IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:03 | Hello and welcome to Maya New
Features. I am George Maestri.
| | 00:06 | As an animation director and producer I
have been using Maya since it was first
| | 00:10 | released and I have seen it add a
number of groundbreaking features. In this
| | 00:14 | course we will break some more new ground and
explore some of the new features of Maya 2009.
| | 00:19 | We will look at animation layering that
allows you to create and edit animation
| | 00:23 | in whole new ways. I will show you
how to blend, merge, group and reorder
| | 00:28 | animation layers with ease.
| | 00:29 | Then there is MayaMuscle, a powerful
toolset that helps you create life-like
| | 00:33 | skin motion by simulating the
muscles that deform the skin. If you are
| | 00:38 | interested in creating effects in Maya,
you will be very happy with nParticles,
| | 00:42 | which is a whole new particle system
for Maya. nParticles can do all sorts of
| | 00:46 | effects, including smokes,
spray, liquids and pyrotechnics.
| | 00:50 | These are some of the new features I
have learned about in Maya 2009 and I am
| | 00:54 | happy to get you up to speed so you
can use them in your own productions.
| | 00:58 | Once you have completed this title
you might want to check out Maya 2009
| | 01:02 | Essential Training for a broader view
on how these new features are used.
| | 01:06 | With that, I am really looking forward
to sharing my knowledge of these great
| | 01:09 | new features with you. So let's get
started with Maya 2009 New Features.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at the Exercise
Files. If you are a lynda.com premium
| | 00:04 | member, you will have access to these
files. If you are not, then you can
| | 00:09 | certainly follow along with the
tutorials and get a lot out of them.
| | 00:13 | Now, the Exercise Files once
downloaded should be placed on the Desktop. And
| | 00:18 | here it is on my Desktop and let's
just go ahead and open this and you will
| | 00:22 | see that we have five folders and
each folder represents a specific chapter;
| | 00:28 | one for each one in this particular title.
| | 00:30 | Now, if I open these chapter folders
you will see that it's actually a Maya
| | 00:35 | project. So when we start a new
chapter we need to make sure that we set that
| | 00:40 | project within Maya. Let
me show you how this works.
| | 00:43 | If I go into Maya, all I have to do is
just go File > Project > Set and then I
| | 00:51 | just go to my Desktop, to my Exercise
Files and I will set it to whatever
| | 00:56 | chapter I am in.
| | 00:57 | Now, what this does is it allows all
of the padding to the texture files and
| | 01:03 | everything else that these projects
need to work, to be linked up. So that way
| | 01:08 | when you load an object, all the
textures and everything else will be there.
| | 01:12 | If you don't set the project then
things might come up missing.
| | 01:15 | So let's just go ahead and set this
project, select it for Chapter 1, hit OK,
| | 01:21 | and we are all set.
| | 01:22 | So with that in mind, let's
go ahead and start the lessons.
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1. Working with the New Interface and Selection ToolsUsing the new Panel toolbar| 00:00 | We are going to start off by taking
a look at some of the new interface
| | 00:03 | features in Maya 2009. First, we are
going to look at something called the
| | 00:07 | panel yoolbar. But before we do that let's go
ahead and make sure we have our projects all set.
| | 00:13 | We do have the Exercise Files on the
Desktop and so let's go ahead and set our
| | 00:18 | project to Desktop/Exercise Files/Chap
_01 and then the file I have opened is
| | 00:26 | called Head.mb.
| | 00:27 | Now, the first thing I want to show
you is called the Panel Toolbar; and you
| | 00:32 | can see it right here. When you open a
window you will see this additional row
| | 00:38 | of icons along a viewport. In fact,
these are along every viewport; you can see
| | 00:43 | them here. So I am just going to
enlarge this Perspective viewport here and
| | 00:47 | let's just go through some of these.
| | 00:48 | Now, what these do is they basically
duplicate some of the more popular options
| | 00:53 | that we have here in the menus. Now,
a lot of times it's difficult to pull down
| | 00:58 | the menu and then find your options, so
a lot of the more common ones have been
| | 01:02 | kind of shortcutted here.
| | 01:04 | So we have, for example, Select camera,
which will select the active camera, in
| | 01:08 | this case the Perspective camera. Will
allow you to go into Camera Attribute
| | 01:13 | editor, very quickly. We can also do
Scene Bookmarks. We can turn on or off an
| | 01:20 | Image Plane. So if I click this little
S for the Image Plane image. You can
| | 01:24 | turn on and off the Grid,
which I find very handy.
| | 01:27 | We can also do Film Gate,
Resolution Gate. Turn those off.
| | 01:33 | We can also do whether or not you have
a Gate mask or not. So in another words,
| | 01:37 | is this gray outside of the area where
the object shows? So it's a really good
| | 01:43 | handy visual device to know whether or
not your object is actually going to be
| | 01:47 | in the final render.
| | 01:48 | You can also turn on a Field grid. We
also have Safe Action and Safe Title.
| | 01:54 | Then we also have some display modes
here. We have Wireframe, Shaded, Shaded
| | 02:01 | with Wireframe. You can also turn on
and off Texturing; so this is essentially
| | 02:06 | the same as hardware texturing here.
So you can just flip that on and off,
| | 02:10 | which is really nice.
| | 02:11 | You can also do Use All Lights. So you
can turn on and off the default light in
| | 02:15 | the scene or the actual lights in the
scene. You can turn Shadows on and off, as
| | 02:20 | well as High quality or Low
quality, or Faster quality rendering.
| | 02:26 | We also have what's called Isolate
Select. So for example, if you have selected
| | 02:30 | the eye here in this particular
character, you can just isolate that very, very
| | 02:34 | quickly. This is great for modeling,
if you want to just get into something
| | 02:38 | very quickly.
| | 02:39 | We also have our X-Ray modes. You can
turn-on X-Ray; X-Ray just the active
| | 02:44 | components. So for example, if I have
the head selected I can just X-Ray just
| | 02:48 | the head and leave everything else unX-
Rayed and you can also do X-Ray Joints.
| | 02:53 | So all of these are available with
just a simple click and I find this very,
| | 02:58 | very handy, because it's a lot
faster than pulling down menus.
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| Using the improved selection tools| 00:00 | One of the handiest new things in
Maya 2009 is some improvements to the
| | 00:05 | Selection tools. Now these will
help your modeling go a lot faster.
| | 00:09 | The first thing I want to show you is
called Preselection Highlighting and
| | 00:12 | what this does is it allows you to
see exactly what you are about to select
| | 00:18 | before you select it. That's
Preselection. So let me show you how this works on
| | 00:23 | this head model.
| | 00:24 | If I right click over the model and I
go to face, you will see Preselection
| | 00:29 | Highlighting is actually turned on for
this particular model. So if I move my
| | 00:36 | cursor above any one of these faces, it
will highlight it. So all I have to do
| | 00:41 | is just click and Shift Select and I
can highlight this. Now, this is a much
| | 00:46 | more interactive way than the old method.
| | 00:49 | In fact, if you want to go back to
the old method you can, or if it's not
| | 00:53 | turned on, let me show you
where to turn it on. We can go into
| | 00:56 | Settings/Preferences > Preferences and
under Settings > Selection, we have an
| | 01:04 | option here for Preselection Highlight.
| | 01:06 | So if I turn that off and hit Save, we
go back to the old method, which you can
| | 01:10 | see is not nearly as interactive.
| | 01:13 | Let me show you another trick for
turning this on and off. Maya 2009 has added
| | 01:18 | a new marking menu. So if you hit Ctrl
+Shift+Right-click while in Selection
| | 01:24 | Mode, you get these two menus here. One
is Reflection, the other one is Select.
| | 01:29 | Let's go down to Select and right here
we can turn on Preselection Highlight.
| | 01:34 | I turn that on, there it is. If I want
to turn it off, Ctrl+Shift+Right-click,
| | 01:38 | Select, toggle it off. Very simple.
| | 01:43 | Let me show you one more new feature
in the Selection tool and that's called
| | 01:47 | camera-based selection. So let's just
go in here and I am just going to aoom
| | 01:51 | in a little bit, Let's say I was
actually modeling and I wanted to reshape his
| | 01:55 | eyebrows or something like that. I
start selecting, or maybe even rubber band
| | 02:01 | select his eyebrows.
| | 02:05 | Now, if I rubber band select, normally
what it will do; and you have all seen
| | 02:10 | this if you have done modeling, is it
will actually select the back-facing
| | 02:13 | polygons, because what it's doing here is--
if we are going to Wireframe here-- it's
| | 02:18 | really just selecting everything
inside that box; either forward or back.
| | 02:24 | So we can fix this by using what's
called camera-based selection. I do this by
| | 02:29 | going into my Selection tool. So I have
my Select tool active and I go here to
| | 02:35 | Show or Hide Tool Settings and these
are the tool settings for my Select tool;
| | 02:40 | now this also works for
Rotate, Scale and Move as well.
| | 02:44 | So all I have here is a little checkbox
here called Camera based selection. So
| | 02:49 | when I do that and I select those
same polygons, you will notice that it
| | 02:55 | doesn't select the back facing polygons,
because what it's doing is it's only
| | 02:59 | selecting those polygons
the camera can actually see.
| | 03:03 | So for example, if I zoomed out here
and I selected his entire head, I wouldn't
| | 03:07 | really be selecting his entire head,
because it wouldn't select the stuff the
| | 03:11 | camera didn't see.
| | 03:13 | So if in this case I wanted to select
everything, I have to turn it on or off.
| | 03:17 | Now, this works the same for the Move,
the Rotate and the Scale tool as well.
| | 03:24 | So you can see how handy these tools
are, particularly when you want to model
| | 03:28 | polygonal objects.
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| Working with the new soft selection tools| 00:00 | Another improvement to the
Selection tool is the availability of Soft
| | 00:04 | Selection. Now, this is really good
for organic modeling and doing soft
| | 00:09 | modeling, that sort of thing.
Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:12 | I have this model, Head.mb, and let's
just go ahead and zoom in and go to the
| | 00:18 | side here. We are going to reshape his
nose. So I am just going to right click,
| | 00:22 | go to Vertex and then
just select those vertices.
| | 00:25 | Now typically, if we want to move these,
you will see that well, we are only
| | 00:29 | moving those vertices, but if we want
to move the entire nose and just make his
| | 00:33 | nose bigger, it will be nice to have
some Soft Selection, so let me show you
| | 00:38 | how that works.
| | 00:40 | There is a couple of ways of getting
into it. Let me show you the first way. We
| | 00:44 | go into Tool Settings here, scroll down,
and we will find the Soft Selection
| | 00:49 | tab. If I turn it on, you can see it
already gives me visual feedback as to
| | 00:54 | what's being selected. I can
change that Falloff radius here.
| | 00:59 | So for example, if I make it just
pretty small here, you can see how I can just
| | 01:04 | extend his nose and so on.
| | 01:06 | Now, if I want I can also change the
way it interpolates here, or I can create
| | 01:12 | my own Falloff curve. That's kind of
nice if you want to do some really custom
| | 01:17 | modeling. You can certainly use any of
these standard ones or make your own.
| | 01:21 | Now, another way of using this is by
using the Brush tool. So for example, if I
| | 01:26 | hit the B key I can actually create a
brush that allows me to automatically get
| | 01:34 | whatever Soft Selection I want,
and then I can move that as well.
| | 01:40 | Now in addition to this you can also
do what's called Reflection. So if you
| | 01:46 | have a symmetrical model like this you
can reshape it symmetrically by using
| | 01:51 | Reflections. So I will select his ear
here, turn on Reflection and you notice
| | 01:56 | that his other ear is selected and
all I have to do now is move one side and
| | 02:02 | the other side moves in
concert. So isn't that nice?
| | 02:06 | You can change how it reflects by just
flipping some of these options here. We
| | 02:11 | can reflect over World Space or Object
Space. We can also reflect in X, Y and
| | 02:16 | Z as well. There is also a Tolerance,
as well as what's called Seam Tolerance,
| | 02:23 | and that's for NURBS objects. So if you
are modeling around a seam, do you want
| | 02:29 | the seam to split or not? These
are tools to help you to prevent seam splinting.
| | 02:35 | So those are some of the basics of
the Soft Selection tool. As you can see,
| | 02:38 | it's really handy for doing organic
modeling and I am sure you will find a lot
| | 02:43 | of uses for it.
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| Making selections with Drag Select | 00:00 | Another handy new feature in Maya 2009
is called Drag Select and this gives
| | 00:05 | you just a whole new way of
selecting components within an object.
| | 00:09 | So for example, if I took this face, if
I wanted to select a lot of polygons--
| | 00:13 | let's go ahead into face. If I want to
select a lot of faces, I could just left
| | 00:17 | click and drag and select a bunch of faces.
| | 00:20 | But this really isn't as accurate as I
want. Now, I could use a Lasso Select,
| | 00:25 | but I think Drag Select is actually
even more accurate than that. Let me go
| | 00:29 | ahead and unselect here.
| | 00:31 | To turn on Drag Select, all I have to
do is go Ctrl+Shift and right-click over
| | 00:37 | the object and then under Select, all
I have to do is just go up to here and
| | 00:42 | just go Drag Select.
| | 00:44 | Now, left-click and drag, selects,
which is kind of cool. You can see how it's
| | 00:50 | very easy to paint out your selection.
This makes it much, much easier to
| | 00:56 | select fine areas or kind of
complicated areas within a model.
| | 01:01 | Now, one of the things with Drag
Select is that you can turn it on to select
| | 01:05 | opposite faces or not.
| | 01:07 | So for example here, I had camera based
selection turned off, so I selected the
| | 01:13 | polygons or the faces on the
opposite side of the character's head.
| | 01:17 | If I go here to the Tool Settings, you
will see that I actually have a second
| | 01:21 | camera-based paint selection toggle for
Drags. So if I turn that on-- let's go
| | 01:28 | ahead and select that-- then it will
only select those things that the camera
| | 01:34 | sees. So in this case I am not
selecting the opposite side of the character's head.
| | 01:39 | So you can see how Drag Select makes
it much easier to select things within
| | 01:43 | complex and oddly shaped areas.
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| Making multi-component selections| 00:00 | Another handy little feature in Maya
2009 is the addition of a Multicomponent
| | 00:06 | Select mode. Now, let me show you what that is.
| | 00:09 | I have this model selected and let's
just go ahead and zoom in. If I want to
| | 00:14 | do some modeling I would right click
over that and select the face, an edge, or
| | 00:19 | a vertex and in previous versions of
Maya I would have to them one at a time.
| | 00:24 | But we don't have to do that anymore.
We can go to just this Multi mode here,
| | 00:28 | and this gives us any one
of these types of components.
| | 00:31 | So for example, if I put my cursor
over here, I could select a face, an edge,
| | 00:35 | or a vertex, or any combination of
those. So if I hold down my Shift key I
| | 00:40 | could select vertices, edges,
faces, really anything I want.
| | 00:45 | Now, this is really handy for those
times when you do need to select more than
| | 00:50 | one component, such as well, Wedge
Faces is one example. You need to select an
| | 00:56 | edge and then you also need to select the face.
| | 00:59 | So for example, if I go here, select
this edge and then Shift-Select that face,
| | 01:04 | I can just go into my Polygonal tools
and just go Wedge Face and you can see
| | 01:10 | how I have got that tool very easily.
Now before I would have to select one,
| | 01:15 | switch modes, Shift-Select the other,
and it got really complicated, but this
| | 01:20 | makes it a lot easier.
| | 01:22 | As you can see, Multi Select mode is
a much better way to select components
| | 01:26 | within Maya.
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| Selecting portions of edge and face loops| 00:00 | One additional feature in the Selection
tool is the ability to select portions
| | 00:04 | of a face loop or an edge loop,
so let me show you how that works.
| | 00:08 | We have got this Head model open and
let's go ahead and start with Edge Loops.
| | 00:13 | So I am just going to go ahead and
select Edge. We know that if I double click
| | 00:18 | on an edge, you get the whole Edge Loop.
| | 00:22 | Now, if I just want portions of that
Edge Loop, I can use a Shift+Double-click.
| | 00:27 | So for example, if I select the Edge
Loop here at the front of his hair and go
| | 00:32 | back here and Shift+Double-click that
one, I get all the edges in between.
| | 00:39 | Pretty simple! It's a great way to
select portions of this. So for example, if
| | 00:44 | I wanted to move this or remodel this,
it would be very easy to select that
| | 00:48 | portion of his head.
| | 00:50 | Now, it also works for Face Loops as
well. So let's go ahead and right click
| | 00:54 | here, go to Face and I could, for
example, click here and Shift+Double-click
| | 01:02 | here and I can select, again,
just portions of his head.
| | 01:05 | So if I click here and Shift+Double-
click here, again I am selecting that
| | 01:11 | whole loop of edges in between those two,
which is really handy because you can
| | 01:17 | certainly see how that makes it much
easier to select very specific areas of
| | 01:22 | your model when you go to model.
| | 01:24 | So that's just about it for
Face and Edge Loop selection.
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2. Organizing with Maya AssetsCreating assets| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at a new
feature in Maya and it's called Assets.
| | 00:04 | What Assets does is it allows you to take
a complex assembly of objects and boil it
| | 00:10 | down into one simple node.
| | 00:13 | So for example, a character or special
effect can be simplified so it's much
| | 00:17 | easier to animate and see within a scene.
| | 00:20 | Now, I already have something that we
built using assets and I want to show
| | 00:25 | that too. I have a file here called
Jack_in_Box_04.mb. As you can see we have
| | 00:31 | got a fairly complex little assembly
here. We have got a box, we have got a
| | 00:36 | key, spring, some joints, we have got
a whole bunch of different things here.
| | 00:41 | But if we look at this in the Outliner,
you will see that I really just have
| | 00:45 | two nodes. I have a node called Jack_in
_Box and a little transform node and
| | 00:50 | they really allow me to completely
control this object without having to dig
| | 00:55 | through all the other things that comprise it.
| | 00:58 | So I can, for example, translate this,
I can rotate it, scale it and I have a
| | 01:05 | couple of custom attributes here; one
to open and close the box lid, one to
| | 01:10 | rotate the key, one to move that little
spring up and down and left and right,
| | 01:17 | and back and forth.
| | 01:18 | Now with this simple number of
attributes I can pretty much animate this
| | 01:23 | Jack_in_Box and I don't have to worry
about all of the different things that
| | 01:27 | make it up. So let me show you
how to start building these things.
| | 01:31 | We are going to go ahead and open a
scene called Jack_in_Box_01.mb and this is
| | 01:38 | the basic Jack in the box. So let's
go ahead and take a look at this in the
| | 01:42 | Outliner. You will see we have a node
here called JackInBox, which is just a
| | 01:46 | group and this has all of the
attributes that we really want to play with.
| | 01:51 | This is where I have assigned the
box lid. I have created some custom
| | 01:54 | attributes here for the lid
and all that sort of stuff.
| | 01:59 | This pretty much works the same as the
one that we had before, except it's a
| | 02:02 | lot more complex. You notice here we
have got a lot of different joints, we
| | 02:06 | have got the lid, the hinge for the
lid, the gasket and then the key as a
| | 02:10 | group, with all sorts of different
NURBS surfaces in there. So we have got a
| | 02:15 | whole bunch of different objects and
you can see how this can get very complex
| | 02:19 | when you go to animate it or
distribute it out to a production, it's messy.
| | 02:24 | Let's go ahead and clean
this up by using Assets.
| | 02:26 | Now, we can find Assets; it actually
has its own Menu here next to Window and
| | 02:31 | this is where we have all of our options.
So let me go ahead and tear this off
| | 02:35 | so I can explain some of these.
| | 02:37 | Now, Assets works by creating what
are called Containers and into those
| | 02:42 | Containers basically what we do is we
put the Assets of our scene that we want
| | 02:46 | to be in that particular container. So
we have tools that add or remove things
| | 02:51 | from the container.
| | 02:52 | Then we also have what's called an
Asset Editor, which allows us to publish or
| | 02:56 | unpublish the attributes of those
objects in the container. We also have some
| | 03:01 | tools here that will allow us to
publish and unpublish without going into the
| | 03:05 | Asset Editor.
| | 03:07 | Let's go ahead and create a container.
I am going to go ahead and bring this
| | 03:10 | down and let's just go ahead and select
the Jack_in_Box and the box and just
| | 03:15 | go create Container.
| | 03:17 | Now, if you notice here we have got the
container, we also have the JackInBox,
| | 03:21 | we also have Box itself, but if we
go further down the hierarchy you will
| | 03:26 | notice that we don't have anything else.
| | 03:30 | So how this works is, what you
selected when you created the container is all
| | 03:34 | that gets added. So if you want stuff
that's further down in the hierarchy you
| | 03:37 | have got to make sure you select it.
Let me show you how this works.
| | 03:41 | I am going to go ahead and select the
JackInBox and the Box and I am going to
| | 03:45 | go ahead and use the tool that
removes them from the container.
| | 03:47 | Now if I go into that, you can see I
have all these other options. So if I
| | 03:51 | wanted to I could select all of these
and then just add them to the container,
| | 03:55 | but of course I need to select the
container and go add and then you can see I
| | 04:00 | have got all of these in the container.
If I want to I can remove them again,
| | 04:05 | and I can also create multiple
containers. If I want to I can delete this
| | 04:09 | container because it's empty. And I
can select again my JackInBox and the Box
| | 04:15 | and let's just go back to what we had before.
| | 04:17 | Now also, I have the Spring, which is
actually outside of that hierarchy and I
| | 04:24 | do want to add that in as well. So
let's go ahead and Ctrl+Select the container
| | 04:29 | and add in that Spring, so now we have
all of these objects in that container.
| | 04:33 | Now, once we have everything in the
container we can start editing the Assets
| | 04:39 | to publish and unpublish the
attributes that we want to show to the world. So
| | 04:43 | let's go ahead and do that in the next lesson.
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| Editing assets| 00:00 | Now that we have our container
created let's go ahead and start publishing
| | 00:05 | attributes to that container. So if I
select this container you will see that I
| | 00:09 | really have nothing in the Channel Box
for this. I do have all of the inputs,
| | 00:14 | which are basically the objects that
are in the container, but I really want to
| | 00:19 | publish some of these so that I can
just animate the container itself. So we do
| | 00:23 | that by using the Asset Editor.
| | 00:26 | I go into Assets, Asset Editor and
make sure my container is selected. It's
| | 00:33 | basically almost like a little Outliner
window here and I can just go through
| | 00:38 | and Show or Hide any of the
objects that are in that container.
| | 00:43 | Now if I want to I can start
publishing things to that container. So for
| | 00:48 | example, if I take this JackInBox node,
that has almost everything that I need--
| | 00:52 | It has my Translate, my Rotate, my
Scale, all of that stuff, so what I can do
| | 00:57 | is I can take this and I can pin it.
| | 00:59 | If I pin this I can go into my
JackInBox node, open it up and you can see
| | 01:06 | these are all the attributes for that.
Well, I don't want to show all of these.
| | 01:10 | I really just want to show Translations,
Rotation, Scale, plus the custom ones
| | 01:15 | that I gave it.
| | 01:16 | So I can go into Show and I can add
or subtract anything that I want. So for
| | 01:23 | example, I can do Scale, Rotate,
Translate and User Defined. So what that does
| | 01:35 | is it gives me all of the options that
I want, so I can just select those and
| | 01:41 | add those in. Once I do that you can
see that if I select my container, I have
| | 01:49 | these options now in that
root node of the container.
| | 01:53 | So what I am doing here is I am
actually taking these different objects
| | 01:56 | attributes and I am publishing them to
this container at the very top. So all I
| | 02:00 | have to do is go to this container
and now I can, for example, move this,
| | 02:04 | rotate it, scale it and so on and so forth.
| | 02:10 | In this Asset Editor there is also a
number of different options; obviously we
| | 02:14 | can add, we can publish, we can Unbind,
we can add and subtract all of these
| | 02:20 | different attributes. In fact, when I
hit this Plus sign, what it does is it
| | 02:24 | publishes that. So I also have some
options here. In fact, this is the same as
| | 02:28 | my Assets window and you will notice
I also have what's called Publish and
| | 02:33 | Unpublish connections. I find it's
much easier to do it using these buttons
| | 02:37 | here in the Asset Editor.
| | 02:40 | Now once we have these set, we can
start animating. We could actually just do
| | 02:45 | whatever we want with this particular object.
| | 02:49 | Now, if we want we can actually
customize this a little bit more and let's go
| | 02:52 | ahead and do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying asset attributes| 00:00 | So, now let me show you a little bit
more about how to modify containers and
| | 00:04 | that's why you are modifying their attributes.
| | 00:07 | I have a file here called Jack_in_
Box_03.mb open and if I select this
| | 00:11 | container and go to the Attribute
Editor, you'll notice that I've got a bunch
| | 00:17 | of attributes here. I have got the
Published Attributes, which are the things
| | 00:22 | that I have actually published using
the Asset Editor and in this case it's all
| | 00:26 | of these assets for JackInBox.
| | 00:29 | Now, if I go a little bit further down,
you can see that I've got a roll out
| | 00:34 | here called Container Attributes and
what this does is it allows me for one
| | 00:40 | thing, make this into what's called a
Black Box. So if I create this Black Box,
| | 00:45 | you can see now all I have are the
attributes for that container. I don't have
| | 00:52 | anything else and if I go back into
this Attribute Editor, you can also change
| | 00:58 | the way that these Published
Attributes are shown. So in this case, I have
| | 01:03 | Group By Node, but I can also do what's called
Use Template, which gives a much different view.
| | 01:08 | So, for example, like I have nice some
sliders here for translation, that sort
| | 01:12 | of thing. I also have what's called
Group By Node and these are just different
| | 01:19 | ways to look at this data here, which
is all the data I can animate. Now this
| | 01:25 | is just viewing it in the Attribute
Editor. Typically, I like Flat because I
| | 01:30 | tend to just do things in the Channel Box anyways,
but it's really up to what you want to do.
| | 01:34 | Now if you want, you can also create
your own Custom Template. Now, this is the
| | 01:39 | default template here. But you can also
create your own Custom Template, using
| | 01:44 | XML programming, I am not going to get
into that, but you can actually write
| | 01:47 | your own interfaces for this and you
can just load up that template, give it a
| | 01:51 | path, that sort of thing.
| | 01:53 | Now in addition to this, you can
also give ownership. Now, when you give
| | 01:57 | ownership to this, only the owner can
uncheck this Black Box tab and make the
| | 02:05 | contents of this visible. So if I click
Black Box here and I have got an owner
| | 02:11 | on this that means that only the person
who created this can modify it. This is
| | 02:16 | great if you are a technical director
and you don't want people touching what
| | 02:20 | you've done and you want to
distribute this out to a production, you can
| | 02:23 | basically lock it.
| | 02:25 | Now, in addition to this we also have
an Icon Name, so you can actually give a
| | 02:28 | nice clever little icon to this. I am
just going to use the HappyFace. That's
| | 02:33 | what I use for the texture here and if
you want to, you can look at it in the
| | 02:36 | Hypergraph and you can see that there
is a little happy face there. In fact,
| | 02:42 | let's go ahead and zoom in there and
you can see that there is a nice little
| | 02:47 | happy face there and of course we can
give our containers a name. All you have
| | 02:50 | to do is just double-click on
it and type whatever you want.
| | 02:57 | So those are the basics of how to
change the attributes of a container and as
| | 03:03 | you can see you can make this very,
very easy to use for the users.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Creating Maya MusclesIntroducing the Maya Muscle system| 00:00 | Now, we are going to look at a new
character rigging feature in Maya 2009 and
| | 00:05 | this is called MayaMuscle and what it
does is it actually simulates the affect
| | 00:09 | of real muscles on skins, so you
can get much more realistic character
| | 00:14 | deformations and animation.
| | 00:17 | So I have a file here called Arm_03
and what this illustrates is the two
| | 00:21 | different types of muscles that you
can create with MayaMuscle. Now, if you
| | 00:26 | don't have MayaMuscle available,
you'll find it under the Animation menu and
| | 00:31 | there is actually little series of
menus here called Muscle. If that's not
| | 00:35 | available you are going to have to load
the plug-in. Let me show you where that is.
| | 00:39 | We are going to go into Window >
Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager and
| | 00:44 | then you just scroll down until you
find MayaMuscle, make sure you check
| | 00:49 | Loaded. And if you want it to load
every time you load Maya, just go Auto load.
| | 00:56 | Now, once that's loaded your
muscles should pretty much come up.
| | 00:59 | Now, let me show you the two
differences between these and then we'll go into
| | 01:03 | exactly how to create both of these
types of Muscle systems. I have got some
| | 01:08 | layers here, so we can actually turn
off the Geometry here. This is actually an
| | 01:13 | arm and these are biceps. So you can see
how the bicep muscles flex as the arm animates.
| | 01:21 | Now, we have two types of muscles. The
one here on the top was built using the
| | 01:25 | first option which we will go through
and that's called the Muscle Creator and
| | 01:29 | what this does is it gives you a
muscle that has all of these control boxes,
| | 01:34 | which can control reflex and stretch
and the bulging of the muscles. Now,
| | 01:39 | what's really nice about this
particular type is that you actually have these
| | 01:43 | control points here, which you can use
to actually fit and move and adjust the
| | 01:49 | muscle wherever you want, so it's very
interactive. It's very nice, very handy
| | 01:54 | to work with.
| | 01:56 | Now, the second type which is that
type down here is built using the second
| | 02:00 | type which is called the Muscle Builder,
and what this does is it gives you a
| | 02:06 | kind of more of a shape animation.
You actually define the actual shape of
| | 02:12 | the muscle as it bulges, which is kind
of nice, so you can get some really very
| | 02:16 | realistic effects.
| | 02:18 | Now, which type of muscle you create,
just depends on how you want to rig your
| | 02:23 | character. Typically, I use Muscle
Builder, which is this second type, but you
| | 02:27 | can use both and I am going to use
both as we go through the next lessons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up a muscle system| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and start with
Maya Muscle by setting up a very basic Skeleton
| | 00:04 | Deformation System and this will be
similar to what we would do with the skin
| | 00:08 | deformer with joints. Now, this is
the starting point for Maya Muscle is to
| | 00:14 | basically create the skeleton, create the
basic deformation and then you add in the muscles.
| | 00:19 | So I am starting here with a file
called Arm_00.mb. If we take a look at it,
| | 00:25 | this is very simple setup. It's just a
polygonal arm or portion of an arm and
| | 00:31 | then three joints and I have some
animation on those joints so we can bulge the
| | 00:37 | bicep here. Now, we are going to get
to that in a bit, but first of all let's
| | 00:41 | just go ahead and set this up.
| | 00:43 | Now, Maya Muscle has its own set of
menus. But it doesn't load by default, so
| | 00:48 | let's go ahead and make sure we have
it loaded. So we are going to go to the
| | 00:50 | Windows > Settings/Preferences > Plug-
in Manager and just scroll down until you
| | 00:55 | get to the MayaMuscle, which is right
around here. And just make sure that it's
| | 01:00 | loaded. And if you want, you can
turn on Auto load so it loads every time
| | 01:04 | you'll load Maya, but MayaMuscle is the
plug-in that you need to make sure you
| | 01:08 | have that loaded. And once you have
that loaded, this menu will show up. So,
| | 01:13 | let's go ahead and take a look
at some of these options here.
| | 01:16 | Now, what we are going to do is we
are going to take these joints in this
| | 01:22 | object here and we are going to convert
them into what are called Capsules and
| | 01:28 | capsules are essentially the same as
rigid objects or the same as the skeletal
| | 01:33 | bones that you have in a character and
so let's just go ahead and do that. So I
| | 01:39 | am going to go into my Outliner, I am
going to move that over here so you can
| | 01:44 | see it and then I am just going to
expand out. We've got 1, 2, 3 joints. I am
| | 01:49 | just going to select all three joints
and then under Muscles / Bones, I am
| | 01:55 | going to go Convert Surface to Muscle /
Bone. Now, I am converting a joint to a
| | 02:01 | muscle/bone, but you actually can
convert a polygonal surface or a NURB surface
| | 02:06 | to a muscle or bone as well, so if you
wanted to you could actually sculpted
| | 02:10 | out a real skeleton and use that, but
we are just going to use these joints.
| | 02:14 | So when I do this it's going to ask
me which axis aims down the arm length.
| | 02:20 | Now, because I use the standard Maya
Drawing tools, the default axis for these
| | 02:24 | joints is the X-axis. Now, when I do
that you can see some stuff shows up here.
| | 02:30 | In fact, let's go ahead and shade this.
L et me go ahead and X-Ray shade this
| | 02:35 | and may be even turn on Wireframe on
Shaded, so let's take a look at what's
| | 02:42 | been created in the Outliner.
| | 02:44 | Each one of these joints now has a
shape attached to it. Now it just a
| | 02:49 | polygonal shape, so these shapes can
be use to deform the mesh. So we have to
| | 02:55 | do a couple of things. First we have
to make the mesh able to accept the
| | 03:00 | muscles and then we need to add in the
deformation. So we are going to start by
| | 03:04 | selecting this mesh here, it's called
Cylinder1 and under Muscle, we are going
| | 03:09 | to go Skin Setup and this is the skin
of our character, we are just going to
| | 03:14 | Apply Muscle Systems Skin Deformer.
Now, what this does is it sets it up to
| | 03:20 | accept deformation from muscles. So
when I apply that, it's going to do some
| | 03:25 | stuff and then it's applied. So now,
if I looked at it, for example, in the
| | 03:30 | Channel Box, you would see I have
a MuscleSystem Deformer right here.
| | 03:36 | Now, once this is set up with the
deformer I can now add in my muscle, in fact
| | 03:41 | I am going to tear this off so we can
see this. So all I have to do now is just
| | 03:47 | go Connect Selected Muscle Objects, but
of course, before I connect them I have
| | 03:51 | to select them. So I am just going to
go ahead and select everything, my joints
| | 03:55 | and my joint shapes and then I am
going to Ctrl-Select that pCylinder1 last
| | 04:01 | and then I am going to connect all
those as Muscle Objects. So what that does
| | 04:07 | now is it connects the muscles to the
skin, but if I scrub this you can see
| | 04:13 | it's still not deforming. I have to
do one more step. I have to add in my
| | 04:19 | Weighting. So all I can do
here is go Apply Default Weights.
| | 04:23 | Now, when I do this it brings up a
little menu and I have a number of different
| | 04:28 | ways of deforming it. These are
actually just presets for how to do the
| | 04:33 | weighting. You can do Jiggle, Relax,
you can do Sliding skin or Sticky skin or
| | 04:39 | really any type of skin you want,
there is a lot of different defaults. I am
| | 04:43 | just going to select this Sticky, which
is my basic default here and then you
| | 04:47 | can also select a Smoothing value and
I am just going to leave everything at
| | 04:51 | the defaults and then just go Apply
Default Weights. When I do that, it does a
| | 04:57 | bunch of stuff and it will do a few
collections and then I get my deformation.
| | 05:04 | So this is the first step for doing this.
| | 05:06 | Now, we can add in our muscles. So
let's go through this one more time. We
| | 05:10 | create our joints and then what we do
is Convert the Surfaces to muscles or
| | 05:16 | bones, then we select our Skin, Apply
the Skin Deformer, add in the selected
| | 05:22 | Muscle Objects and then Apply Default
Weights and now once we've done that,
| | 05:29 | we have our deformation, so there we go.
Okay, so now let's move on to adding in
| | 05:36 | muscles and doing some more sophisticated work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Muscle Creator to create and edit muscles| 00:00 | Now, let's take a look at how to add
in more realistic muscles. We've already
| | 00:06 | done skeletal deformation, let's go
ahead and do muscle deformation. Now, I
| | 00:10 | have saved out that last project
that we've worked on it and it's called
| | 00:14 | Arm_01.mb and essentially what this has is
the skin that's being deformed by this skeleton.
| | 00:25 | So what we can do now is add in actual
muscles. There is two methods for doing
| | 00:31 | this. So I am going to show you the
first one and that's through the Muscle
| | 00:35 | Creator. So, let's go ahead and look at
this menu here. So what this does is it
| | 00:40 | brings up a menu that allows us to
create or edit muscles. So we are going to
| | 00:45 | start off with creation.
| | 00:47 | Now first thing we have to do is give
it a name. So let's go ahead and create a
| | 00:50 | Bicep and then we have to give it a
number of Controls. How many different
| | 00:56 | points of control along this are we
going to need? Now one thing about this is
| | 01:01 | that once you've created this you
can't go back and change the number of
| | 01:05 | controls or cross sections, so you
really need to consider how many you are
| | 01:09 | going to need. Now typically five is
plenty. I find that I can actually get
| | 01:13 | away with three and I am going to drag
this down to three and then the number
| | 01:17 | of Segments around which is basically,
the muscle is a cylinder, how much
| | 01:22 | radial detail do you have and then
also what we have is the Attach Start and End.
| | 01:28 | In fact, I am going to go into my
Outliner here, I am just going to click this
| | 01:32 | little icon here and so I am going
to select my joint1, I am actually
| | 01:37 | selecting the joints, not the shape,
and so we are going to select joint1 as my
| | 01:42 | Start Attach point and joint2 which is
my elbow as my second Attach, so I am
| | 01:50 | going from here to here. So basically
from the shoulder to the elbow and these
| | 01:55 | are going to be my Attach Points
and then it says you want to create a
| | 01:58 | MuscleObject shape node. And I'll say
yes and then if you are working on a
| | 02:04 | symmetrical character or something
like that, you can also Mirror this.
| | 02:09 | We can create a Mirror Muscle that's
identical, but we are not going to do
| | 02:13 | that here. We are just going to go
ahead and click this button here, which is
| | 02:16 | Create Muscle and what this does is it
creates a muscle. In fact, let's take a
| | 02:22 | look at this in the Outliner creating
the whole bunch of stuff here. So let's
| | 02:26 | take a look at this. So what it did
was it created starting and end points
| | 02:34 | under joint2, so essentially when this
bends you can see it actually is moving
| | 02:39 | these little locators. These
locators actually control where the muscle
| | 02:45 | attaches along this form essentially
and then these two here, Start1 and Start2,
| | 02:52 | these actually control where it's
attached to the shoulder. So what we can do
| | 02:56 | is we can move these around to
reposition the muscle and reshape how it works.
| | 03:03 | Now, in this case it's actually put
the muscle in a little bit sideways. I
| | 03:07 | really want the muscle to turn 90
degrees. So the easiest way to do that is
| | 03:12 | select both of those and I am just
going to go ahead and group them. Now these
| | 03:16 | are just locators so you don't have to
have them in the hierarchy, if you group
| | 03:21 | them you can really do whatever you
want with them and then I am just going to
| | 03:24 | rotate those 90 degrees.
| | 03:28 | Actually let me go ahead and look this
up and you can see what it does is it
| | 03:31 | creates this flat shape and that's
basically what my muscle is. Its squash
| | 03:38 | NURBS sphere shape. In fact, I am
going to go ahead and move that muscle a
| | 03:41 | little bit up on to the forearm so now
when it bends, you can start to see how
| | 03:48 | this is actually starting to flex. May
be I can move it back just a little bit,
| | 03:53 | but typically bicep actually isn't
attached right at the elbow, it's actually
| | 03:57 | attached a little bit further down from
the elbow, so that way it can actually
| | 04:02 | pull that arm in this liver there to work.
| | 04:06 | So I have got that first part of that
working and now what I need to do is
| | 04:10 | rotate the back part of this muscle
here. So I am just going to select these
| | 04:15 | two locators and again group, Ctrl+G,
and that groups them and then I can just
| | 04:21 | again rotate those 90 degrees and then
again I can move that group wherever I
| | 04:29 | want. So now, I've got a nice muscle,
may be I can move this up a little bit,
| | 04:36 | and if you want, you can also move
these locators and what those will do is
| | 04:40 | those will move the actual attach points.
| | 04:43 | So if you are rigging a character you
might want to get something a little bit
| | 04:46 | more accurate, like for example,
here you might want to move these attach
| | 04:50 | points in on the forearm to give it a
little bit more of an natural profile
| | 04:56 | because it is going to be thicker at
the shoulder then it is at the elbow.
| | 05:01 | So now that I have this I can add in
this muscle to the deformation I already
| | 05:06 | have. In fact I've got some layers
setup here, let's go ahead and turn this
| | 05:12 | off, you can see that this skin is not
really deforming with that muscle. You
| | 05:19 | can see the muscles there in red and
the skin is in green and so the muscles
| | 05:24 | not affecting the skin, the skin is
just affected by the bones in the joints.
| | 05:29 | So what we can do is we can add that
muscle in. So I am just going to go ahead
| | 05:32 | and select the shape, so actually
select that NURB surface and then
| | 05:37 | Shift-Select my arm geometry. And then
I am going to go Muscle > Muscle Objects
| | 05:45 | and we are going to use the exact
same menu option we have before which is
| | 05:48 | Connect Selected Muscle Objects. So
let's go ahead and do that. It's going to
| | 05:54 | say what's my bind distance which is
basically how far away from this muscle is
| | 05:59 | it going to affect the skin. I always
just do Auto-Calculate because we can go
| | 06:04 | back and repeat these and change these
later. Let's just do Auto-Calculate. So
| | 06:09 | what this does is it brings it into
the calculations of the arm, but we still
| | 06:14 | need to reset our weights.
| | 06:17 | So let's go ahead and go one more
step here, Apply Default Weights, which is
| | 06:21 | exactly what we did before, but now
we've added in this additional muscle and
| | 06:27 | then again we are going to pick
whatever weight preset we want to, we leave
| | 06:31 | this as Sticky and just go Apply
Default Weights. Now, you can see the muscle
| | 06:38 | is actually bulging that arm. In fact,
if I select this muscle here and I add
| | 06:45 | this into that layer, you can see--
So now that I have got this hidden, let's go
| | 06:51 | ahead and turn off X-Ray here. As you can
see this is joint now is affected by the muscle.
| | 06:58 | So as the muscle moves it bulges and
it affects the underlying surface, pretty
| | 07:08 | cool. So you can obviously go through
an add muscles into the entire character
| | 07:14 | and entire body and get a much more
rich deformation. So, this is the first way
| | 07:20 | of creating muscles and that's just
creating muscles and attaching them manually.
| | 07:24 | The other way is just sculpt muscles
and let's go ahead and show that in the
| | 07:27 | next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Muscle Builder to sculpt deformable muscles| 00:00 | Now I am going to show you the second
way to create muscles and this one is
| | 00:04 | actually a little bit more controllable
action. I like this one better. If your
| | 00:08 | setting step up from scratch, I
probably recommend you do this one and this is
| | 00:13 | actually sculpting muscles. This is
actually called Muscle Builder, is the
| | 00:18 | technical name. So what we can do is
just load that up under Simple Muscles we
| | 00:22 | can go Muscle Builder and what this
does is that it gives us a whole new menu,
| | 00:30 | but it works pretty much the same as
the Muscle Creator in that we have to give
| | 00:33 | an Attach Object and then set number
of Spans and all these other Parameters.
| | 00:39 | In fact, I am going to load up my
Outliner here so we can see what we have got
| | 00:42 | and so I am going to select Joint 1
here and make that Attach Object1. Select
| | 00:49 | Joint 2 ,make it a Attach Object 2.
| | 00:52 | Now what I am going to do is just
update that Muscle. So let's go ahead and go
| | 01:00 | Build/Update and what it does it creates
a little muscle there. You can see it, kinda of,
| | 01:06 | and then what we can do is start
affecting the parameters of that ,uscle. So I
| | 01:09 | can, for example, affect the attach
point here, how far away in X I am actually
| | 01:18 | affecting a muscle, a start point
here and then I could do the same for the
| | 01:26 | attach point at the elbow. So I can
actually make it go a little bit more. In
| | 01:30 | fact, you can actually see how this is
going to deform. Nice. So what that you
| | 01:37 | want to do here is just get this
attach in just about where you want. If I am
| | 01:44 | going to turn off Geometry I am going
here to this layer and turn that off, so
| | 01:48 | we see how this works. So you can see
how that creates the basic muscle. Now we
| | 01:56 | still haven't finished the muscle;
we are just updating what we have got.
| | 02:00 | In fact if we want to, I
can add in more Spans, more
| | 02:03 | segments, that sort of stuff, I can
actually add in. So more spans would be more
| | 02:08 | detailed in that muscle. You can see
here I am adding in more or less detail
| | 02:14 | here. So all of these are kind of
temporary until we do this finalize
| | 02:19 | operation, but before we finalize
let's go through the Cross Section Editor.
| | 02:24 | Those are actually two little mini-
viewports that allows you to select these
| | 02:28 | cross sections and actually move them.
| | 02:32 | In fact if we match them
up with the Geometry we can
| | 02:35 | actually move them, we can even move
them here in this viewport or in one of
| | 02:41 | these viewports, so I can select any
one of these and I can actually move them
| | 02:47 | to actually match my skin and even more
than that I can actually go through and
| | 02:54 | reshape these. So for example this
one here, this small one say here at
| | 02:59 | the beginning, I can actually right
click over that and go on to Control Vertex
| | 03:04 | and literally re-sculpt that muscle.
| | 03:06 | So I can actually make it bulge out a little bit
| | 03:08 | more if I want. I could take this
little one here, again just right click over it,
| | 03:15 | go into Control Vertex mode and
I can actually take-- let's go ahead and
| | 03:20 | turn off this Geometry here. So you can
see I can actually take and reshape all
| | 03:28 | of these outlines. So you can actually
fine-tune this muscle so it exactly fits
| | 03:34 | into this skin that you are working with.
| | 03:36 | Now you can spend lot of time tweaking this, but
| | 03:40 | once you have got this all set up, we
can go to the finalize operation and his
| | 03:45 | gives us a number of controls we want
and then whether it's a Muscle Spline
| | 03:50 | deformer or a Muscle Stretch. We are
going to use Spline deformer because it's
| | 03:53 | going to give us more power later on.
So all I am going to do is leave it at
| | 03:57 | these settings and just go Convert to
Muscle and then it's going to ask for a name
| | 04:02 | and it give us some warning here so I
am just going to call it Muscle bicep and
| | 04:06 | go OK. So now I have got
this muscle pretty much set up.
| | 04:10 | Now again all I have to do is keep
that muscle selected, Shift-select my skin
| | 04:17 | and then I could add this into the
deformation. So I am just going to go Muscle
| | 04:23 | > Muscle Objects > Connect Selected ,
Muscle Object, which connects it to the skin
| | 04:28 | and then we have to reset our
deformation again by going into Weighting > Apply
| | 04:33 | Default Weights, we'll just leave that
at Sticky and now this muscle deforms to
| | 04:41 | that mesh. So let's go ahead and show
you how to further refine these muscles
| | 04:47 | in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying muscle bulge and jiggle using Muscle parameters| 00:00 | So now that we have learned how to add
in muscles to a skeleton, let's go ahead
| | 00:05 | and show you how to modify their
behavior and edit those muscles.
| | 00:10 | I have saved out a scene here called
Arm_02.mb and it's pretty much like the
| | 00:15 | last one that we have been working
with and it's essentially that arm that
| | 00:21 | bends. Then I also have a little bit
of vertical motion here, because I am
| | 00:25 | going to show you how to
work with muscle jiggle.
| | 00:26 | So I am going to go into my Outliner
here and let's just go ahead and go here
| | 00:35 | to Group Muscles. Let's go into
Wireframe Mode here. If I want I could actually
| | 00:41 | just select that muscle here. So Muscle
Bicep is what we want to have selected.
| | 00:49 | So once we do that, we can actually
go back into Set Muscle Parameters. Now
| | 00:56 | what that does is it brings us into
our Muscle Builder. Remember how we had
| | 01:00 | Build, Cross Section and Finalize,
but we also have a fourth tab here called
| | 01:05 | Muscle Parameters. What this does is it
allows us to change the way the muscle behaves.
| | 01:13 | So we can change the basic Object
Settings, such as how much Fat is in the
| | 01:20 | muscle and how Muscular it is. This
will affect the dynamics of this, the
| | 01:25 | Radius of the muscle. But first, before
we do any of this, we need to load the
| | 01:30 | selected muscle. So I have Muscle Bicep
selected, so let's just go ahead and go
| | 01:34 | Load Selected.
| | 01:36 | Then I can go through and change some
of these parameters. Now, the ones that
| | 01:40 | are probably the most important are
these ones down here called Stretch and Jiggle.
| | 01:46 | So Stretch Volume Presets gives you
the ability to change how the muscle
| | 01:51 | stretches when the muscle
actually bends and moves.
| | 01:55 | So for example here I want to actually
make this Small, Medium; you can see how
| | 02:00 | this works, or Large. What this does is
it actually changes these numbers here.
| | 02:05 | So we have a Start number, a Mid
number and an End number. So this is the
| | 02:11 | start of the muscle, the
middle of the muscle and the end.
| | 02:17 | Now, notice I only have three of
these. That's because I only have three
| | 02:21 | control points. If I had added more in
when I created the muscle, I would have
| | 02:26 | more places to actually bulge that
muscle, but for this case we really don't
| | 02:31 | need more than three.
| | 02:32 | So this Mid number actually gives us
the amount of bulge. If I wanted to make
| | 02:36 | this more, I could say just bring
those up to say 3 or something like that. I
| | 02:45 | could actually type in whatever
numbers I want and then just apply those
| | 02:51 | values and you can see how this now
affects it. If I want to I can always go
| | 02:58 | back to these Presets, which I
think actually work just fine.
| | 03:01 | Now, in addition to this we also have
what's called Jiggle. So if I go to the
| | 03:08 | second part of this animation, you
can see that as the muscle moves up it
| | 03:12 | doesn't really jiggle. But in the real
world you would actually get a little
| | 03:17 | bit of jiggle in muscles; as the
character runs around, muscles due tend to
| | 03:21 | jiggle. So we can actually add in the
Jiggle here. So I am just going to turn
| | 03:25 | on Heavy and see what happens.
| | 03:30 | You can see now the muscle is actually
jiggling. It's actually giving you some
| | 03:34 | nice secondary motion. Now, we can do
Light, Medium, or Heavy and again, these
| | 03:41 | numbers here change and these are just
Presets here, so how much Jiggle do you
| | 03:46 | have, at what part of the muscle? So
is the start and the end of this part of
| | 03:51 | this muscle going to jiggle? No,
because they are actually tied down, but the
| | 03:54 | middle will.
| | 03:56 | Then how much does it Cycle and how
much does it Rest; how many frames to
| | 04:00 | Cycle and how many frames to Rest and
then a Dampen amount. So how long does
| | 04:05 | it take to kind of settle out?
| | 04:07 | Now, once you have all these set you
can basically change them whenever you
| | 04:13 | want or you can just leave them as it
is. So you can see how you have a lot of
| | 04:18 | control over how the muscles work
dynamically using Muscle Presets.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sculpting muscle shapes| 00:00 | Now let's go one step further and we
will show you how to sculpt custom muscle
| | 00:04 | shapes. Now, I have the same file open,
Arm_02.mb, and this is a muscle and
| | 00:15 | this muscle actually has a Muscle
Spline Deformer applied. Now remember, there
| | 00:18 | are two different types of Deformers:
there is a Stretch and the Spline
| | 00:23 | Deformer. And we have a Spline Deformer
on this particular muscle and this is
| | 00:27 | what we need in order to
customize the shapes of this.
| | 00:30 | So what I am going to do is I am just
going to work with the first 16 frames.
| | 00:36 | We are just going to go ahead and work
with this muscle bulge. But in fact,
| | 00:41 | I am going to turn off that Geometry
layer so we can just see the muscle itself.
| | 00:45 | Now, if we select this muscle, it
should be called Muscle Bicep, we can go into
| | 00:54 | Simple Muscles and just go into
something called Custom Muscle Shapes. What
| | 01:00 | this does is it allows us to sculpt a
shape for each of the major points in the
| | 01:09 | deformation.
| | 01:09 | So for example, if I go to frame 16,
I can sculpt a custom bulge. Now, I do
| | 01:16 | that by hitting this Prep for Sculpt
button and essentially all that does is
| | 01:22 | it gives me my control vertices and
allows me to just move them around. Now,
| | 01:28 | this is just modeling, so all I am
doing here is selecting some CVs, moving
| | 01:33 | them around. I can scale them. I can
pretty much do whatever I want in terms of
| | 01:39 | just sculpting out this shape.
| | 01:40 | So if I want more of kind of a
cartoony Popeye bulge, I can do that and
| | 01:47 | whatever shape I sculpt in I can lock
that shape in when I hit this Create New button.
| | 01:55 | So I can just go, this is my bulge
shape and just go OK. So now that's locked in.
| | 02:03 | So now I have this bulge shape.
| | 02:06 | Now, when I go down to this stretch
shape I want to reshape this. So let's go
| | 02:13 | ahead and make sure this is still
selected and let's again hit Prep for
| | 02:17 | Sculpt and now I am going to go ahead
and just flatten this out. If I want I
| | 02:24 | can select all the vertices I want and
sculpt this muscle pretty much however I want.
| | 02:32 | Again, once I have sculpted that shape
I can go Create New and just give it
| | 02:38 | another name.
| | 02:45 | Now once I have done that, you can see
how this works in. So you can actually
| | 02:52 | blend this in or out by using this
Blend here. You can see how this particular
| | 03:02 | shape blends out and then
it goes into that stretch.
| | 03:13 | So as you can see you can create very
customized shapes for the muscles at any
| | 03:18 | position that they are stretched.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting muscle weights| 00:00 | So the last thing I want to show you
is painting muscle weights. Now, we have
| | 00:05 | just been working a little bit with
just the default muscle weighting. If we go
| | 00:10 | into, in fact let's go ahead and
tear this off here. If we go into our
| | 00:15 | Weighting menu, you'll see we have a
lot of different ones. Now, we were
| | 00:18 | working with Apply Default Weights
and what that does is it gives us our
| | 00:23 | different types of options here
for how the weighting is applied.
| | 00:30 | But, we also can paint the muscle
weights. So if I select the skin and go into
| | 00:38 | Paint Muscle Weights, this will
actually give me list of all the muscles in
| | 00:44 | here. So these are my joints as well as
the muscles. So I can have a huge list
| | 00:51 | here. This is a very simple set up here,
but each muscle can affect different
| | 00:57 | parts of the mesh and you can
actually paint that deformation.
| | 01:01 | So you can show this in color, you can
show it in gray scale, you can also just
| | 01:08 | use your standard Artisan tools, so
for example B changes the sizes of the
| | 01:13 | brush. You can change the radius here
as well. You can paint different types of
| | 01:20 | weights here. So, for example, if you
want to paint sliding weights, if you
| | 01:24 | want this to kind of slide over the
bicep rather than stick to it, you can.
| | 01:31 | So the way that the skin is affected
by the muscle can be changed by the
| | 01:36 | weight. So you can affect all of
these different types of parameters by
| | 01:41 | painting this weight. Now again, you
can stick to sticky or go to any of these
| | 01:45 | other parameters. Then of course you
can set a default weight that you want to
| | 01:51 | paint. So for example if you do it to 0,
you can say, well, I don't want the
| | 01:55 | bicep to affect this part of the mesh.
| | 01:59 | So as you can see, you can go through
an entire mesh and using your Paint tools,
| | 02:08 | you can fine-tune your mesh
so that it works perfectly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Working with nParticlesIntroducing nParticles| 00:00 | Now we are going to take a look at a
brand new feature in Maya 2009 and that's
| | 00:05 | called nParticles. Now, this particular
feature is only available for those who
| | 00:10 | have Maya Unlimited. So if you have that
version of Maya you can certainly follow along.
| | 00:16 | Now, nParticles is a brand new
particle system and it uses what's called the
| | 00:21 | nucleus engine. What that is, is the
same engine that's used for Maya's nCloth,
| | 00:28 | and it's a much faster physics solver,
so nParticles has a lot of additional
| | 00:33 | features. They have built in collisions,
they have built in gravity and they
| | 00:38 | have a lot of built in forces.
| | 00:40 | So let's take a look at some nParticles
in action here. We have a teapot that's
| | 00:44 | emitting some steam and
those are done using nParticles.
| | 00:50 | Now, you can find nParticles here under
the nDynamics tab and right here there
| | 00:57 | is an nParticles menu. This has pretty
much all that you need. Now, these work
| | 01:02 | pretty much the same as Maya's regular
particle system, but they have a lot of
| | 01:08 | additional features and we have the
ability to create Emitters, emit from
| | 01:12 | object, so on and so forth.
| | 01:14 | You can also create Collision Events,
and have the particles collide with one
| | 01:19 | another. Let me go ahead and stop that.
So let's go ahead and take a look at
| | 01:25 | nParticles in action.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating emitters| 00:00 | Now, let's take a look at how to use
nParticles to create a particle system.
| | 00:04 | First of all, before we start I am in a
file here called Emitters.mb. And this
| | 00:10 | has actually couple of different
layers here and we are going to use these
| | 00:13 | throughout this particular lesson.
| | 00:16 | So to create particles we go under
nParticles > Create nParticles and there is
| | 00:21 | a couple of different tools here. One
here is called the nParticles tool and
| | 00:25 | that allows you to place
particles one by one throughout the scene.
| | 00:30 | You can also create an Emitter,
which is probably the most common way of
| | 00:34 | creating particles. You can also emit
from an object, so from the surface of
| | 00:39 | any object. You can also fill an
Object. Now, this is new in nParticles, in
| | 00:43 | that you can actually fill an object
with particle and then use those particles later.
| | 00:48 | Now, the particles you create can be
any number of different types and these
| | 00:52 | can actually be changed later. You
can start with Points, Balls or Spheres,
| | 00:57 | Clouds, Thick Clouds and Water. I am
going to leave this on Cloud and let's
| | 01:02 | go ahead and actually create using an Emitter.
| | 01:06 | In fact, let's go into the Options here
and see what we have. We can obviously
| | 01:10 | give the Emitter a name. We can give
it a type, either Omni, Directional, or
| | 01:18 | Volume and we will go through those.
You can give it a Rate; how many
| | 01:22 | particles per second will this emit.
Then in addition to that we have Speed,
| | 01:28 | a Randomness Value to the Speed and
additional things for if you choose a
| | 01:33 | Volume Emitter or whatever. So I am
going to leave these at the defaults and
| | 01:37 | just go Create.
| | 01:38 | Now, what this does is it actually
creates an Emitter here at the origin.
| | 01:43 | In fact, let's go ahead and give ourselves
some more frames, so I am going to give
| | 01:47 | myself 200 frames here so we can
actually see how this emits. You can see that
| | 01:53 | it creates an Emitter that emits a
cloud or cloud-like particles. Very, very
| | 02:00 | simple. Kind of nice.
| | 02:02 | Now, if we want we can actually go
into the Outliner and we can find that
| | 02:05 | Emitter that we have created. We can
go into the Attribute Editor and if we
| | 02:10 | want we can change our Start parameters.
| | 02:13 | So for example, if I want it to be
Directional instead of an Omni, I can do
| | 02:17 | that. What Directional does is
emits the particles pretty much in one
| | 02:22 | direction, almost like a spray. We
can also do a Volume Emitter and that
| | 02:27 | actually emits from any number of
different types of volume, such as a Cube, or
| | 02:32 | a Sphere, a Cone; really any of these
basic primitives and you can see that,
| | 02:37 | that emits those particles
from that particular object.
| | 02:44 | So we can also create Emitters from
other types of objects, we can actually
| | 02:50 | emit from an object itself. So I am
going to go ahead and select this Emitter
| | 02:54 | and this particle system
here and just delete those.
| | 02:58 | Let's go ahead and turn on this
EmitObject layer and we have the letter M. So
| | 03:04 | all I have to do is just highlight
that and we can use that as an Emitter by
| | 03:10 | going Create nParticles, Emit from
Object. Again, we have a number of options
| | 03:15 | here, most important of which is the
Rate in particles per second. If we create
| | 03:21 | that, you can see now that the
object itself is emitting the particles.
| | 03:26 | Now what happens here is that if we
select Omni, every point in that object
| | 03:33 | becomes an emitter. So we are creating
a number of different emitters. Instead
| | 03:37 | of just having one point emitter at
the origin, we have a number of different
| | 03:41 | ones along the surface here.
| | 03:43 | So what we can do is go into our
Attribute Editor and we find geoConnector.
| | 03:49 | That's the node that we want. We can
turn down this Tessellation Factor to turn
| | 03:55 | down how many points on that surface
we are actually emitting. So we can
| | 04:00 | actually create a little bit more
detail, that sort of thing, in terms of how
| | 04:05 | this particle is emitted.
| | 04:08 | Now, the last way is to fill an object.
So I am going to go ahead and turn off
| | 04:11 | this Emit Object and actually I am
going to go select this particle system and
| | 04:15 | delete it in the Outliner.
| | 04:18 | Now, let's go ahead to the last one,
which is FillObject. So I am just going to
| | 04:21 | go to this layer here called FillObject
and turn it on. So that's just a basic
| | 04:27 | cylinder with the top cut off and what
we can do is we can actually fill this
| | 04:31 | with particles.
| | 04:33 | So I am just going to go nParticles,
Create nParticles and I am going to
| | 04:36 | change this to Balls, so that we have
a different type of particle. Then I am
| | 04:43 | just going to go FillOjbect.
| | 04:44 | Now, what this does is it fills that
particular object with spheres. Now, the
| | 04:52 | thing about these spheres is that they
have dynamics already applied to them,
| | 04:56 | so they have gravity, so when I play
them, you could see they actually fall down.
| | 05:02 | Now, if I want to I can actually use
these particles and use this container to
| | 05:07 | actually direct the particles. Now,
what I can do is I can make this container
| | 05:11 | into what's called a Collision object.
| | 05:13 | What it does is that it collides with
the Balls and it contains them. So if I
| | 05:17 | select that cylinder and I go Create
Passive Collider, now the balls just kind
| | 05:24 | of settle into the bucket. So now I
have a bucket filled with spheres.
| | 05:31 | Now, because these obey the laws of
gravity I can do something else. So for
| | 05:36 | example, I go here and say frame 20,
select the cylinder, set a keyframe here,
| | 05:42 | and then let's just go ahead to say
frame 50 and then let's just go ahead and
| | 05:48 | dump that out. So I am just going to go
ahead and set another keyframe here, so
| | 05:52 | this is the keyframes. So all we have
to do now is just run the simulation.
| | 06:00 | There we go. We are dumping
out the bucket essentially.
| | 06:04 | So that's a really easy way to create
that sort of particle system. Let's go
| | 06:07 | ahead and show you this one more time.
So you can see how gravity and the fact
| | 06:14 | that this is a collision object allows
you to create a very complex effect very simply.
| | 06:20 | So as you can see, there is a lot of
different ways to create a particle system
| | 06:23 | using Maya's nParticles. So go ahead
and play with some of these and then we
| | 06:28 | are going to move on to some more stuff.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with particle attributes| 00:00 | So now that we know how to create
particles, let's show you a little about how
| | 00:04 | to make them look interesting and different.
| | 00:06 | So we have got this file here called
Teapot_01.mb and this is a just a teapot
| | 00:12 | that's emitting some steam and the
steam is just basically a particle system.
| | 00:17 | So I can select those particles and go
into the Attribute Editor and let's go
| | 00:23 | through some of the attributes of this
particle system to show you how we can
| | 00:28 | affect the way that it looks.
| | 00:29 | I am going to actually zoom in here so
we can see the particles. Now, under the
| | 00:34 | Particle System we have got a number
of different tabs here. We have got the
| | 00:40 | actual Particle System itself, which
is really just positional, where is this
| | 00:44 | positioned. Then we have 1 or 2
ParticleShape tabs. Then we also have what's
| | 00:51 | called a Spray and that's for the type
of emitter that it is. This is actually
| | 00:57 | kind of a directional emitter. Then
we also have the nucleus, which is
| | 01:02 | basically the physics controls of this
Particle System, and we will get into
| | 01:09 | that a little bit later when we get
into forces, but this is where the forces
| | 01:13 | are located.
| | 01:13 | But we are just going to go through
some of the ParticleShape attributes here.
| | 01:17 | Now, the first one is Count, but
that's really just the number of particles
| | 01:22 | that we have at the moment.
| | 01:24 | The next one here is important and
this is called the Lifespan; how long do
| | 01:28 | you want these particles to live? Do
you want them to live forever? Do you want
| | 01:32 | them to live a Constant life, or a Random
range, or if you want to lifespan Per Particle?
| | 01:40 | So if I change this to Constant, you
could say I want them to live however many
| | 01:45 | frames or seconds. Random range from
this to this with a Random seed. We are
| | 01:51 | going to keep this on Live forever.
| | 01:53 | We can also change; let's go down
through these, we can change the Particle
| | 01:56 | Size. So we can make them small or big,
really whatever size we want. We can
| | 02:06 | randomize how big or small they are.
| | 02:11 | We can also worry about Collisions.
Do you want them to Collide with other
| | 02:15 | objects, or do you want them to Self
Collide; so do you want them to collide
| | 02:20 | with themselves? So for example, if you
had particles representing marbles, you
| | 02:25 | would want them to collide amongst
themselves. If it was steam, you would want
| | 02:29 | it to collide with other
objects but not themselves.
| | 02:36 | We can also add in things such as
Bounce, Friction, Stickiness, that sort of
| | 02:40 | stuff. So for example, if you wanted to
do Foam, you might want them to collide
| | 02:45 | and stick together or something like that.
| | 02:47 | Next, we have Dynamic Properties,
which allow us to change the Mass and the
| | 02:53 | Weight and how it's affected by
forces and we will get into that.
| | 02:58 | Then we also have one here called
Liquid Simulation. When you turn that on what
| | 03:03 | it does is it allows this to simulate
water. So it will create particles that
| | 03:10 | will not compress. So water is
pretty much a viscous fluid so it will not
| | 03:15 | compress as opposed to say a cloud or
some gaseous sort of effect where it
| | 03:21 | actually can compress. So liquids
kind of keep the volume of the particles together.
| | 03:27 | Then Output Mesh. Do you actually want
this to output as a mesh and how do you
| | 03:32 | want that to output?
| | 03:34 | For example, if we are doing a thing
such as a Blobby surface, how do you want
| | 03:38 | that to output?
| | 03:39 | Then we can go down here and we can go
down to Shading. Now, this is actually
| | 03:45 | probably one of the most important
rollouts, because it really determines what
| | 03:48 | type of particle you are creating.
These are familiar to anybody who has used
| | 03:53 | the other types of particles in Maya,
and we have a number of different Render Types.
| | 03:59 | First one is MultiPoint, which
basically is almost like sparkles or something
| | 04:04 | like that. It's basically points. So
each one of these -- in fact, let's just
| | 04:09 | go ahead and create some here and
we will highlight these. You can say
| | 04:12 | MultiPoint or MultiStreaks. You can
see these are streaks. In fact, we might
| | 04:18 | want to make these a little bit bigger,
so let's go ahead up to Radius here and
| | 04:22 | just make them a little bit
bigger, see if we can affect those.
| | 04:26 | We can also do Numeric. What Numeric
does is it just gives you a Particle
| | 04:30 | Number, so each particle does have a
number; this is more for debugging.
| | 04:34 | You make them Points and we can
assume we make them bigger if we want.
| | 04:40 | Spheres. Again, we can change the size.
| | 04:46 | Sprites. Now, Sprites are really handy,
because what those do is those allow
| | 04:51 | you to map images. So each one of
these is a rectangle and you can actually
| | 04:56 | use texture mapping to map an image
to that, which can be really handy.
| | 05:01 | Streaks and again, we can
create them bigger or smaller.
| | 05:06 | Then some other ones here such as
Blobby Surface, which again creates -- let's
| | 05:12 | go ahead and make these a little bit
smaller so you can see how Blobby Surface
| | 05:15 | works. Now, what Blobby Surface does
is it creates kind of more of a watery
| | 05:20 | type of effect.
| | 05:22 | Cloud, which is steam, which
is basically what we were doing.
| | 05:26 | Also Tubes.
| | 05:28 | Now some of these, ones with the s/w
behind them, will render in the Maya
| | 05:34 | Software Renderer. Some of these will
not. All of these will render in Mental
| | 05:39 | Ray and they will also render in the
Maya Hardware Renderer. Now, typically
| | 05:44 | for these types of particles systems we
just tend to render them in Mental Ray.
| | 05:48 | Now, in addition to this we can also
create Opacity and we can actually Scale
| | 05:54 | the Opacity so it actually can be
completely opaque to completely transparent.
| | 06:00 | What this does -- now, this is
actually new to nParticles -- is that over the
| | 06:04 | lifetime of a particle, makes it go
more transparent or less transparent.
| | 06:09 | So what this ramp does is it keys off
of this Opacity. When this top value is
| | 06:16 | one or if it's less than 1, this value
is essentially that and then it just
| | 06:21 | translates all the way down to 0.
This one is always 0. This top one is
| | 06:26 | whatever number is in here.
| | 06:29 | Then we can also play with color. In
fact, you can also do color by time. So
| | 06:36 | you could actually make the color
change over time. So for example, if I wanted
| | 06:40 | to I could say the age of the
particle affects the color. This is great.
| | 06:47 | Previously, in Maya Particles you had
to go through all sorts of gyrations to
| | 06:51 | make this work and this just puts it
right here, right in front of you, makes
| | 06:54 | them a very easy.
| | 06:55 | You can also do the same for
incandescence or a number of other things.
| | 07:00 | Now, if you are familiar with Maya's
existing particles systems you can still
| | 07:05 | do particle array attributes like you
have done before and this is where it
| | 07:09 | gets a little complex.
| | 07:12 | So those are some of the attributes
that you can use to change how a particle looks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding forces to particle systems| 00:00 | Now, previously in Maya you had to
create separate wind and separate gravity
| | 00:05 | and other forces separately in order
to have them affect the particle system.
| | 00:09 | With nParticles, it's all built-in,
which makes it a lot easier to set up. So
| | 00:14 | let me show you how this works.
| | 00:16 | We are going to start with nParticles,
and let's go ahead and set our preset to
| | 00:19 | Balls. Then we are going to just create
an emitter. I am just going to go ahead
| | 00:25 | and move that above the ground plane a
little bit and this should just be an
| | 00:29 | Omni emitter and let's go
ahead and emit those spheres.
| | 00:35 | As you can see, they are actually
falling down; they actually have gravity
| | 00:40 | applied to them. So if we keep that
emitter selected and go over to our
| | 00:44 | Attribute Editor, let's just
go ahead and see how this works.
| | 00:47 | Well, we have got the emitter. We also
have the ParticleShape, which is what
| | 00:52 | defines the actual particle, which
makes them for example Balls rather than
| | 00:56 | Clouds and we also have the nucleus
tab, which actually defines the forces,
| | 01:03 | such as Gravity and Air Density and
the Wind Speed and so on and so forth.
| | 01:10 | So if we go over here to the
ParticleShape and we scroll down to Dynamic
| | 01:14 | Properties, we can turn on or off the
Wind or the Gravity. So if I click this
| | 01:22 | button here, that means it's going to
Ignore Gravity, which means gravity is not
| | 01:27 | going to affect it, and now you can
see it gets more of that cloud shape
| | 01:30 | because the particles are just moving
in the direction in which they were emitted.
| | 01:35 | As soon as I turn off this tab, it
means that Gravity is back on and you can
| | 01:41 | see how the spheres respond to gravity.
| | 01:45 | Now, if I go over here to the nucleus
tab, you can actually affect Gravity. You
| | 01:49 | can turn gravity on or off. You can
actually affect the strength of Gravity
| | 01:53 | here so I can make gravity weaker or I
can make it stronger. Now, 9.8 is earth
| | 02:01 | gravity, or 9.8 meters per second squared.
| | 02:04 | You can also change the direction of
Gravity. Right now it's -1 in the y
| | 02:08 | direction, which means it pulls
straight down. If you want Gravity that pushes up,
| | 02:13 | you can certainly do that.
| | 02:16 | You can also change the Air Density and
the Wind Speed. Let's go ahead and turn
| | 02:20 | up the Wind Speed a bit and see what
happens. Well, you can see how the wind
| | 02:26 | actually does affect how these particles move.
| | 02:33 | You can also turn on what's called a
Ground Plane. Now, what this does is you
| | 02:38 | can actually create a Ground Plane
for those spheres to impact with or to
| | 02:43 | collide with and then you can see now
that when they actually hit 0, they fall
| | 02:47 | on the floor.
| | 02:48 | Now, we can also change some features
about the particles. Let's go back to
| | 02:56 | this ParticleShape tab here and go
back down to Dynamic Properties. One of the
| | 03:00 | things we can change is the
Dynamics Weight. We can also change how it
| | 03:04 | conserves energy. So when it hits the
ground, do you want it to bounce like a
| | 03:09 | marble, or do you want it to kind of
slow down and not conserve that energy as much?
| | 03:17 | So if I turn down Dynamics Weight here,
you can see how it affects it. You can
| | 03:21 | do this interactively as well.
| | 03:23 | The other thing is how much drag does
it have. So for example, if I turn up
| | 03:28 | Drag, you can see that it's actually
dragging in the wind a little bit more.
| | 03:34 | So let's go ahead and turn Drag way down,
you can see how that affects this.
| | 03:41 | Then we can also Dampen. What that
does is obviously it dampens the effect of
| | 03:53 | the forces. Let's go ahead and
turn that way back down again.
| | 04:03 | We can also give the particles mass.
This is probably the most important one,
| | 04:06 | because what this affects is how
external forces, such as wind, affect the
| | 04:11 | particles. So if I have a heavy mass
particles, the wind is not going to affect
| | 04:16 | it as much as if I have a 0 or near 0 mass.
| | 04:20 | So for example, when this is really high,
the wind doesn't affect it hardly at
| | 04:25 | all, but when this is low, you can see
how the wind even blows these particles
| | 04:30 | across the floor.
| | 04:31 | Now, one of the nicer things about this
is that you can actually scale the mass
| | 04:36 | of a particle with age. So for example,
I could take this basic mass here and
| | 04:42 | scale it down as the particle ages.
Now, these particles aren't aging; they
| | 04:47 | live forever. So this isn't going to
really work on this. But you can see how
| | 04:50 | you can actually make the particles
lighter as they get older. This is probably
| | 04:55 | good for things like smoke or something
like that, where you want the smoke to
| | 04:58 | bellow up and then kind of float
off in the wind as the particles get a
| | 05:03 | little bit older.
| | 05:05 | So in addition to these forces that are
built into the Particle System, you can
| | 05:09 | certainly use the other forces that
are available in the standard dynamics
| | 05:14 | model, such as any one of these fields
here, such as Air, Drag, Gravity. Any of
| | 05:20 | these forces will work on an
nParticles field. But typically, I like to
| | 05:25 | use the built-in Wind and
Gravity because it's so much easier.
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| Creating particle collisions| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at
collisions between particles and objects in
| | 00:04 | nParticles. This is pretty simple
to use. I have a file here called
| | 00:08 | collisions.mb. So let's take a look at
this. I have got a trough, a spout and
| | 00:13 | then in the back of that spout I have a
little plane. Let's go ahead and select
| | 00:18 | that. And then under nParticles we
want to make sure that we have a Water
| | 00:22 | checked. So we are going to create
water type particles and then we are just
| | 00:27 | going to go Emit from Object, make
sure that the plane is selected. And then
| | 00:32 | when I scroll back to zero and play this,
you can see that it's emitting water,
| | 00:38 | or water-like particles. Now what is
happening here though is that the water
| | 00:44 | is just emitting from that plane and
it's being affected by gravity, but it's
| | 00:48 | not flowing.
| | 00:50 | So as you can see this is not
interacting with the trough or the spout, so
| | 00:54 | let's go ahead and add those into the
solution. We can do that by selecting
| | 00:58 | these and simply going over to nMesh.
And all we have to do is Create Passive
| | 01:04 | Collider. Now let's go ahead and see
the options here. There's really only one
| | 01:08 | option and that is what the Solver
is and the default Solver is always
| | 01:13 | nucleus1 and that's what we want to use.
So all we have to do here is go Make
| | 01:17 | Collide and when we do that, what
happens is the water will now be channeled
| | 01:24 | down the spout and into the trough.
| | 01:28 | So as you can see you can make some
very complex effects using just collisions
| | 01:35 | and gravity. Now in addition to rigid
objects you can also have things collide
| | 01:40 | with stuff like cloth. Let's go ahead
and show you that. I am going to open a
| | 01:44 | scene here called ClothCollision and
what it has is basically just a plane and
| | 01:51 | some cylinders. Right now there is
nothing going on here. So let's go ahead and
| | 01:55 | add in some cloth and we'll show you
just a little bit of nCloth here. We are
| | 01:59 | going to select this plane and just
go nMesh > Create nCloth and what that
| | 02:06 | does is it creates a cloth.
| | 02:09 | Now what we want this cloth to do is
collide with these cylinders. Now this
| | 02:14 | Solver is the exact same Solver that we
used for particles. So it's exact same
| | 02:20 | procedure. We can go nMesh > Create
Passive Collider and now the cloth will
| | 02:28 | collide with the cylinders, just like
the particles collided with the trough.
| | 02:32 | Now we can take this one step further
and add particles into this equation. So
| | 02:38 | I am going to scroll back to zero. Go
nParticles > Create nParticles. I am
| | 02:42 | going to go ahead and change this to
balls and just let's go ahead and Create
| | 02:47 | an Emitter and move that Emitter
slightly above that cloth. Now watch what
| | 02:56 | happens. When the balls are created,
they will collide with the cloth and they
| | 03:01 | will also interact with the cloth.
| | 03:07 | So they are actually going to push the
cloth down. If I took those particles
| | 03:12 | and selected them and went into the
Attribute Editor, I could under Dynamics,
| | 03:21 | increase the mass. And if I increased
the mass, I can also increase the radius
| | 03:26 | of the particles, make them a little
bit bigger and if I do that then they are
| | 03:32 | going to have a bigger effect on the cloth.
| | 03:35 | Now as I start using cloth you're
going to see, you're going to have a much
| | 03:40 | deeper effect here. So you can see how
we have created a very complex effect
| | 03:50 | with just a few keystrokes. It's
actually makes these sorts of things very easy.
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| Creating collision events| 00:00 | Now let's talk about Collision Events.
These are events that happen when a
| | 00:05 | particle hits something. So for
example, if a particle hits a wall, you may
| | 00:09 | want it to break into several
different particles. We can do that using the
| | 00:15 | Collision Event Editor. Let me show you
how this works. First thing we need is
| | 00:18 | something to collide against. So I am
just going to create a plane, move it up
| | 00:24 | a little bit and then let's go ahead
and create a particle system. We are
| | 00:30 | going to create an Emitter, let's go
ahead and create balls. I am going to
| | 00:34 | create an Emitter Omni and let's make
sure the rate is kind of low. In fact,
| | 00:39 | let's just make it like five particles
per second. We are not going to emit a
| | 00:42 | whole lot here and just leave the
speed here and just go ahead and create
| | 00:47 | that and move it slightly above the
plane, so it will collide with it. But of
| | 00:51 | course, if you want it to collide,
you need to select the plane, go nMesh >
| | 00:55 | Create Passive Collider. So I am
going to go ahead and expand my frame rate
| | 00:59 | here and let's just go ahead and
create a simple particle system.
| | 01:06 | That's great. Now, what we want to
happen is that when each of these spheres
| | 01:11 | hits the ground, we want it to break
up, or do something a little bit more
| | 01:15 | interesting. So what I can do here is
select this particle system and go into
| | 01:20 | nParticles and go Particle Collision
Event Editor. Now what this has, it has
| | 01:25 | the list of the particle systems in
the scene. And what we can do is we can
| | 01:29 | create an event. So we can say when
all collisions happen, or the first
| | 01:35 | collision say, we want something to
happen. So we want it to either emit more
| | 01:41 | particles, or we want it to split into
multiple particles. So let's go ahead
| | 01:47 | and emit a couple of particles, like
three or four particles and then down
| | 01:52 | here go Create Event.
| | 01:53 | Now what this does is as you can see
here, you get these particles. I don't
| | 02:02 | know if you can see them all that well,
but what happens is, particles start
| | 02:06 | flying off as these hit the ground,
and also you can see that these balls
| | 02:11 | disappear and turn into these other
types of particles. In fact, we have now
| | 02:16 | two particle systems in the scene. We
have the first one which is the spheres,
| | 02:21 | and then we have the second one, which
is the emitted particles, and we can
| | 02:25 | certainly change those from dots to
spheres, or whatever type of particle we want.
| | 02:30 | Now let's go ahead and reselect
particle one and go back into that Particle
| | 02:35 | Collision Event Editor. So I can
select that event and I can delete it. Now
| | 02:40 | let's go ahead and create a new one
here. If I want to, I can split these
| | 02:45 | particles. Let's go ahead and create
one more. We'll split the particles into
| | 02:48 | say, three separate particles and
create that event and let's see what
| | 02:54 | happens now. So now when they hit,
they split into three separate particles.
| | 03:01 | Now if I want, I can select this
second particle system and go into the
| | 03:06 | attributes from that and change the
Render type to sphere, streaks, whatever.
| | 03:13 | So if you want to make that into
spheres, you can certainly do that.
| | 03:17 | So let's go back into this one more
time and let's go over it again. So what
| | 03:25 | you do is select your particle,
select the event and then select what
| | 03:30 | happens. So one of the things you can
do is you can keep going. You can have
| | 03:33 | your initial particle system create
additional particles, which in turn create
| | 03:39 | even more particles. So as you can see
this can get very complex, very quickly,
| | 03:43 | but it's also very, very powerful.
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|
|
5. Animating with Animation LayersWorking in the animation layer interface| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at animation
layers. What this does is it allows you to
| | 00:04 | place motion on multiple layers and
then be able to mix and switch between
| | 00:10 | different types of motion. You can
also blend motion together to create all
| | 00:15 | sorts of really cool effects.
| | 00:16 | The file we have open is called Simple_
WalkRun.mb. Now, if I hit Play, you will
| | 00:23 | see I have a simple walk. Now this
is just a walk cycle. Now this walk is
| | 00:29 | actually on a layer. So you can see
here, we have several different types of
| | 00:34 | layers. We have a Walk, a Run and a
BaseAnimation layer. Now these layers are
| | 00:40 | in what's called the Animation Layer
menu. This is very similar to Display
| | 00:45 | Layers, which we have all worked with,
Render Layers and now the new one is
| | 00:50 | called Animation Layers.
| | 00:52 | Now if I want, I can take this layer
and I can actually manipulate it. So if I
| | 00:56 | hit Play, you can see if I hit this
Mute button, you can turn on and off the
| | 01:02 | animation. There is another button
here called solo and what this does is
| | 01:08 | allows you to solo the animation. So
if you've got more than one clip mixed,
| | 01:13 | you can just highlight that one clip
and turn everything else off. It's kind
| | 01:17 | of the opposite of a Mute button.
| | 01:19 | Then we also have a Lock button,
which allows us to lock the layer. Now the
| | 01:25 | other thing we have is we actually have
a Run Layer as well. So if I hit Play,
| | 01:30 | I can actually turn on that Run layer,
and turn off the Walk Layer. So I can
| | 01:37 | actually mute each one of these and so
either I can turn them both on or both
| | 01:42 | off. Now if I have them both on, let
me slow this down so you can kind of see
| | 01:48 | what happens. What it does is it
actually adds those two layers together. So we
| | 01:54 | are in what's called Additive Mode,
and what this does is it takes the Run
| | 01:58 | Layer and it just lays it over and
adds the keyframes to the other layer. Now
| | 02:03 | what you can see here is you are
getting kind of-- it's not really a walk or a
| | 02:08 | run. It's kind of like a hop-skippy
kind of thing and it's not really all that
| | 02:12 | great. But what we can do is, we can
actually take both of these layers and mix
| | 02:16 | between them. So you can actually go
from a walk to a run and back. So let me
| | 02:21 | show you how this works. We have a
Weight slider here and what we can do is
| | 02:27 | we can actually weight the animation
on or off. Rather than just muting it on
| | 02:32 | or off, we can actually fade it on or off.
| | 02:36 | So what I am going to do is turn on
both of these layers. And I am going to
| | 02:40 | take this Run Layer. And turn it all
the way down to zero. And then there is a
| | 02:47 | little K button next to it and that
just keyframes it. So now at frame one,
| | 02:52 | I have completely turned off the run. So
now all I have is the walk. So let's go
| | 02:58 | ahead and fade from the walk to the run,
or we can do the exact same thing with
| | 03:03 | this Walk Layer by keyframing it. So
if I want to, I can just hit this key
| | 03:08 | here while the weight is at one. So
that just sets that to one and now I am
| | 03:14 | just going to fade this out over say,
about 12 frames. So let's go to frame 37,
| | 03:20 | and I am going to turn this all the way
down to zero. Now there is another good
| | 03:24 | shortcut here. These two buttons
allow you to go from one or to zero
| | 03:30 | automatically. And then if I just hit
a keyframe here, you can see this walk
| | 03:35 | kind of fades out. It fades out to
whatever is below it, which is this
| | 03:40 | BaseAnimation Layer.
| | 03:41 | Now if I want, I can go back and I can
take this Run Layer, which I had keyed
| | 03:47 | to zero and key it up to one, so we
can go from the walk to the run. So as
| | 03:53 | this walk fades out, I am going to
fade in the run. So here at frame 25 I am
| | 04:02 | going to hit K for Keyframe. Go up to 37.
If I want, I can bring this up to one
| | 04:08 | or I can just hit this little button
here and that brings it up to one and I
| | 04:12 | keyframe it. Now, if I play it, walk to run.
| | 04:19 | Now I can certainly go back the other
way as well. So if I take, for example,
| | 04:24 | this run, I can certainly key it here,
and then just fade it out over a few
| | 04:31 | frames. So now I have got walk to run,
and then run to standing. Now I can
| | 04:40 | certainly take that Walk Layer again,
and just keyframe it up to one and so now
| | 04:49 | what I have done is I have actually
gone from walk to run back to walk.
| | 04:55 | Now notice here I've got a little bit
of a glitch that comes in as this fades
| | 05:01 | in. Now one of the things is, when we
are doing cycles like this, you may have
| | 05:06 | a little bit of overlap where the
feet don't quite match up between the two
| | 05:10 | cycles where they are kind of out of
sync. And so you really have to pick your
| | 05:14 | spots as to where you want to
fade between something like this.
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| Creating animation layers| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how to
create layers. I have the same file open,
| | 00:05 | Simple_WalkRun and this has that walk
and run cycle in it. So I am just going
| | 00:12 | to go ahead and scroll back and what
we are going to do is we are going to
| | 00:16 | create an animation layer.
| | 00:18 | Now you can do that by going here and
we can actually create empty layer, or
| | 00:24 | create layer from selected. You can
actually create layers, or create layers
| | 00:28 | from selected here with
these two buttons as well.
| | 00:31 | Let's go ahead and create a layer that
has the body of the character. So if I
| | 00:36 | click on this sphere, it's actually
called Body and let's go Layers > Create
| | 00:42 | Layer from Selected. And what this
does is it creates a new layer here called
| | 00:47 | Animlayer1. This layer only has that
body object in it; it doesn't have any
| | 00:54 | other objects. So if I animate
anything else, that animation will go into a
| | 00:59 | different layer. So you have to be
careful when you actually create layers that
| | 01:05 | you put exactly what you want
to animate into those layers.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to hit my Move key and
let's go ahead and animate this character
| | 01:14 | walking under something low. So as he
walks I want that body to drop down. So
| | 01:21 | all I have to do is just set a key and
then move it forward and drop the body,
| | 01:32 | maybe set another key and then lift
them back up. So what you can see here is
| | 01:40 | that as this character walks that
additional animation is layered on top of it.
| | 01:46 | So anything in Animlayer1 is laid
on top of anything that's below it.
| | 01:52 | So if I play this and I mute it, you
can see it goes away. If I solo it, you
| | 01:59 | can see that this is the only thing
that animates, is that the body going down,
| | 02:04 | and coming back up.
| | 02:09 | Now if I want, I can actually add to
that layer. So let's go ahead and select,
| | 02:14 | in fact, let's go to our Outliner,
let's go ahead and select the left ankle
| | 02:17 | here. And as he goes down, you'll
notice how that foot kind of gets stuck
| | 02:25 | underneath him. Now we can certainly
use animation layers to fix that, but
| | 02:30 | before I do this, I need to make sure
I add that ankle into the layer I am
| | 02:35 | going to work with. So if I select
this Animlayer1, right-click and go Add
| | 02:40 | Selected Objects-- that's very important.
| | 02:43 | So now, let's go ahead and set a
keyframe here somewhere around 50 and then as
| | 02:50 | it comes out, I am just going to move
that foot out and then I want to just
| | 02:59 | copy and paste that other key. So now
you can see I have just added that kind
| | 03:06 | of foot going out to the side. Now
again, if I solo this, you can see what's
| | 03:12 | happening. In fact, it just goes down,
the foot goes out and it comes back up.
| | 03:18 | Now when I mix that with everything else,
look what you get. So you can see how
| | 03:25 | this can be very, very effective,
particularly when using things like cycles or
| | 03:30 | motion capture, or other types of
complex animation, you can go in and just do
| | 03:35 | some very quick tweaks to your
existing animation and be done with it.
| | 03:40 | Again, I want to make sure that you
understand this. You have to very careful
| | 03:44 | as to what is in specific layers. Now
if you want to see what's in any given
| | 03:48 | layer, you can go into the Layers menu,
and go to this little menu option here
| | 03:53 | called Membership. And what this does,
is it gives you the Relationship Editor,
| | 03:59 | and all you have to do is just open up
any one of these layers and it will tell
| | 04:02 | you exactly what's in there.
| | 04:05 | So this one has the body, translate,
rotate, scale, handles for the toes and
| | 04:10 | the ankles and then this one
animation layer here, Animlayer1, just has the
| | 04:16 | body and the ankle. It doesn't have
both ankles and it doesn't have the toes
| | 04:22 | either. So you can see how it's very
easy to set up these layers and add
| | 04:28 | additional animation on top of
something that you already have. So let's go
| | 04:32 | ahead and move on from here.
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| Editing animation layers| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at how to edit
animation that is in layers. I've got this
| | 00:05 | file open called Simple_WalkRun and we
have a couple of layers here. And if I
| | 00:11 | select this body and go into the Graph
Editor, you'll notice something a little
| | 00:21 | different. What happens is when you
create layers, those layers actually show
| | 00:27 | up in the Graph Editor. So I have
a Run_Layer, a Walk_Layer and my
| | 00:32 | BaseAnimation layer just like I have here.
| | 00:35 | So if your object is a member of any
layer, you are going to start getting
| | 00:41 | additional entries here in the
Graph Editor, as well as the Dope Sheet.
| | 00:47 | Now if I want to, I can certainly
expand the layer and edit the curves. So for
| | 00:52 | example, this is my active layer and
so I can actually edit those curves. If I
| | 01:02 | unlock the Run_Layer, you can see I
can edit those curves. If I select my
| | 01:08 | Walk_Layer, while it's locked and the
other one is active, you will see that I
| | 01:14 | can't touch these curves. They are
grayed out, so I really can't see them.
| | 01:18 | Now this is also another way of finding
out what objects are in what layers. So
| | 01:24 | if you select an object, you can
actually see what layers those objects belong
| | 01:29 | to. So when you go to edit curves in
Maya and you are using layers, just be
| | 01:35 | aware that you will have
additional curves for each layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting animation layers| 00:00 | One of the nice benefits of working
with layers is that it allows you to easily
| | 00:05 | export animation, or actually your
animation layers. This can make it very easy
| | 00:11 | to create libraries of motions. So for
example, I have this character that has
| | 00:15 | a walk and a run. I can actually
export each of these layers individually. So
| | 00:22 | that way I can import them later into
another scene and just mix them right in.
| | 00:27 | So let's just go ahead and show you
how to do this. It's really a very simple
| | 00:30 | process. All I have to do is select a
layer. So for example, let's go ahead and
| | 00:36 | take this Run_Layer and if you right-
click over this, we have a number of
| | 00:40 | options for the layer. The one I want
to take a look at is called Export Layer.
| | 00:46 | All you have to do is just go Export,
and what it does is it allows you to
| | 00:50 | export a Maya Binary File. So you just
export a file called run and that's it.
| | 00:59 | Now if I open a scene with a brand new
character here. I've got one here called
| | 01:04 | Simple.Legs and this is just that same
character with no animation on it. So,
| | 01:13 | all I have to do is just import that
file that I exported. So I just go Import,
| | 01:19 | run and notice how the layer comes
right up and all that's imported is just
| | 01:27 | the layer. It didn't import
any characters or anything else.
| | 01:31 | I've also exported that walk. I can
also import that walk scene. So let's go
| | 01:36 | walk.mb and now you can see I have
two layers. I have the walk and the run
| | 01:42 | layer and now I pretty much have what
I had before in that scene. So you can
| | 01:48 | see how it's very easy to move
animation between scenes just by using layers.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | So that's pretty much it for all of the
new features in Maya 2009. I certainly
| | 00:06 | hope you have a chance to use all of
them in your projects. Until next time,
| | 00:11 | I am George Maestri. Thank
you very much and goodbye!
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