IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:06 | Hi! I am George Maestri and welcome to
Maya 2009 Essential Training. I am an
| | 00:07 | animation director and producer and
I have also authored several books on
| | 00:10 | character animation. This year marks
Maya's tenth anniversary and I have been
| | 00:15 | using Maya since its first beta.
I'm always impressed by what it can do.
| | 00:20 | In this essential training course, we
will go over Maya's features and give you
| | 00:23 | the information needed to hit the
ground running. First we will tackle the
| | 00:27 | interface and how to manipulate objects,
so you will be able to get around in
| | 00:31 | Maya 2009 with confidence and ease.
We'll also get you familiar with polygonal
| | 00:36 | modeling, so that you can turn spheres,
cubes, and cylinders, into more complex objects.
| | 00:41 | Then we will move on to NURBS Modeling
to learn how to create very organic and
| | 00:45 | smooth surfaces. From there we will
study some advanced modeling concepts and
| | 00:50 | apply them to a design project where
we will build a robot from scratch.
| | 00:55 | Also take a detailed look at creating
and manipulating textures in Maya to give
| | 00:59 | your models added depth and realism.
Next we will move on to rendering and
| | 01:03 | creating photo realistic images using
Maya's Software Renderer as well as the
| | 01:07 | more powerful Mental Ray Renderer. We
will also explore using Paint Effects to
| | 01:11 | create lush environments and effects.
And finally we will animate some scenes
| | 01:16 | in Maya 2009 to bring your models to life.
| | 01:19 | I tried to make this course both fun
and effective to help you understand the
| | 01:23 | potential of Maya. I hope you would enjoy it.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | Now the Exercise Files are available to
those who have purchased the DVD or for
| | 00:06 | premium subscribers to lynda.com.
| | 00:09 | If you are working with the Exercise
Files, go ahead and place those on your
| | 00:13 | desktop. The exercise files are a
folder and within it you should have 10
| | 00:19 | individual folders, which are geared
towards the individual chapters in this title.
| | 00:24 | Now often I will go ahead and set a
project and when I do that, go ahead and
| | 00:29 | just make sure that you are in this
Exercise Files folder and that you have set
| | 00:34 | the proper project in Maya.
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| Starting Maya 2009| 00:00 |
Starting Maya is pretty much like
starting any other program. On a Windows
| | 00:05 |
machine, when you install Maya, it
should put an icon on your desktop. You can
| | 00:08 |
certainly double-click on that. If you
want to find it in the Programs menu,
| | 00:13 |
you can either go here into your Start
menu and you may have a Maya 2009 option
| | 00:19 |
here, or if you go into All Programs,
scroll down to Autodesk, Autodesk Maya,
| | 00:25 |
Maya 2009 and you can start it.
| | 00:27 |
Now if you are on the Macintosh, you
can also find it in your dock, if you have
| | 00:32 |
dragged it there as well. Once you
have started it, we can start working with it.
| | 00:38 |
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| Working on a Mac| 00:00 | Now for those of you who are using
the Macintosh, the interface is pretty
| | 00:05 | consistent between Windows and Mac for
Maya 2009 but there is a difference in
| | 00:11 | the keyboard. The Macintosh keyboard is
actually physically different than the
| | 00:15 | PC or the LINUX keyboard.
| | 00:17 | So on the PC, I will be hitting the Alt
key and then using my mouse to navigate
| | 00:24 | through the scene such as what I am
doing here. Now you do not have an Alt key
| | 00:30 | on the Mac keyboard. So, in that case,
you would substitute the Option key.
| | 00:35 | The other major difference is the
Insert key. So when I am moving a Pivot such
| | 00:41 | as now, I would hit the Insert key. On
the Macintosh, we don't have an Insert
| | 00:46 | key so you would be using the Home key.
For this, I will try and call this out
| | 00:51 | in the lessons but just be sure that
you remember the Alt key is the Option key
| | 00:56 | and the Insert key is the Home key and
pretty much everything else should line
| | 01:01 | up between Windows and the Mac.
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| The importance of a three-button mouse| 00:00 | One more thing I really want to
stress is that you must get a three button
| | 00:04 | mouse for use with Maya. Now I know
some machines, particularly the Macintosh,
| | 00:10 | do not ship with the three button mouse.
| | 00:12 | But please go out to the store and
spend the $10 it takes to buy a three button
| | 00:16 | mouse because you will not be able to
navigate Maya properly without one. Just
| | 00:21 | a word of advice, be sure
to get a three button mouse.
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| Graphics card recommendation| 00:00 |
Now one more thing you should probably
do when you get Maya is actually get a
| | 00:05 |
decent graphics card. Most consumer
graphics card don't support openGL to the
| | 00:11 |
level that Maya requires. Now you
will probably be able to use about 90% of
| | 00:16 |
Maya with an ordinary graphics card,
but if you don't have one that fully
| | 00:21 |
supports openGL such as in Nvidia
Quadro or an AMD FireGL card, then you will
| | 00:29 |
not really be able to use
Maya to it's full capabilities.
| | 00:32 |
You will notice some of the differences
when you go into high quality rendering
| | 00:36 |
or you do hard work texturing, which
actually it brings up the actual textures
| | 00:42 |
in a scene, and you will also notice
it in highly interactive places such as
| | 00:47 |
paint effects. So you may get ghost
thing in strange artifacts, if you don't
| | 00:53 |
have a fully supported graphics
card. So just be aware of that.
| | 00:56 |
Now for those people who are on the
budget, you can use a consumer card with
| | 01:00 |
Maya, you may get some errors as you
use some of the more advanced functions.
| | 01:07 |
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|
|
1. Interface EssentialsUnderstanding the Maya interface| 00:00 | Let's take a look at the Maya
interface. Now, I have Maya open and when you
| | 00:05 | first look at it, it looks a little
daunting. There is a lot of buttons and a
| | 00:08 | lot of controls here. That's because
Maya can do a lot of different things.
| | 00:12 | But let's go ahead and just go
through this one step at a time and you will
| | 00:15 | know where everything is at,
and then it won't seem so daunting.
| | 00:19 | Now, as with any application, Maya
does have a text based menu bar along the
| | 00:25 | top and we have standard options here
such as File, Edit, Cut and Paste, that
| | 00:30 | sort of stuff. Modify. Create, a
Create menu that allows you to create
| | 00:36 | different types of objects and so on.
| | 00:39 | Now once we get to the ones here on the
right, these are actually ones you can
| | 00:44 | change. For example right now, we
are working with Animation. We have a
| | 00:48 | pull-down menu here, which actually
changes part of that text-based menu.
| | 00:53 | So for example, if we are working with
Animation, we will leave it here and all
| | 00:56 | the animation tools come up. If we
are working with Polygons, which means
| | 01:01 | modeling, then we change that and all
of a sudden, this menu changes. Notice
| | 01:06 | how this menu changes when you go to
Surfaces, which is NURBS based modeling,
| | 01:10 | and Rendering and so on. The top
line of Maya is not big enough to hold
| | 01:15 | everything that Maya can do. So you
have to kind of break it down into task-
| | 01:19 | based stuff.
| | 01:20 | Now, another thing with menus is that
they can't tear off. So click on the menu
| | 01:24 | here, scroll down to this double bar
at the very top of the menu, I can just
| | 01:29 | click on that and it floats the menu,
which is kind of nice if you need to keep
| | 01:34 | referencing a specific menu. I can
also tear off sub-menus as well. So any of
| | 01:41 | these menus can be floated which will
make things a little bit more efficient.
| | 01:46 | Off to the right of this pull-down menu
here, we have what's called the Status
| | 01:50 | Line, and this has a number of
different tools for selecting and moving objects
| | 01:54 | that sort of stuff. Each one of these
are kind of divided up by these little
| | 01:58 | segments here. Right here we have File
> Open and Close tools, and then here,
| | 02:03 | we have what are called Selection Masks.
So this allows you to select objects
| | 02:08 | by specific types.
| | 02:11 | As I click these three buttons, we
go into hierarchies, objects, and
| | 02:15 | components, and then within each one of
these, you will notice how these menus
| | 02:19 | change here. This allows us to turn
on and off different types of objects.
| | 02:24 | Let's say we were working in Animation
and we wanted to not select the joints
| | 02:29 | of a character skeleton or we didn't
want to select certain types of geometry,
| | 02:34 | we can actually mask off that, so that
we are only selecting the objects that
| | 02:38 | we really need. If you get a very
complex Maya scene, you will see the value of
| | 02:43 | masking off certain types of objects.
| | 02:46 | In addition to this off to the right
here, we have all of these magnet-based
| | 02:51 | icons and these are for snapping. So
this will snap to a grid, this will snap
| | 02:56 | to a curve, points, surface, and so on,
and these toggle on and off. So if I
| | 03:02 | keep these toggled on, I am going to
be snapping everything to everything and
| | 03:05 | so you don't want that. So let's
make sure these are all turned off.
| | 03:09 | Now, these here allow you to move up
and down the stack. When we get into
| | 03:14 | materials, we will be using this a
little bit more. Off here with all these
| | 03:17 | ones with a little Clapboard icon,
these are for rendering. So we can actually
| | 03:23 | just render our scene just by clicking
that. Obviously, there is nothing in the
| | 03:26 | scene. So we are not rendering anything.
| | 03:28 | Well, here we have X, Y, and Z type-
ins. So if we want to, we can actually
| | 03:33 | type in co-ordinates here. This
controls the Attribute Editor, Tool menu, and
| | 03:41 | the Channel Box. Now, all of these
are just different ways to control the
| | 03:45 | different parameters in your scene and
as we go through modeling and that sort
| | 03:49 | of stuff, we'll be using these a lot.
I just want you to know that they are here.
| | 03:52 | Underneath the Status Line is
what's called a shelf. A shelf is just a
| | 03:58 | collection of tools and they're
more of a graphic representation of the
| | 04:02 | different tools and
functions available for Maya.
| | 04:06 | Now, one nice thing about this is that
you can actually create your own custom
| | 04:10 | toolbars and create your own custom
tools, which is very, very handy. But a
| | 04:15 | lot of the tools that we are going to
be using we can actually access from
| | 04:18 | these shelves. There are some standard
shelves that Autodesk provides for these.
| | 04:23 | Now, off to the left here, we have all
of our Move tools. If we want to move,
| | 04:29 | rotate or scale an object, they are
all along here. These buttons down here
| | 04:34 | control the different types of
viewports and how we view those.
| | 04:38 | Now, I am on a screen that's a little
bit small. There is actually some more
| | 04:42 | menu options down here. If you want,
you can also get rid of these just by
| | 04:46 | clicking on any one of these little tabs here.
| | 04:50 | Now along the bottom, we have the
Time slider, which allows us to work with
| | 04:54 | animation and also a Range slider,
which shows us how many frames we are
| | 04:59 | animating. Then off to the right, we
have the Channel Box or the Attribute
| | 05:06 | Editor or the Tools menu. So for
example, if I select the Move tool, all of
| | 05:12 | the options for the Move tool come up
here. If I go into the Attribute Editor
| | 05:16 | and I create an object, all of the
attributes for that object are here.
| | 05:20 | Now, the Channel Box actually has
all of the controls for translation,
| | 05:26 | rotation, and scale. So for example,
if we are moving stuff around, we would
| | 05:29 | probably wanted to be in the Channel Box.
Moving down, we also have underneath
| | 05:35 | the Channel Box, we have got what's
called the Layers Editor which allows us to
| | 05:39 | organize our scenes in layers, and
then along the bottom, we have our Play controls.
| | 05:45 | Now, we can also control how Maya looks
just by going into Preferences. So I am
| | 05:51 | going to go to Window > Settings
Preferences > Preferences and bring up the
| | 05:56 | Preferences window. Now in this, we
can actually turn on and off any one of
| | 06:01 | these UI Elements. So for example, if
you don't want the Status Line or you
| | 06:05 | don't want to see your Shelves, you
can actually turn all of these off, and
| | 06:08 | make a very large window to work in or
you can turn them all on and have all of
| | 06:13 | the controls available to you.
| | 06:15 | So one of the things that happens a lot
of times is that you will accidentally
| | 06:19 | click here and delete some of these
user interface elements, and you wonder how
| | 06:24 | to get them back. Well, if that's the
case, then you just go again Window >
| | 06:28 | Setting > Preferences and then you
just go to your UI Elements, and you can
| | 06:32 | turn them back on.
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| Working with files and Maya projects| 00:00 | As we start working with Maya, we
are going to be working with a lot of
| | 00:03 | different types of files. Maya has
its own file format, Maya binary, which it
| | 00:09 | uses to store all of its geometry data
and all the scene data, but it also can
| | 00:14 | pull from a lot of different files
outside of itself, such as textures or image
| | 00:19 | files, that sort of thing. So what Maya
does in order to keep things organized,
| | 00:25 | it creates what's called a Project.
| | 00:27 | Now a Project is just a standardized
directory system that organizes all of your
| | 00:32 | data so it's all on the same place.
In fact, I can show you what a Project
| | 00:36 | looks like. I am going to minimize Maya
here, go out to my desktop and if we go
| | 00:41 | into the Exercise Files directory that
we have placed on our desktop, you will
| | 00:46 | see that each one of these
directories here is actually a project.
| | 00:51 | So if I go into 01_Essentials, you
will see I have all of these different
| | 00:55 | directories and those are really just
places where Maya puts things. So, for
| | 00:59 | example, particle systems might be here,
stuff related to mel scripts are here,
| | 01:05 | sourceimages are where we usually
put our image files for texturing, that
| | 01:09 | sort of stuff, so it's all in a
standardized directory format.
| | 01:15 | So when we work with files,
particularly in this lesson, we are going to need
| | 01:19 | to set the project so that Maya
knows where all the text or files and
| | 01:23 | everything else is. We can do that
through the File menu. So we go File >
| | 01:28 | Project and we have a
couple of options. One is New.
| | 01:33 | Let's go ahead and take a look at what
that is and so if you are starting from
| | 01:36 | scratch and you are just creating your
own Project, you can just go Project >
| | 01:40 | New, it brings up this window and this
allows you to give the Project a name
| | 01:47 | and then browse for a location, so we
can actually put this wherever we want.
| | 01:52 | And once we do that, we can just hit
this button down here in the middle called
| | 01:55 | Use Defaults and what that does is
it just gives all of these directories a
| | 02:02 | name and then if you hit Accept it
will go ahead and create that Project.
| | 02:05 | I am going to go ahead and cancel
out of that because we already have the
| | 02:10 | Project set up. So let's go ahead to
File > Project and let's just go Set and
| | 02:16 | what we can do is just scroll up to our
desktop, go to Exercise Files, which is
| | 02:24 | that directory we put on there, and just
expand that and then we can set any one
| | 02:28 | of these projects as our project directory.
| | 02:31 | So, for example, right now we are in
Chapter 1, so I am going to set my project
| | 02:35 | to 01_Essentials and hit OK and now
all of my pathing is set so that Maya
| | 02:41 | will find all the files
associated with that Project.
| | 02:45 | Now Projects are really important if
you are going to be moving your data
| | 02:49 | around. If you want to move your data
to another computer or collaborate with
| | 02:54 | somebody, I would highly recommend
using Projects. Now Maya doesn't strictly
| | 02:59 | require that you use Projects. You can
actually put the data anywhere you want,
| | 03:03 | but the problem is that if you move
your data to another computer or something
| | 03:08 | else, then you have to go through and
reconnect everything so that it can find
| | 03:12 | all of the files. If you keep
everything in a project, then you can just move
| | 03:17 | all the directories associated with
the project, reset the project and
| | 03:20 | everything will be there.
| | 03:21 | So it makes a lot of sense to work
with Projects and I highly recommend that
| | 03:25 | you get in the habit of doing that as
you use Maya. So now that you set our
| | 03:30 | Project, we can go ahead and start
working with actual models and data.
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| Navigating viewports| 00:00 | So now let's go ahead and look at
viewports in Maya and let's learn how to
| | 00:04 | navigate within a viewport. A viewport
is essentially this big window, which
| | 00:10 | shows you the objects in your scene.
| | 00:13 | Let's go ahead and load some objects so
we can play with that. I am going to go
| | 00:16 | ahead and go File > Open Scene, and if
we set our project properly, we should
| | 00:22 | have Exercise Files/Essentials/
Scenes as the directory that pops up.
| | 00:26 | We are going to open RedWagon.mb and
mb stands for Maya Binary and we have a
| | 00:32 | little red wagon here, actually a
little hot rod red wagon. This is coming up
| | 00:38 | in the Perspective viewport, which
allows you to see your scene in 3D, but
| | 00:43 | there are other ways to look at your scene.
| | 00:45 | We can go over here to this little
icon here which gives you a Four View or
| | 00:53 | Four Panel View. In fact, if we click
that, we will see that we actually do
| | 00:56 | have a Four Panel View and this shows
you the orthographic views of top, front,
| | 01:02 | and side in addition to perspective.
| | 01:06 | So if I wanted to for example, look
at something from the top of model very
| | 01:10 | accurately, I would want one of these
orthographic views, but ultimately we are
| | 01:15 | going to be looking at this in
perspective view. If I want to, I can just
| | 01:20 | switch between these very
easily just by hitting the Spacebar.
| | 01:23 | If I put my mouse over for example the
Perspective view and hit the Spacebar,
| | 01:28 | it pops up. Hit the Spacebar again, I
go back to my Four View, and that's the
| | 01:34 | same for anyone of these windows. If
I wanted to bring up the Front View, I
| | 01:38 | just put my mouse over the Front View
and there we go. And it's really very
| | 01:42 | quick. Any window can be instantly
brought up, so it's just where your mouse is located.
| | 01:48 | I am going to go ahead and bring up
the prospective window and let's go ahead
| | 01:51 | and start navigating within this window.
Now we do that by using a three-button
| | 01:57 | mouse, and either the Alt or the
Option key. Now that depends on whether you
| | 02:02 | have Windows or Macintosh machine. It will
be Alt on Windows and Option on the Macintosh.
| | 02:09 | And if you hold down the Alt or Option
key and left click, you will be able to
| | 02:14 | rotate around the scene. Now go ahead
and practice that. And then if you Alt or
| | 02:23 | Option and then middle click, you
can pan very easily. Alt or Option and
| | 02:31 | right-click zooms.
| | 02:35 | Between these three, we've got very
easy way to navigate. It becomes very
| | 02:41 | natural. All you have to do is practice
it for about three minutes and you have
| | 02:45 | got it. Now, the other thing I want to
point out is that if you have a mouse
| | 02:49 | with a center scroll wheel, you can
also zoom using that scroll wheel. So you
| | 02:54 | just scroll up and down
and you can zoom in and out.
| | 02:57 | Now in addition to this sort of
navigation, you can also navigate using this
| | 03:03 | View Cube. So all I have to do is
just hit one of these views and I can
| | 03:09 | instantly go from say front to left,
to top, and so on. Now these front views
| | 03:18 | are not orthographic views.
| | 03:21 | An orthographic view actually is at a
complete right angle for everything and
| | 03:25 | if you notice with this Prospective
view, I actually, I am seeing kind of the
| | 03:29 | back of the top of this wagon. So it's
kind of a front. I place my camera in
| | 03:34 | the front rather than actually have an
official orthographic view, but this is
| | 03:38 | a really quick way to see
your scene from different angles.
| | 03:42 | In fact one of the things you can do is,
you can actually press the corners of
| | 03:45 | this box or the sides to give kind of
half and three quarter views. Now if you
| | 03:52 | hit this Home key, it automatically
goes through a preset default home.
| | 04:00 | Now in addition to these sorts of
navigation tools, you have some additional
| | 04:06 | tools along the top here. Every
viewport has these menus and these icons along
| | 04:13 | the top. In fact, I am going to go
ahead and zoom out here and you will see
| | 04:17 | that every single viewport has its own controls.
| | 04:21 | So you can set up each viewport to
behave completely differently. We are just
| | 04:25 | going to play with the perspective
viewport. So I am going to go ahead and
| | 04:28 | maximize that again. Now if we go into
the View menu, you will notice we have a
| | 04:32 | number of options.
| | 04:34 | The first one is Select Camera; that
just selects the camera so that I can
| | 04:39 | change the options of the actual
camera that's taking this picture. We will
| | 04:43 | play with that when we get to rendering.
| | 04:46 | The other one is called Previous
View and Next View. Now for example if I
| | 04:50 | zoomed in here and I wanted to see
what this looks like, I can go Previous
| | 04:55 | View. It shows me the zoomed out version.
So if I go Zoom Out and I go Previous
| | 05:03 | View, it would be the zoomed in version.
Or if I go Next View, it steps between
| | 05:09 | the last two states that this window
was in. So it's kind of nice that you can
| | 05:14 | actually go between these.
| | 05:16 | If you look here, we actually have two
hot keys and those are the brackets. So
| | 05:20 | if you hit bracket, left and right,
you can step between these views. So for
| | 05:25 | example, if I zoomed out and then I
hit my bracket, I can step between these
| | 05:30 | two individual views.
| | 05:32 | Another nice option is called Look at
Selection. Now in order to do that, you
| | 05:36 | need something selected. We can select
anything in the scene just by putting
| | 05:40 | the mouse over it and left clicking.
| | 05:41 | So for example, if I left click on this
tire, I could go Look at Selection and
| | 05:48 | it would take that tire and it centers
it in the viewport. So I can see it. So
| | 05:53 | if I zoom over or it's off to the side,
I can just go Look at Selection and I
| | 05:59 | will place the camera so that is
always in the center of that viewport.
| | 06:03 | If I go Frame All, it will go ahead
and frame everything in the scene. So for
| | 06:09 | example, if I have got this off to
the side, I can go Frame All. It will go
| | 06:13 | ahead and bring in every object in the
scene so that it's centered within the viewport.
| | 06:19 | If I go Frame Selection, it will take
the object that's selected, in this case
| | 06:24 | the tire, and it will bring that up.
So those are some other ways of showing
| | 06:31 | your object. So for example, if I
selected this tire off to the side, I could
| | 06:34 | also do a Frame Selection.
| | 06:36 | And if you notice there is a hot key
here of F. So if I hit F, it will actually
| | 06:40 | frame that tire as well. Now in
addition to these framing tools, we also have
| | 06:48 | shading tools. We have a Shading menu
here and this allows us to look at the
| | 06:53 | scene either in Wireframe or Shaded mode.
| | 06:56 | So if I crawl down here and I go
Wireframe, you will see the scene in
| | 06:59 | Wireframe. Go and Smooth Shade All,
it will shade that. Now one thing you
| | 07:05 | should know is that Wireframe is
always the number 4 on the keyboard, and the
| | 07:10 | number 5 on the keyboard will shade it.
| | 07:14 | Then notice, how it's shaded
without the textures. In order to turn on
| | 07:19 | textures, you have to go under the
Shading menu and turn on Hardware Texturing.
| | 07:25 | So if you load up a scene and your
textures aren't showing, make sure you turn
| | 07:29 | on Hardware Texturing and that will go
ahead and show any textures you have in the scene.
| | 07:35 | Now in addition to the numbers 4 and 5,
we also have numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the
| | 07:40 | keyboard, which also control how things
are displayed. Now this depends on the
| | 07:45 | type of geometry that you have selected.
| | 07:47 | So for example, if I select this tire,
which is made of NURBS, and hit 1, it
| | 07:53 | will give me a very rough view of this.
If I hit 2 it will smooth it out a
| | 07:58 | little bit. If I hit 3, it will
completely smooth it out. So in another words,
| | 08:02 | I am showing different levels of
smoothing on that particular object.
| | 08:08 | I can do the same with this wagon.
This wagon is actually what's called a
| | 08:12 | polygonal object, so it's built a
little bit differently than the tire. But if
| | 08:17 | I hit 1, it will just show me the object.
If I hit 2, it actually smoothes it.
| | 08:23 | In fact, you can probably look in here
and you can see that what it does is it
| | 08:27 | actually smoothes. So if I hit 1, it
shows me the actual object. If I hit 2, it
| | 08:33 | shows a smoothed version of this object.
And if I hit 3, it takes away that cage.
| | 08:41 | So if you are doing what's called sub-
division surface modeling or polygonal
| | 08:45 | modeling with smoothing, these can be
very handy. I am going to leave this at 1
| | 08:49 | for right now. Now in addition to this,
we also have some menus for Lighting. 1
| | 08:55 | allows us to use the default lighting,
use all lights, so if we actually have
| | 09:01 | lights in the scene, we would be able
to see them, but we don't. So this isn't
| | 09:04 | going to work. This allows us to
control how the lighting in the scene works.
| | 09:10 | We can also use either Default or High
Quality Rendering here. The one thing
| | 09:17 | about High Quality Rendering is that
it can actually slow down your viewport.
| | 09:21 | So I usually keep this at Default
Quality and then you can also change what
| | 09:26 | type of panel you have. So right now we
are going to Perspective panel, but if
| | 09:31 | you want, you could actually change
this to a front, side, or top view, or you
| | 09:36 | can also change it into a Stereo View,
which is one of the new features of Maya 2009.
| | 09:44 | In addition to these viewports, which
show you geometry, you can also turn on
| | 09:49 | any other type of panel. So if you were
working in animation, you could turn on
| | 09:54 | for example, a Graph Editor to do
animation. You could do the Outliner, which
| | 10:00 | shows you all of the
objects in the scene and so on.
| | 10:03 | I am actually going to go back to a
Perspective view here and turn on Shading
| | 10:09 | and also turn on Hardware Texturing. Now,
a lot of these functions that I went
| | 10:15 | through in the menu are also available
in these icons. Now this is new in Maya
| | 10:20 | 2009, but we have a number of
different icons, which kind of just mimic these
| | 10:25 | menu options, which gives you a
little bit faster way of doing this.
| | 10:28 | So for example, this will select your
camera. This will give you the camera
| | 10:33 | attribute editor. This one allows you
to open an individual file. This button
| | 10:40 | here turns on/off the grid. So if you
notice there is a grid right here. You
| | 10:45 | can turn that off. So you
can have a fairly clean scene.
| | 10:49 | Now these buttons here allow you to
show what's called the Gate. So if I am
| | 10:53 | rendering a scene out, I really need
to know what falls in and out of the
| | 10:58 | camera's view. So if I click on this,
it will show me exactly what is going to
| | 11:03 | be rendered. This gets really important
when we come down to actually rendering scenes.
| | 11:09 | This button here turns on the field
grid, which if you are in animation, you
| | 11:14 | can actually use that to match the
animation. We also have stuff such as
| | 11:18 | ghosting, and the more important
ones are here we have our Wireframe, our
| | 11:23 | Shaded View. We also have what's
called a Wireframe on Shaded View, which
| | 11:28 | allows you to see the actual wires
of the object on the shaded version.
| | 11:35 | This turns on/off Hardware Texturing,
and these are ones that allow us to do
| | 11:40 | lights. Now another really cool thing
is the ability to X-ray. If I click on
| | 11:45 | this button here, it shows the
object in X-ray, which kind of gives you a
| | 11:49 | semi-shaded view that you can still
see the wires. This is really handy when
| | 11:54 | you go into modeling. Then you can
also turn on shading four things such as
| | 12:00 | joints and so on.
| | 12:02 | All of these are actually located in
the Shading menu. So for example, if I
| | 12:06 | have X-ray, I can actually turn it on
here in the Shading menu. But now that
| | 12:10 | it's here on this icon, it makes it
much easier to do it from the Graphic icon.
| | 12:17 | So, those are some of the ways to
look at and manage viewports in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Hotbox| 00:00 | One of the really nice features of
Maya is that a lot of the menu items are
| | 00:05 | right there at the tip of your mouse.
Now we actually did use the Spacebar to
| | 00:11 | step between different types of
viewports, but if you hold down the Spacebar,
| | 00:16 | you get a whole new set of
menus and this is called the Hotbox.
| | 00:20 | And what this is, is basically all of
the menus that you need right here at the
| | 00:26 | tip of your mouse, so you don't have
to go all the way up to the top right
| | 00:29 | corner of the screen, you can just
hold down the Spacebar and you can get to
| | 00:34 | your File, Edit, Modify, any of these
options within Maya just by holding down
| | 00:41 | that Spacebar.
| | 00:42 | Now the Hotbox also has a number of
different options. So if you hold down the
| | 00:47 | Hotbox and go to the center, you can
also change your views. You can go from
| | 00:50 | here to Side view, you can go to your
Top view, you can go to Perspective view,
| | 00:55 | very easily. Now you can actually get
to the point where you can just very
| | 01:00 | quickly go between views
using that Center option.
| | 01:05 | Now in addition to just the standard
menu options, you also have one called
| | 01:10 | Recent Commands. And what that does
is it records about the 20 most recent
| | 01:15 | commands that you have and it just
keeps them in the list. So if you are doing
| | 01:18 | repetitive tasks, you can just
instantly go here rather than having to dig
| | 01:23 | through the menus.
| | 01:24 | Now along the bottom, you have
basically the menu set that's set here. So in
| | 01:31 | this case, we are in Animation mode,
so all of the animation menus will show
| | 01:35 | up. If I change this to say Polygon mode,
then I go into my viewport and I hit
| | 01:42 | my Spacebar and all of the
polygonal modeling tools will come up.
| | 01:47 | In addition to that, we can set which
ones of these menus show up just by going
| | 01:51 | over to the Hotbox controls. If we
want to we can show Polygons, Surfaces,
| | 01:57 | Animation. We can also Show All and
this is actually what I like to do. I like
| | 02:03 | to have Show All here, so that way
when I hit the Spacebar, I have got every
| | 02:07 | menu available to me right here.
| | 02:11 | And now normally, I will go up here and
just kind of work with the menus that I
| | 02:14 | am normally working with, but if I
need something out of the ordinary, then I
| | 02:18 | don't have to go and switch to the
Animation menu and go here, I can just click
| | 02:22 | on my viewport, open up the
Hotbox and just find it very quickly.
| | 02:27 | Now in addition, we have some
additional menus down here. We have whether or
| | 02:33 | not we want to show common menus, Show
Custom Set menus and so on and so forth.
| | 02:38 | Do we want to show Cloth, if you work
with Maya Cloth, Maya Live, all that sort of stuff?
| | 02:44 | We can also set Transparency. So if you
want, you can actually make this window
| | 02:47 | a little bit more transparent. So you
can kind of see under it; that's kind of
| | 02:51 | cool. We can also set what we want to
see. Do we want to see the zones in the
| | 02:55 | menus? Do y6ou want to see
everything or just the Center zone only?
| | 03:00 | And I usually just leave this to
everything, and then you also have Window
| | 03:05 | Options. Do you want to show the main
menu bar or the panes? Okay, so these are
| | 03:09 | all just things as to what you
want to show within the Hotbox.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with marking menus| 00:00 | Another way to get menu options at the
tip of your mouse is by right-clicking.
| | 00:06 | If I right-click up on the body of this
wagon, it will bring up a marking menu
| | 00:10 | and this will give me options specific
to that object. So this is a polygonal
| | 00:15 | object and so I will have all of the
Polygonal Modeling tools available. So for
| | 00:20 | example, I will have Edges, Vertices and Faces.
| | 00:23 | So for example, if I click Edges,
that means I can edit the edges of this
| | 00:29 | model. If I click Vertex, it will
give me the vertices. If I go Face, I can
| | 00:35 | actually edit the faces of these. If
I go to Object Mode, again I am just
| | 00:40 | right-clicking, it allows me
to select the entire object.
| | 00:44 | Now this menu is context-sensitive, so
it's dependent upon what type of object
| | 00:49 | your mouse is over as to what type of
marking menu you are going to get. So let
| | 00:54 | me go zoom in a little bit and for
this wagon, we have -- the tires are
| | 01:00 | actually made out of NURBS objects
and the rest of the wagon is made out of
| | 01:04 | what I call polygonal objects.
| | 01:06 | So if I right-click over the body of
the wagon, I will get Edges, Vertices,
| | 01:10 | Faces and the Polygonal Modeling tools.
If I right-click over the tire, I get
| | 01:16 | things called Isoparms, Control
Vertices, Hulls and so on, and these are
| | 01:22 | components that I use to edit a NURBS
based object. So for example, with this tire,
| | 01:28 | I could just go to Control Vertex,
select the Control Vertices and I can
| | 01:34 | actually reshape that tire if I wanted to.
| | 01:37 | I am going to go ahead to Object Mode
here and we can select that. Now one of
| | 01:42 | the nice things about this menu is
that it is radial. So you can actually by
| | 01:47 | angle, just get to wherever you want
very quickly. So if I am here and I want
| | 01:51 | to go to Vertices, I just right-click
and jerk my mouse to the right and I get
| | 01:56 | Vertices. Jerk my mouse up, I get Edges.
| | 01:59 | With a little bit of practice, you can
get very quick at changing your editing
| | 02:03 | mode. So it's something that a lot of
seasoned artists do is they just use these
| | 02:07 | Marking menus and it almost becomes a
gestural type of thing. Now in addition
| | 02:12 | to the Radio menus, you also have
just the regular menu underneath.
| | 02:16 | Now this gives you a number of
different options. One allows you to select it,
| | 02:21 | allows you to select the hierarchy,
which is really everything that's connected
| | 02:25 | to that. In addition, we have what are
called Inputs and Outputs. We also have
| | 02:30 | some Paint options. So we could
actually go into 3D Paint or we can actually
| | 02:36 | sculpt the object just from right-clicking.
| | 02:38 | Now in addition, we have things called
Actions and let me go through some of
| | 02:42 | these. One is called Template. Now,
when you create a template, what it does is
| | 02:48 | it highlights the object in gray or
pink and allows you to basically use it as
| | 02:54 | a template for modeling.
| | 02:55 | So for example, if you brought in
another model and you wanted to do some work
| | 03:00 | with another model around it or
something like that, then you could template
| | 03:04 | the first model, so that you don't
accidentally select it and it doesn't
| | 03:08 | clutter up the scene. You can
untemplate things again by right-clicking, going
| | 03:12 | Actions and Untemplate.
| | 03:15 | Now in addition under those actions, we
also have what's called Unparent, which
| | 03:19 | takes things out of a hierarchy. We
also have one called Bounding Box and what
| | 03:23 | that does is it just shows you the
Bounding Box of that object. So it shows you
| | 03:28 | that there is something there but it
doesn't show you the exact geometry of this.
| | 03:32 | So if you have a lot of complex objects
in you scene, you could turn them into
| | 03:37 | Bounding Boxes so that they would
animate a lot more quickly. You can undo this
| | 03:41 | just by going Actions > Bounding Box and
that will go ahead and revert it back to normal.
| | 03:46 | Now in addition to this, we also have
what are called Material Attributes. This
| | 03:50 | is essentially the color of the object.
So for example, if I wanted to make
| | 03:55 | that red wagon a different color,
I could either assign a new material here or
| | 04:02 | I could assign an existing material. I
can also do some additional objects such
| | 04:06 | as Baking and so on and so forth.
| | 04:09 | So just by right-clicking, you can get
to a lot of different options here on
| | 04:14 | your additional object. Those are some
of the basics of marking menus. Now let's
| | 04:20 | go ahead and move on to the next topic.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Manipulating ObjectsSelecting objects| 00:00 | So now that, we know how to work the
Maya interface, let's go ahead and start
| | 00:04 | actually manipulating objects. Now we
are in a new chapter, so I want to set a
| | 00:09 | new project.
| | 00:09 | We are going to go File > Project > Set
and then I am just going to go down to
| | 00:15 | Exercise_files on my desktop here and
go 02_Manipulation. And once I do that,
| | 00:21 | it sets all my paths, so I an open
those files. Now, manipulating objects in
| | 00:25 | Maya involves selecting them, moving
them, rotating them and scaling them.
| | 00:32 | All of these functions are available on
your keyboard. So let me show you where
| | 00:36 | the tools are for us and then I will
show you some of the keyboard shortcuts.
| | 00:39 | And this is actually really
fast way to work with Maya.
| | 00:42 | We have Select, which is here. It's
also here in the Edit menu under Select.
| | 00:48 | But I don't know anybody ever goes to
the Edit menu to get there because it's
| | 00:52 | right here. You can also Go, Move,
Rotate and Scale. And those are also here
| | 00:59 | under Transformation tools.
| | 01:00 | Again they are buried, you really want
to get to those through the menus, but
| | 01:05 | really key thing here is the fast way
to get to these is that all of these
| | 01:09 | keyboard shortcuts are the top
left corner of your keyboard.
| | 01:13 | So it's Q, W, E and R of your keyboard.
So Q is Select, W is Move, E is Rotate,
| | 01:23 | and R is Scale. So Q, W, E, R, you can
get to all of these tools very quickly
| | 01:30 | just by putting four fingers at
the top left corner of your keyboard.
| | 01:34 | So let's go ahead and play with Select
for right now. So we are going to hit Q
| | 01:38 | and go into my Select tool. When
you are in Select Mode, you can just
| | 01:43 | left-click on any object in the scene
and select it. Now notice how the objects
| | 01:48 | also show up here.
| | 01:50 | If I have channel box active, I have
for example, the handle, the tire, body,
| | 01:57 | and so on. So every object that you
have has a name and parameters assigned to
| | 02:03 | it. If want to I can also
rubber band any objects.
| | 02:07 | So if I left-click and drag, I can for
example, select everything. If I don't
| | 02:13 | want to select anything, I can just
left-click outside of an object, it just
| | 02:18 | does select nothing, or I can rubber
band just part of the object and select
| | 02:23 | just that part.
| | 02:25 | Now in addition, we have Shift tool.
So if you want to Shift-Select, you can
| | 02:29 | individually pick the objects that you
want. So I can hold down the Shift key
| | 02:34 | and just select the objects
that I want and they will select.
| | 02:38 | Shift-Select is like toggle. Every time,
I click on it, it either selects it or
| | 02:44 | de-selects it. So if it's selected, you
will un-select the object. So this gets
| | 02:49 | kind of funky when you hold down the
Shift key and you rubber band this like
| | 02:52 | so. If I Shift and rubber band select,
it's actually going to de-select those
| | 02:57 | things that were active and
select the things that were inactive.
| | 03:01 | So that's just something you need to
be aware of when you start working with
| | 03:05 | Maya. Every tool in Maya has what are
called options. You can get to those
| | 03:10 | options in several ways. One is by
just double-clicking on this icon and it
| | 03:15 | brings up the Selection options.
| | 03:17 | Another way is by clicking here for
the Tool Options. So whatever tool is
| | 03:22 | active, if you click here, you bring
up that exact same menu. And also if you
| | 03:27 | go through Maya, you will notice that
most tools here also have a little box
| | 03:33 | off to the side.
| | 03:34 | If you select just the tool, you
select the tool itself, but if you select it
| | 03:38 | with the box, it will bring up those
tool options. Let me show you that for the
| | 03:43 | Move tool. Transformation Tools > Move
Tool. If I just select the tool itself
| | 03:48 | it just comes up, but if I go Move
tool and click on that little box, it will
| | 03:54 | bring up the options for that tool.
| | 03:56 | So let's go ahead and go back to the
Select tool and see what some of the
| | 04:00 | options are. Now for this particular
tool, there are not a lot of options. You
| | 04:04 | either have Marquee or Drag-Select.
Okay, so you can Drag-Select or you can
| | 04:11 | Marquee-Select.
| | 04:12 | Now there are additional ways to
select objects. One is by using the Lasso
| | 04:18 | tool. So let's go ahead and click on
that. And that's just a standard lasso
| | 04:23 | that we can use to draw areas that
you can't quite get with a rectangular
| | 04:29 | rubber-band box.
| | 04:31 | And again, you have some options here.
One is called Open and Closed. And what
| | 04:36 | that is, it's really just how it draws
it. So you can see it's not closing the
| | 04:39 | loop yet, and this one
automatically closes the loop.
| | 04:44 | Now in addition to this, we have what
are called Soft Select Options. Now these
| | 04:48 | are really more for when you are
actually modeling within an object to give
| | 04:52 | soft deformations to an object. So
those are the basics of the Select tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Move tool| 00:00 |
Now, let's go ahead and start moving
objects within the scene. Moving object is
| | 00:05 |
pretty simple. You can either select an
object and then just hit the Move key,
| | 00:10 |
which is W, or you can select the Move
icon here, or if you want to dig through
| | 00:16 |
some menus, you could actually
go Modify > Transform > Move.
| | 00:21 |
So, typically I just hit the W key to
get into Move mode. Now when you select
| | 00:26 |
an object to move, you'll notice this
little gizmo comes up. In fact, I am
| | 00:31 |
going to go ahead and zoom in and show
you what that is. So that gizmo, if you
| | 00:36 |
notice it has three axes; it has red,
green and blue. And notice how these
| | 00:42 |
correspond to the axes here in the
bottom left hand corner of the screen.
| | 00:48 |
Now in Maya, it is a 3D program so we
have an X, a Y and a Z axis. These are
| | 00:54 |
always color coded. The easiest way to
understand these as X, Y, Z equals RGB,
| | 01:01 |
so red, green, blue. Just like your
color palette is RGB, your X, Y and Z
| | 01:06 |
always correspond to that. So, if I
click on, for example, the red, it moves it
| | 01:14 |
along the X-axis. If I click Y or Z,
I can move along any one of those axes.
| | 01:22 |
If I click in the middle of this icon, I
can move it whatever I want. Now, I am
| | 01:29 |
going to go ahead and undo
that so I center my tire back.
| | 01:32 |
Now, I can do this with pretty much
any object. For example, if I select the
| | 01:38 |
body of the wagon, I can move this
wherever I want. Now one other things about
| | 01:45 |
moving within 3D space is that
sometimes you don't really know where you are
| | 01:50 |
moving, particularly if you are
grabbing the middle of this gizmo, you don't
| | 01:54 |
know if you are moving back and forth
or up and down, because it's kind of hard
| | 01:57 |
to see this in a perspective view.
| | 02:00 |
So I typically move things one axis at
a time, if I can. Or another way to do
| | 02:07 |
it is to just go into a side or top or
front viewport and just move those along
| | 02:14 |
two dimensions. For example, if I am
in this front viewport and I am moving
| | 02:18 |
then I am really moving along the
plane that that front viewport is on. Now,
| | 02:24 |
if you want to you can always undo.
Ctrl+Z is your undo key. So I am going to
| | 02:30 |
be doing that a lot because I am
going to be moving things and then undoing that.
| | 02:37 |
In addition to just moving with the
gizmo, you can also move using what's
| | 02:42 |
called the Channel Box. If we go up here,
we'll see these three buttons. If we
| | 02:48 |
want to we can go to the right most
button and that's the Channel Box, and what
| | 02:53 |
this does is, is it tells us what
object is selected. In this case Body or
| | 02:57 |
the body of the wagon and we
have our Translation options here.
| | 03:03 |
So, if I want to I could just type in
numberS. Let's say I want to move this say
| | 03:08 |
2 units in Y, I hit that and it jumps
up vertically 2 units. If I want to move
| | 03:15 |
it in Z I can just type in a number.
Well, that's a little bit too big. So
| | 03:19 |
let's just go ahead and type 5, and I
can change those to whatever I want.
| | 03:24 |
If I want to re-zero this I can just
select all of this, I am just left clicking
| | 03:27 |
and dragging, and just type a 0 in and
it will zero everything. So, if I can
| | 03:33 |
select all of these fields and type in
a number, it will go into all of those
| | 03:38 |
fields. That's handy. Particularly
when you want a zero something out.
| | 03:43 |
Now another way to use the Channel Box
is by selecting the title of the Channel
| | 03:49 |
and then going into the viewport and
middle clicking. So any one of these
| | 03:54 |
parameters can be changed with a middle
click. So I select this, middle click,
| | 03:59 |
and I drag left and the right, notice
how it changes those values. It's almost
| | 04:04 |
like dragging the slider. This can be
very, very handy and I can do this for
| | 04:15 |
more than one, if I want to.
| | 04:17 |
If I wanted to move this diagonally on
Y/Z, I can just again middle click and
| | 04:22 |
drag left and right and I am literally
just moving that slider. In addition to
| | 04:29 |
moving single objects, you can also
move multiple objects. Let's say I wanted
| | 04:34 |
to move the whole wagon, I can just
rubber band select everything, hit W and
| | 04:39 |
I can move everything all at once.
| | 04:44 |
The Move tool also has some additional
options here. So if I select the Move
| | 04:48 |
tool and select an object, I can
either double-click on this or go to Tool
| | 04:55 |
Options here and we can go into some
settings for the Move tool to make it work
| | 04:59 |
in different ways.
| | 05:01 |
The most important one of these is the
Move Axis and that determines exactly
| | 05:07 |
what axis we are using for the object
itself. For example, let's go ahead and
| | 05:14 |
select the rim of this tire. I am
going to zoom in a little bit here so you
| | 05:18 |
could see this axis here.
| | 05:19 |
Now this rim has been rotated, so if I go
into Object axis you will notice that
| | 05:25 |
the directions of my X/Ys are actually
changing. Because if I go over to the
| | 05:31 |
Channel Box here you will notice that
this is actually rotated 51 degrees. So
| | 05:36 |
when I go into my Move tool here, you
would see when I go to World settings it's
| | 05:42 |
identical to X, Y, Z. But if I go
onto Object settings, it will take on the
| | 05:47 |
rotation of that object.
| | 05:50 |
Now you can also do some really cool
stuff with this. You could actually set
| | 05:54 |
this to any custom axis you want or you
can set it to a specific Point, Edge or
| | 06:01 |
Face of an object.
| | 06:04 |
In addition we have what are called
Snap Settings. Let me show you how this
| | 06:09 |
works. I am going to go ahead back to
my Channel Box and I am just going to go
| | 06:12 |
ahead and select the body of the Wagon.
| | 06:15 |
Now if you want, you can actually turn
on any one of these Snapping options. So
| | 06:20 |
I am just going to turn on Snap to
Grid and as I start moving this you will
| | 06:24 |
notice that it's actually
snapping to the points of this grid.
| | 06:31 |
Also notice when I turned on snapping,
the little icon in the center of this
| | 06:36 |
gizmo goes from being a square to being
a circle. So when it's a circle it's in
| | 06:41 |
Snap mode. Again you could snap the
all sorts of things. You can Snap to a
| | 06:46 |
Grid, you can Snap to Curves, you can
Snap to Vertices on objects. So if I go
| | 06:51 |
to snap to that, I could snap to
the individual vertices on any one of
| | 06:54 |
these objects and you can also Snap to Surfaces.
| | 06:59 |
Now typically for positioning objects,
you want to snap to the grids. Now in
| | 07:06 |
addition if you go into, for example,
the front or the side viewports you can
| | 07:10 |
snap to any one of these orthographic
viewports to precisely position this object.
| | 07:17 |
| | 07:21 |
So, that's everything you
need to know about the Move tool.
| | 07:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating and scaling| 00:00 |
The next tools we are going to look
at are Rotate and Scale. Now, those are
| | 00:04 |
located over here, and they are
also E and R on your keyboard.
| | 00:09 |
So if I select the body of this wagon,
I can rotate it just by selecting the
| | 00:15 |
Rotate tool. When you activate the
Rotate tool, you will notice the gizmo is
| | 00:20 |
composed of a bunch of circles. You
have a red, a green, and a blue circle as
| | 00:25 |
well as a yellow circle here around the outside.
| | 00:29 |
These circles correspond to the axis
in which it rotates around. For example,
| | 00:35 |
if I want to rotate around the Z-axis,
right now it's pointing at me, I can
| | 00:40 |
just left click on that blue
circle and rotate around the Z-axis. So
| | 00:45 |
essentially you are rotating
perpendicular to that axis. If I rotate around the
| | 00:51 |
X-axis, that would be the red
circle, and the same for the Y-axis.
| | 00:59 |
Now, in addition to these, you also
have this outside manipulator, and what
| | 01:06 |
this does is it allows you to rotate
around the camera view. So whatever view
| | 01:10 |
is perpendicular to the camera, so
however you are looking, it's going to
| | 01:15 |
rotate around that view. If I am
looking at it from this way, I am rotating
| | 01:20 |
around that axis or if I am looking at
from the bottom, I will rotate around
| | 01:25 |
that axis.
| | 01:26 |
Now if you want you could also click in
between the circles and that gives you
| | 01:33 |
kind of a free form rotation. Now I
find this to be a little hard to control
| | 01:41 |
this free form rotation and I always
tend to rotate just like I move; I do it
| | 01:45 |
an axis at a time, and that way I am a
lot more precise when I work in Maya.
| | 01:52 |
Now as you've noticed you can also
manipulate your rotations here in your
| | 01:58 |
Channel Box as well. Now rotations in
Maya are in degrees, so from 0 to 360
| | 02:04 |
degrees is a full circle. I can go
ahead and zero these out just by selecting
| | 02:09 |
them all and hitting 0.
| | 02:13 |
The next tool is the Scale tool and I
can just hit R or select the Scale tool
| | 02:19 |
from the little menu there. The Scale
tool looks a lot like the Move tool and
| | 02:24 |
that it has a red, a green, a blue,
and a yellow box. Instead of an arrow, it
| | 02:31 |
has boxes, and all I have to do is
grab any one of those to scale it in the
| | 02:36 |
directions. So if I want to scale it
up and down, I just grab the green one,
| | 02:41 |
red one, blue one, and then the center
one is a global scale; it scales everything.
| | 02:48 |
Now, one of the nice things about
scale is that you can scale negative. So,
| | 02:55 |
take a look at the lettering on this
wagon. If I scale to 0 and then go back
| | 03:00 |
the other way, you'll notice how the
lettering flips around which means I have
| | 03:03 |
kind of scaled it, I kind of mirrored
it. So that's the great way to mirror
| | 03:07 |
object is just to scale
them in the negative direction.
| | 03:10 |
Now, if I want to 0 all of this out, I
actually have to type in a 1, because in
| | 03:16 |
Maya 1 is my default scale. Some
packages will go to a 100% but in Maya it's 1.
| | 03:24 |
So those are the basics of
the Rotate and Scale tools.
| | 03:30 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating pivots| 00:00 | When working with Rotate and Scale,
one of the more important things is the
| | 00:03 | location of the pivot of the object.
Now in Maya, every object has what's
| | 00:10 | called a pivot. So for example, if I
selected the body of this wagon and I
| | 00:16 | rotated it, it rotates around that
pivot point. Now, you can set this pivot
| | 00:23 | point to customize the way the things rotate.
| | 00:26 | Let's go ahead and select this handle
of this wagon. The pivot point for this
| | 00:33 | handle is actually set to 0 point of
the scene. Now, a lot of times when you
| | 00:38 | create an object in Maya, it will
actually just default the pivot to 000 in the
| | 00:44 | whirl. But that's not where we need
this pivot for this handle to move
| | 00:49 | properly. What we have to do is we
have to actually move that pivot from here
| | 00:55 | to here, so that it will rotate around
this pin, which is supposed to hold it in.
| | 01:00 | We can do that by moving the pivot.
This is done by hitting the Insert key on
| | 01:06 | the Windows keyboard or the Home key
on the Macintosh keyboard. So I go ahead
| | 01:12 | and hit that key Insert for Windows
or Linux, and I can move that pivot
| | 01:19 | wherever I want. In fact, I am going to
go ahead and go into my Front viewport
| | 01:23 | here and just precisely position that.
| | 01:27 | Now, once I have that positioned, I
can just hit Insert again or Home and it
| | 01:36 | goes back to Normal, Move, Rotate and
Scale mode. So I can go back into my
| | 01:41 | Perspective window and I can rotate
the handle and notice how the handle now
| | 01:49 | rotates around that pin,
which is supposed to hold that in.
| | 01:53 | One thing I am also noticing here is
that this handle is a little too low. So I
| | 01:58 | can certainly move this up a little
bit and again, just hit Insert and move
| | 02:04 | that pivot down and now I
should have a pretty good rotation.
| | 02:07 | Now, this pivot also works for Scale.
If you wanted to scale this handle, when
| | 02:20 | you scale it it's actually going to
scale starting with that pivot point. So
| | 02:24 | you can see how when the pivot is at
the bottom, scaling this vertically,
| | 02:30 | scales it from the bottom up.
| | 02:34 | You could also say, for example with
this, if I move the pivot to the front of
| | 02:41 | the wagon, you could see that when
I scale this, it scales more in one
| | 02:46 | direction than the other.
| | 02:48 | Now, another way of manipulating the
pivot is to use the Center pivot tool. We
| | 02:53 | can go Modify > Center pivot and that
will always put the pivot to the exact
| | 03:00 | center of the object.
| | 03:03 | So pivots are really important for
modeling, but they are also very important
| | 03:07 | for animation. For example, if I was
going to animate this wheel or something
| | 03:12 | like that, I really do want to have
these pivots exactly centered, so that the
| | 03:16 | wheel moves with an exact center. So
those are some of the basics of pivots.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Channel Box| 00:00 | As we manipulate objects, we have seen
that we can view those manipulations in
| | 00:06 | the Channel Box. All you have to do is
click on this top right icon here and
| | 00:11 | bring up the Channel Box. So for
example, if I translate something, those
| | 00:16 | numbers show up in the Channel Box.
But if we want to, we can actually do a
| | 00:22 | bunch of additional things with the
Channel Box. If you right-click over any
| | 00:27 | one of these values or if you select
the number of values by Shift-selecting
| | 00:31 | them and right-click over them, you
will see that we have a whole right-click
| | 00:36 | menu for these values.
| | 00:40 | Now, some of these are related to
animation such as Key Selected, Key All and
| | 00:45 | these are for setting keyframes in
animation. We can also Cut and Copy. Now,
| | 00:49 | this isn't cutting and copying the
actual values, but it's actually cutting and
| | 00:55 | copying the channels themselves
because one of the things you can do in the
| | 00:59 | Channel Box is actually create your
own custom parameters for objects and use
| | 01:04 | those to further manipulate objects.
| | 01:08 | In addition, we can do what's called
a freeze. Now, what a freeze is, is it
| | 01:14 | basically takes an object where it's at
and it resets the pivot. For example,
| | 01:19 | if we have this wheel on this object
and we hit Rotate, you will see that the
| | 01:24 | rotation here is actually at 51
degrees. If I want to, I can freeze the
| | 01:31 | rotation of this object and notice how
the wheel doesn't rotate, but just the
| | 01:36 | pivot goes back to 0. Now, this
is another way to affect a pivot.
| | 01:41 | In fact, if you want, there is actually
a Modify that allows you to freeze all
| | 01:46 | transformations on one or many objects.
And what that does is it zeros out all
| | 01:51 | of the transformations and rotations of
any object. Now, we can also do that on
| | 01:56 | an individual basis from the Channel
Box. In addition, we have what's called
| | 02:02 | Break and Select Connections. It's
actually a higher level animation function
| | 02:07 | where you can actually have
one object controlling another.
| | 02:10 | So for example, if you wanted to for
example move the wagon and have the wheels
| | 02:15 | automatically roll as you move the wagon,
you could do that using Connections.
| | 02:20 | Now, the thing that's actually most
important is the Lock, Unlock, and Hide,
| | 02:25 | which is down here.
| | 02:26 | So if I want to, I can actually lock a
Rotation value. So for example, let's go
| | 02:31 | over to this handle. Now, if I want to,
let's go ahead and move the pivot. So I
| | 02:39 | am going to hit the Insert or the Home
key and I am going to move that pivot,
| | 02:44 | so that it's pretty much at zero.
| | 02:48 | Okay. Now, I am going to hit the
Insert or the Home key again and then I can
| | 02:57 | rotate this. But the thing about this
handle is that it should be constrained
| | 03:01 | only to one rotation and that's
rotation around the Z axis because in reality,
| | 03:07 | this isn't going to be able to
rotate this way or this way, right?
| | 03:12 | So if I want to constrain it just so we
can rotate around Z and not around X or
| | 03:18 | Y, what I can do is I can just select
the channels here in the Channel Box for
| | 03:23 | Rotate X and Y, right-click over them,
and go Lock Selected. When I do that,
| | 03:29 | they turn gray. So now when I reselect
this, I can't rotate left or right or
| | 03:37 | around the axis. I can only rotate
this where it's supposed to be rotated.
| | 03:41 | This can be very handy because then
that way, you don't accidentally move
| | 03:45 | something in a way that it's not
intended, and it makes animation lot easier
| | 03:50 | because there are fewer mistakes.
You can do the same with the wheels.
| | 03:54 | Obviously these wheels are only meant
to rotate around this axis. You don't
| | 04:00 | want the wheels moving like this or any
other direction. So what you can do is
| | 04:04 | you can just take each of these wheels.
This is rotating around the Z axis, and
| | 04:09 | so I can just again lock X and Y for
the tire, and also for the rim. So now, I
| | 04:20 | can rotate the tire any other
way than how it's supposed to go.
| | 04:25 | Now, another thing you can do with
these is you can actually hide values. So
| | 04:30 | let's go ahead and select the handle
again, and if I am never rotating around X
| | 04:39 | or Y, why do I even need to see that?
So I can right click here and just go
| | 04:44 | Hide Selected. And that will actually
hide those values that I don't want to animate.
| | 04:49 | I can undo that just by hitting Ctrl+Z
and that will undo that if you want to
| | 04:54 | bring those back. Now, there are some
other menu options here. You can also
| | 04:59 | Lock in Hide Selected. For example, if I had
a value here, I can lock it and then hide it.
| | 05:05 | Then, you can also say, do you want
to be able to keyframe these? You can
| | 05:09 | either make them keyable or non-
keyable. This actually goes into animation
| | 05:14 | functions, but if you don't want to be
able to set a keyframe on something,
| | 05:17 | you can actually make that
happen here in the Channel Box.
| | 05:20 | Now, another thing about the Channel
Box is that you can also view how an
| | 05:25 | object is built, in other words, the
history of an object, and this is just a
| | 05:30 | coffee cup that I built. If I select
this object by left-clicking on it, you
| | 05:35 | will see I have got all the stuff here
in my Channel Box, and if I wanted to,
| | 05:40 | I could for example select these, right
click and go Freeze My Translations, and
| | 05:44 | that would set those to 0.
| | 05:46 | But more importantly, if I scroll down
here, in fact let's go ahead-- I want to
| | 05:52 | show you another little option here
in the Channel Box is that we have some
| | 05:56 | Filters here along the top. If I click
here, it actually turns on or off the
| | 06:02 | Layers palette. We have a
little window here called Layers.
| | 06:06 | If I don't want to see that, all I have
to do is click on this left most icon,
| | 06:10 | and that will get rid of it. So that
way we have a little bit more on our
| | 06:13 | screen. Now, when I select this object,
you can see I have my Translation,
| | 06:17 | Rotation, Scale options here, but
also if you notice, I have got all of the
| | 06:24 | construction history of my object. So
as I get into modeling and as I start
| | 06:29 | building an object, Maya will actually
keep track of everything that I do. This
| | 06:35 | actually can be seen in a number of
places, one of which is the Channel Box.
| | 06:41 | So for example, this coffee cup
actually started with the Cylinder. So I took a
| | 06:45 | cylinder and then I added some detail,
I extruded in the coffee cup and then I
| | 06:52 | built the handle, and then I
actually did a number of tasks to build this
| | 06:56 | coffee cup, but it all started with
just a simple cylinder. If I want, I can
| | 07:01 | actually go back to these
original parameters and change them.
| | 07:05 | For example, the radius of this cylinder,
if I want to change it, all I have to
| | 07:08 | do is highlight it, and then I can
just middle-click and drag and I can
| | 07:13 | actually change that value. That
original value that actually goes all the way
| | 07:17 | up and filters all the way
through all these other changes.
| | 07:21 | So one of the nice things about this
is that you can actually go back through
| | 07:24 | your construction history and change
things from within the Channel Box. With
| | 07:29 | any of these parameters here, you can
also right-click over these and also lock
| | 07:34 | or key or do whatever you want to any
parameter in the Channel Box. It's not
| | 07:39 | limited to just the
Translation, Rotation, and Scale.
| | 07:43 | One last thing I want to show you
about the Channel Box that it does have an
| | 07:46 | additional attribute and that's
called Visibility, and that's essentially
| | 07:50 | either on or off. So actually you can
just type the word off and an object will
| | 07:54 | go invisible or you can turn it
on and the object will go visible.
| | 07:59 | This is a good way to turn things on
and off and we can actually connect this
| | 08:03 | to other objects, actually physically
turn things on and off. This is actually
| | 08:07 | one of the basics of how South Park
is animated in Maya, is through a lot of
| | 08:12 | animated visibility. Those are some
of the basics of Maya's Channel Box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Attribute editor| 00:00 | One of the more important windows in
Maya is the Attribute Editor. Now, it's
| | 00:05 | kind of similar to the Channel Box but
it's a lot more robust, we have a lot
| | 00:08 | more controls over it.
| | 00:10 | You can get to the Attribute Editor a
couple of ways. One is just by clicking
| | 00:17 | here and that will go ahead and bring
up the Attribute Editor. Another is by
| | 00:22 | selecting an object and hitting Ctrl+A
and that will actually toggle between
| | 00:27 | the Channel Box and the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:31 | Now, the Attribute Editor is different
for every single object because what it
| | 00:35 | contains is all of the things that make
the object what it is. So for example,
| | 00:40 | we have this coffee cup and the coffee
cup was built from a cylinder and then
| | 00:48 | modify to create the shape of a coffee
cup and if you look in the Channel Box
| | 00:52 | here, we can see all of this
construction history. We started with a
| | 00:55 | polyCylinder and then we did some
Extrudes and so on and so forth.
| | 01:02 | If we go to the Attribute Editor, you
can see all of this activity and each one
| | 01:07 | is a tab and each tab has tons and
tons of controls. So the very top tab is
| | 01:15 | always going to be your Translation and
Rotation option. So for example, here I
| | 01:20 | have got Transform Attributes and I
can actually translate this here by just
| | 01:25 | typing in numbers. So this is exactly
the same as what you have here in the
| | 01:30 | Channel Box. In fact, if I make this
number 2.256 here, I go to the Attribute
| | 01:36 | Editor, it's the same here.
| | 01:38 | Now, in addition to this, you have
options for the pivots, whether or not you
| | 01:43 | want to display the pivots and also
how the object displays. There is also
| | 01:52 | additional ones here for rendering,
such as for Mental Ray, which is one of the
| | 01:58 | renderers within Maya.
| | 02:00 | Now, each tab also has additional
parameters. So for example, the second tab is
| | 02:05 | usually the Shape tab and that
determines what the geometry actually looks
| | 02:09 | like. So for example, in this one,
you have how does the object look and we
| | 02:15 | also have stuff like Render Stats,
whether or not this object renders, Castes
| | 02:19 | Shadows, and so on. So each of these
tabs has some very critical information
| | 02:24 | for the object.
| | 02:25 | Now, if you notice, we've got a lot of
tabs because we did a lot of things to
| | 02:29 | make this object. If you want to, you
can actually hit these left and right
| | 02:33 | arrows and go all the way to the end
and you can see how the object was built.
| | 02:37 | In fact, if I go the second to the end
one here, this one called polyCylinder1,
| | 02:43 | click on that. I have got the same
controls for the original cylinder that I
| | 02:48 | used to create this coffee cup.
| | 02:50 | So if I want to, I can size the
original cylinder which created the coffee cup.
| | 02:55 | We also have what's called the Material,
which is what's applied to the object
| | 03:00 | to give it its color. In this case, we
use a Blinn and here is the Color. So
| | 03:05 | all of this is controlled
in the Attribute Editor.
| | 03:09 | The Attribute Editor isn't the same
for every single object. If you for
| | 03:13 | example, select the Camera, I can go
to my View-port and select the Camera in
| | 03:17 | my View-port, the Attribute Editor
will be completely different because now I
| | 03:22 | am working with the actual camera
that I am viewing the coffee cup through.
| | 03:27 | What I can do here is I can actually
change those parameters that affect the
| | 03:32 | camera itself. So every single object
will have different attributes and those
| | 03:37 | attributes can be adjusted within the
Attribute Editor. As we work with Maya,
| | 03:43 | we will be using the Attribute Editor
a lot. So I want you to just understand
| | 03:47 | where that is and some of
the basics of how to use it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Outliner| 00:00 | As you start working in Maya, you are
going to start creating lots and lots of
| | 00:04 | objects. So one of the things that
you have to really be concerned with is
| | 00:08 | keeping yourself organized. It's
always good to have a global way to view all
| | 00:13 | of the stuff in your scene. In Maya,
this is done using the Outliner window.
| | 00:20 | Now, there are two places to get to
this. One is under Window > Outliner and
| | 00:26 | you click on that, you can actually
have a floating window which is kind of
| | 00:30 | nice. The other way is to do this as a
View-port. Now, I am going to close this
| | 00:35 | floating window, and I am going to go
down here to the bottom left and you are
| | 00:40 | going to see this little icon here and
as I click on this, you'll see it sets
| | 00:45 | up the window, so that I have an
outliner here on the left and then just a
| | 00:49 | standard perspective window on the
right. So either way will work fine, it's
| | 00:55 | just how you choose to work.
| | 00:57 | Now, what the Outliner does is it
allows you to see every single object in the
| | 01:04 | scene. So for example, this red wagon
is made up of a body, a rear axle, made
| | 01:12 | up of wheels and tires and all
sorts of things, and each one of those
| | 01:17 | individual objects shows up in the Outliner.
| | 01:20 | We also can see a lot of other things
in the Outliner such as the cameras that
| | 01:25 | we view the scene through, any lights
that are in the scene, a lot of different
| | 01:31 | things show up in the Outliner.
| | 01:34 | One of the first things you'll notice
is that everything in the scene has a
| | 01:38 | name. This is something I really want
to stress, is that everything that you
| | 01:43 | create in Maya should have a
descriptive name. This makes it much easier to
| | 01:49 | work. If you know that handle one is
the handle of the wagon that's much better
| | 01:53 | than some cryptic name.
| | 01:55 | If you want, you can actually change
the name of an object in the Outliner just
| | 02:00 | by double-clicking on that. So you
double-click and you can just change the
| | 02:04 | name of that for example to Wagon,
and it changes. Now, also notice that it
| | 02:09 | changes over here in the Channel Box.
So if I double-click here, I can also
| | 02:15 | change the name and it
updates in the Outliner as well.
| | 02:19 | Now, one of the great things about
having names for objects is that you can
| | 02:23 | actually search by name. So if you
have a constant naming scheme for your
| | 02:28 | objects, you could actually sort
through the 100s or 1000s of objects you'll
| | 02:33 | have in a scene just by typing in some
global search terms. This can be very,
| | 02:39 | very handy. So for example, if I want
to find all the tires in the scene, all I
| | 02:42 | have to do is type the word tire here
with an asterisk for global and then it
| | 02:48 | just lists all the tires.
| | 02:52 | So this can be very handy if you have
a scene with a lot of objects. If you
| | 02:56 | keep a consistent naming scheme, you
can select things a lot easier. I can just
| | 03:03 | get rid of this just by selecting my
search term and hitting the Backspace and
| | 03:08 | Enter and just deleting that term.
| | 03:11 | Now, another thing you can do with the
Outliner is you have a couple of menus
| | 03:16 | here which allow you to display
certain types of objects. These are actually
| | 03:20 | toggles. So do you turn on what
types of objects, you can turn on, this
| | 03:26 | actually turns on everything in the
scene. So you can actually see things like
| | 03:30 | the Shaders and for example, the
Rubber texture of the tires, the chrome
| | 03:39 | texture of the wheels. You can
see all of this in the Outliner.
| | 03:45 | Here is another little trick, is if
this gets too narrow, you can just put your
| | 03:50 | mouse over this border between the
panes and you can just left-click and drag
| | 03:54 | and make it a little bit bigger.
| | 03:55 | So if you don't want to show everything,
you can just click here and that goes
| | 03:59 | DAG Objects Only. And that's
basically just the objects that you see in the
| | 04:04 | scene, the physical objects in the scene.
| | 04:06 | You can also turn on Attributes, so
you can see all the attributes for an
| | 04:10 | object. So if you want to see for
example, the Move, Rotate, Scale, you could
| | 04:16 | actually see the Scale X, Y and Z
options for this. Typically, we don't want to
| | 04:22 | do that because it's a lot of additional
real estate on that screen that we don't need.
| | 04:27 | We can also show how things are
connected and we can also do things such as
| | 04:31 | change the Sort Order. So for example,
you can do just by the hierarchy of the
| | 04:35 | scene, or Alphabetical Within Type.
We can also change the order of the
| | 04:40 | attributes that are shown. So
that's if I turn on Attributes here.
| | 04:46 | So this is a really great way to
browse your scene and select objects. If you
| | 04:52 | want to select things, you can select
them from within the Outliner. So for
| | 04:55 | example, you can just Shift-Select and
select things by name, or if you hold
| | 05:00 | down the Ctrl key, again this is just
that standard selection type. So if you
| | 05:07 | hold something down and you shift, it
will select everything between your two clicks.
| | 05:12 | If you select something and hold down
the Ctrl key, you can individually pick
| | 05:16 | things. So those are some of
the basics of the Outliner.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating hierarchies| 00:00 | When you start creating multiple
objects in a scene, there are times when you
| | 00:04 | want to group those objects so that
they can move together. Like for example,
| | 00:09 | with this wagon you really want to be
able to move the body of the wagon and
| | 00:14 | then have everything else move
with it, you don't want things to be
| | 00:17 | disconnected like this.
| | 00:19 | We can connect all of the pieces
together by using what's called a Hierarchy.
| | 00:25 | Now, we can do that by using the
Outliner. So let's go Window > Outliner and
| | 00:32 | let's go ahead and position that. So,
for example, let's say we wanted
| | 00:36 | everything to move with the body. In
fact let's just go ahead and do this one
| | 00:41 | piece at a time.
| | 00:43 | For example, we have this FrontAxle,
which is completely separate from the
| | 00:49 | body. If I wanted this to move with
the body, all I have to do is select this
| | 00:55 | and then just drag it in the
Outliner. Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:59 | You left-click to highlight it, middle-
click and drag. Now notice that when you
| | 01:06 | get above a word you get a double line
like this. If we go between words, then
| | 01:13 | you get a single line. If you go
between words and let go, it just rearranges
| | 01:18 | so I could actually put this down to
the bottom, so this is kind of just a way
| | 01:22 | to organize things.
| | 01:23 | But if I drag and drag it above the
body so that there is a double line there,
| | 01:29 | see single line, double line. Notice
how this little plus sign comes up and
| | 01:35 | what happens is now this is a child
of the body. So when I select the body,
| | 01:43 | that FrontAxle moves with it
in a hierarchy. This is great.
| | 01:49 | Well what I can do is if I want
everything to move with that then all I have to
| | 01:53 | do is just select everything so I can
just Shift-Select everything, middle-
| | 01:59 | click and drag it so that it's over
the body and now everything is a child of
| | 02:05 | the body. Now I can move just the body
and everything moves with it. That way I
| | 02:12 | can actually expand or contract that.
| | 02:16 | We can take this a little bit
further by creating hierarchies within
| | 02:20 | hierarchies. Let's say for example we
want this front wheel to turn. So for
| | 02:26 | example, we've got this FrontAxle and
in reality we really would want this to
| | 02:30 | turn left and right and have the wheels
move with it and have the handle move with it.
| | 02:35 | So in order to do that, first thing we
need to do is be able to get it to turn.
| | 02:40 | So we have to move the pivots so
I am just going to hit the Insert key
| | 02:44 | and move that pivot right there, so
that it's kind of centered among that and
| | 02:50 | then hit the Insert or the Home key
on the Mac and then that will at least
| | 02:55 | rotate around its center.
| | 02:56 | But I want the wheels and the handle
and everything else to move with it. So
| | 03:02 | what I can do is just select the tire
and the wheel. These tires and wheels are
| | 03:09 | separate so I can just Shift-Select
the tire and the wheel and this tire and
| | 03:17 | this wheel and also select the handle.
I am holding down the Ctrl key here-
| | 03:22 | the Handle and the Pin, which is in
between the handle and that yoke. So, now
| | 03:29 | that I have all of these selected, all
of these are attached to that FrontAxle.
| | 03:35 | I can just middle click
and drag above the FrontAxle.
| | 03:39 | Now, if you notice I have got two
levels of hierarchy now. I have got the body,
| | 03:43 | everything under the body and then I
also have the FrontAxle and everything
| | 03:48 | under that FrontAxle. So if I rotate
that FrontAxle now, everything is moving
| | 03:55 | all hunky-dory.
| | 03:56 | Now, I can do the same for these tires.
Now, if you notice the tire is actually
| | 04:02 | separate from the rim. So if I take
this mag wheel and I rotate it, the tire
| | 04:09 | isn't actually rotating with that mag
wheel. In order to do that they need to
| | 04:14 | be a child of the wheel. So again I
could just take the tire, middle click and
| | 04:19 | drag it and do that the same for the
other ones, oops! And middle click and drag.
| | 04:27 | So now I have got a four level hierarchy.
So I have got the Wagon, and then the
| | 04:33 | FrontAxle, and then the Rim, and then the Tire.
| | 04:42 | So as you can see we have something
that actually moves realistically. In fact
| | 04:46 | let me go ahead and move this pivot for
the handle. I am just going to go ahead
| | 04:58 | and hit Insert. There, that moves perfectly.
| | 05:01 | So now the front end of this works
great. And for the rear of this we could
| | 05:07 | actually do the same, we could actually
take these wheels and make them a child
| | 05:14 | of that axle and then again just
put the tires as children of the rims.
| | 05:26 | So as you can see now we have a very
organized scene. So if we want we can just
| | 05:33 | select the Body and that selects
everything and then we can go through and in
| | 05:37 | the Outliner we can
actually pick out certain things.
| | 05:40 | Now, another thing you can do is you
can use the arrow keys to actually walk
| | 05:50 | through the hierarchy. So if I have
something here, for example if I pick the
| | 05:55 | wheel, I can just use the up
arrow to walk up the hierarchy.
| | 06:01 | Now, I can't really walk down the
hierarchy because it doesn't know which one
| | 06:06 | of these to go to but I can certainly
walk up it. So if I want to select the
| | 06:09 | parent, so I select for example this
wheel, I can certainly go to the parent of
| | 06:15 | the wheel and the parent of the Axle
as well just by hitting the Arrow keys.
| | 06:21 | So those are some of the basics of
hierarchies and we are going to be using
| | 06:25 | these a lot when we get into Animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the Hypergraph| 00:00 | Another way to look at the hierarchy
of your scene is by using the Hypergraph
| | 00:04 | window. This is similar to the
Outliner but it is a little bit more of a
| | 00:08 | graphic representation of your scene.
We are going to go ahead and open a scene
| | 00:13 | here called RedWagon_assembled. It is
the same red wagon except it has got the
| | 00:22 | hierarchies all set up. So this is the
one that we have set up in the Outliner,
| | 00:27 | and it has got all of the
hierarchies setup and ready to go.
| | 00:32 | Now if we want to view this graphically,
we can see it in the Hypergraph. So we
| | 00:37 | go Window > Hypergraph, and there are
two options here. The one we want to go
| | 00:42 | to is called Hypergraph:Hierarchy.
This brings up a little window and we can
| | 00:49 | see all of the objects in our scene in
a hierarchy. You notice how this is all
| | 00:55 | are graphically drawn out.
| | 00:57 | I think it is a much more visual, the
much better way to see things in your
| | 01:05 | scene. In fact, you can go through this
window, and just highlight them just by
| | 01:08 | moving your mouse over them, and select
them. If you want you can hold down the
| | 01:13 | Shift key and select multiple objects.
So this is holding down the Shift key
| | 01:17 | and in this case, the Ctrl key does not
work because this is actually more of a
| | 01:21 | graphical interface; this is more of
a viewport like the Front or the Top
| | 01:26 | viewport, and you can actually navigate
this just like any viewport by holding
| | 01:30 | down the Alt or the Option key, and
zooming, and panning just like you do in
| | 01:37 | any viewport.
| | 01:38 | Now in order to re-adjust this
hierarchy, all you have to do is select the
| | 01:43 | nodes. You can just Rubber band
select them, and just like you do in the
| | 01:48 | Outliner, you can middle click, and
drag, and you can put this anywhere you
| | 01:52 | want. So for example, I want those
Supports under the Rear Axle, I can do that,
| | 01:56 | and notice how they reconnect. So if I
want to put those back over the Body, I
| | 02:01 | can do that just by selecting them,
middle clicking, and dragging.
| | 02:05 | Now there are a few View options here.
One will allow you to zoom to the ones
| | 02:13 | that you have selected. The other one
is a Fit-to-Screen, and the other one
| | 02:19 | shows everything in the scene. So this
one fits to the screen everything within
| | 02:26 | the hierarchy. So if we had multiple
objects with multiple hierarchies, I could
| | 02:30 | select that one object, hit this button
and it would zoom to the extents of the
| | 02:35 | hierarchy. Again, this one zooms to
the extents of everything in the scene.
| | 02:39 | When we went to this window, we
actually have two modes for the Hypergraph
| | 02:43 | window. One is Hierarchy, the other one
is Connections. I am not going to click
| | 02:48 | on this because you can actually get to
this from within the Hypergraph window.
| | 02:52 | If you select this button, that shows
the Hierarchy; this one here shows the
| | 03:00 | Connections, and this is essentially
how the object is built. This particular
| | 03:06 | object is not really all that
interesting. So I am going to go ahead and close
| | 03:10 | this window and we are going to open
a new file. I am going to go ahead and
| | 03:13 | Open Scene and we are going to open
that CoffeeCup scene. Remember how this
| | 03:20 | still has a lot of that construction
history which we can see here in the
| | 03:24 | Channel box.
| | 03:25 | So let's go into Window > Hypergraph,
and this time let's just go into
| | 03:29 | Connections mode. You will see there
is all sorts of stuff in here. What this
| | 03:35 | is is how the object is built. How it
is wired together? So each one of these
| | 03:43 | options here is a separate node. So for
example, the shader node which provides
| | 03:50 | the color is here, and then any of
these operations that we have done to
| | 03:56 | actually create the object, for example,
the original Cylinder. Remember how we
| | 04:00 | had that. In fact, let's go ahead and
get this coffee cup so we can see it.
| | 04:04 | I can actually select that and I can
actually see that in ether the Channel box
| | 04:10 | or the Attribute Editor. So I can
select any one of these and they will show up
| | 04:16 | in the Attribute Editor. So for example
I can go to the poly Cylinder, which I
| | 04:20 | used to originally create this coffee
cup, and again I can size it if I want.
| | 04:25 | So this is just another way to find it.
| | 04:27 | Now if you want to get really
sophisticated, there are ways to actually totally
| | 04:32 | rewire and reconnect your model.
This is a very powerful window. Now, in
| | 04:39 | addition, you can just flip between
this Connections mode and the actual
| | 04:44 | Hierarchy mode. This scene only has
one object, so Hierarchy mode really does
| | 04:47 | not mater much at all.
| | 04:50 | Now in addition, we have a couple of
menu options here. One allows you to
| | 04:55 | rename the objects. This actually is
a view so it allows you to Frame All,
| | 05:00 | Frame Selection, so on and so forth.
This one here with graphs either Scene
| | 05:06 | Hierarchy, and again it is just like
pressing this button here or this button
| | 05:10 | or Input and Output Connections, and
this one actually only graph Input or
| | 05:15 | Output Connections, and this will
actually rebuild the window. It kind of just
| | 05:20 | reorganizes so it looks a little bit less messy.
| | 05:24 | Then also if you want you can also
show things such as Rendering Options, and
| | 05:29 | we can also have different types
of layouts. We can also orient this
| | 05:36 | vertically, horizontally, and
so on. So if I go to Graph Layout
| | 05:41 | Style>Orientation> Vertical,
everything goes vertical. Or if I want to go
| | 05:49 | Schematic, it goes in the different
way. Then the other option here is Show
| | 05:54 | Objects, and we can show objects by
type. So if you only want to see NURBS or
| | 05:59 | Polygon Objects, you can actually
filter this just to see different types of objects.
| | 06:05 | So those are some of the basics of
the Hypergraph window and that is just
| | 06:09 | another way to look at your scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Grouping objects| 00:00 | Another way of organizing
hierarchies is by suing Groups. Now I have the
| | 00:04 | original RedWagon open here, not
the one that we have created with the
| | 00:10 | hierarchies. And if I open the Outliner,
you will see that it is pretty much a
| | 00:17 | flat hierarchy.
| | 00:18 | Now one way to create hierarchies is
to basically, just select everything in
| | 00:23 | the Outliner, middle click, and drag.
And I have created a hierarchy with the
| | 00:26 | Body as the parent. But another way
to do that is by using what is called a
| | 00:32 | Group. I am just going to go ahead and
drag these out of the hierarchy. And if
| | 00:36 | I want, I can actually
do what is called a Group.
| | 00:39 | So let's go ahead and start with these
tires. I am just going to go ahead and
| | 00:41 | select this front right tire. And
another way to organize this is by using
| | 00:49 | Group. So what we can do is we go Edit
> Group, and the option here is Ctrl+G.
| | 00:56 | And if you group it, watch what happens.
You get this little node here called a
| | 01:01 | group. And under that group, we have
our two objects. So let's take a look at
| | 01:07 | how this works.
| | 01:08 | I have got my group here and if I want
to I can move that. Now the group always
| | 01:14 | creates a pivot point at 0, 0. So if I
want to move that wheel or rotate it, it
| | 01:22 | is going to actually rotate from 0, 0
because that is where the pivot point of
| | 01:27 | that group is. I can certainly move the
pivot point. I can just hit Insert and
| | 01:34 | move that pivot point wherever I want.
And if I want I can actually center that
| | 01:41 | to the wheel.
| | 01:41 | I am going to go ahead and Insert. And
again that's Home on the Macintosh. But
| | 01:49 | the really interesting thing about this
is that this is really a separate pivot
| | 01:52 | point. So I have got this group pivot
and I can move that wherever I want. So I
| | 02:01 | have got my tire has its own pivot,
the wheel has its own pivot, and then the
| | 02:07 | group has a third pivot.
| | 02:09 | Now I can use this to a great affect
in animation. If I want things to rotate
| | 02:14 | around different axes at different times,
I can actually use Groups to do that.
| | 02:19 | So for example, if I want this tire
to rotate around this axis, I can just
| | 02:25 | rotate the group. And if I wanted to
rotate around its center axis, I can
| | 02:29 | rotate the object itself.
| | 02:31 | Hey! Let's take a look at this with
just the handle. So if I want to I can just
| | 02:38 | go Modify > Center Pivot, and I have
got the handle here with the pivot at
| | 02:43 | center so I can just rotate around that.
But I can also group it. So I am just
| | 02:49 | going to hit Ctrl+G and watch what
happens here in the Outliner with this
| | 02:53 | handle. Ctrl+G, I create another group.
This is called group2. And this pivot
| | 03:01 | goes directly to the origin which is
at 0, 0 here. But I can certainly move
| | 03:07 | that by hitting Insert or Home and just
position that, for example, at-- like I
| | 03:12 | may want to go into a top or left
viewport here. Let's go ahead and move that
| | 03:20 | pivot point. There we go. Okay, much
better. So I can move this to the base of
| | 03:30 | my object. And now I have got
basically, two pivot points to work with.
| | 03:38 | I can rotate here. Or if I go into the
Outliner and I can rotate here. Kind of
| | 03:48 | handy and I can make as many of these
as I want. So again I can just hit Ctrl+G
| | 03:52 | again, make a third group and a third
pivot point. And again, I can make one
| | 03:59 | that goes around the top for example.
So now this rotates around the top. And I
| | 04:06 | can actually rename these, and just
call this Top, Bottom, and then I also have
| | 04:14 | one for the middle of the handle. So
by selecting any one of these, I can
| | 04:20 | actually create different ways
that I can rotate the object.
| | 04:26 | Another cool thing is that these
groups are actually basically, just empty
| | 04:29 | pivot points. So if I take this handle,
drag it out of the group, I still have
| | 04:36 | that Top and Bottom pivot point. Even
though, they are not really affecting
| | 04:41 | anything. So I could actually drag that
handle back over the Bottom pivot point
| | 04:46 | and again it will work.
| | 04:48 | Now another great thing you can do is
if you go into the Attribute Editor for
| | 04:53 | any one of these groups, I can actually
go down here to Display and I can turn
| | 05:01 | on what's called Display Handle. And
watch what it does here. It is right here,
| | 05:06 | so go ahead and if I turn that on, I
get what's called a Handle. And I can now
| | 05:11 | grab that handle and it actually is a
physical object that I can locate in the
| | 05:15 | scene. I can do the same here for the
Bottom pivot. I can just turn on Display
| | 05:20 | Handle, and now I have got two pivots
that I can play with. So if I want to I
| | 05:26 | can actually go here and I can rotate
around this axis, or I can come here and
| | 05:31 | I can rotate around that axis.
| | 05:32 | So what you can actually do is create
additional handles, pivot points, or
| | 05:39 | whatever to manipulate your objects.
Another handy thing with groups is that it
| | 05:45 | is just a good way to kind of tie
everything together without having to pair it
| | 05:50 | actual geometry. A lot of times it
is better to have a group. Let's say I
| | 05:55 | wanted to take everything and just kind
of organize it so I could actually for
| | 05:59 | example, create a Group here by hitting Ctrl+G.
| | 06:04 | Or another really cool thing to do is
you can use that as kind of almost like a
| | 06:09 | manipulation or modeling tool. Like
for example, if I took just one of these
| | 06:14 | wheels, or both of these wheels. Let's
say for example, I was actually making
| | 06:19 | this model so I am going to go ahead
and delete these wheels on the right side.
| | 06:24 | And I can just select the left wheels
and I can just group them. And when I
| | 06:29 | group those, I kind of make the
opposite side wheels just by doing a scale of
| | 06:34 | the group, or actually what I can do?
| | 06:37 | Okay, this is all actually a little
trick. I can actually duplicate those
| | 06:41 | objects or duplicate that group, and
then I can just Scale that group -1 to
| | 06:54 | make the mirror image wheels on the
opposite side. So you can see how groups
| | 07:01 | are kind of a handy way, it kind of
like a little place holder that you can use
| | 07:06 | to create new pivot points, use for
aid in scaling, and so on. Now with these
| | 07:12 | wheels once the group has been scaled,
I can actually take those, drag them
| | 07:16 | back out of the group, and their
scaling will stay the same. Okay, even though
| | 07:22 | the group itself, I can just go
ahead and delete that original group.
| | 07:28 | And the last thing I want to show you
is that if you do have a group, you can
| | 07:31 | get rid of it just by going Ungroup.
And that will actually just get rid of
| | 07:36 | each of the groups and it will get rid
of the handle as well. So notice how we
| | 07:40 | have this Bottom group here with its
handle. If I go Ungroup, it gets rid of
| | 07:46 | the group and the handle itself.
| | 07:50 | So those are some of the tools for
manipulating and using Groups within Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hiding and showing objects| 00:00 | As your scenes get more complex, you
are going to find the need to hide things,
| | 00:04 | so you can focus in on what's important
in a scene. One of the ways to hide and
| | 00:09 | show things is just within the viewport.
| | 00:12 | If you go over here, you will see a
Show menu option. If we click that, we can
| | 00:17 | actually turn on and off all sorts of
object types within the viewport. So for
| | 00:23 | example, if I don't want to see the
Grid, I don't have to see it, but more
| | 00:26 | importantly is we can turn things off
by object type. So for example, if I turn
| | 00:30 | off NURBS Surfaces, then the tires in
this scene go away, because those are
| | 00:36 | made of NURBS. I can turn them back on as well.
| | 00:39 | Now this is on a viewport by viewport
basis. So for example, if I hid all the
| | 00:46 | Polygons in this viewport, they
would still show up in all of my other viewports.
| | 00:54 | Now another way to hide and show
objects is by just selecting the objects
| | 01:00 | themselves. So let's say I wanted to
work on the bucket of this wagon and I
| | 01:08 | have got all of this stuff in the way.
So I have got all these axles and all of
| | 01:12 | this stuff and I really can't see
clearly as to what I want to model. Well, the
| | 01:18 | easiest way to get rid of
this is just to hide it.
| | 01:22 | There is a Display menu here called
Hide and Show. So we have Hide, we can hide
| | 01:28 | the object that we have selected. So I
can just hide the bucket, but that's not
| | 01:32 | what I want. I could actually Hide
Unselected Objects, which is everything but
| | 01:38 | the bucket, which is actually more
what I want. Or I can hide everything and
| | 01:47 | there is also some additional options
as well. I can hide by certain types of
| | 01:51 | Geometry, Deformers, Lights, Cameras,
pretty much all sorts of different things.
| | 01:58 | Now the real handy thing here is that
we do have some hot keys here. So if I go
| | 02:03 | Alt+h or on the Apple keyboard, it will
be Option+h. Now this is a lowercase h.
| | 02:09 | You hide Unselected Objects. Now if you
want to show them, you can go here and
| | 02:15 | you can either Show the Last Hidden or
you can Show All. But the really nice
| | 02:20 | thing is that Show Last Hidden is
Ctrl+H, uppercase H. So if I go
| | 02:24 | Shift+Ctrl+H, it shows it back. So if I
am working on the wagon itself, I will
| | 02:32 | just go Alt+h or Option+h and then
Ctrl+Shift+H and it brings it back.
| | 02:39 | So there is some other options here for
Show. We can Show All. We can also Show
| | 02:43 | Selection. You are probably wondering,
how do I select something if I can't see it,
| | 02:48 | if it's hidden? So let's say for
example, we hide the body of this wagon.
| | 02:53 | Well, if I go into the Outliner, I can
still see the body here and you can see
| | 02:58 | that it's hidden because the
lettering of this is marked in blue. So black
| | 03:03 | means it's visible, blue means it's hidden.
| | 03:06 | So I can still select it in the Outliner,
it's just not going to show up in my
| | 03:10 | viewports. And so if I want to show that,
I just go Shift+H and that will show it
| | 03:15 | or I can obviously select it from this
menu. Again with the Show menu you also
| | 03:20 | have the ability to Show All and show
stuff by type like Geometry, Lights,
| | 03:26 | Cameras, and so on.
| | 03:29 | So those can be very handy tools when
you are working with complex scenes. So,
| | 03:34 | get to know the Hide and Show Tools and
we will go ahead and move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating layers| 00:00 | One more way to organize your scenes
is by using layers. So I am going to go
| | 00:05 | ahead and open a file and that's
called Kitchen.mb and that's the one that I
| | 00:12 | have open here.
| | 00:14 | And in this, we have what I call the
Layers. I can get to my Layers menu by
| | 00:18 | going over to my Channels box and make
sure that this or this icon is selected.
| | 00:25 | This actually shows your layers with
the Channels box and this just shows the Layers.
| | 00:30 | I am going to go and show it with the
Channels box, which is kind of a default
| | 00:33 | way of looking at it, and if you want
you can resize this up by just grabbing
| | 00:37 | this little bar and just dragging it up.
| | 00:39 | Now if you notice, I have got some
layers set up in this scene. Now layers are
| | 00:45 | great way to organize your workflow in
Maya. So for example, one common thing
| | 00:51 | to do is to put all of your lights on a
separate layer, or all of your cameras,
| | 00:56 | and all of your geometry, or if you
have character animation you can put all of
| | 01:00 | the stuff related to one
specific character on its own layer.
| | 01:04 | Some of the great things that you could
do with layers is that you can actually
| | 01:07 | turn things on and off. So for example,
here I have got all the Appliances on
| | 01:11 | in their own layer. So all I have to
do is just hit this little V and I can
| | 01:16 | hide them. The same with the Cabinets
in the scene. So every type of object can
| | 01:21 | have its own layer.
| | 01:23 | So if I wanted to create a layer, all
you have to do is go into Layers and just
| | 01:28 | go Create Empty Layer and that
creates a new layer and if I double click on
| | 01:35 | that, I can give this a Name. So let's
say, we wanted to put all the furniture
| | 01:40 | in a layer. I can just type that name,
Furniture, and I hit Save. And so now
| | 01:47 | it's got that new name. Now all I have
to do is select the chairs, Shift-Select
| | 01:52 | chairs and the table, and then you just
right click over the layer and just say
| | 01:57 | Add Selected Objects.
| | 01:59 | Now once I have done that those
objects are in that layer. So I can turn that
| | 02:03 | layer on and off. Now there are some
other things that you can do with this
| | 02:06 | layer. One is that you can template
things. So if I hit this button here, I can
| | 02:13 | actually create a template. So that
means I can see it in Outline form but I
| | 02:19 | can't select it.
| | 02:22 | I also have some additional buttons
that allow me to arrange the layers. So for
| | 02:25 | example, if I want to I can actually
move these layers down and up and this is
| | 02:29 | just more of an organizational
standpoint. And this button here allows me to
| | 02:34 | create new layers as well. So I can
either create new layers here from the
| | 02:38 | Layers menu or I also have an icon here.
| | 02:42 | Now if I want I can also right click
over any of these layers and I can go down
| | 02:47 | here to Membership and it will actually
bring up a Relationship Editor which is
| | 02:53 | basically just something that shows me,
what objects are in what layers? So if
| | 02:58 | I select Cabinets, you can see I have
got Cabinets01, 02, 03, and 04. If I go
| | 03:03 | Furniture you can see I have got the
two Chairs and the Table and if I want to
| | 03:08 | I can actually take objects in
or out of those layers as well.
| | 03:13 | Now in addition to just Display layers,
I also have what I call Render and
| | 03:18 | Animation layers. Now Render layers
allow you to render a scene out upon at a
| | 03:23 | time and the Animation layers allow
you to layer animation so that certain
| | 03:29 | types of animation happen before others.
| | 03:31 | Now in addition to this Layers menu,
we also can Delete Selected Layers or we
| | 03:36 | can Delete Unused Layers. Now if you
delete a layer, what happens is that the
| | 03:40 | objects themselves basically
just go out into a No layer state.
| | 03:44 | Now we also have some Options here
which allows us to Add any New Objects to a
| | 03:49 | Current Layer. So if you are modeling,
you can set a current layer. So for
| | 03:54 | example layer1, I can go make that
layer current and since that's the active
| | 04:01 | layer, any object that I create, so
for example if I create a sphere or
| | 04:06 | something like that, that sphere
will now be a part of this new layer.
| | 04:10 | Of course, I have to have that selected.
So when I create a new object here,
| | 04:17 | when that's selected, then that becomes
part of that layer. Of course, this is
| | 04:21 | a toggle here so I have to have that checked.
| | 04:26 | So those are some of the basics of
Layers and it's a really good way to
| | 04:29 | organize your scenes as your
scenes start to get more complicated.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with selection masks| 00:00 | The next thing I want to talk about
are Selection Masks. These are ways to
| | 00:04 | actually mask what is and isn't
selected in a scene. Now in this really scene
| | 00:12 | with the wagon, we really only have
two types of objects. We have the tire,
| | 00:16 | which is a NURBS based object, and the
wheel, which is a polygonal type object.
| | 00:22 | Now most of these objects are polygons
but the actual tires are actually NURBS
| | 00:27 | based objects.
| | 00:29 | Now in a scene you may want to be
able to select one type of object over
| | 00:33 | another. We can do that using Selection
Masks. We can set those up here by just
| | 00:41 | clicking on this option here and then
your masks show up as toggles along this
| | 00:49 | line. If I want to I can turn on and
off any of these types of objects. So if I
| | 00:54 | turn everything off, I can't
select anything in the scene.
| | 00:59 | Now if I want to I could go here to
Surfaces, right click on it and just click
| | 01:03 | NURBS Surfaces and that means the only
thing that gets selected in this scene
| | 01:08 | are the NURBS Surfaces. In this case,
that's the tires and of course I could do
| | 01:13 | that for the Poly Surfaces and turn
off NURBS Surfaces. Again, this is right
| | 01:19 | clicking over this. So in that case, I
can actually rubber band select just the
| | 01:24 | polygonal objects and ignore the NURBS objects.
| | 01:28 | Now this is a lot more comprehensive
than just geometry. You could also do
| | 01:34 | stuff for Curves, Skeletons, Handles,
and IK Handles. For example, if I took
| | 01:44 | one of these and I grouped it using
Ctrl+G and then made a selection handle
| | 01:51 | here, I go into the Attributes Editor
for that group and turn on the Display
| | 01:56 | Handle. If I turn off that, I
won't be able to select that handle.
| | 02:01 | So now I have got this particular
handle is turned on. Now I turn it off here
| | 02:07 | and I can't select it. Okay, so you
can see how this works for all sorts of
| | 02:11 | different objects. So we have got
Handles, Curves, Skeleton Joints, Lattices,
| | 02:17 | Clusters, all sorts of Dynamics, and
Particles, and Systems and stuff like that
| | 02:23 | and also Lights, Cameras, and Textures.
| | 02:25 | So this makes it much easier to work in
your scene. So let's say, you are doing
| | 02:29 | a lot of work with cameras. You could
just turn all objects off and only turn
| | 02:36 | on Cameras. So that way, when you
Rubber band select you are only going to
| | 02:40 | select the cameras in the scene.
| | 02:42 | And again, the best thing to do is once
you have set those if you want to reset
| | 02:46 | it just go all objects on or all
objects off. Now another nice thing you could
| | 02:51 | do is you could actually save this
state to the shelf. So for example, if I
| | 02:56 | have all objects off except for NURBS
Surfaces, I could actually save that to
| | 03:02 | Shelf and now you have got a Mask there.
And all I have to do now is -- if I
| | 03:08 | want to select just NURBS Surfaces, I
will just click that and it automatically
| | 03:15 | sets my mask. Kind of nice.
| | 03:18 | So now I have a custom tool on my
Toolbar here that allows me to turn on just
| | 03:25 | NURBS Surfaces. Now I can make another
one here. I can just turn all objects
| | 03:29 | off and just right click here for Poly
Surfaces. And then I could just go save
| | 03:35 | again to Shelf. So now I have one that
allows me select only the poly surfaces.
| | 03:40 | Then another one which allows
me to select the NURBS Surfaces.
| | 03:44 | That's some of the basics of
Selection Masks for objects, now there is also
| | 03:50 | another one for Components, which are
the things that comprise objects. And if
| | 03:55 | you want to you can also turn on and
off objects by the type of components,
| | 03:59 | such as Face, or Control Vertex, or
Edge, or whatever. And we will get into
| | 04:05 | those as we get into the modeling chapters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Polygonal ModelingPolygonal primitives| 00:00 | Now let's talk about modeling and
creating objects from scratch. We are going
| | 00:05 | to first start with polygonal
modeling and you can find all of those tools
| | 00:11 | here, as we go down to Polygons and
that will bring up the Polygon tool set.
| | 00:16 | There is also a shelf with a lot of
those tools here and actually I tend to use
| | 00:21 | the shelf, so I maybe going to these
but a lot of these tools are up along here
| | 00:26 | and I will try and show
you where everything is at.
| | 00:28 | Now with polygonal modeling the way
it works is you generally start with a
| | 00:33 | polygonal primitive. Now that can be
either a sphere or cube or cylinder and
| | 00:39 | then you reshape that object into
whatever it is you are trying to build.
| | 00:45 | So the first thing we need to do is go
over some of these Polygonal Primitives
| | 00:49 | and show you how they work. Now, if you
have the Polygon shelf active you will
| | 00:54 | see they are all right here. You can
also get to them through the Create menu.
| | 00:59 | We can go to Create > Polygonal
Primitives and here they are. In fact, I am
| | 01:03 | going to go ahead and tear this
off so that we have it right here.
| | 01:07 | So let's just go down the list and I am
just going to go through the basics of
| | 01:11 | all of these Polygonal Primitives so we
are all on the same page. Now the first
| | 01:15 | one is the Sphere and if we want to
you can just click here and create the sphere.
| | 01:21 | Now in order to create a sphere all you
have to do is just left click and drag
| | 01:26 | wherever it is you want to create that
object. Now I am in Wireframe mode, all
| | 01:31 | I have to do is hit the number 5 to go
into Shaded mode so you can see that.
| | 01:35 | I am going to go into the Channel Box
and I am just going to highlight just the
| | 01:39 | Channel Box here. I am just going to
hit this icon and when you create this you
| | 01:42 | actually create a node, which shows
up in the Channel Box as well as the
| | 01:46 | Attribute Editor, called polySphere and
this gives you some of the options that
| | 01:51 | you can use to create that sphere.
| | 01:52 | One of them is the Radius of the sphere,
or basically how big the sphere is
| | 01:57 | and the other one is Subdivisions. How
much resolution is that sphere. You have
| | 02:04 | ones for along the Axis as well as
Height and if you want to, one of the things
| | 02:08 | I like to do is highlight both of
these and you can scale them both at once
| | 02:13 | just by right-clicking and dragging
left to right. So you highlight these.
| | 02:17 | Now you can also do this in the
Attribute Editor. Let's go over there and let
| | 02:21 | me show you how to do that. Here we
have polySphere1 and again we have our
| | 02:26 | Subdivisions here and our Radius as
well. Now you also have some additional
| | 02:31 | options here in the Attribute Editor
and one is how to create UVs, which is
| | 02:36 | essentially how a texture
will be applied to this sphere.
| | 02:42 | Okay, now I am going to go back to the
Channel Box and let's go ahead and look
| | 02:46 | at some of these other primitives. The
next one is the Cube. All you have to do
| | 02:51 | is click Cube. Now you can also get to
it here and all you do is left-click and
| | 02:56 | you drag out the base of the cube
and then you pull up the height.
| | 03:03 | Now this has actually something you
need to be aware of if you are building
| | 03:07 | this in a front or a side viewport.
Let's go ahead and delete this. Let's say I
| | 03:11 | am in the front viewport and I want to
draw a box. Well, then I create that but
| | 03:18 | I can't pull the height. I actually
have to go into another viewport in order
| | 03:22 | to pull the height. The only way that
I can create it in one viewport is in
| | 03:27 | some sort of perspective viewport. So just
be aware of that for this particular primitive.
| | 03:33 | Now again, we have options here such as
Width, Height, Depth. Width, Height and
| | 03:42 | Depth are kind of relative to how you
draw it. So if you draw it in the top
| | 03:47 | viewport first, the Width and Height
are going to be little bit different than
| | 03:52 | if you draw in a side viewport
because the first plane that you draw is
| | 03:57 | actually your Width and Height and
then what you drag out is going to be your
| | 04:01 | Depth and then in addition to that we
have Subdivisions. We can actually create
| | 04:05 | Subdivisions along Height,
Width and Depth as well.
| | 04:09 | Now one of the things I also want to
show you is that each of these options
| | 04:14 | also has a little toolbox here. I am
going to go ahead and delete this cube
| | 04:19 | here and let's go ahead and recreate
this. So when we create the cube using the
| | 04:25 | Tools Options box, we can preset the
number of divisions for example, before we
| | 04:30 | even draw it. So that's kind of nice.
| | 04:34 | But the one thing about this is that
once you have set this, they stick around.
| | 04:38 | The next cube I draw will also have
that same number of divisions. So if I want to
| | 04:44 | I can actually just bring those
back to one which is the default. So what
| | 04:49 | you can do for any of these is you can
actually reset the default options just
| | 04:53 | by going into this Tools menu. So let's
go ahead and delete these. So let's go
| | 04:58 | on to some of these other options.
| | 05:01 | The next one is a Cylinder. Again, it's
kind of like the cube where you have to
| | 05:05 | draw out the base and then drag the
height. And for each of these we have a
| | 05:10 | Radius, we have the actual Height.
Now the Height is actually around the
| | 05:15 | center. So you see how it actually
scales up and down around the center and
| | 05:20 | then number of Subdivisions radially
along the top and then also Subdivisions
| | 05:26 | for the top and bottom, which are called Caps.
| | 05:32 | Cone, again it's very similar to a
cylinder and again it's got Radius and
| | 05:38 | Height and so on. This is
pretty self-explanatory.
| | 05:42 | The next one is actually the Plane
and that's pretty easy to draw. You just
| | 05:47 | again left-click and drag and with a
plane all you really have is Width, Height
| | 05:51 | and again the number of Subdivisions.
In fact, let me more above the grid
| | 05:57 | so you can see it, and then we also have
a Torus, which is kind of like a doughnut.
| | 06:07 | So let me show you how that works again.
What you do is you drag out the main
| | 06:13 | Radius of the Torus or how big around
is the doughnut and then you have to drag
| | 06:19 | again for the thickness. So this is
how thick my doughnut is. Is it a ring or
| | 06:25 | is it crispy cream or whatever. So and
again with this, you can actually change
| | 06:30 | your Radius and your Section Radius
which is actually the technical name.
| | 06:35 | Another nice thing is you actually
have a Twist option here. So you can
| | 06:38 | actually twist down little bit and you
can also change your Subdivisions. Okay,
| | 06:45 | let's go through some of these other
ones. This one is called Prism. In fact,
| | 06:51 | let's go ahead-- I am not going to go
into the Attribute Editor for this one, so
| | 06:54 | I am just going to go Ctrl+A
and go here to polyPrism1.
| | 06:59 | Let's go ahead and play with this a
little bit. So we have the length of the
| | 07:02 | sides, the Number of Sides. This is
almost like an n-gon and then you can
| | 07:09 | also have number of Subdivisions in the
Height and the Caps. So this is almost
| | 07:13 | like you can make a -- for example,
this is the Pentagon or the Chrysler logo
| | 07:18 | and this is a hexagon or an octagon
and so it's very easy way to make a
| | 07:23 | regular-sided object.
| | 07:26 | Well, we have got a few more here. We
have got the Pyramid and that's exactly
| | 07:32 | like it's advertised and this is the
Great Pyramid of Cheops and we can also
| | 07:37 | create a different number of sides.
We can actually create a tetra- or a
| | 07:42 | penta-pyramid and also give
number of subdivisions as well.
| | 07:49 | I like this one a lot. This is a tube.
They call it a Pipe. So basically you
| | 07:53 | set the Radius, set the Height and
then set the Thickness. Okay, so it's a
| | 08:00 | three step process. Let's go through
that one more time for the Pipe. Radius,
| | 08:06 | Height, Thickness. Three separate left
clicks to get that done and then again
| | 08:12 | we can go into either the Attribute
Editor or the Channel Box to change any of
| | 08:17 | these parameters.
| | 08:18 | If you draw it and it's not exactly the
way you want it, you can always go back
| | 08:22 | and change it. So that's kind of a
nice thing. And then a couple more. One is
| | 08:28 | called the Helix. That's like a little
spring there and then you can also drag
| | 08:35 | for number of coils and then you can
also drag the Section Radius. This is kind
| | 08:41 | of a nice way to make springs.
| | 08:43 | Now sometimes this would be a really
hard object. Here let's make a little bit
| | 08:47 | more of a simpler one for this. Now
this would be a very hard object to model.
| | 08:56 | So it's nice to have kind of a
parametric version of this. One of the nice
| | 09:00 | things is that you can actually animate the height.
| | 09:03 | So for example, if you had a spring in
a car, you can actually just animate the
| | 09:09 | height of that to actually get the
bounciness of that spring. So that's kind of
| | 09:12 | a nice little feature of that and
then we have a few more. We have a Soccer
| | 09:16 | Ball and this is great for creating
geodesic domes, that sort of thing, and we
| | 09:24 | have what are called the Platonic
Solids and if we go here we have solid type
| | 09:30 | effect and we need to go to the
Attribute Editor for this one.
| | 09:34 | So we got a Platonic Solid. We have
a pull-down menu here. Dodecahedron,
| | 09:38 | Icosahedron, Octahedron, and
Tetrahedron and those are the four hedron
| | 09:47 | brothers. So those are the basics of
the Polygonal Primitives. Now what we will
| | 09:52 | be doing is we will be taking these
primitives and actually reshaping them into
| | 09:58 | more organic types of objects using
some of the polygonal modeling tools.
| | 10:04 | So once you are familiar with these
basis primitives, we can expand that to
| | 10:07 | create more complex objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Polygonal components| 00:00 | So now let's go ahead and start
modeling some of these primitives into actual
| | 00:06 | objects. The first thing you need to
understand when doing polygonal modeling
| | 00:10 | is you need to understand what makes
up a polygonal model. So let's go ahead
| | 00:14 | and start with a Cube.
| | 00:16 | So I am just going to go right here,
click on Cube, drag it out and I am going
| | 00:22 | to shade it by hitting 5 on the
keyboard. Now if you notice we have this
| | 00:27 | object, it's a three-dimensional
object. So each dimension has its own
| | 00:32 | component. Now components are those
things that make up the object, the things
| | 00:36 | that allow you to edit the polygonal object.
| | 00:40 | So if I want to get to those
components, all I have to do is bring up my
| | 00:44 | Marking menu. Right-click over it, I
have got three main components here. I
| | 00:50 | have got a lot of other stuff here but
the one I really want to look at here
| | 00:53 | are Faces, Edges and Vertices.
| | 00:58 | Let's start with Vertices. If we go to
Vertex, notice how these little points
| | 01:02 | come up here and those are where all
of these lines intersect. In fact, a
| | 01:08 | Vertex is a point and a point is
basically one dimension. So I can take those
| | 01:13 | if I want to edit this. All I have to
do is select one of those and just hit
| | 01:18 | Move or hit the W key and I can
reshape by moving those vertices.
| | 01:25 | So Vertex is basically one point. If I
right-click above this and go Edge, we
| | 01:33 | can select the edges. Now the Edges
are the lines that connect individual
| | 01:39 | vertices. So if I select the Edge, I
can certainly edit this object by moving
| | 01:45 | the edges. So essentially an edge is a
two-dimensional construct. It goes from
| | 01:51 | point to point and it creates a line.
| | 01:55 | If I right-click over this again, I
can go to Face and what faces are are
| | 02:01 | essentially the planes that are
connected by edges. So if I go, I can actually
| | 02:07 | move these faces around using my Move
tool. So what we have got here is we have
| | 02:16 | got Vertices, Edges and Faces and by
manipulating these we can actually any of
| | 02:24 | these Polygonal Primitives to create a model.
| | 02:28 | Now one tool that's actually really
cool is the Multi-select tool. So now I
| | 02:35 | have got Face, which allows me to
select only faces. Edge, which allows me to
| | 02:42 | select only edges and Vertex, which
allows me to select just the vertices. But
| | 02:49 | I also have what's called a Multi tool
or Multi mode; it's not really a tool.
| | 02:55 | It allows you to select
Faces and Vertices and Edges.
| | 03:00 | Now this can be really handy when
you are doing certain types of modeling
| | 03:03 | operations. Now typically I tend to
stick to either Vertices or Edges or Faces
| | 03:08 | but there are times when you want to
be able to switch between those and then
| | 03:13 | if you right-click here and go to
Object Mode, you actually select the object itself.
| | 03:19 | Now I have been using the Marking menu,
another way to get into this is to
| | 03:23 | click on this button or hit F8 and
that brings you into Component Mode, which
| | 03:30 | allows you to select and modify
whatever it is you want. Now in this option,
| | 03:36 | you can actually use the selection mass
to turn on and off individual component.
| | 03:40 | For example, we go All Components Off.
Then I really can't select anything. But
| | 03:47 | I can go here and for example and right-
click and go Poly Edges, make sure that
| | 03:52 | says Poly Edges and I can select Edges
or here I can select Vertices or here I
| | 04:01 | can select Faces and I can
turn them all on or off if I want.
| | 04:05 | So I actually have a little bit more
control here but I have to also go up and
| | 04:10 | make the selection mask myself.
Typically, I say All Components On if you want
| | 04:15 | and if you do that you get all of that.
I will do them all off and however you
| | 04:20 | want, but I find it's a lot faster just
to use this Marking menu and go in and
| | 04:27 | just get to your objects this way.
| | 04:31 | Now I am going to go ahead and delete
this. So those are the basics of how to
| | 04:37 | select and modify polygonal components.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Soft Select and Paint Select| 00:00 | Let's go a little bit deeper into
Polygonal Editing. I am going to go ahead and
| | 00:04 | start by creating a sphere, let's just
go ahead and create a default sphere and
| | 00:09 | shade that and then if I want to I
can edit this just by right-clicking and
| | 00:15 | selecting Vertex.
| | 00:17 | Now if I wanted to actually reshape this,
I could just take those vertices and
| | 00:23 | move them around. Now one of the
things you will notice very quickly when you
| | 00:27 | start moving a large groups of
vertices is that you get kind of hard edges
| | 00:31 | around the points where you move those.
If you want, you can actually modify
| | 00:37 | this a little bit more organically by
using Soft Selection. So how you do that
| | 00:43 | is you basically double-click on any
one of these tools, any one of the Move,
| | 00:47 | Rotate or Scale tools.
| | 00:49 | So let's go ahead and play with the
Move tool. If I double-click on that, you
| | 00:54 | will see I get my Move Tool Settings.
If I scroll down you will see a little
| | 00:59 | section here called Soft Selection,
this is really handy. If you turn on Soft
| | 01:06 | Select, you can actually dial in the
Radius over which this is affected. So
| | 01:14 | everything, every vertex that I have
selected, in fact, I can un-select and
| | 01:18 | reselect these, now has the falloff.
So everything I have selected will move
| | 01:25 | 100% and then over the Radius of, in
this case, 4.76 it will fade off to zero.
| | 01:34 | That's way to look at this is just to say
okay, let's just go ahead and play with this.
| | 01:38 | You can see now instead of moving
just those vertices, I get a nice falloff
| | 01:44 | which gives me a really nice way to
model organically. So I can actually
| | 01:49 | reshape this and make this look a lot
more organic. Now this works not just for
| | 01:54 | the Move tool but also for the Rotate
and the Scale tool. Now you have to make
| | 02:00 | sure that it's turned on and if you
have turned it off for one tool, it will
| | 02:04 | default to all the other tools. When
you go to Rotate, you don't have to
| | 02:10 | actually turn it on again. It will
inherit the settings from whatever you had
| | 02:14 | from the last tool.
| | 02:15 | Now some of the nice things you can
do with this is you can actually do
| | 02:20 | different types of curve presets so
that it will falloff in different ways,
| | 02:24 | linearly, parametrically, you can make
it so that it actually creates like a
| | 02:29 | little bump here, like that. So you can
make all sorts of curves. In fact, you
| | 02:36 | can actually dial in your old curve by
using this Curve Editor, all you have to
| | 02:40 | do is just left-click on anyone of
these and you could make your own curve. So
| | 02:44 | if you left-click here, you can
actually create your own falloff curve. If you
| | 02:48 | want to get rid of this, all I have to
do is hit that little X and that will
| | 02:51 | get rid of anyone of those.
| | 02:53 | And then if you want to, you could
actually give it your own color. If for some
| | 02:56 | reason you are afraid of the color red,
you can certainly change that color to
| | 03:01 | blue or whatever. So you could
actually make whatever color falloff you want.
| | 03:06 | You can go from blue to green or green
to blue rather than red to yellow and
| | 03:12 | that's just to display thing.
| | 03:14 | You can also go what's called
Reflection. Now what Reflection does is it
| | 03:18 | actually finds the vertices on the
opposite side of the model allows you to
| | 03:22 | edit those as well. This probably works
better on a fresh model. In fact, I am
| | 03:26 | going to go ahead, right-click, go to
Object Mode, delete it. Let's go ahead
| | 03:29 | and start with a new sphere and then
let's go ahead and turn on Soft Select and
| | 03:35 | make sure that Reflection is turned on,
right-click, go to Vertex and select
| | 03:40 | some vertices.
| | 03:41 | Now notice how we have got this
Reflection turned on. If I am going to model
| | 03:45 | something organically and I want to
make sure that it's symmetrical, all I have
| | 03:49 | to do is turn on that Reflection and
that will reflect around, whatever axis I
| | 03:55 | select. In this case, it's the X axis,
so anything on positive X, again, x is
| | 04:02 | red. So on positive X it will move
negative on the opposite side. Now this is
| | 04:07 | for things that are created along the X axis.
| | 04:11 | Now this is reflective along the
pivot point of the object. So if I go and
| | 04:16 | select the actual object itself, you
will see that that's where it's reflecting
| | 04:20 | off the pivot point of that object.
If I move the pivot of the object, the
| | 04:24 | reflection point will change as well.
So as you can see, this is a very handy
| | 04:30 | tool for organic and soft modeling.
| | 04:35 | Now another way to select polygonal
objects or really any sort of component is
| | 04:41 | by using Paint Select. So I am going to
go ahead and create a polygonal sphere
| | 04:45 | here and shade it. And let's just go
into Face Mode here and normally if I want
| | 04:52 | to select something, I can just Shift
Select or Rubber-band Select or Lasso
| | 04:59 | Select. But we also have what's called
a Paint Select tool. So all I have to do
| | 05:04 | is select this, in fact, if I double-
click on it, you have got some options
| | 05:07 | here and I can just start painting my selection.
| | 05:13 | Now I have basically a brush that
allows me to paint that selection. If I want
| | 05:18 | to size the brush, I can do it one of
two ways. I can go into the Tool Options
| | 05:23 | and just give it a Radius of what I
want or the more interactive way is to hold
| | 05:29 | down the B key, B for brush and
then just left-click and drag.
| | 05:34 | So this also works really well with the
tablet and this is also an introduction
| | 05:41 | to the Artist and Painting interface
within Maya, which you can use for a lot
| | 05:45 | of other things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Subdivision surface workflow using subdiv proxy| 00:00 | Now one of the more popular
workflows when you are working with polygonal
| | 00:04 | objects is to use what are called
Subdivisions Surfaces. Now we have got a
| | 00:07 | little bit of a taste of this, just by
the way we can view polygonal objects in
| | 00:11 | the viewport. So, for example, I am
working with this head and if I just hit
| | 00:16 | the 1, 2, or 3 keys, we can
actually see how this surface subdivides.
| | 00:21 | So 1 shows you the actual polygonal
model of this character's head. 2 shows you
| | 00:28 | the subdivision surface with the
polygonal cage above the head. So actually
| | 00:34 | this is the model here, the model is
actually the cage and we can just affect
| | 00:42 | that, and it affects the surface
underneath or we can hit the 3 button and that
| | 00:48 | just shows us the mesh by itself. So,
for example, if I selected the vertices
| | 00:53 | of his nose, I could obviously reshape
this and if I selected the vertices of
| | 00:59 | the head, notice how when I select
this vertex it actually goes off of the head.
| | 01:04 | So if I hit the number 2, you can see
that that's because the actual vertex
| | 01:08 | that I am manipulating is on the cage,
which is actually a little bit off of
| | 01:13 | that head. So, for example with all of
these vertices, you can see how those
| | 01:17 | work as well. So all of these display
stuff is all fun and dandy but the real
| | 01:23 | key for this is that you want to be
able to animate this Low Res version
| | 01:29 | because that makes it a lot simpler to
manipulate and render and it's going to
| | 01:33 | be lot faster if you work with
the Low Poly version in Maya.
| | 01:38 | But you want to render a Higher Res
version. So when you actually get to the
| | 01:43 | point when you are rendering the scene,
you want the renderer to see this one.
| | 01:47 | So in Maya there are actually two
different workflows for using subdivision
| | 01:53 | surfaces. So let's go over the
first one. Now this is probably the more
| | 01:56 | standard one, the one that a lot of
people who are familiar with Maya have used
| | 02:01 | for a long time and that's called Subdiv Proxy.
| | 02:04 | So how this works is on the Polygons
menu, we have what's called a Proxy and we
| | 02:12 | have Subdiv Proxy and Remove Subdiv
Proxy, all of that but the one that's most
| | 02:17 | important is this one called Subdiv
Proxy. Now what I can do is I could just
| | 02:22 | hit this or there is actually a hot
key here, Ctrl+~ and when I do that, what
| | 02:28 | it does is actually creates two
objects. In fact, if I go into my Outliner
| | 02:33 | here, you can see here I have got my
head, which is my original model, and then
| | 02:38 | I have got a copy of that
which is the smoothed version.
| | 02:43 | Now if I render this, you see it
actually renders both. So what I have to do,
| | 02:48 | in this case, is actually go through
and either hide this, so I can actually
| | 02:53 | just go Display > Hide that particular
object, and then it will render smooth.
| | 03:00 | Or I can set stuff up in layers,
there are all sorts of ways to hide this
| | 03:04 | before you render or what you can do
is you can also go into the Attributes
| | 03:07 | Editor for this particular object and
you can go into your Render stats it just
| | 03:13 | turn off all the rendering queues for
that and so you can actually still see it
| | 03:17 | in your viewport, you don't' have to
hide it but when you render, it just shows
| | 03:21 | up as invisible.
| | 03:22 | Now the more important thing about
this is that the head and the proxy of the
| | 03:28 | head are connected using this modifier
here called polishSmoothProxy. Now I can
| | 03:34 | see it here in the Channel Box or if I
go into my Attribute Editor, I can find
| | 03:39 | a little note here that says
polishSmoothProxy as well. And what this does is
| | 03:43 | this allows me to set the number of
division level, so how much is it smoothed?
| | 03:48 | So do I smooth it once, twice and now
you got to be careful, you don't want to
| | 03:53 | really dial this up too much
because every time you go up a level, you
| | 03:59 | quadruple the number of polygons.
| | 04:01 | So, for example, if I go to 0, that's
one big polygon, if I go to 1, it divides
| | 04:08 | it into 4 and then it divides that 4
by 4 and you get 16, where I originally
| | 04:14 | had one and then you go up one more,
you get 64. So you could see how you can
| | 04:19 | very easily get a lot of polygons
and something like this will be almost
| | 04:24 | impossible to manipulate in real time
if you are doing something like facial
| | 04:27 | animation but when you go to
render, it looks really smooth.
| | 04:33 | So the key for this number of division
levels is to set a number that basically
| | 04:37 | renders smooth. So I am looking here at
this edge and I can see that that looks
| | 04:42 | pretty smooth. If I go down to say
level 1, you will see I still have a little
| | 04:47 | bit of jagginess. So you can just
basically go by my rule of thumb, which is if
| | 04:51 | it looks good, it is good. So I just
turn this up until it looks good. So
| | 04:56 | that's generally how I
work with this sort of stuff.
| | 04:59 | Now there are additional tools that
Maya has for managing these. So I just
| | 05:04 | wanted to show you how Subdiv Proxy
works for those times when you do want to
| | 05:08 | do organic modeling for subdivision surfaces.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Subdivision surface workflow using mental ray| 00:00 | Now the second method for dealing
Subdivision Surfaces involves the Mental Ray
| | 00:06 | Renderer. It's actually pretty simple
the way that this work, so let me go
| | 00:10 | ahead and select this head again
and again we are going to go with our
| | 00:14 | subdivision of 1, 2 which shows the
cage and the object, and 3 which just shows
| | 00:21 | the object itself.
| | 00:22 | Now if I render this, I am going to
hit this button here, which is the Render
| | 00:27 | Globals button, and I want to make
sure I am in Maya Software Renderer. Okay,
| | 00:30 | because I am going to show you how it
works with that renderer. So I am going
| | 00:35 | to just leave this up in this position,
so I can see it. So if we render this I
| | 00:40 | can actually hit this little button
here to do rendering, just a quick render.
| | 00:45 | And I render it, the smoothing doesn't come up.
| | 00:49 | Well that's because the Maya Software
Renderer doesn't automatically smooth the
| | 00:54 | model but if we go over to Mental Ray,
which is the second renderer in Maya and
| | 01:02 | I select that make sure that that's
the active renderer and then I just hit
| | 01:06 | Render again, you will see it
automatically picks that up. So with that you
| | 01:10 | have an automatic workflow for
subdivisions surfaces that you really don't even
| | 01:15 | have to pay attention to. All you have
to do is make sure that you smooth that
| | 01:19 | in the viewport.
| | 01:21 | So if I actually hit the number 1 and
un-smooth this and render it in Mental
| | 01:25 | Ray, you will notice that it actually
renders un-smooth. Okay and if I hit 2,
| | 01:33 | which shows the cage, it will remove
the cage and still render the smooth
| | 01:37 | version. The really cool thing about
Mental Ray is that it will calculate the
| | 01:41 | subdivision based upon the camera
position. So the closer it is the more it
| | 01:46 | will smooth it. So you actually have
kind of an adaptive smoothing system, so
| | 01:51 | you don't even have to worry about
dialing up your subdivision levels or
| | 01:54 | dialing them down.
| | 01:55 | Now let me show you a little bit more
about how this subdivisions work within
| | 02:01 | Maya. So let's go ahead and select
the head, hit 1 and then let's go to the
| | 02:07 | Attribute Editor right here or you can
hit Ctrl+A and then let's go down to --
| | 02:14 | let's go ahead and select our Head
NeutralShape and let's go to Smooth Mesh.
| | 02:19 | Then when I turned on Smooth Mesh notice,
when I hit the 2, it actually checks
| | 02:24 | that button which says Smooth Mesh
Preview and it actually is just changing
| | 02:29 | these options.
| | 02:30 | So these options are actually set on a
per object basis, so I can show my Cage,
| | 02:37 | my Smooth Mesh or both or I can just
show my Smooth Mesh. Now if I go down 1
| | 02:44 | more level here from Smooth Mesh to
Subdivision Levels, I can actually change
| | 02:49 | the number of subdivision levels it
displays. So, for example, I go Cage and
| | 02:54 | Smooth Mesh, I could actually display
those subdivision levels and I can dial
| | 02:59 | those up and down for how it displays
in the viewport and also how it renders.
| | 03:04 | Then we also have some extra controls
here which shows how it smoothes in terms
| | 03:08 | of continuity. So in other words, the
angle of smoothing and as well do you
| | 03:12 | want to smooth the textures and that
sort of stuff on the object. You know, for
| | 03:17 | example, in between his hair and his
skin, there is actually a border where two
| | 03:23 | textures overlap and how do you
want to smooth, that sort of stuff.
| | 03:27 | So those were some of the basics for
using Subdivision Surfaces with Mental
| | 03:31 | Ray. I would highly recommend this
workflow for anybody who is using
| | 03:36 | Subdivision Surfaces, it does involve
using Mental Ray as your renderer but
| | 03:41 | that's actually not a bad thing
because it is a much more robust rendering system.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Extrude tool| 00:00 | So now let's go through some of the
modeling tools within Maya. Most of the
| | 00:05 | modeling tools are contained here in
the Polygons menu set. And we have Mesh,
| | 00:11 | which controls anything that affects
an entire object. And then we have Edit
| | 00:16 | Mesh tools and those affect
components such as Faces, Vertices, and Edges.
| | 00:22 | We are going to play with first one of
these Edit Mesh tools, which is Extrude.
| | 00:27 | So let's go ahead and do that. We are
going to start with a box. I am just
| | 00:30 | going to go here to my Polygon shelf,
create a box or I can create Polygon
| | 00:36 | Primitives > Cube. I call it box but
actually, technically the name is a cube.
| | 00:42 | And then I am going to create that cube and shade it.
| | 00:45 | Now if under my Channels Box you can
see in my Input I have got my polyCube is
| | 00:52 | set and I can go ahead and ramp up
the number of divisions if I want. Now,
| | 00:57 | extrusion works on Faces, Edges, and
Vertices. So let's go ahead and play with
| | 01:02 | Faces first because that's probably the
most common way to extrude. I can right
| | 01:06 | click above my model, select Face and
just select one face. And then I can just
| | 01:13 | go ahead and do an Extrude.
| | 01:15 | Now when I do that up comes this little
gizmo. Now this gizmo has arrows which
| | 01:20 | allows me to move it up and down. So
if I want to make a hole, I just move it
| | 01:23 | down and if I want to create a
protrusion, I just move the arrow up. Now also
| | 01:29 | notice here in my Channel Box I have
a polyExtrudeFace node, which actually
| | 01:35 | changes. Notice how this Local
Translate changes as I move this.
| | 01:40 | And I can also scale and you can also
notice how these affect that as well. So,
| | 01:45 | we can scale these, we can move them,
we can rotate them. And in addition, we
| | 01:51 | also have options for, if I move down
here, number of divisions. So I can, for
| | 01:56 | example, ramp up these divisions as well.
| | 02:00 | Now in addition to Move and Scale, I
also have Rotate so I can actually rotate
| | 02:05 | that extrusion here as well. What I am
doing here is I am just middle clicking
| | 02:10 | and dragging left and right to
change those values. Now in addition to
| | 02:14 | extruding Faces, we can also extrude
Edges and Vertices. So let me show you how
| | 02:20 | to do that as well.
| | 02:21 | I am going to go ahead and select this
face and I am just going to delete it so
| | 02:24 | I have an open edge. And then I am just
going to go right click over this and I
| | 02:28 | can either go to Multi or Edge. I am
going to go to Edge here and just select
| | 02:32 | this edge. So then I am just going to
extrude that. Now I can do that in one of
| | 02:36 | two places. I can just go back to here
or I can do one of my favorite little
| | 02:40 | tricks, which is to just hit the
Spacebar and go to Recent Commands and just
| | 02:43 | pull up the Extrude command from there.
| | 02:45 | Now once I do that I can extrude the
edge. Now when you extrude an edge,
| | 02:50 | obviously you are just extruding a
flat face. But you still have all of the
| | 02:55 | same controls. And I can actually go
down here and again create divisions if I
| | 03:00 | want to. Because this actually can
be a real handy thing if you want to
| | 03:06 | create a plane or if let's say, you
have a hole or something like that and you
| | 03:09 | want to bridge that, you can just extrude
the edge over the hole or something like that.
| | 03:13 | Now the third way you can extrude is
you can extrude Vertices. So I am going to
| | 03:16 | right click above this, go to Vertex
and I just pick a random vertex here.
| | 03:20 | And then let's just go ahead and
Extrude. And when you extrude a vertex,
| | 03:28 | notice how what it does is it actually
creates an almost like a point type of
| | 03:32 | object. Now this can be kind of
cool if you want to make like spikes on something.
| | 03:36 | Probably here is a really cool and
simple trick here is just take a sphere,
| | 03:41 | select all the Vertices and extrude them,
and you are going to have a pointy sea urchin
| | 03:47 | type of thing, which is basically
just extruding every individual vertex.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keeping faces together| 00:01 | When you are using Extrude or any
other tool that creates new geometry, you
| | 00:05 | have an option in Maya whether you want
to keep faces together or not. Now this
| | 00:10 | can really affect the way that your
modeling works particularly when you are
| | 00:14 | doing subdivision surface type modeling.
| | 00:17 | We are going to go ahead and build a
hand and I will show you how this works.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and draw out a box.
And I am going to go ahead and shade
| | 00:26 | that. And then I am going to go to my
INPUTS here in my Channels box and I am
| | 00:30 | just going to go ahead and middle click
and drag to set the Width and the Depth
| | 00:36 | to about 4, because what I want is one,
two, three, four fingers, and then a
| | 00:40 | thumb at the bottom of this.
Think of this as the palm of the hand.
| | 00:45 | So let's go ahead and do an Extrude and
create for example the thumb. Before I
| | 00:49 | do that, am actually going to go ahead
and smooth this. So I am going to hit
| | 00:53 | the number 2, so we can see how the
cage affects our subdivision surface here
| | 00:59 | because we are kind of doing
subdivision surface modeling. So when I do an
| | 01:03 | Extrude for the thumb, you can see
how that affects the mesh. Now, I do an
| | 01:11 | Extrude like that and then I want to go
ahead and go over here to Divisions and
| | 01:16 | just add one or two
divisions to create that thumb.
| | 01:19 | Now, for the front of this, the first
instinct is to just go ahead and extrude
| | 01:27 | the faces along the front because I
have got one, two, three, four; I can
| | 01:30 | create four fingers just like I
created one thumb. But, what Maya does is by
| | 01:36 | default actually keeps spaces together
when you extrude them. So let's just go
| | 01:40 | ahead and do that. I am going to hit
my Spacebar here and just go to Recent
| | 01:44 | Commands and just go back
to that Extrude that we did.
| | 01:48 | When I extrude these, what it does is
it extrudes these as a block and it just
| | 01:53 | extends my palm. Essentially, it
extends this box and it doesn't give me
| | 02:00 | individual fingers. Well, that's not
really what I want. So I am going to hit
| | 02:03 | Ctrl+Z and undo that a few times.
What we have in Maya is we have an option
| | 02:11 | here. This option is to keep faces
together. Now, by default, that's checked
| | 02:17 | because typically, when we do an
extrusion, we want to keep those faces
| | 02:22 | together, but in this case, we don't.
So let's go ahead and uncheck that.
| | 02:26 | When we do that, what it does is it
actually makes individual polygons. Well
| | 02:33 | here, let me show you how this works.
We are just going to go ahead and hit
| | 02:35 | Spacebar, go back to Extrude, and now
when I Extrude, it actually extrudes
| | 02:42 | these as individual objects. In fact,
let's go ahead and just take one of these
| | 02:47 | and just move it. You can see that
now what it does is it actually creates
| | 02:52 | individual faces rather than making
them all one block here. If I want to, I
| | 02:58 | can go back to my object, go into
my Extrude Face and just add some
| | 03:04 | subdivisions to create the fingers.
| | 03:06 | So those are the basics of creating a
hand. Now, this keep faces together, it's
| | 03:10 | a toggle. So for example, if I left it
off and I wanted to do some other type
| | 03:16 | of extrusion. In fact, if I want to, I
can Paint select all of these faces and
| | 03:23 | do an Extrude. What it does is it
makes them individual and that's not really
| | 03:30 | what I want for this case. So if I
click this over to Keep Faces Together and
| | 03:37 | then do the Extrude, it extrudes
them all as one block. That's the big
| | 03:44 | difference between that.
| | 03:45 | So just be sure you know that this
option exists and that you have it checked
| | 03:50 | appropriately for the type of operation
you want to do. One of the things that
| | 03:54 | always trips me up is that I check
it off when I am doing one thing and I
| | 03:58 | forget to turn it back on when I do
another thing, and I accidentally create
| | 04:03 | additional polygons because I haven't
kept my faces together. So now that you
| | 04:09 | understand the basics of that
tool, let's go ahead and move on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with edge loops| 00:00 | Now, let's talk about Edge Loops.
Edge Loops is very important concept in
| | 00:05 | polygonal modeling because it really
allows you to control the detail as well
| | 00:09 | as the curvature of a subdivision surface.
| | 00:13 | Now, I am working with two coffee cups
here. Now, let's go ahead and just work
| | 00:17 | with the regular cup here, I am going
to go ahead and move the coffee cup of to
| | 00:20 | the side, we are going to use one
without the handle and just zoom in.
| | 00:23 | Now, if you notice this is
essentially a cylinder that's been extruded to
| | 00:28 | create the cup shape. But the edges
of this object, in fact I am going to
| | 00:33 | right-click here and go into Edge
Mode, you have series of vertical and
| | 00:38 | horizontal edges, it's almost like
latitude and longitude on a globe.
| | 00:45 | If you notice this edge goes all the
way around, so it's called an Edge Loop.
| | 00:49 | By controlling these loops, we can
actually control where the detail is on our
| | 00:54 | model as well as how the model smoothes.
| | 00:56 | Now, we can work with Edge Loops in
Maya simply by using the arrow keys. If I
| | 01:03 | press the right arrow, it selects the
entire loop. So all I have to do is click
| | 01:09 | on one edge, hit the right arrow and
it selects that entire loop. Now, if I
| | 01:14 | want to I can just move that
loop to reposition that detail.
| | 01:19 | If I select the left arrow, I can step
through different types of loops. So I
| | 01:26 | can just go, that one goes up, or if I
press the right arrow once I have a loop
| | 01:30 | selected I can also move
counterclockwise, just step through all those loops.
| | 01:35 | Now, this also works for the vertical
loops. So if I select for example, that
| | 01:38 | edge, hit the right arrow it will
select everything up until the pole of that
| | 01:46 | cylinder and then I can just hit
right or left and go around and select
| | 01:50 | individual loops, this is a
very handy way of selecting things.
| | 01:54 | Now, if you hit the up or down arrow,
let's go ahead and select the horizontal
| | 01:57 | loop and hit the up or down arrow, it
will go ahead and select what's called I
| | 02:01 | believe it's called the ring which is
all the loops parallel to that loop and
| | 02:05 | then again I can hit right -- once I
hit up or down, I can hit up or down to
| | 02:10 | step through all of those as well.
| | 02:13 | And the same works for the vertical
edges. So for example, if I take that one
| | 02:18 | there and I hit the up arrow notice
how it selects that and then up and down
| | 02:22 | will go ahead and step me through all of these.
| | 02:26 | So for example, if I wanted to create
a bulge here I could just scale those
| | 02:30 | edges and bulge that out. So those are
kind of some handy select tools. But the
| | 02:36 | real power of Edge Loops comes in how
it controls smoothing of the object. So I
| | 02:42 | am just going to go ahead and select
this object and I am going to hit either
| | 02:46 | the 2 or the 3 button on the
keyboard to show how that smoothes.
| | 02:50 | Now, let's go ahead and hit the 2
button and notice that smoothing happens.
| | 02:56 | Let's just go down in the bottom here,
the smoothing happens along the edge. So
| | 03:02 | it starts smoothing where the edge
starts and it ends smoothing where the next
| | 03:07 | edge start. So for example, this
corner it's moved between this face and this face.
| | 03:12 | I am going to turn off my Grid here, so
you can see this little bit better. So
| | 03:17 | this face and this face are what
control the smoothing and the size of this
| | 03:21 | face is determined by where this Edge
Loop is. So if I can select one of these
| | 03:27 | edges right-click select Edge, select
one of these edges and then just the hit
| | 03:33 | the right arrow key, I can actually
move this Edge Loop up and down and what
| | 03:38 | that does is it shortens that
corresponding polygon and makes that corner
| | 03:44 | either tighter or rounder.
| | 03:46 | So where the edge exists determines
how that corner is smoothed. Okay, so
| | 03:55 | that's very important for polygonal
modeling, in fact let's just take a look at
| | 03:58 | this in Normal Mode here, so I can
just move this edge up and down but when I
| | 04:03 | actually go to smooth it, moving that
edge makes it either a sharper or a more
| | 04:10 | narrow corner.
| | 04:13 | As you can see the edge ellipse
control where the detail is on the model, as
| | 04:17 | well as how it smoothes. So
let's go ahead and move on from here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting and offseting edge loops| 00:00 | So let's go little bit further with
Edge Loops. We are still playing with that
| | 00:04 | coffee cup file and this time I want
to play with the other, the one with the
| | 00:08 | handle. So I am going to move this
one out of the way and move this one in
| | 00:12 | towards the center here,
let's zoom in so we can see this.
| | 00:14 | Now, we were talking about Edge Loops
and how they control smoothness. So let's
| | 00:18 | go ahead and just select this coffee
cup and hit either 2 or 3 to subdivide
| | 00:24 | that so we can see what that looks like.
Now, one of the things I am noticing
| | 00:27 | with this is that that handle is kind
of blobby; it doesn't really look like a
| | 00:31 | nice handle.
| | 00:32 | Now, in order to get that to smooth
better though, let's take a look at this
| | 00:36 | model. We actually need additional
Edge Loops in order to control that
| | 00:42 | smoothness because I really can't move
this loop here. Let's go ahead and take
| | 00:45 | this edge here. So for example, if I
take that edge and I move it in, I am
| | 00:51 | actually affecting the shape of the
coffee cup. I need to actually add in Edge
| | 00:55 | Loops in order to control that smoothness.
| | 00:59 | We can do that with a number of Edge
Loop tools that are included within Maya
| | 01:04 | and those are Insert and Offset Edge
Loop. So let's go ahead and just do Insert
| | 01:10 | Edge Loop and see how that works. If
we go Insert Edge Loop, what happens is
| | 01:14 | your cursor changes to this little
diamond and all I have to do is click on
| | 01:19 | Edge Loop and I can insert a loop, right there.
| | 01:23 | So now when I go ahead and smooth this,
you can see how that smoothing actually
| | 01:27 | gives it a tighter curve. So you can
see it's tighter here than it is there.
| | 01:31 | If I want to, I can insert another Edge
Loop just again left-click. Now what you
| | 01:36 | are doing is we are left-clicking on
the edge that's going to be perpendicular
| | 01:41 | to my new Edge Loop. In this case, I
am left-clicking on a vertical edge and
| | 01:46 | then I can just move that Edge Loop
wherever I want and notice how it changes
| | 01:49 | the curvature of that.
| | 01:51 | I can do the same for here, I am going
to click on this horizontal one and I
| | 01:55 | could bring one in a little bit more.
By inserting Edge Loops, I can actually
| | 02:00 | insert detail, which then affects
how the object is going to be smoothed.
| | 02:05 | Now, I have an additional tool here
and that's called Offset Edge Loop and
| | 02:11 | that's actually a little bit different
and what it does is it actually selects
| | 02:14 | a horizontal loop and it just creates
an offset on either side of that. So for
| | 02:19 | example, if I select this one, it
creates one or two loops. In fact, let's go
| | 02:23 | ahead and do that to the basic model here.
| | 02:27 | So let's go ahead and go Insert Edge
Loop. I'll insert one here and now when I
| | 02:33 | use the Offset Edge Loop tool, I click
on this one and it just gives me a pair
| | 02:40 | of Edge Loops that bracket that
initial one. So that's really just a way
| | 02:43 | to add more details, so you can
actually control the curvature of this again.
| | 02:48 | And again these control how an object smoothes.
| | 02:52 | Now, you can also just add detail to
create places to model. Let's go head
| | 02:57 | over to this other cup and let's say we
wanted to add in enough detail to make
| | 03:05 | a handle. All I have to do here is
go Insert Edge Loop and I could insert
| | 03:13 | enough for a handle or I can do Offset
Edge Loop, click on the horizontal one and
| | 03:19 | again I am just going to add enough detail.
| | 03:21 | And so that gives me a little bit of
extra detail here, so now I can go off to
| | 03:27 | the faces and Shift-Select those and if
I want to I can Extrude those to start
| | 03:35 | making the handle of a new coffee cup.
| | 03:38 | So as you can see Edge Loops have a
lot of power and some of these Insert and
| | 03:44 | Offset Edge Loop tools can help you to
refine your model in very specific ways,
| | 03:49 | so that you can add detail where you need it.
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| Using the Slide Edge tool| 00:00 | One more tool for manipulating edges
is the Slide Edge tool. Now, what this
| | 00:07 | does is it's a little bit different
than Move. And that the Slide Edge tool
| | 00:11 | actually tries to maintain
the consistency of the model.
| | 00:16 | So, for example, I have this Head model
and if I want to I could actually just
| | 00:22 | select Edge and just move the edge but
when I move the edge I may or may not
| | 00:28 | move it on the surface. If I wanted to,
for example, reposition this detail,
| | 00:34 | it's very hard for me to just move this
without creating for example like this
| | 00:38 | little crease here. So watch, when I
reposition this it's very easy to create
| | 00:43 | creases and to make the surface non continuous.
| | 00:48 | But the Slide Edge tool allows you to
actually slide the edge along the surface
| | 00:54 | and it tries to maintain that
continuity, so it's a different way of moving
| | 00:58 | edges around. So I can select an edge
or multiple edges and slide them, so I
| | 01:04 | just go Edit Mesh > Slide Edge Tool
and just middle click. It says Drag with
| | 01:11 | MMB. MMB means middle mouse button, so
drag with the middle mouse button and
| | 01:15 | then when I slide those notice
how it maintains that continuity.
| | 01:19 | So, notice how it maintains that
continuity and I don't get nearly as much
| | 01:27 | creasing, now obviously the surface
will change a little bit, but it's trying
| | 01:31 | to maintain that curvature, so this
is just another way to manipulate edges
| | 01:38 | within Maya.
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| Cutting faces and splitting polygons| 00:00 | Another way to add detail to an
object is to cut or split the faces of an
| | 00:06 | object. Let me show you how that works.
| | 00:08 | I am just going to draw a simple Cube,
so we can just see how this tool works
| | 00:13 | and I am going to shade it. So in our
Edit Mesh menu we have two options: one
| | 00:18 | is called Cut Faces, the
other one is called Split Polygon.
| | 00:22 | Let me show you how Split Polygon works
first. All you have to do is select the
| | 00:27 | tool and then your cursor changes to
this little delta shape and then all you
| | 00:34 | have to do is just click on an Edge and
it will split the polygon, you can just
| | 00:40 | hit Enter and now I split that polygon
in half, so if I go I actually have two faces here.
| | 00:46 | Again, one thing this can't do is it
can't create what's called the five-sided
| | 00:51 | or you can't create an N-gon, which is
a more than four-sided face, which can
| | 00:57 | induce problems when you start
smoothing the object. But this will split the
| | 01:02 | polygon. So let me show
you how this works again.
| | 01:04 | Just go Edit Mesh > Split Polygon; now
you don't have to split straight across
| | 01:09 | you can certainly split corner to
corner and you can split multiple times, all
| | 01:14 | you have to do again is just click on
these edges and then just hit Enter when
| | 01:19 | you are done. So, for example, I've
created a diamond there before one I can
| | 01:22 | select that Face and I can use that
as a face, so for example, extrude if I need to.
| | 01:28 | Now, the other tool in fact I am just
going to go ahead and select this and
| | 01:35 | delete it and just draw a new box,
so we have a fresh slate here.
| | 01:38 | Now, the other tool I want to show you
is called the Cut Faces tool, now this
| | 01:43 | works kind of the similar way except
it kind of gives you almost like a knife
| | 01:48 | and so all I have to do is click on
this and drag and whatever this is dragged
| | 01:54 | it will cut the faces right along that
line. Now I am in a Perspective View so
| | 01:59 | it's going to cut it from a Perspective
Template. It's almost like I am tossing
| | 02:04 | a wedge through that polygon at the
direction that I am looking at it. So it
| | 02:10 | just cuts it along that edge.
| | 02:13 | So a lot of times when you use this
Cut Polygon tool it's better to do it an
| | 02:17 | Orthographic view-port. So let's go
into for example the top viewport and again
| | 02:23 | use it, so you just go ahead and you
cut polygon and this way I can, for
| | 02:26 | example, cut it, right down the
middle because you can see it snaps to 0
| | 02:32 | degrees there. And when I do that you
can see how it actually cut it, since I
| | 02:37 | cut it from the top, down, cuts that
way. Or if I want to -- in fact let's go
| | 02:43 | ahead and leave this view up, you can
see how I can cut it from this side,
| | 02:46 | you'll see how -- again, I
can cut that from this side.
| | 02:52 | So those are two ways to create
additional detail in your model.
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| Poking and wedging faces| 00:00 | Another two tools for adding detail to
a model are Poke and Wedge Face and let
| | 00:06 | me show you how those work. I am going
to go ahead and create another box and I
| | 00:13 | am going to shade it, by hitting 5, and
I am going to go over here to polyCube
| | 00:18 | and I am going to select all of these,
middle click and drag until I have three
| | 00:24 | subdivisions for Height, Width and Depth.
| | 00:27 | Now, I am just going to go into Face
mode and I can just select any face or any
| | 00:33 | number of faces and let's go ahead
and use Poke Face. It's really very
| | 00:38 | self-explanatory, all I have to do is
just select the Face, go Poke Face and
| | 00:43 | watch what happens. What it does is it
cuts the face diagonally both ways and
| | 00:52 | then adds another vertex, so you can
actually basically create a peak there.
| | 00:57 | Now, if you do this for a triangular
face, go Poke Face again, again it will
| | 01:03 | just bisect those three angles, okay,
so you don't have to do this on a
| | 01:09 | four-sided face. It's really any side
you have, it will go ahead and find the
| | 01:13 | center point of that and then draw a
line to each vertex. So basically it takes
| | 01:18 | each vertex on the face, this case one,
two, three, four, connects them all and
| | 01:24 | gives a center line for three-sided
face. It will go one, two, three and give
| | 01:30 | you the center. So that's Poke Face.
| | 01:34 | Now, the next one is called Wedge Faces,
this is actually a handy little tools
| | 01:37 | and so I am going to go ahead and in
this case I have to select two things, so
| | 01:42 | this is a great use for the multi-
select options. So I am going to right-click
| | 01:47 | over this go Multi-select, select the
Face, Shift+Select and Edge, so I want a
| | 01:53 | Face and an Edge selected.
| | 01:57 | Then I go into Edit Mesh and I go Wedge
Face, and watch what it does. It takes
| | 02:04 | that face and it rotates it around and
creates I consider like the corner of an
| | 02:09 | air-conditioning duct or something like that.
| | 02:12 | But if I want to I can go over into my
Channel Box here and open this up and
| | 02:18 | see that I can actually give it an
angle and a number of divisions. And I can
| | 02:23 | also do that in my Attribute Editor.
So I would go into polyWedgeFace. I can
| | 02:29 | give it an Angle and a number of
Divisions as well. So this is the angle. So
| | 02:36 | you can actually make this, 360
degrees, whatever you want and give it any
| | 02:41 | number of divisions.
| | 02:42 | So those are pretty simple, as you can
see there you have a lot of interesting
| | 02:47 | uses if you need to add some very
specific types of geometry. So let's go ahead
| | 02:51 | and move on just some more tools.
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| Using the Polygon Bevel tool| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the polyBevel
tool and what Bevel does is pretty much
| | 00:06 | as described. It bevels edges. In other
words, it whittles them away. So let's
| | 00:10 | go in Edit Mesh and we have a tool
here called Bevel. But we have to bevel
| | 00:15 | either an edge, a face, or a vertex.
| | 00:18 | Let's start with the face. I am
actually going to click off to this,
| | 00:21 | right-click over the cube and select
that top face. Let's go Edit Mesh > Bevel
| | 00:27 | and just do a default bevel and what
it does is it basically cuts that corner
| | 00:33 | by 45 degrees, if it's a 90 degree
corner. It cuts the corner in half, so if it
| | 00:37 | was a 30 degree angle, it will
cut at 15, so on and so forth.
| | 00:42 | But I can go back too. If I go to
Object Mode, select my object I can actually
| | 00:45 | go back to my Bevel Control and you
can see I have all sorts of options here.
| | 00:50 | One is the Offset. How much is it beveled?
| | 00:55 | The other one is the Roundness of
this. Well, that doesn't make any sense
| | 00:59 | unless I have more segments. So I can
just take the Number of Segments, and
| | 01:03 | again I am middle-clicking and right
and left dragging and I am going to add
| | 01:05 | more segments.
| | 01:07 | Then if I want, I can take the
roundness up or down. And then you can also have
| | 01:12 | some additional options here. Now
these options are also available in the
| | 01:17 | Attribute Editor, and they are
also available in the Bevel Options.
| | 01:21 | You can certainly give it the Number
of Segments right there and also the
| | 01:25 | Width. Now I like doing this afterwards;
that's kind of the way that I work. I
| | 01:29 | like working with it in the Channel box
because I have more control over how it looks.
| | 01:34 | Now you don't have to bevel just faces,
you can also bevel edges or vertices.
| | 01:39 | So let's go ahead and take some edges.
Let's go ahead and take this edge here
| | 01:43 | and bevel that, Edit Mesh > Bevel. Now
what it does is it bevels that edge and
| | 01:50 | again, I can give it an Offset. I can
give it the Number of Segments and give
| | 01:56 | it some Roundness.
| | 01:56 | Let's go ahead and undo that, turn-off
the grid here, and I am just going to
| | 02:01 | ahead and go to the bottom here, Edit
Mesh > Bevel that bottom. And if you do
| | 02:10 | that, select all of those edges, you
get basically the same effect as if you
| | 02:14 | had beveled the face surrounding
those edges. So it's pretty equivalent for
| | 02:19 | edges and faces.
| | 02:21 | Therefore if I want, I can also bevel
vertices. In order to do that, let's just
| | 02:27 | go ahead and I am just going to create
a new box and I am going to give it a
| | 02:32 | little bit of sub-divisions.
| | 02:34 | So let's go ahead and select the Vertex
here on the corner and if I bevel that
| | 02:43 | and see what happens. It's not nearly
as interesting when you bevel vertices
| | 02:48 | but you can see. You can probably use
that for some sort of modeling thing but
| | 02:52 | they actually adds a lot of detail,
a lot of triangles there. So you can
| | 02:55 | actually add more segments. So you can
see how beveling vertices works as well.
| | 03:00 | Typically I do faces and edges, but
you can certainly do vertices as well.
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| Using the Polygon Chamfer tool| 00:00 | Let's take a look at the Chamfer
Vertex tool. It's really very simple in the
| | 00:04 | way that it works. Let's go ahead and
just create a simple box and shade it.
| | 00:09 | And I am going to go ahead and
just add some Subdivisions here.
| | 00:12 | Now Chamfer is a lot like the Bevel
tool, but it's for vertices. So let's
| | 00:19 | select a vertex, right-click over here
with out Marking menu, and select the
| | 00:23 | Vertex, and just go Edit > Chamfer
Vertex, and it basically just cuts the
| | 00:29 | corner there. If I want to I can also
Chamfer Vertex on a face, and notice how
| | 00:35 | it works a little bit differently.
| | 00:37 | Now what Chamfer does is it takes
every edge that comes into that vertex, and
| | 00:43 | it just extends new edges out along
there. So you can see how these works for
| | 00:49 | this becomes that, and this becomes that.
| | 00:53 | Now if I right-click here, go in the
Object Mode, you can see each of these
| | 00:57 | chamfers also has a width value and
also a number of divisions if you want it.
| | 01:04 | So that's just the basics of
that tool. It's a very simple tool.
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| Using the Polygon Bridge tool| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the Bridge
tool. What this does is it allows you to
| | 00:06 | bridge or create a connection between
polygons or edges in a polygonal model.
| | 00:14 | So let me show you with this Coffee Cup
file, and let's start off with the cup
| | 00:19 | with the handle and let's just
go ahead and rebuild that handle.
| | 00:23 | So what I can do is just go into Face
Mode, select the faces of this vertical
| | 00:28 | part of the handle. And hit Delete.
And then, I can right-click over this and
| | 00:33 | go to Edge and select the Open Edges.
Now when I deleted those faces, notice
| | 00:39 | how I have an open hole
here, and an open hole here.
| | 00:43 | I can use Bridge to connect those
holes but what I have to do is select the
| | 00:48 | edges bounding that opening first. So
these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 edges here, and I
| | 00:55 | also need to select 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
edges here. Now Bridge is pretty smart,
| | 01:04 | you don't have to select these edges in
any specific order. All you have to is
| | 01:08 | make sure they are
selected and then just hit Bridge.
| | 01:10 | And when you do that, it actually
connects the two. It creates a bridge between
| | 01:15 | those two open edges. If I right-click
and go in the Object Mode, you can see I
| | 01:19 | have got polyBridgeEdge and I can go
ahead and change the number of Divisions
| | 01:25 | or whatever.
| | 01:26 | Now Bridge also works from polygon to
polygon. So you don't need an open edge,
| | 01:30 | you can just select a polygon face. So
let's go ahead and put a handle on this
| | 01:35 | coffee cup. In fact let's just go
ahead and rework this a little bit.
| | 01:39 | I am going to go ahead, and move this
edge loop up just a little bit. Select
| | 01:42 | this edge loop, hit the right arrow
and move it down, so we have a little bit
| | 01:46 | more of a space, which make a handle.
And then, I am just going to right-click
| | 01:50 | here, and go select this face and this
face, and then we are going to extrude
| | 01:56 | them. And then, maybe just
extrude them one more time.
| | 02:01 | Now let's go ahead and make this into a
handle. All I have to do is select this
| | 02:08 | face and this face under here, and then,
once I do that, I can again do Bridge.
| | 02:18 | And that just bridges those automatically.
So I don't even need the open edges there.
| | 02:22 | So what's really cool is that you can
bridge any two or any group of faces to
| | 02:29 | any group of faces. So for example, I
can just select this one here, and this
| | 02:33 | one here, and just go Edit Mesh >
Bridge, and I can create a Bridge between
| | 02:37 | those two faces as well. Of course,
that doesn't make much sense, but you can
| | 02:41 | certainly do it if you want.
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| Working with polygon booleans| 00:00 | Another popular way of modeling is
using Booleans. Now Maya does support
| | 00:05 | Booleans and let me show you how that works.
| | 00:08 | What Booleans can do is they can use
one object to cut holes or append to
| | 00:14 | another. So I am going to go ahead and
create a simple box here, and I am going
| | 00:18 | to create a cylinder. And now, I am going
to use this cylinder to cut a hole in this box.
| | 00:30 | So, I am going to place the cylinder.
In fact, let's go ahead and go into X-Ray
| | 00:34 | Mode so I can see how this works. So
I am going to go ahead and take that
| | 00:38 | cylinder. I am going to go
Wireframe on Shaded as well.
| | 00:43 | So we can really see how this works.
So I am going to take this cylinder and
| | 00:47 | position itself as over the box like
this. Then, I am going to select the box
| | 00:53 | and Shift-Select the cylinder.
| | 00:55 | Now here is the little hand, the
last thing selected in Maya is always
| | 00:59 | highlighted in green. So in this case
is where you have to select multiple
| | 01:03 | things, always know that the last
thing that you have selected is green.
| | 01:08 | Okay, and once we have done that, we
can go Mesh > Booleans, and we have three
| | 01:14 | options here. In fact I am going to
tear this off. Union, Difference, and
| | 01:20 | Intersection; so, let's
just go through all of these.
| | 01:23 | If you do Union, I just go ahead and
turn-off X-Ray here. What it does is it
| | 01:29 | creates them both as one object. It
basically fuses them together as one
| | 01:34 | object. If I undo that, so now I have
got this separate again. So that was Union.
| | 01:41 | And now we can do Difference. So we
select the box, Shift-Select the cylinder
| | 01:46 | again and go Difference, and what
that does is it cuts a hole in the box.
| | 01:53 | Okay, now I am going to go ahead
undo that again, and let's just do
| | 01:59 | Intersection. What Intersection
does is it only leaves those parts that
| | 02:05 | intersect. So it's essentially just the
top of that cylinder because that's the
| | 02:12 | only part of those that really overlap.
| | 02:15 | In fact if I show that in X-Ray you can
see this would be Intersection. And in
| | 02:20 | difference the last one cuts a hole in
the first one. And Union, both of them
| | 02:26 | are combined. So those are some
of the basics of Booleans in Maya.
| | 02:31 | Now one thing, I do want to advise
you about is that Booleans as a form of
| | 02:37 | modeling really only works
for objects that are static.
| | 02:41 | If you are going to animate the shape
of an object, let's say it's a character
| | 02:46 | or something like that, you really
don't want to be using Booleans because what
| | 02:49 | Booleans does is it can create rough
edges that really don't smooth well.
| | 02:54 | In fact let me just go ahead and do a
Difference here and create that, and then
| | 02:59 | just go ahead and shade this. And if I
smooth this, you can see how it smoothes
| | 03:05 | really weird. And that's because this
isn't giving you a clean edge on which to smooth.
| | 03:12 | So Booleans are really great for
mechanical objects, objects that really are
| | 03:17 | going to deform the smooth or change
shape. So just be aware of that if you
| | 03:22 | decide to use Booleans.
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| Combining objects| 00:00 | Now we wan to a little bit about
combining and separating objects. Now
| | 00:05 | typically, when we have been
working with objects, we work with them
| | 00:09 | separately. So for example, I have
this head model up here. This is actually
| | 00:13 | Head.mb and if we look at it in our
Outliner, you will see it's actually a
| | 00:19 | bunch of different objects. I have
the head itself, which I can move, and I
| | 00:23 | also have the eyes and the gums and the
teeth and they are all separate objects.
| | 00:29 | Now this may be good if I want to
animate it this way. But a lot of times you
| | 00:34 | want everything to be a part of the
same model. Lets say you model the teeth
| | 00:38 | and the gums, you know separately and
then you want to bring it all together as
| | 00:42 | one mesh, you can do that by using a
feature called Combine and let me show you
| | 00:47 | how that works.
| | 00:48 | All you have to do is select the
objects and these all have to be polygonal
| | 00:52 | objects that you want to combine and
then just go Mesh > Combine. Now watch
| | 00:58 | what happens. Is when I do this, if
you look at it in the outliner, all of
| | 01:03 | these go blank and all the geometry
goes into this one note called Poly Surface.
| | 01:09 | Basically what happens is they all
become part of the same polygonal object.
| | 01:16 | And even though they are not
physically connected, they are still part of the
| | 01:19 | same object. So for example, if I
wanted to, I could select the faces of this
| | 01:24 | eyeball and if I wanted to, I could
grow that selection using -- in fact, let's
| | 01:28 | show this in Wire Frame here.
| | 01:31 | I could just grow that selection using
the greater than sign and just go ahead
| | 01:36 | and grow that. Now let's go ahead and
shade this. Once I have that selected,
| | 01:40 | you could see it's actually still a
separate object. But its just separate
| | 01:44 | faces within this surface.
| | 01:47 | Therefore, if I want to, I could
actually separate out these objects one at a
| | 01:51 | time or I could separate the whole
thing all together. If I want to separate
| | 01:56 | them out one at a time, all I have to
do is just pick a face on any of these
| | 02:00 | objects and go separate. And when I
do that, it actually creates a separate
| | 02:07 | surface for, in this case, the eyeball.
So now the eyeball again is just a
| | 02:12 | separate object.
| | 02:13 | If I want to separate the whole thing,
all I have to do is just select either
| | 02:18 | the model or every face within the
model and just go Mesh > Separate and then
| | 02:27 | that just puts it back to the way it
was. Obviously the pivots change and the
| | 02:31 | names of the objects change. But
it's pretty much all separate again.
| | 02:36 | So that's a way of combining and
separating objects within polygonal surfaces.
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| Merging vertices and edges| 00:00 |
Now let's look at the Merge tools
within Maya. I have a file here that's open.
| | 00:05 |
It's called hand.mb. And what it is
it's a hand and the wrist that it's
| | 00:12 |
attached to. So this is a subset of a
character modeling issue that you will
| | 00:17 |
probably encounter, which is taking
different body parts and connecting them
| | 00:21 |
together. So often times you will the
hand separately from the character and
| | 00:25 |
you will want to attach it or you will
steal the hand off of another character,
| | 00:29 |
so you don't have to model it twice.
But there still exists a problem of
| | 00:33 |
connecting them together. And we
do that by using the Merge tools.
| | 00:37 |
Now in order for Merge to work, these
two objects have to be part of the same
| | 00:42 |
polygonal object. So we connect them
together by using Combine. So all I have
| | 00:47 |
to do is Shift-Select or rubber band
select both of them and then just go
| | 00:51 |
Mesh > Combine. Now they are
part of the same mesh. Now in order to
| | 00:57 |
connect these two though, we still
have a hole. I mean need to connect this
| | 01:01 |
side to that side seamlessly.
So it all connects together.
| | 01:05 |
Now we can do this using one of three
different tools. Under Edit Mesh, we have
| | 01:11 |
Merge, Merge Vertex and Merge Edge. Now,
I am going to go through Merge first.
| | 01:19 |
Now Merge typically works on vertices.
So let's go ahead and right click and go
| | 01:23 |
into Vertex Editing mode. And what we
have to do is we have to get this vertex
| | 01:29 |
close to that vertex. It's best if we
get them exactly coincident, which means
| | 01:34 |
one on top of the other so what I can
do is I can just hit my Move tool and
| | 01:41 |
move that in and hope for the best.
| | 01:44 |
But probably the better way to do this
is to use snapping. So what I can do is
| | 01:48 |
go up here and click on Snap to Vertex,
which is this little magnet with a dot
| | 01:54 |
underneath it. And then I can just
snap these vertices together. So you can
| | 01:58 |
just snap, snap. I am not going to do
all of these because I am going to show
| | 02:02 |
you some of these other tools here. So
I am going to snap, snap, snap. I will
| | 02:05 |
snap three of these together. So now,
the vertex on this side is exactly on top
| | 02:11 |
of the vertex on the hand side.
| | 02:14 |
Now I am going to turn off snapping
and then just select each of these three
| | 02:21 |
points, which are basically two
vertices on each side. And then I am going to
| | 02:27 |
go Edit Mesh > Merge. But let me go
ahead and show you the options here. So I
| | 02:31 |
am going to go over here and just
bring up the options. And there is actually
| | 02:36 |
only one option here and that's
Threshold. And that means that if the two
| | 02:40 |
vertices are within 0.01 in terms of
distance together, then they will merge
| | 02:49 |
together and since we snapped these, they're
actually at zero. So let's just go ahead
| | 02:54 |
and go Merge.
| | 02:55 |
Now when I merge those together, what
happens is they are stuck together. Now,
| | 03:02 |
two become one and I have that part
of the surface merged together. Now,
| | 03:08 |
there are some other tools within the
Maya that you can use to merge as well.
| | 03:11 |
And these are probably little bit easier to use.
| | 03:14 |
So I am going to back intro Vertex
mode and we are going to use the Merge
| | 03:18 |
Vertex tool right here. All you have
to do is just click on that tool and
| | 03:23 |
notice how your cursor changes
and also when I move over Vertex,
| | 03:27 |
it highlights in red. So all I have to
do is left click on that and drag and I
| | 03:33 |
drag it to the vertex I want to merge
it to. And then Snap. Bingo! It's merged.
| | 03:39 |
So this a lot easier than
snapping and merging. There we go.
| | 03:44 |
Now before I completely close this up,
let me show you the other tool. So I go
| | 03:50 |
ahead and go Edit Mesh > Merge Edge
Tool, one, two, Enter. And again let's go
| | 03:58 |
ahead and just stitch up the rest of
this guy here. So just go Merge Edge Tool
| | 04:02 |
and there he is. So now this is
completely stitched up and I have the
| | 04:10 |
completely together model. And now
when I go to smooth it, it all smoothes perfectly.
| | 04:20 |
Okay, so those are some of the methods
for combining open edges and vertices
| | 04:25 |
together within Maya.
| | 04:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Crease tool| 00:00 | For those of you who are doing
subdivision surface modeling, the Crease tool
| | 00:05 | can actually be of real help in adding
sharp edges to a model. Now I have this
| | 00:14 | particular character up and when we
smooth him, let's go ahead and hit the
| | 00:19 | three button. I will select this head
and hit three. You will notice that it
| | 00:23 | smoothes pretty much everything. Now
if you look for example at his lip, you
| | 00:28 | know we have got a very smooth lip.
| | 00:30 | Now sometimes you want a little bit
more of a crease. You don't want things to
| | 00:35 | smooth out. Now we can affect that by
using the Crease tool. Now how we do that
| | 00:41 | is we select the Edge. In fact, we
can just go ahead and go to Edge mode.
| | 00:45 | Select that Edge. And I am going to
hit the right arrow to select the whole
| | 00:48 | loop of edges. And then we go into
Edit Mesh > Crease Tool. And all I have to
| | 00:56 | do now is my cursor changes and it says
drag middle mouse button to Edit Crease value.
| | 01:03 | So I middle mouse click and notice I
can decrease it or increase, but notice
| | 01:08 | how that edge on the lips get shaper.
So you can actually sharpen an edge so
| | 01:16 | that rounding that automatically gets
put in when we do subdivision surfaces
| | 01:21 | can get taken away. So you
can actually make sharp edges.
| | 01:25 | Now this is good in character modeling.
It's also good in a lot of other areas.
| | 01:28 | So for example here where his nostrils
hit his cheek, a lot of times there is a
| | 01:34 | crease. And this is getting a little
too smoothed out on this particular model.
| | 01:38 | So again I can select those edges,
middle mouse click and crease them up a little
| | 01:44 | bit. So you have a little bit more
realism without having to add additional
| | 01:47 | detail to get that crease.
| | 01:50 | Now again, this is when this renders.
Let's go ahead and change this to Mental
| | 01:55 | Rays. So when this renders in Mental Ray,
you can see how we get a really nice
| | 01:59 | crease and a little bit of sharpness to
define that lip. So those are some of the
| | 02:04 | basics of the Crease tool in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with object history| 00:00 |
The last thing I want to talk about is
object history. Now this is important
| | 00:04 |
for all areas of Maya because what
Maya does is it creates a history of
| | 00:09 |
everything you do and attaches it to
the object. Now this is really important
| | 00:14 |
for modeling, but it affects pretty
much every area of Maya. So let's go ahead
| | 00:19 |
and create some history. So we can play with it.
| | 00:22 |
So I am just going to go ahead and
create a sphere and let's just do some
| | 00:25 |
modeling tasks here. I am going to go
into Face mode. I am going to shade this.
| | 00:30 |
Go into Face mode. Select the top part
of this sphere. Let's just do an extrude
| | 00:43 |
and maybe a scale, maybe move that down
a little bit. OK. Then may be I can add
| | 00:54 |
in some edge loops or something like
that. Go, Insert Edge Loops. Then notice
| | 01:04 |
as I am doing this, it's creating all
of this history. So I started with a
| | 01:08 |
sphere. I extruded it. Then I moved
some stuff around and I tweaked it. And
| | 01:14 |
then I added one, two edge loops.
| | 01:17 |
Now all of this history is held on to
this model. So if I go into my HB editor,
| | 01:25 |
I can see all of these nodes and all
of the things that I have done to create
| | 01:30 |
this object. So I can go into my
original sphere, change the radius. I can go
| | 01:36 |
into my extrude. Change the number
divisions. Now notice how when I am changing
| | 01:41 |
the number of divisions, it affects
what goes above that. Because what I have
| | 01:46 |
done is I have tweaked and I have
added edge loops. So what happens is that
| | 01:49 |
when I add some divisions, the edge
loops get affected. So you have to be a
| | 01:54 |
little careful about how
you work with this history.
| | 01:59 |
But I also have a list of everything
that's done to the object. Now this
| | 02:04 |
history also shows up in our hypergraph.
Now we will play with this a little
| | 02:09 |
bit. We go into Hypergraph Connections
and we could see everything that we have
| | 02:13 |
done to this object. These show up as
node. In fact, if I zoom in here, you
| | 02:17 |
would see I have got a sphere. I
extruded the sphere. I tweaked the sphere. I
| | 02:21 |
did insert edge loops. And then
at the very end, we shaded. OK.
| | 02:28 |
Now if you do a lot of modeling, you
are going to get a ton of history. And
| | 02:34 |
sometimes it's not a good thing because
if you have a lot history, what happens
| | 02:38 |
is that if you keep this history around,
Maya recalculates it every time you
| | 02:45 |
load the object. So if I click on this
object this says, okay, I am going to
| | 02:48 |
take a sphere. I am going to extrude it.
I am going to tweak it. I am going to
| | 02:51 |
add to edge loops. And every time you
select that object, it goes through and
| | 02:55 |
it essentially rebuilds it. Sometimes
it gets a little much. And if you have a
| | 03:00 |
lot of history, it really slows down the system.
| | 03:04 |
So what you can do is under Edit, you
can delete the history. Now there is a
| | 03:09 |
couple of ways of deleting history.
One is just to delete the history on the
| | 03:14 |
object. So if I do that, all the
history goes away and now it's just a mesh
| | 03:20 |
that's a shape. I am going to go ahead
and undo that by hitting Ctrl+Z. If we
| | 03:24 |
want, we can also delete what's called
Non Deformer History. Now this is really
| | 03:29 |
applicable to character animation
because a lot of times with character
| | 03:33 |
animation, you have Deformers applied.
So for example, the skin of a character
| | 03:37 |
will deform. You can delete everything,
but those things that are Deformers.
| | 03:41 |
Now if you have a really big scene, we
can also do delete all by type and we
| | 03:46 |
can delete all the history on every
object in the scene if you want or all the
| | 03:51 |
Non Deformer. Or you can also delete
all sorts of other stuff. You can delete
| | 03:56 |
all lights in the scene,
all the cameras and so on.
| | 04:00 |
That's some of the basics of history.
So I guess the big point here is to just
| | 04:04 |
keep track of this. If it starts
getting really long, then go ahead and delete
| | 04:09 |
it. And one of the things I do is that
once I finalized a model and I know it's
| | 04:13 |
complete, I will go ahead and save out
a version with history and then I will
| | 04:17 |
go ahead and delete history and save a
new version. So I kind of have a clean
| | 04:21 |
copy for when go ahead in
text editor or do something else.
| | 04:25 |
So those are the basics of history and
let's go ahead and move on from here.
| | 04:31 |
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|
|
4. NURBS ModelingIntroducing NURBS modeling| 00:00 | The second type of modeling in Maya is
called NURBS. And NURBS stands for Non
| | 00:05 | Uniform Rational B-Spline. And that's
just a fancy word for patches. And what a
| | 00:12 | patch is, it's just a curved surface.
And the file I have opened is called
| | 00:17 | DecoCar00. And this car is built
pretty much entirely out of NURB surfaces or
| | 00:23 | NURBS patches. Now let me
show you how these work.
| | 00:26 | A NURBS patch is essentially a whole
flexible object. It's almost like a
| | 00:32 | subdivision surface. But it's actually
composed of four sided patches, which
| | 00:37 | are bounded by curves. And so by
modeling with NURBS patches, you van create
| | 00:44 | very curved and very smooth surfaces.
| | 00:48 | Now NURBS originally came from the
automobile industry and they use it lot for
| | 00:52 | designing car bodies and stuff like that.
And that filtered into Maya through a
| | 00:58 | company called Alias, which had created
a lot of the original technology used in Maya.
| | 01:03 | So all of the NURBS tools are located
under the Surfaces Directory and NURBS
| | 01:09 | are basically composed of curves. So
we have an Edit Curves tool here and we
| | 01:14 | also have Surfaces, which allow you
to create surfaces. And then we have
| | 01:19 | another menu set here, called Edit
NURBS, which allows you to actually edit
| | 01:24 | NURB surfaces as well.
| | 01:26 | So we are going to go ahead and be
going to through all of these tools in the
| | 01:30 | next two chapters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| NURBS primitives| 00:00 | One latest start modeling in NURBS is
to just use NURBS Primitives. Now we have
| | 00:05 | a number of primitives here under
the Surfaces tab or under Create NURBS
| | 00:10 | Primitives. In fact, let me go ahead
and tear that off. So a lot of these are
| | 00:15 | contained on this shelf as well. So,
NURBS primitives pretty much cover this
| | 00:20 | standard range of primitives that we
would normally expect. One is the sphere.
| | 00:26 | Now notice how the NURBS sphere is a
little bit different than the polygonal
| | 00:31 | sphere. In fact, let's go ahead and
draw a polygonal sphere right next to it so
| | 00:35 | we can kind of see the difference.
And the big difference is that the NURBS
| | 00:41 | surface is smoother with less detail.
In a polygonal surface, each face has an
| | 00:48 | edge and the edge is a straight line.
So you can see that's a straight line
| | 00:53 | from there to there and from there to there.
| | 00:55 | Now with a NURB surface, the edges of
the patches are curves. They are not
| | 01:02 | straight lines. So we have an
infinitely curved surface. So we can actually
| | 01:07 | calculate the curvature wherever we are
and surfaces are now a perfectly smooth
| | 01:12 | result, which one of the really
good benefits of NURBS objects.
| | 01:18 | Now with a NURBS sphere, we have a
number of different parameters. Now these
| | 01:24 | are actually different than what you
would have for polygonal sphere. Of
| | 01:27 | course, we still have the radius, which
is the same for both. But with a NURBS
| | 01:32 | sphere, we also have sections, which
are your Radial subdivisions, and we also
| | 01:38 | have spans, which are
your Vertical subdivisions.
| | 01:43 | But in addition to that, we have what's
called a Sweep. We have a Start and an
| | 01:48 | End Sweep. In NURBS, let's take a look
at that from this side here. And notice
| | 01:54 | how one of these latitude lines is
actually a double line and that's where the
| | 02:00 | NURBS surface seems together. And the
thing with NURBS surfaces is that each of
| | 02:06 | these primitives is
composed of rectangular patches.
| | 02:12 | So one sphere is essentially one
rectangular patch that's looped around and
| | 02:17 | kind of bunched up at the poles,
almost like if you took a big piece of
| | 02:21 | wrapping paper and wanted to wrap a
basketball, you would wrap it around and
| | 02:25 | then squint up the poles. That's
basically what happens with a NURBS surface.
| | 02:31 | So this is all one surface that's
just been deformed into a sphere.
| | 02:36 | Now that's the same for lot of these
other Primitives. So let's go ahead and
| | 02:41 | look at some at some of these other
ones. I am going to skip over to Cube for
| | 02:43 | right now. Let's just go to the Cylinder.
The Cylinder -- in fact, let's take a
| | 02:50 | look at these parameters here. Again,
we have Radius. We have a Start and an
| | 02:55 | End Sweep and again look. This is a
patch. Now the thing about NURBS surfaces
| | 03:01 | is that every NURBS patch is a four
sided surface. So for something like a
| | 03:07 | cylinder, it's actually made up of
three separate NURBS patches. So let's go to
| | 03:14 | the outliner and take a look at this.
| | 03:16 | We have our NURBS cylinder. But
that's actually a group that contains the
| | 03:20 | cylinder, the bottom cap and the top
cap. Now each of these caps are actually
| | 03:26 | separate patches. So if I do this, I
get an Exploded view of what comprises
| | 03:33 | this cylinder. I have the cylinder
itself and then both of the caps. And you
| | 03:38 | can see how the cylinder is actually
composed of a rectangular patch that's
| | 03:43 | just wrapped around. It's almost like
the label on a Sweep Camera or something like that.
| | 03:48 | So this is one thing you have to be
aware of when you are dealing with NURBS
| | 03:52 | surfaces, especially with primitives,
is that when you create these primitives,
| | 03:56 | your action can be creating multiple
pieces PF geometry. So if I don't want for
| | 04:01 | example, the caps on the cylinder, I
can just select them and delete them and
| | 04:05 | then all I have is the original cylinder.
| | 04:10 | So now that brings me back to the one
that we skipped over which the cube.
| | 04:15 | Let's go ahead and create a NURBS cube.
And when I do that and you realize very
| | 04:21 | quickly, in fact let's take a look at
this. This is actually a group containing
| | 04:25 | six separate patches. So in a
Polygonal cube it's all pretty much stuck
| | 04:31 | together. But a NURBS cube is just
four separate flat patches that are just
| | 04:38 | grouped together. In fact, we can
add detail to each of these patches
| | 04:43 | separately if we want or we
can add them to the whole group.
| | 04:47 | So let's take a look at some of the
rest of these primitives here. We have a
| | 04:53 | cone and again a cone is very similar
to a cylinder, except it doesn't have a
| | 04:57 | top cap. So it's a cylinder that's kind
of bunched up at the top with a bottom
| | 05:02 | cap here, right there. So you can
select those and delete them. And then we
| | 05:08 | have the plane.
| | 05:09 | Now actually, the plane is the most
pure in terms of what are NURBS surfaces,
| | 05:13 | because a plane is a basic NURBS patch.
In fact, I can give you a little bit of
| | 05:18 | detail here. And so this is essentially
what all NURB surfaces are composed of.
| | 05:23 | It's just a four sided patch.
| | 05:27 | And the last surface is called a Torus.
Now a Torus is composed of one patch.
| | 05:33 | In fact, let's go ahead and select that.
We can actually unwrap this. Now we
| | 05:36 | have a sweep that goes radially. So
you can see that this is actually a
| | 05:40 | cylinder that's been spun around into
a doughnut. And if we want to, we can
| | 05:46 | also un-sweep it in the minor direction.
So you can see that this is actually
| | 05:51 | one, two, three, four sided patch that
swopped into a cylinder and then swopped
| | 05:57 | again into a doughnut. And then again,
we can certainly change the height ratio
| | 06:03 | and parameters of that doughnut.
| | 06:06 | Now, there are two additional things in
this NURBS Primitives menu. And one is
| | 06:12 | called the circle. That's pretty simple.
Now that's actually just been actual
| | 06:16 | curve. It's not a surface. And then we
also have a square. Now a square is very
| | 06:22 | similar to how it creates a cube. We
actually have one, two, three, four
| | 06:28 | straight lines that create the square.
So that's kind of almost like a bogus
| | 06:33 | square because it's really just four
lines. It's not actually all connected. So
| | 06:38 | you got to be aware of
that when you create those.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the NURBS curve tools| 00:00 | Now another way to create NURBS
surfaces is by starting with Curves. So Maya
| | 00:06 | has a number of curved tools that allow
you to draw and create curves that you
| | 00:12 | can later use to construct surfaces.
So let's go over some of these Curve
| | 00:16 | tools. We have under the create menu,
a couple of them. CV Curve, EP Curve,
| | 00:23 | pencil Curve, Arcs and then Text. We
also have a Curve Shelf, which has a lot
| | 00:31 | of these tools. Now we have already
seen the Circle tool, which basically just
| | 00:36 | draws a circle. And we have
seen the Square tool as well.
| | 00:42 | Now probably the most common tool for
creating NURBS curve is called the CV
| | 00:49 | Curve tool. This is probably the
most popular. Now with NURBS Curves, I
| | 00:53 | typically like to draw them in an
Orthographic viewport like a front or a Side
| | 00:59 | viewport. So let's go ahead over to a
Front viewport here. And the reason we
| | 01:03 | draw curves in an Orthographic
viewport is because generally you want to draw
| | 01:08 | them along a flat plane.
| | 01:10 | So we can go create CV Curve tool and
that brings up this little cross hair at
| | 01:19 | cursor. And then all we have to do is
left click to lay down our curve. So if I
| | 01:25 | left click, it lays down what's called
a CV or a Control Vertex. And notice how
| | 01:31 | the first vertex is a Square. And then
we can lay down a second vertex, which
| | 01:38 | is a U. Now this gives us the direction
of the curve. But we are not seeing the
| | 01:43 | curve yet. All we are seeing are the
points. In fact if I lay down a third
| | 01:48 | point, I still don't see the curve.
| | 01:50 | For a NURBS curve to be visible, in
fact for a NURBS curve to even be defined,
| | 01:55 | you will need at least four CVs. So
when I lay down my fourth CV, you will see
| | 02:01 | the curve. And then I can continue to
draw. So you need a minimum of four CVs
| | 02:07 | to create a curve. And then once I have
laid down my curve, all I have to do is
| | 02:12 | hit enter and that ends my mode and
here I have my CV Curve. So let's go ahead
| | 02:18 | and do that one more time. CV Curve
tool, one, two, three, four, and then you
| | 02:26 | can continue to draw.
| | 02:29 | Now there is another way of creating
a curve. And that's using the EP Curve
| | 02:34 | tool. Now let's show you how that works.
Select that tool and again you get the
| | 02:42 | cross haired cursor. Select your first
one, second one, and by the time you hit
| | 02:48 | your third one, you will start to see
the curve. But it actually draws that
| | 02:51 | curve between the first two points
automatically. So you can just draw.
| | 02:55 | Now notice how the curve goes
through the points. This is actually very
| | 03:01 | different from the CV curve tool. So
this actually draws the curve through the
| | 03:06 | control points. When you do the CV
curve tool, the curve is always off of the
| | 03:12 | points. Notice how the points always
lie outside of the curve. So with the EP
| | 03:18 | Curve tool, it's just an input method.
They both create this exact same type of
| | 03:25 | curve once you go to edit it.
| | 03:27 | Now there are additional tools here. We
have the Pencil Curve tool. And this is
| | 03:32 | just a free hand drawing tool. And then,
if you want to, you can go back and
| | 03:39 | edit this. Now the one thing about this
type of curve is that it creates a lot
| | 03:44 | of data. So this is not a really curve
that you can edit all that easily. And
| | 03:50 | typically, you want to use the other
types of curves because you can actually
| | 03:53 | define them more so simply and not
have to have so many points to edit. But
| | 03:58 | that's there.
| | 03:59 | And then we also have what are called
Arc tools. So we have a three point and a
| | 04:03 | two point Circular Arc. Let's go
ahead and start with the two point arc. So
| | 04:08 | basically, we lay down one, two points.
And then all you have to do is, you can
| | 04:15 | go up to a semicircle with this and
then you go Angle and Radius as well. And
| | 04:22 | then just hit enter and that defines
that curve. And then we also have what's
| | 04:27 | called the Three Point Circular Arc.
So you go one, two, and then the third
| | 04:34 | point. So this is for the curves
that are more than 180 degrees.
| | 04:40 | So those are the basics of
creating curves within Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating text curves| 00:00 | Another way to create curves is by
creating text. Now text actually can create
| | 00:06 | than just a curve. Let's go ahead and
do create text and see how this works. So
| | 00:12 | when I create text, it just
brings up some rough text.
| | 00:16 | Now if I want to actually input the
text, I have to go over here to the Tool
| | 00:22 | Options box here and click on that and
that gives me the Text that I want to
| | 00:28 | type in. I can also select the Font
right here, Bold, Italic, whatever, Font
| | 00:40 | Size. Then, I can also output this as
curves, which is one way to create a
| | 00:47 | curve. You can also output this as
Polygonal Objects. You can also output it as
| | 00:52 | a Polygonal Object with a Bevel, or as
what's called a Trimmed Surface. I am
| | 00:57 | just going to output this as Curves right now.
| | 01:03 | What this does is it creates outlines
or curves that you can use for modeling
| | 01:10 | or whatever. And if we go into the
outliner, we can take a look at how these
| | 01:14 | work. Each of these is grouped and then
every letter and every shape within the
| | 01:22 | letter has its own curve. So for
example an A would have one, two curves and so
| | 01:28 | would the D.
| | 01:29 | Now if you do want to create solid text,
I am going to select these and delete
| | 01:33 | them. You can create them as a trim
surface, which basically creates them as a
| | 01:41 | flat NURBS surface like that. So
that's basically just a patch that's been
| | 01:49 | trimmed away. You can also create Text
as a Polygon. Now once you do that, you
| | 01:58 | get all sorts of operations here. Do
you want to bring them out as Triangles,
| | 02:03 | Quads? All sorts of options here. I
usually use Quads and Standard Fit and just
| | 02:09 | go create. That creates that as a
Polygonal object. Or we can do Text as what's
| | 02:18 | called a Bevel.
| | 02:20 | Now what a bevel does is we can
actually give it a width and the depth and then
| | 02:24 | also an extrude distance. In addition
to that, you also have -- let's go ahead
| | 02:29 | and bring this down. We also have, do
you want the bevel to be straight out,
| | 02:33 | straight in, concave, and so on? You
have all sorts of different bevel styles.
| | 02:38 | So you have got a lot of options here.
And if you create that, then you can see
| | 02:45 | I have actually got nice extruded text,
which is actually probably what a lot
| | 02:49 | of the motion graphics people want to
zoom out some depth to their text. So
| | 02:53 | that's how you do that.
| | 02:55 | So those are some of the basics of text.
Now that's a way to create objects or
| | 02:59 | curves. Now sometimes, I use text to
actually create a curve that's a rough
| | 03:04 | shape of what I want and then I just
go ahead and remodel that into the shape
| | 03:09 | that I so desire. So let's go
ahead and move on to some other stuff.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating NURBS curves| 00:01 | So now let's take a look at how to
reshape and manipulate NURBS curves. I'm
| | 00:05 | going to go into my Front viewport and
just draw a curve. I'm going to use my
| | 00:11 | CV Curve tool and just sketch out a
number of points here and then just hit Enter.
| | 00:20 | Now if I want to edit this curve, I
have a marking menu that's available. All
| | 00:25 | if have to do is right-click above this
curve and I've got a number of options
| | 00:29 | here. The most important one is
Control Vertex. If I select that, all of the
| | 00:35 | CVs show up for the curve and all I
have to do is just select one of those and
| | 00:41 | I can move them wherever I want. Now I
can move them also in 3D if I want as well.
| | 00:49 | Now notice that all of these CVs are
dots except for the first two that I drew.
| | 00:56 | The very first CV of the object is
always a hollow box and that tells me that
| | 01:02 | this is CV number one. The second CV is
always shaped like a U, and that tells
| | 01:09 | me that this is the direction of
the curve. So it goes CV 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 01:16 | Now for most modeling tasks we really
don't need to concern ourselves with the
| | 01:20 | way that the curve is drawn. But for
something like an animation path, you
| | 01:24 | actually do need to understand the
direction of the curve, because if you're
| | 01:28 | animating something along the path, it
needs to start here, go along the path
| | 01:32 | and then here, rather than the other way around.
| | 01:36 | Now in addition to these CVs, we also
have things called Curve Points. What a
| | 01:43 | Curve Point is, is just a point on the
curve where we do another operation and
| | 01:49 | we'll get to that in little bit, but
just know that Curve Point exists. We also
| | 01:54 | have what are called halls, and what a
hall is it's almost like an edge loop
| | 02:00 | for a curve.
| | 02:01 | Now halls are probably more important
in editing NURBS surfaces than they are
| | 02:06 | in curve, but we do have that option
as well. Then we also have what's called
| | 02:10 | an end point. That allows us to edit
the curve like an EP Curve tool. So if I
| | 02:21 | edit it with end points, that means I'm
editing it almost like I draw it when I
| | 02:26 | use the EP Curve tool. Then
I can go back to Object Mode.
| | 02:33 | Now in addition to this, we also have
under Edit Curves, we have what's called
| | 02:38 | the Curve Editing tool. What that does
is it allows us to edit the curve at any
| | 02:48 | point. So I've got a couple of
operations here. I've got this box, and if I
| | 02:53 | move the box, this center box is on the
curve, I actually can reshape the curve.
| | 03:00 | If I move this little box here, this
little blue box above it, I can actually
| | 03:05 | slide that. So this box here is where
we're actually doing the action and we
| | 03:09 | can slide this box wherever we want
and then either reshape the curve or if I
| | 03:16 | click onto this handle, I can also
affect the direction of the curve, as well
| | 03:20 | as the sharpness of the curve. So
this is almost like a Bezier Handle.
| | 03:28 | So I can actually make a really tight
curve, a really broad curve, I can make
| | 03:33 | it pointing this way, this way and then
I can move it and then move that point
| | 03:39 | of action as well. So that's a really
handy way to edit these curves. When
| | 03:45 | you're done with that you
can always just hit Enter.
| | 03:48 | So that's how you edit curves in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Refining NURBS curves | 00:00 | So now that we understand the basis of
creating and editing curves, let's go
| | 00:05 | ahead and do some more operations to
curves within Maya. I'm going to go back
| | 00:11 | into my front viewport and
I'm going to draw a CV curve.
| | 00:17 | Now one of the more common things that
people want to do when drawing a curve
| | 00:24 | is to draw a closed curve. Now typically,
the first thing people want to do is,
| | 00:29 | just draw that CV over the first
vertex and hopefully it just creates a close
| | 00:34 | curve. But that's not the way that Maya
works. You actually have to explicitly
| | 00:39 | open and close the curve.
| | 00:41 | So I'm going to hit Enter and end
Creation mode, and then I'm going to go into
| | 00:45 | my Edit Curves menu. Here we have an
option called Open Close Curves. When I
| | 00:52 | select that, what it does is it
actually closes that curve. In fact, let me
| | 00:57 | undo it here. When I redo that,
Open Close Curves, that's what it does.
| | 01:03 | This is actually a toggle. So if I
have a closed curve and I do Open Close
| | 01:08 | Curves, it opens it up again. This is
where curve direction becomes important
| | 01:13 | because if I look at my Control
Vertices, I have this vertex as my first
| | 01:18 | vertex. This is always where it will
open the curve when I open a closed curve,
| | 01:24 | between this vertex and that will.
It will never open it here or here. So
| | 01:31 | that's one of the most important
ways of creating that first vertex.
| | 01:36 | Now another thing we can do with curves
is we can break them in two. We can do
| | 01:40 | that using the Detach Curves tool.
Now in order to break a curve in two, it
| | 01:47 | needs to know where that curve is going
to be broken. And that's done by using
| | 01:52 | a Curve Point.
| | 01:54 | So I can right-click over here, bring
up my marking menu and go to Curve Point.
| | 01:59 | Then I just left-click and drag this
little red dot and wherever I drag it,
| | 02:05 | that's where it will perform the action.
In this case, the action is Detach Curves.
| | 02:11 | If I click on that, and next thing I
know, I've got two curves, in fact, I've
| | 02:17 | got one curve here and another curve
here. Now if I want to I can reattach
| | 02:23 | these, all I have to do is select them,
go Edit Curves and attach and then
| | 02:28 | we'll go ahead and attach those two curves.
| | 02:30 | Now in this case, it leaves the old
curves behind. Now one of the nice things
| | 02:35 | is that, it does retain history so if
I go through and I edit the original
| | 02:41 | curves, the Attach Curve will follow
along. This could be kind of handy.
| | 02:47 | Now if you don't want that to happen,
all you have to do is just Delete by Type
| | 02:52 | > History on the brand new curve, and
then that will no longer be affected. So
| | 02:58 | I'm going to go ahead and delete
these. I'll just go back to this curve.
| | 03:10 | Now another tool that you can do is
called Insert Knot. Now that allows you to
| | 03:15 | add detail within a curve, so let's say
we've got this curve here and I want to
| | 03:20 | add some detail in here because I
want to sculpt out maybe another bump or
| | 03:25 | something like that.
| | 03:26 | So in another to do that, again we have
to use what is called Curve Point. So I
| | 03:30 | just move my Curve Point to where I
want to add in my detail and then I go
| | 03:37 | Insert Knot. What that does is that
inserts a new CV right at that Curve Point.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using cut curves and fillets| 00:00 | Another way to cut and manipulate
curves is by using one curve to cut another.
| | 00:06 | So in this case I'm just going to take
two circles that are overlapping. I'm
| | 00:16 | going to select both of them
and go Edit Curves > Cut Curve.
| | 00:21 | Now what this does is it takes each
circle and it cuts it where the two
| | 00:28 | overlap. Now we can use this to create
new curves. So, for example, if I take
| | 00:34 | that kind of teardrop in the middle, I
can actually attach those two curves and
| | 00:40 | create a unified curve.
| | 00:44 | I can also use these to do things
such as fillets. So if I go Edit Curves >
| | 00:50 | Curve Fillet, what it does is it
actually creates a semicircular curve that
| | 00:57 | bridges these two. Again, I can use
that curve to cut the other curves if I
| | 01:03 | want. Then I can have all of these together
and make them into unified curve if I want.
| | 01:14 | So as you can see there is a lot of
different ways to use these Cut tools to
| | 01:22 | build new curves out of existing curves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Offsetting and extending curves| 00:00 | The Offset Curve tool allows you to
create a copy of an existing curve. So
| | 00:06 | let's go ahead and go into our Front
viewport and just create some text. I am
| | 00:10 | going to go here and click on this
little box and let's just create the text M
| | 00:16 | and I am going to create that as curves.
So you just go ahead and hit Apply.
| | 00:23 | So now I have the letter M as a curve.
If I want to, I can use the Offset Curve
| | 00:33 | tool to actually make a copy of this
or to make an outline. Now if go over to
| | 00:42 | my Channel Box you can see I have a
distance value here. And I can extend that
| | 00:52 | or make it either big or
small and create an outline there.
| | 00:58 | Now this works for any curve, it
doesn't work for just text. So I can actually
| | 01:03 | create just a standard CV curve, hit
Enter, Edit Curves > Offset > Offset Curve
| | 01:14 | and then again you can give it a
distance, positive or negative. Now in
| | 01:20 | addition to offsetting curves, you
can also extend them so go Edit Curve >
| | 01:27 | Extend > Extend Curve and what this
will do is it will extend the end of the
| | 01:33 | curve by a specific distance.
| | 01:35 | So basically it finds that tangent and
it just continues to extend, in fact,
| | 01:42 | you don't have to extend at the end,
you can also extend at the beginning.
| | 01:46 | Let's go to the Attribute Editor here
and say we don't want to start the End,
| | 01:51 | we could start it to Start or both and
again this is where that initial vertex
| | 01:57 | comes in handy.
| | 01:58 | So, for example, if I look at this one
here the first vertex was here, the last
| | 02:03 | vertex was here. So when I extend this
curve, it's going to go from either the
| | 02:10 | Start, the End or both. And then, of
course, I can certainly give it a distance
| | 02:17 | and also I have an additional option
here for whether you want to go Linear,
| | 02:21 | Circular or Extrapolate the
curvature that was already there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | Let's take a look at some basic
NURBS Surfaces and how to reshape and
| | 00:04 | manipulate those surfaces. I am going
to go over here to the Surfaces Shelf and
| | 00:09 | select the NURBS Sphere. Just drag that
out and shade it. Now if I right click
| | 00:17 | over this, I would get a marking menu
with all of the different components for
| | 00:21 | that object. NURBS Surfaces have
control vertices, which are lot like the
| | 00:27 | vertices in a polygonal object in that
you can move them around to reshape the
| | 00:33 | surface. They also have what are called
Hulls. Now a Hull is more like an Edge
| | 00:39 | Loop. Now notice how when I click on
a Hull, it selects all of the control
| | 00:44 | vertices for that Hull. So see how it
is going to get this cage around it and
| | 00:52 | by clicking on any one of these wires,
I select the Hull and then I can just
| | 00:57 | move all of those vertices. So those
are two ways of reshaping a NURBS Surface.
| | 01:02 | But we also have some additional
components here. One is called an Isoparm.
| | 01:08 | Now, an Isoparm is a lot like the curve
point on a NURBS curve. It's a point of
| | 01:16 | actions so what I can do is I can select
an Isoparm on a NURBS Surface and then
| | 01:22 | at that point I can actually perform
an action. We also have what are called
| | 01:29 | Surface Points which again are very
similar to Curve Points. They're again
| | 01:36 | points of action on the surface.
And the last one is Surface Patch and that
| | 01:44 | just allows you to select each individual
patch on the NURBS Surface but for
| | 01:50 | most editing, we tend to work with
control vertices and Hulls because that's
| | 01:56 | the best way to reshape these surfaces.
Now let me show you one more thing
| | 02:02 | about a NURBS Surface. I am going to
go ahead in Object Mode and just delete
| | 02:06 | this and I am going to draw a NURBS patch.
And I am just going to drag it above
| | 02:13 | the grid here and then I am going to
right click and go Control Vertex. Now
| | 02:19 | what I want to show you is that just
like a NURBS curve, a NURBS patch also has
| | 02:27 | a direction. If we zoom in here,
you will see that we have a square vertex,
| | 02:32 | which is very similar to the square
vertex on a NURBS curve. And then off to
| | 02:37 | the right, I have-- if you can see this.
I am going to go here, let's go into
| | 02:42 | Wireframe mode. So off to the right here,
I have got this U and what that U is
| | 02:48 | the U direction. So I have a curve
going in this direction defining that
| | 02:53 | surface, but I also have a curve going
in the opposite direction to define that
| | 03:00 | other edge and that's actually called
the V direction. So while a curve really
| | 03:05 | basically has one direction a NURBS
Surface actually has two directions. So it
| | 03:10 | has a U and a V direction. Now these
become very important when you go to apply
| | 03:16 | texture maps to the surface as well
as do other sorts of actions. And again
| | 03:23 | once I have got this, I can certainly
reshape the curve and reshape the surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using NURBS Revolve| 00:00 | Now, we are going to start creating
surfaces from NURBS Curves. Now, most of
| | 00:05 | the tools where creating surfaces are
in the Surfaces menu and these allow you
| | 00:10 | to turn NURBS Curves into different
types of surfaces. Note we have Revolve,
| | 00:15 | Loft, Planar, and so on.
| | 00:17 | Now, the first tool we are going to
use is Revolve. So let's go ahead and do
| | 00:22 | that. So first of all let's just do
the classic exercise for Revolve which is
| | 00:27 | to make a wine glass, I am just
going to show you how this tool works.
| | 00:30 | I am going to go into my Front viewport
and zoom out a little bit, in fact I am
| | 00:36 | going to turn on Grid Snaps so I have a
little bit more accuracy here, and I am
| | 00:41 | going to draw a CV Curve, so I am going
to start at the origin at 0, 0 snap to
| | 00:47 | that and then I am just going to snap
out the outline of a wine or a champagne
| | 00:55 | goblet, something like that. And then
once I have that selected, I can zoom out
| | 01:05 | and I can revolve this into the
actual object. So all I have to do is do
| | 01:10 | Surfaces, Revolve.
| | 01:12 | Now, there is a problem with Revolve
in that, it actually works around a
| | 01:16 | specific axis. So in this case I
revolve around the wrong axis. So I am going
| | 01:22 | to go ahead and undo that and let's
make sure we have everything set properly.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to go Revolve and I'll go
ahead and click this box here and that
| | 01:31 | brings up my Tool Options, and so here
I have my Axis, now this is going to be
| | 01:39 | Preset to whatever you had it set for
before, and in this case I want to set it
| | 01:44 | to the vertical axis which is Y, and
then I also have some additional options
| | 01:49 | here for the type of object that I can create.
| | 01:52 | But the most important thing for
right now is the Axis. So let's make sure
| | 01:57 | that, the axis is Y and let me just
hit Revolve and there we go, there is our
| | 02:02 | Goblet or Chalice or whatever you want.
| | 02:04 | Now, once I have done this I can
certainly go back and modify the options. I
| | 02:09 | can either go into my Channel Box, or
into my Attribute Editor, find my revolve
| | 02:15 | and I can adjust the parameter, so for
example I can adjust my Sweep and I can
| | 02:20 | adjust the number of
Sections, or whatever else I want.
| | 02:23 | Now, let me show you another way of
doing Revolve, in fact let's use this in a
| | 02:29 | more practical application. I am going
to go ahead and Open a Scene, Revolve.mb
| | 02:36 | and this is our little car that I
showed you. As I am going to show you how to
| | 02:44 | make one of these tires. Now the tires
are made out of NURBS and it actually
| | 02:49 | made out of this outline, which has
been revolved. So if I do a revolve right
| | 02:56 | now, let in fact -- let's go ahead
and take a look at this, let me turn off Snap here.
| | 03:01 | Now, if I take a look at this and
actually just do a Revolve, you are going to
| | 03:07 | see it's not really going where I want,
because it actually revolves around the
| | 03:13 | center, or around the Pivot point of
the object and that's not really what I
| | 03:17 | want. So I am going to Undo this and
what I have to do in order to get this
| | 03:21 | tool revolves properly is I need to
center this Pivot, or actually put this
| | 03:24 | Pivot in the place where the center is
right where the center of the tire needs to be.
| | 03:29 | So I can go Modify > Center Pivot and
that's centers it to the geographical
| | 03:35 | center of that curve, but I actually
need to move it up a little bit higher, so
| | 03:38 | I am going to hit Insert or Home and
move that up about there may be, and then
| | 03:45 | just end that mode by hitting Insert again.
| | 03:49 | So now that I have that all I have to
do is hit Revolve, but again I need to
| | 03:54 | make sure I am revolving around the
right axis. In this case you can see it's
| | 03:59 | the red arrow where I want to revolve
and of course red is X, so I just make
| | 04:04 | sure that's X and I hit
Revolve and there is my little tire.
| | 04:08 | Now, notice that this creates a second
surface. So I have this tire, in fact
| | 04:14 | let me show the Grid here, the
actually origin of this is at 0,0 so any time
| | 04:20 | you revolve a surface and create a new
surface, so which is created with the
| | 04:25 | Pivot point at 0,0. So in other words,
if I want to move this, I move it from
| | 04:31 | there and that means if I want to spin
the tire, it's going to spin around that
| | 04:36 | axis and that's not really what I want.
So I simply have to do Center Pivot and
| | 04:41 | then that works, and then I can
just go ahead and position that tire.
| | 04:45 | Now, the other thing is that this is
depended upon where this outline is, so if
| | 04:51 | I start moving this outline because
I have History turned on, I can still
| | 04:56 | affect the shape and characteristics of
this tire. If I take this curve and it
| | 05:02 | actually edit the Control Vertexes I
can still edit exactly how the tire looks.
| | 05:08 | So if I want to get rid of that, simply
select the actual NURB Surface, Edit >
| | 05:14 | Delete > History.
| | 05:16 | Now, sometimes you don't want to delete
History on these things because you can
| | 05:19 | actually edit the curves or animate
the curves to create shape animation in
| | 05:25 | your NURBS object but in this case I
really want this tire to be pretty solid,
| | 05:29 | so we don't need that's sort of History.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using NURBS Loft| 00:01 | The next tool I want to cover is Loft.
And what Loft does is that it actually
| | 00:06 | takes multiple curves and it connects
them together to make a surface. Let's go
| | 00:12 | into my side viewport, and I am going
to create a CV Curve. It really doesn't
| | 00:20 | have to be any specific shape I am just
going to make of kind of like a little
| | 00:23 | undulating shape here.
| | 00:25 | And once I have that curve I can go
ahead and duplicate it. Now I don't know if
| | 00:32 | I have covered this before but
duplication is just Ctrl+D or you can go Edit >
| | 00:37 | Duplicate. And when I do that it just
creates a copy of that curve. In fact, we
| | 00:42 | can see it here in the Outliner. So if
I do Ctrl+D, I can create a copy of the
| | 00:48 | curve. So now I have three curves. In
fact, if I want to I can go, and I can
| | 00:52 | actually edit those curves, and
reshape them if I want. I will just go ahead
| | 00:58 | here, right click, Control Vertex, and
I am just going to make these, vary up
| | 01:02 | these curves just a little bit
so we have something to work with.
| | 01:07 | Now that I have these curves I can
loft them together to make a surface. Now
| | 01:14 | there don't have to be three curves,
it can be as many curves as you want to
| | 01:19 | define that surface. So all I have to
do is select the curves in order. So I
| | 01:24 | can select them. Hit the
Shift key, one, two, three.
| | 01:29 | Now notice the last one I select is
highlighted in green. So for example, if I
| | 01:35 | Rubber band selected them, you could
see that one is sleeted in green. And if I
| | 01:40 | selected them in maybe a different
order, they may get selected differently.
| | 01:46 | Okay, so again you want to make sure
that you select them in order because this
| | 01:50 | is important for Loft. And then I can
just go Loft. And what that does is it
| | 01:56 | creates a surface that's bounded by
those curves or defined by those curves. In
| | 02:01 | fact, if I go back to any of these
curves, I can certainly move those curves,
| | 02:07 | and change the character of the surface.
In fact, if I want to I can even edit
| | 02:10 | those curves or do whatever I want.
| | 02:15 | Now the reason you want to pick these
in order is that it does remember that
| | 02:20 | order for when you create the Loft. So
if I did this one, then this one, then
| | 02:26 | this one, and did a Loft, it's going to
create a different Loft. It's going to
| | 02:31 | go from here to here to here, rather
than over the top; it's going to kind of
| | 02:37 | go under and over. So you really do
need to be careful about how you select
| | 02:42 | those curves. Now Rubber band selecting
them is usually okay, but I always tend
| | 02:46 | to be extra cautious and just select
them individually in the order that I want.
| | 02:52 | Now if you want you do have a few
options here with this. And one is called
| | 03:00 | Section Spans, which really just gives
you a little bit of interpolation here
| | 03:05 | on this particular surface. Now let
me show you a little bit more of a
| | 03:09 | practical application for this and we
are going to be playing with that car
| | 03:13 | that we are working with again. So
let's go ahead and open a scene. I am going
| | 03:16 | to open a scene called of all things, Loft.
And that's basically the fenders of this car.
| | 03:26 | So all I have to do is just select the
curves that make up the fender. So I am
| | 03:33 | defining the fender by drawing curves
that go over the wheels and that way I
| | 03:39 | can very easily define how that shape is.
It's much easier to draw these curves
| | 03:45 | than it would be to actually take a
flat NURBS plane and deform it into this
| | 03:51 | shape particularly, because I can get
these nice tight corners here. So all I
| | 03:56 | have to do is select those and again
just do Loft. And now I have a very nice
| | 04:02 | set of fenders for my car.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using NURBS Extrude| 00:01 |
The Extrude tool is another way to
create a NURBS surface from curves. Now what
| | 00:07 |
the Extrude tool does is it creates
basically a tube or a hose using two
| | 00:13 |
curves. One curve is called the path;
the other is called the profile. So let's
| | 00:19 |
go ahead and draw a path here.
| | 00:20 |
I am just going to go ahead and create
a CV Curve. I am just going to go ahead
| | 00:24 |
and sketch out just kind of an S
shape here. Then I need to create what's
| | 00:29 |
called a profile. This is my path; this
is going to be for example, the length
| | 00:34 |
of my garden hose. Then I need to
create something that shows the diameter of that.
| | 00:39 |
The easiest thing to use is a circle
so let's go ahead and do that. I am just
| | 00:44 |
going to go into my front viewport and
draw a circle. If I want to I can move
| | 00:52 |
that close to the path but it's not
critical that these two actually be
| | 00:57 |
aligned. Let me show you how this works.
| | 01:01 |
We start by selecting the profile,
which in this case is a circle. Then we
| | 01:05 |
select the path, then we go Surfaces >
Extrude. But I am going to go ahead
| | 01:11 |
and open these Options here because we
have two options. One is do we want the
| | 01:16 |
Result position at the profile, which
means at the circle, or at the path? Let
| | 01:23 |
me show you how that works.
| | 01:24 |
If I do it at the Profile, then it
takes that path, moves it to the circle and
| | 01:30 |
extrudes it from there. Let's do this
again. Circle, then the path, Surfaces >
| | 01:36 |
Extrude, and let's go to Options here.
If we go to the path and Extrude, then
| | 01:42 |
it takes that and it tries to align
it to the path. Now it may not align it
| | 01:47 |
perfectly but we can also go into our
Creation Options. We can go back to this
| | 01:54 |
Option here, or we can actually go
into our Attribute Editor here and we can
| | 01:59 |
define how that works.
| | 02:01 |
One of the things we can do is we can
actually make it aligned to the Component
| | 02:07 |
Pivot or the center of the Bounding
Box of the Pivot. So sometimes you just
| | 02:13 |
have to play with these options to get
it right. Now once we have this we also
| | 02:18 |
have some additional options. We could
actually rotate that surface and we can
| | 02:24 |
also scale it.
| | 02:25 |
So if you want this to go to a point
or something like that, you can also do
| | 02:29 |
that. Now the nice thing about this is
that this allows you to animate things
| | 02:35 |
like hoses by just animating this
path. So if I go into my Outliner and I
| | 02:39 |
select that original curve, I can
actually go in and modify it. So if I go into
| | 02:47 |
Component mode here and select my
curve, if I have History turned on, I can
| | 02:53 |
actually animate that path and animate
the curve as well, or just reshape it if I need to.
| | 03:00 |
Now let's go ahead and look at this in
a more practical application. Let's go
| | 03:05 |
ahead and show it on that car that we
are playing with. Let's go ahead and open
| | 03:10 |
Extrude.mb and in this case I have
the car. Now this isn't quite done but I
| | 03:19 |
want to create the outline or the
little rubber gasket around the window.
| | 03:25 |
Now in this case, I have got something
a little bit different. So instead of an
| | 03:30 |
actual curve, I have what's called a
trim edge, which is essentially a curve
| | 03:36 |
that's locked to the surface of this
car. I will show you how to do that in a
| | 03:40 |
little bit but just know that
this is a curve, this outline here.
| | 03:44 |
So I select my outline and again, it's
just a circle. Now this doesn't have to
| | 03:49 |
be a circle. It can certainly be
any open or closed curve. Then here I
| | 03:53 |
right-click and instead of Curve I
select Trim Edge, hold down the Shift key
| | 04:00 |
and select that. Okay, now this is
just a curve but it's called a different
| | 04:05 |
thing, it's called the Trim Edge.
Again, I just go Surfaces > Extrude and
| | 04:13 |
that creates my window grommet. If I
want to I can go back into my Attribute
| | 04:19 |
Editor and I can adjust this as required.
| | 04:25 |
Now the really cool thing is that
because this is using what's called a Trim
| | 04:29 |
Edge it's actually locked to the
surface of this car. So if I go in and
| | 04:36 |
actually re-adjust the vertexes of this
car, the grommet goes with it, which is
| | 04:43 |
nice. Okay, and I will show you how
to create those trim curves in just a
| | 04:47 |
little bit but just see how
that works. That's pretty cool.
| | 04:51 |
So those are the basics of Extrude and
let's go ahead and move on from here.
| | 04:57 |
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| Using NURBS Planar| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the Planar
tool. What this does is it takes a flat
| | 00:05 | curve and it trims out a NURBS patch
like a cookie cutter for NURBS patches.
| | 00:12 | Let me show you how this works. We
need to start by drawing by a curve. In
| | 00:16 | fact, I am going to do this in my top
viewport and I am just going to create a
| | 00:21 | CV Curve. I think I am going to
create it in kind of a heart shaped here.
| | 00:26 | Now this curve needs to be closed so I
am going to go ahead and Edit Curves >
| | 00:37 | Open/Close Curves. And the other key
item is that the curve needs to be flat
| | 00:45 | along any plane, it could be vertical,
horizontal, left, or right; it doesn't
| | 00:50 | matter but it has to be flat along a
plane. So I can look at that and I can see
| | 00:57 | that it's flat. And once I have that
flat curve all I have to do is just go
| | 01:02 | Surfaces, Planar. And what that does
is it actually projects a NURBS plane
| | 01:11 | along the outside of this, and
then trims out all of the excess.
| | 01:17 | Okay, so let's take a look at how
this works. If I actually turn on for
| | 01:23 | example, Control Vertex of this new
object you will see I actually have vertex
| | 01:29 | that are way out to the side because
what it does is that it fits the plane to
| | 01:34 | the bounding box of this curve and then
uses out to project. In fact, you will
| | 01:38 | probably see this better if I do
Hulls, you could see that's my plane.
| | 01:43 | Once I have got this completed this
plane is actually trimmed out. So I can
| | 01:50 | modify the Control Vertex of this
plane to actually deform it. But the key is
| | 01:56 | that because I am projecting on a plane
this curves still needs to be flat. If
| | 02:01 | I do anything to make it not flat, I
can certainly move this way. But if I move
| | 02:08 | it up or down off of the plane,
instantly I create an air condition and that
| | 02:14 | planar goes away. So you have to be
very careful with that. So once you create
| | 02:18 | it go ahead and either
hide or delete those curves.
| | 02:21 | Now another thing you can do with
Planar is cut multiple holes. I am just going
| | 02:26 | to go ahead and do New Scene here,
let's not save this. Let's just go in the
| | 02:32 | front viewport and create some text. I
just want to create a letter that has a
| | 02:38 | hole in it so I am just going to create
an O, the letter O. And so what we have
| | 02:44 | is we have two curves; we have one, two
curves, and if I select them both, and
| | 02:50 | go Planar. In fact, let's go ahead
and look at this in prospective. What it
| | 02:58 | does is it uses the outside and the
inside curves to define the hole. So if you
| | 03:03 | have multiple curves selected, it will
be smart about it and actually trim out
| | 03:09 | the holes. And that's pretty cool.
| | 03:11 | Now the one really neat thing about
this is that you can actually use these
| | 03:16 | curves again to create for example,
a Loft. So if I select these outside
| | 03:23 | curves, hit Ctrl+D and move them back,
I actually can create duplicates of
| | 03:30 | these curves. So if I select this edge
curve here and this one, then I can also
| | 03:36 | just use the Loft tool. It has actually
started building something a little bit
| | 03:41 | more 3D. So you can kind of see how
that works. I have got the two curves
| | 03:50 | creating a trim, and then this outside
curve is working with its duplicate to
| | 03:56 | create the sides, and then on the
inside we have got the same thing happening here.
| | 04:02 | So that's one of the reasons why you
would use a Planar, is that if you want to
| | 04:06 | kind of Extrude some text or
create a shape similar to this.
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| Editing and refining NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | Now in addition to creating surfaces
from curves, we can also refine existing
| | 00:06 | NURBS surfaces using the Edit NURBS
tools, which are all right here, and these
| | 00:12 | work on existing surfaces.
| | 00:14 | So let's go ahead and work with some
of these. I am going to go ahead and
| | 00:17 | create a NURBS Sphere and shade that.
And the first tool I am going to use is
| | 00:24 | the Detach Surfaces. Now this works
very similar to the Detach Curves, right
| | 00:30 | here we have the Detach Curves and we
have Detach Surfaces. Now remember with
| | 00:36 | the Detach Curves tool we had to set
a point at which to detach that curve.
| | 00:42 | We have to do the same thing with the
NURBS surface. Now on the curve we used
| | 00:47 | what's called the curve point but of
course, we don't have that on a NURBS
| | 00:50 | surface. But we do have a thing called
an Isoparm. So I can right click over my
| | 00:57 | sphere, select Isoparm and then left
click to define that point. So this would
| | 01:04 | be my cut point. When I let it go you
see I have this yellow dotted line, which
| | 01:10 | defines my Isoparm, and this is the
point at which I am going to perform my
| | 01:16 | action on this surface. So if I go Edit
NURBS > Detach Surfaces... Bingo! There
| | 01:24 | we go. I have got one, two separate
surfaces. And you can see I can pop the top there.
| | 01:30 | So this is a great way to refine and
cut surfaces in half or do these sorts of
| | 01:38 | task. Now just like with the Detach
Curves we also have an Attach. So in
| | 01:45 | addition to detaching surfaces, we can
also reattach them. So all I have to do
| | 01:51 | is select both surfaces and go Edit
NURBS > Attach Surfaces. And once I do that
| | 02:01 | I get a third surface which is linked
to the original too. So I can certainly
| | 02:06 | move that and move that, and I have my
History of these two surfaces and I can
| | 02:12 | certainly delete that if I want.
| | 02:15 | So those are the basics of attaching
and detaching surfaces. So let me show you
| | 02:19 | a little bit about how to use this in
the real world. We are going to go ahead
| | 02:24 | and open a scene called Detach. And
this is the car and what we are doing is we
| | 02:32 | are going to use a detached sphere to
make one of these hubcaps, one of these
| | 02:36 | little baby moon hubcaps. So I am
actually going to go into my side viewport
| | 02:41 | and I am going to draw a
NURBS Sphere right over that tire.
| | 02:46 | Now when I draw it over the tire it
actually comes in at 0, 0 so it's actually
| | 02:53 | going to be kind of under the car here.
So I am going to move it out to the
| | 02:57 | side so I can see it. And then I am
going to right click, go Isoparm and I need
| | 03:03 | to find the point at which I want to
cut off that hubcap. So again I am doing
| | 03:09 | almost exact same operation I did
before. I find that cut point, Edit NURBS >
| | 03:16 | Detach Surfaces, select the back one,
delete it and there is my hub cap, and I
| | 03:21 | need to just go ahead and put that in
the tire. So there is some practical
| | 03:28 | applications for Detach Surfaces.
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| Extracting NURBS curves from surfaces| 00:00 | Now as we have seen, we have the
ability to take curves and generate NURBS
| | 00:05 | surfaces. But we also can go the
opposite way. We can take a NURB surface, and
| | 00:10 | extract, or duplicate the curves off of
a surface. Now this can be really handy
| | 00:16 | when you are building complex objects,
and you need to connect different
| | 00:21 | surfaces together. Let me show you how
this works. I am just going to create
| | 00:25 | basic NURBSSphere and I am going to
shade it. In fact, I am going to go ahead
| | 00:32 | and deform this is little bit so it's
not a perfect sphere. So I am just going
| | 00:36 | to go ahead and select these Control
Vertices, and just kind of put a little
| | 00:39 | dent in the side there.
| | 00:41 | Then I am going to go to the Object
Mode, or actually I am going to go to the
| | 00:45 | Isoparm mode, and I am going to
select an Isoparm around the edge of this
| | 00:51 | sphere. Then all I have to do is go
Edit Curves > Duplicate Surface Curves and
| | 00:58 | what it will do, it will take the
Isoparm that I have defined, and turn that
| | 01:04 | into a curve that exactly matches
the surface of this sphere. So this is
| | 01:11 | actually a separate curve. Now the
great thing about this is that this curve is
| | 01:16 | actually matched to the surface, so if
I modify the surface, the curve would
| | 01:22 | follow along with it, if I have history
selected, and I have history turned on.
| | 01:27 | Now I can use this to actually create
additional surfaces that attach to this
| | 01:34 | sphere to create more complex objects.
So let me show you how that works. In
| | 01:40 | fact, I am just going to go ahead and
select all of these objects and delete
| | 01:44 | them, and I am just going to go ahead
and create another sphere. Now this time
| | 01:50 | I am going to right click over this
sphere, select Isoparm, and go about a
| | 01:55 | third of the way down, and then just
go Edit NURBS > Detach Surfaces. I am
| | 02:01 | going to cut this in half like I have
done before, delete the top, and let's
| | 02:06 | just take a look at this.
| | 02:07 | Now this looks like a really nice
little eggshell, but the problem is that, we
| | 02:11 | really don't have any thickness along
the edge. We can do that by using curves
| | 02:17 | on duplicated curves. I have my
outside surface, I actually want to create an
| | 02:23 | inside surface, I can do that by
duplicating this surface once, so I just go
| | 02:27 | Ctrl+D to duplicate, and then just
scale that down. So now I have two surfaces.
| | 02:36 | I have the original surface, and the
inside surface. I am going to go ahead and
| | 02:42 | move this until its right about at the
same height, but I still have this gap
| | 02:48 | that I need to fill.
| | 02:52 | So I have got kind of a hole here that
needs to be filled. Now I can fill that
| | 02:57 | by using Duplicate Surface Curves and a
loft. Let me show you, how that works.
| | 03:02 | I right click over the outside surface,
go Isoparm, and I set that to the very
| | 03:07 | top edge. Edit Curves > Duplicate
Surface Curves. In fact, let's go ahead and
| | 03:13 | open the out-liner, so we can see
what's being created here. I have got
| | 03:16 | NURBSSphere1, NURBSSphere2, and the
duplicatedCurve. Now I am going to create a
| | 03:22 | second duplicatedCurve on this
inside edge, and again it's the exact same
| | 03:27 | procedure. Isoparm, go up to the top
edge, Duplicate Surface Curves. Now
| | 03:34 | remember these curves are still
attached via history to these surfaces. So if I
| | 03:41 | redefine the surface, if I change it,
if I edit some controversies, they still
| | 03:47 | stick. Okay, but I also have two curves,
and if I have two curves that means I
| | 03:53 | can create a surface from those curves.
So in this case I am going to create a
| | 03:59 | loft, so I select both curves, and
then I go Loft, and now I have an edge for
| | 04:07 | my little object. Now if I move any of
these, this duplicated surface curves
| | 04:14 | moves with them, and so the whole thing
kind of just hangs together, it's kind of neat.
| | 04:19 | If I want to, I can select Control
Vertices, and deform it, and I still have
| | 04:24 | that edge. So you can see now how by
duplicating surface curves, you can make
| | 04:29 | more complex objects by
creating multiple surfaces.
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| Opening and closing surfaces| 00:00 | Another way to effect NURBS surfaces
is to open and close them. Now just like
| | 00:05 | we can open and close curves, we can
also open and close surfaces. So let me
| | 00:13 | show you how that works. Let's just
take the most basic NURBS surface, which is
| | 00:17 | a nurbesPlane, and I am going to give
it a little bit of detail and just go
| | 00:22 | ahead and move it up above the grid
here, so we can see what's going on.
| | 00:27 | Now if I want to, I can just go ahead
and take some of these Control Vertices
| | 00:32 | along one edge, in fact, I am going to
be very specific about this. In fact,
| | 00:36 | let's go ahead into Wireframe mode.
You can see here this square one is the
| | 00:41 | first vertex of the patch. We have two
directions, we have a U direction, which
| | 00:47 | goes along here, and we have a V
direction, which goes along here. Now what I
| | 00:53 | can do is I can close it along either
direction, so I can close it this way or
| | 01:00 | this way. So let's go ahead and do the
first direction, and I am going to just
| | 01:05 | take some of these vertices along
this U side, and move those straight up.
| | 01:12 | Go back to Object Mode, and let's
shade this, so we can see what's happening.
| | 01:18 | Then we go Edit NURBS > Open/Close
Surfaces. Now I am going to go over to the
| | 01:23 | Options here and show you what we
have. Now we can open or close it along
| | 01:28 | either direction, U or V. Now let's
make sure that we are doing this in the
| | 01:32 | right direction. We move the U vertices
up, which means that this edge here is
| | 01:38 | the V direction, and this is kind of
how we want to close it. So let's go ahead
| | 01:42 | and do that. Make sure this is on
Preserve, and do Open/Close, and when I do
| | 01:49 | that it preserves the shape, and then
draws a whole new patch that closes off
| | 01:56 | this surface. In fact, if I go into
Control Vertices here, you will see it
| | 02:01 | didn't add any new vertices. So I can
actually take these, and move them up,
| | 02:06 | and what I have now is a nice loop, I
have kind of like a little conveyor belt
| | 02:10 | or whatever you want to call it.
| | 02:12 | Now I can go back to this surface,
and again, it's just like open and close
| | 02:18 | with curves. So if I Open it again,
it's just gets rid of that option. So
| | 02:24 | again, I can go into my Control
Vertices, and let's go ahead and move these
| | 02:27 | ones back down, and let's just do this
the other directions. So I am going to
| | 02:31 | take these V vertices, and I am going
to go ahead and move them around, and get
| | 02:38 | those ready, go Object mode, Edit NURBS
> Open/Close Surfaces, now this time we
| | 02:44 | are going to do it along the U
direction, and go Open/Close, and there we go.
| | 02:53 | And again, I can undo that or whatever.
| | 02:56 | Now if we want, we can also do this
along both directions. So let's go ahead to
| | 03:03 | Both, and what this does is it actually
creates, you can kind of see, it almost
| | 03:08 | creates kind of like a folded
surface, and sometimes this isn't a very
| | 03:12 | practical surface to have, but you can
create it, and so there it is. So those
| | 03:19 | are the basics of opening and closing
surfaces. Now these can be really handy
| | 03:24 | when you are creating things such as
train tracks or treads or any sort of
| | 03:29 | belts or loop. You can very easily
create a surface that's closed using these tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Advanced ModelingCreating curves on a surface| 00:00 | Now let's look at some advanced
modeling tools. One of the first ones I want to
| | 00:04 | show you is curves on a surface. Now
what this does is it allows you to take a
| | 00:09 | NURBS object and draw a curve on it.
So that way you have a curve that's
| | 00:15 | actually locked to the surface.
| | 00:16 | Now we have seen how you can actually
extract curves from a surface but those
| | 00:21 | are curves that are actually locked
to Isoparms, the latitude and longitude
| | 00:26 | lines of a surface. But with drawing a
curve on surface you can really draw it
| | 00:30 | in any direction. So let me show you
how to do that. We are going to create a
| | 00:35 | NURBS Sphere and I'll make it a
little big so we can see it. And then just
| | 00:40 | shape that.
| | 00:43 | Now I am going to keep this selected
and then I am going to hit this Magnet
| | 00:47 | button here. And what this does is it
makes the surface live so any curves we
| | 00:52 | draw stick to the surface. So note
how that changes color a little bit. And
| | 00:59 | then we can go Create > CV Curve. Once
I do that anything I draw sticks to that
| | 01:07 | surface. You can see how that sticks
to my surface. Once I have this on the
| | 01:16 | surface I can click Live again to make
the surface normal, and then just select
| | 01:25 | the Control Vertex of that surface and
I can manipulate them. Now notice how
| | 01:30 | these are stuck to that surface.
| | 01:34 | Now the curve can be moved around if I
want it to. You can also use a lot of
| | 01:39 | the curve tools. You can for example,
Open and Close the Curve, or you can do
| | 01:44 | things such as Offset. For example, if
I want to offset this I have to select
| | 01:49 | Offset Curve on Surface but the
functionality is pretty much the same. So now I
| | 01:54 | have one, two curves; one is offset.
And again, no matter how I deform this
| | 02:00 | surface those curves stay stuck.
| | 02:03 | Now let me show you a little bit about
how this works technically. I am going
| | 02:07 | to go delete this. I am going to do
this one more time. Now how it works is
| | 02:12 | that remember that a NURBS patch is
essentially a two dimensional flat plane or
| | 02:19 | actually more like a sheet of rubber.
And you can think of it almost as a piece
| | 02:23 | of paper. And what we are doing is
when we make that surface live we are
| | 02:28 | drawing on that paper. So when I
create a CV Curve, and now that curve is
| | 02:36 | actually stuck to the borders. Now no
matter what I do to that surface or what
| | 02:42 | I do to the paper, the curve is
basically stuck to it. And just remember that
| | 02:47 | any NURBS object such as a sphere is
essentially a four sided NURBS patch
| | 02:52 | that's just been deformed.
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| Projecting curves on surfaces| 00:00 |
Another way to create curves on a
surface is to project them. Now we have seen
| | 00:05 |
how to draw curves directly on a surface,
but you can also take existing curves
| | 00:10 |
and project them on to a surface. Let
me show you how that works. I am going to
| | 00:16 |
start with a NURBS sphere and I am
just going to go ahead and shade that and
| | 00:21 |
then I need a curve.
| | 00:23 |
In this case let's just go ahead and
create some text. So I am just going to go
| | 00:27 |
ahead and go Create > Text and then
it just give us the letter O. Let's go
| | 00:33 |
ahead and create that. Now I can't see
it because it creates it at 0, 0, but
| | 00:38 |
if I select it here in my front
viewport and move it, I can see it here.
| | 00:45 |
Now I am going to go ahead and turn
off the Grid on this view here.
| | 00:51 |
Now in order to project it what has to
happen is the system needs to project it
| | 00:56 |
in a perpendicular direction or
basically what it does is it projects in the
| | 01:00 |
direction of whatever viewport you
select. So if I want to project this at a
| | 01:05 |
right angle I do need to do this from
the front viewport. So let's go ahead
| | 01:12 |
into the front viewport, select my
curves, select my surface go Edit NURBS >
| | 01:19 |
Project Curve On Surface and what that
does as you can see in the perspective
| | 01:24 |
window is it takes that O and it
projects it right on to the surface.
| | 01:30 |
Now if I want to I could actually
select the original one and I can move that
| | 01:34 |
around if I want, because I have
History turned on. Of course if I delete
| | 01:41 |
history that will go away. Now the
great thing about having curves on surfaces
| | 01:45 |
that you can use them to create
additional surfaces that attach two surfaces
| | 01:50 |
together. For example with this O, if I
selected this curve and Shift selected
| | 01:57 |
to that curve, so I have these two
curves selected, I could actually build a
| | 02:00 |
surface such as a Loft and I can do
it again for that curve and that curve.
| | 02:08 |
Now if I want to I can even select the
curves in the front and then just do a
| | 02:17 |
Planar to create kind of little O on
that sphere. Now if you notice the Planar
| | 02:25 |
is essentially exactly what we have
been doing here. It's a curve that's on a
| | 02:29 |
surface projected under the plane and
then those areas outside of the O have
| | 02:36 |
been just cut away or trimmed away.
| | 02:39 |
So that's how you project a curve on a
surface, and let's go ahead and do some
| | 02:43 |
more stuff with the curves on
the surface in the next lesson.
| | 02:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Trimming NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | Now let's talk about trimming the
surfaces. I am going to use to an actual
| | 00:04 | example here from this art deco car. In
fact, we need to set our projects let's
| | 00:09 | go ahead and go Project > Set and
let's set this to O5_Advanced. Hit OK. And
| | 00:15 | then the file itself is called Car_
Trim.mb and you will find it in that project.
| | 00:22 | So here we have that art deco car, but
this is actually more primitive version
| | 00:27 | of it. It doesn't have any windows yet,
and we can create those windows by
| | 00:31 | using what's called trim surfaces. So
what we can do is we can actually project
| | 00:35 | a curve on this surface and use that
as a tool to trim away the windows. So I
| | 00:40 | am going to use this. It's basically
just an oval. I took a circle and squashed
| | 00:45 | it and I am going to project it on to this car.
| | 00:48 | So I need to do that from in this case
the front viewport. So let's go into the
| | 00:52 | front viewport select the curve
select the body of the car. Go Edit NURBS >
| | 00:58 | Project Curve on Surface and what
that does is like we have seen before it
| | 01:03 | projects that curve on to this surface.
| | 01:06 | Now what I can do is I can use this as
a way to create the windows of the car
| | 01:13 | by trimming away all of the area within
those Windows. In fact I am going to do
| | 01:17 | a little trick here. I am actually
going to duplicate this. I am going to hit
| | 01:21 | Ctrl+D and duplicate the body. When I
actually duplicate a NURBS surface that
| | 01:27 | has curves, all the surface. The curves
actually go with it. So I am just going
| | 01:30 | to hold this up here for right now and
we are going to bring this a little bit
| | 01:34 | later. So I am going to zoom in and
let's just work with this surface.
| | 01:38 | So in this case I want to trim away
the holes for the window. So we go Edit
| | 01:44 | NURBS and we use what's called the
Trim tool. Now there is a nice handy help
| | 01:48 | down here on the bottom here, here and
it says Click Button 1 on the surface to
| | 01:52 | select the region to keep. So I am just
going to go ahead and left click and it
| | 01:56 | creates a little dot there and I am
going to keep that one or if I want to I
| | 02:00 | can actually select multiple regions to keep.
| | 02:03 | In this case I just want to keep the
body. So I am just going to hit Enter and
| | 02:08 | what that does is it actually trims
away those parts of the surface that are
| | 02:15 | inside those projected curves. This is
actually just a rendering trick, because
| | 02:22 | the surface itself actually is still
there. In fact, if I go into Control
| | 02:26 | Vertex mode you will see I still have
the CVs for the entire body of the car
| | 02:31 | like for example right here.
| | 02:34 | So what this does is it just does a
rendering trick and that it doesn't render
| | 02:39 | that area within the trimmed surface.
So basically it's just saying don't
| | 02:45 | render those pixels.
| | 02:47 | Now if you notice we have a little bit
of an error here. You can see I have got
| | 02:50 | a little bit of this kind of straight
line here and that's just because of the
| | 02:55 | way the Maya is calculating this
surface in the viewport. If I actually did a
| | 02:59 | render of this, you would actually see
that it's perfectly smooth. So don't get
| | 03:05 | freaked out when you see little art
affects like that. They don't show up in rendering.
| | 03:11 | Now the reason I copied the body of
the car or was that we can also use those
| | 03:15 | exact same Trim Curve to make the
windows themselves and all I have to do with
| | 03:20 | that is just trim it again. So I go
into Trim tool and in this case I am going
| | 03:25 | to click on window, window. So I have
actually two surfaces on keeping, I hit
| | 03:32 | Enter and I don't keep the body.
| | 03:34 | Now I select that, and you will even
see if I go into for example Hulls you
| | 03:39 | could actually see that the surface
is really is there and all that's being
| | 03:43 | kept is just those parts for the window.
So let's go back in Object Mode and I
| | 03:48 | am going to do a little trick here. I
am actually going to my Rendering tab I
| | 03:51 | am going to click on a Blinn surface
and then just add some transparency for
| | 03:58 | that just to make it look little bit
like a window. Then I am going to select
| | 04:01 | this surface and move it into place
and there we have windows that fit
| | 04:08 | perfectly. In fact, I can just
render that you can see how that fits.
| | 04:13 | So as you can see I can use those
curves to create both the opening for the
| | 04:16 | windows and the windows themselves and
you can see the benefits of how to use
| | 04:22 | the Trim tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the NURBS Fillet tool| 00:00 | Now we are going to look at another
way to connect surfaces together in NURBS
| | 00:04 | and that's called the Fillet Blend tool.
Now I am using a file to here called
| | 00:09 | obviously enough FilletBlend and it's
in our O5_projects. And what this is, is
| | 00:15 | it just a real simple set up. I have
got a sphere and a cylinder and the
| | 00:20 | cylinder the end curve of that cylinder was
extracted and projected on to that sphere.
| | 00:30 | So essentially what I have is I have
is I have a curve on surface here and
| | 00:35 | that's matching my cylinder. Now
these you don't have to match, but this I
| | 00:40 | actually will make a nice object here.
So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:45 | Now what I want to do is bridge these
two with the Surface set is seamless to
| | 00:50 | both. I can do that using the Fillet
Blend tool. So all I go is go Edit NURBS >
| | 00:55 | Surface Fillet > Fillet Blend. Now
this tool works a little bit differently
| | 01:00 | then a lot of tools and that actually
prompts you through. If you go down the
| | 01:04 | bottom right, you will see the
prompts here. It says Select curves from the
| | 01:08 | left edge. Now I have to select the
curves that are on that edge. Select that
| | 01:15 | and hit Enter. Then I select my Curve
On Surface and hit Enter again and bingo!
| | 01:24 | There you go.
| | 01:25 | Now what this has done is this
created a bridging surface a Fillet Blend
| | 01:31 | Surface. In fact, we can take a look
at this actual surface. It's actually a
| | 01:35 | third surface. So we have our sphere
our cylinder and then our derived surface,
| | 01:41 | which is the Fillet Blend. Then I go
into my Attribute Editor. I can see my
| | 01:47 | Fillet Blend Surface node right here
and you have some controls here about
| | 01:51 | where it starts and where it ends and
that sort of thing, whether or not it
| | 01:55 | Anchors, and if it comes up backwards
or it's like kind of twisted in half. You
| | 01:59 | can reverse one side or the other and
you have some control here as to how it
| | 02:04 | creates that surface.
| | 02:07 | Now the really cool thing is that the
surface is dynamic and so no matter what
| | 02:12 | you do that surface is always going to
stay attach. Now this is because I have
| | 02:17 | History on this surface here that connects
us circular curve on surface to the cylinder.
| | 02:26 | Now another thing you can do is you
can actually use this to create flexible
| | 02:30 | joints. So let me show you how to do
that with this cylinder. I am going to
| | 02:34 | select this cylinder and duplicate it.
So I am going to go Ctrl+D to duplicate
| | 02:39 | and I am just going to move that out
beyond the cylinder there. In fact, I am
| | 02:47 | going to change the pivot points, so
I am going hit Insert or Home and then
| | 02:51 | just move that pivot point here and you
will see why we do this later and then
| | 02:55 | just Insert.
| | 02:55 | Now the most important thing is that I
want to create a blend surface between
| | 02:59 | these two openings. So all I have to do
again is just go Fillet Blend tool and
| | 03:05 | then I select this Enter, this, Enter.
Now it has created a bridging surface
| | 03:13 | that actually looks like I have one
solid cylinder, but it's actually two
| | 03:19 | cylinders and so I can actually move
this and create kind of like this elbow
| | 03:23 | joint that's always connected and
always flexible. So you can see a lot of
| | 03:27 | possibilities for how you
could use this in animation.
| | 03:32 | Now the one key with this is that when
you select these surfaces you have to be
| | 03:37 | very careful about what you select. Let
me do this one more time and then I am
| | 03:42 | actually going it do it wrong on
purpose, so you can see a common errors that
| | 03:46 | actually a lot of people do. One is
that you actually instead of selecting the
| | 03:50 | forward edge you select the
perpendicular edge and that will create all sort of
| | 04:00 | weird stuff. So you got to make sure
that you select exactly the right edge.
| | 04:04 | Now another thing you can do is you
can actually select multiple edges. So I
| | 04:08 | can for example select this edge and
one of these edges as well as one of those
| | 04:16 | and I would still get an error. So be
careful about that. You have to be very
| | 04:20 | careful about what you select when you
use this tool, but if you get it right
| | 04:24 | you can do a lot of really, really cool things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Stitching NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | So now we are going to talk about
another way to attach surfaces together and
| | 00:05 | this is called stitching. Now this is
actually very similar to stitching a
| | 00:09 | garment together. Remember that a NURB
surface is really just a flat patch. In
| | 00:14 | fact we have a file up here
called Stitch.mb so just so you know.
| | 00:19 | But remember that a NURB surface is
just a flat patch and in order to make a
| | 00:25 | more complex surface you need to be
able to connect those edges together and
| | 00:29 | essentially stitch them together. You
could almost think of like how you would
| | 00:33 | stitch together a shirt where you
would take flat pieces of cloth and then
| | 00:38 | stitch together to make
more of a 3D type of garment.
| | 00:41 | So there are three types of stitch
options here in Maya. We have Stitch Surface
| | 00:48 | Points, Stitch Edges, and Global Stitch.
So we are going to start with Stitch
| | 00:54 | Surface Points. Now I have layer 3
in this file highlighted and that just
| | 01:01 | simply has two planes and what we can
do is we can just stitch together the
| | 01:04 | surface a point at a time.
| | 01:07 | So what I need to do is select both of
these and put them in the Control Vertex
| | 01:11 | mode. So I right click over the first
one, go Control Vertex. Right click over
| | 01:15 | the second one, go Control Vertex.
And now they are both in Control Vertex
| | 01:21 | component mode. Now all I have to do
is just select two of those points and
| | 01:27 | then I can go Edit NURBS > Stitch >
Stitch Surface Points and notice how that
| | 01:33 | sticks those two together. So those
two points are stitched. If I move this
| | 01:40 | surface, they are both stuck
together which is kind of nice.
| | 01:44 | So let's go ahead and do another one.
Control Vertex, make sure we are both on
| | 01:49 | the same page for these and then
select these two and then just go Stitch
| | 01:54 | Surface Points. Now I have got these
two connected. So now I have got almost
| | 01:59 | like an edge that's connected as well.
So that's the first way of doing it. Now
| | 02:04 | you can see how that -- if you are
doing it a point at a time, it can get kind
| | 02:07 | of tedious. Actually this is kind
of more for like a touch up kind of
| | 02:10 | operation. Probably the more global
way to stitch things together is by
| | 02:15 | stitching edges together.
| | 02:17 | Now I have just a couple of planes here
and we can actually stitch together the
| | 02:22 | edges of the plane. This is in layer 2.
So all I have to do is go Edit NURBS >
| | 02:31 | Stitch > Stitch Edges. Now notice my
cursor changes and I select the first edge
| | 02:36 | and then the second edge and it
stitches them together. Now I get a little
| | 02:41 | zipper here, which allows me to
control where the stitching starts on that
| | 02:45 | second edge.
| | 02:47 | Now how this works? I am going to hit
W and go into Move mode. Now what this
| | 02:52 | does is, it actually stitches those
edges together. Now what this does is, it
| | 02:57 | takes the second selected edge and just
moves it to match the edge of the first
| | 03:02 | object. Remember I selected this one
first and then the one facing us, so that
| | 03:07 | way I move this one and that edge is
always stuck to this one. So we can do the
| | 03:13 | same thing over here.
| | 03:17 | So all I have to do is go Stitch Edges,
first edge, second edge and they are
| | 03:25 | stitched together and I can just keep
doing that. Stitch Edges, 1, 2, and 1, 2,
| | 03:36 | and that stitches them all together.
Now we go in the Object mode here and move
| | 03:42 | those around. You can see I have got
all of these stuck together, which is kind
| | 03:48 | of nice. So now you have got a
continuous edge. So you don't have a box that
| | 03:53 | breaks apart.
| | 03:55 | Now the last way to do this, I am
going to go ahead and highlight layer 1, is
| | 03:59 | by using what's called Global Stitch.
Now this is probably easiest way to do
| | 04:03 | this. Now I have got actually I have an
object that's fairly similar to what we
| | 04:07 | were playing with before. I have got a
sphere, two spheres with the tops cut
| | 04:13 | off and then a loft
surface that goes between them.
| | 04:17 | If I want to I can connect these.
Now I had these connected before by
| | 04:21 | extracting the curves from the surface
to create the loft, but another way to
| | 04:25 | do this is with a stitch so I don't
have to place these exactly perfectly. I
| | 04:31 | can just get them roughly aligned and
just select all three and then I can just
| | 04:37 | go Edit NURBS > Stitch > Global Stitch.
| | 04:42 | Now what that does is it just
stitches together everything that's close. In
| | 04:46 | fact, let me give you a look at the
options for Global Stitch. It's very
| | 04:51 | similar to Merge, which is it gives a
maximum separation. So anything within
| | 04:58 | that separation gets stitched together.
You also have some options here whether
| | 05:02 | you want to stitch corners, edges,
types of smoothness and so on. But the
| | 05:07 | really cool thing is that it's all
stitched together and it all becomes
| | 05:11 | basically almost the same as one
surface. So you can take that top surface,
| | 05:15 | move it and you have a
really nice connected surface.
| | 05:20 | Now this is great for things where you
have non-square type of objects like I
| | 05:25 | have seen a lot of things like human
faces or animals modeled out of flat NURBS
| | 05:30 | patches and then just stitched together.
So these are some of the options you
| | 05:34 | have for stitching objects together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sculpting on NURBS and polygonal surfaces | 00:00 |
Another more advanced way of editing
surfaces is by sculpting them. Maya has a
| | 00:06 |
very powerful Sculpt tool for both
polygonal and NURB surfaces. So let me show
| | 00:12 |
you how this works.
| | 00:13 |
I am going to go ahead and create a
NURBS sphere, shade it. In fact I am going
| | 00:20 |
to turn off my Grid here. Now I am
going to go over to my Channel Box where I
| | 00:24 |
have my sphere and I am going to ramp
up the detail a lot. I really wanted a
| | 00:29 |
lot of detail here, so I can have
some stuff to paint on or to sculpt with.
| | 00:34 |
Then all I have to do is go to Edit
NURBS > Sculpt Geometry tool, and I want to
| | 00:39 |
make sure that I click this little
box which brings up my paint interface.
| | 00:43 |
Now this interface probably looks a
little familiar to you, because it's what
| | 00:47 |
we used to do paint select, but this
also has a number of additional tools.
| | 00:53 |
This interface is used a lot in Maya
for all sorts of things that require
| | 00:57 |
painting, but sculpting is
probably one of the more powerful one.
| | 01:01 |
So let me show you how this works. You
have a brush and you can size this brush
| | 01:07 |
here. We can make it really big or
really small and again holding down the B
| | 01:12 |
key and dragging will change that
value as well. We also have Radius and an
| | 01:20 |
Opacity, which is kind of a strength
value. We also have a profile, do we want
| | 01:25 |
this to be heavy at the center then
fade off or whatever. We can make this any
| | 01:30 |
shape we want as well.
| | 01:32 |
Now in addition to this we have our
sculpted parameters, which is do we push
| | 01:38 |
the mesh, do we pull the mesh. So for
example, if I want to push the mesh I can
| | 01:43 |
certainly do that and make a dent. I
can pull the mesh and pull it out. I can
| | 01:49 |
also smooth the mesh, which just
tempers it a little bit. I can also reorganize
| | 01:58 |
the detail. Now what this does is it
just kind of makes things a little bit
| | 02:01 |
more rational in terms of just where
the detail is going. And we also have
| | 02:05 |
what's called an Eraser, which
basically just puts this object back to the way
| | 02:09 |
it was. In fact, if I just erase
everything, I can go back to my normal sphere.
| | 02:15 |
All these tools work off of what's
called a reference vector. Now typically
| | 02:20 |
this is the normal of the surface. Now
if you don't know what a normal of the
| | 02:24 |
surface is it's really just the
point on the surface that's always
| | 02:27 |
perpendicular to where you are. So
for example, if I am on this side of the
| | 02:31 |
surface, the normals are going to
point to the right. If I am at the top then
| | 02:35 |
the normals are going to point up.
So it's always pointing away from the
| | 02:39 |
surface at a right angle.
| | 02:41 |
I can also change this. For example,
if I wanted to go around the X, Y or Z
| | 02:46 |
axis, for example if I am sculpting on
the Z axis, you will see when I am doing
| | 02:51 |
it at this angle, it's pushing. But if
I am at a 90 degree angle it's actually
| | 02:56 |
just going to push it back to the
side. So it's always pushing in that
| | 02:59 |
direction. Typically, I keep this on
Normal, because that's probably the most
| | 03:04 |
rational way to do this.
| | 03:06 |
Now I also have a feature here for how
much is this displacing. So if I put it
| | 03:11 |
up high I can pull out a lot of
surface at once or if I make it low then it's
| | 03:19 |
just gently tweaking it. Then I also
have what's called a Flood, and what the
| | 03:26 |
Flood does is it just takes that value,
whatever this value is, and it adds it.
| | 03:32 |
So essentially what it does is it
makes my sphere a little bit bigger. For
| | 03:35 |
example if I flooded it with negative,
it would actually make it little bit
| | 03:38 |
smaller. Or if I Flood Erased it, it
would just automatically go to zero.
| | 03:44 |
In addition to this I also have what's
called stroke parameters. Probably the
| | 03:49 |
most popular one is to use Reflection.
What this does, you can see it right
| | 03:55 |
here, is it reflects around in axis so
I can actually sculpt symmetrically. Now
| | 04:01 |
I can reflect around an X, Y or Z. Now
in this case I am going to do X, here,
| | 04:10 |
let's go ahead up here and I am going
to pull the surface. So you can see how I
| | 04:16 |
can create something that's very
symmetrical. For example, if I was modeling a
| | 04:21 |
character or something like that.
| | 04:23 |
In addition to this we have Stylus
Pressure. So you can actually tie this to
| | 04:27 |
the pressure of a stylus, which will
give you a lot more fine control over how
| | 04:32 |
this tool works. Now typically, what I
do is I don't really sculpt things from
| | 04:37 |
scratch using this tool, but what I do
is I get my geometry roughly to where I
| | 04:42 |
want and then I use the sculpt tool to
kind of fine tune and tweak it. Now we
| | 04:48 |
have been working on a NURB surface
but let me just show you very quickly how
| | 04:51 |
to do this with a polygonal surface.
| | 04:53 |
Now I am going to go ahead and
delete this and then I am going to go to
| | 04:56 |
Polygons and create a polygonal sphere.
Then let's go ahead again and just ramp
| | 05:05 |
up that detail. Then when I am in
the Polygons menu, you see I have mesh,
| | 05:11 |
sculpt geometry tool. It's the exact
same tool. In fact, all of the parameters
| | 05:15 |
are remembered from the last time I
used it. So you can see I can do exact same
| | 05:19 |
thing to a polygonal surface as well.
| | 05:23 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with nonlinear deformers| 00:00 | Another way to model in Maya is to
actually use some animation tools. Now, Maya
| | 00:05 | has a number of deformers that it can
use to change the surface. Now typically
| | 00:10 | these are used for animation but you
can also use them as modeling tool. So let
| | 00:14 | me show you how to use them.
| | 00:16 | Start by creating a cylinder, I am
going to make this fairly tall, so we have
| | 00:21 | some room to work with. Then, I am
going to click over here and I am just going
| | 00:25 | to give it some more sub divisions in
height. Now, let's open up the deformers.
| | 00:30 | So I am going to the Animation menu set,
Create Deformers and there is one here
| | 00:35 | called Non-linear. In fact, I am going
to tear off this menu. We have a couple,
| | 00:41 | Bend, Flare, Sine and so on. Just move
that over here. Let's just go through
| | 00:46 | these, these are actually very self-explanatory.
| | 00:48 | So all you have to do is select your
object or faces or components within an
| | 00:54 | object. Okay, it doesn't have to work
on the entire object; this makes it a
| | 00:57 | good modeling tool because you can
actually put these deformers on parts of a
| | 01:01 | model. Let's just use it for the
whole model, so you can see how it works.
| | 01:05 | The first one is Bend and if you put
that on there, you can see here an input
| | 01:09 | comes up here which says Bend. It's
very simple; in fact you can even see it
| | 01:13 | here in the Attribute Editor as well.
We have a curvature and then also a high
| | 01:20 | and a low bound. So for example, you
can say where does that curve start? Is it
| | 01:24 | just at the top or is it all over?
| | 01:27 | In fact, let me go ahead and undo out
here. So another way you can work with
| | 01:32 | these, let's go ahead and reapply
this bend, it's by using what are called
| | 01:36 | Manipulators. Now, over here on the
left, you have this little icon here and
| | 01:40 | this brings up a manipulator, which
allows you to actually manipulate how this
| | 01:45 | works. So all I have to do is grab
one of these handles, for example, this
| | 01:49 | affects the curvature and these two
affect that upper and lower bounce. So I am
| | 01:56 | going to go ahead and undo out of
that just to get back to normal.
| | 02:01 | Now, we also have other ones, we have
Flare. Now, I have got my manipulators
| | 02:05 | turned on and you can see now what
Flare does is it basically flares the
| | 02:09 | object. And you can also give it a
curvature again. Let's see the parameters
| | 02:13 | here. We have Curve; we have Start and
End Flare and again High and Low Bound.
| | 02:20 | So these are some of those options.
| | 02:24 | The next one is called Sine and that
pretty much creates a sine wave. Squash,
| | 02:32 | squash is great because it does squash
and stretch. So it keeps the volume of
| | 02:36 | the object and then just
squashes or stretches it.
| | 02:40 | Next one is Twist, which is actually
pretty simple. In fact, let's go ahead and
| | 02:45 | turn on Wireframe on Shaded, so we can
see that and essentially what it does is
| | 02:50 | it twists the object left or right.
Now, you don't really see it on the
| | 02:54 | cylinder, but in other object, you
would definitely be able to see that.
| | 02:59 | The last one is called Wave. We have
Amplitude and Drop-off minimum, maximum
| | 03:11 | position and so on. In fact, if I want
to, I can go to these manipulators here
| | 03:15 | and change this. What this is doing
is it actually creating a wave from left
| | 03:19 | to right. So we actually don't see it
here on this cylinder as much because of
| | 03:23 | the way that the wave is going.
| | 03:25 | But, those are the basics of the Non-
linear Deformers. Now, you can certainly
| | 03:29 | use these as animation tools, but I find
them very valuable as modeling tools as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with lattices| 00:00 | The next deformer I want to show you
is called a Lattice. Now, what a lattice
| | 00:05 | does is it allows you to globally
change and reshape an object. You can also
| | 00:12 | use this in animation, but I find it
to be a very powerful modeling tool as
| | 00:16 | well. But because it's a deformer, we
will find it in the Animation menu set
| | 00:21 | and under Create Deformers, then go
down to Lattice and I am going to select
| | 00:26 | the Tool Options here.
| | 00:28 | Now, in this case, I am going to add
some divisions here. I am just going to
| | 00:32 | make it 5, 5, and 5, so that I have
enough detail to edit my model and then I
| | 00:38 | am just going to go Create. Now, I have
selected my model and it puts a lattice
| | 00:42 | around that model. Now, if I go to the
outliner, you will see that I actually
| | 00:47 | have a separate object called a Lattice
and that lattice actually is a separate
| | 00:52 | object that can be moved
and rotated and whatever.
| | 00:55 | Now by moving this, I am actually
moving the lattice, not the head. But, the
| | 01:00 | lattice because it's a separate object,
it also has its own Marquee menu and
| | 01:04 | its own types of components. A lattice
really only has one component and that's
| | 01:09 | the points on the lattice. So if I
select those, then I can use them to reshape
| | 01:16 | whatever I want.
| | 01:17 | So for example, if I want to make his
head a little bit smaller, I could do
| | 01:23 | that by taking down these corners, I
could make him a low brow, I could make
| | 01:27 | him a high brow. He looks like a troll
there. We could also take his nose, move
| | 01:33 | it out, push it in, give him a little
bit more of a chin here. All of this is
| | 01:41 | just by moving these vertices and you
can move, rotate, and scale. It's just
| | 01:44 | like modeling a cube or something like
that but of course these have lattice
| | 01:48 | points that are inside where a
cube would just be the shell.
| | 01:52 | As you can see, we can actually do a
lot of stuff with a lattice. Now, the
| | 01:56 | other thing you can do with this is you
can actually add a lattice. In fact, if
| | 02:00 | I want to, I can just go ahead Edit >
Delete by Type > History and that gets
| | 02:05 | rid of my lattice.
| | 02:07 | Now, if I wanted to do some more
modifications, I can actually place this
| | 02:11 | lattice on just a portion of the
character. So if I right-click over this,
| | 02:17 | select for example vertices, select
just the nose, I can create a lattice that
| | 02:23 | is just around the nose or just
around what I have selected. I seem to have
| | 02:27 | selected a little bit more than just
the nose. But you get the idea and then I
| | 02:32 | just go to lattice point and now, I can
really fine-tune and tweak the nose of
| | 02:37 | the character.
| | 02:37 | I am sure you can see a lot of the
benefits for doing things this way because
| | 02:46 | what you can do is you can push a lot
of detail around, especially if you have
| | 02:50 | a high resolution model, it might be
better to use a lattice than to actually
| | 02:56 | try and model the surface itself.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting NURBS to polygons| 00:00 | Now, I want to show you how to move
between NURBS and polygons. Now, we have
| | 00:05 | been doing a lot of NURBS modeling but
you can actually take a NURBS surface
| | 00:10 | and convert it to polygon. This gives
you some of the benefits of the smooth
| | 00:15 | surface modeling of NURBS. But, you can
also go down to polygons for your final
| | 00:22 | output. Now, you can't go polygons to
NURBS because polygons are actually a
| | 00:26 | lower order surface.
| | 00:28 | But I have this deco car and let's go
ahead and convert some of these surfaces
| | 00:33 | to NURBS. Let's go ahead and play with
this fender effect. I am just going to
| | 00:35 | lift this fender up, so we can see it.
| | 00:37 | Then, I am going to go Modify > Convert
> NURBS to Polygons and let's go ahead
| | 00:44 | and see some of the options here. Now
I am just going to go with the defaults
| | 00:49 | in Maya, which is Standard Fit and
Quads, and just go Tessellate. When that
| | 00:54 | happens, what it does is it actually
creates a second surface here called NURBS
| | 01:00 | to Poly, and that tries to
fit it exactly to that surface.
| | 01:05 | Now, the thing you will notice is that
it's not a regular polygonal surface. As
| | 01:10 | the surface gets more curved, it adds
more polygons. This is good because what
| | 01:16 | it does is it gives you the minimum
number of polygons needed to create that
| | 01:20 | surface, but it's not a surface that
can be deformed. So if this is something
| | 01:26 | just going to be a rigid object, it
might be okay, but if you are going to
| | 01:30 | animate it or do something like that,
you may want a more regular polygonal
| | 01:34 | surface with more regular edged loops.
| | 01:37 | So I am going to go ahead and delete
this first conversion here and I am going
| | 01:40 | to go ahead and select my lofted
surface again. Now, I am going to go Modify >
| | 01:45 | Convert > NURBS to Polygons and this
time we are going to change the way that
| | 01:50 | it converts. In fact, there is a
number of different ways to convert.
| | 01:53 | First of all, the output can be either
triangles or quads. So let's take a look
| | 01:58 | at what triangles does. Triangles
basically makes your surface into a
| | 02:03 | triangular surface, which some people
like particularly for some certain types
| | 02:06 | of game engines and that sort of thing.
| | 02:09 | Let's go ahead and do this again and I
am going to keep it at quads. We also
| | 02:17 | have a Tessellation method. One is
called General; the other one is called
| | 02:21 | Count. Now, count just says, I want
this to be no more than 200 polygons or
| | 02:27 | whatever number you dial in. If I
apply that, you can see that this actually
| | 02:33 | reduces that to no more than 291
polygons and it keeps it that way. If I make
| | 02:38 | this a much larger number, you are
going to get a more detailed mesh, okay.
| | 02:44 | Now, for general, this is actually the
one that I tend to use the most and this
| | 02:50 | actually gives you how do you want
this to create polygons per U and V
| | 02:57 | direction, remember U and V direction,
in the surface. So basically, what I do
| | 03:02 | is I do a per span. So basically, in
this case, we are doing 3 per span. What
| | 03:08 | that does is it gives me 3 polygons per
span of this surface. So that's a great
| | 03:14 | way to dial in a nice surface that has
edge loops that you can actually work
| | 03:19 | with. I like that per span that it's
the one that works the best for me for a
| | 03:22 | lot of things that I do.
| | 03:24 | But in addition to that, we can also do
what's called Control Points. What that
| | 03:31 | does is again it just converts exactly
what we have here to polygons as well.
| | 03:36 | So it's a very simple one. Now, with
the general one, we also have what's
| | 03:41 | called the Secondary Tessellation
Controls, which allow you to give additional
| | 03:46 | tessellation here. So let's go ahead
and do an Apply on that and that actually
| | 03:50 | gives you a lot more detail. Also
notice how it actually is adding detail when
| | 03:57 | the surface gets more curved. So
again, you are not getting a regular
| | 04:00 | tessellation here when we
are using this Chord Height.
| | 04:04 | Now, the last thing I want to show you,
I am just going to go ahead and move
| | 04:07 | this back down, is that this does work
on things like trim surfaces. So I have
| | 04:13 | this window. I can also create NURBS to
Poly on this window. So I am just going
| | 04:17 | to go ahead and do a standard fit on
this and just do tessellate and now I have
| | 04:23 | those windows are actually built in
polygons. So there we have it. Okay, so
| | 04:31 | those are some of the tools for moving
between the different geometry types.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling templates with image planes and NURBS planes| 00:00 | So now, we are going to start building
this little robot here and this is the
| | 00:05 | completed version and over the next
couple of chapters, we are going to add
| | 00:09 | parts to this robot as we go
through the modeling exercises.
| | 00:13 | Now, in order to model something in
Maya, it's always a great idea to have
| | 00:19 | reference. So let's say you are
modeling a human, you might want photographic
| | 00:24 | reference, or a car or something like
that, or if it's something that you have
| | 00:29 | designed, you may want hand
drawn or Illustrator drawn reference.
| | 00:33 | For this robot, I actually just did a
simple pencil sketch. In fact, I am just
| | 00:37 | going to go ahead and open this and
show you the sketch that I did. File > View
| | 00:42 | Image and then we go into our Project
> Source Images, and I have one here
| | 00:47 | called Robot_00. Let's just take a look at that.
| | 00:51 | So what I did was I drew an
orthographic view of this robot. So I drew an exact
| | 00:57 | front view and an exact side view.
Now, if you are doing photography, you
| | 01:02 | basically need to do the same thing
which is take an exact front version of
| | 01:06 | your subject and exact side version,
maybe even a top version, and you want to
| | 01:11 | take those with a very long length so
you have as minimal amount of perspective.
| | 01:16 | So what I did, was I brought this
into Photoshop and I just made sure
| | 01:19 | everything lined up and then, I am
just going to show you two more. I broke
| | 01:23 | those in two. I broke it up into a
front and a side view. So I have two
| | 01:31 | separate images, one for front, one for
side and I just want to make sure that
| | 01:35 | they are aligned and pretty much the same size.
| | 01:38 | So I am going to go ahead and close
this. So in order to model against
| | 01:42 | reference, we need to bring those
images into Maya. There is actually two ways
| | 01:47 | of doing it. I am going to show you the
first way. I am just going to go File >
| | 01:51 | New Scene, and the first way of doing
it is to actually create what are called
| | 01:56 | Image Planes in the viewports that we
want. In this case, I have a front and a
| | 02:01 | side view of the robot. So I am going
to start with the front view. I am just
| | 02:04 | going to go expand this view-port and
then on the View menu, I am just going to
| | 02:09 | go down to Image Plane and then I am
going to import that image. So go to Image
| | 02:14 | Plane, Import Image.
| | 02:16 | I go to my source images directory,
which is where I have these particular ones
| | 02:19 | stored, and I select Robot_Front00
and there it is. If I go out to my
| | 02:28 | view-ports, you can see I have actually
got this image already in Maya. Now, I
| | 02:35 | can do the same for the side-view.
View > Image Plane > Import Image and in
| | 02:42 | this case, it's Robot_
Side00 and there is my image.
| | 02:47 | Now, the real key here is you need to
make sure that these images are the same
| | 02:51 | size. So there is a same height in
terms of number of pixels. So that way, they
| | 02:56 | pretty much line up when you come
into Maya. Now, this is one way of doing
| | 03:00 | this. I actually like doing it a
different way, so let me show you that as well.
| | 03:05 | I am going to get rid of these by going
into my Hypergraph Connections. So what
| | 03:11 | I am going to do is I am actually
going to go into my Camera Views here and I
| | 03:16 | am just going to go View > Select
Camera, and it brings it up and I can just
| | 03:21 | select that image plane and delete it
if I want to. The same for here, View >
| | 03:27 | Select Camera, and that brings up the
camera and then I just re-graph that by
| | 03:31 | hitting this button here,
select the image plane and delete it.
| | 03:35 | Now, what I like to do is I like to
actually build these against real planes
| | 03:39 | because it gives me a lot more
flexibility in the way that I model. So let me
| | 03:43 | show you how to do that. I am still
going to go into the front view and now I
| | 03:47 | am just going to go and create a NURBS
plane. So I am going to go Surfaces, hit
| | 03:52 | Plane, or I can go Create NURBS
Primitives > Plane, and then I am just going to
| | 03:59 | sketch out a NURBS plane which is
roughly the size of that image I created.
| | 04:04 | Now, the reason I am using a NURBS
plane is because I am actually going to
| | 04:07 | model most of this in polygons. So if
I put the image on a NURBS plane, I can
| | 04:11 | set my selection masks, so that I don't
accidentally select my NURBS object. It
| | 04:17 | just makes it easier to have them as
different types of geometry because then
| | 04:20 | you can make it, so you
don't select one or the other.
| | 04:23 | Now, once I have this, I still need to
put -- in fact let's go ahead and shade
| | 04:27 | this. I am going to go into my
Perspective View and shade it. Now, here is the
| | 04:31 | little trick. We are going to do a
little bit of rendering stuff, but I just
| | 04:34 | want to show you how to quickly add a
texture to this. I am going to go to my
| | 04:38 | Rendering tab and I can do this one of
two ways. I can go to my Rendering tab
| | 04:42 | and add what's called a lambert,
which is a non-shiny material, or I can
| | 04:47 | right-click over here, assign
new material, scroll up to Lambert.
| | 04:52 | Now, the reason I am choosing
lambert is because it doesn't reflect. It's
| | 04:54 | non-shiny. So once I do that, it
brings up my Attribute Editor for that
| | 05:00 | material. Then, I have to just
basically put that image into the color channel.
| | 05:04 | So I am going to go ahead into color,
hit that little checkerboard there and
| | 05:08 | this brings up Create Render Node. And
we are going to go through this a lot
| | 05:11 | more when we actually go through
rendering, but I am just going to show you
| | 05:14 | this very quickly.
| | 05:15 | So I want to make sure that this is
clicked as normal and then I am just going
| | 05:18 | to go ahead and Load File > Image Name
and then Robot_Front. Little bit of a
| | 05:23 | procedure, but once you get it, then
you can just turn on hardware texturing
| | 05:28 | and that robot image will be there. So
I can just scale this and make it about
| | 05:33 | the right size.
| | 05:34 | Now, I can do the same for the other
robot. In fact, I can just take this one,
| | 05:38 | duplicate it. So you can just go Edit >
Duplicate or hit Ctrl+D and then rotate
| | 05:44 | it. In fact, if I use my Channel Box,
I could actually just rotate it exactly
| | 05:48 | 90 degrees. So I can rotate around Y 90 degrees.
| | 05:53 | So now, I have got two planes at 90
degrees to each other. Then, I select this
| | 05:56 | second plane and again apply a lambert
texture. In fact, I am just going to do
| | 06:00 | it here from the Rendering Shelf. In
the Color Channel, Normal, File, and then
| | 06:05 | select the file name and this
is going to be Robot_Side00.
| | 06:08 | Now, this is a little bit more of
a procedure, but you get a lot more
| | 06:13 | flexibility with this. Watch what
you can do, you can actually take these
| | 06:17 | planes and you can scale them, you
can move them around, so that they are
| | 06:21 | exactly aligned. It's harder to do
with image planes. So I find this a much
| | 06:26 | better way to create my refs for modeling.
| | 06:31 | Also, the other nice thing is that you
actually can see this on both sides. In
| | 06:35 | fact, one of the things I am going to
do is, I am going to go ahead and turn on
| | 06:37 | the Grid here and make sure that his
feet are flat on the ground right there.
| | 06:42 | So now that I have this, I can go
ahead and start modeling. But, before I do
| | 06:46 | that, I am actually going to start
working with my layers a little bit.
| | 06:49 | So I am just going to go ahead and
select both of these and then, I am just
| | 06:53 | going to go Create New Layer and right-
click, add selected objects. In fact, I
| | 06:58 | am going to go ahead and double-click
on this and just call this Templates.
| | 07:03 | So now, I can turn these on and off
very quickly when I am modeling. If I want
| | 07:07 | to see my templates, I can turn them on,
if I don't, I can turn them off, very
| | 07:11 | simple. So those are the basics of how
to set up your reference for modeling.
| | 07:16 | So let's go ahead and start modeling.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a robot pt. 1: The body| 00:00 | So now that we have our templates set up,
let's go ahead and start modeling and
| | 00:05 | this is my robot.
| | 00:06 | Now with this template, the first
thing I want to do is set it so I don't
| | 00:10 | accidentally select it. I can do this
in one of two ways, the first is I can
| | 00:15 | set a selection mask and just right
click here and turn off NURBS Surfaces.
| | 00:20 | That way I don't accidentally select it.
But eventually I will be adding a few
| | 00:26 | little NURBS Surfaces on this model so
that's not going to work for my whole process.
| | 00:30 | So I am going to actually go and turn
that back on. I am right clicking here.
| | 00:33 | But actually I have to set up on a layer.
So if I want to, I can click on this
| | 00:38 | button here and if I click on R, that
means it's just reference and I can't
| | 00:43 | select it but I can see it. So now I
can model over this and not worry about
| | 00:49 | accidentally selecting
my template and moving it.
| | 00:51 | Now let's go ahead and take a look at
this from the front view. I am going to
| | 00:56 | turn on shading and I am going to turn
on hardware texturing and let's go ahead
| | 01:01 | and zoom in a little bit. Now one thing
I am noticing is that this is actually
| | 01:05 | not centered, here is the central line
of my scene and that's really off to the
| | 01:10 | side of the nose of this character.
| | 01:13 | So I am actually going to turn off R
here, select my NURBS Surfaces and move
| | 01:19 | them so that they are pretty much
centered. I want to build my robot around the
| | 01:24 | center line of the scene because that
will make you a lot easier to build.
| | 01:28 | So once I do that, I can deselect and
then just go ahead and switch that back
| | 01:33 | to R. Now that we have this, we can
actually start building the robot. Now I am
| | 01:38 | going to start with his body and that's
basically going to be a box or cube and
| | 01:45 | I am going to build most of him out of
polygons. Some of this is going to be
| | 01:49 | NURBS but most of it will be polygons.
| | 01:51 | So all I have to do is go to polygons
and select cube. But the key here is that
| | 01:57 | I really want to see what I am drawing.
So I am going to do one more step,
| | 02:00 | before I do that, I am going to turn on
X-Ray for this and then just select my
| | 02:05 | cube, drag it until it's the
size of the body of the robot.
| | 02:11 | Now I still need to drag to set the
height. So I am going to hit my Spacebar,
| | 02:16 | go into my perspective view and then
drag this out. I don't really know exactly
| | 02:21 | how deep this is because I am actually
dragging this out in a perspective view
| | 02:26 | and also this starts at zero and
his back is actually behind zero.
| | 02:31 | So I am just estimating it and then I
am going to go ahead and position it. In
| | 02:36 | fact the best way to position this is
in the side view and we are still going
| | 02:40 | to turn on Smooth Shade, Hardware
Texturing and then I am going to turn on
| | 02:45 | X-Ray and let's go ahead and position that.
| | 02:47 | Now he is a little bit thin, so I can
go into my polyCube here and I am just
| | 02:52 | going to center this in the drawing
and then I am just going to go ahead and
| | 02:56 | adjust my height until that's about
the right size. Okay, now we still have a
| | 03:02 | little bit more to go on this body
because we do have these curved and beveled edges.
| | 03:08 | The easiest way to do that is to simply
bevel the edges. So I am going to right
| | 03:14 | click above the box, select the edge
and then I am just going to select all the
| | 03:19 | edges in my model. In fact, I am going
to turn on X-Ray here as well so we can
| | 03:23 | match it to the model.
| | 03:25 | And then just go into my Polygons menu,
Edit Mesh > Bevel. Now that bevel is
| | 03:30 | set at 45 degrees but I have got my
controls right here. So first thing I am
| | 03:35 | going to do is add a few segments,
maybe three, maybe four. And then I am going
| | 03:39 | to select my Offset and again I am
middle clicking and dragging, so that I get
| | 03:44 | around this, it's about the same as
what I have in the drawing. So I am just
| | 03:48 | going to estimate that
but that looks pretty good.
| | 03:50 | Now we can do the same for the
character's head. So I am going back into my
| | 03:55 | front view, I am going to draw
another cube right there. It's just slightly
| | 04:01 | below the body so that it
interpenetrates just a hair. I am just going to the
| | 04:07 | side view here, drag this forward and I
am estimating. This is almost the exact
| | 04:11 | same procedure. Hey! Look, I was pretty close.
| | 04:15 | Now with this I actually want to bevel
just the top and front edges but I don't
| | 04:21 | want to bevel the bottom. I don't want
to bevel that edge that's against the
| | 04:25 | top of the body. So I am simply going
to right click above here, select just
| | 04:30 | the ones above here, Mesh > Bevel. And
then again, I am just going to add three
| | 04:37 | Segments and affect the Offset
here so that it's about right.
| | 04:42 | So let's go ahead and turn on Normal Shading here.
So now I have the body and the head.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a robot pt. 2: Arms, legs, and feet| 00:00 |
So now that we have the body blocked
out, let's go ahead and do the arms and
| | 00:04 |
legs. Now I stated this out in a file
called Robot_01.mb. So if you want to
| | 00:11 |
follow along you can. Now I added one
little thing to that file and that's just
| | 00:16 |
two NURBS Curves and those actually
allow me to make the legs. So we are going
| | 00:22 |
to start with the legs and the
feet and then move on to the arms.
| | 00:25 |
So if I want to I can just select both
of these curves and go Surfaces, Loft
| | 00:33 |
and that creates -- in fact, let's
go ahead and shade this. Let's go into
| | 00:37 |
Hardware Texturing there. That creates
one of my legs. Now if I want to I can
| | 00:41 |
actually select that surface and just
create another leg from that first leg.
| | 00:46 |
So I can create the mirror opposite of
that leg and probably the easiest way to
| | 00:50 |
do that is with Duplicate Special.
Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:53 |
If I go to Duplicate Special and click
on this box here, I have all sorts of
| | 00:58 |
options. Now the option I want to show
you is that I can scale as I duplicate.
| | 01:03 |
So if I want to I can scale a negative
1 in the X direction which is right down
| | 01:08 |
here and when I do that it actually
takes my leg, duplicates it and then adds a
| | 01:14 |
negative 1 to the scaling which
actually just mirrors it, which is exactly what
| | 01:17 |
I want and that's how I make that second leg.
| | 01:20 |
Now let's go ahead and make the foot.
Now the foot is easy to make. It's very
| | 01:25 |
similar to what we did with the body.
We are just going to take a box and we
| | 01:30 |
are going to bevel it. Drag it out so
that it's the size of the foot and then
| | 01:34 |
drag to set the height, there we go. In
the side view, I can certainly see this
| | 01:39 |
and move it and I can also again
affect the height of this so that it's about
| | 01:46 |
the right width. Now I can also just
bevel that top edge, just by going Edge.
| | 01:52 |
And then just probably in my
Perspective viewport here, just select one, two,
| | 01:57 |
three, four; Polygons, Mesh > Bevel.
Hey! But of course, I need to make my
| | 02:05 |
offset a little bit less and then just
add a few segments to round that off. So
| | 02:11 |
there is my foot.
| | 02:12 |
And then all I have to do is just
select the foot itself, duplicate with Ctrl+D
| | 02:19 |
and then just move that over here.
Now as I go, I probably should be naming
| | 02:23 |
these, but I am just going to continue
on right now, so that we can see just
| | 02:27 |
the process but typically I would be,
as I create these, I would name them
| | 02:31 |
right and left foot and so on.
| | 02:34 |
Now for the arms, we probably should
start with the shoulder there which
| | 02:38 |
actually is kind of a box shape on
this side. But if we look at it from this
| | 02:43 |
side, we see it's actually circular
more of a cylinder shape. So we are just
| | 02:49 |
going to take a default cylinder and I
am going to drag that to make the rough
| | 02:54 |
outline of that arm. And then I need
to again drag this out, so I am going to
| | 02:59 |
into Wireframe mode so I can see this.
| | 03:01 |
Now when I drew it, it started at zero,
which is inside the body of the robot.
| | 03:06 |
So I just need to drag that out and
again, I am just going to estimate the
| | 03:09 |
width, I can always adjust that later.
I will turn on my Shading here and I can
| | 03:13 |
move this out to exactly the size I
want. Now I can certainly change the size
| | 03:18 |
here by changing the height,
so it's about the right width.
| | 03:21 |
Now the other thing is I just need
to change the Subdivisions in terms of
| | 03:25 |
Height. So one, two sub divisions, I
have got a little bit of space here, a
| | 03:31 |
little bit of space here and then the
extrusion for the arm. So basically I
| | 03:37 |
want to be able to extrude that arm out.
So this gives me the amount of detail
| | 03:41 |
I need to do that.
| | 03:42 |
So I am just going to select these
vertices and scale them. Now I have my
| | 03:50 |
detail in the right place to create
that arm and all I have to do is select
| | 03:54 |
these faces underneath. In fact,
let's go through here to match what I have
| | 04:06 |
here. So I need these faces to be
from here to about here. In fact, we can
| | 04:12 |
probably take a look at that in the
side view here. In fact, if we turn on
| | 04:16 |
X-Ray we can kind of see how that
works. So basically, I want this to match
| | 04:21 |
this and this to match this. I need to
take one of these away here, there we
| | 04:25 |
go. So that's what I am going to extrude.
| | 04:30 |
So let's go ahead and do that. So we
are going to go Edit Mesh > Extrude. Make
| | 04:35 |
sure we have Keep Faces Together on
and then I am going to extrude this. Now
| | 04:41 |
the problem is that it's just
extruding out according to what the normals of
| | 04:45 |
this are. So we need to kind of squish
this back together, but I am just going
| | 04:50 |
to extrude it at this point
and then come back and fix it.
| | 04:55 |
I can do that by selecting these
vertices and the first thing I want to do is
| | 04:58 |
flatten them out. I can do that by
scaling, just scale them down so they are
| | 05:03 |
flat and then scale them together.
Now I have got the sort of detail that I want.
| | 05:08 |
So sometimes when you extrude, it's
not going to be exactly what you want but
| | 05:11 |
you always can model it back in later.
So now I am just going to hit E for
| | 05:15 |
rotate and rotate this around and move
it so it's pretty much in how I want it,
| | 05:22 |
maybe even scale it just a little bit.
| | 05:27 |
So there is my basic arm. Now if I want
I can also bevel those edges again, so
| | 05:33 |
let's just go in my edge here, select
that one, hit the up arrow to get my Edge
| | 05:37 |
loop, Edit Mesh > Bevel and then again
just Offset. So I can bevel that edge
| | 05:43 |
just a little bit, same for this one,
Bevel and again fix my Offset. So now I
| | 05:51 |
have got my top version of that, in fact,
let's go ahead and see this in non X-Ray mode.
| | 05:58 |
So that's my top part of my arm. Now I
just need to do the same for the lower
| | 06:04 |
part of the arm. I already have the
basic structure that I need, so all I have
| | 06:08 |
to do is just take this and duplicate it.
So I am just going to go ahead and do
| | 06:13 |
Ctrl+D, duplicate this part of the arm
and use it to make the lower part. Now
| | 06:19 |
this is a little bit bigger but what
I can do is I can certainly scale this
| | 06:22 |
down just a little bit. And then
rotate it, so that I have my second arm and
| | 06:28 |
then select these vertices and again
move them over and maybe rotate them and
| | 06:35 |
so on and so forth.
| | 06:36 |
Now the only other issue that we have
here. In fact, let's go in Object mode
| | 06:40 |
here. Now I can certainly move this
over, now the one thing is I do want to
| | 06:44 |
create kind of like a little notch for
this top arm to fit into the bottom arm
| | 06:49 |
and I can do that by just selecting some faces.
| | 06:53 |
So for example, these faces along
here and I can do another Extrude, just
| | 07:00 |
extrude those down. If I hit the blue
one, I can extrude them down and then I
| | 07:05 |
could scale them in just a little bit.
So now I have kind of a notch for that
| | 07:10 |
other one to fit into. Go back to
Object mode and move that into place.
| | 07:16 |
Now there is still a little bit of
fitting to go here. In fact, I can just make
| | 07:20 |
that a little bit wider, just like
that and there we go. So now pretty much
| | 07:23 |
fits. So now I have got the arms and I
have got the legs. Now all I have to do
| | 07:29 |
to create the other arm is select both
of these and then just duplicate them
| | 07:34 |
and move them over. So let's go ahead
and do some more robot modeling in the
| | 07:39 |
next lesson.
| | 07:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a robot pt. 3: The face| 00:00 | So now we have our Robot pretty much
sketched out. I have got this saved
| | 00:05 | Robot_02.mb, and then I just added in
two additional cylinders for the hand.
| | 00:12 | Now let's work on the face of the
Robot. Let's take a look at what his face
| | 00:15 | looks like, I am going to go into the
front viewport and let's take a quick
| | 00:19 | glance of that, and we have three
things that we need to build. One is these
| | 00:25 | eyes and the other one is this kind of
nose brow shape, and then we also have
| | 00:30 | this grill for the mouth. Well, the
eyes are basically just spheres, so we can
| | 00:34 | knock those out very quickly, all I
have to do is just create a sphere, and
| | 00:38 | that's it, just make sure it's the same
size, and then just go ahead, and move
| | 00:43 | that, so it's right at the front of that,
of that body, and then just duplicate
| | 00:51 | it, and there we have got my eyes.
| | 00:54 | Now let's work on this mouth, which is
kind of a grill shape. We can start by
| | 00:58 | creating a box, and then we need to
have enough detail in here to create each
| | 01:03 | one of these little details, now
these are divots or indentations in this
| | 01:08 | grill. So we can start with a box, so
I am going to draw a box that's pretty
| | 01:12 | much the same width, go into my side
viewport and drag out that box, so I have
| | 01:17 | a little bit of depth, and then just
move that up to the front of his face. Now
| | 01:23 | with this box, I still need enough
detail to be able to extrude in each one of
| | 01:29 | these divots. So I need a series of
edge loops on either side of these. Now I
| | 01:34 | can do this in a number of ways. One is,
I can do insert edge loops, but that's
| | 01:38 | going to get little tedious, and I
might not be as accurate as I want to be.
| | 01:42 | Probably the easier way is to just use
my Subdivisions. So for example, for my
| | 01:46 | Subdivisions in Depth, if I put that
at 3, I know I'll have enough detail for
| | 01:51 | the top, the middle, and the bottom.
| | 01:53 | Then I also need to change my
Subdivisions Width to a number that allows me to
| | 01:58 | create six of these. Now I know from
experience that that number is actually
| | 02:02 | going to be 13. So I have one, two,
three, four, five, six places to create
| | 02:10 | those divots. Now all I have to do is
position my top and bottom vertices right
| | 02:16 | here, and here, to border that, and
again, this is just a little rough, this
| | 02:23 | drawing isn't exactly accurate, and
now that I have that, I can just do an Extrude.
| | 02:29 | So I am going to go into my
prospective viewport, in fact, I am going to turn
| | 02:32 | off my templates here, so that way I
can see this a little bit better, and then
| | 02:38 | I am going to go into face mode, I
am going to select this face, every
| | 02:42 | alternate face, right like that, and
then just do an extrude. I am going to
| | 02:49 | extrude just a little bit, and then
extrude again a little bit more, because
| | 02:56 | what I really want to do is create an
edge, remember how smoothing works. I am
| | 03:00 | actually going to smooth this, so we
are going to create a little bit of an
| | 03:04 | edge. In fact, if you want you can
see how this works just by hitting the
| | 03:06 | number 3, and that gives us a
good idea as to how this will smooth.
| | 03:11 | And if I want, I can also position
this, its looks like its a little high.
| | 03:20 | There we go. Now the next one is going
to be his little nose, his little brow,
| | 03:26 | so I am going to turn on my Template
again, and what I need here is these again
| | 03:30 | are divots, but these are
hemispherical divots, they are made out of spheres.
| | 03:35 | So I am actually going to have to use
a Boolean to create these, but first I
| | 03:41 | need the rough shape, well, this is
going to be done using a box, so I am just
| | 03:44 | going to go ahead and create a simple
box, and again, just the same procedure.
| | 03:49 | I am going to drag this out, move this
out to the front here, and I also need
| | 03:56 | this T shape, so I can do that by just
adding 2 Subdivisions in Width, scaling
| | 04:04 | these in, and then selecting this face
on the bottom and Extruding it out. I
| | 04:11 | may probably have to do this in
prospective view to select that little face
| | 04:17 | there, and then just do Recent Command,
Extrude, and Extrude that out, and turn
| | 04:24 | on my Template, and its pretty close.
| | 04:27 | Okay, so I need to create a number of
spheres to cut out my Booleans. Because I
| | 04:32 | have got the Template here, I've got
the thing I am going to cut. Now I need
| | 04:36 | the things that will actually cut this.
So I am going to create some polygonal
| | 04:41 | spheres. I am actually going to create
one, and move that out. Now what I need
| | 04:52 | to do is figure out how deep this
needs to go in order to create that sort of
| | 04:57 | hemispherical divot. So I kind of need
to position this in front of it, so that
| | 05:02 | it makes the divot, but the divot is
just big enough. Now once I get one, I
| | 05:08 | need to duplicate these. Now I can do
that in the number of ways. I can just
| | 05:12 | hit Ctrl+D, and move it. That might be
the easiest way to do it. I could also
| | 05:17 | use Duplicate Special, which would
allow me to position them precisely, because
| | 05:23 | what Duplicate Special does, it
allows me to do a Number of copies within
| | 05:29 | Translation per a copy. But this is
small enough, so I can just copy all of
| | 05:35 | these, and I should be pretty close here.
| | 05:48 | So now that I have all of these
cutters. We essentially got to cut out the
| | 05:51 | little holes for this nose bridge.
These are 11 of these. Now I don't have to
| | 05:56 | do 11 Booleans, so the easiest thing to
do is just select them all, select all
| | 06:00 | the spheres, go Mesh > Combine, and
that combines them into one sphere. In
| | 06:04 | fact, I can do Modify > Center Pivot,
and now I can basically move those in and
| | 06:09 | out as one. So now I select my T shape,
then I select my spheres, and I do Mesh
| | 06:21 | > Booleans > Difference, and there we go,
just cut the little holes there, and
| | 06:28 | that looks pretty cool. Okay, so
that's the basics of his face. So let's go
| | 06:33 | ahead and move on to some other cool stuff.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a robot pt. 4: The chest| 00:01 | So now let's keep working on our robot.
In this lesson we are going to build
| | 00:05 | the front parts of this robot. So let
me go ahead and turn on these templates
| | 00:10 | and show you what we are going to work
on. We are going to work on this little
| | 00:14 | shield here and the dial. Now, I have
done a few things with this robot. One is
| | 00:21 | that I have organized stuff into layers.
So, I have created a Templates layer,
| | 00:26 | a Robot layer, which is all the
geometry, and then a layer for Curves.
| | 00:30 | Now, I have already pre-drawn some
curves here and so we don't have to go
| | 00:34 | through that process and we are going
to use those curves to create this front
| | 00:40 | shield. Okay, so we have got this
shield here which has kind of a round button
| | 00:46 | here with the center part and then
another round button on the side and then
| | 00:50 | the dial is pretty much self-
explanatory. What I have done is I have just
| | 00:54 | traced that outline as
best I could with the curves.
| | 00:58 | Now, let me show how I created this
shield. I am actually going to turn off the
| | 01:04 | Templates right now and let's just
take a look at these Curves. This first
| | 01:08 | curve here that is just for that button.
So it's just the outline of that and
| | 01:13 | then these curves create the ridged
shield. Okay, so in order to do this most
| | 01:21 | effectively I like to start with one
curve and in this case I drew this curve
| | 01:26 | here and if I go on to ControlVertices,
you can see that this is actually made
| | 01:31 | up of a number of CVs.
| | 01:33 | I could have actually drawn this curve
with probably just four CVs and it would
| | 01:37 | be just fine. But the reason I drew it
with multiple curves is so that I could
| | 01:42 | do this sort of detail here. So I can
take that one curve and just reshape it
| | 01:48 | so if you can see it here from the top,
let me turn on Hull here. So when you
| | 01:55 | can see it from the top, you see I have
got this sawtooth arrangement and that
| | 01:59 | gives it kind of that rippling effect.
So I have duplicated this curve here and
| | 02:06 | here and then I also have one curve on
each side of that base to kind of give
| | 02:11 | it a nice flow.
| | 02:13 | So in order to create this it's very
simple. All I have to do is just go from
| | 02:17 | top to bottom and just select all of
these curves and we have done before
| | 02:24 | Surfaces, Loft. And now you can kind
of see this, so you can see how we get
| | 02:30 | that nice ripple effect here. Now, for
the side one for this little button, we
| | 02:36 | are going to do a Revolve. In fact
let's take a look at this with the template
| | 02:40 | behind it. We are actually going
to do Revolve to make that detail.
| | 02:45 | So let's go back into our Perspective
view and in order to do a Revolve, I do
| | 02:52 | need to have that pivot centered at
the center of the Revolve. So I am just
| | 02:56 | going to hit the W key just to see
where that pivot is set and it looks like
| | 03:01 | its set in the right place.
| | 03:02 | So let's go ahead and go Surfaces >
Revolve, but before we do that we need to
| | 03:07 | make sure we are revolving around the
proper axis and in this case it's the
| | 03:10 | blue axis, which is the Z-axis. So go
ahead and do that Revolve. And there is
| | 03:17 | that detail. Now, I still have to
create a couple of more things. First of all
| | 03:24 | I need to create the opposite button
here. So I need to create this side. Well
| | 03:30 | because I have created this surface
from a Revolve, its center has actually had
| | 03:35 | 000. I can use that to work with
Duplicate special to actually create an exact mirror.
| | 03:42 | So all I have to do is go Duplicate
Special, put -1 in the Scale. Watch what
| | 03:49 | this does. There we go, so now I have
got an exact opposite of that. Now all we
| | 03:56 | need is a Fillet blend that connects
these three surfaces. So let's go ahead
| | 04:03 | and do that for one side and then the
other. So I am going to go ahead and turn
| | 04:08 | off my Templates and then I am going to
select my lofted surface, right-click,
| | 04:14 | Isoparm, select the Isoparm at the
very end Duplicate Surface Curves.
| | 04:20 | If I go into my Outline, and you will
see it all the way down here I have this
| | 04:25 | duplicated curve. Now, I can also
select my revolve surface and then just go
| | 04:32 | into the side viewport. I don't have to
maximize that, I just have to make sure
| | 04:35 | that that's the active viewport and
then just and then just go Edit NURB >
| | 04:40 | Project Curve on Surface and so now
that curve is on the surface there. And I
| | 04:47 | can use these now to create the
Fillet Blend. So I go Edit NURBS > Surface
| | 04:51 | Fillet > Fillet Blend, select the end
Isoparm of the loft, hit Enter. Select
| | 04:59 | this curve on surface, hit Enter.
| | 05:03 | Now, this is actually flipped around,
but I can change that by just keeping
| | 05:07 | this Fillet Blend surface selected and
going into my Attribute Editor. Now, I
| | 05:13 | can basically reverse this, but
actually I have to reverse two things. I have
| | 05:17 | to turn off Auto Normal and then I have
to flip and reverse one of these sides
| | 05:23 | and then that just makes it perfect.
| | 05:25 | So let's go ahead and do this for the
other side as well. So let's go ahead and
| | 05:31 | go Isoparm, select this, Duplicate
Surface Curves, go into side view, make sure
| | 05:45 | that's active. It has a little blue
line around it when it's active, Project
| | 05:50 | Curve on Surface and then go back in my
perspective, Fillet Blend tool, select
| | 05:58 | that, hit Enter, select that curve, hit
Enter and this one actually didn't need
| | 06:05 | to be reversed.
| | 06:06 | So there we go. So there is the shield.
Now, let's very quickly do the dial.
| | 06:12 | Now the dial is built from two curves
that were actually how I drew this. Let
| | 06:17 | me just go very quickly through how I
drew it, because I wanted this to be
| | 06:21 | symmetrical so I actually drew half of
the curve, flipped it and then merged
| | 06:26 | the two curves together to make sure
they are exactly symmetrical. But for this
| | 06:31 | all we really need to know is that
these curves exist. So let's go ahead and
| | 06:34 | select both of these. Now, these have
to be exactly on the same plane. You
| | 06:41 | cannot have this at any angle here and
then just go Surfaces, Planar that makes
| | 06:49 | the original phase.
| | 06:52 | And if I want, I can turn off
selection for NURBS surfaces so I am not
| | 06:57 | consistently this surface so I can
select just the curves. So if I select both
| | 07:03 | of these curves, duplicate them with
Ctrl+D and move them back. In fact, I can
| | 07:10 | turn on my Robot here so that I make
sure that these are right on or just
| | 07:15 | slightly behind the surface of that
Robot and I can use that to make the size
| | 07:23 | of this dial. So let's go ahead on
the inside surface, so I will select the
| | 07:28 | inside one on both of these and just do
a Loft. Now, for the outside one I want
| | 07:35 | a little bit of a bevel.
| | 07:36 | So actually what I am going to do is I
am going to take this and one and I am
| | 07:41 | going to scale it up just a little bit
like that, so that's actually a little
| | 07:46 | bit outside of that dial. Duplicate it
again and move it here. So that way I am
| | 07:54 | getting kind of almost like a
little bit of a bevel. In fact I can just
| | 07:57 | duplicate it one more time and then
scale that third one down just a little bit.
| | 08:04 | So now all I have to do is select all
four of these and then just go Loft. You
| | 08:12 | see I have got a little bit of a bump
there so I all have to do is select that
| | 08:15 | curve and just adjust it so that I
have got something that's pretty close,
| | 08:21 | there we go, beautiful. Now, this dial,
I am going to move this forward here so
| | 08:26 | we can just see it and that would be
just a Planar. So all we have to do is go
| | 08:29 | Surfaces, Planar and then what I do is
I always Center the pivot there. In fact
| | 08:38 | I am going to go ahead and move the
pivot so it right down there. I am going to
| | 08:41 | hit Insert or Home, Insert again and
just move the surface itself in there.
| | 08:49 | So now when I turn on the Robot, move
it down back a little bit. I have got my
| | 08:54 | dial, I have got my shield and I am
getting very close to where I need to be.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a robot pt. 5: The final details| 00:00 | Now, we are going to make the rest
of the stuff on the Robot. I am
| | 00:04 | working with a file called Robot_04.mb
and I just rearranged that file a little bit
| | 00:11 | and just put everything in the
proper place. But we still have a Templates
| | 00:14 | and a Robot layer. Now, I am going to
work first on this side basically his ear.
| | 00:22 | The drawing really isn't exactly
the shape that I want, so I am just going
| | 00:27 | to freehand this and I will show you a
really cool way to make like a knobby shape,
| | 00:32 | which is basically what
his ear is supposed to be.
| | 00:35 | So I am going to start with a
cylinder and I am going to start in my side
| | 00:41 | viewport and basically center that
cylinder over his ear and then go ahead into
| | 00:49 | a front viewport and drag that up. Then
I need to position that, over where his
| | 00:59 | head would be. In fact I should turn
on the Robot layer here and then I am
| | 01:06 | going to go into my Inputs here for my
cylinder. First I am going to change the
| | 01:10 | Height, so I will select the Height,
right-click and drag and move that so that
| | 01:15 | the Height is where I want it
to be, somewhere around there.
| | 01:24 | And then I am going to give it one
Subdivision in Height and then one
| | 01:31 | Subdivision for the Caps. Now the most
important thing here is the number of
| | 01:36 | subdivisions around the axis, which
is this number here. I am going to be
| | 01:40 | changing this. Now, the way I am going
to draw this knob is I am going to do
| | 01:46 | every third vertex. I am going to
smoosh it in so that it makes kind of a knob
| | 01:51 | shape. So that means I have to have
this in multiples of three. So in this
| | 01:56 | case I am going to make it 18
Subdivisions in the Axis and you will see why
| | 02:01 | this is important right now
when I start modeling this.
| | 02:04 | I am going to right-click over this,
select Vertex and then I am going to
| | 02:08 | select the top one. I am going to skip two,
one, two, Shift-Select the third one.
| | 02:16 | Again, one two, three, every third axis
here I am selecting. This is why I had
| | 02:24 | it as 18, which is a multiple of 6.
So that way I can get six of these
| | 02:30 | selections. Now, when I hit R and
scale this in, you can see how I can get a
| | 02:37 | nice little knobby shape. So this is
almost like a knurled type of knob. And
| | 02:42 | when I scale these in, I am using the
master scale here and what that does from
| | 02:48 | the side, in fact let's take a look at
this from the side, is it also scales it.
| | 02:53 | So it's basically I am scaling it this way.
| | 02:56 | So I do what those indentations along
the top, but the bottom I don't want it
| | 03:03 | to be so knurled. So I can either move
those in or the better way to do it is
| | 03:10 | just to select these Vertices here,
in fact we could probably do this better in
| | 03:14 | Wireframe, if I just rubber band
select, I can very nearly grab those and
| | 03:20 | just move those back. So now I have
this kind of knurled knob shape. Now, I
| | 03:35 | also want to make a kind of divot in
the center of this. This is why I put more
| | 03:40 | than one Subdivision on the Caps as well.
| | 03:43 | So I am going to select Faces, in
fact I am going to use Paint Select,
| | 03:48 | right-click, make sure I am on Faces
and I am just going to paint out those
| | 03:52 | particular faces and then I am going to
go to Extrude and I am going to Extrude
| | 03:58 | those in a bit, then scale and then I
am going to Extrude again and one more
| | 04:16 | time scale it in a little bit more to
kind of make more of a bump on the top.
| | 04:25 | And then if I want I can select this
middle vertex here right in the center and
| | 04:30 | pull that out just a little bit so I
can get kind of almost a curve here.
| | 04:35 | Now, when I go to Object Mode you can
see this will work pretty well. In fact
| | 04:41 | if I hit the number 3 to subdivide it,
you can see exactly how this will subdivide.
| | 04:46 | That's kind of nice. Now if I want to,
I can force the subdivision on this and
| | 04:50 | just bake it in by doing a Mesh >
Smooth. In fact let's go ahead and do that.
| | 04:55 | Let's just do Mesh > Smooth and that
automatically smoothes that. And then I
| | 05:01 | just need to move that in and then in
order to make the other one, all I have
| | 05:06 | to do is duplicate it and then flip it
around and I flip it around by scaling.
| | 05:11 | In this case scaling over -1 and then
just bringing it in. So there is his ears.
| | 05:18 | Now, let's just make the top of his
head and we will be done. So if we look at
| | 05:22 | the Template, the top of his head is
basically a dome with a ring or I like
| | 05:27 | using a tube or a torus around that. So
let's just go ahead and freehand this.
| | 05:33 | I am going to actually go in this case
into the top view. You can see here this
| | 05:40 | is top of his head. In this case, I am
actually going to create a torus. It's
| | 05:49 | about the size of the top of his head
and that would be like the rubber gasket
| | 05:55 | that contains-- so we need to move that up.
| | 06:05 | And then I need to center that as much
as I can and then make a sphere. In fact,
| | 06:14 | in this case I am going to actually
going to make a NURBS Sphere that is about
| | 06:21 | the same diameter and again just move
that up. Now, for the sphere, actually I
| | 06:29 | want to cut that sphere in half and
kind of squash it. I can do one of two
| | 06:33 | ways. I can either just clip it with
the Isoparm like we have done before or I
| | 06:37 | can just unfold it. I think probably
the easiest way to do this is under NURBS
| | 06:43 | Sphere, just sweep it 180 degrees. But
that sweeps in the wrong direction. So,
| | 06:49 | all I have to do is just rotate that 90
degrees and then just scale that down a
| | 07:01 | little bit. There we go, perfect.
| | 07:10 | Okay, so there is the basics of our
Robot. Looks pretty cool, huh? So that's the
| | 07:19 | basics of modeling the Robot. We are
obviously going to texture and render the
| | 07:23 | Robot in the subsequent lessons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Applying TexturesUnderstand the basics of materials| 00:00 |
Now we are going to talk about
Materials and Textures in Maya. And the best way
| | 00:06 |
to look at Materials and Textures is
as a code of paint on the model that you
| | 00:11 |
have created. So for example, this deco
car that we have created, in fact let's
| | 00:16 |
go ahead to our Project, let's make
sure we have that set. We are actually in
| | 00:20 |
06 Textures and the file is called
Deco Car.mb. Now, I have striped this off
| | 00:28 |
all of its texture and this is
basically how it would be when you first model
| | 00:33 |
it, which is kind of just this gray
tone. Now, if you think about it, if you
| | 00:38 |
built this out of clay, it would also
be kind of a similar grayish kind of
| | 00:42 |
non-colored tone and we can add color
by adding Materials and then we can add
| | 00:48 |
Texture within those Materials.
| | 00:51 |
So, first of all let's go through the
basics of these materials. All of this
| | 00:56 |
rendering stuff, Materials and Textures
is in the Rendering menu set, which is
| | 01:02 |
also a Rendering shelf here and I tend
to use the Rendering shelf a lot. But,
| | 01:09 |
in order to create a color on this,
let's go ahead and just select the body. We
| | 01:14 |
can apply what is called a Material.
So we do Assign New Material and we can
| | 01:20 |
give it any one of these materials. Now,
some of these especially these ones in
| | 01:24 |
the lower section are ones that are
only available to Mental Ray. So if you are
| | 01:31 |
using these textures, like for example,
this one here is called Car Paint,
| | 01:34 |
which will be perfect for this, but
those are specifically for the Mental Ray
| | 01:38 |
renderer. They won't render that
well with the Maya software renderer.
| | 01:42 |
So, let me go through some of the
basics here. We have got a Blinn, Lambert,
| | 01:47 |
Phong, Phong E and Anisotropic. Okay,
those are the main shaders that we use
| | 01:52 |
and those are the same as you would
use in most 3D packages. Now, let me show
| | 01:57 |
you the other ways of getting to
these main shaders here. If we go to our
| | 02:01 |
Rendering shelf, we have a bunch of
little shader balls here and those are your
| | 02:06 |
Anisotropic, Blinn, Lambert, Phong and
Phong E. We can also select an object,
| | 02:13 |
right click over it and go all the
way down here and we have Assigned New
| | 02:17 |
Material and can get right to menu
here and go Anisotropic, Blinn and so on,
| | 02:22 |
any one of these shaders.
| | 02:24 |
Now the most common shader I like to
use is called a Blinn. So, let me just
| | 02:28 |
show you that. I am going to select my
surface and then hit this button. Now
| | 02:33 |
when I do that it brings up the
parameters for the Blinn material. Now, this
| | 02:38 |
material is applied to the object itself.
So, if I click off of this and click
| | 02:46 |
back on you will notice that these are
all of the operations I used to create
| | 02:51 |
this car body. If you go to scroll to
the very end you will see we have a Blinn
| | 02:56 |
shader here. So, these are all the
different operations. This is basically my
| | 03:00 |
object history and there is my Blinn Shader.
| | 03:04 |
Now, the Shader allows you to assign a
number of parameters. Now, the types of
| | 03:09 |
parameters depends upon the Shader. A
Blinn is a really good example. So, we
| | 03:13 |
can see here we have got some of the
main parameters here, which are Color. So,
| | 03:17 |
all I have to do change color is
just click right here and I have a Color
| | 03:21 |
Picker and I can just choose whatever
color I want. Now, the Color Picker can
| | 03:27 |
go in Hue Saturation or RGB and the RGB
can go 0 to 1 or 0 to 255 and that just
| | 03:35 |
depends on if you want to match to
Photoshop or some other program that uses a
| | 03:39 |
different color model.
| | 03:41 |
So you can basically select whatever
color you want and hit Accept and that
| | 03:45 |
color will go into this slot. We can
also do stuff like Transparency. So, for
| | 03:51 |
example these windows if you select
them by default they have the default
| | 03:57 |
texture on them, which is called
Lambert 1. Now, Lambert 1 is always applied to
| | 04:03 |
whatever object you create. So, I would
not mess with this and you want to keep
| | 04:07 |
it gray, so you know it is just a
standard Lambert material. But, for something
| | 04:12 |
like the window, we want to apply a
new material. So, we want to apply
| | 04:15 |
something like glass. Probably one of
the better ones that look like glass is
| | 04:19 |
called Phonge E.
| | 04:20 |
So, let's go up here and apply Phonge
E. Now what Phonge E does is again it
| | 04:28 |
allows you to do color and in this
case because it is a window we want to do
| | 04:31 |
some transparency, so we can actually
play with the Transparency of this. So,
| | 04:35 |
you can see it's almost looking
like a window already, but we also some
| | 04:39 |
additional parameters. Now, these are
the same for a lot of the Shaders. We
| | 04:42 |
have what's called Ambient Color. Now,
some of this will show in the viewport.
| | 04:47 |
Some of this will only show here in the
Material Sample. So, take a look here,
| | 04:51 |
when I go Ambient Color, in
fact here, let me turn this down.
| | 04:55 |
What the Ambient color does is it's
almost like a self illumination parameter.
| | 04:58 |
We also have Incandescence. So, Ambient
Color allows it to illuminate, but also
| | 05:04 |
have highlights where Incandescence
kind of blows out the highlights. We also
| | 05:09 |
have Bump Mapping. We also have
Diffuse, which is the shadowed side of the
| | 05:14 |
object. In addition we have what's
called Translucence, which is kind of almost
| | 05:19 |
like a back glow with the depth and a
focus. Now, the real difference between
| | 05:23 |
all of the main shaders is in how it
handles Specularity. So, let me go ahead
| | 05:29 |
and turn this up and give it a little
bit of transparency there, so we have got that.
| | 05:33 |
So the big difference between these is
how it handles what's called Specular
| | 05:38 |
Shading, which is this highlight. So,
if I want I can give it a Roughness, I
| | 05:43 |
can give it a Highlight Size. I can
just go ahead and get less transparent
| | 05:48 |
there. So I could change my Highlight
Size, I can change how white this is. I
| | 05:53 |
can also change the color of the
Specularity. In addition to that I can change
| | 05:58 |
Reflectivity. So, if I actually want
this to reflect like a mirror I can turn
| | 06:03 |
this from 0 to 1 to make it reflective.
Now, one thing I want to show you is
| | 06:07 |
that each one of these has a
different specular model. That is the main
| | 06:13 |
difference between the different Shaders.
| | 06:16 |
So, let's go ahead and scroll up
here and if we want to we could actually
| | 06:19 |
change the type of Shader here,
instead of actually having to apply a new
| | 06:23 |
Shader, I can just select my object,
find my Shader and change it. So, for
| | 06:29 |
example, if I want to do a Blinn and
if you scroll down here notice that the
| | 06:32 |
Specular parameters are different. So,
it different Specular Shading, Specular
| | 06:37 |
Roll Off, Color and so on.
| | 06:39 |
Now, a Lambert actually has no
Specularity. It is kind of a matte material
| | 06:44 |
that's great for rubber or cloth or
things that aren't shiny. Let me have
| | 06:49 |
Phonge and Phonge E. Now Phonge has
what's called cosine power which determines
| | 06:55 |
the shape of that specular highlight.
In addition to a specular color and then
| | 06:59 |
Phonge E, which is what we just used,
it has what's called the Highlight Size
| | 07:05 |
and Whiteness. So, it is little bit
different than Phonge. So let's go ahead
| | 07:08 |
and turn up the Transparency there.
| | 07:11 |
Now, all of these are just simulated
here in the viewport. The way to really
| | 07:15 |
see these is to render them. Now, we
are not getting into hardcore rendering
| | 07:20 |
just yet, but let me show you some
basics about rendering here. So, if we go to
| | 07:26 |
this button that brings up the Render
Global, so we can determine what renderer
| | 07:31 |
we use and then if we are using the
Maya Software Renderer we can also change
| | 07:37 |
our quality. Now, typically I use
Production Quality, but we could also use
| | 07:42 |
Preview Quality, if you don't
want the renderers to take too long.
| | 07:45 |
But, let's go ahead and turn on
Production Quality, close this and then I will
| | 07:49 |
just hit this button to do a quick
render. And so we can see how that works.
| | 07:54 |
Now, for example, this body maybe we
want this to be a little bit shinier. So I
| | 07:58 |
can select this, go to my Material and
then just play with my Specularity here
| | 08:03 |
and just maybe make it a little bit
more shiny, little bit brighter and again
| | 08:08 |
we can play with this.
| | 08:10 |
So, those are the basics of how to
apply and adjust Materials in Maya. Let's go
| | 08:14 |
ahead a little bit deeper into
these windows in the next lesson.
| | 08:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and applying maps| 00:01 | In the last lesson we looked at how to
create materials and apply color, but
| | 00:06 | the color of a material can also be
derived from what's called a Texture. So,
| | 00:10 | let me show you a little bit about that.
Let's just create a simple surface. I
| | 00:14 | am going to create a NURBS Sphere and
I am going to shade it here and I am
| | 00:20 | going to turn on Hardware Texturing.
Now, let's go ahead and apply a new
| | 00:24 | material to this. Let's just create
a material. So I am going to go to my
| | 00:27 | Rendering tab and I am just going to
apply a Blinn Material and that brings up
| | 00:32 | the Blinn Attribute.
| | 00:34 | And I can certainly do stuff like
change the color if want to; very simple.
| | 00:38 | But, this color here is just solid.
This particular box has just a solid color.
| | 00:45 | If I go over to the right, you will
see that on all of these there is another
| | 00:49 | box that's checkered and that
means that you can insert an image or a
| | 00:54 | procedural texture into that to create
a non-solid color. So, let's go ahead
| | 01:00 | and click on this and what comes up is
called the Render Node or create Render
| | 01:04 | Node window.
| | 01:06 | Now, this has a number of different
options but let's just look at what the
| | 01:09 | default is when you click on this
button. It comes right into what are called
| | 01:14 | 2D Textures and it gives you three
options. The one we are going to play with
| | 01:18 | right now is called Normal, but also
have one called as Projection, which we
| | 01:22 | will describe later, and As Stencil. But,
Normal is mostly what you want to do.
| | 01:27 | So make sure that that is checked. Then
it gives us a list of all the different
| | 01:32 | types of textures that we can apply.
For the 2D Textures these basically are
| | 01:36 | the same as like a
bitmap or something like that.
| | 01:39 | So, we could for example, select any
one of these. I am going to select this
| | 01:43 | one called Cloth and there we go. You
can now see how the Cloth texture is
| | 01:48 | applied to the color channel of the
material. Here are the Cloth Attributes.
| | 01:53 | Now, we can certainly play this. We can
give it all sorts of color if we want,
| | 01:57 | U and V Color which means just a
different types of threads here and we can
| | 02:01 | also change stuff like Width and you
can play with this all that you want. But,
| | 02:05 | we are not going to get into that
right now. I just wanted to use this as an example.
| | 02:09 | The real key here is that this map is
writing the color for that channel and
| | 02:14 | the way you navigate this is through
these Up and Down buttons here. So, if I
| | 02:20 | go up that means I go up to the
channel that is using this node. So in this
| | 02:25 | case it's the color channel in the
shader. So, if I click the Up arrow, it
| | 02:30 | brings me to this Blinn shader and you
can see now that this has changed. The
| | 02:35 | Color Attribute actually has the down
arrow, which is the same as this which
| | 02:40 | connects it to the Cloth texture. So,
if I click this I go back to Cloth, I
| | 02:46 | click this I go back up to the thing
that's referencing this and I also have
| | 02:49 | little tab here for the Cloth as well,
so I can just switch between them here.
| | 02:53 | Sometimes this isn't available, but you
can always get to them with the Up and
| | 02:57 | the Down arrows. Now, I can map a
lot more than just color. I can map
| | 03:02 | Transparency, I can map Incandescence,
Specularity, anything I want with one of
| | 03:08 | these little checkers, I can map. So,
let's go ahead and map Transparency and
| | 03:14 | see how that works. So, again I am
going to click here and now we are going to
| | 03:19 | select something else. Let's go ahead
and select the Checkerboard and that will
| | 03:23 | be Transparency.
| | 03:25 | So, if I go up here you see that it is
not really showing. But, if I turn on
| | 03:30 | High Quality Rendering you can see
now that this is actually using the
| | 03:35 | Checkerboard as the Transparency. In
fact if I go Blinn on this object and go
| | 03:41 | down to Transparency you can see I can
actually even change the colors here. So
| | 03:47 | black is solid and white is transparent.
So, I can actually play with that in
| | 03:53 | real time if I want and if I go up you
could see now I have two channels that
| | 03:58 | are map. So, those are the basics
of how to put Maps into an image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using bitmaps as texture| 00:01 |
We just saw how to apply basic
procedural texture maps, which are ones that you
| | 00:06 |
can actually create within Maya, but
you can also use image maps or Bitmaps to
| | 00:12 |
create textures as well and that's
probably one of the more common ways of
| | 00:15 |
creating textures within Maya.
| | 00:17 |
I am going to open up Photoshop for
just a second here. I have a file here with
| | 00:21 |
this kind of a rusty sort of texture,
kind of grimy rusty texture and let's go
| | 00:25 |
ahead and apply this to the robot first.
So I am going to select his body and
| | 00:31 |
we are going to apply a new material.
In this case, I am just going to apply a
| | 00:35 |
Blinn and then in the Color Channel, I
am going to select this. Make sure it
| | 00:41 |
set it Normal and then in order to
bring in an image file, we can do it a
| | 00:46 |
number of ways.
| | 00:47 |
We have File, which brings in a
standard flat image file such as a JPEG or a
| | 00:52 |
TIFF or a TARGA. We can bring in movies,
which are like a TARGA sequence or
| | 00:58 |
something like that. We can also
bring in Photoshop files and the Photoshop
| | 01:03 |
node actually recognizes layers
within Photoshop. Well let's just go ahead
| | 01:07 |
and play with a simple JPEG.
| | 01:08 |
So I am going to go ahead and select
File and what this does is it brings us
| | 01:12 |
into a whole new node. Now notice
how the texture changes and the Texture
| | 01:17 |
Sample goes to black. What we have to
do here is select the actual image. So I
| | 01:24 |
select the File node, then I
put the image into that node.
| | 01:28 |
Now if we set our project correctly,
we should be in 06_Textures sourceimages
| | 01:33 |
and there is a file there called Rusty.
jpg and that brings it up. Now if this
| | 01:38 |
isn't showing up, make sure you turn on
Hardware Texturing. Now once that's in,
| | 01:43 |
you pretty much see it pop up on the
robot. Now we have got a couple of options here.
| | 01:49 |
Well, first of all, I want to show you
how this connects to that Blinn Shader.
| | 01:54 |
Again, let's just go ahead and press
the Up Arrow here and you can see that
| | 01:58 |
it's connected here to the Color
channel. In fact, one of the things I would
| | 02:02 |
like to do is as I create shaders,
I like to name them. So in this case,
| | 02:07 |
let's just call this Rust.
| | 02:09 |
Now if I want to go back to that image
map, I just click here and I go back to
| | 02:13 |
my file. Now we have got a couple of
options here. One is the ability to filter
| | 02:20 |
this for rendering. I usually leave
it on Quadratic. We cam also change or
| | 02:26 |
reload the image. We also
have some Effects down here.
| | 02:30 |
So you can actually change the color.
One of the more important ones is Color
| | 02:36 |
Gain, so you can actually have a
brightness control here with Color Gain and
| | 02:40 |
Color Offset, that allows you to kind
of tweak the texture in terms of how
| | 02:45 |
bright it is. You can also
change the Alpha Channel if you want.
| | 02:49 |
You can also invert it here and if you
actually want to remap the color, you
| | 02:52 |
can actually use a second image map or
texture to do that. Now in addition, we
| | 02:57 |
have what's called the place2dTexture
node and this shows how this particular
| | 03:02 |
texture is applied to the object.
| | 03:06 |
So again, let's see we have got a
file node here and then we have got the
| | 03:09 |
place2dTexture node. Now what this
does is it basically controls the mapping
| | 03:15 |
and how much this repeats. So for example,
if I go Repeat UV and I put in a much
| | 03:20 |
higher number like, for example six,
you will see that its tiling much more closely.
| | 03:27 |
Now this particular texture is set to
tile, so if I do an additional repeat on
| | 03:32 |
my UV coordinates there, you are not
going to see the seams between the
| | 03:36 |
textures where they repeat. Now we
also have an option here for Coverage.
| | 03:42 |
What that means is how much of that
bitmap is shown. So if you have a coverage
| | 03:47 |
of less than one, then part of the
bitmap is shown. You can see there is a dark
| | 03:52 |
thing here. Now this is actually for
the entire thing, it goes UV and then
| | 03:56 |
Coverage, so how much is this UV covering.
| | 03:59 |
If we go one, it covers the whole
object. If we go higher than one, let's say
| | 04:03 |
we go two, you will see again it
start repeating. So this is another way to
| | 04:08 |
repeat this more, is just to give it
more Coverage and that will increase again
| | 04:13 |
the number of repeats if that's the
way you want to do it. So now that I have
| | 04:17 |
this repeated eight times, let's go up
to the Texture Sample so we can actually
| | 04:20 |
see it and you can see exactly
how many times this is tiling.
| | 04:25 |
So those were some of the basics of
how to apply files into an image channel.
| | 04:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Hypershade window| 00:00 | Now when you work with materials, we
can certainly edit our materials in the
| | 00:06 | Attribute Editor, which is one way to
do it. For example, I have got this robot
| | 00:10 | here called Robot_Final.mb and we can
certainly manipulate the textures and
| | 00:16 | stuff within the Attribute Editor.
But we also want to have a better global
| | 00:21 | view over all the textures in the scene.
| | 00:23 | Now the textures are not attached to
specific objects. The textures actually
| | 00:28 | live separately in Maya and then they
are painted on. So it's almost like you
| | 00:33 | having separate buckets of paint.
We can view all of the materials in a
| | 00:38 | scene by going into Window > Rendering
Editors > Hypershade and that brings up
| | 00:44 | what's called the Hypershade window.
| | 00:45 | Now this contains a list of all the
different materials that are currently used
| | 00:51 | in the scene. So for example, this
robot, he has his eyes made of this red
| | 00:58 | texture, he has got a color for his
body and so on and so forth. Now each of
| | 01:04 | these, I can apply to any object I want.
| | 01:07 | So for example, if I actually created a
new object in the scene, I could simply
| | 01:13 | apply an existing texture to that.
Either I right click, go Apply Existing
| | 01:18 | Material, or I can go into my
Hypershade window and select one, right click and
| | 01:26 | just go Assign Material to Selection
and so that assigns that particular
| | 01:31 | material. All I have to do
is select it. Assign Material.
| | 01:37 | In addition to this, the Hypershade
window allows you to actually manage all of
| | 01:41 | these materials and do a lot of other
things as well. You can actually create a
| | 01:47 | new material here that's not attached
to any specific object. All you have to
| | 01:52 | do is just go Create Maya Nodes
and for example, I can create a new
| | 01:56 | Phong shader right here and that would
show up here, phong9, and if I double
| | 02:01 | click on any shader, it brings up the
Attribute Editor for that particular shader.
| | 02:07 | So for example, this Phong. I could
change it to any color I want and then once
| | 02:11 | I have the shader that I like, I can
select an object here and just assign it.
| | 02:16 | Let me undo that. Now in addition, we
can see how a shader is built by graphing
| | 02:23 | it in this work area. So for example,
if I selected this Dial material, which
| | 02:29 | is the actual -- let me zoom in here.
This is actually the texture here on the
| | 02:33 | dial that says Volts. I could just
right click and go Graph Network.
| | 02:38 | Now what this does is it actually
shows me how the network is constructed. So
| | 02:44 | we have a material called Dial_Case and
the color is coming from a node called
| | 02:52 | file6 and that texture is controlled
by this place2dTexture6. So you can see
| | 03:00 | how this is completely graphed out and
we can actually visually understand how
| | 03:05 | our shader is built. Now as you get
working into more complex shaders, you can
| | 03:11 | also have many, many nodes going in to
the shaders. You can actually have very
| | 03:17 | complex networks.
| | 03:19 | Now this window also has a number of
different options. We can certainly import
| | 03:24 | textures from other Maya scenes; we can
do some editing functions here such as
| | 03:29 | Delete. One of the nice ones is Delete
Unused Nodes, which kind of just cleans
| | 03:33 | up anything that's not attached. So
for example, if I did that, it would get
| | 03:37 | rid of that Phong that I added in.
We could also delete what are called
| | 03:41 | Duplicate Shading Networks, which
again just cleans up the window.
| | 03:45 | Now we can also select objects with the
materials applied. So for example, if I
| | 03:50 | have this material applied -- and let
me move this over here. So if I want to,
| | 03:55 | I could select objects with those
materials applied. If I do that, it selects
| | 04:00 | the objects containing that material.
In addition, this work area can be
| | 04:04 | navigated just like a viewport. So you
hold down your Alt key and then use your
| | 04:10 | middle and right click to zoom and pan.
Obviously because it's a 2D viewport,
| | 04:15 | you can't rotate.
| | 04:17 | Now, in addition to this we have a
number of other options here. We have
| | 04:20 | Create, which allows you to create
any sort of materials, basically just a
| | 04:24 | master Create menu here. You can also
create tabs to organize things, you can
| | 04:30 | obviously change the way you graph
your connections and we also have some
| | 04:34 | additional options and help for this window.
| | 04:37 | Now this here controls how big these
shader balls go and then in addition, we
| | 04:42 | have all of these tabs along the top.
So there are the materials, but we also
| | 04:47 | can look at Textures, which is every
texture file that we have. In this case
| | 04:52 | we have a lot of image files.
| | 04:53 | We also have Utilities, which are the
Place textures, and we also have Lights
| | 04:58 | and Cameras as well as what are
called Shading Groups and so on. So this is
| | 05:04 | kind of a central place for organizing
a lot of your rendering tasks. It's not
| | 05:09 | only for creating materials, but also
lights, cameras and a lot of other things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Multilister| 00:01 | Another way to look at the
materials and textures in Maya is using the
| | 00:05 | Multilister window. Now this is
actually fairly simple window. It's here under
| | 00:10 | Window > Rendering Editors >
Multilister and when I bring this up, it's kind of
| | 00:15 | like the Hypershade window, but it has
a little bit different layout. It has
| | 00:18 | some tabs along the top, for General,
Materials, Lights and Cameras, but it
| | 00:26 | doesn't have all the other tabs that
the Hypershade window has. And along the
| | 00:30 | bottom it has a separate Textures
tab, which I find kind of handy.
| | 00:34 | You can select any texture and double
click on it to get the Attribute Editor
| | 00:38 | for that and I can also do that in
this window as well. Now this window is
| | 00:42 | actually fairly simple, you can
certainly right click over this and we have a
| | 00:45 | number of options, Import, if you want
to import. You can also assign this to a
| | 00:51 | selected object, you can also delete
any ones that are highlighted or unused.
| | 00:56 | We can also select anything that
is using that assigned material.
| | 01:02 | So for example, if I right click here
-- again, this is just very similar to
| | 01:07 | what's in the Hypershade window-- you
can also change your display a little
| | 01:11 | bit. So you can actually do an
alphabetic display, which is kind of nice, and
| | 01:14 | you can also do it small, medium and
large if you want. And there are a number
| | 01:19 | of menu options along here, most of
which mimic those right click windows.
| | 01:23 | One of the nice ones is called Filter.
Now, if you have a scene with a lot of
| | 01:27 | materials in it, the Filter can come
in very handy. So for example, if I have
| | 01:31 | these objects selected, I could show
only the materials applicable to the
| | 01:36 | selected objects, so that will reduce
the amount of clutter that I have on the
| | 01:41 | screen and it will show me exactly what
materials are used for what objects. So
| | 01:46 | if I just selected one object, I could
go Show Selected, it would be that. I do
| | 01:51 | this one, Show Selected, and so on.
| | 01:55 | So those are some of the basics of the
Multilister. I tend to use this when I
| | 01:59 | want to work quickly with just
assigning and editing materials, and then if I
| | 02:03 | want to get deeper, I go
into the Hypershade window.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Texture-mapping NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | So now that we know how to create
materials and put textures in the materials,
| | 00:06 | we also have to understand how those
textures map to specific objects. Now how
| | 00:13 | you map a texture to an object depends
a lot upon the type of geometry that we
| | 00:18 | have for the object. Now we are going
to go ahead and start with NURBS based
| | 00:23 | geometry, and I have opened up this Deco_Car.mb.
| | 00:27 | So I am just going to go ahead and one
of the things that I am going to do is
| | 00:31 | just select this body and go Display >
Hide, because I really want to look at
| | 00:36 | this undercarriage. Now when we apply a
texture to a NURBS surface, the texture
| | 00:41 | is usually a rectangular bitmap or a
texture. So for example, here I have this
| | 00:47 | Rust texture that we have been playing
with and I can select the car and let's
| | 00:52 | go ahead and create a material for that.
| | 00:54 | I can just go to my Rendering tab,
select one of these -- I am going to select
| | 00:58 | the Blinn. That's really not
important which one we select, and then in the
| | 01:01 | Color Channel I am going to just add a
Render node. Make sure this is set to
| | 01:06 | Normal and we are going to do File and
I am going to load up Rusty, to make a
| | 01:12 | rusty car. Now you are not going to
see this until you turn on Hardware Texturing.
| | 01:17 | Now once I do, you see that rust is
applied to the fender. Now let me show you
| | 01:22 | how this maps. On a NURBS surface, you
have basically a flat patch -- in fact,
| | 01:29 | let me show you this on a NURBS plane.
I am going to go ahead and just draw a
| | 01:34 | NURBS plane and then right click over
it, and go Assign Existing Material,
| | 01:40 | blinn1. So this is my image map. In fact,
its exact same image map I have here
| | 01:46 | in Photoshop. So this image maps corner
to corner on the four sided NURBS patch.
| | 01:55 | And if I deform the patch, the texture
sticks, because it's really just mapping
| | 02:00 | the X and Y coordinates of the bitmap
or the width and height coordinates of
| | 02:05 | the bitmap, to the U and V coordinates
of the patch. Now it's exactly the same
| | 02:12 | for this fender of the car. We have a
corner and a corner here and the surface
| | 02:18 | does have a U and a V direction. Now
it's just shaped a little bit differently,
| | 02:23 | but the underlying geometry is
basically the same, you can even imagine this
| | 02:27 | being stamped out of a single sheet of metal.
| | 02:31 | So what we can do is take this bitmap,
and we can change how it's placed on to
| | 02:38 | the object. So all I have to do is
double click on my object, go to the Blinn
| | 02:41 | node, go to Color, and then I find
this place2dTexture node here. Now we have
| | 02:47 | played with this a little bit, we can
certainly repeat if we want. But the most
| | 02:51 | important one is Coverage, particularly
for a NURBS surface, because right now
| | 02:55 | we are mapping the height and width of
this image, one to one, to the U and V
| | 03:03 | coordinates of this object.
| | 03:05 | So if I take the Coverage and change it,
let's say, I want the coverage to be
| | 03:10 | 0.5, then it shrinks the texture and
the same here if I make it, say for
| | 03:17 | example 0.4, it's going to shrink it
this way. So it's only kind of cover 40%
| | 03:22 | of this. Now I can also rotate this
frame if I want and I can translate it. Now
| | 03:28 | translation works on a one to one basis.
So if I translate at one, you are not
| | 03:33 | going to notice and difference
because basically it's gone one over and is
| | 03:37 | wrapping around. So I need to do
this is in a fraction, say 0.2 and 0.4.
| | 03:44 | But we can also use what's called
Interactive Placement, to place this a little
| | 03:48 | bit more precisely. So if I click on
this, notice how my cursor changes, and
| | 03:53 | the key mouse stroke here is middle
mouse button. So all I have to do is middle
| | 03:57 | mouse click and I can change the
positioning of this. Now when you middle mouse
| | 04:03 | click, notice how there is little grab
points, little tabs here. Sometimes you
| | 04:07 | have to grab those. Now if you grab
the middle one here, you can position it.
| | 04:12 | See that little dot there? That's the
positioning node and so I can just go
| | 04:17 | ahead and position it by moving that.
| | 04:20 | So for NURBS surfaces, this is a great
way to position and align textures and
| | 04:25 | NURBS are really kind of nice in terms
of texturing because one NURB surface
| | 04:30 | basically equals one bitmap image and
so it makes it very easy to stick bitmaps
| | 04:36 | to a NURBS surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Projecting textures| 00:01 | Another way to apply texture mapping to
an object is to project those textures.
| | 00:05 | Now what projection does is it actually
uses an external object as a projector
| | 00:11 | to apply the texture. So this works
for either NURBS or Polygonal surfaces
| | 00:16 | because the actual texture mapping
object is separate from the geometry itself.
| | 00:23 | So let's go ahead and open up Robot_05.
mb and I am going to select the face of
| | 00:30 | this dial here in his stomach and then
I am just going to create a material. So
| | 00:35 | I am just going to go to my Rendering
shelf here, create a Blinn, go Color. Now
| | 00:41 | typically we have this set as Normal,
but I want to go one down here to As
| | 00:46 | Projection, select the File and then
here we have what's called Image. So I am
| | 00:52 | actually going to go down one
more and then load the image.
| | 00:55 | Now I am in my sourceimages directory
and I am just going to load this one
| | 00:59 | called Dial_FG.jpg. Now you can see
that maps to the object. Now we are not
| | 01:06 | seeing this mapping exactly because I
should turn on High Quality Rendering,
| | 01:12 | which will give me a little bit
better view here. Well I have got this word
| | 01:16 | Volts, which needs to be here, but you
can see that the little tip of it's up
| | 01:20 | here. I can change this by
manipulating this texture mapping object.
| | 01:24 | Now it comes in down here and it's
called place3dTexture. Now if I move that
| | 01:30 | throughout the scene, you can see how
it moves the texture. In fact, if I want,
| | 01:36 | I could actually fit that to the group.
So if I just go Fit to bounding box, it
| | 01:40 | automatically fits and then I can go in
and I can adjust it. So I can move this
| | 01:46 | around, I can adjust it and I can do
whatever I want. So this is how I am
| | 01:50 | placing my texture on to my object.
| | 01:54 | Now this place3dTexture node is
actually a separate object in Maya. If I go to
| | 02:01 | my Outliner, you will see I have it
highlighted, here it is. And if I go to my
| | 02:05 | Dial, my Dial is actually in here
somewhere and then if I select this object, I
| | 02:10 | can change that mapping anytime I want.
Now this is really good if you want to
| | 02:15 | animate a map, but it's also good if
you want to also project a texture on to
| | 02:20 | multiple objects.
| | 02:22 | Now in addition to this, right now we
are doing a Planar mapping, but we also
| | 02:27 | can do other types of mapping as well.
So if I go to my actual object here, I
| | 02:34 | click on the face of the dial, I go to
my Blinn, go to my Color mapping here,
| | 02:39 | you can see I have what's called a
projection, and this tells me how that
| | 02:44 | texture is being projected. Now in this
case, we have got a Planar projection,
| | 02:49 | but you don't have to use Planar,
you can use any one of these.
| | 02:52 | So for example, you can project it
Spherically. Okay, now this doesn't really
| | 02:56 | work for this particular object
but you can see how you do Spherical,
| | 02:59 | Cylindrical and so on. One of the
nice ones is called TriPlanar, which
| | 03:04 | basically projects it from three
different sides. You can also do Cubic, which
| | 03:08 | projects from six sides. Well I am
going to keep this one a Planar for now, but
| | 03:13 | you can use these to map just about any
object within Maya and also control the
| | 03:19 | mapping from outside of the object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Texture-mapping polygonal surfaces| 00:01 | Polygonal objects have several
different ways to apply mapping coordinates. So
| | 00:06 | we have got this Robot opened, Robot_06,
and we have already mapped the dial
| | 00:10 | here, but let's go ahead and map the
body of the Robot. I am going to hide
| | 00:14 | everything else. I am just going to
select the body of the Robot and I am going
| | 00:18 | to go Display > Hide > Hide
Unselected Objects. We can also hit Alt+H if we
| | 00:24 | want. And let's just go ahead and
apply the Texture map. In fact, I've got a
| | 00:29 | Texture map here in Photoshop and it's
called Robot_FrontB.jpg, and if I just
| | 00:36 | create a material such as a Blinn and
apply this as a Normal. Make sure we have
| | 00:43 | selected this as Normal, File and
select Robot_FrontB, you will see that it
| | 00:51 | applies the Texture, but it doesn't
really map it how I want. I just want this
| | 00:55 | texture to be mapped to the front of
this object. Now I can do that in one of
| | 01:01 | two ways. You can see how this
isn't mapped to the front of the object.
| | 01:05 | Now in order to do that I can go
into my Polygons menu where I have these
| | 01:10 | mapping tools, and those mapping tools
are under Create UVs and now we have a
| | 01:15 | number of different types of mapping.
We have Planner, Cylindrical, Spherical
| | 01:19 | and Automatic. So let's just go ahead
and use Planner Mapping. So if I take
| | 01:24 | this object and apply Planner Mapping
to it, you will see that a little plane
| | 01:28 | comes up and it actually maps it and
it's actually mapping it to the side. But
| | 01:34 | I really don't wanted to be there, I
need to rotate it. So I can go into my
| | 01:39 | polyPlaner Projection. Now let me show
where this is. I am actually going to
| | 01:43 | click off of this. If you go into
your Channel Box, you will see that the
| | 01:48 | actual object itself has a polyPlanner
Projection node on the history of the
| | 01:56 | object. In fact, I can even get to
that in my Attribute Editor. So I select
| | 02:00 | this and I find my polyPlaner
Projection node, I can still affect this.
| | 02:06 | Now one of the options here is
obviously the Width of this and the Height. But
| | 02:12 | really we want to play with Rotation,
because we want this projected on the
| | 02:15 | front. So I am going to take the
Rotation down, so with the Rotation of 000,
| | 02:21 | this is pretty much aligned. But now
I still need to scale this. So I can
| | 02:25 | actually just grab the handles here
and scale, left or right, and then the
| | 02:31 | center one positions it. So there we
go. So now I have got this front of my
| | 02:36 | Robot, in fact, if I go Display > Show
> Show Last Hidden. You can see I have
| | 02:41 | got my Robot. Now this little shield,
this is a little high here. But you can
| | 02:45 | see how that maps to the box.
| | 02:48 | In fact, let's go ahead and select the
box and just do another Alt+H or Hide
| | 02:53 | Unselected, and I want to show you
another little thing here. It's that this
| | 02:58 | map is actually smearing here on the
sides, because it's got a little bit in
| | 03:03 | fact, if we look at the map here,
it's got a little bit of grain to it. And
| | 03:07 | also if you go into the back of this
object, the mapping is kind of just
| | 03:11 | mirrored from what we have on the front.
Now we can change that. If we want we
| | 03:15 | can actually apply multiple UVs to it.
So for example, for the back I could
| | 03:21 | actually right click, select the Face,
that Face on the back, and go create
| | 03:28 | another Planner Mapping for that Face,
and I can unrotate it and I can scale
| | 03:36 | it. And one of the things I can do is
I can just scale it beyond where that
| | 03:43 | texture is and just position it so
that I don't have any of that detail in
| | 03:48 | there. I am really using a trick and
that I am zooming in to this little area
| | 03:52 | in the texture where there is no
object. So now I have got a clean back.
| | 03:56 | Now you can do that as well for the
sides, or the front, and you don't have to
| | 04:01 | do Planner Mapping. You can
certainly select all of these faces and apply
| | 04:05 | whatever other type of mapping you
want. For example, if I wanted to do
| | 04:08 | Cylindrical Mapping, I could certainly
do that as well. Now I am not going to
| | 04:12 | adjust this. I just want to show you
that you can apply multiple types of mapping.
| | 04:16 | So for example, Cylindrical Mapping
allows you to basically wrap a tin can,
| | 04:21 | kind of like that. We also have
Spherical Mapping and another really good one
| | 04:26 | is called Automatic Mapping and what
Automatic Mapping does, here let's go
| | 04:30 | ahead and select these again and go
Automatic Mapping. What that does is it
| | 04:35 | projects one texture from each
direction, which is kind of nice. Now once I
| | 04:41 | have this, you can actually go back
into you Channel box, or your Attribute
| | 04:46 | Editor, and you will see that we
have got a number of different types of
| | 04:50 | projection. So every single projection
is remembered on the object. So you can
| | 04:55 | back and adjust those at any time you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying UV mapping| 00:00 | Now if you have a complex Polygonal
Object, you may not want to apply multiple
| | 00:05 | maps to it. You may want to do what's
called UVW mapping, which allows you to
| | 00:10 | take a single map and map it to
multiple parts of a Polygonal Objects.
| | 00:15 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:17 | I am going to actually go into
Photoshop and just show you an image file here.
| | 00:21 | So for this file, we have actually the
front, the back, and the side views of
| | 00:27 | this Robot all laid out in one file.
So that way I don't have to create
| | 00:33 | multiple texture maps and it all
sticks to the Polygonal Object. Now with a
| | 00:38 | texture like this I need to be able
to map parts of my Polygonal Object to
| | 00:43 | parts of the bitmap. So let me show
you how that's done. I am going to select
| | 00:47 | the body of the Robot, and then I am
going to just do a Hide > Hide Unselected,
| | 00:54 | so we just play with that. Then I am
just going to create a Blinn material and
| | 00:59 | then apply a File as normal, and apply
the file called Robot_UVW, and again, I
| | 01:07 | need to make sure I have High Quality
Rendering and Hardware Texturing turned
| | 01:11 | on. But now again we have that same
situation, we have this one map that's kind
| | 01:15 | of applied all funky to this object.
But we can change that by using what's
| | 01:20 | called the UV Texture Editor.
| | 01:23 | Now each one of these represents a
side of this cube and all we have to do is
| | 01:29 | match the proper side of the cube to
the proper part of the bit map. Now we can
| | 01:34 | do this in a number of ways. One is,
if we right click over the Polygonal
| | 01:39 | Object, you'll notice you have UV. Now
these are called UV Texture Coordinates.
| | 01:44 | So for example, here if I select one
of these, you will notice that when I go
| | 01:48 | into this window that UV shows up. In
fact, if I zoom in here, you will see
| | 01:53 | that each one of these UVs shows up in
this window. So I actually can position
| | 01:59 | this on a vertex by vertex basis. But
Maya in this particular case has broken
| | 02:05 | this up into individual kind of
surfaces. So I can use another tool here to
| | 02:11 | select the entire surface. So if I
click this icon, I can select the entire surface.
| | 02:17 | So for example, I could select these
and move them away, and I can select this,
| | 02:21 | which I know is the front. You
can see how they lined up here. And just
| | 02:25 | move that. You can see how the
texture is starting to map in. And then if
| | 02:30 | I want, I can just use my Moving Scale
tools. I can actually scale this to fit.
| | 02:36 | So this exactly fits and if I don't
like where some of these are going, I can
| | 02:41 | select just those vertices and move
them or just those UVs and move them. And
| | 02:47 | then I also can do this for the rest
of my objects. So for example, if I want
| | 02:51 | some on the side, I could for example
select these two, move these out of the
| | 02:56 | way, select this one and position it as
my side one. And I can just select each
| | 03:04 | of these vertices, just by hitting W I
can move them, and I can position those
| | 03:12 | as well. If they are not stretched a
little bit too much, in fact, this one
| | 03:16 | needs to be rotated. If you notice,
it's stretched vertically, because it's in
| | 03:20 | the wrong orientation.
| | 03:22 | Now I can change that just by
hitting one of these rotate buttons, which
| | 03:25 | rotates 45 and 90 degrees. And actually I
need to select the entire thing in order to
| | 03:31 | do that. So let's select all of this,
rotate it 45 and 90 degrees and then adjust it.
| | 03:45 | So you can see how very easily you can
position on a polygon by polygon basis
| | 03:52 | and actually map this to your object.
Let's go ahead and just do one more
| | 03:57 | surface here. Let's just do the back.
So where is that back one? Okay, there is
| | 04:02 | the back. So I am going to go ahead and
move this one out of the way, and then
| | 04:06 | let's go ahead and move this all over
kind of like the clear area here and
| | 04:09 | select this back, and then just use
scale to position it. Now in this case I
| | 04:14 | have got this a little bit upside down.
So if I want I can just rotate it a few
| | 04:20 | times until it's right, and there
we go. Now there is a lot of different
| | 04:24 | functionality here. But what I tend
to do is I tend to use these ones here.
| | 04:28 | Now this one selects the entire mesh
and allows you to deform it with a warp,
| | 04:34 | this one selects the shell, this one
allows you to unfold things. So for
| | 04:39 | example, if I have something that
isn't already unfolded then I can actually
| | 04:42 | unfold that. Now I have additional
tools here such as Rotate and Scale. I can
| | 04:48 | also merge edges, so if I have two
shells that are close to each other, I can
| | 04:52 | Merge, Cut, Paste. And there is whole
wealth of other tools. So this is a very
| | 04:57 | popular way of mapping Polygonal
Objects to image maps and I would strongly
| | 05:03 | suggest that you understand this if
you are going to be doing a lot of
| | 05:07 | Polygonal Texturing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Live action integration with Use Background| 00:01 | Another way to use Materials is to
integrate objects with live action and
| | 00:07 | typically we do that with the Use
Background Material and let me show you how
| | 00:12 | to use that. We have got a file open
called CarDG.mb and it's essentially just
| | 00:19 | a car sitting on a plane. In fact if
we want to we can render this. Now I am
| | 00:24 | rendering this in Mental Ray but
strictly it works for any renderer. It's just
| | 00:28 | a car in a plane with some shadows
underneath. Now let's go ahead and place
| | 00:33 | this into a still image.
| | 00:35 | Let me go ahead and open
Photoshop. I have this simple background
| | 00:38 | image and let's go ahead and just bring
that in as an image plane. So I go View
| | 00:45 | > Image Plane > Import Image and in our
Source Images directory we have a file
| | 00:50 | called Background. And we could see
that in fact it is an Image Plane so you
| | 00:54 | can actually see that in multiple
views here. And if we move the Camera it's
| | 00:59 | actually stuck to the Camera. So the
plane is always our background. So we can
| | 01:03 | just adjust this car to be
in the scene however we want.
| | 01:08 | Now if you notice this doesn't
quite fit my image. Now I can
| | 01:13 | change that just by going Image Plane >
Image Plane Attributes and just change
| | 01:18 | that. Now if I scroll down here to
Placement you can just click one of two
| | 01:22 | buttons. One will fit to the
Resolution Gate which is the 640x480 that we are
| | 01:28 | rendering or the Film Gate. So we are
going to click this Fit to Resolution
| | 01:32 | Gate and let's just choose through a
quick render. So the Car is kind of
| | 01:36 | sitting in the scene but we still have
to get it on the grass, so to speak or
| | 01:42 | on the ground.
| | 01:43 | You can assign it by selecting
your plane, going to our Rendering
| | 01:48 | tab here, clicking here on Use
Background or going to Rendering,
| | 01:53 | Lighting/Shading > Assign New Material
> Use Background. When I assign that to
| | 01:58 | the plane what it does is it actually
is going to pick up any image data that's
| | 02:04 | behind this. So for example all this
stuff in the foreground, it's going to use
| | 02:08 | that color to create the color on the
plane. So if I render it you will see
| | 02:16 | that it's starting to pick up this color.
But we have an issue here and you can
| | 02:20 | see that this object is
actually reflecting in our image.
| | 02:25 | And that's because this Use
Background can create reflectivity,
| | 02:30 | which is really nice but for this
particular application we don't need it. So I
| | 02:34 | am going to just go ahead and slide
this all the way down to zero and do a
| | 02:38 | render and there we go. Now this is
just a rough idea as to how it works.
| | 02:43 | Obviously we can do some stuff to make
the car fit into the grass a little bit better.
| | 02:47 | But you can see in principle how this
works. Now in addition to this you can
| | 02:53 | also use this with moving image
files. So if you wanted to use a target
| | 02:57 | sequence for your image
plane you could also do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using displacement and bump mapping| 00:00 | The next topic we are going to cover
is Displacement and Bump Mapping. Now a
| | 00:05 | lot of times you want your surfaces of
your objects to have bumps or roughness,
| | 00:10 | and you could do that in one of two ways.
The first is Bump Mapping. So let me
| | 00:14 | show you how that works. Let me create
a simple NURBS Sphere and just apply a
| | 00:20 | Blinn Texture to that. Now if I render
this you will see the texture is very
| | 00:24 | smooth, it looks almost like
plastic. Now we don't have to keep that
| | 00:29 | smoothness. We can always add what's
called a Bump Map. So if I click here and
| | 00:35 | add a Map into there I
can actually create a bump.
| | 00:38 | Now one of the more common ones is to
just do what's called a Fractal or a
| | 00:42 | Noise to give it just kind of an
overall random sort of roughness. So let's go
| | 00:47 | ahead and add Fractal to this and then
let's just do a render. As you can see
| | 00:52 | the characteristics of this surface
have changed a lot. And if we want we can
| | 00:56 | actually change the depth of the bump.
So if I bring this down here to a
| | 01:01 | smaller value, you can see that you can
get almost like an orangy like texture.
| | 01:06 | In fact if I want I can go up here,
change the color to orange or orangy and I
| | 01:14 | have a reasonable facsimile orange
just by adding that Fractal Texture.
| | 01:19 | Now the one thing about Bump
Mapping is that it's really just a
| | 01:23 | rendering trick. In other words it
only affects the pixels of the surface. So
| | 01:29 | it doesn't really bump the surface,
it just renders the surface as if it is
| | 01:33 | bumped. So let's take a look at a more
extreme example. I am going to create a
| | 01:37 | brand new material for this. So I am
just going to go ahead and apply another
| | 01:40 | Blinn. And this time in the Bump
Mapping I am going to add a Cloth Texture. So
| | 01:46 | let's go ahead and render that. When
I do you will see that on the edges it
| | 01:52 | still goes to a Sphere. In fact if I
zoomed in here a little bit and did that
| | 01:56 | render you will see that these
bumps actually aren't real bumps.
| | 02:01 | They are just kind of painted
on. It's almost as if somebody
| | 02:05 | painted it like it was bumped but it's
still a flat surface, almost like a Faux
| | 02:09 | Texture or something like that. So
in order to create an actual change in
| | 02:15 | surface you need to do what's called a
Displacement. So let me go ahead and do
| | 02:20 | that. I am actually just going to
duplicate this Sphere and move it over to the
| | 02:24 | side here. So we are going to have two
Spheres. This one has a bump; this one
| | 02:27 | will have Displacement. I am going to
create a new material, again I will just
| | 02:32 | use a Blinn, and this time instead of
going to Bump Mapping I am going to go up one node.
| | 02:39 | So if we actually go up here
you go to what's called the Shader
| | 02:43 | group. Now you can get to it this way
or if you want you can go into something
| | 02:48 | like the Hypershade window. And you
will notice here Shading groups here. So
| | 02:53 | for example this one is Blinn3SG. And
so what this does is it actually has a
| | 03:00 | number of different types of materials.
One is the Surface Material, which
| | 03:03 | actually renders the characteristics
of the surface itself. The other one is
| | 03:07 | called the Volume Material and this
is for creating volumetric effects.
| | 03:11 | And the third is called a
Displacement Material. And this
| | 03:14 | actually physically displaces the
geometry. So let me show you how this works.
| | 03:19 | We go to the Displacement Material, add
in a Texture and again we are going to
| | 03:23 | do this as normal and we will add in
that same Cloth Texture. Now when I render
| | 03:27 | this, notice the difference. This one
just has a Bump Map applied; this one has
| | 03:34 | a Displacement Map applied. Now the
Displacement Map literally remodels the
| | 03:40 | object and actually creates new
geometry to create actual bumps.
| | 03:45 | Now the problem with this is that
we are adding additional geometry
| | 03:50 | to our scene and that creates overhead.
So if you don't need a Displacement Map,
| | 03:55 | don't use it. Bump Maps are a lot
faster when it comes to rendering. The other
| | 03:59 | problem with Displacement Maps is that
the surface you see in the viewport is
| | 04:03 | not the surface you see when it renders.
For example if a character is walking
| | 04:08 | across a bumpy ground that was
displaced the foot may go through the ground if
| | 04:13 | you don't know exactly how that's displacing.
| | 04:16 | Now we can control Displacement here
by just going into our object. So I am
| | 04:21 | going to select this second sphere here
and if I go into the NURBS Sphere Shape
| | 04:26 | Node, I can actually go down here and
control how the Displacement Map actually
| | 04:32 | adds in that geometry. So if I want I
can actually increase the Sample Rate, so
| | 04:37 | if I increase it up a little bit, you
will see that it's actually going to
| | 04:41 | create a finer mesh. It's also going
to take a lot longer to render. So you
| | 04:45 | have to be careful with this. Now you
can probably keep this as low as you can
| | 04:49 | without creating artifacts.
| | 04:51 | And then again for the actual Shader
Group if you go into this displacement
| | 04:55 | material you can affect that
particular Texture Map. So those are the
| | 05:00 | differences between Bump and
Displacement Maps and I really don't find too many
| | 05:05 | places where Displacement Maps are
absolutely needed. But you can use them and
| | 05:10 | they are definitely very
effective when the situation requires.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Ramp Shader| 00:01 |
The next material I want to show you
is called the Ramp Shader. Now what this
| | 00:04 |
does is it uses Gradients or Ramps
to determine things like Color and
| | 00:09 |
Transparency. Let me show you how this
works. I am going to create a Sphere and
| | 00:14 |
I am just selecting my NURBS Sphere. So
we will just start with the Sphere and
| | 00:18 |
the Ramp Shader is here or you can
certainly go into Lighting/Shading > Assign
| | 00:23 |
New Material > Ramp Shader. When I do
that up comes the Ramp Shader parameters.
| | 00:30 |
Color, Transparency, Incandescence,
Specularity, and so on and what these do is
| | 00:37 |
they use Ramps or Color Gradients to
determine how the color changes on the surface.
| | 00:44 |
So let's just start with the
actual surface of the object itself.
| | 00:47 |
Now if we want to we can certainly
change the color to, for example, Red or
| | 00:51 |
Yellow or whatever color we want. We
can also change it so that the color
| | 00:57 |
varies depending upon the number of
different inputs, which is right here.
| | 01:01 |
Either Light Angle, Facing Angle,
Brightness or Normalized Brightness. Now I
| | 01:06 |
think Facing Angle is probably one of
the easiest to understand because what it
| | 01:09 |
does is it changes the color
depending upon the angle of the surface to the
| | 01:14 |
eye. So when the surface is pointed
straight at you it's one color, and when
| | 01:18 |
it's away from you it's another color.
| | 01:21 |
So we can add in this second
color here just by left-clicking
| | 01:25 |
and dragging a new node. And as soon
as we select that node we can change the
| | 01:29 |
color. So we can say I want it to be
blue when it's facing me and here and I
| | 01:36 |
can certainly move this around if I
want. And if select this one I could say
| | 01:40 |
well I want it to be Red when it's away
from me. I don't really see it here. I
| | 01:45 |
can certainly turn on Hardware
Texturing and I can see it a little bit better.
| | 01:48 |
But you see it the most when you
render it. So you can see how part of the
| | 01:52 |
object that's facing me is blue
and that which is facing away is red.
| | 01:57 |
Now this can be very handy. So
for example if I have a blue I
| | 02:01 |
could just make it a light blue sphere
here and just fade it to almost a darker
| | 02:07 |
blue or even a bluish purple. Now
this gives me a much better way to shade
| | 02:12 |
things. So I have a richer sense of
shadow and form. So instead of it going to
| | 02:17 |
just gray it goes kind of a dark
blue. It's a really nice way to give
| | 02:22 |
additional detail to an object. Now
I am going to go ahead into my Camera
| | 02:28 |
Attribute Editor here and I am going
to turn this environment into white.
| | 02:34 |
I am going to turn my
Background Color to White so it renders a
| | 02:36 |
little bit better. And now we are
going to play a little bit with the
| | 02:39 |
Transparency in that Ramp Shader. So I
select my object, go to Ramp Shader and
| | 02:45 |
let's go to Transparency. Now what
we can also do is change Transparency
| | 02:50 |
dependent on Angle. Now this is really
handy when you are doing something like
| | 02:54 |
glass because as for example the glass
on the windshield of a car, curves away
| | 03:00 |
from you, you actually get kind of more
thickness and actually it becomes less
| | 03:05 |
transparent than if you are looking
straight through. Think about a piece of
| | 03:08 |
glass, if you look straight through it
you can pretty much see through it if
| | 03:11 |
you tilt it there comes a point where
you can't see through because you are
| | 03:14 |
looking through so much glass.
| | 03:16 |
Now we can do the same thing
here by just adding a node changing
| | 03:20 |
the color to white or black. So for
example this one here is the angle that's
| | 03:25 |
away. So if I make it a darker color,
it's going to be more opaque. Lighter
| | 03:30 |
colors are more transparent. So I
select this one and I can also bring those in
| | 03:37 |
a little bit. And then when I render
this you will see that in fact let's go
| | 03:42 |
ahead and put something behind here.
| | 03:43 |
I am going to go into Image Plane
and let's go ahead and just put this
| | 03:48 |
background behind it. We can kind of
see this a little bit better. So you can
| | 03:53 |
see that when you are looking straight
through it, it's pretty transparent but
| | 03:57 |
towards the edges you can see how it's
a lot less transparent. So this is just
| | 04:02 |
because the Transparency is determined
by the Ramp. Now for example if I wanted
| | 04:07 |
to I can make this completely
transparent, so we could actually make this even
| | 04:11 |
a little bit more effective here. So
you can see it's very clear through here.
| | 04:14 |
So this gives a much better
simulation of stuff like glass and transparent
| | 04:20 |
surfaces. Now in addition to this
you can also play with stuff like
| | 04:23 |
Specularity, Specular Roll Off and
Reflectivity. So one of the nicer things
| | 04:29 |
about this is that you can actually
define how your specular colors roll off.
| | 04:35 |
So for example if I want a highly
specular surface here, I could actually roll
| | 04:40 |
that off according to a user defined
curve, which is really nice. So those are
| | 04:45 |
some of the basics of the Ramp Shader.
| | 04:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the 3D paint tools| 00:00 | Now one of the coolest features of Maya
is the ability to do 3D Paint. You can
| | 00:06 | actually paint on an object and save
those files out as bitmaps. Let me show
| | 00:11 | you how that works. Let's just go ahead
and paint a simple sphere. So I am just
| | 00:15 | going to create a sphere and apply a
material to it. I am just going to go
| | 00:20 | ahead and apply a Phong and once we
have material we can certainly change the
| | 00:24 | material and add stuff in such as Color,
we can add a bitmap in the Color. Now
| | 00:29 | once we have applied the material we
can certainly change the Color by adding a
| | 00:34 | bitmap, or transparency, or whatever
but the other way to do it is to actually
| | 00:38 | just paint that texture.
| | 00:40 | So let's go into our Rendering menu
set, go to Texturing and we have what's
| | 00:45 | called 3D Paint tool. Open that up
and what I get is a Brush interface very
| | 00:53 | similar to the interface we used for
Paint Select and for Sculpt Surfaces. In
| | 00:59 | fact, the tool is almost identical here.
Or I can hit B to size my brush, and
| | 01:05 | then I can paint but you are not going
to be able to paint on anything until
| | 01:08 | you assign a texture.
| | 01:10 | Now we do that by going to the bottom
of this menu and we select what type of
| | 01:15 | attribute we want to paint. Now in
this case we are just going to pick Color
| | 01:20 | and then hit Assign/Edit Textures.
What this does is it brings up this dialog
| | 01:26 | box and we can dial in the size of the
texture that we want to paint. We can
| | 01:32 | also choose whatever type of
file we want to save this as.
| | 01:35 | So once we have set the size of the
image and the format that we want to save
| | 01:41 | it at, we can go Assign/Edit Textures,
and then once we do that we can start
| | 01:46 | painting. So again, let me scroll up to
the top here and you can see that I am
| | 01:50 | painting this color. If I want to I can
certainly change the Color and paint. I
| | 01:57 | can change the size of my brush and I
can also change the size of the brush
| | 02:03 | here. I can also change the type of
brush; whether I want a hard edge or a soft
| | 02:07 | edge brush. I can also change the
Opacity of the brush. So for example, if I
| | 02:13 | wanted to do just kind of a light wash
over it, I can just really dial down the
| | 02:18 | Opacity and I would just be tinting this.
| | 02:22 | You can see how this makes a very easy
way to sketch out and draw textures. Now
| | 02:27 | a lot of times what people do is they
will use this 3D Paint package to kind of
| | 02:31 | rough out where everything is on the
texture of an object, and then they will
| | 02:35 | go in to Photoshop and actually fine
tune those images. Now in addition to the
| | 02:42 | painting tools, we also have a Flood
tool. Now we can flood this with any color
| | 02:47 | we want. So for example, if I wanted to
flood it with this color all I have to
| | 02:52 | dial in the color and just go Flood
Paint, and it will flood my image and then
| | 02:57 | I can go ahead and paint on
this whatever color I want.
| | 03:01 | Now once you have your paint done you
will need to save this texture out in
| | 03:11 | order to really be using it in Maya.
Now in order to save the textures you also
| | 03:16 | have to save your Maya file. So I am
going to go ahead and Save the Scene As
| | 03:21 | 3dpaint.mb. Now once I have saved it I
can go back and select my object, go to
| | 03:31 | my Attribute Editor, select my object,
and you will see that it's actually
| | 03:36 | created a scene here called Shape 1.
color.tga. In fact, I can open this up and
| | 03:41 | you will see that it's actually located
in the 3dpaintTextures directory of my project.
| | 03:49 | So now I have an actual image file
that I can load up in Photoshop if I want.
| | 03:53 | Now if I want to I can go back to the
3D Paint tool and continue to work. If I
| | 03:59 | have got it to a point where I really
like it, I don't have to save the whole
| | 04:02 | image, I can just save out my textures
intermittently if I want to. In addition
| | 04:07 | to just painting color, you can also do
stuff like smear so you could actually
| | 04:12 | smear paint, you can blur, and you
also have a clone brush, and you also have
| | 04:21 | an erase brush here which erases it to
the last image that you have saved. So
| | 04:27 | basically, it's almost like a Paint
Undo so it just goes back to the last saved image.
| | 04:32 | So that's the basics of the 3D Paint
tool. Now remember this tool does use
| | 04:36 | pressure sensitivity so if you have a
tablet, you will get a lot more out of it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Rendering in MayaUnderstanding render settings| 00:00 | Now let's talk about rendering in Maya.
It's essentially a photographic process
| | 00:06 | because what it does is it allows you
to take a 3D image and snap a picture of
| | 00:11 | that. Now in this case the picture is a
bitmap but it's very similar to taking
| | 00:16 | a picture with the digital camera. So
I have got a file open here; in fact,
| | 00:20 | let's go ahead and set our project here;
Set > Rendering. Now for this chapter
| | 00:26 | we are going to be working with the
Maya Software Render, which is kind of a
| | 00:30 | default render in Maya.
| | 00:33 | I have got this file open. In fact, I
am going to go ahead and turn off these
| | 00:35 | Templates. If I want to render this
robot, all I really have to do is hit this
| | 00:41 | little Render button and I have got a
nice rendered image. Now rendering is
| | 00:47 | controlled by the Render Settings window.
We can get to that window in a couple
| | 00:50 | of places. Rendering Editor > Render
Settings or we can click on this icon,
| | 00:56 | which is where I always go. In this
Render Settings window we have all of the
| | 01:00 | controls for each individual rendering.
| | 01:03 | Now if I want to I can change the
render here and notice how all of these
| | 01:09 | options change. So the Maya Software
Render has these types of parameters
| | 01:15 | whereas Mental Ray has all of these
parameters. Now every renderer here has
| | 01:20 | what it call common parameters and
those are things that are basically common
| | 01:25 | to all sorts of render which is the
types of File Output, the number of frames
| | 01:30 | that we are rendering, which Camera
renders, as well as the Image Size. So
| | 01:34 | let's go through some of these.
| | 01:36 | The first one is File Output. Now if
you want you can certainly set it to a
| | 01:40 | specific name; if not, it's going to
use whatever your scene is named. In this
| | 01:45 | case that will be Robot_Final and then
the Image format. If we want we can use
| | 01:50 | Maya IFF or any of these. Now the next
one is how do you want the files to be
| | 01:56 | named? Now Maya renders in image
sequences so if you have an image sequence,
| | 02:02 | you can name it any one of these. So
for example, it's just the name, the name
| | 02:07 | with the extension, in this case, .Targa.
| | 02:10 | Now if you are rendering animation,
you will have tell it where to put the
| | 02:14 | number. So for example, if you want
the name and then the number and then the
| | 02:18 | extension, and so on. If you select one
of these animation ones, then a couple
| | 02:23 | of new options light up. The most
important one is Frame padding. So if you
| | 02:27 | look here it actually gives you a
sample of what the file name will be. If we
| | 02:33 | turn up Frame padding, that means we
have more leading zeros in the number. So
| | 02:38 | for example, 2 leading zeros, 3 leading zeros.
| | 02:42 | Now if you have this at a name.ext,
obviously we are not rendering image
| | 02:48 | sequences so it's just going to be
this name. Now if we are rendering
| | 02:52 | animation, what comes up here is the
Frame Range. What are we rendering? Are we
| | 02:57 | rendering 1 through 10, 1 through a 100,
28 through 43? Give it your Start and
| | 03:02 | End frame, and you can also give it an
increment. So if you want to render on
| | 03:06 | two's or some things like that you can do that.
| | 03:08 | You can also renumber the frames. So if
you are rendering say in the middle of
| | 03:12 | the sequence but you still want the
first frame be called frame1, one you can
| | 03:16 | do that here. Now the next one down is
probably one of the more important ones,
| | 03:20 | which is the Renderable Camera. Which
camera in the scene gets rendered? Now if
| | 03:25 | you have multiple cameras in the scene,
you will have to set this to be the
| | 03:29 | Renderable Camera.
| | 03:31 | The next one is Image Size. How big is
our render going to be? How big is the
| | 03:35 | piece of film? Defaults to 640X480, you
have a number of Presets here. You have
| | 03:42 | Square 1k, 2k, 3k, and 4k. We have 1024,
HD 1080, and so on and so forth. If
| | 03:49 | you don't like any of these, you can
certainly create your own Custom one where
| | 03:53 | we can give it whatever Width and Height,
and whatever Device and Pixel aspect
| | 03:58 | ratio we want.
| | 03:59 | Now we also have what it calls
Render Options and these allow you to put
| | 04:03 | scripts in before and after
something renders. Now with the Maya Software
| | 04:09 | Renderer we also have another tab. I
am not going to go through all of these.
| | 04:13 | Let me just go through some of the
basics. The most important one here is
| | 04:17 | Quality because these are some
presets that you can use just to give you
| | 04:21 | whatever type of quality you want. Now
we have what's called Preview quality,
| | 04:26 | which is actually kind of a low
resolution quality. It gives you kind of jaggy
| | 04:30 | edges and stuff but it's great for
rendering things fast. If you just wanted to
| | 04:34 | do a comp or just do a test,
just do it in Preview quality.
| | 04:38 | If you want to do full up
Production quality, then what that does is it
| | 04:42 | increases the amount of anti-
aliasing and so on, and that's all of these
| | 04:47 | parameters here. Now typically, I just
use the presets. If you want, you can
| | 04:51 | dig through this and really
customize it if you want. We also have Field
| | 04:55 | Options. If you are rendering NTSCs or
if you are rendering on fields, you can do that.
| | 05:00 | The next one is called Raytracing
Quality and this is where we can turn on and
| | 05:04 | off Raytracing. Now what Raytracing is
is reflection. So for example, if I turn
| | 05:09 | on Raytracing and do a quick render,
you will see that we have a little bit of
| | 05:14 | a different look because now it's
adding reflections here and that sort of
| | 05:18 | stuff. So you can get stuff like
reflections, you can get more accurate class
| | 05:23 | and transparency and you can also
get ray trace shadows with all of that.
| | 05:28 | Then we also have stuff for Motion Blur,
additional render options, and so on
| | 05:34 | and so forth. So those are the basics
of Render Settings window. So as we work
| | 05:38 | through the next couple of lessons you
may need to change these. So just know
| | 05:43 | where this menu is at and
get very familiar with it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the basics of lights and lighting types| 00:00 | Now rendering is like photography, so
we are taking pictures and in order to
| | 00:05 | take pictures we need to add
light. Now I have a file here called
| | 00:10 | Robot_NoLights.mb and it's exactly as
advertise. Now when I render something
| | 00:16 | without any lights in the scene what
happens is Maya just puts in what's called
| | 00:21 | a Default Light and it will render the
scene with that default light, so it's
| | 00:26 | kind of just a boring light.
| | 00:27 | Now I can change that in the Render
Settings window, if I go all the way down
| | 00:31 | here in my Common parameters, under my
Render Options, I can turn off Enable
| | 00:37 | Default Light and what happens when I
do that is nothing, because there is no
| | 00:42 | light in the scene, other than
what's caused by the objects themselves.
| | 00:46 | Now this particular scene I have a
little bit of glow, here let me show you
| | 00:50 | where I put that in. I have got a
little bit of glow on the special effects of
| | 00:55 | the shader for the eyeballs and a
little bit of self illumination, we have
| | 01:00 | actually got a ramp shader here with
a little bit of self illumination. But
| | 01:04 | those were the only sources of light
in the scene so that's all that renders.
| | 01:08 | Now we can add in additional light. Now
if I want to I can certainly turn back
| | 01:12 | on this Enable Default Light because
what happens is as soon as I add in a
| | 01:17 | light to the scene that goes away and
it just uses whatever the lights are in
| | 01:21 | this scene. In fact, if I want to see
default lighting I can always go into
| | 01:25 | viewport and go Use Default Lighting as well.
| | 01:29 | Now let's go ahead and add some lights
into our scene. We can get to lights in
| | 01:33 | a couple of ways. We can go Create >
Lights and just create any of these
| | 01:39 | lights. In fact, I am going to tear
this off here or if we are on a Rendering
| | 01:44 | shelf we have those same lights here
as icons. Now the lights are Ambient
| | 01:49 | Light, Directional, Point,
Spot, Area and Volume Light.
| | 01:53 | So let's go ahead and go through some
of these. I may skip around here. The
| | 01:57 | first one I want to show you is the
Spot Light, because that's actually one of
| | 02:01 | the ones that we probably would use
the most often. Now when I create a light
| | 02:05 | in Maya it always creates it at 0,0,
actually this scene was built so he is
| | 02:11 | actually a little below zero, so it
kind of comes up around his waist here. Now
| | 02:15 | if we zoom in, you can
see that that's the light.
| | 02:18 | Now if want to I could actually turn
on in my viewport, Use All Lights and I
| | 02:24 | can actually see how this light affects
the scene. So I am going to zoom out in
| | 02:29 | one of my side viewports and you can
see there is my light. Very cool. Now if I
| | 02:35 | want to I can also adjust this light
in a different way and this is actually
| | 02:39 | the way that I like doing it,
is using this manipulator.
| | 02:42 | So instead of going Move, Rotate, I
can actually rotate this light and you
| | 02:46 | know, you can only move and rotate, if
you scale it, nothing will happen but
| | 02:49 | you can also use what's called the
Manipulator. So if I click here it brings up
| | 02:54 | two nodes that I can move. One is the
target and the other is the light itself.
| | 03:01 | So actually I like using this a lot.
So I tend to hit this button a lot and
| | 03:06 | then just position the light. So that
way you can say, well I always want to
| | 03:09 | point it at the robot and then I can
just put the light wherever I want and
| | 03:13 | that way you never accidentally move
the light off of there. And let's go ahead
| | 03:18 | and take a render of this
and see what it looks like.
| | 03:21 | Okay so that's what that light,
looks like. Now what makes the Spot Light
| | 03:25 | unique is that it does cast a spot
over very specific areas. So, for example,
| | 03:30 | if I select this light and move it,
you can see how I have a cone of light
| | 03:36 | that's cast over the scene. Now we
also can change the attributes of this
| | 03:42 | spotlight just by going Ctrl+A and I
can go through here and these are all the
| | 03:47 | attributes for the spot light.
| | 03:48 | Well one of the first things I can
change is the Color. So if I want it to be a
| | 03:53 | different color, I can change the color,
I can change the Intensity, how bright
| | 03:59 | or dim is the light. For a Spot Light,
I can change the Cone Angle, how narrow
| | 04:05 | is that beam and I also can create
what's called a Penumbra Angle, so you can
| | 04:10 | see that as the soft edge. So when
this is positive, the soft edge goes out.
| | 04:15 | When it's negative the soft edge goes
in and then you also have what's called
| | 04:19 | Dropoff, which is
enabling the light to fall off.
| | 04:22 | Now another important one is called
Decay Rate and what this does is it allows
| | 04:26 | the light to fall off with distance.
Now by default there is No Decay. So these
| | 04:32 | lights don't really work like they do
in the real world. If you have a 100 watt
| | 04:35 | bulb all the way across the room in
real life, it's not going to illuminate the
| | 04:40 | far corner of the room as much as it's
going to illuminate right next to it.
| | 04:44 | But with the Maya light and No Decay,
it illuminates evenly no matter how far
| | 04:49 | away. Now we change that to either
Linear which is fall-off one per distance,
| | 04:55 | Quadratic which is inverse square law,
which is real life lights or Cubic which
| | 05:01 | falls off with the inverse of the cube.
Okay, this gets all technical but just
| | 05:06 | know, No Decay means the light never
changes, Quadratic is real, Cubic is more
| | 05:12 | than real, Linear is somewhere in between.
| | 05:15 | So those are the basics of the light
parameters. Now we also have different
| | 05:19 | types of lights. So I am going to go
ahead and delete the Spot Light and let's
| | 05:22 | put in another type of light. The
next type of light I want to show you is
| | 05:26 | called a Directional Light because this
works a lot like a spot light except it
| | 05:30 | doesn't have a cone. In fact, it's
almost like the light from the sun. It
| | 05:34 | really just kind of comes in parallel rays.
| | 05:36 | In fact, if you zoom in on this, you
can kind of see how that looks, the light
| | 05:41 | is always coming from parallel
directions rather than a point as in a spot
| | 05:45 | light. Because the light is coming
from all directions, the position of the
| | 05:49 | light doesn't really matter. The only thing
that matters is the direction of the light.
| | 05:54 | So if I go into my Perspective viewport
and hit Rotate, I can change that light
| | 06:00 | just by changing the direction. So,
for example, even though the lights over
| | 06:03 | here it's still coming from that
direction. Okay, so that's the Directional
| | 06:08 | Light. Now this is really great for
general illumination of the scene but you
| | 06:13 | may come into problems when you go into
things like shadows because there is no
| | 06:17 | defined area for this light to follow
like there is in a spot light, so it's
| | 06:21 | hard for Maya to calculate the shadow.
| | 06:24 | The third type of light is called a
Point Light. So let's just go ahead and
| | 06:27 | create that and what a point light is,
is the bare light bulb in the room. It's
| | 06:31 | just the light that illuminates in all
directions and there really is no sense
| | 06:38 | of direction like there is in
directional light or the point light.
| | 06:42 | The next type of light is called
Ambient Light. Now what this is just kind of a
| | 06:48 | general ambient light. It's almost
like a wash of light, it's not really
| | 06:53 | anything more than ambient room light
and typically you want to kind of keep
| | 06:57 | that low. Now if you are lighting a
scene where you have kind of like a bright
| | 07:01 | sunlight and you have light coming from
all directions, you may want it to pass
| | 07:05 | in an ambient light, just to kind of
soften the shadows and make sure there is
| | 07:09 | no hard shadows.
| | 07:11 | The next one is Volume Light. Now what
a volume light is, is a light that comes
| | 07:16 | from or is contained within a volume.
So when I have this light I can actually
| | 07:22 | do a couple of things. One is I can
change what type of shape the light is. It
| | 07:28 | starts with the Sphere. I can, for
example, make it a Cylinder, a Cone, a Box,
| | 07:33 | or a Sphere. I can scale this light if
I want to and make it bigger or smaller
| | 07:39 | and the cool thing about this light
is that it's actually emitting out from
| | 07:44 | that sphere or if I want, this is
even a little bit more cool, as I can
| | 07:48 | illuminate Inward to that.
| | 07:51 | So for example, if I wanted to I can
only illuminate those things within that
| | 07:57 | sphere. Now this doesn't show up in
the viewport, you have to render this. So
| | 08:04 | for example, if I had only this part of
the robot in the sphere, only that part
| | 08:11 | will show. This is a really great way
to have spot lighting that is tightly
| | 08:15 | controlled. You can just create a
volume of light and just put it around
| | 08:18 | something that you want to highlight
without having to shine all sorts of
| | 08:22 | lights on it.
| | 08:23 | And the last one is called an Area
Light. Let me go ahead and move that one
| | 08:27 | out. Now what an Area Light is
essentially a light that comes from a specific
| | 08:34 | area. Now if I want to I can scale
this up to create a softer light. This is
| | 08:40 | almost like a soft box and an Area
Light it comes from an area not a point or
| | 08:45 | many directions, but a confined area
which gives you a little bit more of an
| | 08:49 | advantage when you are doing something
like soft lighting, let's see how that renders.
| | 08:53 | So you can see that it's a little bit
softer, it's not quite as harsh as the
| | 08:57 | other lights. Now the other thing with
an Area Light is that as you scale it
| | 09:01 | up, the light gets brighter. Okay, so
the size of that does matter. So if you
| | 09:10 | scale it up, you are going to get a
brighter light than if you scale it down.
| | 09:13 | So you can certainly affect the intensity
to offset that but just be aware of that.
| | 09:18 | So those are the basic lights within
Maya and some of the basic parameters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding depth map shadows| 00:01 | Now let's talk about shadows. By
default Maya's lights actually don't cast
| | 00:05 | shadows. Now this is kind of odd
because there is really no light in the real
| | 00:09 | world that doesn't cast a shadow.
You know, any time where there is an
| | 00:13 | occlusion of light there
is going to be a shadow.
| | 00:16 | So that's actually kind of a cool
thing with Maya is that you have lighting
| | 00:20 | that is actually beyond reality. You
can simulate reality if you want but you
| | 00:24 | don't have to, you are not really
constrained by the laws of physics as much as
| | 00:28 | you are here on planet Earth.
| | 00:30 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
how to create shadows within Maya. I am
| | 00:35 | going to start with this file Robot_
NoLights.mb and we are going to add a spot
| | 00:42 | light. So this is the Spot Light icon
here and I am just going to go ahead and
| | 00:45 | create that and move that up. In fact,
I am going to turn on Use All Lights
| | 00:50 | here, so I can see where my spot
light is. In fact, I am going to use my
| | 00:53 | Manipulator tool.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to go into my
Perspective view and just position this light. I
| | 01:02 | will position it, kind of high almost
like a modeling light, kind of high and
| | 01:06 | to the left, this is the standard
Hollywood beauty shot light because they
| | 01:12 | really want to get a good shadow. So
now that I have the light selected and I
| | 01:16 | have it positioned, I can certainly
do a quick render here and you will see
| | 01:20 | that you have a light, hits the
object but it doesn't create a shadow.
| | 01:24 | Now I can create the shadows in one of
two ways. The first way is using what
| | 01:30 | are called Depth Map Shadows and
that's what I am going to cover in this
| | 01:33 | lesson. So if I select the light and I
go to my Attribute Editor for that light
| | 01:39 | and I scroll down, you will see a nice
little tab here called Shadows and that
| | 01:45 | allows me to turn on what are called
Depth Map Shadows or Ray Trace Shadows.
| | 01:51 | So let's go ahead and concentrate on
Depth Map Shadows first. Let's just turn
| | 01:55 | it on. Of course, I have to have the
proper view highlighted. So I will make
| | 01:59 | sure I right click over the Perspective
window and then do my quick render and
| | 02:04 | there is my shadow. Looks great. Okay,
but we can also affect this by using a
| | 02:09 | lot of different parameters here.
| | 02:11 | In fact, I am going to do a little
trick here. We have an additional way to
| | 02:15 | render in Maya and that's called IPR.
If I click this button, it will go ahead
| | 02:20 | and render my scene and it will allow
me to do interactive rendering, all I
| | 02:26 | have to do is just left click and drag
over the area I want to see and it will
| | 02:31 | automatically update that. So I can
change some of these parameters and we can
| | 02:36 | see them in real time.
| | 02:37 | So one of the first things we can
change is Shadow Color. So for example, if I
| | 02:42 | lighten up or darken my shadow, I can
create whatever color shadow I want,
| | 02:48 | which is kind of nice because I can
certainly make a green shadow; if I really
| | 02:51 | want to make a bright green shadow, I
could certainly do that. It's not very
| | 02:55 | natural, but then again Maya doesn't
have to stick to the laws of physics.
| | 02:59 | And one of the things I find the best
about affecting Shadow Color is that you
| | 03:03 | can soften your shadows. You can
actually make a shadow that's not completely
| | 03:07 | black. Now the other thing with
Depth Map Shadows is the couple of these
| | 03:11 | parameters. One is called Resolution
and Filter Size. Now what Resolution is,
| | 03:17 | is the size of the bitmap it uses to
create the shadow. So what this means to
| | 03:23 | you is that the higher the resolution
the sharper the shadow, the lower the
| | 03:28 | resolution the more blurry or softer the shadow.
| | 03:32 | Now this is kind of dependent upon how
big you render. If you are rendering 4K,
| | 03:37 | you know, giant images you may need
to change your shadow resolutions to a
| | 03:41 | different value then if you are
rendering for NTSC or something like that. So
| | 03:45 | let's go ahead and put this to a
ridiculously low value, let's put this to 64,
| | 03:48 | we will see what happens.
| | 03:50 | So when I change it to 64, I had to re-
render because of how IPR works but when
| | 03:57 | I did that you can see how the shadow
is starting to break up. That's because
| | 04:01 | it only has a 64 x 64 bitmap to
calculate that shadow. In fact, if I take this
| | 04:08 | second value here, which is called
Filter Size, this is what blurs that shadow.
| | 04:13 | So if I bring this all the way down to
zero, you can see that this shadow is
| | 04:18 | actually composed of this jaggy kind of
bitmap and this Filter Size, if I go up
| | 04:25 | one, render, you will see as I go up,
let's bring it up to 4. What it does is
| | 04:31 | it starts blurring the edges
so that I have a softer shadow.
| | 04:36 | So a lower resolution and a higher
filter size will create a softer shadow. Now
| | 04:41 | if I bring my Resolution up very high,
this bitmap will have less space to
| | 04:45 | blur. So for example, if I bring
this up to 2048 or really high like a 2K
| | 04:50 | shadow map, then you are going to get a
really sharp shadow again, because this
| | 04:55 | is only blurring the outer four
pixels or something like that.
| | 04:58 | So a higher number here on the
Filter Size, doesn't matters much when the
| | 05:03 | resolution is high. I could certainly
push this up to a very high number. If I
| | 05:07 | want to, I can actually type in
something like 48 and I can actually get a much
| | 05:11 | blurrier shadow.
| | 05:13 | But again, with a really high
resolution, it's still not going to be affected
| | 05:17 | as much. So typically I keep this
actually around in a range of 1, 2, 3 or 4,
| | 05:23 | typically around 3 and I keep this
around 512. This is just for standard NTSC
| | 05:29 | work. And that gives me a nice shadow
that is not too sharp. The difference
| | 05:33 | between these can create soft or hard shadows.
| | 05:37 | Now in addition to these, we also have
what's called a Bias control and what
| | 05:40 | the Bias control does is it actually
offsets the shadow just slightly from the
| | 05:45 | geometry so you don't have geometry
shadowing itself. And then we also have
| | 05:50 | parameters here for Fog Shadows if we
are doing special effects on the light.
| | 05:55 | So, for example, if I added some fog to
the light, I could add shadows through that fog.
| | 06:01 | So those are some of the basics of
Depth Map Shadows, let's move on to Ray
| | 06:04 | Trace Shadows in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Raytrace shadows| 00:00 | The other type of shadow in Maya is
called a Raytrace Shadow. Let me show you
| | 00:05 | how that works. Again, we are going
to start with a spotlight. So I am just
| | 00:08 | going to add a spotlight into the
scene and let's go ahead and position that.
| | 00:12 | And again I want to just get a nice
high kind of angle so I have a nice shadow
| | 00:18 | to play with here, pretty much over
his head, something like that, okay.
| | 00:23 | So I am going to go into my
perspective window and keep that spotlight
| | 00:26 | selected. Now I am just going to hit
Ctrl+A and go into my Attribute Editor and
| | 00:31 | what we did before was we used Depth
Map Shadows but this time we are actually
| | 00:35 | going to use what are called Raytrace
Shadows. The Raytrace Shadows work a
| | 00:39 | little bit differently, Depth Map
Shadows work off of a bitmap but actually
| | 00:44 | calculates a bitmap and they render a
little bit faster than a Raytrace Shadow.
| | 00:49 | But Raytrace Shadows actually are
really accurate shadow, they actually
| | 00:52 | calculate by bouncing rays of light
through the scenes. So it actually
| | 00:55 | calculates a very accurate shadow. One
of the benefits of Raytrace Shadows is
| | 01:00 | that you can actually shadow
transparent object so if you had a class table,
| | 01:04 | for example, you could cast a semi-
transparent shadow under that table where
| | 01:09 | you couldn't do that with the Depth Map Shadow.
| | 01:12 | So with Raytrace Shadows, you need to
turn on Raytracing in the Render Settings
| | 01:17 | window. So if go into the Maya
Software Renderer and it's the same for Mental
| | 01:21 | Ray, you have to make sure that
Raytracing is clicked on and when I do that
| | 01:26 | then I can actually render the scene.
Now notice how that Raytrace Shadow is
| | 01:32 | really very sharp because what it's
doing is it's casting rays from a point in
| | 01:36 | that spotlight and making
a very, very sharp shadow.
| | 01:40 | Now with Raytrace Shadows, I can
certainly modify the shadow color. So for
| | 01:44 | example, if I made this a little less
dark, it would still render and it would
| | 01:49 | be a little bit lighter of a shadow.
But one thing about Raytrace Shadows is
| | 01:53 | it's harder to create soft edge shadows.
So what Maya does is it gives you some
| | 01:58 | options here and one is called the
Light Radius and the number of Shadow Says.
| | 02:03 | If it's 0 and there is 1 Shadow Ray,
that means we have very, very sharp
| | 02:09 | shadow. More Shadow Rays at a higher
Light Radius will make the shadow a lot of
| | 02:14 | softer. For example, the light is bigger,
it's going to actually cast the rays
| | 02:19 | from a wider area and so it will cast
them from different angles and create a
| | 02:23 | softer shadow. But in order to do that
we need to increase the number of Shadow
| | 02:28 | Rays. So let's go ahead and bring this
up to say 0.25 and 16 Shadow Rays and
| | 02:35 | let's see what that does.
| | 02:36 | Okay that's a little bit softer. Let's
go ahead and bring up that Light Radius
| | 02:39 | up a lot, let's make it 2. Now these
are in Maya units, so it depends on the
| | 02:45 | scale of your scene as to how big that
Light Radius needs to be. If your scene
| | 02:50 | is modeled in a large measurement scale,
you are going to need a larger Light Radius.
| | 02:54 | So with a Radius of 2, you can start
to see I get a much better shadow. Now
| | 03:00 | with the Radius of 2 and 1 Shadow Ray,
you can see that it's kind of grainy,
| | 03:06 | kind of gets that almost stippled effect.
So more Shadow Rays kind of fills in
| | 03:11 | the stippling. So for example, if I go
up to say 8 or 10, it will modify that effect.
| | 03:18 | Now the higher the Radius of the light,
the more Shadow Rays you will need. So
| | 03:24 | for example, if I bring that up 8, you
are going to get a very soft shadow and
| | 03:27 | again you are going to see a lot of
that stippling. So again you can just bring
| | 03:31 | up the Shadow Rays to say 16 or even
higher and you can get a much better shadow.
| | 03:39 | But also notice that the more Shadow
Rays you add, that longer it's going to
| | 03:43 | take to render. So it's really a
balance, you really just want the minimum
| | 03:46 | number of Shadow Rays to render the
scenes, so it looks good because the mantra
| | 03:51 | with CG is that if it looks good it
is good, it's all about how it looks.
| | 03:55 | So basically you want just enough
Shadow Rays to give you a good smooth look
| | 04:01 | because if we go too far it's
going to jack up your rendering times.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the basics of cameras| 00:01 | Up until now we have been playing
with lights but let's go ahead and take a
| | 00:04 | look at cameras. Now cameras in Maya
are essentially virtual cameras but they
| | 00:10 | mimic standard 35mm and motion picture
cameras. You can create cameras either
| | 00:16 | in the Create menu under Cameras. There
is three types, Camera, Camera and Aim,
| | 00:21 | Camera Aim and Up. There is
also in Maya 2009, Stereo Cameras.
| | 00:26 | You can also create a camera here and
this just creates a basic camera not one
| | 00:30 | with Aim or Up. We are actually
working in this Robot_Final.mb file. So let's
| | 00:36 | just zoom out to a four view and let's
just go ahead and create some cameras.
| | 00:42 | The first one is just Camera. So when
we create a basic camera it just creates
| | 00:46 | a camera in the viewport.
| | 00:49 | Now in order to look through that
camera you need to change one of the
| | 00:53 | viewports so you can see through it.
So for example, here we can go Panels >
| | 00:57 | Perspective > camera1, and this will
actually look through that camera. So you
| | 01:05 | can see it here in Perspective we are
actually-- in fact, let's go ahead and
| | 01:08 | turn on Shading here. We can actually
see this in Perspective. In fact, if you
| | 01:13 | want to you can actually use your
camera modification tools and just position
| | 01:19 | your camera by zooming and rotating.
Notice how, when I do that, the camera in
| | 01:24 | the viewport changes so I am actually
literally moving this camera by zooming out here.
| | 01:30 | Now the next type of camera, let's just
go through the basic cameras here. The
| | 01:33 | next type of camera is called Camera
and Aim. So let's go ahead and select that
| | 01:38 | and when you do that what it does is
it creates a second node. Notice how I
| | 01:43 | have a Camera and I have an Aim point.
Again let's go Panels > camera1, and now
| | 01:50 | this camera is locked to this target.
It's almost like using that Manipulator
| | 01:55 | tool for lights is that it's
always pointing at that target.
| | 01:59 | The third one is called Camera, Aim and
Up but I am going to show you a little
| | 02:03 | trick. We could either create that
through the menu or one of the other great
| | 02:08 | things is that if I go into the
Camera's Attribute Editor, so I will keep that
| | 02:12 | camera selected, do Ctrl+A, I can go
into my Camera Attributes. Here I can
| | 02:18 | actually change it from regular Camera
to a Camera and Aim, and a Camera, Aim
| | 02:23 | and Up. Now what the Up does-- In fact,
let's just go ahead and take a look at
| | 02:27 | that. It creates a third little point
here, which allows me to tilt the camera.
| | 02:33 | Very simple.
| | 02:34 | So now that I have this I can actually
change it from any one type of camera to
| | 02:38 | another. Now let's go through some of
these controls for the camera. Cameras in
| | 02:43 | Maya basically mimic 35mm camera so if
you have something like a Focal Length,
| | 02:48 | it's going to be a 35 mm focal length.
In fact, let's go ahead and maximize our
| | 02:54 | camera view. A Focal Length means is
how long is the lens, is it wide angle or telephoto?
| | 03:01 | Now notice how Focal Length and Angle
of View are connected. So the longer the
| | 03:05 | lens, the narrower the angle of view.
So for example if I have a 135 lens on
| | 03:11 | this, it's going to be a 15 degree
angle of view. Now what this means for you
| | 03:16 | is that the longer the lens, the less
perspective in the scene. So this kind of
| | 03:22 | flattens it out. So for example, if you
are taking portraits, you want to take
| | 03:25 | a portrait with a slightly longer lens
because it flattens out the scene and
| | 03:28 | also it gives a little bit more depth of field.
| | 03:31 | Now if I want to I could actually make
this a very short lens. So for example,
| | 03:34 | if I want it to make a 12mm lens, just
type in 12, and now I have got a very
| | 03:39 | wide angle of view. In fact, it has a
112 degree angle of view, which means now
| | 03:44 | it's seeing a lot more of the
scene from the same position.
| | 03:48 | Now when I have the camera zoomed in I
had to move it back in order to see the
| | 03:53 | robot. In this case I have to push the
camera in or tuck in, in order to get
| | 04:00 | that same view. Now notice when I have
a wide focal length you get much more
| | 04:06 | perspective. This is a almost like a
fisheye lens sort of effect but the big
| | 04:10 | key here is that Angle of View and
Focal Length are connected. So I am going to
| | 04:14 | go ahead and put this back to
say, a 40mm lens so we have that.
| | 04:17 | Now we also have some other things. We
have what are called Clipping Planes.
| | 04:22 | What a Clipping Plane does is the
maximum distance where the camera can see.
| | 04:26 | Minimum/maximum difference. So for
example, if I took the Clipping Plane
| | 04:30 | and I brought it way down to, let's
say to 10, I wouldn't see anything. Bring
| | 04:34 | it up to a 100, I can but as I zoom out
you can see it doesn't render anything
| | 04:41 | greater than a 100 units away. This
can be really handy for rendering things
| | 04:45 | like special effects and that sort of
stuff but typically this is set to a
| | 04:49 | 1,000 or a 10,000 so I am
just going to put that back.
| | 04:52 | Now in addition we can also create
what are called Film Backs. So if you are
| | 04:56 | working with 35mm or Imax or any sort
of film matching, if you want to match to
| | 05:02 | live action shot in any of these formats,
you can use those Film Gates. Then we
| | 05:06 | also have additional settings here.
One is for a Mental Ray; the other is for
| | 05:10 | Depth of Field, which we'll get to. We
also have Output Settings. Environment.
| | 05:16 | Now this is one that we've actually
used before. What this does is it sets the
| | 05:20 | environment or the color of the
environment. So when I render this for
| | 05:23 | example, this is rendered against the
Background Color of black. If I bring it
| | 05:28 | to white, it will render against white.
If I change it to a different color,
| | 05:32 | now this is the background color behind
all of the geometry, it will render red.
| | 05:37 | Now if we want we could also create
an Image Plane at this point. This is
| | 05:41 | exactly the same as going View > Image
Plane > Import Image; these two buttons
| | 05:46 | are equivalent.
| | 05:47 | Now in addition we have Special
Effects. For example, I change the Shutter
| | 05:51 | Angle and this will affect Motion Blur.
Then we also have some Display Options,
| | 05:55 | we can display a Film Gate, a Display
Resolution, a Render Gate Mask, and so
| | 06:01 | on. Now these are also available up
here as buttons and also in the View menu,
| | 06:07 | we have our Camera Settings. We can
also turn on the Gate Mask which kind of
| | 06:11 | just masks out those areas that don't
render so we can actually see exactly
| | 06:16 | what the camera sees. We can also
turn on and off the Field Chart if we want.
| | 06:20 | Now if you also want you could also
make the camera into an Orthographic
| | 06:25 | camera, which is an infinite angle view.
That's basically like a top, left, or
| | 06:29 | right camera. So sometimes you may
need this for like a special effect or
| | 06:33 | something like that if you are going
to do like isometric stuff, you can use
| | 06:36 | that Orthographic View.
| | 06:38 | So once you understand the basics of
cameras you can start placing them. When
| | 06:43 | you are working with live action and
your matching cameras one of the big keys
| | 06:47 | is to write down your Camera
Settings because you can match them in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding depth of field| 00:01 | Another way to achieve realism in
rendering is through Depth of Field. Now this
| | 00:05 | is a common technique in photography
where you highlight one part of the scene
| | 00:11 | by keeping it in focus and blur out
the rest of the scene so that you have a
| | 00:16 | point of interest in the scene.
| | 00:18 | We can simulate this in Maya using
Depth of Field in the camera. Now I have a
| | 00:23 | file here called RedWagonDOF.mb and it
has that red wagon in it. Now if I just
| | 00:30 | zoom out here, you will see I have a
camera already setup here. In fact, I have
| | 00:34 | got this one here which is called
camera1. Let's just go ahead and zoom in
| | 00:40 | there and let's shade this window. In
fact, let's turn on Hardware Texturing so
| | 00:43 | we can see. For example, if we wanted
to render this with the handle as the
| | 00:50 | point of the interest, we
could blur the rest of the wagon.
| | 00:55 | Now if we just do a normal render, we
get everything. But we can add Depth of
| | 01:00 | Field by selecting the camera and going
in to the Camera Attribute Editor. All
| | 01:05 | we have to do is go all the way down
to Depth of Field of all things. Now we
| | 01:09 | can just turn in on and see what
happens. Notice it takes a little
| | 01:13 | longer to render. And we get blurriness
because the Depth of Field is set to a
| | 01:17 | specific Focus Distance right here.
| | 01:21 | Now we need to calculate how far it is
to the object that we want to focus on,
| | 01:28 | and we can do that by-- actually
there is a little trick here. Under
| | 01:31 | Display we have what's called a Heads
Up Display, and we can just turn on all
| | 01:36 | sorts of things that will show up in
our display. The one I want to turn on
| | 01:40 | here is called Object Details. When I
turn that on and I select the specific
| | 01:45 | object then it shows me the distance
from the camera. So for example, if I
| | 01:51 | chose this handle, it will show me the
distance to the camera but this is the
| | 01:54 | distance to the pivot of the object.
So I need to make sure that the object
| | 02:00 | that I am looking at is at the right distance.
| | 02:03 | So if I want this handle in focus, the
distance of this object from the camera
| | 02:06 | is actually calculated from the
pivot, which is all the way down here.
| | 02:10 | Probably, the easiest thing to do is
just to create a dummy object in there. So
| | 02:15 | I am just going to create a thing
called a Locator here, and this is just a
| | 02:18 | dummy object that doesn't render, and I
am just going to set that right on top
| | 02:22 | of the handle.
| | 02:24 | Now I can see that this particular
object is at a distance. So if I want to
| | 02:29 | focus right there, I know that that
point is 13.535 from the camera. So all I
| | 02:37 | have to do is go Camera Attribute
Editor, go here and just type 13.5. That
| | 02:42 | should be close enough. And then I can
set the F Stop of my camera. I am going
| | 02:47 | to leave this at 5.6 and just do a render.
| | 02:50 | Now you can see this is in perfect
focus and the background is out of focus,
| | 02:55 | which gives you a really nice kind of
a bouquet sort of effect. Now if I want
| | 02:59 | to focus on something else, I can
either just move this around which is kind of
| | 03:03 | nice or I can just select the object.
So let's say I want to focus on the wagon
| | 03:08 | that's at distance of 30 so let's go
ahead and go Camera Attribute Editor, and
| | 03:14 | go 30.6, and then do another render.
| | 03:18 | Now the handle is out of focus and the
body of the wagon is in focus. Now let's
| | 03:27 | go ahead and put this back to being
focused on the handles so I can just type
| | 03:31 | in 13.5. Now If I want to I can also
change my F Stop. Now this works exactly
| | 03:36 | the way the 35mm cameras work. So for
example, if I do F 1.8, which is a very
| | 03:42 | wide lens, I am going to get a lot
more depth of field. The blurring starts a
| | 03:47 | lot more quickly. If I bring this F
Stop way up, let's say I do F 11, I am
| | 03:53 | going to get a much lower depth of field.
So this doesn't blur nearly as much.
| | 03:59 | So the F Stop really
determines the amount of blurry.
| | 04:02 | Now I also have something called Focus
Region Scale and what that does is it's
| | 04:06 | your fudge factor. So you can type in a
specific Focus Distance and a specific
| | 04:11 | F Stop but you can also fudge that. So
you can actually make that Focus Region
| | 04:15 | bigger or smaller. So if your F Stop
isn't giving you exactly the right amount
| | 04:21 | that you want, you can certainly expand that.
| | 04:23 | So those are the basics of Depth of
Field and one of the things you can do is
| | 04:27 | if you have a 35mm or digital SLR,
play with depth of field on your camera to
| | 04:33 | see how it works and you can apply
that directly to your work in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Motion Blur| 00:00 | Another way to add realism to a scene
is by using Motion Blur. This is really
| | 00:06 | important with moving images, because
most photographic cameras don't take an
| | 00:11 | exact still image. If something is
moving through the scene it's going to blur
| | 00:16 | while it moves. So we can simulate
this in two ways using Maya's Software
| | 00:22 | Renderer's Motion Blur options.
| | 00:24 | So let's go into a scene. We are
actually in a scene called RedWagon_Animated.
| | 00:29 | It's just that little red wagon and
it's just zooming through the scene. So
| | 00:33 | let's go ahead to around frame
14 or 15 and just render that.
| | 00:38 | If we render it, we will see that we
have a still image, but we don't have any
| | 00:42 | blurring on this. Now, if this was
actually moving through the scene you would
| | 00:46 | see a little bit of blurring in a
realistic photograph of the scene. So we can
| | 00:50 | simulate that using Motion Blur.
| | 00:53 | We go into our Maya Software Renderer
and we have a Motion Blur tab. Now, if we
| | 01:00 | scroll down we can turn on Motion
Blur; we have two types: 2D and 3D.
| | 01:07 | Now, let me explain the differences
between these. 2D is a Motion Blur that
| | 01:12 | actually just blurs the pixels of the
final rendered image. So it's kind of
| | 01:16 | almost like a mock Motion Blur. Now,
it renders really, really fast, which is
| | 01:21 | nice, but it doesn't quite
catch certain types of animation.
| | 01:25 | Now, for example, this wagon, which is
moving left to right across the screen,
| | 01:29 | most of the blurring is going to
happen on the left to right, but if for
| | 01:33 | example, this was tumbling and moving
in three dimensions, 2D Motion Blur might
| | 01:38 | not catch that, and so that's where
3D Motion Blur comes in. So let's go
| | 01:43 | through both of them and see how they work.
| | 01:45 | Now, 2D Motion Blur again just blurs
the image. So we can just go ahead and
| | 01:51 | turn this on and render it, and you are
going to get blurring, but you are also
| | 01:55 | going to get this real, kind of weirdness here.
| | 01:58 | Now, some of this is pixelation,
because I have this set at Low Quality
| | 02:04 | rendering. If I turn it up to
Production Quality you might get a little bit
| | 02:08 | better, but what it's doing here is its
motion blurring the Alpha channel. So I
| | 02:14 | have got this against the blank image,
so it's actually doing Motion Blur
| | 02:17 | against an Alpha channel. If I want to
see this on the image, I need to go down
| | 02:21 | here to Smooth and smooth to Color
rather than to Alpha, and this will look
| | 02:26 | better in this type of rendering.
| | 02:28 | Now, if you are going to go composite
something with Motion Blur, you do want
| | 02:31 | to blur to Alpha channel, but if you
are just rendering out of the camera,
| | 02:35 | color is what you want.
| | 02:36 | Now, you can see we have our Motion
Blur and this actually is a lot nicer. Now,
| | 02:42 | we can affect the Motion Blur here by
doing the Blur Length; if we crank that
| | 02:46 | up it should be a lot blurrier. There we go.
Crank it down; we can do it a lot more subtly.
| | 02:55 | We also have Blur by frame; you can
actually blur over multiple frames if you
| | 03:00 | want. Another option you can use is
Use Shutter Open and Close. Now, this
| | 03:05 | actually simulates the shutter of a
motion picture camera. So we can open this
| | 03:09 | shutter at 50%, we can open it more or
less. So for example, if we open it at
| | 03:14 | 25 and close it at 25 or 0.25;
again, a much lighter Motion Blur.
| | 03:21 | We also have a Blur sharpness and a
Smooth value. Now, the Smooth value just
| | 03:26 | smoothes out. It's kind of like a
blurring value, so a higher Smooth value will
| | 03:30 | give you a blurrier kind of Motion
Blur. So I usually just keep this at the
| | 03:35 | default, but you can certainly play with that.
| | 03:37 | Now, the next type of Motion Blur is
3D Motion Blur. Now, this has fewer
| | 03:41 | options, you actually just have Blur
by frame and if you want you can use the
| | 03:46 | Shutter to Open and Close.
| | 03:48 | Now, this is almost like an automatic
Motion Blur because it' actually creating
| | 03:51 | it more realistically. When you are
faking Motion Blur, such as in 2D, you have
| | 03:56 | all these parameters you use to fake
it, but when you are actually doing
| | 03:59 | something that's a little bit more
authentic, you don't need to worry so much
| | 04:03 | about all those fake parameters.
| | 04:04 | So let's just go ahead and take a look
at this render. So as you can see, this
| | 04:08 | is a little bit different in
character than the other Motion Blur, in fact,
| | 04:12 | it's a little bit more realistic.
| | 04:14 | Now, if you want you can certainly
affect the length of it by scalping down the
| | 04:19 | shutter, which means less time; a
faster shutter speed means quicker action. So
| | 04:25 | that's how you affect the amount of
Motion Blur, in this case is by doing the
| | 04:29 | Shutter Open and Shutter Close.
| | 04:32 | So those are some of the key tools
for using Motion Blur. I like to keep it
| | 04:36 | turned on; because anytime I am doing
animation it's always nice to have a
| | 04:40 | little bit of blur on your objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Raytracing reflections and refractions| 00:01 | Now, let's talk about reflections and
refractions in Maya. These can be done
| | 00:06 | using the Raytracer. So let me show
you how this works. We have a file here
| | 00:11 | called Refractions.mb and it's just a
kind of a transparent goblet with some
| | 00:16 | oranges in it. If we pull up the scene
and render it without Raytracing, we get
| | 00:20 | this, which is not really all that realistic.
| | 00:24 | Now, the first we could do is turn on
Raytracing in the Maya Software Renderer.
| | 00:29 | So we go here to Render Settings,
Maya Software Renderer and we turn on
| | 00:35 | Raytracing. Now, I am going to turn
this to production quality because what
| | 00:39 | this does is it increases the number
of reflections and refractions as a
| | 00:44 | default in Raytracing for this render.
So it just gives us more bounces of the
| | 00:49 | light when the light runs through the
scene in Maya. So let's go ahead and set
| | 00:54 | that Raytracing on and render.
| | 00:56 | Now when we turn on Raytracing, the
first thing you'll notice is you'll notice
| | 01:01 | that there are reflections and these
reflections are caused by the surface
| | 01:07 | material. So for example I select this
tabletop, go into the Attribute Editor
| | 01:12 | of that and I will find my little
Blinn shader here. You can see this is the
| | 01:16 | color, but the more important one for
we're concerned with is this reflectivity
| | 01:22 | value here. Right now it's set to .5.
If I bring it up, let's go ahead and
| | 01:27 | bring it up to very high number and
then just click on that viewport and do a
| | 01:31 | quick render, you can
see it reflects a lot more.
| | 01:34 | If I don't want that to reflect, I
have to turn that down to 0 and that
| | 01:39 | essentially makes it a non-reflective
surface. So you can see how it doesn't
| | 01:43 | reflect. So I am going to kind of keep
it back towards the middle here, so we
| | 01:47 | have some nice reflections and
notice how reflections tend to -- they act
| | 01:52 | almost like shadows do in a scene and
that they anchor the glass to the table
| | 01:57 | top because there's now a point of
connection here where the glass meets the table.
| | 02:04 | Now, in addition to this though, we
still don't have a really nice look to this
| | 02:08 | glass. We have got some nice
reflections but it still doesn't look like glass,
| | 02:12 | it just looks like it's kind of a
shaded material. We can affect that by
| | 02:17 | working with refractions. So let me
show you how that works. I am going to
| | 02:21 | close this Render window, select the
goblet, make sure we're in the blinn2
| | 02:27 | material. Go down to Raytrace
options and turn on refractions.
| | 02:32 | Now we have a number of options here.
One is the refractive index, refraction
| | 02:37 | limit, how many surfaces will this
bounce through before the refractions go
| | 02:42 | away. So for example, in this goblet,
you have this one, two, three, four
| | 02:49 | surfaces. You could actually bounce
through the inside and outside surfaces of
| | 02:53 | the glass on both sides and then if
you had a fluid or something like that in
| | 02:57 | there, you can probably go to at least 6.
By default its 6 and you can probably
| | 03:01 | keep it there, you can
always increase that if you want.
| | 03:04 | We also have stuff like Light
Absorbance which is how much does that surface
| | 03:09 | soak up the light and then in addition
we also have surface thickness and so on
| | 03:14 | and how much does it attenuate shadows.
I am just going to leave it, just turn
| | 03:18 | on refractions and just leave it at the
default, so let's just see what happens.
| | 03:22 | When we do that, we really don't get
much of a difference because we have a
| | 03:27 | refractive index of 1 and a refractive
index of 1 is the same as not having any
| | 03:32 | refractions. Because what happens is
when the light hits a surface, what a
| | 03:36 | refraction is, is that the light
changes its angle, and that causes almost like
| | 03:41 | a lens effect. So when you have a
refractive index of 1, there is no lens
| | 03:46 | effects because the light isn't bending.
So let's go ahead and increase that
| | 03:50 | refractive index. Let's just go ahead
and make it like 1.1. You really don't
| | 03:53 | have to increase it by all that much
to get the effect. Once I do that and I
| | 03:58 | render, you will see a much better
difference there because now the light is
| | 04:04 | actually changing angle as
it goes through the surface.
| | 04:08 | You can see now I am getting kind of a
lens effect right down here, it really
| | 04:12 | works. So if I want, I can make the
refractive index either above or below 1.
| | 04:17 | When it's above 1, it refracts the
light at positive angle, below 1, refracts
| | 04:22 | it at a negative angle. So the best
way to do is just experiment and see how
| | 04:27 | this works. So you can see when I have
a refractive index below 1, you can see
| | 04:32 | the effect here. In fact, you don't
have to really do much of refractive index.
| | 04:36 | In fact, if I just do .96 or .95
really just slightly below 1, you will get a
| | 04:44 | really nice effect. So you
can kind of see how that works.
| | 04:50 | So now that we understand little bit
about refractions, let's go ahead and see
| | 04:54 | exactly how these work in the Render
Settings window. So let's go here to
| | 04:59 | Render Settings and go back down to
Raytracing Quality. Now we have three
| | 05:03 | parameters here. We have Reflections,
Refractions, Shadows. These numbers
| | 05:08 | indicate the number of bounces the
light will go for each of these types. Now
| | 05:11 | we've done reflections and refractions,
let's also go ahead and do shadows.
| | 05:15 | So to do that, I need to select a
light in the scene. I am going to go to my
| | 05:21 | Hypergraph window, come down here to
default light set and select Spotlight 2.
| | 05:26 | Now, I can come down and I can set two
types of shadows. One is Depth Map, the
| | 05:32 | other is Raytrace. Let's go ahead and
turn on Depth Map Shadows and render it.
| | 05:39 | You get a shadow, it's a nice shadow,
but notice how the shadow is not
| | 05:43 | transparent. So it doesn't
really look all that real.
| | 05:46 | Also notice right here where the bottom
surface of the glass interacts with the
| | 05:51 | table, you are getting this little
striation here and that's just an artifact
| | 05:56 | of the Depth Map Shadow. We can fix
that by turning off Depth Map Shadows,
| | 06:00 | scrolling down and just turning on
Raytrace Shadows. We can leave this at the
| | 06:05 | default and just do another render.
| | 06:07 | Now, notice how different this shadow
looks from the other one. You have actual
| | 06:12 | Raytrace shadows. The shadow is
actually showing the transparency. You can even
| | 06:16 | see the oranges in the goblet, so you
get a much more accurate shadow when you
| | 06:21 | are using Raytrace Shadows,
particularly with transparent surfaces.
| | 06:26 | So those are some of the basics of
Raytracing and you can see how these make
| | 06:30 | for a much more realistic
transparent and glassy surfaces.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Interactive rendering with IPR| 00:01 | One of the issues you will come across
when rendering is the time it takes to
| | 00:04 | render a scene. Now, when you are
tweaking, the way a scene looks you are going
| | 00:09 | to be doing a lot of renders. You are
going to adjust the light for example and
| | 00:13 | then render. You are going to adjust
the texture and then you are going to
| | 00:16 | render, and those renders tend to add
up and they can really make your day a
| | 00:20 | very long day.
| | 00:22 | Maya has a tool that can really help
you with this iterative process and it's
| | 00:27 | called IPR or the Interactive Photorealistic
Renderer. Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:33 | We've got a file here called RedWagon_
IPR.mb and it's just the red wagon with a
| | 00:40 | few lights in it. So let's go ahead
and just do a standard render. So if I do
| | 00:44 | this render, I can render the scene,
change parameters and then I have to
| | 00:49 | render again. This scene renders fairly
quickly but if you start getting in the
| | 00:53 | things that take a while to
render, this can start to add up.
| | 00:56 | We can change this by using the IPR
renderer. So let me show you. There are a
| | 01:01 | couple of places we can get to it. One
is, if we go into our Rendering palette
| | 01:05 | here, we can go Render, we have IPR
render, I always go here which is just the
| | 01:11 | IPR Render button and what that does
is it just renders the scene, but it
| | 01:15 | stores a lot of the parameters for the
scene on the disc and so that way, you
| | 01:21 | can just left-click and drag and draw
a box around all the things you want to change.
| | 01:27 | So for example if I select this wheel,
I can go into the attribute editor here
| | 01:33 | and change the color of the wheel. So
for example if I want to make it white
| | 01:38 | wheels, you can see how the wheels
actually change color, not only in the
| | 01:43 | viewport but also in that final render.
We can also do other sorts of things.
| | 01:48 | We can also change lighting.
| | 01:49 | So let me go ahead and close this and
let's go ahead and zoom-out here and
| | 01:53 | let's find a light. There's actually a
light here if you can see it and let me
| | 01:57 | zoom-in, there's a spotlight right
here that's called Spotlight1 and if I do
| | 02:03 | another IPR, I can change some
of these spotlight parameters.
| | 02:08 | So all I have to do is draw a box
around what I want to see and then I can
| | 02:13 | change for example the shadow color,
and I can just see how that changes in the
| | 02:16 | scene. I can also change white color,
so I could take the color of the light,
| | 02:21 | make it a red light, a blue light
whatever I want. I can change the intensity
| | 02:25 | of the light, and this all reflects
in this IPR. I can also change the cone
| | 02:30 | angle of the light. I can actually
bring the light in, I can change the
| | 02:33 | Penumbra Angle of that light and I can
see exactly how this is affecting the
| | 02:38 | scene. In fact, if I want to, I could
even move the light. So I go into this
| | 02:42 | viewport here, I can move the
light and it will change in IPR.
| | 02:47 | Now, there are some things that don't
come through. One of the more important
| | 02:51 | things is some of the Shadow parameters.
So for example -- here let me go ahead
| | 02:54 | up to the light and turn it back down
here. I am going to turn it back down to
| | 02:58 | say 1.1, so we have a little bit more
shadow that we can see, but let's go down
| | 03:03 | to depth of that shadow. Now one of
the things we can do is we can certainly
| | 03:06 | change the shadow color, but shadow
resolution is one of the things that cannot
| | 03:11 | be changed in IPR and there is a whole
list of things that it will and will not do.
| | 03:16 | We can change the way the shadows
are filtered, but we can't change the
| | 03:21 | resolution. So if brought this down to
a low number, you wouldn't see that, but
| | 03:25 | I can re-IPR this either by just
clicking here or if you are in your Render
| | 03:30 | View window, you have another IPR button,
it does the exact same thing and now
| | 03:34 | you can see I have got a much grainer
shadow and I can certainly add my filter
| | 03:39 | size here to that shadow and re-
filter it, but I can't change the original
| | 03:43 | resolution of that depth map.
| | 03:45 | Now, that's just one of many parameters
that don't work, there's a lot that do.
| | 03:50 | So just go ahead and play with IPR and
especially if you are doing some final
| | 03:54 | rendering, it can really help
to speed your process along.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Batch rendering | 00:01 | Up until this point, we have been
rendering single images but Maya is an
| | 00:05 | animation package, so we will have to
render image sequences, so we can render
| | 00:09 | animation. So the best way to do this
or the easiest way to do this is through
| | 00:13 | Maya's own Batch Renderer.
Let me show you how that works.
| | 00:17 | I have a file opened here. It's a
called RedWagon_ Animated and this actually
| | 00:22 | has some animation in it, it has Wagon
kind of going through the scene here. In
| | 00:27 | order to set up that rendering, first
of all we have to do some stuff in the
| | 00:31 | Render Settings window. So I can go
to either Window > Rendering Editor >
| | 00:35 | Render Settings or I can hit this
little button here which brings up Render Settings.
| | 00:40 | Now the best way to configure this
is to just give it a file name and an
| | 00:46 | extension. So for example if I want
it to be name_#.ext, that's how it will
| | 00:53 | name it. In fact, you can see here the
file name, it goes From and To. So I am
| | 00:58 | going to animate, in this case, Start
Frame is 1, End Frame is 10. So I am
| | 01:02 | going to animate the first 10 frames.
This particular sequence is 24 frames
| | 01:08 | long, so I can certainly type that
number in here, Frame Range is just tells
| | 01:12 | you what you are rendering and here,
it will tell you my first name is this
| | 01:16 | file name prefix which is the name of
my scene, RedWagon_Animated_1 to 24. If I
| | 01:23 | want, I can certainly change that name
by just typing in whatever I want. I can
| | 01:27 | change the image format. Let's go ahead
and render these just to JPEGs, just to
| | 01:32 | make them small files and then also,
I have got here what's called Frame Padding.
| | 01:37 | So if you notice, we have got RedWagon_
Animated 1 to 24, but a lot of times you
| | 01:41 | want leading 0s on those numbers, so
that way they organize for other types of
| | 01:46 | compositing packages and so on. Now the
best way to render animation in Maya is
| | 01:52 | to use image sequences. Now this gives
you a couple of benefits. One is if for
| | 01:58 | some reason the render fails in the
middle of the render and you've got 100
| | 02:04 | frames render, you still have those
frames on the disc. But if you are
| | 02:09 | rendering to something like a QuickTime
or an AVI and it fails in the middle of
| | 02:12 | the render, you have to go back to the
very beginning and render those first
| | 02:17 | 100 frames all over again. So it's much
safer to render in image sequences and
| | 02:23 | that's kind of how Maya is set up.
| | 02:25 | The other benefit for rendering image
sequences is that you can distribute
| | 02:29 | those images across multiple machines.
So for example, if you are doing batch
| | 02:33 | rendering, you can have machine one
render the first third, machine two, the
| | 02:38 | second third or whatever. You can
certainly distribute the load among multiple
| | 02:42 | machines, which you can't do again
if you render in QuickTime or AVI.
| | 02:46 | So we're setting this to JPEG and
we've got our scene name set and then batch
| | 02:52 | render is actually very simple. All
you have is option here that says batch
| | 02:56 | render. We can certainly look at the
options here and there's really only one
| | 03:00 | option, do you want to use all the
available processors in your machine and
| | 03:05 | that means if you have a dual core, or
quad core or multi-processor system, do
| | 03:10 | you want all of those processors
rendering or do you want to specify how many
| | 03:16 | processors to use. So you could
actually background render on one processor,
| | 03:21 | while you continue to animate on the
other, so you don't completely load down
| | 03:25 | your system with rendering.
| | 03:26 | In this case we're just going to
render with all processors and we're just
| | 03:30 | going to do batch render and close.
Then, your status of your rendering is
| | 03:34 | going to come up here in the bottom
right-hand corner. It's going to say,
| | 03:38 | Result: Rendering with Maya software
and then once it gets going; it's going to
| | 03:42 | start rendering fairly quickly. In this
case, I have a fairly fast machine, so
| | 03:46 | I render 24 frames and/in fractions
of a second each. Now, once I have got
| | 03:51 | those done, I can certainly look at
those files. So probably the easiest way to
| | 03:54 | do it is to go View Image from the
File menu and let's make sure we're in our
| | 04:00 | Rendering project. We will file those
rendered images in the Images directory
| | 04:06 | of our project, and here they all are.
Now, if we want, we can also view an
| | 04:11 | image sequence. So again, I can just go
into my Rendering project and go ahead
| | 04:17 | and load up just the first one and it
will go ahead and automatically pick up
| | 04:21 | that sequence and then you
can see how that renders.
| | 04:30 | So those are the basics of batch
rendering. Now, for those who have really
| | 04:34 | intense rendering applications, there
are third party rendering managers for
| | 04:39 | Maya. Maya doesn't include a third
party rendering manager on its own, so you
| | 04:43 | do have to go outside of the original
package. The one that I use a lot is
| | 04:47 | called Smedge, but there are a number
of other ones out there and they can
| | 04:51 | actually manage multiple machines and
distribute the load amongst a number of
| | 04:56 | different machines. So those are
basics of batch rendering in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting a scene: The robot| 00:00 | Now, let's take what we've learned
about lighting and rendering and go ahead
| | 00:05 | and light and render a scene. We have
a scene out here called Toyshelf.mb and
| | 00:10 | this has the robot and the car and
few other things that we've created and
| | 00:15 | let's go ahead and pull
them all together into a scene.
| | 00:18 | Now when I start rendering a scene, I
take it one light at a time. I usually
| | 00:23 | start with the main light and then
add another secondary modeling light and
| | 00:27 | make sure they're balanced and then
fill in with additional light. Now remember
| | 00:32 | that every time you add a light, you
are going to increase the brightness of
| | 00:37 | the scene. We've got to be careful
when we add lights not to over-expose our shot.
| | 00:42 | So let's go ahead and start lighting
the scene. I am going to start by creating
| | 00:46 | a main light that kind of simulates
the light coming in from window. So I am
| | 00:51 | going to go out into my scene here and
just create a spotlight and then I am
| | 00:58 | going to move that light out. Now in
order to see what this light is doing, I
| | 01:02 | can go use all lights and then also
I am going to turn on high quality
| | 01:07 | rendering in my Camera 1 viewport.
| | 01:10 | Now as I pull out, you can see that the
spotlight is starting to illuminate the
| | 01:14 | scene, but I want this spotlight to
simulate a window. Now what I have done is
| | 01:19 | I have actually created in Photoshop a
very simple texture called Window.jpg.
| | 01:24 | So let's go ahead and attach this to
our light source. I am going to go into my
| | 01:29 | Spotlights Attribute Editor and in the
Color Channel for that light; I am going
| | 01:34 | to place that bitmap.
| | 01:36 | So I am just going to click here,
create a Render Node file and in that file, I
| | 01:40 | am going to select Window.jpg in our
07 rendering directory. When I do that,
| | 01:46 | you can see in this Camera viewport
how the light is affecting the scene. So
| | 01:51 | all I have to do is now position this
light. I can go into my Top viewport or
| | 01:58 | wherever and just start
positioning that. Now I am going to use the
| | 02:01 | manipulator. So I am going to
actually put a target here somewhere in that
| | 02:05 | scene and then I am going to make the
light come up and maybe a little bit from
| | 02:09 | the left and then just pull that
light out until I have got it pretty much
| | 02:17 | where I want.
| | 02:18 | Now another thing I can do is if I
don't want to pull that too far back, you
| | 02:22 | can affect the angle. So if I go to
into my Attribute Editor, I can certainly
| | 02:27 | bring up the cone angle of that light
a little bit and then just use that to
| | 02:32 | affect where that light is coming from
and also affect the size of that pattern
| | 02:39 | on the wall.
| | 02:40 | Now that I have this, I can certainly
do a quick render by clicking on the
| | 02:44 | Camera 1 viewport and just join the
render. Let me see, I have got this nice
| | 02:49 | highlight here, but this isn't fully
lit. It just looks like its light coming
| | 02:53 | from one direction. I need to make
this look more like daylight, so I need to
| | 02:56 | fill this in.
| | 02:56 | Now, one thing also is that I am
rendering right now at 640 by 480. It's
| | 03:01 | probably going to be a lot easier, a
lot faster if I render smaller. So I am
| | 03:05 | going to go into my Render Settings
window, go down here and let's just do 400
| | 03:10 | by 300 in the image size just so that
we have a smaller amount to render and so
| | 03:18 | things will go a lot more quickly.
| | 03:20 | Now, I am going to go ahead and fill
this light in a little bit more. Let's
| | 03:23 | create a spotlight, and this light I am
going to put up above. So I am actually
| | 03:30 | going to light from the top and make
sure that's basically my modeling light
| | 03:41 | here. So this is actually going to
give me the light I need from the top.
| | 03:47 | Now again, I can adjust the Penumbra
Angle if I want to and the Cone Angle. Now
| | 03:52 | look here at the top corner, I really
want that cone to be outside of the field
| | 03:57 | of view. As long as it's outside of
there, it's going to look a lot better. Now
| | 04:01 | I can certainly do a quick render
here. Much better, it's a little bit
| | 04:05 | brighter. There's a couple of things
missing. One is shadows. So let's go ahead
| | 04:10 | and turn on shadows for both of these lights.
| | 04:13 | So I am going to keep my Spotlight 2
selected and just use some depth map
| | 04:18 | shadows and I am going to wrap up the
filter size just a little bit and also I
| | 04:23 | don't like black shadows. So I am going
to go ahead and just make the shadows a
| | 04:28 | little bit grayer, like kind of a
darker gray, do a quick render on that to see
| | 04:33 | how they look. I could also be using IPR here.
| | 04:36 | That looks good, but also I want a
shadow from the window obviously. So I am
| | 04:40 | going to select that light that's
creating the window which is Spotlight 1, and
| | 04:45 | again I am going to use depth map
shadows, but I don't want this to be the main
| | 04:48 | shadow because if I render this, you
are going to see I am going to get a
| | 04:52 | really big black shadow here and
that's not going to look all that good.
| | 04:56 | So let's go ahead and just moderate the
shadow a little bit. I am going to make
| | 05:00 | it obviously grayer but another thing
I am going to do is I am going to turn
| | 05:03 | down the resolution a lot to 128 and
then I am going to filter it, so I get
| | 05:08 | about 4 and that will really blur
out that shadow to make it a lot less
| | 05:13 | apparent. So now I have got a much
softer shadow on the wall and a much harder
| | 05:18 | shadow underneath. So that gives
me a much more direct shadowing.
| | 05:21 | Now still, if I take a look at this
rendered scene, you'll see that along the
| | 05:26 | side here, it's still really dark. In
fact, it's really dark coming from the
| | 05:30 | side and we really want to brighten
that up. Now, we're getting to the point
| | 05:34 | where we have two lights in the scene.
So any additional light we add is
| | 05:39 | probably going to start over-exposing it,
but I am still going to add a light.
| | 05:43 | I am going to add a point like this
time, because I really don't need to cast
| | 05:47 | shadows and I just want a general light.
| | 05:49 | So I create a point light. Now notice
how that creates this light in the room.
| | 05:55 | I fact, if I want to, you can see
how when I move it over, it totally
| | 05:58 | illuminates the sides. All I have to do
is take this light, move it over a bit,
| | 06:02 | in fact, and maybe move it just a
little bit forward, just keep it off to the
| | 06:09 | side though. Now, what I have got here
though is I have got a lot a light in
| | 06:12 | the scene. I have got three lights in
the scene. They are all at the intensity
| | 06:16 | of 1, which is actually pretty strong.
So I have to kind of bring that light down.
| | 06:23 | So I am going to keep this point light
selected and one thing that I could do
| | 06:27 | is just dial down that intensity. That
would work pretty good, but I probably
| | 06:32 | want to give a little more pop to this.
So I am actually going to change the
| | 06:35 | color. I am going to click here and
let's go ahead and change the color to
| | 06:38 | almost like a dark bluish purple
and that will kind of give almost the
| | 06:43 | impression of shadow.
| | 06:44 | In fact look here. If I were to ante
this up, you can see how that kind of
| | 06:48 | gives almost the impression of a shadow,
but it's also a color and that gives
| | 06:52 | it a little bit more pop on the side
there and it also helps the front of this
| | 06:57 | car as well.
| | 06:59 | Now I can again just play with the
intensity of this. I can bring the intensity
| | 07:04 | down or the other thing I could do is
that if I make the color closer to white,
| | 07:08 | the intensity is going to come up. So
watch how this works that as this light
| | 07:12 | goes closer to white, you're getting
more illumination on the side. I can also
| | 07:18 | intensify it and that will also
increase the intensity. So it's really a
| | 07:22 | balance between the actual color of
the light and the darker the color, the
| | 07:26 | darker the light and then the
intensity, which kind of is overall volume
| | 07:30 | control. So let's just go ahead and get
those balanced out the way that I want
| | 07:33 | them and then just do a quick render.
| | 07:37 | Now this is looking pretty good. I mean,
I don't have complete darkness on this
| | 07:41 | side, but I still have a lot of
darkness underneath here, especially underneath
| | 07:45 | this ball. I can affect that by doing
two things. The first thing I could do is
| | 07:50 | actually add ambient white to the scene,
which gives an overall wash of white.
| | 07:55 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 07:56 | I am going to go ahead and create
what's called an ambient light. In fact, we
| | 08:00 | can do Create > Lights > Ambient Light.
Now when I do that, again, I am adding
| | 08:05 | light to the scene. So I have to be
careful with this light. Now the one thing
| | 08:09 | about ambient light is that it's really
not all that directional. It's kind of
| | 08:13 | a wash of light over the scene. So I
really don't have to move that light
| | 08:16 | around a lot. All I have to
do is affect the intensity.
| | 08:20 | So what I need to do here is just
dial down that intensity a lot, maybe to
| | 08:25 | about .15 and what that will do is
just give a general bottom floor of where
| | 08:31 | the lighting will be in the scene.
Now when I do that, you are going to see
| | 08:35 | that okay, yeah I have got a little
bit less darkness underneath this sphere,
| | 08:40 | but I am getting a lot of hotness right
here in the top left corner and that's
| | 08:45 | because I have got a lot of light in the scene.
| | 08:46 | Now what I can do is actually just
start dialing down lights. I have got a lot
| | 08:50 | of light in the scene. I need to start
kind of bringing down the overall volume
| | 08:55 | of these lights. So what I can do is
actually take the first light that we put
| | 08:59 | in, the spotlight and go into the
Attribute Editor and go up to the intensity
| | 09:05 | and start playing with that
because I want to reduce that hotness.
| | 09:08 | Now, you can see how if I dial that up,
you are going to get way too hot. If I
| | 09:12 | bring it down, you can see how now it's
going to be a little bit more balanced
| | 09:17 | and little bit more realistic. You
have to think almost like a photographer,
| | 09:21 | you don't want to over-expose the shot.
You also want to guide the light and
| | 09:25 | the eye, so that everything is balanced.
| | 09:29 | Now that's looking pretty good. Now
there's another thing we can do and that's
| | 09:34 | actually add in some ambient color
underneath here. Again, this is so kind of
| | 09:39 | dark. Now if I wanted to, I could still
work with lighting, but you don't have
| | 09:43 | to fix everything with lights in Maya.
So if I select this sphere, I can
| | 09:48 | actually go to the material applied
to the sphere and actually change the
| | 09:53 | ambient color. Let me show you how this
works. If I click on ambient color, you
| | 09:57 | can see how-- in fact, just look at
how it's affected in the viewport. If I
| | 10:01 | turn this way up, you will see that it
starts to glow. What this ambient color
| | 10:05 | is, is it's the darkest
color this object will ever be.
| | 10:09 | So what I can do is I can dial that
into something like a darker blue and watch
| | 10:14 | what happens when we render. With a
darker blue, you see that this doesn't
| | 10:18 | completely go to black. So it gives
more of an impression of ambient light. Now
| | 10:22 | this is probably a little too bright.
So I am going to dial that down just a
| | 10:26 | little bit more, and you can see how
this kind of brightens up the sphere, so
| | 10:29 | it doesn't look so dark.
| | 10:31 | Now another thing we can do is we can
start turning on stuff like Raytracing.
| | 10:36 | Now that we have kind of a good light
balance, let's go ahead and turn on our
| | 10:41 | Raytracing in our Maya Software
Renderer. I go to the Render Settings window,
| | 10:46 | go the Maya Software tab and just turn
on Raytracing. Now I have this set at
| | 10:51 | Production Quality and then let's do
another render. Now this render will take
| | 10:56 | a little bit longer.
| | 10:57 | Now as you can see, when I have added
in Raytracing, you've got -- the scene is
| | 11:02 | now starting to reflect all of the
light that's in the scene and it's actually
| | 11:07 | brightening up the scene. So now we
have to kind of go through our scene a
| | 11:11 | little bit and tweak some of that
lighting. Now you can see I actually feel
| | 11:15 | like it's almost a little over-exposed,
so one of the things we can probably do
| | 11:18 | is just dial down some of these lights
a little bit more. So I am going to take
| | 11:22 | this above light, spotlight 2 and just
kind of drop it down maybe to .9 or .8
| | 11:29 | and then maybe even take this light
after the side and drop that down little bit.
| | 11:33 | Now again I have already done the
Scene 1, so I kind of know what I am doing,
| | 11:36 | but again, you are just going to play
with this light at the time and just kind
| | 11:40 | of start giving an overall volume. Now
this is a little bit better. Now I am
| | 11:44 | going to stop here with the lighting.
The last thing I want to do is give a
| | 11:48 | little bit more focus to the scene.
So let's go ahead and do some depth of
| | 11:51 | field and focus in on the robot and
make sure that he is the center of the scene.
| | 11:57 | So I am going to go ahead and select my
Camera Attribute Editor and I am going
| | 12:02 | to go down to the Depth of Field tab
and I am just going to turn it on and then
| | 12:07 | I am going to render and when I render
that, it's blurred because down here my
| | 12:13 | focus distance is off. So let's go
ahead and on our Heads up Display, turn on
| | 12:18 | Object Details and I am just going to
select my Robot's body and I know that
| | 12:22 | his distance from the camera is 58.5.
| | 12:25 | So now I select my Camera Attribute
Editor, in my Focus Distance, I type in
| | 12:30 | 58.5, and then I do a render. Well,
that looks pretty good. He is in focus but
| | 12:36 | everything else is kind of in focus.
So I need more depth of field. I can do
| | 12:40 | that by just turning down this F Stop.
Let's make it F 1.4 and again, just do a
| | 12:45 | quick render, much better. So now he
is in focus, the other stuff is slightly
| | 12:49 | blurred and looks a lot better.
| | 12:52 | Now this is where I am going to stop,
but you can see that lighting in Maya
| | 12:56 | evolves you building light. You take
their main lights and then continue to add
| | 13:01 | lighting until you get the effect you
want. Now remember, when you do add stuff
| | 13:06 | like Raytracing, it will start to
bounce light around the room and brighten the
| | 13:10 | whole scene. So you need to make sure
that all of your lights balance then you
| | 13:14 | also check it against your Raytracing
and everything else that you're putting
| | 13:18 | into the scene.
| | 13:19 | So as you light, just remember that
you're lighting per mood, you're lighting
| | 13:23 | to highlights specific objects in
the scene and you're lighting to tell a
| | 13:28 | story. So remember that as you
light your scenes within Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Rendering with Mental RayIntroducing mental ray| 00:01 |
Now let's take a look at the Mental
Ray Render. This is one of the additional
| | 00:05 |
renders that Maya has. It's probably
one of the more popular renders, because
| | 00:09 |
it has a lot of really great features
that allow for soft lighting and much
| | 00:15 |
more realistic rendering.
| | 00:16 |
In fact, I have a scene loaded up
here called Deco_Car and this has some of
| | 00:22 |
those effects in it. In fact if we want
to, we can just render it. We can go to
| | 00:27 |
our Render Settings window and
make sure we have Mental Ray loaded.
| | 00:32 |
Now before we render, I want to make
sure that you have Mental Ray loaded. If
| | 00:35 |
you don't, sometimes you have to go
into what's called the Plug-In Manager. So
| | 00:40 |
if you go Window > Settings/
Preferences > Plug-in Manager. This is where you
| | 00:45 |
can actually make Mental Ray available,
if it isn't. Scroll down and look for
| | 00:50 |
Mayatomr.mll and make sure that
that's loaded, and if you want you can also
| | 00:55 |
check Auto load, so that it
loads every time you open Maya.
| | 00:59 |
Now once you do that Mental Ray
will show up. We have our Maya Software
| | 01:03 |
renderer and Mental Ray as well. In
fact let's go ahead and render this in the
| | 01:07 |
Maya Software renderer. So we go here
and just click on that window and just do
| | 01:11 |
a quick render. As you can see, we
have got a scene that doesn't really look
| | 01:15 |
all that great, because some of these
materials don't actually render in Maya.
| | 01:20 |
So when I render in the Maya Software
Renderer, you will notice some of these
| | 01:24 |
surfaces aren't even showing up and
that's because some of these are actually
| | 01:28 |
textured and shaded using Mental Ray
specific shaders. So when we go into
| | 01:35 |
Mental Ray and make that our default
renderer, we can just do a quick render of
| | 01:41 |
the scene and now everything shows up.
| | 01:44 |
You notice how we have a really soft
lighting model to this. Also, notice how
| | 01:49 |
on the surface which didn't render
in the Maya Software renderer, we have
| | 01:53 |
what's called the Car Paint which has
really nice material that allows for
| | 01:57 |
stuff like metal flakes, clear coding
and all that sort of stuff. So we get a
| | 02:01 |
really high quality rendered surface
as well as high quality reflections and all that.
| | 02:07 |
Now Mental Ray is actually just a
selection in our Render Settings window. It
| | 02:12 |
has the same common parameters as the
Maya Software render. But we also have a
| | 02:17 |
bunch of additional tabs. One here is
for Render Passes; the other one is for
| | 02:22 |
Features. Now these are all the
different types of features that Mental Ray can
| | 02:26 |
do and we will get to these
as we work through Mental Ray.
| | 02:30 |
The next one is the Quality settings.
In fact, if you want, you can go to
| | 02:34 |
Production Quality, which his kind of
the default quality. And the next one is
| | 02:38 |
called Indirect Lighting. Now what
this does is this allows us to turn on
| | 02:43 |
different things that give us much
higher quality rendering. So for example, if
| | 02:47 |
I turned on Final Gathering and did a
render, now this may take a little while.
| | 02:54 |
Now when you turn on Final Gathering,
what it does is it actually computes
| | 02:57 |
secondary or bounced lighting. This
gives you a much more realistic effect. So
| | 03:02 |
for example, in this case, the sky is
providing additional light and we can
| | 03:06 |
calculate that with Final Gathering.
| | 03:09 |
We also have what's called Caustics
and Global Illumination, which are two
| | 03:14 |
additional ways to create indirect
lighting. Then we also have a lot of
| | 03:19 |
different sorts of options here,
especially for what sort of preview we want.
| | 03:24 |
So those are some of the basics of how
to get into Mental Ray. Now one thing
| | 03:28 |
about Mental Ray is that it will render
almost anything that you can render in
| | 03:32 |
the Maya Software renderer. So you can
take a scene that you have created in
| | 03:36 |
Maya and just switch it over to Mental Ray
and generally it will render in Mental Ray.
| | 03:40 |
So let's go ahead and get into some of
the additional features of Mental Ray
| | 03:45 |
and show you how to use it.
| | 03:48 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating mental ray materials| 00:00 |
One of the big differences between
Mental Ray and the Maya Software Renderer
| | 00:05 |
are the amount of materials available.
Mental Ray has a lot more built-in
| | 00:11 |
materials and a lot more different
surface types. In that way, it can make
| | 00:15 |
creating interesting surfaces a lot easier.
| | 00:18 |
Now, you can get to these surfaces by
going to the Rendering menu and under
| | 00:22 |
Lighting/Shading, if we go under
Assign New Material, you will see them here.
| | 00:27 |
If you go up to the top, these are all
the standard ones for the Maya Software
| | 00:30 |
Renderer such as the Blinn and the
Lambert. But if you go all the way down, you
| | 00:34 |
will see in this section a whole bunch
of different shaders that you can use with Maya.
| | 00:40 |
Now, we are not going to go through
all of these, but let's go through a few.
| | 00:43 |
We actually have a scene open here;
it's called MR_Materials.mb. In fact, let
| | 00:48 |
me do a really quick little render
here to see how that looks. So it's
| | 00:54 |
basically just a sphere with
something in the background in a room.
| | 00:58 |
Now, this is actually set up for Mental
Ray, so let's make sure you render this
| | 01:02 |
in Mental Ray. Now, all of these
surfaces here are just standard blends. Now,
| | 01:06 |
we are going to add new materials
to the sphere to see how that looks.
| | 01:10 |
So let's go into Lighting/Shading and
let's go Assign New Material and let's
| | 01:15 |
scroll down and find car_paint_phen or
phenomenon and just assign that to the
| | 01:22 |
sphere. When we do that, our Attribute
Editor comes up and we can go over to
| | 01:26 |
this tab and start playing with the
parameters. In fact, if I want to, I can
| | 01:30 |
just do a really quick render
here to see what this looks like.
| | 01:33 |
You can see this gives a really
nice kind of candy sparkle effect. It's
| | 01:37 |
actually kind of like a car paint. It's
like hot rod paint or whatever you want
| | 01:41 |
to call it. Now, you can actually
change a lot of different parameters with
| | 01:45 |
this. As I change these, you can look
at the sample and see how this works. One
| | 01:49 |
is the ambient color.
| | 01:51 |
Now, that is just like the ambient in
any of the Maya Software renderer ones,
| | 01:55 |
it's kind of like the default, the
lowest dark that you can get in this color.
| | 01:59 |
So you can certainly change this to
whatever color you want, maybe even like a
| | 02:03 |
dark kind of violet there, base color.
| | 02:06 |
Now that's the color of the car itself.
But also notice we have additional
| | 02:11 |
colors here. We have what's called an
Edge Color. So if you look at this, you
| | 02:15 |
can see how -- you can actually make
the edge of the object a different color.
| | 02:21 |
So this can kind of almost simulate the
type of paint where you have one color
| | 02:25 |
coated over the other and looks
different from different directions. So for
| | 02:29 |
example, I can make the edge color
maybe like even a green or something like that.
| | 02:34 |
Then, we also have the Lit Color
where the light is directly applied to the
| | 02:38 |
surface and we can change that as well.
We can see how this looks by just doing
| | 02:42 |
a quick render. So you can see I have
changed a lot of those surfaces. I am
| | 02:46 |
getting some really interesting effects here.
| | 02:48 |
Now, if we go down to the bottom,
we also have what are called Specular
| | 02:52 |
Parameters and one thing I really like
is you have basically metal flakes that
| | 02:56 |
you can put into there. So we can
change the color of the flakes. We can also
| | 03:00 |
change the scale of the flakes. So
let's just go ahead and render it with the
| | 03:03 |
regular flakes and you can kind of see
how those look. But if you want to, you
| | 03:07 |
can actually scale those flakes up
and you can kind of see how they would
| | 03:11 |
normally look. So if I bring that up
to say 0.5, maybe even zoom-in a little
| | 03:14 |
bit so I can see these. So that's one
of these materials. Let's go ahead and
| | 03:21 |
take a look at some of these other ones.
| | 03:23 |
Another one is called metallic_paint
and that is actually very similar to
| | 03:26 |
car_paint. But the one that I really
like here is called Material. So when I
| | 03:30 |
click on that, it gives me a very
glossy material. In fact, if I render this,
| | 03:36 |
you will see it's just kind of almost
like a glossy gray sphere, but what's
| | 03:41 |
really nice about this is that you
can actually use this to create very
| | 03:45 |
realistic glassy effects with this material.
| | 03:48 |
If I go down to the Refraction tab
here, I can actually change the Index of
| | 03:54 |
Refraction. But more importantly, I
can change the Transparency. So if I dial
| | 03:58 |
up the transparency a lot, change the
Index of Refraction, do another render,
| | 04:02 |
you will start to see some glassy
effects. Now, if I bring that Index of
| | 04:07 |
Refraction down below 1, you are going
to see something even a little bit better.
| | 04:12 |
So you can see how this gives a really
nice glass effect. I really like this
| | 04:18 |
for transparent, semitransparent
surfaces and of course you can certainly
| | 04:23 |
change the color and make it kind of a
piece of color glass if you want. So for
| | 04:27 |
example, if I made that blue, you
would have kind of a bluish glass there
| | 04:32 |
that's kind of refracting and also
notice it refracts well in the shadows.
| | 04:38 |
Now, the next one I want to show you,
and I think this would be the last one
| | 04:40 |
I'll show you in this lesson, is the
Skin Shader. Now, what the skin shader
| | 04:46 |
does is it actually creates a skin
color, almost like for the skin of a
| | 04:51 |
character, and it also gives what's
called Subsurface Scattering, which means
| | 04:55 |
that it actually gives almost like
that iridescent glow. So if the light is
| | 04:59 |
coming from behind the character, you
will see a slight transparency and a
| | 05:03 |
slight bouncing of the
light underneath the skin.
| | 05:06 |
So let me just do a quick render of
this and you can see this gives you a nice
| | 05:11 |
kind of smooth skin color. You can
certainly change the colors of these by
| | 05:16 |
going through the Scatter Color. You
can also add in a Bump Shader for bumpy
| | 05:21 |
skin, which you probably
want to do as a texture map.
| | 05:24 |
So these are some of the basic
materials of Mental Ray. You can see how you can
| | 05:30 |
go a lot further just with some of
these standard Mental Ray materials than you
| | 05:34 |
can in the Maya Software renderer. So
this is just one of many reasons why you
| | 05:40 |
would want to use Mental Ray.
| | 05:42 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with mental ray lights| 00:01 |
Another advantage of Mental Ray is
that it has some additional shadowing and
| | 00:05 |
lighting options. So let
me show you some of those.
| | 00:08 |
Now, Mental Ray has indirect lighting,
which is a completely different subject
| | 00:13 |
here. Let's just look at the difference
between the standard lights that Mental Ray has.
| | 00:17 |
I have a scene here called MR_Lights.
mb and it's just a simple scene with two
| | 00:23 |
primitives and a light. Now, what I can
do is I can certainly just render this
| | 00:28 |
and you will see we have a nice scene
but there are no shadows. Let me show you
| | 00:33 |
how Mental Ray works with shadows.
| | 00:35 |
Let's make sure that we are set to
render in Mental Ray, and then I am going to
| | 00:39 |
select this light and let's just bring
up this camera view. So I am going to
| | 00:45 |
under the Attribute Editor for that
spotLight1 and let's go through some of the
| | 00:49 |
shadowing options.
| | 00:50 |
First of all, you can use the
standard Maya shadows. You can use Depth Map
| | 00:55 |
Shadows and those will render, as you
can see. We also can use Raytrace Shadow.
| | 01:01 |
So if I go down here to Raytrace
Shadow Attributes and turn those on, you can
| | 01:06 |
render those as well and you see you
get that kind of standard Raytrace hard
| | 01:11 |
shadow, but it still works and it will
work with transparent objects as well.
| | 01:15 |
Now, if we go all the way down here,
you will see there is a Mental Ray tab.
| | 01:20 |
Under that Mental Ray tab, you have a
couple of sub-tabs here, Area Light,
| | 01:25 |
Global Illumination, and Shadows. Open
up shadows and you will see we have a
| | 01:29 |
third way to calculate shadows and
that's using the Mental Ray shadow map.
| | 01:35 |
So if we turn this on, you will see
we have some parameters. One is the
| | 01:39 |
resolution of the map. This is very
similar to what we have with Depth Map
| | 01:43 |
Shadows in Maya. We also have a number
of samples and a softness. Let's just
| | 01:48 |
leave these at these
defaults here and do a quick render.
| | 01:51 |
Now, what we are seeing here is we are
seeing a little bit of this jaggy edge.
| | 01:55 |
That's because we have a bitmap of 256
and it's not being softened at all. So I
| | 02:03 |
can soften this by just adding a
softness parameter here. Now, this parameter
| | 02:08 |
is actually pretty touchy. So you have
to use kind of low numbers here. So I am
| | 02:13 |
putting in 0.1 for softness and let's
just do another render. And you can see
| | 02:18 |
now we have a softer shadow. But we
are also getting this breaking up of the
| | 02:22 |
shadow. We're kind of getting this
pixelation here around the edges. Now, we
| | 02:27 |
can solve that by upping the number of samples.
| | 02:30 |
So for example, if I bring that up to
8 and render, you will see that it's a
| | 02:35 |
little bit softer and what this does
is it just uses more and more samples to
| | 02:39 |
smooth that out. So let's bring it up
to a much larger number. Let's bring it
| | 02:43 |
up to 64 and do another render. There
we have a really nice smooth shadow.
| | 02:49 |
Now if I want, I can certainly play
with the softness. For example, I can put
| | 02:53 |
this down to 0.025 and give a much
softer edge to the shadow and still have
| | 02:59 |
that high sample rate. So you have
kind of a nice softer edge there.
| | 03:03 |
Now, let's go up and look at one more
difference and that's in the way we do
| | 03:07 |
Area Lights. Now, I am going to go back
out to my four-view here and select the
| | 03:12 |
slide. Let's take a look at what this
slide looks like. It's a cone; it's a
| | 03:17 |
spotlight. Now, when I turn on Area
Light here, watch what happens. A little
| | 03:22 |
rectangle gets put at
the back of that spotlight.
| | 03:26 |
Now, what I can do here is I can
actually change the type of Area Light we
| | 03:30 |
have. I can change it to a Disc. Now
see how that changes there. I have a
| | 03:34 |
Sphere, Cylinder, which would be like
a tube or something like that, and we
| | 03:40 |
also have User Defined. I am going to
leave it at rectangle and leave this at
| | 03:44 |
the default of sample rate. Let's just
do a quick little render with an Area Light.
| | 03:49 |
Now, notice it takes a little bit
longer to render, because what this is doing
| | 03:54 |
is it's actually creating 3x3 light
sources. So 3x3 is 9. It creates 9 lights
| | 04:02 |
and scatters them about that
rectangle to create the light source. So right
| | 04:06 |
now, we have slightly softer lighting,
but not as soft as we would like. We can
| | 04:11 |
increase that softness by increasing
the area that the light is emitted from.
| | 04:16 |
So I can do that by selecting the
light and just scaling by hitting R and
| | 04:20 |
scaling it up. So I am going to
actually scale it up quite a bit and let's just
| | 04:24 |
see what happens. So I am going to go
into my camera viewport and just render
| | 04:28 |
that again. What happens is you see
that, yeah, the light is softer but I am
| | 04:32 |
getting a graininess. Well, we can fix
that by adding in more lights or adding
| | 04:37 |
in more samples.
| | 04:39 |
So for example, if I bring it up to
5x5, that makes 5x5 and it puts in 25
| | 04:45 |
lights, 25 light sources or essentially
25 sample points and it gives us a bit
| | 04:51 |
of a softer lighting, but maybe we
still have a little bit of that graininess.
| | 04:54 |
I can certainly scale up the light a
little bit more if I want and let's go
| | 04:58 |
ahead and make this 8x8, give at 64
samples and see how that works. Now, this
| | 05:05 |
will take a little bit longer to render,
because you have more samples, more
| | 05:09 |
light sources, more stuff to calculate.
| | 05:11 |
So now we can see how this Area Light
is actually creating a softer look to the
| | 05:16 |
scene. But we realize how this Area
Light can jack up render times a lot. So
| | 05:21 |
there are other ways to create that
sort of soft lighting, which we will get to
| | 05:26 |
in the next few lessons. But let me
show you one more little tab here.
| | 05:31 |
That additional soft lighting comes
from what are called Caustics and Global
| | 05:36 |
Illumination, and what each light can
do is it can do what's called emitting
| | 05:40 |
photons, which is a secondary light
source which is used to calculate indirect
| | 05:45 |
lighting. Now, we are not going to get
into that right now, but I just wanted
| | 05:48 |
to show you that this is here.
| | 05:51 |
So those are some of the basic
differences of lights between Mental Ray and
| | 05:55 |
Maya. So get used to that, especially
if you are going to be using Mental Ray a lot.
| | 06:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Depth of field in mental ray| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at Depth of Field.
As with a lot of the other aspects of
| | 00:05 | Mental Ray rendering, you can use a
lot of the basic Maya presets. So let's
| | 00:10 | just do a real quick Depth of Field
like we have done in the Maya Software
| | 00:14 | renderer. In fact let's just
go ahead and render this first.
| | 00:17 | I have a file called MR_DOF.mb and I
am just going to open it and render. You
| | 00:25 | see we just have a line of objects here.
So let's go ahead do some Depth of Field on this.
| | 00:29 | So we are going to do basically the
same method we have done before. We are
| | 00:33 | going to turn on our Heads Up Display,
select the object we want in focus and
| | 00:39 | we note the difference is 15.096. Then
we go to our Camera Attribute Editor and
| | 00:46 | we scroll down to Depth of Field.
| | 00:47 | Now remember we are using Mental Ray
here and not the Maya Software renderer
| | 00:52 | and then we type that number in. So
that's close to 15, so we can certainly do
| | 00:56 | that and let's keep the default at
5.6 for the F Stop, and let's just do a
| | 01:01 | quick render. So you can see we are
getting Depth of Field. Just like with the
| | 01:06 | Maya Software renderer, we can
certainly increase the F Stop to increase the
| | 01:11 | Depth of Field.
| | 01:12 | Now one thing you will notice in Maya,
this is something that happens a lot, is
| | 01:16 | that as it starts blurring, you will
see a lot of speckly stuff going on in the
| | 01:21 | background. This is caused by the way
Mental Ray anti aliases. So if we go to
| | 01:26 | the Render Settings window, we have
got to make sure we have Mental Ray
| | 01:30 | selected and we go over here to Quality.
Now when we do Production Quality, it
| | 01:36 | says the Maximum Sample Level is 2.
If we turn this up, it will start to get
| | 01:41 | rid of that. So I am going to turn it
up to 3 and we will see what happens.
| | 01:45 | Of course, the more you turn it up,
the more time it takes to render.
| | 01:49 | Okay, so you can see that smoothed out a bit.
If we want to bring it up one more, we can
| | 01:55 | do that as well. Now this will take
even longer to render, but let's take a
| | 01:58 | look at this.
| | 02:03 | So now you can see how when I have
turned up this Maximum Sample Level it's
| | 02:09 | certainly smooth this out, but it
really brought the render times up. So for
| | 02:13 | now I am just going bring this back
down to the standard level of 2, but I just
| | 02:17 | wanted to show you how to
get rid of that sort of stuff.
| | 02:20 | Now we have used the regular Maya
method for doing Depth of Field and that
| | 02:24 | works just fine. But let's go ahead
and look at another way of doing Depth of
| | 02:29 | Field. So I am going to go back into
my Camera Attribute Editor and I am just
| | 02:32 | going to switch off Depth of Field.
| | 02:35 | Now I am going to go up here to the
Mental Ray tab and we are going to do Depth
| | 02:42 | of Field completely differently. We
are going to use what's called a Lens Shader.
| | 02:45 | Now a Lens Shader is essentially a way
to affect the way that the camera takes
| | 02:50 | a picture. Now Mental Ray uses Shaders
for a lot of different things, but I am
| | 02:55 | just going to show you the Lens Shader
just to give you a taste of some of the
| | 02:59 | stuff that Mental Ray can do.
| | 03:00 | So if I click on this, it says, Create
Render Node. It brings us over to the
| | 03:04 | Mental Ray tab, you go up to the top,
you have got all of the materials and we
| | 03:09 | scroll down and we have stuff like
Volume Metric, all this other stuff and we
| | 03:13 | want to scroll all the way
down until we get to Lenses.
| | 03:17 | Now we have a bunch of different
types of Lenses here. We have one for
| | 03:21 | bokeh, which is another form of
Depth of Field. We also have all sorts of
| | 03:26 | other ones. The one I want to look at
is called Physical_lens_dof. Just click
| | 03:31 | on that and it brings up some more
parameters that we can use to do Depth of Field.
| | 03:37 | Now in this case the parameters are
the plane. Now this is a negative number,
| | 03:44 | but this is the distance from the
camera that it's going to focus on. It's the
| | 03:49 | exact same number we would use here
which is 15. So when I select my Camera
| | 03:55 | Attribute Editor, make sure I know that
number is 15, go down to my Mental Ray
| | 04:00 | tab and then just go down to that node
which is my Depth of Field node. So I
| | 04:05 | just type in -15.
| | 04:08 | The Radius is how much does it blur.
So when I go ahead and render with just
| | 04:13 | -15 in that Radius, you will see I get
a pretty good Depth of Field, but it's
| | 04:18 | not a lot. So if I want to, I can
certainly ramp up this Radius. If I bring it
| | 04:22 | up to say 0.25 and render, you will see
a little bit of a difference. You will
| | 04:27 | see it's getting a little bit blurrier.
I want to bring it up to, say, a bigger
| | 04:31 | number, say 0.75 and you will
see a much bigger difference.
| | 04:35 | So as you can see, this is just another
method for calculating Depth of Field.
| | 04:41 | Now I find that the Mental Ray
parameters are sometimes a lot more accurate
| | 04:46 | than the ones coming from the Maya
Software renderer, but you can pick and
| | 04:50 | choose whichever one you
feel most comfortable with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Motion blur in mental ray| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at Motion Blur
in Mental Ray. We have a file called
| | 00:05 | MR_MotionBlur.mb open and there are a
few differences in the way that Mental
| | 00:12 | Ray handles Motion Blur; Mental Ray is
a little bit better. One of the ways is
| | 00:16 | that it's actually Motion Blurs shadows.
So actually let's take this file and
| | 00:21 | let's just do a quick render.
| | 00:22 | I am going to into the Maya Software
Renderer, I make sure I have Raytracing
| | 00:27 | turned on, and also make sure that
Motion Blur is turned on, and actually I am
| | 00:32 | going to turn on 3D Motion Blur. So
Raytracing and 3D Motion Blur, and let's
| | 00:36 | just do a quick render.
| | 00:37 | So this is a simple scene. In fact,
if you want to, you can even turn on a
| | 00:41 | little higher quality as to Production
quality, so you can see this is a little
| | 00:45 | bit better. So when we do Motion
Blur in Maya, one thing that doesn't get
| | 00:50 | motion blurred are the shadows. Now
this can be very important, because if
| | 00:54 | something is moving like this, the
shadow is also going to Motion Blur. So what
| | 00:59 | you have to do is you either have to
fake Motion Blur of the shadow by doing
| | 01:04 | like a Depth Map Shadow and just
making sure it's got a nice soft edge, but
| | 01:08 | something with a hard edge, like this
Raytrace shadow, isn't going to motion blue.
| | 01:11 | So let's go into Mental Ray and let's
show you how Motion Blur works for that.
| | 01:16 | Now in Mental Ray, Motion Blur pretty
much works the same as it does in the
| | 01:20 | Maya Software Renderer. We go over to
the Quality tab here and we scroll down
| | 01:26 | and we find the Motion Blur roll out
here, there it is. There are actually two
| | 01:31 | types of Motion Blur. These are very
similar to what we have in the Maya
| | 01:35 | Software Renderer.
| | 01:36 | We have on called No Deformation. Now
what this is for is it actually used for
| | 01:42 | solid objects that aren't changing shape.
We have another one called Full, and
| | 01:47 | what this will do is this will actually
motion blur something that is changing
| | 01:51 | in shape. So for example, if you have a
character that's moving and its mesh is
| | 01:55 | changing shape, it will actually motion
blur all of that. So we can use one or
| | 02:00 | the other, and actually No
Deformation is a little bit faster.
| | 02:04 | So here we have some parameters, one is
called Motion Blur By and this is just
| | 02:07 | a multiplier to either increase or
decrease the overall affect. Then we have
| | 02:12 | Shutter Open and Shutter Close.
Obviously when the shutter is opened and closed
| | 02:16 | at maximum, you are going to get
maximum Motion Blur. Bring either of these
| | 02:21 | down and your Motion Blur will shorten.
| | 02:24 | We also have what's called Motion Steps
and Time Samples. Now these create the
| | 02:30 | quality of the Motion Blur that you have.
Now also let's go up to Quality here,
| | 02:34 | let's just make sure that we are in
Production, and let's go ahead and re-turn
| | 02:41 | on No Deformation. Let's
just do a quick render here.
| | 02:44 | So now we have this render and you
can see that it's got a nice Motion Blur
| | 02:49 | going on here, and also if you look at
the leading edge of these shadows, the
| | 02:53 | shadows are also Motion
Blur, which is kind of nice.
| | 02:55 | Now if we want to, we can increase the
quality of this by increasing the number
| | 03:00 | of Time Samples. Sample the Motion
Blur over a given frame, so the more
| | 03:04 | samples, the better the quality; the
more samples, the longer the render. So
| | 03:09 | you have to balance it. Time Samples to
8; let's see what happens. Okay, so you
| | 03:13 | can see that's a lot
less grainy when we do that.
| | 03:19 | Now the other type of Motion Blur is
called Full, which will motion blur things
| | 03:24 | that are deforming. In this case, we
don't have to do that, but if you have an
| | 03:28 | object that is changing shape,
particularly in character animation, you do want
| | 03:33 | to turn that on.
| | 03:34 | So those are some of the
basics of Motion Blur in Mental Ray.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating global illumination in mental ray| 00:00 | One of the best reasons to use Mental
Ray is to use indirect lighting. Now,
| | 00:05 | Indirect lighting is a realistic
type of lighting where you have bounce
| | 00:09 | lighting between the objects in the
scene. Now, this is something you really
| | 00:13 | can't get in the Maya Software Renderer.
So Mental Ray really exceeds in this
| | 00:18 | kind of soft realistic lighting.
| | 00:20 | Now, there are number of methods for
doing this. Let me show you the first one,
| | 00:23 | which is called Global Illumination.
Now, I have a scene here called
| | 00:28 | MR_GlobalIllum.mb. It's a very simple
file and it has a sphere inside of a box,
| | 00:36 | and it's set on a plane. Now, all I
have in the scene is one spotlight. In
| | 00:41 | fact, let's go ahead and just do a
quick render. I am going to go ahead and
| | 00:44 | make sure I have Mental Ray
turned on and then do the quick render.
| | 00:49 | Now, what you will see in this file is
that we have got the light set, so it
| | 00:53 | casts a very harsh shadow from the
corner of the box. So you really can't see
| | 00:59 | inside that box at all. Now, in the
real world, what would happen would be some
| | 01:04 | of this light on the floor and the side
of the box would bounce up and kind of
| | 01:08 | give a little bit of a soft cast
inside the box to illuminate the box. We can
| | 01:14 | do that using Global Illumination.
| | 01:17 | So I select my light called spotlight.
I go into the Attribute Editor. Now,
| | 01:21 | Global Illumination is turned on in
two places. You have to turn it on in the
| | 01:25 | light; you also have to turn it on in
the Mental Ray Render settings. So first
| | 01:30 | of all, let's start with the light.
| | 01:32 | When we go over to the light, you will
see that we have our Mental Ray tab. If
| | 01:37 | we scroll down, there are some of these
that we have already used like Shadows
| | 01:40 | and Area Light, but the one I want
to go to is called Caustic and Global
| | 01:44 | Illumination. What we can do here is we
can Emit Photons. When I turn that on,
| | 01:50 | what it does is it emits a secondary
light source. It will illuminate the scene
| | 01:54 | as normal and then it will go back
and re-illuminate the scene using these
| | 01:59 | photons, and these photons actually
bounce around the scene and create this
| | 02:04 | secondary global illumination.
| | 02:06 | Now, once I have it turned on here
in the light, I still need to tell the
| | 02:11 | renderer to go ahead and render the
Global Illumination. So I go into my Render
| | 02:16 | Settings window and go over to the
Indirect Lighting tab. All I have to do is
| | 02:21 | turn on Global Illumination, and I am
going to just leave it at the defaults
| | 02:26 | and then I am just going
to go ahead and close this.
| | 02:28 | Now, I highlight my Camera One
window and just do a quick render. Now,
| | 02:32 | rendering will take longer with Global
Illumination turned on, so be prepared
| | 02:37 | to wait a little bit. Now, as you can
see it's maybe doing something but we are
| | 02:42 | really not getting much of
an effect with the defaults.
| | 02:45 | I am going to close this and reselect
that light. Now, let's go ahead and take
| | 02:50 | a look at what some of these values do.
First of all, we have these photons,
| | 02:54 | which again are emitting secondary
light into the scene. So we need to brighten
| | 02:59 | up this secondary light. We have
what's called the Photon Color, which is a
| | 03:04 | color of this light; we have the
Intensity which is how bright is that
| | 03:09 | secondary light source;
and third is the Exponent.
| | 03:13 | Now the Exponent is a fall off value.
So the further away from the light you
| | 03:18 | get, the less intense the photons. Now,
typically you want to leave this at an
| | 03:23 | Exponent of 2, which means that it
follows the inversed square law, which means
| | 03:28 | it follows real world physics. If you
increase the Exponent, the light will
| | 03:33 | fall off quicker; if you decrease
it, the light will fall off slower.
| | 03:37 | So for us, the best thing to do is
just to increase the photon intensity. I
| | 03:42 | like keeping this Exponent to 2,
because well we are trying to create realism.
| | 03:46 | So let's go ahead and keep the
Exponent at a realistic value.
| | 03:50 | So when I increase the Photon
Intensity, I just need to find a number that
| | 03:54 | works for this particular scene. Every
scene is going to be different and so
| | 03:58 | your distance from the light will also
be different. So I am just going to go
| | 04:02 | ahead and select my camera and render
it with a photon intensity of 80,000
| | 04:07 | instead of 8,000.
| | 04:10 | Now, when I do that, you can see we are
getting a little bit of an effect here.
| | 04:14 | It's not completely dark inside this
box. We are getting a little bit of a
| | 04:18 | highlight on the roof of the box and
little bit down here and over here. Now,
| | 04:23 | if I want to, I can continue to
increase this Photon Intensity. In fact, let's
| | 04:26 | just make it a really big number.
Let's make it 250,000 and then let's do
| | 04:32 | another render.
| | 04:35 | Now, you can really see inside this box,
because what we have done is we have
| | 04:38 | actually just increased the Photon
Intensity and this, in effect, increases the
| | 04:43 | ambient bouncy light in the scene. Now,
let me show you something else, so you
| | 04:48 | can see exactly how this works.
| | 04:50 | What we can do is we can actually
turn the intensity of this light down to
| | 04:53 | 0.000. So my initial illuminating
light is going to be 0, but my photons will
| | 04:59 | still be there. If I render this, what
you will see is the effect of just the
| | 05:04 | photons. So what Maya does is it
illuminates the scene and then it
| | 05:09 | re-illuminates it and it creates
basically two scenes. It creates this one and
| | 05:14 | the original one, which is just the
light in the scene, and then it mixes the
| | 05:18 | two to create the actual lighting.
| | 05:20 | I am going to put this intensity back
to 1.000 and let's go ahead and do one
| | 05:24 | more thing with these photons. We have
one more value that I haven't explained
| | 05:28 | here and that's the number of Global
Illumination Photons. If you can take a
| | 05:33 | look at this, you can see some of
these little circles here and what this
| | 05:36 | number of Global Illumination Photons
does is it creates a level of accuracy.
| | 05:42 | So for example, if I brought this
down to a very low number, let's say, I
| | 05:45 | brought this down to 50 and just
made a very low number of photons in the
| | 05:50 | scene, you will actually
see how this scene renders.
| | 05:53 | Now, as you can see, we have got these
little circles of light and what these
| | 05:58 | are, are photons. So what it does is
it casts these big circles of light all
| | 06:02 | over the scene and then it mixes them.
So the more photons we have, the more
| | 06:07 | accurate the solution. Of course, again,
as with anything, the more photons you
| | 06:11 | have, the longer it takes to
render. So you have to balance this.
| | 06:15 | So let's go ahead and bring this
photon intensity down to maybe a 100000.000
| | 06:20 | and let's keep the Global Illumination
Photons at 10000, and just do a quick
| | 06:26 | render again. So there you go. Now,
you have got a much more realistic render
| | 06:31 | in the scene.
| | 06:32 | With Global Illumination, you do have
to manage your resources. The big thing
| | 06:38 | here is the number of photons and how
many of those do you actually need to
| | 06:43 | render this scene accurately. So you
have to just play with that value, and
| | 06:47 | then, of course, the Photon Intensity
is going to give you almost like a mixing
| | 06:51 | value of how much do you want to mix
this sort of light with the actual light
| | 06:55 | in the scene.
| | 06:56 | Now, that you are going to have to do
by eye. So there is no real method of
| | 07:01 | creating the exact duplicate of what
reality is. It's really what your eye
| | 07:05 | tells you looks the most real.
Okay, so let's go ahead and move on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Final Gather to enhance global illumination| 00:01 | Another way to get soft, indirect
lighting in Mental Ray is to use what's
| | 00:06 | called Final Gather. Now this is a
great way to create lights because what you
| | 00:11 | can do is you actually use objects in
the scene to create light. Let me show
| | 00:17 | how this works.
| | 00:18 | We have got a file here caller MR_
FinalGather, it's just the car on a plane.
| | 00:24 | Now I have the scene setup so there are
no lights in the scene. Let's go ahead
| | 00:29 | and make sure we are in Mental Ray so I
am going to open up my Render Settings
| | 00:32 | window. We will leave that open and
then just hit Render. Now when I render,
| | 00:37 | even though there are no lights in
the scene I still get an image. That's
| | 00:42 | because in the Render Settings window,
under the Common tab, if we go down here
| | 00:47 | under Render Options, you will see
Enable Default Light. Now what this does is
| | 00:52 | if there are no lights in the scene,
Maya creates a light just so you can render.
| | 00:57 | But we don't want that, so lets' go
ahead and turn that off, Enable Default
| | 01:01 | Light and let's just do another render
and we get lots and lots of black which
| | 01:06 | is exactly what we want because we
are going to add a light in that's not
| | 01:10 | really a light. So instead of creating
a light here on the Rendering tab, we
| | 01:14 | are just going to actually create a
surface. I am just going to create a plane,
| | 01:18 | so I am just going to go here to
Surfaces > Create NURBS Plane, just drag it
| | 01:22 | out, and that's it. So all I have to
do is just start to position this. I am
| | 01:27 | just going to turn this a
little bit so that we can see it.
| | 01:30 | Now in order for this to become a light,
we need to have something that glows
| | 01:34 | or illuminates the object's surface.
We can do that with a particular type of
| | 01:39 | shader called a Surface Shader. So I
go into Lighting/Shading > Assign New
| | 01:45 | Material > Surface Shader. Now what a
Surface Shader does is it just shades the
| | 01:51 | entire surface whatever color you give
it and doesn't do any sort of shading.
| | 01:56 | So if I create this Out Color as white,
just kind of dull that up, then it
| | 02:01 | becomes just a white plane and if I
render this, you will see the plane, but
| | 02:06 | you are not going to see the lighting
until we do one more little trick here
| | 02:11 | and that's turn on Final Gather.
| | 02:13 | Now before I do that, I actually do
want to go out into my four view here and
| | 02:19 | just take that plane and position it
where I want it. In fact, here on Panels I
| | 02:24 | want to make sure I am in camera 1 and
then just position that plane above the
| | 02:30 | car so that can be as a light source on
the car. Now I am going to highlight my
| | 02:35 | camera 1 viewport. Let's go to
Render Settings and go over to Indirect
| | 02:40 | Lighting, scroll down to find the
Final Gathering tab, turn it on. Now again
| | 02:47 | select the camera 1 viewport and render.
| | 02:50 | Now what you are getting is you are
getting a little bit of light. You are not
| | 02:54 | getting a whole bunch of light, you are
just getting enough light, you can kind
| | 02:58 | of see that, hey, maybe it is working.
Now we can do one of two things. The
| | 03:02 | first thing we can do is actually
increase the size of this plane because if
| | 03:06 | it's bigger, it's going to actually
cast more light. So if I do that, you may
| | 03:10 | get a little bit more light in the scene.
Yes, we are, we kind of getting like
| | 03:15 | a nice dim light.
| | 03:16 | But we can't keep increasing the size
of this forever. A better way to do this
| | 03:21 | is to actually increase the intensity
of the light emitted from that plane. We
| | 03:27 | can do this by going over to the
Surface Shader and increasing the value of
| | 03:31 | this Out Color but as you can see
it's already at the maximum. Well, we
| | 03:36 | actually make the maximum bigger just
by clicking on this Color tab and typing
| | 03:41 | a new number in to the value of this
Color. Right now it's at 1, which is
| | 03:47 | normally the hottest color we can do.
We can actually make this even bigger
| | 03:51 | just by typing in a bigger number. So
for example, if we typed in say, 8 that
| | 03:57 | would make that now 8 rather than 1.
Now this is eight times the illumination.
| | 04:05 | Now when I render you will see I am
actually getting a really nice soft
| | 04:09 | lighting and I am getting a very cool,
a little rendering model here. Now the
| | 04:13 | one thing is that we have reflections
turned on the car so we can actually see
| | 04:19 | our light source. Now we may want that
to happen, but we don't have to. So what
| | 04:24 | we can do is actually select the NURBS
plane that is our light source, go over
| | 04:29 | to our NURBSPlaneShape here, and find
the Render Stats tab. So what we are
| | 04:35 | going to do is we are going to make
this plane, this light source not Visible
| | 04:40 | in Reflections and not Visible in
Refractions. When I do the render again now I
| | 04:46 | get the soft light without the visible
light source. So you can use this for
| | 04:52 | all sorts of things.
| | 04:53 | Let's go ahead and do one more little
thing. I am going to go ahead and delete
| | 04:57 | this plane and we are going to do
something a little bit more dramatic. I am
| | 05:01 | going to create a NURBS Sphere around
this car and I am going to move that
| | 05:08 | sphere down a little bit. Now we are
going to add a Text trick to this. We are
| | 05:12 | actually going to add another surface
shader, Assign a New Material, Surface
| | 05:17 | Shader but this time for the Out Color
we can add in a file. So for example, I
| | 05:24 | can add in my image. It's easy
here if I go in to 08_Mentalray, under
| | 05:30 | sourceimages, I have one called Sky.
So once I have that Sky I can actually
| | 05:36 | make the sky the illuminating source
for this scene. In fact, let's go ahead
| | 05:41 | and turn on Hardware texturing so
we can see how that sky is in there.
| | 05:45 | Okay, now I don't have this completely
mapped to the sphere but let's just go
| | 05:48 | ahead and take a quick render. You
can see now the sky is illuminating this
| | 05:53 | from all different directions and it's
actually reflected in the car. Now if I
| | 05:58 | want to I can actually make the sky
even brighter doing almost the exact same
| | 06:04 | technique that I did with this Color.
So I go into my Sky Texture node and I
| | 06:10 | scroll down to Color balance, and
again I can take my Color Gain and make it
| | 06:15 | more than once. So in this case let's
not go too far. Let's make it say, 3 or 4.
| | 06:21 | Now what I am doing is I am actually
making this a little bit brighter and this
| | 06:25 | is actually a little too over
saturated here so we can just turn this down a
| | 06:28 | little bit. Now another thing you
can do is you can combine this with a
| | 06:33 | secondary light source, part of the
light is coming from the sky and part of
| | 06:37 | the light is coming from just a regular
light in the scene. So you can mix and
| | 06:42 | match these methods.
| | 06:44 | So here I have a lot of our light
coming from the sky. If I want to I can for
| | 06:48 | example, add in a point light into the
scene, and move that light up and over,
| | 06:57 | and maybe bring the intensity down
just a little bit and see what that does.
| | 07:02 | Now that will probably give a little
bit more of a pop in the scene and it will
| | 07:05 | definitely give a good or moreover
our lighting but I am still getting the
| | 07:09 | lighting from the sky as well. So I
can see I get a very nice soft overall
| | 07:14 | lighting so I can keep my standard
lighting, add in a little lighting from the
| | 07:18 | sky, and I am getting a much,
much better rendering model.
| | 07:24 | Final Gather actually renders fairly
quickly so this is actually a really nice
| | 07:28 | way to do this sort of lighting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rendering transparent materials with caustics| 00:01 | Now let's go over a one more really
nice feature of Mental Ray and that's the
| | 00:06 | ability to generate caustics. Now
what Caustics are, are the little bits of
| | 00:12 | light that gets filtered through glass
or reflected off of water, or metal, or
| | 00:17 | something like that; they create all
of these little highlights. You can best
| | 00:21 | see it under something like this, which
is a Martini glass or a wine glass, and
| | 00:25 | let me show you how to create that effect.
| | 00:28 | We have a file here called Martini01.
mb. Now this is set to render within
| | 00:35 | Mental Rays so let's make we have
Mental Rays set. Then let's just go ahead and
| | 00:40 | do a quick rendering and see what we
have. Now this is a Martini glass with a
| | 00:45 | normal vignette and it's on just a
flat plane. Now the glass itself looks
| | 00:50 | pretty good but what we don't have are
the shadows or the highlights that will
| | 00:55 | be created when the light filters
through the glass and the liquid in the glass.
| | 00:59 | So we can do that by adding caustics
to a light. Let's go out in to the four
| | 01:04 | view of this. You will see that the
scene has two lights. It has one light
| | 01:09 | here, which is the general
illumination, and then it has a highlight light
| | 01:13 | here, which is called spotLight1.
That's the one we are going to add Caustics
| | 01:18 | to. So first of all let's so ahead
and add in some Raytrace Shadows in this
| | 01:24 | light here. Let's go ahead up here to
Raytrace Shadow Attributes and turn on
| | 01:29 | Use Ray Trace Shadows, and then let's
do a quick render and as you can see we
| | 01:34 | have got a nice little shadow
developing here from the light.
| | 01:38 | Now I still want to get the caustics
highlights that would be coming from this
| | 01:41 | glass when the light is filtering
through. We can do that by turning on
| | 01:45 | caustics. Now this is very similar to
the way the global illumination works. We
| | 01:50 | have to turn photons in the light
and then turn on Caustics in the render
| | 01:56 | Settings window. So I am going to go
down here to the Mental Ray tab and open
| | 02:00 | up Caustic and Global Illumination,
and turn on Emit Photons. Now let's go to
| | 02:05 | the Render Settings window. I got to
make sure I am in the Indirect Lighting
| | 02:08 | tab and let's just turn on Caustics.
| | 02:12 | Now I don't want to go through all
these parameters here, let's just leave it
| | 02:15 | at the default. Now select the camera
1 window and let's do a render. Now as
| | 02:23 | you can see there is really not much
happening here. Again, just like with
| | 02:26 | global illumination, we have the same
situation. We have the photons, which
| | 02:32 | actually create the Caustic lighting,
and the photon intensity is the intensity
| | 02:37 | of that effect. Now again, we have
exact same numbers here. We have the
| | 02:42 | Intensity of the Photons as well as an
Exponent. So what I need to do here is
| | 02:47 | start bringing up the Intensity.
Let's go ahead and bring up to a 100,000
| | 02:51 | instead of 8,000 and then do
another render and see what happens.
| | 02:57 | Now you can start seeing the effect.
You can see right here we have a little
| | 03:01 | bit of a caustic illumination here
coming from the light. If we want to we can
| | 03:06 | add this up even more. In fact, let's
bring it up way up, let's bring it up to
| | 03:10 | 500,000 and let's do another render.
Now at 500,000 you can really see how the
| | 03:17 | effect is taking place. Now this is
probably too much. We are going to have to
| | 03:21 | back it off to somewhere between 100,
000 and 500,000, but as you can see the
| | 03:27 | light is now creating a Caustic effect,
it's also illuminating the liquid and
| | 03:32 | the olive in the Martini. So this is
actually really nice because there is a
| | 03:37 | really good effect here.
| | 03:39 | So I am going to bring this down to
about 250,000 and let's see if we can get
| | 03:43 | something a little bit in between
those two. Now, this looks a little bit
| | 03:47 | better. Again, we have the Caustic
lighting and we also have a little bit of
| | 03:52 | illumination of the liquid in the
glass. Now again just as with global
| | 03:56 | illumination, the number of photons
will determine how the effect works. So for
| | 04:03 | example, if I have this light
selected I can also up the number of Caustic
| | 04:08 | photons. Now more photons will
increase the render times as well.
| | 04:15 | Now as you can see with a 100,000
photons, the solution is a lot less grainy,
| | 04:20 | it's a lot more accurate. So again,
more photons is going to give you more
| | 04:24 | accuracy. Now I am finding generally
that Caustics requires a lot more photons
| | 04:29 | than global illumination to calculate
accurately. But as you can see you can
| | 04:34 | get some incredibly realistic glass
and reflective effects with Caustics. Now
| | 04:40 | this can also be done for reflections
such as metal objects on a table, or for
| | 04:45 | example, a light reflecting off of
water in a swimming pool for example. So all
| | 04:50 | of these effects can be created with Caustics.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Working with Paint EffectsIntroducing Paint Effects| 00:00 |
Now let's take a look at Maya's Paint
Effects. This is a really great way to
| | 00:04 |
create environments and naturalistic
scenes because it allows you to paint
| | 00:09 |
things like trees and grass and
flowers in to a scene. It's very organic, a
| | 00:14 |
really great way to populate a scene
very quickly with organic stuff. In
| | 00:20 |
addition to doing things like trees
and grass, Paint Effects can also do
| | 00:24 |
special effects and all sorts of other
things. So let's just show you some of
| | 00:29 |
the basics, let's just get our
feet wet here in Paint Effects.
| | 00:32 |
We have a project that we need to set.
Let's go ahead and set our project to
| | 00:37 |
09_PaintEffects and let's make sure we
are in the file called Road.mb. Now this
| | 00:44 |
is a very simple scene. It has
basically just two main objects here. It has a
| | 00:49 |
plane that is a ground plane
essentially and we also have a sky. Now we are
| | 00:56 |
going to go ahead and paint some
foliage and grass on to this ground plane. So
| | 01:02 |
we can do that through the Paint
Effects menu. If we are in our Rendering menu
| | 01:08 |
options, we can go to Paint Effects
and we have a ton of options here. In
| | 01:14 |
addition to that there is a Paint
Effects shelf, which has most of these
| | 01:18 |
options and a number of brushes.
| | 01:22 |
So let's go ahead and start by
selecting this ground plane, it's called
| | 01:26 |
NURBSPlane1, and go into Paint Effects
menu here and go in Make Paintable. Now
| | 01:33 |
what that does is it allows us to
paint directly on to that NURBS surface. So
| | 01:39 |
in order to paint, we need to select
what we want to paint. There is a nice
| | 01:43 |
little grass brush right here and so if
I select that what happens is I can now
| | 01:49 |
just left click and drag on to the
surface of that plane and I can paint grass.
| | 01:57 |
So there we go. So now I
have grass into that scene.
| | 02:01 |
Now this uses the Artisan Interface,
which is the same interface we used for 3D
| | 02:06 |
paint, for sculpting surfaces and a
number of other things. So in order to
| | 02:11 |
change the size of the brush all I have
to do is use that same keystroke, B for
| | 02:15 |
brush, and if I left click and drag, I
will make that brush bigger. So then I
| | 02:22 |
can also paint the grass bigger. So
if I wanted to make really big grass, I
| | 02:27 |
could certainly do that. So by changing
the size of the brush you are changing
| | 02:31 |
the scale of whatever it is you are painting.
| | 02:35 |
So now that I have painted some grass
into the scene I can do a quick render
| | 02:39 |
and you will see how this comes up.
Notice how it renders the shadows and you
| | 02:43 |
can see the grass is being rendered in
to the scene. Now when you paint in to a
| | 02:50 |
scene -- let's go in to our Outliner
and let's see what happens. When you paint
| | 02:55 |
into a scene, each stroke is a
separate object. So every time I click this
| | 03:03 |
brush and paint some grass it creates
a new stroke. So just remember that,
| | 03:11 |
every time you do that it creates
what's called a stroke. We will get to why
| | 03:14 |
that's important a little bit later,
but let me show you how to paint some
| | 03:17 |
additional things.
| | 03:18 |
Now we can certainly select brushes
from this top menu here, but this is only a
| | 03:23 |
small fraction of what Maya has
available. Now in addition to these, if we go
| | 03:29 |
into our general Editors Visor window
and go over here to Paint Effects, you
| | 03:38 |
will notice we have a whole list of
stuff. Now all of this you can use as
| | 03:43 |
brushes. So in addition to foliage you
could just use standard paintbrushes.
| | 03:49 |
You have animal fur and skins like
snakeskin and that sort of stuff; meshes for
| | 03:54 |
cities. So for example, if I wanted to
paint Manhattan, I could certainly do
| | 03:58 |
that. I can also do clouds;
electrical effects like lightning; feathers; we
| | 04:06 |
also have a whole library of flowers.
So for example, if I wanted to do
| | 04:10 |
sunflowers, I could certainly just
paint sunflowers into the scene; or daisies,
| | 04:17 |
dandelions, whatever; food; stars and
galaxies; tons of different grasses; a
| | 04:25 |
lot of trees.
| | 04:27 |
Now there is two types of trees here.
There is these trees here, which actually
| | 04:32 |
will render faster, and then you have
ones called treesMesh and some of these
| | 04:36 |
you will notice have clocks by them.
That's because some of these actually take
| | 04:39 |
some time to render and that's because
these actually create actual meshes in
| | 04:45 |
the scene. So for example, if I
created one of these oaks, you can see how it
| | 04:50 |
creates a very realistic oak tree
with leaves and everything. It is a very
| | 04:55 |
complicated object so it
takes a little time to refresh.
| | 04:59 |
We also have stuff like weather; and
watercolors, mesh, all that sort of stuff.
| | 05:05 |
So as you can see you have got a huge
palette of possibilities. Now in addition
| | 05:11 |
to these standard brushes, you can
also make your own brushes and customize
| | 05:16 |
stuff to make pretty much whatever you
want in paint Effects. So if you want to
| | 05:21 |
you can go ahead and practice just
by populating the scene with trees and
| | 05:25 |
flowers and then we are going to get
in to creating your own brushes in the next lesson.
| | 05:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating brushes| 00:00 | Now let's take a deeper look into how
brushes are constructed in Maya and take
| | 00:06 | a look at the underlying
aspects of Paint Effects.
| | 00:09 | We already know how to select a
surface and paint on it; that's pretty easy,
| | 00:14 | but let's go ahead and take a look at
how to create and modify what we paint,
| | 00:18 | so that we can get a little
bit more of a custom look.
| | 00:21 | I am starting off in a new Maya scene
and let's just go ahead and create a
| | 00:27 | NURBS plane from the top view here. I
am just going to go into my Perspective
| | 00:33 | view, Shade that Hardware Texturing,
so we can see what we are working with.
| | 00:39 | Then I am going to my PaintEffects shelf,
I am going to keep that selected and
| | 00:43 | just go make paintable, and let's go
ahead and just paint some more grass. So I
| | 00:48 | am just going to select this Clump
grass and I am going to paint a stroke.
| | 00:52 | Now, when I paint this what happens is
it creates a stroke. So I have my plane
| | 01:01 | and then on that I have created this
grass. Now, this stroke actually has two
| | 01:07 | components. There is the actual path,
which is that line that I painted, and
| | 01:12 | that's what's called the stroke. And
then on top of that stroke is applied a
| | 01:18 | brush, which determines what is
actually painted. So in this case it's grass.
| | 01:22 | Now, this could just as easily be tress
or buildings or whatever, but right now
| | 01:27 | we are painting grass.
| | 01:28 | So let's show you how this works in
the Attribute Editor. I have got this
| | 01:31 | stroke selected, go into the Attribute
Editor. I am going to Zoom in a little
| | 01:37 | bit here and we will see we
have a couple of different nodes.
| | 01:41 | The first one is our master node,
which just determines where this stroke is.
| | 01:45 | In fact, I can select this stroke and
just move it wherever I want. It doesn't
| | 01:50 | have to be locked to that surface. That
stroke, if you can see there is a line
| | 01:54 | underneath there, I can
actually move that wherever I want.
| | 01:59 | Now, the stroke itself also has the
stroke parameters. Now, these include
| | 02:04 | things like Pressure sensitivity. So
you actually can use Pressure sensitivity
| | 02:09 | to paint the grass thicker or thinner
or longer or shorter, that sort of thing.
| | 02:15 | But also we have a number of options here.
| | 02:17 | First of all is the Display Quality;
how much of this grass is actually going
| | 02:22 | to be displayed. So we can actually
turn this all the way down to 0 and with no
| | 02:27 | Display Quality you can see the actual
stroke itself. Now, if I turn this up,
| | 02:31 | you are displaying more and
more of these little grass things.
| | 02:36 | Now, if you get a very complex scene
you may want to turn down your display
| | 02:40 | quality just so your screen
updates in a more real-time manner.
| | 02:45 | We can also change what's called the
Seed, which basically just changes a
| | 02:48 | random seed, that will give you a
little bit of width to that grass.
| | 02:53 | We also have some additional options
here such as, what direction it's going,
| | 02:58 | Pressure sensitivity and so on.
| | 03:02 | So as I have said before, the stroke
determines where the stuff is painted, but
| | 03:07 | the actual stuff is located in this
next node over. In this case it's called
| | 03:13 | grassClump1 and this is called a brush.
In fact, you can see it here, it's
| | 03:17 | called brush and this
determines what exactly is painted.
| | 03:21 | Now, by changing these attributes we
can completely change around what is
| | 03:26 | painted. So let's just go through some of these.
| | 03:30 | Now, for example, we have a Global Scale,
which enables us to make this bigger
| | 03:35 | or smaller or whatever.
| | 03:37 | We can go through here, we can say,
what Channels are we painting in.
| | 03:42 | Brush Profile, so how wide or how
narrow is that stroke. How close to that line
| | 03:52 | are these little grass things going
to be painted. So that's your width,
| | 03:56 | basically, it's the width of our brush stroke.
| | 04:00 | We also have options for Twist. So for
example, if I want to twist the grass
| | 04:06 | around, I can certainly do that. All
these can be animated, so you could
| | 04:11 | actually twist the grass to
create some sort of animated effect.
| | 04:15 | We also stuff for the actual Mesh. If
you scroll in here, if you Zoom in to one
| | 04:21 | of these little grass blades here, you
can see that we have how many sections
| | 04:31 | on each one of these and how many
subsegments. So basically how fine is the
| | 04:36 | mesh that we are painting.
| | 04:38 | You can also create thorns on the mesh
if you want to and you can also create
| | 04:45 | stuff like environment. So if
you want this to reflect, you can.
| | 04:50 | We can also do Shading. So this is
great, because we can actually change the
| | 04:54 | color. So for example, if I wanted to
make this red, I can certainly make it
| | 04:59 | red, or I can make it blue or whatever.
So you can see how that first color
| | 05:05 | becomes whatever I choose. So if I
want to make this a really green grass, I
| | 05:09 | can certainly change this.
| | 05:12 | We also have a Color 2. So this is
Color 1, which is basically our base color.
| | 05:17 | Color 2 is out tip color. So for example,
if we wanted to make dried out grass,
| | 05:22 | we can make these brown, or if we
wanted to make a very healthy grass, we could
| | 05:25 | certainly make it green.
| | 05:27 | You also have such options as
Incandescence, Transparency. You can also have a
| | 05:33 | randomness to this. So not every grass
is going to be exactly the same color.
| | 05:39 | Now, if you want to go beyond color,
you can also add Texturing to it. I am not
| | 05:44 | going to do that right now.
| | 05:47 | You can also do Illumination and
Shadow Effects. So if you want these to
| | 05:51 | actually cast shadows, you can. Do you
want it to fake a Shadow, yes or no, or
| | 05:59 | do you want it to have real shadows?
| | 06:02 | Another one is Glow. Do you want this
to glow? Now, for example, if you wanted
| | 06:06 | to do lighting, you probably would want
to glow. For grass, you probably don't.
| | 06:10 | Now, this is probably one of the more
important ones, which is Tubes. What any
| | 06:18 | brush stroke does is create what are
called Tubes. If you look at this, this
| | 06:24 | little grass is just basically a
little tube that's attached to that stroke.
| | 06:29 | So what we can do is we can create
any number of tubes per step. So for
| | 06:33 | example, if we dial this down, we are
going to have fewer tubes per step of the
| | 06:40 | stroke. So if I dial this down to a
lower number, we can kind of get a little
| | 06:44 | bit in and see how this is really
working under the surface, so we don't have
| | 06:48 | so much in the way. We can certainly
create a randomness. If we don't create
| | 06:53 | Randomness then it's going
to space these very evenly.
| | 06:58 | You can also create any number of
Segments on these tubes. So for example, if I
| | 07:03 | dial this down to 1, it's just one
straight segment. More segments gives it
| | 07:09 | more flexibility.
| | 07:11 | We can also change the Length. How long
is our grass or how long are our tubes,
| | 07:16 | and the tubes determine that it's grass.
Do we want them long, short, whatever.
| | 07:22 | We can also change Width. So for example,
the base and the tip, and so on and so forth.
| | 07:29 | Now, if you want, you can also
highly control the Width of this. So for
| | 07:34 | example, if I wanted to I could create
a graph here that actually gives you the
| | 07:40 | outline of this grass.
| | 07:43 | Now, in addition to how the tube is
created, we also have what are called
| | 07:48 | Growth options. So if we want more
than just grass, we can add Twigs, Leaves,
| | 07:56 | Flowers, and Buds. So I have just
turn grass now into a field of Flowers.
| | 08:04 | Now, each one of these also has its own
parameter. So for example, Flowers have
| | 08:12 | their own color, so you can make blue
flowers or whatever. Translucence, all of
| | 08:18 | these parameters; I can't go through
all of these, but you can see we have a
| | 08:22 | huge wealth of parameters here for
totally customizing each one of these.
| | 08:27 | Now, in addition to all of this, we
also have what's called Behavior, which
| | 08:32 | allows it to react to forces such as
wind and that sort of stuff, and also you
| | 08:37 | can animate it.
| | 08:39 | So all of these options allow you to
completely customize how the brushes work.
| | 08:45 | Now, once you have customized the brush,
you can actually use it again just by
| | 08:53 | going into the Paint Effects menu.
| | 08:54 | Now, what I have done is I have taken
that grass brush and I have significantly
| | 08:58 | altered it. So what I can do is I
can just go Get Settings from Selected
| | 09:03 | Stroke, and now what that will do is
the next thing I paint will paint exactly
| | 09:08 | what I have here. So for example, if I
take the paintbrush and I paint it, now
| | 09:12 | I am painting those blue flowers that I created.
| | 09:15 | So as you can see, you can take any
basic brush and completely change it into
| | 09:22 | whatever you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying brushes to existing strokes| 00:00 | We've seen how paint effects separates
the actual stroke from the brush. This
| | 00:05 | can be used for a lot of really neat
things. One is, you can actually repaint
| | 00:09 | something after you have painted it. So
you could actually change the brush on
| | 00:14 | an existing stroke.
| | 00:16 | So let me show you how that works. We
are starting in just an empty window. I
| | 00:20 | have my Visor window open, because we
are going to painting some hair, and I am
| | 00:23 | just going to draw a small sphere. I
don't want the sphere to be too big,
| | 00:28 | because I need to have it in scale for
the hair that I am about the paint. So I
| | 00:33 | just want to make sure I turn on shading,
and turn on Hardware Texturing here,
| | 00:37 | so I can see what I am doing.
| | 00:39 | So I have my Visor window open. So
let's go ahead and do hairWetCurls. Now the
| | 00:47 | first thing I need to do is go
ahead and select the sphere and go Make
| | 00:52 | Paintable. Then I go down to
hairWetCurls and then just stroke that. Okay, so
| | 01:00 | now I have created a stroke with some
curls on it. In fact, if I wanted to, I
| | 01:05 | could render that. You
could see those curly hairs.
| | 01:08 | Now I can go ahead and paint another
stroke if I want, but let's say I decided
| | 01:15 | you know what, I really don't like
that hair. Let's go ahead and change it to
| | 01:19 | something else. What I can do here is I
can go to any one of these presets. So
| | 01:24 | if I wanted to go to hairBlondWavy, all
I have to do is highlight that and that
| | 01:30 | selects that brush, and then if I go
into Paint Effects, all I have to do is
| | 01:36 | just go Apply Settings to my Selected
Strokes. And when I do that you will see
| | 01:41 | that that selected stroke
now goes to the blond hair.
| | 01:46 | So now I have two different types of
hair. In fact, if I wanted to, I could
| | 01:50 | select this other hair and change it as
well. Now how this works is that Paint
| | 01:56 | Effects always has a brush active, and
whatever brush we have active, we can
| | 02:01 | apply it to selected
strokes, or the last stroke.
| | 02:06 | So for example, if I selected this
particular hair here, the curly hair, I
| | 02:12 | could get the settings from that stroke,
and then select the other one and just
| | 02:17 | go apply that, and then
everything would turn to curly hair.
| | 02:22 | Now I could select any of these other
hair strokes and that puts it into the
| | 02:27 | active slot, and when I do that then I
can just apply those as well and it will
| | 02:31 | change that hair. What this means is
that if I painted something, let's say I
| | 02:36 | painted some grass or some hair on
an object, then I don't like it, I can
| | 02:41 | change it just by selecting what I
want and applying it and you can see how
| | 02:45 | simple that is.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharing brushes| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how to apply
one brush to many brushes within Maya.
| | 00:06 | This could be very handy when you are
painting large environments. So I've got
| | 00:11 | my Visor window up and let's just
take a simple plane. Again, it's a NURBS
| | 00:19 | plane and I'll go ahead and highlight
this and just shade that, and just go
| | 00:24 | ahead and go Make Paintable, and then
I am just going to select some of these
| | 00:29 | flower brushes.
| | 00:30 | So let's go ahead and select the
dandelion. I am going to paint some dandelion
| | 00:34 | on the scene there and then select a
different type of brush. How about some
| | 00:38 | sunflowers? I am going to paint some
sunflowers, and then how about some violets?
| | 00:45 | Okay, so now I have painted three types
of flowers in the scene. I am going to
| | 00:52 | minimize this Visor window here. Let's
take a look at that from the Outliner
| | 00:56 | perspective here. I have got the
dandelion stroke, the sunflower stroke, and
| | 01:00 | the violet stroke.
| | 01:02 | Let's say I was painting a large field
of the flowers and I wanted to change
| | 01:05 | things around. I could very easily
select all of these strokes and make them
| | 01:10 | into one flower. Essentially what we
are doing is we are going to take all of
| | 01:14 | these strokes and point them to one brush.
| | 01:17 | So instead of having three strokes
and each stroke has its own brush, I am
| | 01:23 | going to take those three strokes and
point them to only one, and we can do
| | 01:27 | that by doing Share One Brush. I select
those and go Share One Brush. They all
| | 01:32 | now share the exact same brush, and in
this case it's the brush of the last one
| | 01:37 | selected, which was the violet.
| | 01:39 | So now all I have to do is select
any one of these, go back in the Visor,
| | 01:44 | change the brush. So I can select dahlia,
and if I go over to the Paint Effects
| | 01:50 | window and apply it to the Selected
Stroke, you will see that all of the
| | 01:54 | strokes changed even
through I only had one selected.
| | 01:58 | So for example, I can just select this
one and just change it to daisies, and
| | 02:05 | everything changes. What this means is
that all of these strokes point to one
| | 02:10 | brush. So for example, if I selected
one of these strokes, and went into the
| | 02:14 | Attribute Editor, you could go into
this brush and change anything you want.
| | 02:23 | For example, if I change the Global
Scale, it changes the scale of everything.
| | 02:27 | Even though, I am only affecting one of
these. Now this can be very handy when
| | 02:32 | you painting large groups of object,
because you will want to paint multiple
| | 02:36 | strokes, but you will want all of
those strokes to be affected by the same parameters.
| | 02:42 | So that's why Share One Brush really
can help. Now if we want to, we can also
| | 02:47 | Remove Brush Sharing, and what that
does is it separates out all of the options
| | 02:53 | for each of those brushes.
| | 02:55 | So if you select all of these and go
Remove Brush Sharing, that will make them
| | 03:01 | separate. So now that if I select
this and change the scale, the other ones
| | 03:06 | aren't affected. So when you Share One
Brush, it concentrates all of the brush
| | 03:11 | settings into one that you can change
for everything, and then when you remove
| | 03:15 | them, it separates them back out again.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving brushes| 00:00 | Now that we know how to create, modify,
and apply brushes, we also need to
| | 00:05 | learn how to save them. There are going
to be a lot of times when you are going
| | 00:09 | to create a custom brush and you want
to save it for later. So when you come
| | 00:12 | back to the scene, you can
paint with the exact same brush.
| | 00:16 | Now Paint Effects does allow you to
save our brushes and let me show you how. I
| | 00:20 | am just going to create a surface here
and we are going to go into our Paint
| | 00:25 | Effects window, go Make Paintable, and
let's just paint a simple object here.
| | 00:31 | I am just going to choose this tree
here and I am just going to create a row of
| | 00:36 | trees. That way I can just get to a
brush. So let's go ahead and shade this so
| | 00:41 | we can see it. And if I select that
stroke, I can go into the Attribute Editor,
| | 00:48 | go here to treeSimple, and let's
go ahead and modify some parameters.
| | 00:52 | If we want we can change Global Scale.
We could change the number of brushes,
| | 00:57 | that sort of thing. Let's just do
something really simple. Let's go down to
| | 01:01 | Tubes and go down to Growth and turn
on Flowers. Let's just go and make these
| | 01:11 | cherry trees.
| | 01:12 | Now these flowers are little bit big,
so let's go ahead and turn that Petal
| | 01:16 | Length down a bit. So that way, we can
have our smaller buds there, and so now
| | 01:24 | we have basically what are little cherry trees.
| | 01:26 | Now what we can do is we can save this
out to our Presets. So that way if we
| | 01:31 | want to come back and paint cherry
trees, we can. So let's go to the Paint
| | 01:35 | Effects menu and let's just go ahead
and make sure we get the settings from the
| | 01:38 | selected stroke, and that kind of puts
it into our Paint Buffer, and then make
| | 01:42 | sure that's what we were painting.
| | 01:44 | So for example, if I wanted to paint
that right now, I could. And that would go
| | 01:47 | ahead and paint more cherry trees. Now
that I have that selected, I can save
| | 01:53 | it, just by going down to the
bottom here and going Save, Brush Preset.
| | 01:57 | Now this gives us a couple of options.
It's really very simple. We can give it
| | 02:01 | a name, CherryTree, give it a label,
and then we can save it to one of two
| | 02:10 | places, either the shelf, which is
right here, or into Visor. So if we save it
| | 02:17 | into Visor, we have two
places where we can save it.
| | 02:21 | By default it goes into just out
standard preferences. So it goes into my
| | 02:26 | George Maestri; that's who I am. It
goes into my maya, prefs, brushes.
| | 02:31 | If I want to save it out into the main
one, I have to go into a system folder
| | 02:36 | here. I have to go to Program Files,
Autodesk, Maya, and then into brushes, and
| | 02:45 | then here we have all of the different
standard brushes. These are where all of
| | 02:49 | the standard brushes are.
| | 02:50 | So, for example, I can put it into the
Trees directory, if I wanted to. Now I
| | 02:54 | am not going to do this, because
sometimes you may not have permission to save
| | 02:59 | into that system directory, and for
right now, let's just go ahead and save it
| | 03:03 | to the shelf.
| | 03:04 | So I have got my names all set and
let's just go ahead and go Save, Brush
| | 03:08 | Preset. When I do that, I go to my
shelf and if I scroll down here, you see at
| | 03:14 | the very end I have got a cherry tree.
| | 03:17 | So I could for example, select
something else, paint Fire or whatever, and then
| | 03:22 | come here to cherry tree, and then just
go right back to where I was and paint
| | 03:27 | those same trees. Now what we did here,
was we actually added a manuscript to my shelf.
| | 03:35 | Now you can edit Shelves and that's
something we haven't gotten into, so let me
| | 03:38 | show you really quickly how to edit
this and how to get rid of it if I wanted to.
| | 03:44 | If I click on this little button right
here, I can go into my Shelf Editor and
| | 03:48 | this allows me to Add Shelves and
also to affect the shelf contents of this
| | 03:56 | selected shelf. So if I go scroll down
at the very bottom, you will see I have
| | 04:00 | my Cherry Tree. If I want to, I can
move it up and I can rearrange it, or I can
| | 04:06 | rename it, I can change the image,
or I can delete it if I want.
| | 04:14 | So those are the basics of how to
create and save your own brushes in Paint Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting in the Paint Effects window| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the Paint
Effects window. Up to now, we have been
| | 00:04 | painting in a viewport and that is
perfectly fine. But the one thing about
| | 00:09 | painting in a viewport is that, it's
slower and if you get complex Paint
| | 00:14 | Effects scenes you will notice a
significant dragging down of system resources
| | 00:20 | as you paint in a viewport.
| | 00:22 | In order to overcome that, Maya has a
Paint Effects window, which gives you a
| | 00:26 | much faster way to paint in Paint
Effects. So let's go ahead into Window >
| | 00:33 | Paint Effects. Here we have two
options. One is Paint Scene, Paint Canvas.
| | 00:39 | I will get to Paint Canvas in a bit,
but let's just work on Paint Scene. What
| | 00:44 | that does is it brings up kind of a
viewport and from there I can select
| | 00:48 | whatever view I want. So I can go here
to Camera, I can select my Front, Side, or Top.
| | 00:53 | In this case, we are going to select
Camera 1. Now this pretty much gives us
| | 00:57 | the same view as we have in our
viewport. But if I want to, I can turn on
| | 01:03 | Object Shading, as Shaded or Textured.
I can also turn on Default Lighting or
| | 01:10 | Use All Light. I can also Display Fog
if I want and that's if I am using fog.
| | 01:16 | Then, I can paint in this window. So
for example, if I want to get a brush, all
| | 01:21 | I have to do is go Brush, Get Brush.
It immediately brings up my Visor window
| | 01:26 | and I can pick whatever I want. So
for example, if I wanted to paint some
| | 01:30 | flowers, I could select
flowers and just go to town.
| | 01:42 | And if wanted to paint something a
little bit more complex such as a tree, I
| | 01:50 | could do that as well. Now the thing
about this Paint Effects window is that it
| | 01:59 | allows you to change your resolutions.
| | 02:02 | So for example, here I am at Full
Resolution, which gives me exactly what the
| | 02:08 | scene will look like. If I want to,
if my scene is getting a little too
| | 02:11 | complex, I can turn this down and show
it at 25 or 15%, and that way it's not
| | 02:18 | updating as much information and
I am painting a lot more quickly.
| | 02:24 | You can also change how the strokes
refresh when I paint. So if you want it to
| | 02:29 | refresh in rendered view, you can. If
you want to refresh in Wireframe, it will
| | 02:36 | go ahead and paint that way as well.
| | 02:38 | Now the other cool thing about this
is that, I can change some of my basic
| | 02:43 | parameters here. For example, if I zoom
in here, you can see that for this tree
| | 02:49 | that I have selected, I can actually
change the color of the leaves right here
| | 02:53 | without having to dig into my menus.
| | 02:56 | So for example, if I want to make my
trees red, all I have to do is change that
| | 03:00 | and that will change it on my Curve
Brush. So now I am painting red trees
| | 03:03 | instead of green. So a lot of the
major parameters for these brushes show up
| | 03:08 | right here and this gives me
much more immediate control.
| | 03:12 | Now this is just one way of using this
window. The other way is to go into the
| | 03:17 | Paint Canvas Mode. Now what this does
is it allows me to actually paint on to a
| | 03:24 | user-defined canvas. So I can
create a new texture and it gives me some
| | 03:29 | default, let's just go ahead and select
those, and what it does now it gives me
| | 03:33 | a canvas and this allows
me to paint on that canvas.
| | 03:38 | So for example, if I have the Tree
Brush selected, I can actually paint trees
| | 03:42 | on to that canvas. What's really nice
is I could actually paint something else.
| | 03:47 | Let's say I wanted to paint grasses.
All I have to do is go into my Grass here
| | 03:52 | and just start painting Bermuda grass,
and once I do that, I could actually
| | 04:00 | create a background texture.
| | 04:04 | This can actually be saved out as a
bitmap. So I can Save a Snapshot and when I
| | 04:10 | created my canvas, it actually gave it
a file. I could actually browse through
| | 04:15 | here and give it whatever file name I
want. So if I don't want to save this,
| | 04:22 | let's just go ahead and start from scratch here.
| | 04:23 | Let's go ahead and just start painting
grass. Now if I want to, I can paint all
| | 04:27 | of this grass and use this as the
background texture for my actual Paint
| | 04:32 | Effects Grass and so the two will match.
| | 04:35 | Now one of the nice things is that
we can actually do different types of
| | 04:38 | things. We can actually Smear, we can
Blur, we can also Erase. We can also do
| | 04:49 | what's called Roll. So I can Roll and Wrap.
| | 04:53 | So for example, if I Wrap Horizontally
and I am painting with this brush, let's
| | 04:57 | go ahead and just do a Paint Brush here.
When I go over one side, notice how it
| | 05:02 | comes back over on the other. This
allows me to paint a completely seamless
| | 05:07 | texture. So what I have got going over
the left matches on the right. So now I
| | 05:11 | have a tillable texture.
| | 05:14 | I can also Wrap Vertically as well. So
if I go over the top, it comes back up
| | 05:22 | on the bottom. I can also roll the
whole canvas 50% over. So again this allows
| | 05:31 | me to create tillable textures.
It's a very, very handy tool.
| | 05:35 | Now this can also be just be used as a
Paint tool. So let's go ahead and create
| | 05:40 | a new image. And I can use a lot
of my standard Air Brush tools.
| | 05:52 | So for example if I wanted to I can
use airbrushes, I can use animal fur. You
| | 05:58 | can use pretty much whatever you want.
So for example, if I want to do lizard
| | 06:08 | fur, or snakes, or whatever. And I
can change my b |
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