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharing Brushes| 00:00 | So we've learned one method of
changing the look of strokes and that's using
| | 00:05 | Get Brush and Apply Brush. You can also
share brushes, and let me show you how
| | 00:10 | to do that. I'm going to go ahead
and create a sphere and go to my Paint
| | 00:15 | Effects, Make Paintable and let's
paint some more hair. So I'm going to go
| | 00:24 | ahead and create... let's do That Girl
hair. So I'm just going to make my brush
| | 00:29 | just a little bit bigger and
I'm going to create some hair.
| | 00:33 | Now typically what we did was, if I
wanted to change, let's say I wanted to
| | 00:42 | change the color of something, let's
take this hair. And let's say I wanted to
| | 00:47 | change it to some color. We'd go in
to Shading and let's make it kind of a
| | 00:55 | blondish kind of hair. OK, so now we've
got hair that is a different color and I
| | 01:01 | want to apply that to these other
strokes. Well, what I can do is I can
| | 01:04 | certainly do -- you know, in fact
let's go ahead and tear this off here.
| | 01:07 | I can certainly do get and apply
settings but another thing I can do is I can
| | 01:14 | also Shift-select them all and just
say Share One Brush. And what that does is
| | 01:20 | if we go into our Attribute Editor,
you'll notice that whatever the last that
| | 01:26 | I had selected, which was ThatGirl4,
is now applied to all of it. See there,
| | 01:33 | there is my brush. Actually I've one
brush that is affecting all of the
| | 01:38 | different strokes. So if I change the
color of that one brush, it affects all
| | 01:46 | of them. Actually, if you want to
get real technical, we can go into the
| | 01:50 | Hypergraph: Connections and you can
see that all of the strokes are actually
| | 01:53 | going in to this one brush. So
essentially this one node now affects all of the
| | 02:00 | brushes that we share.
| | 02:01 | So let me show you how this works
again. So let's say, we have Shift-select
| | 02:05 | one, two, three, four. The last one we
selected is the one that it is going to
| | 02:11 | use and then all we have to do is go
Share One Brush. And so once we've done
| | 02:18 | that whatever the last one was selected,
that brush is applied to all of the
| | 02:23 | strokes that are selected and now I
can change really any of these strokes.
| | 02:29 | They are all connected. So whatever I
change on one, changes on all of them.
| | 02:34 | So that makes it real easy, again, if
you are painting a lot of the same thing,
| | 02:40 | you just turn on brush sharing and the
brush will actually be applied to many, many strokes.
| | 02:46 | Now if you want to get rid off that
it's very easy. All you have to do is
| | 02:49 | select the strokes you want to
remove that from and just say Remove Brush
| | 02:54 | Sharing and what that does is it
will create a separate brush for each of
| | 03:00 | these. So you've hairThatGirl 5, 6,
and 7. So if I change this one to red,
| | 03:10 | it goes back. So again you select them all,
the last one selected is applied to
| | 03:15 | all of them and then you can remove
them. So that's the basics of brush sharing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving Brushes| 00:00 | Now I'm going to show you how to save
out brushes. Obviously, you are going to
| | 00:04 | be creating brushes and paint effects
that you may want to use later. So let's
| | 00:09 | show you how to do that.
| | 00:10 | First thing I need to do is create
some strokes here, so we can create some
| | 00:16 | brushes. So I'm going to create a
NURB surface. Go to Paint Effects, Make
| | 00:20 | Paintable. So let's just paint a
simple tree. We going to use a simple tree
| | 00:25 | brush. I'm going to make this brush a
little bit bigger and let's just paint
| | 00:29 | just one stroke, that's all we need.
| | 00:31 | Now while these are selected I'm going
to go into my Attribute Editor and let's
| | 00:36 | go ahead and change these. So I'm
going to go into my brush, treeSimple, and
| | 00:42 | scroll down and let's go ahead and
into Tubes. Let's open up the Tubes
| | 00:47 | rollout and turn on Flowers. And
now those Flowers are a little big.
| | 00:56 | So I'm going to go scroll down to my Flowers
rollout here and let's make the flowers smaller.
| | 01:04 | Petal Length, so I'm going
to turn down the Petal Length.
| | 01:10 | That is about right. And if I want to I can
change the color of the flowers. Let's make
| | 01:15 | them yellow with green tips; whatever
we want. So now we've got trees with
| | 01:22 | flowers and obviously, we can go
through and change a myriad of parameters.
| | 01:26 | We can tweak these as much as we want.
But let's just stop here, because really
| | 01:30 | what I want to show is how to save this.
| | 01:33 | So we've changed all the parameters
we want. Let's go ahead and make this
| | 01:38 | happen. So I'm going to in to my Paint
Effects window, and I'm going to say Get
| | 01:41 | Settings From Selected Stroke. I'm
going to select the stroke that has the
| | 01:45 | values that I want, which is tree with
the flowers. Then I'm going to say Save
| | 01:52 | Brush Preset, right at the bottom.
It brings up a window, gives it label,
| | 01:59 | treeSimple - and let's just call it
treeSimple with Flower is the name of the
| | 02:03 | layer. And flower. And where are we
going to save this? We are going to save
| | 02:08 | this the shelf, which is here. Save it
out to Visor. And if so, what directory in
| | 02:15 | Visor? So in other words in Visor, in
fact the directory would be right here
| | 02:19 | and basically if we scroll this all
the way out you can see the name of
| | 02:23 | directory here and each one of these
is a separate directory within this main directory.
| | 02:28 | But we are going to save this to the
shelf and just go Save Brush Preset. Now,
| | 02:34 | notice how this little button popped up
in my Paint Effects shelf. If I want to
| | 02:39 | I could click here, paint grass,
click here on the one I just created and I
| | 02:45 | will paint more of those tress with
flowers. You know, that's very different
| | 02:49 | from the original tree brush that I created.
| | 02:53 | So all of those parameters including
the scale of the brush have been saved. So now,
| | 02:59 | if I want to get back to painting
this particular tree, all I've to do now
| | 03:03 | is hit this button and I
can paint it. Very simple.
| | 03:08 | So that makes it really easy to
modify and save these parameters out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting in the Paint Effects window| 00:00 | Now I want to show the Paint Effects
window, which is another way to paint
| | 00:06 | objects in Maya. The Paint Effects
window is a custom interface for paint
| | 00:10 | effects that speeds up the workflow.
So let me show you how that works.
| | 00:14 | We are going to paint in to a scene,
so I'm going to go Project > Set,
| | 00:18 | 09, so I'm going to set our project 09
and then I'm going to open a scene called
| | 00:23 | Plane01.mb and that's our airplane in
just a standard scene and what I have
| | 00:30 | done is I have basically made a plane
and just mapped this texture on it for
| | 00:34 | the runway and some grass and
then put a cloud pattern behind it.
| | 00:39 | Now I want to paint this grass
because it doesn't really look good when you
| | 00:43 | render it. But let's go ahead and use
the Paint Effects window to do that. So,
| | 00:47 | I'm going to go ahead and select this
and do Make Paintable like we normally do,
| | 00:51 | but instead of painting it here, we
are going to actually go into the Paint
| | 00:55 | Effects window and what we want to do
here is go into Paint Scene. OK, there is
| | 01:00 | an option here, paint either scene or canvas.
| | 01:03 | We are going to get into the canvas a
little bit later and if I go into Paint
| | 01:07 | Scene mode, you will notice that this
is basically a viewport that I can move
| | 01:12 | around and if I want to, I can
actually just display this. So we can actually
| | 01:16 | go here, we can actually do Object
Shading here. We can either shade it, which
| | 01:21 | is basically just gray shade, or we can
textured shade it, which gives us pretty
| | 01:25 | accurate textures and what I can also
do is do a lot of Paint Effects functions.
| | 01:32 | So, for example, I could do Get Brush
and I could select a brush that I want to
| | 01:37 | use or I could, for example if I
wanted to paint grass, I can do that and I
| | 01:43 | can now just start painting into
this window and it gives me very high
| | 01:51 | interactivity which is nice. One of
the nice things about this window is it
| | 01:54 | does have these little parameters along
the top. If I can roll this all the way out.
| | 01:59 | My screen is always a
little tight when I record these.
| | 02:03 | But you can see along the top here, I
have got actual parameters here for the
| | 02:07 | color of the grass and these are the
colors that it's using in the Brush
| | 02:12 | templates settings. In fact if I want to,
I can go to Brush > Edit Template Brush,
| | 02:16 | which is basically my brush settings
here, and if I go into Shading you
| | 02:20 | will see this is Color 1, this is
Color 2 and so on and so forth. So it gives
| | 02:30 | me a lot of parameters, so I can
actually interactively so I don't have to go
| | 02:33 | digging through those windows
to change my brush as I paint.
| | 02:37 | Now there are some other little options
here. One is called Stroke Refresh, so
| | 02:42 | do I want to show my strokes in
Wireframe mode or do I want to show them
| | 02:47 | completely rendered? In fact let's paint
something else in here. Let's paint a tree.
| | 02:52 | That's usually highly visible.
In fact let's paint a tree mesh.
| | 02:57 | Let's paint something that's a little bit
more difficult for Maya and I can paint
| | 03:01 | some oak trees for example.
| | 03:05 | But now I can also -- you can see I can
still interact with these. But if I do
| | 03:11 | Stroke Refresh > Wireframe, it will
interact a lot faster because what Wireframe
| | 03:16 | is is basically a kind of a dump
numbers. Now we can see a placement and then
| | 03:21 | you go into Rendered to see the
high version; you can see how it takes a
| | 03:25 | little bit of time to refresh that. See again,
it takes a little bit of time to refresh.
| | 03:32 | So typically, I do Stroke Refresh >
Wireframe and that allows me to paint fairly
| | 03:37 | interactively. Now there is another
mode of the Paint Effects window and that's
| | 03:42 | called Canvas mode. Now I was playing
with this just a little bit before and
| | 03:47 | this is called Paint Canvas and what
this does is it -- in fact let's just go
| | 03:51 | Canvas > New Image and we go Image
Name, we go Apply Texture. Yes, replace
| | 04:00 | existing file. What it does it gives
me a 2D paint palette. Now what I can do
| | 04:06 | with this is I can actually use the
brushes that I have to paint within this
| | 04:10 | 2D window. Now this is
great for creating textures.
| | 04:14 | So for example, if I go into let's say
Get Brush and let's say I wanted to get
| | 04:21 | some more grasses. Let's just get a
some astroturf here. So I get astroturf and
| | 04:27 | I start painting. I can actually paint
that texture and what I can do is I can
| | 04:33 | actually paint a texture that I can
use to apply to an object later. So for
| | 04:38 | example, let's say I was going to use
astroturf as my Paint Effect stroke,
| | 04:43 | I could actually on the mesh behind
that stroke, put a bitmap texture. That is
| | 04:50 | basically what I'm painting here,
which is astroturf. So that way the colors
| | 04:55 | will match, the general texture will
match and you will have to worry a little
| | 05:00 | bit less about completely filling
in the ground plane when you do that.
| | 05:04 | Now there are some other options here
such as Wrap and Roll. So if I do Roll,
| | 05:10 | what it does is it actually rolls it
50% vertically. Now this is great for
| | 05:14 | creating tile textures. So if I Roll
it again 50% Horizontal, what you can do
| | 05:22 | is you can actually create tile textures.
There is also a Wrap, so you can Wrap
| | 05:26 | Vertically or Horizontally and what
it's supposed to do is actually as you
| | 05:30 | paint off one side, it comes in off the other.
| | 05:34 | Now there are some other brush settings
here as well. You can Smear. OK, so you
| | 05:39 | can actually smear stuff. You can
Erase. OK, now what it does is actually
| | 05:45 | erases using the grass brush. We can
also do a Single Pixel Brush. We can also
| | 05:52 | do stylus texture and all that sort of
thing. Now one of the nice things--
| | 05:56 | I'm going to do a New Image here-- is
that in the Paint Effects window, under Get
| | 06:01 | Brush here, we actually do
have just standard brushes.
| | 06:04 | So for example, if you scroll down
here we have an airbrush, so you can
| | 06:09 | actually just use standard airbrush
settings. You could use watercolors and
| | 06:20 | with stylus pressure, you actually
do have a fairly competent paint package
| | 06:25 | that you can use to paint your textures
from within Maya. And then all you have
| | 06:29 | to do is just save that as, and you
can save it as any image file you want.
| | 06:34 | So you can save it as Maya IFF or you
could save it as JPEG or whatever and then
| | 06:38 | use those bitmap images to texture
your objects within Maya, OK. So those are
| | 06:46 | the two main uses of the Paint Effects
window. So you can see how useful that can be.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding Paint Effects in practice| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how you would
use paint effects in the real world. One
| | 00:04 | of the things with paint effects is
that you can create a lot of data very
| | 00:08 | quickly. So one of the things I
want to show you is some useful tips to
| | 00:12 | organize your paint effect scenes.
| | 00:15 |
|
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