IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I'm George Maestri.
| | 00:05 | Welcome to Maya 2011 Essential Training.
| | 00:08 | Maya 2011 is one of the most popular
3D modeling, rendering and animation
| | 00:13 | packages on the market today.
| | 00:14 | It's used for special effects,
character animation and motion graphics for
| | 00:18 | feature films, television, design and games.
| | 00:22 | Maya 2011 Essential Training will
give you the skills you need to model,
| | 00:25 | texture, animate and render within this
very deep and robust piece of software.
| | 00:31 | First, we'll look at Maya's
interface, learn how to navigate and
| | 00:34 | manipulate objects in 3D.
| | 00:36 | Next, we'll create some
objects and learn how to model.
| | 00:39 | We'll start off with polygonal
modeling to understand how to build characters
| | 00:42 | and other organic objects.
| | 00:44 | After that, we'll move on to NURBs
modeling, which can be used to create
| | 00:48 | vehicles and other solid objects.
| | 00:50 | Maya's shading and texturing tools
allow you to add color to your models.
| | 00:54 | I'll show you how to create surfaces
that mimic those found in the real world,
| | 00:59 | and use bitmap textures
to add in your own images.
| | 01:02 | Maya 2011 has some very robust animation
tools that allow you to bring things to life.
| | 01:07 | I'll first show you how
to rig a simple character.
| | 01:10 | Then, we'll animate the character in a
short scene using the assets we've created.
| | 01:15 | Finally, we'll look at rendering in Maya.
| | 01:17 | We're learning how to set up lights
and cameras, as well as how to create
| | 01:21 | realistic effects, such as
depth of field and motion blur.
| | 01:24 | We'll also set up a complete
scene for rendering and final output.
| | 01:28 | We've got a lot to cover, so
let's get started with Maya 2011,
| | 01:32 | Essential Training.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | Premium subscribers to lynda.com will
have access to the exercise files that we
| | 00:06 | use in this tutorial.
| | 00:09 | So when you download your exercise
files folder, it will come up in a folder
| | 00:14 | named Exercise_Files.
| | 00:16 | This will have one Maya file per
chapter that we use in this course.
| | 00:20 | So all you need to do is just drag
that onto your desktop, and we should be
| | 00:24 | set to go.
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| A note on screen resolution| 00:00 | Maya is a very robust program, and as
such it has a lot of different options.
| | 00:06 | These actually show up with a lot of
different elements on the Maya screen.
| | 00:10 | Now here we have the full Maya interface.
| | 00:12 | You can notice there is a lot of
different buttons, which we'll be explaining
| | 00:16 | throughout the course.
| | 00:17 | But before we actually dive into Maya, I do
need to make a note about screen resolution.
| | 00:23 | Now at the full screen resolution,
which is about 1280 x 1024, 1920 x 1080,
| | 00:30 | basically full screen resolution,
you'll see all of the Maya elements.
| | 00:35 | Now we're actually going to be
recording the majority of this course at a
| | 00:39 | slightly reduced resolution, so that way,
you can read all of the menu options.
| | 00:44 | Let me show you what it's going to look like.
| | 00:46 | Here we have the screen at 1920 x 1080 or
full resolution, where you can see everything.
| | 00:53 | For the majority of the course, so
we're actually going to be using 1280 x 720,
| | 00:57 | which will show you almost all of
the interface options except for a few.
| | 01:02 | The one that's going to be most
noticeable is right here along the left side of
| | 01:06 | the screen, and what we call the toolbar.
| | 01:08 | Now notice it kind of drops off
here at the reduced resolution.
| | 01:13 | If we go to the full resolution version
of Maya, you'll notice that below that
| | 01:17 | cutoff point, there are a number of
Presets for different screen resolutions.
| | 01:22 | We'll discuss these in the course.
| | 01:24 | These basically, just are different
presets for different layouts of the screen.
| | 01:29 | Now typically when I use Maya, I'm
actually going to use this four views, and
| | 01:33 | then just switch between that, and
that's my normal method of working.
| | 01:37 | So, I'm really not going to be using
this too much throughout the course.
| | 01:41 | So it's not really going to be that big
of an issue, but I just want to let you
| | 01:45 | know that we're recording this
at a slightly reduced resolution.
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1. Getting Started in Maya 2011 Overview of the Maya interface | 00:00 | When you open Maya, the first
thing you'll see is the Maya interface.
| | 00:04 | Now I'm showing you this
interface at full resolution.
| | 00:08 | So we're actually going to be showing
you this at 1920 x 1080, so you can see all
| | 00:13 | of the menu options.
| | 00:14 | Let's go through some of the
basic interface elements in Maya.
| | 00:18 | Maya looks pretty much the
same on the Mac, the PC and Linux.
| | 00:22 | So this should work for just about everybody.
| | 00:25 | The first thing you'll notice is that
Maya does have a menu along the top, just
| | 00:29 | like any other program.
| | 00:31 | So we have, for example, File, Edit, Modify.
| | 00:34 | But the one thing that Maya has that
other programs don't have, it has what's
| | 00:38 | called menu sets, so some of these menu
options actually change depending upon
| | 00:44 | where this pulldown menu is set.
| | 00:47 | Now Maya is so robust.
| | 00:48 | It actually has too many menu
options, to fit on one menu bar.
| | 00:53 | So you kind of have to pick and
choose which menus you want to see.
| | 00:57 | So for right now I have Animation
loaded, and we have all of the animation
| | 01:01 | tools as menu options.
| | 01:03 | If I go to Polygons,
notice how some of these change.
| | 01:06 | And so when I'm doing polygonal
modeling, I'll want to be in this menu set.
| | 01:11 | If I go to Surfaces, which is for NURBs
modeling, a different menu set shows up.
| | 01:16 | Now the reason I want you to be aware of
this is that if I go to menu option, and
| | 01:21 | it's not there, be sure to check where
this particular pulldown menu is to
| | 01:26 | make sure that we're both in the same menu set.
| | 01:29 | Now this pulldown menu is actually
on what's called the Status bar.
| | 01:33 | And this gives you a number of options
that show you the status of the scene, and
| | 01:37 | also gives you some additional options.
| | 01:39 | Here we have some very simple Load and
Save options, Create a new scene, Open a
| | 01:44 | scene, and Save the current scene.
| | 01:46 | These are just duplicates
of what's in the File menu.
| | 01:50 | Now along here we have what
are called Selection sets.
| | 01:55 | Here, we have what are called Select options.
| | 01:58 | So we can select by object, which
is basically selecting any particular
| | 02:02 | object in the scene.
| | 02:04 | If we go to the right here, we can
select by component, which is the vertices
| | 02:09 | and the edges inside of objects.
| | 02:12 | And if we go to the other side of this,
this allows us to select by hierarchy.
| | 02:15 | So, for example, if I click on the
body of this character, I can select the
| | 02:20 | entire hierarchy that he is in.
| | 02:23 | So typically, we're going to keep this
on object, but as we get into modeling we
| | 02:26 | may go into Select by component type.
| | 02:29 | Once we have these selected, we can
also create what are called Masks.
| | 02:33 | Mask allows us to select certain
types of objects, but not others.
| | 02:37 | So, for example, I could not select
joints in an object, or curves or something
| | 02:42 | like that, and this will allow me to
more easily select things in the scene.
| | 02:47 | So, for example, if I was just working
with a character, and I just wanted to
| | 02:51 | deal with the joints, I could go over
here, turn all objects off and just turn
| | 02:56 | on the joints, and I'd only be able
to select those particular objects.
| | 03:00 | So in this case, this character has a
joint in his arm that we can select.
| | 03:04 | But I'm going to go ahead and make sure
that that's all objects on, and then all
| | 03:08 | over here we have what
are called Snapping options.
| | 03:11 | So this is really helpful in modeling or in
positioning anything in your scene precisely.
| | 03:17 | So we can snap to grids.
| | 03:18 | We can snap to curves.
| | 03:20 | We can snap to points.
| | 03:21 | And also notice, as I hover over these, a
little help menu comes up, which is kind of nice.
| | 03:27 | Little bit further along here we have
our Render options, and we'll get into
| | 03:31 | those a little bit later.
| | 03:32 | Then over here to the right, we
actually have some configuration menus here.
| | 03:37 | So this actually turns on what's called the
Channel Box and the Attribute Editor right here.
| | 03:44 | If we click here for tool settings,
this actually brings up the settings for
| | 03:50 | whatever tool I'm using.
| | 03:51 | So, for example, if I'm doing a move
of an object, I'll have the options for
| | 03:55 | that particular tool, or if I'm doing a
modeling operation, those options will
| | 04:00 | come up here as well.
| | 04:01 | And we can just toggle that on or off.
| | 04:04 | Along the right side, let's just
go down from little bit further.
| | 04:07 | We have what's called the Channel Box
and the Attribute Editor, so if I click
| | 04:12 | open the Channel Box, this basically
shows me where objects are located.
| | 04:17 | So, for example, if I click on the
head of this character, you can see where
| | 04:21 | he's located, what his rotation is, and so on.
| | 04:24 | Now below this I have
what's called the Layer Editor.
| | 04:28 | And this actually has three panels
here, one for Display, which is what I'm
| | 04:32 | viewing here, one for Rendering and
one for Animation, which we'll get into
| | 04:37 | a little bit later.
| | 04:38 | But right now for Display, this
actually allows me to turn things on and off.
| | 04:42 | So I can actually turn
on and off the background,
| | 04:45 | for example, if I want a closer view
of my character, or something like that.
| | 04:49 | Now in addition to this, we also
have what's called the Attribute Editor.
| | 04:52 | So if I click on this little tab,
this brings up all the attributes for the
| | 04:56 | object that's selected.
| | 04:58 | So, for example, the head of this
particular character has a number of different
| | 05:01 | things that have been done to him.
| | 05:03 | And these are all listed here, and
again, we'll get into these later.
| | 05:07 | I'm just showing you where stuff is at.
| | 05:08 | Now if I want to, I can click on this again.
| | 05:11 | And that will go away.
| | 05:12 | And it gives me a much bigger screen.
| | 05:15 | So if you need more real estate, just
go ahead and click here, and that will
| | 05:18 | give you a little bit more to the side.
| | 05:20 | Now let's go back over to the left
side of the screen, and we have what's
| | 05:25 | called the tool bar.
| | 05:26 | Now this basically allows me to
select things, select with a Lasso tool.
| | 05:31 | You can also do what's called Paint select.
| | 05:33 | And we also have our Move and Rotate and Scale.
| | 05:38 | So, for example, if I select this
object here you can notice how when I've got
| | 05:42 | this, I can actually move the object.
| | 05:44 | I can rotate it and scale it, if I
want, and we'll get into those as well.
| | 05:52 | Now little bit further down, we have
what are called our Preset layouts.
| | 05:57 | Now this we can actually have
just a Single Perspective View.
| | 06:01 | This gives us a Four view.
| | 06:03 | This gives us different presets of
different ways to view your screen.
| | 06:08 | This is really just kind of a convenience.
| | 06:09 | This is not something that we
actually absolutely need to use.
| | 06:14 | Now along the bottom, we have our Time slider.
| | 06:17 | So all I have to do is click and drag,
and you can actually slide your animation.
| | 06:22 | We also have, down here, we
have what's called a Range slider.
| | 06:26 | So right now this particular
animation is going from frame 1 to frame 96.
| | 06:31 | If I wanted to kind of zoom in on my
Timeline, all I have to do is just grab
| | 06:35 | this, and I can zoom in on my Timeline.
| | 06:39 | And I can also pan that window by
just grabbing here in the middle.
| | 06:44 | So each one of these ends is a zoom
point, right there and there, and then, if
| | 06:50 | you grab in the middle, you
can just move that window around.
| | 06:53 | And if you stretch it out,
you can do that as well.
| | 06:57 | Now also notice that as I change it,
notice how these two sets of numbers change.
| | 07:02 | The outer numbers is the
actual length of the animation.
| | 07:05 | The inner numbers is how much
of that you're actually seeing.
| | 07:08 | Now along the bottom right, we
also have our playback options.
| | 07:14 | So I can actually play this, and I can
play backwards, if I want, and I can also
| | 07:21 | step through it a frame at a time
or keyframe at a time if I want.
| | 07:26 | Again, we're going to go into all of
these options a little bit more deeply.
| | 07:30 | So this is a brief
overview of the Maya interface.
| | 07:33 | I know there's a lot to absorb with
Maya, but as we work through all the
| | 07:37 | functions, you'll become a lot more
comfortable and start knowing where
| | 07:40 | everything is at.
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| Working with files and Maya projects | 00:00 | When you work with Maya, oftentimes
you'll have a lot of different files that
| | 00:04 | contribute to your Maya project file.
| | 00:07 | For example, in this file we have a
bitmap that creates the sky, as well as a
| | 00:13 | couple of other bitmaps and other
things that are actually included into this
| | 00:17 | scene to make an entire file.
| | 00:19 | So when you work with Maya files,
it's always a good idea to learn to how
| | 00:23 | to work with projects.
| | 00:25 | And what these are, it's just a
standard way of organizing your Maya data.
| | 00:30 | So before I open a file, I want to
make sure that I set my projects.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to go ahead and go Project
> Set, and then I'm going to set it to
| | 00:40 | the chapter that I'm working in.
| | 00:41 | Let's just go ahead and go Set.
| | 00:43 | Now what this does is it actually
creates the proper paths so that all of the
| | 00:48 | bitmaps in a project show up.
| | 00:51 | Now let me go ahead and show you
what this looks like in the directory.
| | 00:55 | I'm actually going to go into my
Exercise Files, and in Chap_01 you'll notice
| | 01:00 | that I have all of these
standard directory names.
| | 01:03 | All of my Maya scenes are in
the scenes folder of the project.
| | 01:07 | I also have source images which have
all of my textures, and then we have a
| | 01:13 | number of other ones.
| | 01:14 | For example,
3dPaintTextures, motion clips and so on.
| | 01:19 | Now how we set this up in Maya
is by going into the Project menu.
| | 01:26 | So when you actually start a new
project, you want to go into Project > New.
| | 01:33 | And this allows you to create a Project,
Browse for a specific directory that
| | 01:40 | it's going to be located in, as well
as what the paths are for each one of
| | 01:45 | these many different types of data.
| | 01:48 | And if you want you can just hit this
Use Defaults, and it will create all the
| | 01:52 | default names that Maya normally uses, and
once you hit Accept, it can create a new project.
| | 01:57 | I'm actually going to hit Cancel at
this point, because we're actually using
| | 02:01 | the Chap_01 project.
| | 02:04 | So when you start working with Maya,
be sure to set up a project first.
| | 02:08 | That way, your data will be portable.
| | 02:12 | It allows you to just take that
Project directory and move it to another
| | 02:16 | machine, and then be able to
have all of your paths line up.
| | 02:20 | And this is very important,
particularly if you're downloading the Exercise
| | 02:24 | Files and following along with me.
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| Navigating viewports | 00:00 | Maya is a 3D program.
| | 00:02 | But we actually operate Maya through a 2D
interface, which is our flat screen of our computer.
| | 00:09 | Now in order to overcome this difference,
we need to use some special keyboard
| | 00:13 | and mouse functions in order to be able
to navigate in 3D space on a 2D screen.
| | 00:19 | The simplest way to change your view in
Maya is by using what's called the View
| | 00:23 | Cube, and it's this little cube
at the top right of every viewport.
| | 00:28 | If the View Cube doesn't show up on
your screen, you can reveal it by going to
| | 00:34 | Display > Heads Up Display.
| | 00:37 | And down here we have an option for
ViewCube, so you can just turn it off here,
| | 00:41 | so Display > Heads Up Display >
ViewCube, and that will turn it on and off.
| | 00:47 | Now we can just hit any one of these
points on the Cube, and we'll see that option.
| | 00:54 | So if we hit the Front
view, we'll see the front.
| | 00:57 | If we hit the Corner of this, we'll
see kind of like a three-quarter or the
| | 01:01 | left, or if you want, we can hit the
top arrow here. We can see the top.
| | 01:05 | We can also rotate this around, and so on.
| | 01:09 | If we hit the Home, it goes back to
Perspective view, or we can go to our Front view.
| | 01:14 | Now this is great for just giving a
general overview of what we want to look
| | 01:18 | at, but if we want to actually zoom in
and get in close, we need to actually
| | 01:23 | start navigating in 3D.
| | 01:26 | Now we navigate in Maya using a
combination of the keyboard and the mouse.
| | 01:31 | Now on the keyboard, you're going to
notice just immediately to the side of the
| | 01:35 | Spacebar, there's going to be the Alt
key on the PC keyboard, or if you have a
| | 01:39 | Mac keyboard, it's going
to be called the Option key.
| | 01:43 | So what we do is we hold down Alt
or Option, and then we left, middle or
| | 01:48 | right-click, to do our navigation.
| | 01:50 | So what I'm going to do is hold
down the Alt key, and then left-click.
| | 01:54 | And notice how my cursor changes, and if I
drag, you can see that well, I'm rotating.
| | 02:01 | I'm actually spinning around the scene.
| | 02:03 | So I can actually change my angle of
view, or tumble, by using Alt+Left-click.
| | 02:08 | Now if I middle-click, while holding
down the Alt key, you can see I can pan and
| | 02:15 | just move left or right.
| | 02:17 | If I right-click, notice how that
changes again, and you can see how I can
| | 02:21 | basically zoom or truck into the scene.
| | 02:25 | So between these three, you can see how
I can actually tumble around the scene,
| | 02:30 | zoom in, get in close, come
out to see more, and so on.
| | 02:34 | Now there is also one more mouse
function, and this is for people who have a
| | 02:38 | mouse with a middle scroll wheel.
| | 02:40 | And just by rolling that scroll
wheel, you can zoom in and out.
| | 02:45 | So in order to zoom, you can either Alt
+Right-click, or you can just roll the
| | 02:49 | middle mouse button.
| | 02:51 | They do pretty much the same thing.
| | 02:53 | Now there's also other
ways to look at the scene.
| | 02:56 | We're actually right now looking at
what's called a Perspective view, which
| | 03:00 | allows us to see things in Perspective.
| | 03:02 | But there are going to be times when you
want to see kind of more of a drafting view.
| | 03:06 | Well, it's called an orthographic view.
| | 03:09 | And those you can get to by using the
Presets down here, or if you just hit the
| | 03:14 | Spacebar, it'll go to that default Four view.
| | 03:18 | Now you'll notice here we still have
our Perspective view, but we also have a
| | 03:23 | top, a front and a side view as well.
| | 03:27 | Now in this top, front and side view, I
can also navigate using the same keys,
| | 03:33 | except I can't tumble.
| | 03:35 | So if I hit Alt+Left-click, you're
going to see the little "no, you can't do
| | 03:39 | that" sign on the side view.
| | 03:41 | But I can still pan, and
I can still zoom effect.
| | 03:46 | Let's go head over to this view here,
which is in Wireframe, but you can see I
| | 03:51 | can still zoom, pan, but I can't rotate.
| | 03:57 | But that's because this is really a
fixed, flat 2D view, or an orthographic view,
| | 04:03 | kind of like how you would see a top
view in a drafting program, such as a CAD
| | 04:07 | program or something like that.
| | 04:08 | Now if I want to switch between any
one of these viewports, again, the
| | 04:12 | Spacebar is what I need.
| | 04:14 | So if I just place my mouse say over
the top viewport and hit Space, I go
| | 04:18 | into the top viewport.
| | 04:19 | I hit Space again, and
it goes into my four view.
| | 04:24 | If I put my mouse over my
Perspective view, hit Spacebar,
| | 04:28 | again, I get into my Perspective view.
| | 04:30 | Now the thing here is I'm tapping the Spacebar.
| | 04:33 | If I hit the Spacebar and hold,
you'll notice that a menu comes up.
| | 04:37 | We're going to discuss
this menu a little bit later.
| | 04:39 | But for just switching between viewports, it's
actually just a very quick tap on that Spacebar.
| | 04:46 | So let's go back into our Perspective view,
and let's do a little bit of practice.
| | 04:50 | Let's say we wanted to zoom
into the couches, in this office.
| | 04:53 | All I have to do again is hold down Alt
or Option and then right-click and zoom
| | 04:59 | in. And of course, I'm zooming into
the center there, so I'm going to have to
| | 05:02 | middle-click and drag, and again, I'm
holding down the Alt key the whole time.
| | 05:07 | And then if I wanted to get a
different angle on this, I can just, again, left-
| | 05:12 | click and drag, and notice how by just
moving your fingers on the mouse, you can
| | 05:16 | pretty much get this intuitive way
of positioning yourself in the scene.
| | 05:22 | There is another way of navigating, and
that's using the frame key, or actually
| | 05:27 | the F key, so if I hit the F key on the
keyboard, it'll frame everything in the
| | 05:32 | scene, except when I have an object selected.
| | 05:36 | So if I left-click say on the couch
and highlight it, and hit F, it will go
| | 05:41 | ahead and frame that couch.
| | 05:43 | That's a great way to zoom in very
quickly to a certain place in the scene.
| | 05:47 | So now you know the basics of
navigating in Maya, so go ahead and practice this
| | 05:53 | and get fluent with it.
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| Reviewing the Viewport menus| 00:00 | Now Maya is a texturing and rendering
package in addition to being a modeling
| | 00:04 | and animation package.
| | 00:06 | And there are times when you want to
preview what you're lighting, texturing,
| | 00:11 | rendering in the viewport
before you actually go to render.
| | 00:15 | Now Maya has a number of different
options that allow you to pre-visualize your
| | 00:20 | rendering before you actually go to rendering.
| | 00:22 | Now a lot of these are actually
held in the Viewport Shading options.
| | 00:26 | So, for example, we could go to
Wireframe, and that would actually just show us
| | 00:30 | the wires, or the outlines of the
objects that we're working with.
| | 00:35 | If I want, I can go into Smooth Shade.
| | 00:38 | And what that does is basically gives
me rough color, and it also shows me the
| | 00:44 | actual objects themselves, so
it actually allows some shading.
| | 00:49 | One option that I really like is called
Wireframe on Shaded, and that is kind of
| | 00:53 | combination of both of those.
| | 00:55 | It allows you to view the
wires, but with shadings.
| | 00:58 | You can actually see where all of your
vertices and edges are in your models,
| | 01:02 | but also see the actual
result of those with shading.
| | 01:06 | It's a lot easier to visualize things.
| | 01:08 | And I'm going to go ahead and turn that Off.
| | 01:11 | There's other options you can have,
and another nice one is called X-Ray.
| | 01:15 | And what this does is allows you to kind of
see through stuff, in kind of an X-Ray view.
| | 01:20 | This is great for modeling, if you
want to actually kind of visualize what
| | 01:24 | you're modeling, but you still need to see
all the wires, and you need to see everything.
| | 01:28 | This is a really great way to work with that.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to go ahead and turn this off.
| | 01:33 | Many times when you want to be
working with textures, and actually see the
| | 01:37 | textures on the objects that you're
working with, we can turn those on, by going
| | 01:41 | all the way down here to
something called Hardware Texturing.
| | 01:45 | If I turn that on, you can see I've
got some textures on the carpet, the
| | 01:50 | pictures on the walls, and there's like
background image to show what's behind
| | 01:54 | the windows, that sort of thing.
| | 01:57 | So I can actually turn those on or off.
| | 01:59 | There are some keyboard shortcuts that
probably are going to make this a lot
| | 02:03 | easier for you, and those are 4, 5
and 6, and let me show you what those do.
| | 02:08 | When I hit 4, it goes to Wireframe mode.
| | 02:12 | So I can see the wires.
| | 02:13 | When I hit number 5, it goes to Flat
Shaded mode. Number 6 goes to Hardware
| | 02:21 | Texture mode, so 4, 5, 6. 4, 5, 6.
| | 02:25 | Much easier than digging
through the menus in any viewport.
| | 02:30 | So in addition to Shading,
we also have Lighting.
| | 02:35 | So we can actually just use what's
called the Default Lighting, which is this
| | 02:39 | kind of this generic flat lighting.
| | 02:41 | Or we can use the actual lights in the scene.
| | 02:43 | So when I turn this on, you can actually
get kind of an idea to how the lighting
| | 02:48 | is going to look in the scene.
| | 02:50 | And in fact, if you look up here,
we've got four lights up here, and then
| | 02:54 | another little light down here.
| | 02:55 | So I've got total five lights in the scene,
and this is the lighting that they create.
| | 02:59 | Now in addition to Lighting,
we can also view Shadows.
| | 03:04 | So if I want, I can come
down here and turn on Shadows.
| | 03:07 | And you can actually see how the
shadows work with this particular scene.
| | 03:12 | Now the next menu over here is called Show.
| | 03:15 | And what this does is it allows us
to turn on and off specific types of
| | 03:20 | objects in the scenes.
| | 03:21 | So let's say you're modeling, and
you're working with all the NURB surfaces.
| | 03:24 | You may want to turn off other
things that are getting in the ways.
| | 03:27 | You kind of clean out your scene and
just view those things that you're working
| | 03:30 | with at that particular time.
| | 03:32 | So you can just turn things on and off by type.
| | 03:35 | So, for example, if I turned off
Lights, you wouldn't see the Lights.
| | 03:39 | See how those kind of disappeared,
but the Lighting still works.
| | 03:43 | So the actual effect of Lights works,
you just don't see them in the scene, so
| | 03:46 | they don't clutter things up.
| | 03:48 | So if I turn to back on,
you can see how they come on.
| | 03:51 | The next one is actually kind of important.
| | 03:53 | We've got one here called Renderer.
| | 03:55 | This just determines the quality of
the rendering that you have in the scene.
| | 04:00 | So right now we have what's called Default
Quality Rendering, which is what we're seeing.
| | 04:06 | We also have another one called High
Quality Rendering. That actually gives you a
| | 04:09 | much better quality rendering.
| | 04:12 | Now notice how the shadows and the
lighting look a lot more realistic. In fact,
| | 04:16 | if I zoom in here, you can see I've got
kind of this semitransparent shadow on
| | 04:21 | the coffee table, which I wasn't getting before.
| | 04:24 | So this High Quality Rendering actually
will give you a much better idea as to what
| | 04:30 | your final render will look like.
| | 04:33 | The one issue with this is
that it is graphics-card-dependent.
| | 04:37 | So the better the graphics card, the
better this rendering will look, and a
| | 04:42 | lower-level graphics card
might not show it as well.
| | 04:45 | But for a scene of this caliber, you
probably can get away with High Quality
| | 04:49 | Rendering on almost any graphics card.
| | 04:50 | There is an additional Renderer, and
this is actually brand-new to Maya 2011.
| | 04:55 | And this is called Viewport 2.0.
| | 04:58 | What this does is it can get
you even better quality lighting.
| | 05:01 | But again, it makes even more
demands on the graphics card.
| | 05:04 | And another thing you need to be
aware of with Viewport 2.0 is that some
| | 05:09 | functions within Maya don't show up
when you're rendering in that method.
| | 05:13 | So it some things may not seem to work properly,
| | 05:16 | it's because you're not currently
supported in the Viewport 2.0 Renderer, so for
| | 05:21 | the best compromise for me is to go
into High Quality Rendering and use that.
| | 05:28 | There is one more keystroke that I
want to show you. Remember how we did 4, 5
| | 05:33 | and 6, to show Wireframe, Flat Shade, Textures.
| | 05:38 | And if you go 7, you go
to High Quality Rendering.
| | 05:42 | So actually we have four keystrokes,
right along the top of the keyboard.
| | 05:45 | So 4, 5, 6 and 7, and those are
basically just increasing levels of quality, in
| | 05:52 | how you render viewport.
| | 05:54 | Now every viewport renders by itself.
| | 05:56 | So, for example, I can have one here
rendered in High Quality Rendering, and
| | 06:00 | here I could do one in Wireframe or Flat Shaded.
| | 06:04 | So, each individual viewport
has its own rendering style.
| | 06:08 | So you can actually mix-and-
match these if you have multiple
| | 06:11 | viewports available.
| | 06:12 | So those are some of the options for
viewports, and as you work in Maya, you'll
| | 06:17 | find uses for each of these.
| | 06:18 | When you're modeling, you'll probably
stick to the Wireframe menus, and then as
| | 06:22 | you get towards rendering, you
probably get into the Shading and Texturing
| | 06:25 | options of those Windows.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring safe frames and grids| 00:00 | Now when you use Maya, you usually
are animating to a very specific output.
| | 00:05 | A lot times you'll be animating for
film output or video output, and you'll be
| | 00:10 | animating for a very specific aspect ratio.
| | 00:13 | Now your screen, or your viewport
may not match that aspect ratio.
| | 00:18 | For example, here I am on a fairly wide screen.
| | 00:21 | So my perspective
viewport is actually pretty wide.
| | 00:24 | But let's say I was animating for just
standard NTSC Television. I would have a
| | 00:29 | 4x3 screen that I actually need to render for.
| | 00:33 | So what Maya does is it allows you to
actually restrict your viewport so you can
| | 00:37 | actually see exactly what will be rendered.
| | 00:40 | A lot of this happens through the
View menu, under Camera Settings.
| | 00:45 | So, for example, we have what are called Gates.
| | 00:48 | There are two types of gates. One is the
Film Gate, now this is really for people
| | 00:53 | who are using film, and this is
exactly what will be shown on the film.
| | 00:58 | If you know anything about film, you'll
know that the Film Gate is not exactly
| | 01:02 | the same as the resolution that we're using.
| | 01:05 | So if you actually wanted to go for
the Resolution Gate, what that does is
| | 01:09 | actually shows you exactly what will render.
| | 01:13 | And in this case we're set for 640x480.
| | 01:17 | So in this case we have what's called
the Resolution Gate, and when we actually
| | 01:21 | set the Resolution Gate, it puts up
these little green bars that shows you
| | 01:25 | exactly what will render.
| | 01:28 | Now if you want to see that a
little bit more clearly, you can turn on
| | 01:31 | what's called the Gate Mask, and what that
does is it actually kind of masks out the size.
| | 01:39 | You actually have a much clearer view
of exactly what's going to be in the
| | 01:44 | final rendered output.
| | 01:47 | Now in addition to this, anybody who
has done animation or has done work with
| | 01:51 | motion graphics or television, you
always know that we have what's called Safe
| | 01:55 | Actions, which is here, and we also
have Safe Title, which we can do here, and
| | 02:02 | this would just give us
our Safe Action and Title.
| | 02:06 | And then in addition, anybody who's
actually worked with animation will know
| | 02:11 | what a Field Chart is, and this
actually would give you an actual animation
| | 02:16 | field chart, and that's actually a 12-
field Field Chart, for those who
| | 02:23 | actually know what that means.
| | 02:24 | Now a lot of this is actually
accessible through this View menu as well, so you
| | 02:30 | can actually turn on most of this.
| | 02:32 | You can turn on Safe Title.
| | 02:34 | You can turn on Safe Action.
| | 02:36 | You can toggle your Field Chart right here.
| | 02:41 | You can also toggle your masking,
as well your Film Gate and your
| | 02:46 | Resolution Gate as well.
| | 02:48 | And there is one more that you actually
can toggle, and that's called the Grid.
| | 02:51 | You'll notice here it has a little grid
here, and sometimes when you model it's
| | 02:56 | nice to have that grid as kind of a
measurement point or kind like a piece
| | 03:01 | of graph paper under what you are
modeling, so that way you have some reference
| | 03:04 | as to size and shape.
| | 03:06 | So those are some of the ways that you
can configure your viewport in Maya, so
| | 03:11 | that you can animate for a very
specific aspect ratio, and you know that you're
| | 03:16 | actually going to be
outputting what you see on the screen.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting objects | 00:00 | A scene in Maya consists of a
number of different objects.
| | 00:04 | So, for example, in this room we have furniture.
| | 00:08 | And all the furniture in
the room is a separate object.
| | 00:11 | Now if you want, you can select
stuff in your scene object-by-object.
| | 00:14 | So, for example, if I wanted to selected
couch all I have to do is left-click on
| | 00:19 | the couch, or if I want to
select the table and so on.
| | 00:23 | So selecting objects in Maya can be
as simple as just pointing and clicking.
| | 00:28 | If I want to select multiple objects, I
can hold down the Shift key and select
| | 00:34 | as many different objects as I want.
| | 00:36 | Now notice when you select an object it
also shows up here, so you can see that
| | 00:42 | actually every object has a name.
| | 00:44 | This one is called ExecDesk.
| | 00:46 | This was called Officechair.
| | 00:48 | This one is called Couch2, and if I
select multiple objects notice how just
| | 00:55 | the last one selected is showing
up here. Also notice how the last one
| | 00:59 | selected shows up as green.
| | 01:03 | Every time I select a new object it
shows up as green, and the other ones go to
| | 01:07 | white. Now this will be important
later on, so just remember this.
| | 01:12 | Now there are other ways to select objects.
| | 01:15 | We can do a rubber band selection, so
if left-click above here and just drag
| | 01:20 | down, it will select
whatever is inside that rubber band.
| | 01:25 | If I want, I can also do
what's called a lasso select.
| | 01:30 | So here, I have my Select tool, and I
can also do what's called a Lasso tool.
| | 01:37 | So if I want, I can just left-click and
drag, and just lasso-select whatever it
| | 01:43 | is I want it to select.
| | 01:45 | And again, the Shift key
works with that as well.
| | 01:47 | So if I wanted to Shift+Select
with the lasso, I can do that.
| | 01:51 | There is a shortcut key for the
Select tool, and that's the Q key.
| | 01:57 | In fact, this is actually part of another
set of hotkeys that you really need to know.
| | 02:02 | They're called the QWERTY keys, so there is
really the top letter row of the keyboard.
| | 02:09 | So it's QWER. So Q brings you into
select mode, W brings you into move mode, E
| | 02:19 | brings you into rotate mode,
and R brings you into scale mode.
| | 02:25 | Now we are going to work a little bit
more with just select mode, but I wanted
| | 02:28 | to show you those, because these are
going to become very important as you
| | 02:31 | start working with Maya.
| | 02:33 | So let's go ahead and go
back to our Selection tool.
| | 02:35 | I am going to hit Q.
| | 02:37 | And there are other ways of selecting objects.
| | 02:40 | One is to restrict what you select,
so if we go up along the top here to
| | 02:46 | this status bar, you'll notice that we've
actually have all of these little buttons are on.
| | 02:52 | And this allows me to select anything
in the scene, but if I click here and I
| | 02:56 | say All objects off,
| | 02:58 | it means I can't select anything,
because I'm not allowing myself to select
| | 03:04 | any particular object.
| | 03:07 | But if I wanted to, I could, for
example, turn one of these buttons on and be
| | 03:11 | able to select surface objects.
| | 03:13 | But notice here, there is a bunch of
lights at the top here, and those are
| | 03:17 | not being selected.
| | 03:19 | That's because I'm not
allowing myself to select that object.
| | 03:23 | So, for example, if I turn off surface
objects and go over here to rendering
| | 03:28 | objects and right-click over it
and make sure that Lights are on,
| | 03:32 | that means I can actually
select lights, but not surfaces.
| | 03:36 | So that means I can actually
just select only the lights.
| | 03:39 | So this is another way to restrict what
you select to make it easier to select
| | 03:45 | objects within a more complex scene.
| | 03:48 | Now another way to restrict
selection is to use what are called layers.
| | 03:52 | Now I am not going to get into how to
configure layers, but this particular
| | 03:55 | scene does have them open.
| | 03:57 | So what I can do is I can actually turn
on and off layers here by just hitting
| | 04:03 | the V button for visibility.
| | 04:05 | I can also hit what's called this
button here, which actually turns it into a
| | 04:10 | template, which allows you to
kind see it, but not select it.
| | 04:13 | If I go to R, it allows me to
actually shade it, but not select it.
| | 04:18 | And then again, I can actually select it.
| | 04:22 | And again, I am going to go ahead and
turn All objects on here, and you can see
| | 04:25 | that you can select all of this.
| | 04:27 | So those are some of the various
ways that you can actually select
| | 04:30 | objects within Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Move tool | 00:00 | One of the things you'll doing in Maya
a lot is using the Move tool, and this
| | 00:04 | basically just moves things around.
| | 00:07 | It either moves objects around, or parts
of objects, or groups of objects around.
| | 00:12 | So let's take a look at how this works.
| | 00:15 | All you have to do is basically hit the
W key of the keyboard, or select the Move
| | 00:20 | tool from the toolbar.
| | 00:22 | So again Q is the Select
tool, W is the Move tool.
| | 00:28 | So if I have the Move tool selected, I
can use all of the same options I have
| | 00:34 | with the Select tool.
| | 00:35 | So, for example, I could Shift+Select
multiple objects, but notice how the
| | 00:39 | cursor has changed, and I have this
little kind of three arrows over the objects.
| | 00:44 | So, for example, if I select this couch, I
actually have three ways to move this object.
| | 00:50 | I can actually move it along
each of the axes in the scene.
| | 00:56 | Now notice here along the bottom of this
Viewport, I have an X, a Y and a Z axis.
| | 01:03 | So basically X would be east and west,
Z would be north and south, and Y
| | 01:10 | would be up and down.
| | 01:11 | So these are the three dimensions of my
scene, and each one is represented with
| | 01:17 | a color, red, green, blue; X, Y, Z. So
red is X, green is Y, blue is Z. So all
| | 01:28 | I have to do is just left-click and drag on any
one of these arrows, and I can move my object.
| | 01:36 | Or if I click in the middle,
I can move it along any axis.
| | 01:43 | I am going to hit Ctrl+Z here to Undo.
| | 01:47 | If you want to take a look at little bit
more deeply into the Move tool, you can
| | 01:50 | go into your tool Settings.
| | 01:52 | So if I click this button, you'll see
that I actually have some additional
| | 01:56 | options for my Move tool.
| | 01:58 | So, for example, I can move my object
along what's called World space, which is
| | 02:04 | along the X, Y and Z axis of the World.
| | 02:09 | I can move along what's called object
space, which is along the space that the
| | 02:13 | object itself is oriented.
| | 02:15 | I can move along what's called a local
axis or along what are called normals.
| | 02:20 | That's mostly for modeling.
| | 02:22 | I can also create a Custom axis.
| | 02:25 | So let's say I wanted to move this
at 45 degrees or something like that.
| | 02:28 | I can actually type that in here, or I
can set it to any sort of Point Edge or
| | 02:34 | Face in a model and actually move it along that.
| | 02:37 | This is great for precision modeling.
| | 02:40 | Now in addition to just moving the
object itself, we can do what's called Soft
| | 02:46 | Selection, which allows us to actually
move the object at anything close to it.
| | 02:52 | So if select Soft Select, and go
into object mode, you can see I can
| | 02:57 | actually select objects that are very
close to this and actually move them
| | 03:03 | along with this object.
| | 03:05 | This is great for repositioning
certain things in a scene or whatever.
| | 03:10 | This gets a little bit more complex,
but just know that that's there.
| | 03:13 | I am going to go ahead and turn
this off, and I am going to close my
| | 03:17 | Tool Settings window.
| | 03:19 | Now if I want to move multiple objects,
all I have to do is just Shift+Select,
| | 03:23 | and select all of the objects,
and then I can move them around.
| | 03:28 | So when I move an object, all of the
parameters of that object actually show
| | 03:34 | up in the Channel Box.
| | 03:35 | So you can actually see exactly where this is.
| | 03:39 | So those are some of the
basics of the Move tool.
| | 03:42 | Go ahead and practice this, and go
ahead and move some more objects around
| | 03:46 | in the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating and scaling | 00:00 | Maya also allows you to
rotate and scale objects.
| | 00:04 | Now rotation and scale work
pretty similar to the Move tool.
| | 00:07 | Now again, let's reiterate the QWERTY keys here.
| | 00:11 | Q, if we hit the Q, that's select.
| | 00:15 | W is move, E is rotate, and R is scale.
| | 00:20 | So let's go ahead and select this couch.
| | 00:22 | I am going to hit E to go to the Rotate tool.
| | 00:26 | And in fact, I am going zoom in.
Now notice how you can actually zoom and orbit
| | 00:32 | and pan while the Rotate tool is
active. Just as long as you don't click
| | 00:38 | anywhere within this area where the tool
gizmo is you can actually position your
| | 00:44 | camera, so you can see
exactly what you're doing.
| | 00:47 | Now let's take a look at this Rotate tool.
| | 00:50 | Notice how we have, again, three colored axis.
| | 00:54 | We have red, green and blue, and these
correspond to X, Y and Z. But in this
| | 01:01 | case we are rotating around the axis.
| | 01:03 | So, for example, the Y is our up and down axis.
| | 01:07 | If I grab the green bar there, you'll
notice I'm actually rotating around that
| | 01:14 | vertical pivot. It's almost like
there is an axle through the object that's
| | 01:18 | going up and down, and
we're just spinning that axle.
| | 01:21 | So if wanted to rotate around
the X axis, that would be this
| | 01:25 | particular direction.
| | 01:27 | So we would be rotating around that
axle, and the same for the Z axis.
| | 01:31 | And in fact, I am going to go ahead and
hit Ctrl+Z to undo my way out of this.
| | 01:37 | Now also notice that there is about
light blue ring completely around this three-
| | 01:43 | colored gizmo, and that light blue ring
always is on the direct outside of that.
| | 01:49 | Now what that ring does is it allows me
to rotate around a pivot directly down
| | 01:55 | the direction that we're looking.
| | 01:56 | So right now I am looking
kind of through this direction.
| | 02:00 | That's how I will rotate.
| | 02:01 | So if I go kind of in this upward
direction, I would rotate around there, so
| | 02:06 | this outer ring just rotates
around the direction of view.
| | 02:11 | Now if I want, I can also click in
between any one of these green axes, and
| | 02:17 | basically it allows me to
rotate around all of the axes.
| | 02:21 | I personally find this a little hard
to control, so what I tend to do when I
| | 02:26 | rotate is I rotate in one direction, and
then I rotate in another direction as well.
| | 02:34 | Now the next tool we want
to look at is called scale.
| | 02:37 | And this works very similar to the
Rotate tool and to the Move tool.
| | 02:42 | And again, notice how we have three axes.
| | 02:44 | We have red, green and blue, and by
grabbing any one of these handles we can
| | 02:50 | basically scale along any of
these axes, which is all kind of nice.
| | 02:56 | But also notice how in the middle, if
I grab that, it scales it uniformly.
| | 03:01 | So if I just wanted to have a bigger
couch with the same proportions, I would
| | 03:06 | just go ahead and grab the middle.
| | 03:08 | If I wanted to make the couch a
little bit longer, I'd grab the Z axis.
| | 03:13 | If you wanted to make couch little
bit deeper, grab the X axis and so on.
| | 03:19 | So now that we have all of these
tools - we have move, rotate and scale -
| | 03:23 | we can actually go ahead and
rearrange some of the furniture.
| | 03:27 | So let's go ahead and select the couch,
the coffee table, and the other the
| | 03:33 | couch, and let's go ahead and rearrange them.
| | 03:34 | I can do that by just rotating them,
and if I want I can also move them.
| | 03:42 | So, for example, if I wanted to move
this one here, I can select that, and I can
| | 03:49 | move this one over here,
and I can move this one here.
| | 03:56 | And this allows me to basically
reposition my couches, and basically
| | 04:03 | rearrange the furniture.
| | 04:05 | So what I'm doing here is I am basically
just using the move, the rotate, and at
| | 04:10 | this point not the Scale tool, but just
by using move and rotate I can actually
| | 04:14 | rearrange the furniture in my little office.
| | 04:17 | So those are some of the basics on how
to rotate and scale objects, and with the
| | 04:22 | combination of move, move, rotate and
scale will allow you to basically position
| | 04:26 | any object in the scene
just about anywhere you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating pivots | 00:00 | When you rotate and scale anything in
Maya, you have to rotate it and scale it
| | 00:06 | around a specific point.
| | 00:08 | So, for example, if you imagine an axle
going through an object around which you
| | 00:13 | rotate it, that axle has to be
positioned in order for you to rotate the object
| | 00:18 | around your desired point.
| | 00:20 | So, let's take a look at,
for example, these two spheres.
| | 00:24 | If I select this blue sphere, and hit E,
to get into Rotate mode, you can see
| | 00:28 | that this is pretty much
rotating around the center of the ball.
| | 00:32 | So, the ball is basically rolling.
| | 00:34 | If I select the red ball, notice
how the pivot point is actually at the
| | 00:40 | bottom of the ball.
| | 00:41 | So, actually, I'm rotating around the bottom.
| | 00:45 | Notice how this gives a very
different effect than this.
| | 00:49 | Now, the same actually goes for scaling.
| | 00:53 | If I hit R to get into Scale mode, you
can see that when I scale this, this is
| | 00:58 | scaling around the center.
| | 01:01 | If I scale this, this is
scaling up from the bottom.
| | 01:06 | So, this is all dependent
upon where that pivot point is.
| | 01:09 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and just
hit Delete and delete out these spheres.
| | 01:14 | Let's go ahead and focus
in on this office chair.
| | 01:17 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and select
it and hit W to get into Move mode, so we
| | 01:22 | can kind of see where this pivot point is.
| | 01:25 | Now if you notice here, by default, a
lot of times when you build something, or
| | 01:30 | you bring an object in that you've
imported, a lot of times, the pivot point
| | 01:35 | will not be in the right place.
| | 01:38 | So, for example, with his chair, if I
went to rotate the chair, I could actually
| | 01:43 | swivel it, and it would look fine.
| | 01:45 | But if I go to tilt the chair back, you
notice how, well, it's tilting around the middle.
| | 01:50 | It's not tilting around where it really
should be, which is where that chair is
| | 01:55 | attached to the base.
| | 01:57 | So, in order to change that, I need
to change where the pivot point is.
| | 02:03 | I can do this by hitting a
keystroke on the keyboard.
| | 02:07 | Now, this is one of the few places
where the Mac and PC differences show up.
| | 02:13 | On the PC keyboard, you're
going to hit the Insert key.
| | 02:17 | Notice when you hit the
Insert key, these lines show up.
| | 02:21 | That tells me I'm in Move Pivot mode.
| | 02:24 | Now, on the Macintosh keyboard,
you are going to hit the Home key.
| | 02:28 | Now, once you've hit that key,
these little lines will show up.
| | 02:32 | Now I can just grab the lines.
| | 02:34 | It's pretty much like the Move tool.
| | 02:36 | I can just move that pivot to exactly where I
need it in order for that chair to pivot properly.
| | 02:46 | Once I've done that, all I have to do to
jump out of it is go into Move or Rotate mode.
| | 02:51 | So I'm going to hit E to go into Rotate mode.
| | 02:53 | Now you can see, this chair
is tilting along its axis.
| | 02:59 | Now, there is one other way to
change the pivot point, and that's by
| | 03:03 | centering the pivot.
| | 03:05 | Now, for example, if I have this chair
selected, I can go under the Modify menu,
| | 03:10 | and you'll have an option
here called Center Pivot.
| | 03:14 | Now, a lot of times, you'll have an
object where the pivot will be in some
| | 03:17 | strange place, and you just want
to snap it to a point where you can
| | 03:20 | actually work with this.
| | 03:21 | So a lot of times, you'll just hit
Center Pivot, and it will go into the
| | 03:25 | place where you want it.
| | 03:26 | Then if you hit Insert, or Home on the Mac,
you can then adjust it to where you want.
| | 03:33 | So sometimes, that's going to be the process.
| | 03:35 | If you can't find the pivot, you
center it, and then you move it by
| | 03:38 | hitting Insert or Home.
| | 03:40 | So, as you can see, positioning the pivot
is very important in whatever you do in Maya.
| | 03:46 | Now, if you're going to make any sort
of mechanical assembly or animating any
| | 03:49 | object, you want to make sure that
it's rotating around the proper center.
| | 03:54 | By moving the pivot to the proper
place, everything will work out fine.
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| Understanding the Channel Box | 00:00 | There are going to be times in Maya
where you'll need to type in numbers, where
| | 00:04 | you'll need to move things in very
specific amounts, or rotate things very
| | 00:08 | specific degrees, and so on.
| | 00:10 | It's these times when you'll need
an interface called the Channel Box.
| | 00:15 | Now the Channel Box is typically
located to the right side of the screen.
| | 00:19 | So if we select an object we can
actually turn on the Channel Box right here.
| | 00:25 | So we have the Attribute
Editor and the Channel Box.
| | 00:28 | The Channel Box is actually right on
top of the Layer Editor, but it's really
| | 00:33 | just the top half of this window.
| | 00:36 | In the Channel Box, you'll notice what
we have is we have numerical values for
| | 00:42 | all the translation,
rotations and scale of the object.
| | 00:47 | Also, if you scroll down, now if you have a
bigger screen you may not have to scroll down,
| | 00:52 | but you'll also see the operations that
have been used to actually create this object.
| | 00:58 | And a lot of times you may be
able to open those up to access
| | 01:00 | additional parameters.
| | 01:02 | But right now we're just going to look
at rotation and translation and scale.
| | 01:06 | So if I were to, for example, move
this object around, let's say I wanted
| | 01:10 | to rotate this chair,
| | 01:12 | so if I hit E to Rotate you can notice how
I can rotate it along each individual axis.
| | 01:19 | Now also notice in the Channel
Box how those numbers change.
| | 01:24 | So, for example, if I rotated it any
number of different degrees, you'll see
| | 01:29 | that my Rotation values are
all changing as I manipulate it.
| | 01:34 | Now if wanted to I could actually
just type the numbers in right here.
| | 01:38 | So, for example, if I want to rotate
on 0 degrees I can do that, and I can
| | 01:43 | actually do that for all
of them to set it back to 0.
| | 01:47 | Now if I wanted to rotate these all a
very specific amount, I can highlight all
| | 01:52 | of these and type in a number.
| | 01:54 | Let's say I wanted to rotate
it 45 degrees in all directions.
| | 01:58 | I just highlight them all, type 45
into one box, and it rotates all of them.
| | 02:04 | And again, I could do the same
just to get them all back to 0.
| | 02:07 | So I highlight them all by left-
clicking and dragging over all of them and just
| | 02:12 | hit 0, and it goes back to wherever I want.
| | 02:16 | Now this works the same for anything.
| | 02:18 | So, for example, if I wanted to move it,
I could move it in one unit back, or I
| | 02:25 | could move it to put that
right back to 0 and so on.
| | 02:29 | Now there is another way to
manipulate these values, and that's by actually
| | 02:34 | dragging in the Viewport.
| | 02:36 | So, for example, if I took Rotate Y and
I position my mouse over here, over the
| | 02:42 | Viewport and I middle-click and drag
left and right, notice how it becomes
| | 02:50 | almost like a virtual slider.
| | 02:52 | So I can actually rotate that and
actually have it kind of like a number, and
| | 02:59 | actually know exactly which value I am rotating.
| | 03:01 | So if I wanted to rotate it
along the X axis, again, I am just
| | 03:05 | middle-clicking and dragging.
| | 03:07 | And I am just going to go ahead
and undo this so we can go back here.
| | 03:10 | Now if I want I can also, in the
Channel Box, turn on or off my manipulators.
| | 03:15 | So this button here turns on my
manipulators or turns them off.
| | 03:20 | And here, this switches between slow,
medium, and fast channel sliding.
| | 03:27 | So if I were going this way or this way,
and I wanted to go faster I just click
| | 03:32 | this, and that actually spins it a
lot faster or spins it very slow.
| | 03:38 | And typically, you want to keep it on medium.
| | 03:41 | And this actually determines what's
called Linear and Hyperbolic, which means if
| | 03:45 | you slow down, it will rotate slowly,
and if you move your mouse a little bit
| | 03:50 | faster, it will rotate more fastly.
| | 03:53 | So it's kind of more like an
accelerator button or something like that.
| | 03:57 | So those are some of the basics of
how to work with the Channel Box.
| | 04:01 | There are additional things
that you can do in the Channel Box.
| | 04:05 | So, for example, if I go over this
Translate X, if I right-click over it you
| | 04:11 | will see there is a whole bunch of additional
options that I can get to in the Channel Box.
| | 04:16 | Now when you get into animation you'll see
that you can actually set Key Frames here.
| | 04:21 | We can also Cut, Copy, and Paste values.
| | 04:24 | So if you have a value in one
channel and you want to paste it to another
| | 04:27 | channel, you can do that here as well.
| | 04:30 | You can also lock channels.
| | 04:32 | So, for example, let's say I didn't
want to move this particular chair.
| | 04:36 | So, for example, I want the actual
chair itself to be kind of frozen in space
| | 04:41 | and only able to rotate.
| | 04:43 | So what I can do is I can Shift+Select
all of these channels, right-click over
| | 04:49 | them and just go Lock.
| | 04:51 | And what happens now, you can see these
are all kind of grayed out, and now when
| | 04:56 | I select this, and I go to move it,
it's grayed out. I can't move it.
| | 05:01 | So this is a great way to kind of
restrict how your objects are moving is by
| | 05:06 | locking or unlocking specific channel.
| | 05:09 | So, for example, here if I just
Unlock Z, and I go to move it,
| | 05:14 | I can only move along that Z axis.
| | 05:17 | So as you can see, the Channel Box
is very handy when you want to type in
| | 05:22 | precise numeric values.
| | 05:24 | It's also a great way to adjust
parameters using kind of like a slider
| | 05:28 | mentality, when you middle mouse click and drag.
| | 05:31 | So I'm sure you'll be using the
Channel Box a lot as you use Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Attribute Editor | 00:00 | Now, if you want to dig even deeper into
an object, you can use the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:05 | Now, this has some of the features of
the Channel Box, where you can actually do
| | 00:08 | numeric entry on the
position and rotation of an object.
| | 00:12 | But it also allows you to control the
parameters that construct the object itself.
| | 00:17 | So, here I have a simple scene here.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to go ahead and select the dog's head.
| | 00:22 | Now, you notice in the Channel Box we
have all of the rotational information.
| | 00:26 | Now, if I click here into the Attribute Editor,
you'll notice we get a lot more information.
| | 00:32 | Now, the Attribute Editor
is actually built up of tabs.
| | 00:35 | So, each node, or each thing that
changes the object, has its own tab.
| | 00:42 | So the actual main tab, the very
first tab in the Attribute Editor is your
| | 00:47 | Transformation Attribute.
| | 00:48 | So, for example, if I have my
translation, my rotation, and my scale, and I can
| | 00:52 | certainly type in numbers.
| | 00:54 | I also can deal with my pivot information.
| | 00:57 | I can actually display the
pivots of my object if I want.
| | 01:01 | I can also display what's called a
Handle, which allows me to grab the object.
| | 01:06 | So, you can see how the Handle is
showing up here on the dog's head.
| | 01:12 | This actually can be used with the Selection
Mask to actually just grab only the Handle.
| | 01:17 | So you can actually flip that on and off.
| | 01:19 | Now, each tab has its own function.
| | 01:23 | So, for example, if I go over here,
this is the actual mesh of the dog.
| | 01:28 | So, in this, we have
things such as Render Stats.
| | 01:31 | We also have things that allow
us to smooth the mesh and so on.
| | 01:35 | As we start to work with modeling and
building objects, we'll be using the
| | 01:40 | Attribute Editor a lot more.
| | 01:41 | So I just kind of want to give
you just a brief overview of it.
| | 01:44 | Here, we have some left and right arrows
that allow us to go through each of the
| | 01:48 | nodes that affect this object.
| | 01:50 | For example, here we have one for Blend
Shape, which allows me to blink the dog's eyes.
| | 01:56 | Usually, towards the end, you have
the materials that are on the dog.
| | 02:01 | So, for example, here, I have the
color for the head, which includes that
| | 02:05 | texture map, and I also
have another one for the nose.
| | 02:09 | So if I wanted to change the color of the
dog's nose, this would be one place to do that.
| | 02:14 | So, as we start working in Maya, we'll start
to use the Attribute Editor a little bit more.
| | 02:19 | Probably the best way to
understand it is to actually use it.
| | 02:22 | So, as we get into modeling and
texturing, we'll be using the Attribute Editor
| | 02:26 | a lot more.
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| Using the Hotbox| 00:00 | Now, as you get used to Maya and you
start working with the menus, there are
| | 00:04 | times when you want to go a lot faster.
| | 00:06 | That's when we'll start to use a
little trick called the Hotbox.
| | 00:11 | Now remember when we click in the
Viewport, and we hit the Spacebar, we
| | 00:15 | typically go out to the
Four View, and then we zoom in.
| | 00:18 | But also remember when we hold down the
Spacebar, up comes all of these menus.
| | 00:24 | Now, this is what is called the Hotbox.
| | 00:27 | Now, this is actually all the menus in Maya.
| | 00:30 | Now, instead of going here, and
switching between say polygons, and surfaces to
| | 00:35 | get to all of these different menus,
you can get to them all at once just by
| | 00:39 | clicking in the Viewport and
hitting the Spacebar and holding it down.
| | 00:42 | So here I have the Animation menu.
| | 00:44 | I have some modeling menus. I have Particles.
| | 00:48 | I have Lighting/Shading.
| | 00:49 | I have most of my main menus
right here wherever I am working.
| | 00:54 | I also have along the top
my File, Edit and so on.
| | 00:59 | Now, we can actually customize
this by using these Hotbox controls.
| | 01:05 | If we click on this, you can see we
can actually show the Polygon menu.
| | 01:09 | Let's say I wanted to just do
Polygons Only. Well, this will only show the
| | 01:13 | Polygons menu. Or if I want to just
show the Rendering menu only, it will only
| | 01:18 | show Rendering menu. Or if I want I
can show Rendering and Animation.
| | 01:23 | So I can actually have one or two.
| | 01:25 | So really, I can configure exactly which
menus are available underneath this Spacebar.
| | 01:33 | So by hitting the Spacebar, going to
Hotbox Controls I could actually Show All,
| | 01:36 | and I can see all of my menu options.
| | 01:38 | Now, the Hotbox has a couple
of other additional options.
| | 01:42 | If I click here in the center,
I can actually change my view.
| | 01:45 | So, for example, right now I am in the
Perspective View, but if I want, I can go
| | 01:49 | to a Side View, or a Top View,
or a Front View very quickly.
| | 01:55 | In fact, you can get to the point
where you can just almost gesturally
| | 01:59 | go between Viewports.
| | 02:00 | So you just hit the Spacebar and move
your mouse, and you can go from one view
| | 02:04 | to the other very, very quickly.
| | 02:07 | Another nice handy little feature inside
this Hotbox, and this is one that I use
| | 02:11 | a lot is this Recent Commands.
| | 02:14 | So let's say you're modeling, or you're
doing the same command over and over and
| | 02:17 | over again. Rather than going up here
and fishing through the menus, you just go
| | 02:21 | to Recent Commands, and you can just
have a list of your most recent commands.
| | 02:25 | You can just go down the list, and
you can pick out whichever one you want.
| | 02:30 | So if I want to go all the way back to the
point where I opened a scene, I can do that.
| | 02:35 | So those are some of the basics of the Hotbox.
| | 02:37 | Now, the Hotbox isn't for everybody.
| | 02:39 | A lot of times people get into Maya by
using the menus first, and then once they
| | 02:43 | understand the structure of Maya, then
they go into the Hotbox and start using
| | 02:47 | the menus to speed up their workflow.
| | 02:50 | But regardless of when you start using
it, it will make things faster to use.
| | 02:55 | So try and use it and get
used to using the Hotbox.
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| Working with marking menus| 00:00 | Maya has a number of
context-sensitive menus as well.
| | 00:04 | So these are menus that change
depending upon what sort of object or
| | 00:08 | situation you are in.
| | 00:10 | These are called Marking menus.
| | 00:12 | Let me show you how these work.
| | 00:14 | Basically a Marking menu will show up
anytime you right-click over an object.
| | 00:19 | So here I have a couple of objects in the scene.
| | 00:22 | I have two spheres, one made of
Polygons, one made of NURBS, and a Light.
| | 00:29 | So if I right-click over the blue sphere,
you will see that a number of options show up.
| | 00:35 | Here I have all my different Component
options, or different ways to Edit and
| | 00:39 | Reshape this object.
| | 00:41 | And as we get into modeling,
you will see how this works.
| | 00:44 | But also we have a menu down here.
| | 00:46 | Now, this allows me to Select the
object, Select the object's Hierarchy.
| | 00:51 | That means if it's in a group with
other objects, you can select everything.
| | 00:55 | Also, it allows me to do
something such as change my Materials and
| | 00:59 | Material Attributes.
| | 01:00 | In other words, what sort
of color this object is.
| | 01:03 | So, for example, if I right-click here
over Material Attributes, you can see
| | 01:06 | that this is a blue sphere, and here I
am in my Attribute's Editor, so I can
| | 01:11 | actually change that color to
whatever color I want and so on.
| | 01:15 | And that's simply by right-clicking
over that and going to Material Attributes.
| | 01:19 | There are also ways to Assign New
Materials and that sort of thing.
| | 01:23 | Another really important one
is what's called Templating.
| | 01:27 | So if we go here to Actions, we
have something called Template.
| | 01:31 | Now, this is great if you are wanting to
trace over an existing object, or 3D object.
| | 01:37 | You can just Template it, and what that
does is it kind of takes stuff away, and
| | 01:41 | it turns it this kind of pinkish color.
| | 01:43 | And what happens is is that now
that that object is templates,
| | 01:48 | I can't select it or move it.
| | 01:50 | It's just kind of there in the scene
as a template that I can use to either
| | 01:54 | trace over or use as reference,
so it doesn't get in the way.
| | 01:57 | Again, if I right-click over this,
I can go and Untemplate it as well.
| | 02:03 | So if we go to a different type of object,
such as this NURBS sphere, as opposed
| | 02:08 | to this Polygonal sphere, the NURBS
sphere has slightly different options.
| | 02:12 | If I right-click over this, you will
see these options here are a little bit
| | 02:16 | different, because this object
is built a little bit differently.
| | 02:20 | Now, down here, along this menu, I
have pretty much the same options.
| | 02:24 | So here, for example, I have
Isoparm, Hull, Control Vertex.
| | 02:30 | If I right-click over my Polygonal
sphere, I have Edge, Vertex, Face, which are
| | 02:36 | the way that these are constructed.
| | 02:37 | Now, some objects may not have
as much over their Marking menus.
| | 02:41 | So, for example, if I click
over Light, I just get the menu.
| | 02:45 | I don't get any options as to how to edit it.
| | 02:48 | So it really depends upon what
object you right-click over as to what
| | 02:53 | Marking menu will show up.
| | 02:55 | But as you start to use Maya, you
definitely want to rely on Marking menus, and
| | 03:00 | we are going to be using them a lot.
| | 03:01 | So just know that they are there
and know how to get into them.
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| Customizing the interface| 00:00 | Maya allows its interface to be
customized in a wide variety of ways, so let me
| | 00:04 | show you some of the more basic
ways to customize how you view Maya.
| | 00:09 | One of the easiest way is to
start with the Preferences.
| | 00:12 | So if we go into Window, under
Settings/Preferences, we have what are
| | 00:19 | called Preferences.
| | 00:20 | And these allow us to basically change
our Preferences for just about anything.
| | 00:25 | This is where we can change
how the objects Display in Maya.
| | 00:31 | So, for example, if we want our
Animation, how our Animation is ghosting.
| | 00:35 | How big are our Manipulators?
| | 00:38 | How we want to show NURBS or Polygons or so on.
| | 00:42 | Probably the most
interesting one is UI Elements.
| | 00:45 | So if we go up here to the Interface
tab, under UI Elements, we can actually
| | 00:50 | turn on and off all the different UI Elements.
| | 00:54 | Let's go ahead and turn off each one.
| | 00:56 | So, for example, if I turn off the tool
Box, you can see there, that goes away.
| | 01:00 | The Help Line is along the very bottom.
| | 01:02 | The Command Line, the Range slider, so we are
actually kind of working from the bottom up.
| | 01:08 | And then our Time slider.
| | 01:10 | If you weren't doing any Animation,
this may be a much better way to model.
| | 01:14 | For example, you would have a lot more room here.
| | 01:17 | We can also remove what are called the
Shelves, which are all of these kind of
| | 01:20 | preset options here along the
top, so we can take those out.
| | 01:25 | And we can also take out what's called
the Status Line, which is right here.
| | 01:29 | Now, you are thinking, well, gosh,
I don't have any options left.
| | 01:32 | But hey, we still have the Hotbox here,
and we can get to most of these here.
| | 01:37 | So you can actually almost work in this in
kind of like a heads-up display sort of option.
| | 01:42 | So let's go ahead and turn all of these back on.
| | 01:45 | So you can see how you can easily turn
on and off elements in the interface to
| | 01:50 | give yourself more room on the Desktop.
| | 01:53 | There are a lot more options here under
Preferences, but let's go ahead and show
| | 01:57 | you some other options here.
| | 01:59 | Another nice handy interface
element is to be able to tear off menus.
| | 02:03 | Let's say, for example, we were modeling,
and we were using a lot of Edit Mesh
| | 02:08 | commands, and we kept pulling down this menu,
just to find the menu options that we want.
| | 02:13 | Well, if you click on this dotted line
here, you can actually tear off any menu.
| | 02:19 | So now as I start working, I
have all of these menus right there.
| | 02:24 | So I don't have to keep
reaching up here to pull it down.
| | 02:27 | It's all right here.
| | 02:29 | So I can work, grab, work, grab, and so on.
| | 02:32 | Sometimes this is a lot faster than using the
menus, or even using something like the Hotbox.
| | 02:39 | Now, another type of menu that can be torn off
are the Attribute Editors and the Channel Box.
| | 02:45 | So, for example, if I have an object in
the scene, in fact, I need to create an
| | 02:49 | object, so let's go ahead and just go
Create > Polygon Primitives > Sphere.
| | 02:53 | So let's say I have a sphere in the
scene here. If I want, I can actually
| | 02:57 | tear off my Channel Box.
| | 03:01 | So all I have to do is grab.
| | 03:03 | I can do that with my Attribute Editor as well.
| | 03:06 | See this dotted line here?
| | 03:07 | I can just grab it and tear that off.
| | 03:10 | Now, this may not be the solution for
this particular screen, because I am
| | 03:14 | working at a very reduced resolution.
| | 03:17 | But if you are working, for example, on
a dual-screen display, it would make a
| | 03:21 | lot of sense to tear off some menus
and put them on the second screen, so you
| | 03:25 | have a lot more room on your primary workspace.
| | 03:29 | So these are just some very simple
tips and tricks for optimizing the way
| | 03:34 | that you view Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Polygonal Modeling TechniquesCreating polygonal objects | 00:01 | So let's get started with
making some stuff in Maya.
| | 00:03 | We are going to start with a form of
modeling called Polygonal modeling.
| | 00:07 | And this is probably the easiest
type of modeling to understand.
| | 00:11 | Now, Maya has actually two types of modeling.
| | 00:14 | One is Polygonal modeling.
| | 00:16 | The other is called NURBS
modeling, which we will get to.
| | 00:18 | Now, with any sort of modeling, you
generally start with a primitive object or
| | 00:24 | a basic type of object, and then use that as
the basis for building something more complex.
| | 00:30 | So whenever we start with
Polygonal modeling, we usually start with
| | 00:34 | what's called a Primitive.
| | 00:36 | We can get to these by
going into the Create menu.
| | 00:39 | And under Polygonal Primitives, we
have all of our Primitives right here.
| | 00:44 | Now, I am just going to go ahead
and tear off this menu so we have it.
| | 00:48 | But also, you can get to
this on your shelves right here.
| | 00:52 | Now, all I have to do is go to the
Polygons tab, and you will see that we have a
| | 00:57 | number of these primitives as well.
| | 01:00 | So these are all mirrored here.
| | 01:01 | But let's go ahead and play
with the actual menus themselves.
| | 01:05 | Now, the Polygonal
Primitives are really this list here:
| | 01:08 | Sphere, Cube, Cylinder, Cone, and so on.
| | 01:11 | So let me show you how to set up some of
these and how to work with these Primitives.
| | 01:17 | So let's go ahead and just
start with the simplest one of all.
| | 01:19 | And that's called the Sphere.
| | 01:20 | So I am going to go ahead and click on Sphere.
| | 01:23 | And notice how my cursor changes,
and it tells me to drag on the grid.
| | 01:26 | So I left-click and drag, and bingo.
| | 01:30 | There is the Sphere.
| | 01:31 | And I can go ahead and
navigate around, and you can see, yes.
| | 01:34 | It's a round thing. It's a Sphere.
| | 01:36 | Well, one of the things I can do when
I create a Sphere or after I create a
| | 01:41 | Sphere is I can continue to modify this.
| | 01:43 | And actually this is true for
almost any Polygonal object.
| | 01:46 | So if I go down in my Channel Box
here, you will notice I have an Input
| | 01:51 | called the polySphere1.
| | 01:53 | And this actually tells me all the
information I need to know to create this Sphere.
| | 01:58 | So I have the Radius, the number of
Subdivisions, which are the number of
| | 02:02 | latitude and longitude lines in that Sphere.
| | 02:05 | In other words, how detailed is that Sphere?
| | 02:08 | Now, I can change any of these just by
typing in a number or agai,n by middle
| | 02:13 | click and dragging, so I can make it
bigger or smaller, or I can add and
| | 02:17 | subtract more detail.
| | 02:19 | If I want, I can go into the
Attribute Editor, and I can also find
| | 02:24 | this polySphere1 tab.
| | 02:26 | And instead of sliding in the Viewport,
I can just use these sliders here.
| | 02:31 | Very much the same thing.
| | 02:32 | So you can create your
size and your shape as well.
| | 02:39 | Now, with any of these Polygonal
Objects, you are going to have a Control
| | 02:42 | panel very similar.
| | 02:44 | Now, each object is going to be
different in the type of controls it has.
| | 02:48 | So let me show you some of
the other types of objects.
| | 02:51 | Now, probably one of the
most popular ones is the Cube.
| | 02:55 | How we create that is we left-click and
drag to drag out the base and then drag
| | 03:00 | up to set the height.
| | 03:02 | I am going to go over here to the Channel Box.
| | 03:05 | And you can see here we have, again,
Width, Height, Depth, and we also have
| | 03:10 | number of Subdivisions.
| | 03:11 | Now, I can highlight all of those and
just add Subdivisions to all of them or
| | 03:16 | just highlight a single one.
| | 03:18 | And again, I am just middle-clicking
and dragging to change those values.
| | 03:22 | Now, another one we can use is Cylinder.
| | 03:27 | Again, very, very simple.
| | 03:29 | It's just a simple cylinder.
| | 03:31 | And some of the options we have on that
are Subdivisions and Height and Width.
| | 03:36 | All of these options are also
available by clicking into the Tools options.
| | 03:40 | I am going to move this to the other
side, so we can take a look at this.
| | 03:44 | So when I click on this little
box, up comes my Tool Settings.
| | 03:48 | Now, what I can do is actually set the
Radius and the Height and actually type
| | 03:52 | in very specific numbers.
| | 03:54 | And I can change really any of these
parameters I want, and then when I just
| | 03:58 | click on there, it actually
comes up exactly as specified.
| | 04:03 | So you really have two methods of
creating a Polygonal Object in Maya.
| | 04:08 | One is by going to the Tool Settings,
typing in the numbers, and just clicking,
| | 04:13 | and the object appears.
| | 04:14 | The second is by just clicking on the
Creation panel, dragging into the object
| | 04:22 | here, and then going into the
Channel Box to change the Parameters here.
| | 04:26 | So you can either create it
before or adjust it afterwards.
| | 04:31 | Typically, how I like to do it is just
click and drag, and then I get my values here.
| | 04:36 | That's kind of the way that I do it, but
to each its own, and everybody can do it
| | 04:40 | whatever way works best for them.
| | 04:41 | So we have gone through a number of these here.
| | 04:44 | Some of the more interesting ones -
| | 04:46 | Pipe is actually kind of nice.
| | 04:47 | It's a great way to create like
tubing or glasses, that sort of thing.
| | 04:52 | Another nice one is this Helix,
great way to make springs.
| | 04:57 | Some of these are
actually kind of nice and canned.
| | 04:59 | And actually with that Helix what's
really kind of nice is that you can actually
| | 05:04 | change the number of Coils.
| | 05:05 | You can actually make it bigger or smaller.
| | 05:08 | You can change the Height.
| | 05:09 | So you could actually animate that
Height and actually make it all springy like
| | 05:12 | that if you wanted to. It's very nice.
| | 05:15 | Some other nice ones are a Soccer Ball
is actually pretty nice, because it's
| | 05:19 | kind of a difficult
surface to model by yourself.
| | 05:22 | And that could actually become something
like a geodesic dome or something like that.
| | 05:26 | And then we also have what
are called the Platonic Solids.
| | 05:30 | And those are basically Dodecahedron,
Icosahedron, Octahedron, and Tetrahedron.
| | 05:38 | So, for example, if we wanted
an Octahedron, that would be an
| | 05:41 | eight-sided object.
| | 05:43 | If I click on this tool for Platonic
Solids and do Dodecahedron, then I get
| | 05:50 | a ten-sided object. And so on.
| | 05:53 | So these are the basic Polygonal Primitives.
| | 05:55 | As you can see, there's a whole wide
variety of Primitives that we can use.
| | 06:00 | And which one you choose really depends
on where you are going with your modeling.
| | 06:03 | Each one is going to be basically the
basic structure of a more complex object.
| | 06:08 | So, for example, if you were modeling a
helmet, you might want to start with a Sphere.
| | 06:13 | But if you are modeling a
character's torso, you may want to start with
| | 06:16 | a Cylinder or a Cube.
| | 06:18 | It really depends on where
you want to go down the road.
| | 06:22 | As you can see, Polygonal Primitives
really are good basic starting point
| | 06:25 | for any complex model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with polygonal components| 00:00 | When modeling Polygonal Objects,
typically you start with a Primitive and then
| | 00:05 | reshape that into something
a little bit more complex.
| | 00:09 | Now, in order to reshape it, you need
to kind of get into the substructure of
| | 00:14 | the object and move it around.
| | 00:16 | Now, this substructure is called Components.
| | 00:19 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:21 | Let's start off with just a basic Cube.
| | 00:23 | I am going to go ahead and
drag it up to set my Height.
| | 00:26 | I am going to hit 5 to shade it.
| | 00:29 | And then I want a little bit more
detail, so we have some stuff to work with.
| | 00:32 | So I am going to go here into my
Channel Box, highlight my Subdivisions,
| | 00:35 | Height, Width, and Depth.
| | 00:36 | And just type in the number 4.
| | 00:38 | So now I have got four Subdivisions on each side.
| | 00:41 | So I have a little bit of detail to work with.
| | 00:43 | Now, this particular box is made
up of three types of Components.
| | 00:50 | We have a three-dimensional object, and each
Component represents one of the dimensions.
| | 00:55 | In fact, let's go ahead
and take a look at these.
| | 00:58 | So if I right-click over these, I am
going to go into my Marking menu, and I
| | 01:02 | have three basic components:
| | 01:04 | Vertex, Edge, and Face.
| | 01:07 | So let me show you what each of these are.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to go ahead, right-click
over to Vertex, and notice how all these
| | 01:13 | little points come up.
| | 01:14 | Now, each one of these points is a
Vertex, and that's really just a point.
| | 01:19 | And the point is what? One-dimensional object.
| | 01:21 | So Vertex is just a point on the surface.
| | 01:25 | Now, if we go here to Edge, you will notice I
can click on the Edges, and the Edge is what?
| | 01:31 | An Edge is a line. What's a line?
| | 01:33 | A line requires two dimensions.
| | 01:35 | It actually connects two vertices, or
connects two single points with a line.
| | 01:41 | If I go into Face, well, that's a plane.
| | 01:46 | And so that's the third dimensional object.
| | 01:48 | So what we have is we have points, lines,
and faces, or vertices, edges, and faces.
| | 01:56 | Now, if I right-click over here, I also
have a mode called Multi mode, which is
| | 02:01 | actually very handy.
| | 02:03 | And this allows me to pick anything.
| | 02:04 | So I can just go here, and I can pick a Vertex.
| | 02:07 | I can pick an Edge, or I can pick a Face.
| | 02:12 | Now, any one of these can be moved
and manipulated to reshape the object.
| | 02:17 | Now, before we do this, let's go ahead, and I
want to show you one more way to select this.
| | 02:22 | If we go up here into Component mode
or select by Component Type, you will
| | 02:28 | notice here that I also have
Vertices, Edges, and Faces.
| | 02:34 | So if I wanted to, I could actually
select by Vertices, Edges, or Faces.
| | 02:39 | Now, generally, I like to use the
Marking menus. It's a lot faster.
| | 02:44 | This is really kind of almost like
an archival way of working with this.
| | 02:48 | I much prefer just going into Multi
mode or Vertex, Edge, or Face mode and just
| | 02:53 | selecting what I want,
because it's so much faster.
| | 02:56 | So what you can do is you can
select Vertices, Edges, or Faces.
| | 02:59 | So let's say, for example, we are in
Vertex mode, and I wanted to reshape this.
| | 03:03 | All I have to do is just rubber-band-
select all of the Vertices, and notice how
| | 03:08 | they show up in yellow.
| | 03:10 | And then just select Move, Rotate, or Scale.
| | 03:13 | So if I want to translate those,
I just hit W, and I can move them.
| | 03:18 | If I want to make them
bigger, I can make them bigger.
| | 03:21 | And next thing I know, I am grabbing Vertices,
and I am starting to reshape this object.
| | 03:27 | So if I can move this out, and then if
I wanted to Rotate it, Rotate these, I
| | 03:34 | could do that as well.
| | 03:36 | So as you notice here, you can just
very easily start sculpting either a
| | 03:39 | Vertex or a Face at time.
| | 03:41 | So if I wanted to, for example, move
Faces, now what happens when you move a
| | 03:46 | Face? Well, basically what you are
moving is you are moving the whole Face, the
| | 03:49 | four Vertices and Edges on the side.
| | 03:52 | Or I can move Edges.
| | 03:56 | So, for example, if I select this
Edge here, I can also move that.
| | 04:00 | So you can see how you can just start
by just grabbing these Components or
| | 04:05 | these Vertices and Edges and Faces,
you can just basically kind of reshape
| | 04:11 | something to your liking.
| | 04:13 | Let's say I don't want that
to be such a round corner.
| | 04:16 | I could kind of cut it off and so on.
| | 04:19 | Now, this is just a very beginning of
Polygonal modeling, but knowing how to
| | 04:25 | select Components within an object and
move them around is probably the first
| | 04:29 | thing that you need to know
in how to model within Maya.
| | 04:33 | So go ahead and practice this and
get used to selecting all the different
| | 04:38 | Components and being able to reshape an object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting polygonal components | 00:01 | Now, when you're working with components,
there are times when you are going to
| | 00:03 | have to select very specific parts of a
model in order to be able to manipulate
| | 00:08 | it the way that you want.
| | 00:10 | So Maya has a number of different
types of ways to select parts of a model.
| | 00:15 | I am going to start off by
creating just a very basic sphere here.
| | 00:20 | I am going to hit 5 to shade it, so
we can see what we are working on.
| | 00:24 | Then I am going to right-click
over it, and go into Vertex mode.
| | 00:27 | Now typically, you can just rubber-band select.
| | 00:31 | Let's say I want to
select the top of this sphere.
| | 00:34 | I could basically position it so I can
see it and rubber-band select it, and
| | 00:39 | make sure that I got it all selected,
but look. I have got parts of it that
| | 00:42 | aren't. So if I wanted to, I can just
hold down the Shift key and Shift+Select
| | 00:48 | to turn on and off the vertices that
weren't selected properly, and then once I
| | 00:53 | had that, I could actually move them up and
down, or do whatever I need to do with those.
| | 00:58 | I could actually scale those if we
wanted to flatten out the top of that or
| | 01:01 | something like that.
| | 01:03 | This is one way of selecting is
basically to rubber-band select.
| | 01:08 | When you rubber-band select,
you are just getting a rectangle.
| | 01:11 | There are times when you don't want
a rectangle, or you want to do what's
| | 01:14 | called a Lasso Select.
| | 01:15 | So this is very handy with modeling, so
you could actually just click and drag,
| | 01:22 | and just drag whatever it is you
want to select, and there you go.
| | 01:27 | So Lasso tools can also work very well for
selecting just discrete parts of a model.
| | 01:34 | Now, one of the things that actually
can be a real problem with selecting like
| | 01:38 | this is that if you Shift+Select, a
lot of times what you will do is you'll
| | 01:42 | Shift+Select parts of the model, but
you'll deselect parts of the model, but you
| | 01:47 | actually reselect other parts of the model.
| | 01:50 | So sometimes you have to be very
careful in how you Shift+Select.
| | 01:56 | Another way to select is by using Paint Select.
| | 02:01 | Now, this actually uses what are
called the Artisan Paint tools, and this is
| | 02:05 | going to be our first introduction to it.
| | 02:07 | So there's a couple of
keystrokes we need to learn.
| | 02:10 | So let's go ahead and click on this.
| | 02:12 | In fact, if I double-click on
this, my Brush tools come up.
| | 02:15 | Now if you notice here, let me
go and zoom in a little bit here.
| | 02:18 | Notice how this little circle is
floating above my mouse, and it's turned into a
| | 02:23 | paintbrush, and what this is is really
just a brush, and all I have to do is
| | 02:27 | left-click and drag just by
brushing over the vertices,
| | 02:32 | it kind of sticks to the surface, and
I can just brush in all the vertices
| | 02:37 | that I want to select.
| | 02:39 | Now if I want to make my brush bigger
or smaller, all I have to do is hold down
| | 02:44 | the B, B for Brush key, and just left-
click and drag, and I can make my Brush
| | 02:49 | either smaller or bigger.
| | 02:50 | So if I have a bigger brush, I am
going to be selecting more vertices.
| | 02:54 | If I have a smaller brush, it's
going to be a little bit more precise.
| | 02:58 | So all you have to do is just Paint Select.
| | 03:01 | Now if you want, you can also, by
using this Tool palette, Paint Unselect.
| | 03:07 | Again, I am not holding down anything.
| | 03:08 | It's not like I am Shift+Unselecting.
| | 03:11 | I am just Paint Unselecting.
| | 03:13 | Now, this is sometimes a little bit
better than using like a Shift+Lasso tool
| | 03:16 | because you are actually being very
precise about what you're not selecting,
| | 03:21 | rather than deselecting, that sort of thing.
| | 03:24 | There we have some buttons to
Unselect or Select everything.
| | 03:27 | Let's say I wanted to select everything and
just deselect these few. I could do that.
| | 03:33 | Now, there are some other options here
as to what type of brush we have, and
| | 03:40 | also there is some additional stuff
here, such as Stylus Pressure, and Stroke,
| | 03:45 | which actually apply a little bit more to
other types of tools which we will get to.
| | 03:49 | Now, another way to select is by using edges.
| | 03:53 | So let's go ahead and just deselect everything.
| | 03:56 | There is also a Deselect here on
the Edit menu, so we just do Deselect.
| | 04:00 | And I am going to go ahead and right-
click over here and go into Edge mode and
| | 04:04 | just again hit my Q key just
to go into Regular Select mode.
| | 04:07 | So if I go into Regular Select mode
and select an Edge, well I can select as
| | 04:13 | many edges as I want.
| | 04:14 | But a lot of times with a polygonal
model, particularly like the sphere, you're
| | 04:18 | going to want to select either the
latitude or the longitude lines, and these
| | 04:22 | are known as Edge Loops. And these can
be very important when you start modeling
| | 04:27 | polygonal objects because they can
really define the contours of your object.
| | 04:33 | So if I position my mouse over one of
these and double-click, you can see I can
| | 04:38 | actually select that Edge Loop.
| | 04:42 | Now, if I hit my Left and Right arrow,
you can see how I can move that Edge Loop
| | 04:47 | selection up or down.
| | 04:51 | Now if I hit my Up and Down arrow, you
can see how I can actually select the
| | 04:58 | other Edge Loops, these kinds of
short Edge Loops, or if I want, I can
| | 05:02 | double-click on each of the
vertical ones to select those as well.
| | 05:05 | But also notice how in this sphere,
it doesn't quite go all the way around.
| | 05:10 | That's because of the way this is constructed.
| | 05:12 | So these particular lines will go all
the way around, but the longitude lines
| | 05:18 | won't. So these are basically some
strategies for selecting individual components
| | 05:24 | or groups of components
within a polygonal object.
| | 05:28 | Now, each one will depend
upon your individual situation.
| | 05:31 | So get to know all of these different
tools. When you're in a situation where you
| | 05:36 | need to select something very
specifically, you'll know which tool will work
| | 05:40 | best for that situation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with Soft Select| 00:01 | Now there are times when you want to
do a little bit more organic modeling
| | 00:05 | to your polygonal object, and those are the
times when you want to use Soft Selection.
| | 00:10 | So let's go ahead and make a sphere,
our best friend here, this sphere, and
| | 00:15 | let's go ahead and shade that, and
let's go ahead and just right-click over it,
| | 00:19 | go into Vertex mode, and just select a
kind of a random arrangement of vertices
| | 00:24 | towards the top here.
| | 00:25 | Let's just go ahead and move those.
| | 00:27 | Now, you'll notice, if I move these,
and they are not selected radially or
| | 00:31 | linearly, you're going to start to get
kind of all these creases and this kind
| | 00:35 | of crunchiness, and it's not really
going to look right, because you're going to
| | 00:39 | have these kind of sharp edges.
| | 00:40 | That's what happens with polygonal
modeling when you just select individual
| | 00:45 | components and you move them around.
| | 00:47 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and undo this.
| | 00:50 | Let's go ahead over to our Move tool,
and I'm going to double-click on this, and
| | 00:56 | it's going to bring up the Tool settings.
| | 00:58 | Now, another way to get to this is to
go to the top-right, and hit this little
| | 01:02 | Wrench icon, and that will go
ahead and bring up that same menu.
| | 01:06 | Now these are our Move Tool settings and
if we go down here, you'll notice there
| | 01:11 | is a roll out here called Soft Selection.
| | 01:14 | Now what this does is it
enables me to falloff the selection.
| | 01:21 | You notice when I click this on, all of a
sudden this kind of falloff comes up on this sphere.
| | 01:27 | So now when I move my vertices, it's
actually kind of falling off towards
| | 01:35 | the end of the sphere.
| | 01:36 | So now I'm getting a much
more organic deformation.
| | 01:39 | Now, you can determine how much of a
falloff you get by just working with this
| | 01:45 | falloff radius here.
| | 01:46 | If it's small, you'll just deal with
just a small area, and you can also make it
| | 01:51 | large and deal with almost the whole sphere.
| | 01:54 | So let's go ahead and dial this down
a little bit so we can play with it.
| | 01:59 | We also have what's called Interpolation.
| | 02:01 | So what we can do is we can actually
play with this falloff curve to determine
| | 02:07 | exactly how it falls off.
| | 02:09 | Right now, we have got a very smooth
falloff curve, but we also have these presets.
| | 02:14 | So I can click on these and change
the way that the falloff happens.
| | 02:20 | So each one of these has a very
different effect, like this one kind of has like
| | 02:25 | a double bump in the middle.
| | 02:27 | So it's actually kind of doing this, and this
one here is like kind of a little different.
| | 02:32 | So each one may or may not work for you.
| | 02:34 | This one is kind of a stair-step effect.
| | 02:36 | Again, each one is very, very different.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to go back to the initial
preset and if you want, you can also make
| | 02:42 | your own preset as well.
| | 02:44 | All you have to do is just left-click
on this curve, and you can change it
| | 02:49 | to whatever you want.
| | 02:50 | Move it up or down, left or right.
| | 02:52 | I can also add more if I want.
| | 02:55 | If I want to get rid of these, all you
have to do is hit that little X right
| | 02:58 | there, and they go away.
| | 03:00 | Now, in addition to this, we also
have what's called the Falloff Color.
| | 03:06 | This basically is just a feedback color.
| | 03:09 | So typically it goes from yellow to red
to black, which is fine, and I typically
| | 03:15 | just leave it at the default.
| | 03:16 | But if for some reason, you don't want
to use red, or if it maybe is conflicting
| | 03:20 | with your model or something like that,
you can change the color very easily.
| | 03:23 | All you have to do is select one of
these, and just click on the Color, and the
| | 03:28 | Color Picker comes up, and you can
basically choose whatever color you want.
| | 03:32 | So now it goes from cyan to red, and
I'm just going to go ahead and put that
| | 03:36 | back to yellow, just to put it back to default.
| | 03:40 | Now, another thing you can do is change
the way that we falloff by doing what's
| | 03:45 | called the Falloff mode.
| | 03:47 | Now, there are four different Falloff modes.
| | 03:49 | One is called Volume, which is the default.
| | 03:51 | Now, this is actually just
determines a volume of falloff.
| | 03:55 | So basically it just kind of creates a
circle around whatever it is that you select.
| | 04:02 | Surface walks along the
actual surface of the object.
| | 04:06 | So, for example, if you had a teapot
with a spout going out, it would actually
| | 04:11 | have to go along the surface in
order to get to those vertices.
| | 04:15 | Sometimes that's a little bit more handy.
| | 04:17 | Now, the one I really like is called Global.
| | 04:20 | Now, this works a little bit differently.
| | 04:21 | So I'm actually going to have
to model a second object here.
| | 04:24 | So I'm going to go back into Object
mode, and I'm going to go ahead and move
| | 04:28 | the sphere up above this grid here, and I'm
going to go ahead and select Polygonal Plane.
| | 04:34 | I'm going to go ahead and draw plane on
the surface, and again, I want to give a
| | 04:38 | little bit of detail.
| | 04:39 | So I'm going to go into Inputs and for
Subdivisions for Width and Height, let's
| | 04:43 | go ahead and just type in 8.
| | 04:44 | So I've got a little bit
more detail here on this plane.
| | 04:49 | So now I've got two objects.
| | 04:51 | I've got the actual sphere and the plane.
| | 04:54 | Notice how now when I select the
sphere, it's actually affecting the plane.
| | 04:59 | That's because I have Global turned on.
| | 05:02 | If I go back to Volume, it's just going
to affect the volume within the sphere.
| | 05:08 | If I go to Surface, again,
it goes along the surface.
| | 05:11 | If I go to Global, it actually
affects separate objects that are nearby.
| | 05:16 | So, for example, if I selected just
the vertices on the bottom, you'll notice
| | 05:20 | that now it's kind of jumping
the gap to this particular plane.
| | 05:27 | So I can actually move these vertices
and actually have the plane follow along.
| | 05:32 | This is really cool.
| | 05:34 | And even if I go into Object mode, I
can actually use this almost as kind of
| | 05:38 | like a magnet way to manipulate that surface.
| | 05:42 | So I think that's actually pretty cool.
| | 05:44 | I'm going to go back into Object mode
and delete this, and I'm going to put
| | 05:49 | myself back to Volume mode.
| | 05:50 | In fact, I'm going to take off Soft Select here.
| | 05:52 | I'm going to show you one more thing,
and that's called Reflection Settings.
| | 05:56 | Now, with any object, you can
also do what's called Reflection.
| | 05:59 | So if you want to do some
metrical modeling, you can do it.
| | 06:02 | So I'm going to go ahead back into
Vertex mode, select some vertices, and now
| | 06:06 | when I turn on Reflection, notice how
the vertices on the opposite side show up.
| | 06:12 | So now, I can model symmetrically, and I
can reflect this around any axis that I want.
| | 06:19 | So if I want it to reflect around the
Y axis, the Z axis, in this particular
| | 06:23 | case, we want to reflect along X, which you can
see is the right-left axis here, we can do that.
| | 06:30 | We can also do that with
Soft Select to actually do both.
| | 06:36 | So I can actually do reflective
modeling with Soft Select to get very organic
| | 06:41 | modeling, and make it symmetrical,
so if you're modeling a character or
| | 06:44 | something and you want to work on
the left-side, you can also have the
| | 06:48 | right-side follow along.
| | 06:50 | So those are some of the basics of
Soft Select, which really works well
| | 06:55 | for organic modeling.
| | 06:56 | I'm sure you'll be using a lot of
these techniques as you build things like
| | 06:59 | characters and other organic objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Extrude tool | 00:00 | Now as you get deeper and deeper into
polygonal modeling, there are places where
| | 00:04 | you're going to want to add detail to a model.
| | 00:07 | Probably the best way to add
detail is by using an Extrude.
| | 00:12 | It's probably the most common way
to start adding detail to models.
| | 00:16 | So we're going to start
off by creating a simple box.
| | 00:19 | I want a little bit of detail on this box.
| | 00:23 | So I'm going to go into my Channel Box,
into my Inputs and for a Width, Height
| | 00:27 | and Depth, I'm going to type in 3.
| | 00:32 | Let's go ahead and shade that
so we can see what we're doing.
| | 00:34 | So let's go ahead and
play with the Extrude tool.
| | 00:37 | Now the Extrude tool is
found under the Polygons menu.
| | 00:41 | So let's make sure we have that
selected and under that we have Edit Mesh, and
| | 00:46 | you'll find a tool here called Extrude.
| | 00:49 | Now, before I use this tool I need
to select a component to extrude.
| | 00:54 | This works on faces, edges, and vertices,
but most often it's actually used on faces.
| | 01:01 | So let's go ahead and start with that.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to right-click over this cube.
| | 01:05 | I'm going to go ahead and
select this face on the top.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to go Edit Mesh, and Extrude.
| | 01:12 | Now, what it does is it brings up this
little gizmo here, and this is our Extrude tool.
| | 01:17 | So all I need to do is grab this arrow
and pull it up, and you can see how I'm
| | 01:22 | actually extruding new detail into this model.
| | 01:27 | Now, this little gizmo that we have
actually allows me to do a number of things.
| | 01:31 | We've got these little boxes here, and
those are very similar to our Scale tool.
| | 01:36 | In fact, they are a Scale tool.
| | 01:38 | Then also I can select that box
in the middle to do a global scale.
| | 01:43 | I can select the arrows to move this left,
right, up, down, back-and-forth, and so on.
| | 01:51 | So once I have this done, I
have additional detail in my model.
| | 01:56 | Now, if I go back into Object mode and
select my model, let's go ahead and go
| | 02:01 | into our Channel Box and
scroll down a little bit.
| | 02:03 | Now, we have our original polyCube,
but on top of that you'll notice I have
| | 02:09 | what's called an Extrude face.
| | 02:11 | What this is is this is what's called
a Node, and what this node does is it
| | 02:16 | actually does the Extrude.
| | 02:18 | So what we have got is we've got
two objects here, or two nodes.
| | 02:23 | We've got one that creates the
cube, and one that does the Extrude.
| | 02:26 | Now, this is kind of a
history that we can play with.
| | 02:29 | So let's go into our Attribute
Editor, and let's take a little bit of a
| | 02:33 | deeper look in this.
| | 02:34 | You'll notice we have our CubeShape,
but we also have one called ExtrudeFace.
| | 02:39 | This actually gives us some
control over how that Extrude happens.
| | 02:44 | So, for example, I translated that,
so you could actually change the
| | 02:48 | translation of this.
| | 02:50 | You can change the scale.
| | 02:52 | You can also change the number of divisions.
| | 02:55 | So I can actually give
it more or less divisions.
| | 02:58 | So I can actually add detail right here.
| | 03:00 | So this is a great way to
actually change something after the fact.
| | 03:04 | Now, let's go ahead and play a
little bit more with this Extrude tool.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to go back to my
Channel Box here to give some more room.
| | 03:10 | I'm going to right-click over and select Face.
| | 03:15 | So let's go ahead and select this face here.
| | 03:18 | So we don't have to do one face.
In fact, we can select multiple faces.
| | 03:21 | So let's go ahead and
select all of these faces here.
| | 03:25 | Let's go ahead and do Extrude again.
| | 03:26 | Now, I'm going to actually use my HotBox.
| | 03:28 | I'm holding down my Space key, and I'm
just going to do PolyExtrude, which is
| | 03:33 | basically the last command I had.
| | 03:35 | Now, if I want, I could actually push this in,
and create a hole, or again pull this out.
| | 03:41 | So you can see how this
actually also works for multiple faces.
| | 03:48 | You can also use this to create holes.
| | 03:50 | So let's go ahead and use, just select
one face here, do PolyExtrude, and you
| | 03:55 | can see how I can actually create holes as well.
| | 03:58 | So what I've done is I've taken this
basic cube, and now I've added additional
| | 04:02 | detail, and you can see how this
can be the basis of how to sculpt.
| | 04:07 | Now, we've just been working with faces, but
you can also work with edges and vertices.
| | 04:13 | So I'm actually going to select this
and delete it, and let's just go ahead and
| | 04:17 | create a simple plane, and I'm going
to move this above the grid so we can
| | 04:22 | actually see what we're doing.
| | 04:25 | Again, I'm going to go into my Channel
Box, and I'm going to add a little bit of
| | 04:29 | detail to this plane so we
have some stuff to work with.
| | 04:32 | Now, one of the nice things about Extrude
is that it does work on edges and faces.
| | 04:37 | So let's go ahead and show
you how it works on edges.
| | 04:39 | I'm just going to select one edge here,
and I'm going to do Edit Mesh > Extrude.
| | 04:44 | Let's go ahead and extrude that.
| | 04:48 | Notice what happens is it
actually is just extruding the edge.
| | 04:52 | If I were to select the face and extrude that,
it's actually going to add a lot more detail.
| | 04:59 | But when you extrude only the edge, it's
really just creating an additional face.
| | 05:04 | It's kind of creating a plane,
because really, what are you doing?
| | 05:07 | You're actually extruding a 2D line into a 3D
space, rather than extruding a plane, which
| | 05:16 | actually has more dimensions.
| | 05:17 | So that's why you get actual kind of
four-sided geometry here by extruding the
| | 05:21 | plane, and we're actually extruding an edge.
| | 05:25 | Let's go ahead and select some edges here.
| | 05:28 | When we actually extrude those, we're
really just getting additional faces.
| | 05:34 | So this is a great way to kind of model like
a shell-like object, or something like that.
| | 05:39 | That will be a great way to do that.
| | 05:42 | In addition to all of these,
we can also extrude vertices.
| | 05:45 | Now this is actually a lot more simple,
and as soon as I extrude one, you'll
| | 05:48 | see what happens here.
| | 05:50 | All I have to do is just hit Extrude,
and all it does is it kind of subdivides
| | 05:55 | it and makes that little pyramid here.
| | 05:57 | So that's basically what an
extruded vertice looks like.
| | 06:00 | There is not really as much control as
you would have with an edge or a face.
| | 06:05 | Each one of these actually creates another node.
| | 06:09 | So we started with a PolyPlane.
| | 06:11 | We extruded an edge, a face,
some more edges, and a vertex.
| | 06:14 | So you can see how we have this
whole history just sitting here.
| | 06:18 | If we go into our Attribute Editor,
we can start playing with any of these.
| | 06:21 | So if I wanted to add some divisions
here, I can do that just by selecting any
| | 06:25 | one of these nodes and
manipulating it. Kind of cool, huh?
| | 06:31 | So those are the basics of Extrude.
| | 06:34 | You can see how Extrude can be used to
add geometry and start really sculpting
| | 06:40 | a basic primitive into something that's
a little bit more complex and a little bit
| | 06:44 | more interesting.
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| Keeping faces together | 00:00 | Now, there are two ways to use Extrude.
| | 00:03 | One is to keep the faces together.
| | 00:05 | The other is to let them go their separate ways.
| | 00:09 | Now, this may sound confusing to you,
but let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:12 | I am actually going to create a sphere,
and I am going to shade it, and let's go
| | 00:16 | ahead and right-click over this
and select a couple of faces here.
| | 00:21 | So when I do a standard extrude, what
happens is I just extrude that geometry.
| | 00:30 | If I want to select any
individual face on the extrude geometry,
| | 00:34 | everything sticks together.
| | 00:36 | So I am going to go ahead and
select some additional faces here.
| | 00:39 | I am going to Shift+Select four more
faces on this sphere, and I am going to
| | 00:43 | go back to Edit Mesh, and this time I
am going to Uncheck this box that says
| | 00:48 | Keep Faces Together.
| | 00:50 | So now with that Unchecked, I
am going to use the Extrude tool.
| | 00:54 | Now watch what happens.
| | 00:57 | The faces don't stick together.
| | 00:59 | So what I'm getting here is additional geometry.
| | 01:03 | With this here, I've got one big
block with four faces on the top.
| | 01:08 | This one I've got four separate blocks.
| | 01:12 | Now, this can be used to really good
effect for certain types of models.
| | 01:17 | Now typically, we want to keep faces
together because that's kind of how we
| | 01:21 | think when we model using Extrude, but this
could be used for some really cool effects.
| | 01:27 | So let me go ahead and select the
sphere and delete it and just create a new
| | 01:31 | sphere from scratch.
| | 01:33 | I am going to right-click over this,
select Face, and let's just select every
| | 01:38 | face on the sphere, and then
just do Edit Mesh > Extrude.
| | 01:43 | I am going to go ahead and grab this
blue one, and you can see what I'm doing
| | 01:48 | here is I am extruding
every single face on the sphere.
| | 01:52 | Now I'm getting this really kind of
like sea urchin effect here, so I can
| | 01:57 | actually scale those down and make them
into almost like points, and then I can
| | 02:03 | actually manipulate basically all of
that, manipulate the depth by using this
| | 02:09 | particular axis, and now I've
got a really cool little object.
| | 02:14 | If I want to, I can even go into my
Attribute Editor, select the object
| | 02:18 | itself, and go into my ExtrudeFace, and I can
even add in some additional detail for this.
| | 02:25 | You can see how you can make kind of
spiny pointed objects very, very easily.
| | 02:30 | Now, this is actually
another way to use Extrude.
| | 02:33 | By turning off Keep Faces Together,
you can get multi-sided objects that could
| | 02:40 | be very cool-looking.
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| Extruding along curves| 00:00 | Extrude can also be used in conjunction with
curves to create even more refined effects.
| | 00:08 | Now, we really haven't touched on
drawing curves, so I have drawn one for you.
| | 00:12 | We have this file open, and it has
a very simple box and a curve in it.
| | 00:17 | And all we have to do is select the
box, right-click over it, and select
| | 00:23 | an individual face.
| | 00:25 | Now, all we have to do is hold down
the Shift key, and select the curve.
| | 00:28 | So we have the face on the box
selected and the curve itself selected.
| | 00:34 | Then, let's go into Edit Mesh > Extrude.
| | 00:38 | Now make sure that Keep Faces Together
is toggled on. Make sure that's checked.
| | 00:43 | Let's go into our Tool options here for
Extrude, and I want to make sure I up my
| | 00:49 | number of Divisions a little bit.
| | 00:50 | So let's go ahead and give it
maybe 8 or 9 divisions here.
| | 00:54 | Let's go ahead and do Extrude.
| | 00:56 | Now what it does is it uses that curve
to actually extrude my faces, very cool.
| | 01:04 | Now I have additional control over this.
In fact, if I went into my Extrude tool
| | 01:09 | here, you see I have two options here;
| | 01:12 | One is called Taper, and Twist.
| | 01:15 | Now, I am going to go ahead and
close this, because I've already done the
| | 01:17 | Extrude, but if I go into my
Attribute Editor, I can actually play with
| | 01:21 | those effects here.
| | 01:22 | So if I go into my polyExtrudeFace, you
see I have Twist, which actually twists
| | 01:28 | along that curve, as well as tapers.
| | 01:31 | So do I want it to go to a point or do
I, for example, if I keep it at 1, it
| | 01:35 | actually keeps it the exact same size
the whole time, and how many times do I
| | 01:39 | want to twist it, do I want
to twist it or not? And so on.
| | 01:43 | I can also use what's called a Taper Curve.
| | 01:45 | So I can actually taper it down.
| | 01:48 | So I can do Linear or Smooth, so I
can actually make a very nice, very nice
| | 01:57 | curve here, and so on.
| | 02:02 | So it makes it very easy to create
these kind of tentacle-like effects without
| | 02:07 | having to do too much modeling.
| | 02:09 | Now, once I have got this done, let's
go back into, I am going to right-click
| | 02:12 | over this, go back into Object mode,
and I am going to go into XRay mode here.
| | 02:17 | So this will actually give
us a good reason to use this.
| | 02:20 | If I go into that, you can see that
there is that curve on inside of there.
| | 02:24 | If I actually can select that, you see
that moving the curve actually changes,
| | 02:31 | in fact, let's go ahead and turn on
Wireframe on Shaded here, so you can kind of
| | 02:37 | see how that affects that.
| | 02:40 | Now let's go ahead into Wireframe mode, so
we can actually change this a little bit more.
| | 02:43 | If I right-click on this and hit
Control Vertex, I can actually take the actual
| | 02:48 | shape of the curve and change it as well.
| | 02:51 | Now, once I've got that, you can kind of
see how I can actually change the whole
| | 02:55 | shape of the curve, and actually
manipulate how this effect works.
| | 03:01 | So I can change the curve.
| | 03:02 | I can change the position of the curve
or the shape of the curve and actually
| | 03:06 | affect that Extrude.
| | 03:08 | So you can see there is a lot of
different possibilities here. In fact, I could
| | 03:12 | even animate that curve and make kind
of like a flowing tentacle type effect.
| | 03:16 | So the possibilities with this sort of
extrude are endless, which is kind of why
| | 03:21 | I wanted to show it to you.
| | 03:22 | So go ahead and play with that, and
have some fun with this particular tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Polygon Bevel tool | 00:00 | There are times when you'll need to
round off or smooth edges, and those are the
| | 00:05 | points where you'll need to
use the Bevel Polygon tool.
| | 00:09 | Let's go ahead and create a simple cube,
and shade that, and then let's just
| | 00:17 | go ahead and right-click over this and
select Edge, and then go ahead and select an edge.
| | 00:25 | Let's take a look at what Bevel does.
| | 00:27 | So under Edit Mesh, I am going to select Bevel.
| | 00:32 | Notice what it does.
| | 00:33 | It actually creates a Bevel along that edge.
| | 00:36 | Now, we can affect this Bevel by
going into the node that created it.
| | 00:41 | So, if we go into our Inputs, in our
Channel Box, or if we go into our Attribute
| | 00:47 | Editor and find the polyBevel node,
we can look at how we can affect this.
| | 00:53 | We can actually change the number of
segments to make that Bevel a little bit
| | 00:57 | more round, and as you can see, we can
use this to actually round off corners.
| | 01:02 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and undo
that, and let's go ahead and select all
| | 01:08 | edges along the top here.
| | 01:10 | So I have selected a total of four edges
all along the top, and let's go ahead
| | 01:15 | and do Bevel again: Edit Mesh > Bevel.
| | 01:20 | Again, if I keep my Attribute Editor
up, you are going to notice I have my
| | 01:24 | polyBevel here, and you can see how I can
add in segments here to actually create
| | 01:30 | kind of a rounded corner effect.
| | 01:32 | Now, if this is a little bit too big,
| | 01:34 | we have another parameter here called
Offset, which allows us to dial that in or out.
| | 01:40 | Now if I wanted to, I could certainly
set these parameters before I do the Bevel
| | 01:44 | by going into the Tool Settings here,
and this allows me to set the number of
| | 01:49 | Segments as well as the width of the Bevel.
| | 01:54 | Now, we don't just have to Bevel edges.
| | 01:56 | We can also Bevel faces and vertices.
| | 01:59 | So I am going to go ahead and undo this again.
| | 02:01 | And instead of selecting the edges,
let's go ahead and select a face.
| | 02:06 | Again, I am just going to repeat
that command by doing BevelPolygon.
| | 02:11 | Again, you can see the effect is almost
the same as selecting all four edges and
| | 02:15 | beveling those as well.
| | 02:17 | So I still have my Offset, and I can
change the number of Segments there.
| | 02:22 | Now, Bevel also works for vertices.
| | 02:27 | Now, I am going to go ahead and undo this, so
we can actually see how it works on vertices.
| | 02:32 | Again, I am just going to select Vertex, and
then let's just repeat that. Do BevelPolygon.
| | 02:38 | Now, as you can see, what it does is
it kind of triangulates that corner and
| | 02:43 | again, we can add in segments, and you can
see how when you Bevel corners like this,
| | 02:47 | you can actually get some very nice effects.
| | 02:49 | Now, Bevel can also work
within the face of an object.
| | 02:55 | So let me show you what I mean by that.
| | 02:56 | Again, I am going to undo this.
| | 02:58 | I am going to go to my polyCube, and I am just
going to add in a little bit more detail here.
| | 03:03 | So that way I have some
additional geometry to work with.
| | 03:07 | Then, this time let's just go back to
Face mode, and I am just going to select a
| | 03:11 | single face within this field of faces,
and let's go ahead and do Bevel again.
| | 03:17 | So, you can see exactly what this
effect is, so how this Bevel actually works.
| | 03:22 | So this is my original face, and then
what's surrounding that is the Bevel itself.
| | 03:30 | You can do the same for
an edge or multiple edges.
| | 03:33 | So let's say I've selected these two
edges here, and just beveled those.
| | 03:38 | You can see how that works, or you can
work with this with the vertices as well.
| | 03:44 | So you can see how that works.
| | 03:50 | So typically when you are using it on
the face of an object, you are going to
| | 03:54 | get this kind of effect.
| | 03:55 | So in some ways it may not be as productive.
| | 03:59 | Typically, you will use Bevel along
edges and to just kind of round off the
| | 04:03 | corners of objects, and it's
particularly valuable for things such as text or
| | 04:09 | graphics where you need to round off edges.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Smooth and subdivision surfaces| 00:01 | Now, there are other ways to smooth out
the edges of a polygonal surface, and one
| | 00:05 | way is to use Smooth.
| | 00:08 | So let's go ahead and take a simple
cube, and shade that, and then under Mesh,
| | 00:17 | I'm actually going to
select this option called Smooth.
| | 00:21 | Now watch what it does.
| | 00:22 | It actually collapses the
Mesh into a smoother object.
| | 00:27 | Now I'm going to undo this. What we're
going to see here is you're going to see
| | 00:30 | how this one phase to the Mesh
collapses down into four faces.
| | 00:35 | So each single phase of the Mesh is
subdivided into four separate faces.
| | 00:42 | In fact, you can probably see this a
little bit better if you added some
| | 00:44 | detail to that cube, so I'm actually
going to go into my inputs here and
| | 00:49 | actually dial this up a little bit so
that it's about three, and then let's
| | 00:55 | just go ahead and do Smooth again.
| | 00:57 | Now you can see that
this is a little bit better.
| | 00:59 | So what it's done is it quadrupled the
detail of that cube, and it's exactly
| | 01:04 | given me a brand-new cube with smooth
edges, but also a lot of extra detail.
| | 01:10 | Now this is actually one way
of smoothing things out in Maya.
| | 01:14 | Another way is just to have Maya
automatically do it on Render, so I'm going to
| | 01:19 | go ahead and undo this again.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to start with our three by
three cube, and this time instead of doing
| | 01:27 | anything, all I'm going to do
is hit a keyboard shortcut.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to hit the number 3 on the
keyboard and watch what happens. This smoothes out.
| | 01:37 | Now what this is doing is Maya is
actually doing pretty much that same operation
| | 01:41 | that we just did of smoothing the
object without actually affecting the
| | 01:46 | underlying geometry.
| | 01:47 | Let me share how this works.
| | 01:49 | If I hit the number 2, what you'll see
is a little cage will show up around the
| | 01:56 | object, so this is my original box.
| | 01:58 | If I hit 1, this is the geometry that I have.
| | 02:02 | If I hit 2, it's the geometry and the
smoothed result, and if I hit 3 ,it only
| | 02:09 | shows the smooth result.
| | 02:11 | This is a great way to do what
are called Subdivision Surfaces.
| | 02:15 | Let me show you how this works a little
bit more deeply. I'm going to hit number
| | 02:18 | 2 here so we can see our original Mesh.
| | 02:21 | And then I'm going to go
ahead and do some editing.
| | 02:24 | So, for example, if I could take a
Vertex here, you'll notice how it shows up
| | 02:28 | here in yellow, but also in white on
the corresponding smoothed surface.
| | 02:34 | And if I move that around you can
see I get a very nice, kind of gloopy
| | 02:38 | deformation, or basically I can sculpt
this, so basically what I'm doing is I'm
| | 02:43 | actually sculpting the original
bounding box, or the original cube, and the
| | 02:49 | underlying smoothed, or subdivided,
surface is following along, and this works
| | 02:54 | really for any sort of operation.
| | 02:56 | So, for example, if I selected a face,
and I extruded it, the subdivision goes
| | 03:07 | with me. And if I change any of the
number of divisions on that, you can see how
| | 03:11 | that affects the way that the smoothing works.
| | 03:16 | So if you notice the more subdivisions,
or the closer that subdivision is to the
| | 03:22 | edge, the tighter the corner.
| | 03:24 | So, for example, if I would select
all these vertices and move them in, you
| | 03:28 | could see how I could
tightened up that radius there.
| | 03:31 | So what it's really doing is it's kind of
whittling down and rounding off these corners.
| | 03:35 | So, for example, at the very edge of
this you could see how I get that either
| | 03:39 | really square or really round depending upon
how close these two edge loops are together.
| | 03:47 | So this is a really great way to start
blocking out things such as characters or
| | 03:53 | really anything that's going to
deform and needs to be smooth.
| | 03:57 | This is the way to actually create characters.
| | 04:00 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead and
delete this. I'm going to open a very simple
| | 04:05 | scene. Now we're in Project 2.
Make sure you set your project to Project number
| | 04:09 | 2, and we have one here called Dog_
model, which is basically that model that
| | 04:15 | we've been working with, and this
is actually modeled completely using
| | 04:20 | subdivision surfaces.
| | 04:21 | So let's go ahead and just select the
whole character, and if I hit 1, you'll
| | 04:27 | notice that this is actually what is modeled.
| | 04:30 | Especially his nose, you can see how
his nose is really very, very simple
| | 04:34 | geometry, but when I subdivide it, you
can see how it rounds off into almost a
| | 04:39 | perfect little ball there.
| | 04:43 | Now this is actually controlled through
the Attribute Editor, so let me show you
| | 04:48 | a little bit more as to
how to actually control this.
| | 04:50 | So let's keep this head selected
and go over to the Attribute Editor.
| | 04:55 | And under here, we should have a
rollout called Smooth Mesh, and this is
| | 05:00 | under Surface Shape.
| | 05:02 | So under Surface Shape we should have
Smooth Mesh, and now what we can do is we
| | 05:07 | can see how this works, so when I hit 1,
notice how it actually is setting these values.
| | 05:13 | So it's saying, Do I want to
have Smooth Mesh preview or not?
| | 05:16 | So if I hit 1, 2, which is the Cage+Smooth
Mesh, and if I hit 3 ,it's just the Smooth Mesh.
| | 05:25 | So I can actually change
this manually if I want,
| | 05:29 | if I want to be able to edit the Cage
or the Smooth Mesh or both, or if I just
| | 05:32 | want to work on the Mesh itself.
| | 05:36 | Now the other one, and this is
actually a little bit more important is Do you
| | 05:40 | want to display the
subdivisions that are actually happening?
| | 05:44 | So this is actually the Mesh that it's
calculating, and this is the Mesh that
| | 05:50 | it's using so you can actually see
what Maya is doing here, and you can also
| | 05:57 | dial in the number of subdivisions.
| | 06:01 | Now you really don't want to go
much above 2 because every division
| | 06:05 | quadruples the number of polygons you
have in the scene. It certainly makes it
| | 06:09 | smoother, but it also adds a lot more
geometry, so you have to be very careful
| | 06:13 | about this, and also, you can also
use this preview level for rendering.
| | 06:19 | So when I go to Render, which is
actually this little button here, I just want
| | 06:23 | to render this frame,
| | 06:25 | you'll notice that the character
itself renders pretty smoothly, and if I dial
| | 06:31 | down that Subdivision Levels and I
Render, he renders a lot more blocky.
| | 06:39 | So what you can do is you could
actually use this tool to actually model with
| | 06:44 | very simple characters and then
just smooth them at rendering.
| | 06:48 | This is a really great workflow, and
this really is the core of most character
| | 06:52 | animation, or any sort of polygonal
model that you need to have look organic.
| | 06:58 | So get used to these tools. They'll
serve you very well with whatever type of
| | 07:02 | organic modeling that you do.
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| Blocking out a character body| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and put some of our
knowledge to use and start by modeling
| | 00:05 | the body of a simple character.
| | 00:08 | Now we're going to model that dog
character that we've been playing with, and
| | 00:11 | I've actually got a
drawing of him already up here.
| | 00:14 | We should have our project set to Chap_
2 in order to pick up all of the image
| | 00:20 | planes here, and basically what I
have is I have two planes, and onto those
| | 00:26 | planes I've mapped a sketch of the dog.
| | 00:29 | Now in order to see this, you want to
make sure that you have Hardware Texturing
| | 00:33 | turned on, or you can also hit
the number 6 on your keyboard.
| | 00:38 | Now let's go ahead and just start
working with the body itself, and I'm just
| | 00:42 | going to model his torso and
his legs in this first part.
| | 00:47 | Now you can see that we need to
start with some sort of primitive.
| | 00:52 | In this case, I'm actually going to
start with a box. Now in order to model
| | 00:56 | accurately, I need to go into one of
the Orthographic Viewports, so I'm going
| | 01:00 | to go ahead and hit Spacebar, put my
mouse over the front view, and let's go
| | 01:05 | ahead and start there.
| | 01:06 | So I'm going to go ahead and select the
box, and then I'm going to take this box
| | 01:10 | and kind of roughly position it
around where his torso area is.
| | 01:18 | And now I need to go into
another view to set the height.
| | 01:21 | So let's go ahead into our side view
and make sure that the height is about the
| | 01:26 | same to what we have for his body.
| | 01:29 | And now I'm actually going to go into
that side view and move the box so that it
| | 01:35 | pretty much surrounds his body.
| | 01:37 | Now again, this isn't going to be perfect.
| | 01:38 | We are going to have a lot of tweaking
here, and then I'm going to go back into
| | 01:43 | the front view and make
sure that this is centered.
| | 01:46 | So under Translate X I'm just going to
type in 0 to make sure that's centered,
| | 01:52 | and then I want to add some subdivisions here.
| | 01:54 | So I'm going to scroll down until I
see my INPUT polyCube, and for Width
| | 01:59 | I'm going to type in 3.
| | 02:01 | In fact, let's go into our perspective here.
| | 02:06 | For Height, I'm going to type in again
3 and for Depth, this can be about 5.
| | 02:13 | So what I'm doing here is I'm just
adding in enough detail to give me some room
| | 02:18 | to actually start
sculpting and shaping the surface.
| | 02:21 | Now when you start working like this,
you really need to only add enough detail
| | 02:27 | to get the effect that you want.
| | 02:28 | Because remember, all I have to do is
hit 3, and I can subdivide that surface to
| | 02:34 | get an actual smooth surface.
| | 02:35 | So we're trying to get this surface
blocked out but not without too much detail,
| | 02:40 | because more detail means more
stuff that we have to animate.
| | 02:43 | So I want to keep this as simple as possible.
| | 02:45 | Now first thing I want to do
is start working on the legs.
| | 02:49 | Now in this case, sometimes this
image plane may get in the way.
| | 02:54 | Now one way to get around that is to
just work in XRay mode, so you can kind of
| | 03:00 | see through everything.
| | 03:02 | Another way is to simply hide
that layer every once in a while.
| | 03:07 | Now I have actually the image planes
set up on a layer called Ref, and all I
| | 03:13 | have to do is hit this Visibility
button here, and I can just toggle those on
| | 03:17 | and off, and that actually
will make it a little bit easier.
| | 03:19 | So I'm going to start off by making the
legs of the character, so I'm going to
| | 03:23 | actually go underneath this box
and look for this face and this face.
| | 03:30 | So I'm going to right-click, go into
Face components, select this face, hold
| | 03:37 | down the Shift key and select again.
| | 03:39 | Now we're going to go ahead
and extrude the character's legs.
| | 03:43 | So I'm going to go Edit Mesh > Extrude.
I'm going to grab this blue arrow and pull it down.
| | 03:49 | In fact, I'm going to pull all the way
down to the ground, which is that kind
| | 03:54 | of dark line here, and we're actually going
to pull it down to right about there or so.
| | 03:59 | In fact, if we turn on our reference, I
want to pull it down right about where
| | 04:04 | the top of the shoe starts.
| | 04:08 | And now let's go ahead and do another
Extrude and pull it down again until
| | 04:16 | it hits the ground.
| | 04:17 | Now what I've done here is I've
actually created some additional geometry.
| | 04:23 | You can look here from the front.
| | 04:25 | I've created enough room to
pull out the front of his foot.
| | 04:32 | Let's go ahead and select those faces.
Actually I've got two legs here, so I'm
| | 04:37 | going to select this face and again
Shift+Select this face, and again ,I'm
| | 04:42 | going to do Extrude.
| | 04:44 | I'm going to Extrude that foot to right
about here or so, and again we want to
| | 04:52 | try and get this curve.
| | 04:54 | So one thing I can do is I can go back
into Vertex mode and start pulling these
| | 04:59 | up and then go back into Face mode and
reselect these and then go Extrude again,
| | 05:15 | and then maybe one more.
| | 05:21 | Now that I have this, I can start
shaping that foot a little bit more.
| | 05:28 | Now in order to actually see, this we
may have to go into XRay mode so you can
| | 05:32 | kind of see how this works, and then
select these Vertices and start sculpting.
| | 05:38 | So I'm really just pushing and
pulling these around to match my drawing.
| | 05:44 | Okay, so I'm not going to do this all too much.
| | 05:47 | We're really just going to be roughing this in.
| | 05:49 | Now one thing you can do is also is as
you start to work with this, you can hit
| | 05:57 | the 2 or the 3 button to see
exactly how this is smoothing.
| | 06:01 | So if I hit the number 2 button, you can
see how I've got my feet, but they are
| | 06:06 | way too skinny on the left and right side.
| | 06:10 | So one thing I can do with that is I
can again go back into Face mode, select
| | 06:15 | the outside of the feet
and again, do another Extrude.
| | 06:26 | You can see now I'm extruding his feet
out a little bit, and I can squash it
| | 06:36 | down, and then from the front, I can
again adjust these, so again, I'm going to go
| | 06:47 | into Vertex mode, select
these and move them down.
| | 06:53 | You kind of get where I'm going with
this, adding enough geometry to make my
| | 06:58 | character and checking how it smoothes
and then matching that to my drawing.
| | 07:05 | So you can see I've got kind of
that foot roughed out a little bit.
| | 07:07 | So let's go ahead and work a little bit
more on the character's upper torso and
| | 07:12 | body and see if we can
get that into shape as well.
| | 07:15 | Let's go and turn off this reference here.
| | 07:17 | The first thing I notice is that it's
still kind of boxy. I really want it to be
| | 07:21 | a little bit more round, viewed from the top.
| | 07:24 | So let's go back into our top view.
I'm going to hit F to Frame All, and then I'm
| | 07:29 | going to go ahead and select the
vertices in the corners of this box.
| | 07:36 | You can see what I have selected here.
| | 07:39 | And then I'm going to scale.
| | 07:41 | But if I just scale from the middle,
notice how it also scales going up and down
| | 07:45 | this way, and I don't really want to do that.
| | 07:47 | So what I want to do is scale just in
the Z direction and then again in the
| | 07:55 | X, and what that does is it kind of smoothes
it out and makes it a little bit more cylindrical.
| | 08:02 | Then I can also select these vertices in
the middle and just translate those up -
| | 08:13 | oops I selected a vertices on the side
there you can see how I made a little mistake
| | 08:17 | there, so let's go ahead and make this -
| | 08:18 | In fact, probably the easier way to
do this is just select this one face
| | 08:22 | and pull that up, and now what I've
got is I'm kind of getting a little bit
| | 08:25 | of a shoulder here.
| | 08:27 | And now once I have this I can
basically go back in and match it up to the
| | 08:31 | reference and just work with
it from one view or the other.
| | 08:37 | So, for example, here I want to make
sure that this matches the beltline of the
| | 08:42 | character. So again, I'm just going to
start playing with these vertices, and
| | 08:48 | really all I'm going to do
is just pull vertices around.
| | 09:01 | And again, here with his rear end, I'm
going to go ahead and kind of clip off
| | 09:06 | this corner a little bit and again,
all I'm doing is trying to match his
| | 09:14 | geometry to the drawing.
| | 09:16 | It's simple as that.
| | 09:18 | So these are some of the basics of how
to model against a reference drawing.
| | 09:21 | Now the better the reference drawing you
have, the better your modeling will be.
| | 09:25 | It's always good idea to have great
reference when you model like this, and
| | 09:31 | again I'm just using things like Scale
and Rotate to move the vertices globally,
| | 09:38 | and then I go in one at a time and I tweak it.
| | 09:41 | And again, what I'm trying to do here is
I'm trying to create loops of edges that
| | 09:44 | are actually pretty much in line.
| | 09:50 | So you don't want geometry
that's all over the place.
| | 09:53 | You want things to be regular and smooth
and to kind of match what you're doing.
| | 09:59 | So now I've got this kind
of blocked out from the side.
| | 10:01 | Let's go back into the front and do it
again. And again, I'm going to turn on XRay
| | 10:06 | right here, so I can start playing with this.
| | 10:08 | I'm going to go ahead and take this, and
another way you can do this is by using Edge Loops.
| | 10:13 | So if I go into Edge and I double-click
on this edge, remember, it'll select the
| | 10:17 | whole loop, and then I can go
ahead and start scaling this.
| | 10:22 | And if I select this one I can double-
click that, maybe scale it up a little bit
| | 10:26 | because he is a little bit wider.
| | 10:28 | Notice here's the curve, so he is
actually a little bit wider here than I've got
| | 10:33 | him, so a little bit wider.
| | 10:35 | And again, remember I've already shaped
him from front to back, so I'm really
| | 10:40 | only working left to right here, so I
don't want to just globally scale because
| | 10:45 | then I'll get him out of proportion.
| | 10:48 | Anyways I'm going to stop here, and as
you can see, I've already got this body
| | 10:53 | kind of blocked down, and you can
see I've got some of the basic shape.
| | 10:57 | You can see I already have the character.
| | 10:59 | It's already starting to look a
little bit like the character.
| | 11:02 | Now we will do more tweaking on this,
but for right now, let's go ahead and
| | 11:06 | just leave this, and we'll pick it up
and refine it a little bit in the next
| | 11:10 | couple of lessons.
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|
|
3. Refining Polygonal ModelsWorking with edge loops | 00:00 | One of the more important concepts to
understand when working with Maya is the
| | 00:04 | concept of Edge Loops.
| | 00:06 | Now these are just groups of edges that
form concentric loops around your model.
| | 00:10 | And it's really important to organize
your geometry in this way to make your
| | 00:14 | model easy to manipulate as well as
to form, particularly if you're doing
| | 00:18 | character animation.
| | 00:19 | Now I have a character here, and let's
take a look at how his geometry is organized.
| | 00:25 | If you notice here we've got loops of edges,
in fact, I am going to go into Edge mode here.
| | 00:29 | I am going to double-click
on one of these edges here.
| | 00:32 | You can see we've got loops of
edges that just surround this character.
| | 00:36 | And by selecting just the Edge Loops, I
can actually step through parts of the
| | 00:41 | character just by hitting
the Left and Right Arrow.
| | 00:45 | So, for example, if I go to his arm
here, if I hit the Left and Right Arrow I
| | 00:50 | can just step through this geometry very,
very quickly and get from one place to another.
| | 00:56 | Now Maya has a number of tools that
allow us to manipulate both edges and Edge
| | 01:02 | Loops, and let's take a look at some of those.
| | 01:04 | Let me go into Edit Mesh and in fact,
I am going to tear off this menu, so we
| | 01:08 | can actually just see everything.
| | 01:09 | First of all, let's take a
look at the Slide Edge tool.
| | 01:13 | Now let's say I have this
edge of the character selected.
| | 01:16 | If I wanted to I could just move the
edge. For example, if I have this edge
| | 01:21 | here, this really isn't quite perpendicular.
| | 01:24 | So if I start moving the edge you
are going to see I am going to start
| | 01:26 | reshaping the character.
| | 01:29 | If we use the Slide Edge tool, this
allows to actually move the edge along the
| | 01:34 | surface without too much deformation.
| | 01:36 | So I am going to select this.
| | 01:38 | Now notice how it gives me a little hint.
| | 01:39 | It says Drag with the Middle
Mouse Button (MMB) to slide.
| | 01:42 | So all I have to do is Middle Mouse
over this, and I can move this edge, and
| | 01:47 | it'll pretty much maintain
the shape of the character.
| | 01:51 | So if I had to select this edge and
then just hit the Right Arrow to select the
| | 01:54 | whole edge loop. I can go again
Slide Edge with my middle mouse button.
| | 01:58 | I am using this for Edge Loops, but
you also can just use it for individual
| | 02:04 | edges as well, so I can
just slide an individual edge.
| | 02:08 | And again, it's going to try
and stick to that surface.
| | 02:10 | So it is a great way to reorganize
geometry without actually reshaping it.
| | 02:16 | Now there are some other nice little
tools that Maya has, and one is called
| | 02:20 | the Spin Edge tool.
| | 02:22 | Now this is actually new in Maya 2011,
and in fact, let's go ahead and take this
| | 02:26 | character here, and let's go ahead
and play with the Spin Edge tool.
| | 02:29 | Right-click over his face here
and select this edge on his cheek.
| | 02:35 | Now this particular tool, the Spin
Edge tool is actually a tool that is best
| | 02:40 | used with the keyboard.
| | 02:41 | So all I have to do is hold down Ctrl
and Alt, or I believe that would be Option
| | 02:44 | on the Mac, and just do right and left.
| | 02:48 | And what we can do is we can actually
spin this geometry to line it up better.
| | 02:53 | So, for example, if maybe this edge
coming this way is not right for what you
| | 02:58 | want to do, you can put it there.
| | 02:59 | And now I have a complete set of lines
to go from here to here, and this may
| | 03:03 | actually be a better way to
reorganize the character's cheek, for example.
| | 03:07 | By using the left and right arrows along with
Ctrl and Alt, I can actually spin those edges.
| | 03:13 | So these are some basic tools for
manipulating edges and edge loops within a model.
| | 03:19 | Now go ahead and use these to keep edge
loops of your model organized, so that
| | 03:24 | it makes it easy to deform and manipulate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting and offsetting edge loops | 00:01 | Now as you start working,
there is got to come a point where
| | 00:04 | you're going to want to add in some edge loops.
| | 00:06 | And there are a number of tools in Maya
that allow you to create new loops of edges.
| | 00:12 | We are going to be working with this basic
character that we started with in the last chapter.
| | 00:16 | And I am going to show you some of the
Edge Loop tools, which would be Insert
| | 00:21 | and Offset Edge Loop.
| | 00:23 | So let's go ahead and bring this character up.
| | 00:25 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and
turn on the Reference here in the Layers
| | 00:29 | Box, so we can see that.
| | 00:31 | And in fact, I am going to go into my Side View.
| | 00:34 | So I am going to hit the Spacebar, jump
out to my Fore View and then highlight
| | 00:39 | that and jump back in using the Spacebar.
| | 00:42 | So let's take a look at
how some of these tools work.
| | 00:45 | Probably the most common one
is called Insert Edge Loop.
| | 00:48 | So when I select Insert Edge Loop,
notice how my cursor changes, and it says to
| | 00:53 | Click-drag on edges.
| | 00:54 | Well, I have two
directions to create edge loops.
| | 00:57 | I can create it horizontally or vertically.
| | 01:00 | In this case, I kind of want to add
in some edge loops to define maybe the
| | 01:04 | outline of this character's belt.
| | 01:07 | So in order to add a horizontal loop of
edges, I need to click on a vertical edge.
| | 01:11 | And in order to create a vertical group of
edge loops, I need to click on a horizontal edge.
| | 01:17 | So let's go ahead and
click on this vertical edge.
| | 01:20 | And you can see how I
can slide this up and down.
| | 01:23 | And all I have to do is position that
pretty close to where that beltline is and
| | 01:28 | then just let go, and I
have some additional geometry.
| | 01:31 | And now I have some stuff that I
can use to model that character.
| | 01:35 | Now if I wanted to create a vertical
group of edges I could do that as well.
| | 01:38 | In fact, let's go into the
Front View of this character.
| | 01:41 | In fact, I am going to turn
off Reference so we can see this.
| | 01:45 | And let's say I wanted to create a line
straight down the middle of the character.
| | 01:49 | Well then all I have to do is just
click on any one of these rings, and I can
| | 01:53 | create a edge loop that's vertical.
| | 01:57 | Insert Edge Loop really just inserts one loop.
| | 02:01 | Now there is another one
called the Offset Edge Loop tool.
| | 02:05 | And what this does is it actually
takes one of these horizontal or vertical
| | 02:10 | loops and adds what's called an Offset.
| | 02:12 | Basically what it does is it kind of
brackets that edge loop with a new pair of edges.
| | 02:17 | Okay. Well I really don't want to do
that on this particular character.
| | 02:21 | But let's go ahead down to the belt
area, and let's say I wanted to add
| | 02:25 | something in here, say I wanted to add
a little bit of detail here, add in the
| | 02:30 | loop and then another one right about here.
| | 02:33 | So now I have a little bit of extra
detail in which to model that belt.
| | 02:38 | And then all I have to do is just go
into my Side View here, just double-click
| | 02:44 | on that and maybe Shift+double-click on
this, and all I have to do now is expand
| | 02:50 | these, and now I'm starting to get the belt.
| | 02:52 | In fact, let's take a
look at this Reference here.
| | 02:55 | And now I've got enough
geometry in here to create the belt.
| | 02:58 | Now if I really want to see how this
works when it's smooth, I can just hit
| | 03:03 | number 3 button or the number 2
button to kind of see how that's deforming.
| | 03:07 | Now one thing I could do with Edge
Loops is I can double-click on this one
| | 03:11 | here, and if you slide it down, that
crease gets a little bit tighter, and
| | 03:17 | that's kind of what I want.
| | 03:19 | So as you can see, Insert and Offset
Edge Loop can really help to sculpt and
| | 03:24 | define your character.
| | 03:27 | The typical process is you rough out
your geometry, and then you add Edge Loops
| | 03:32 | at very precise places to further
refine the geometry of your model.
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| Symmetrical modeling techniques| 00:00 | There are many times when you want
to model something that's symmetrical.
| | 00:05 | You know a car, for example, is
symmetrical, characters are symmetrical.
| | 00:09 | There are a lot of things
that have a symmetry to them.
| | 00:12 | Now learning how to model things
symmetrically will make it much easier to
| | 00:15 | create things that are balanced.
| | 00:18 | So there are number of tools that
we can use to model symmetrically.
| | 00:22 | The first one is just Reflection.
| | 00:25 | So, for example, if I take this model.
In fact, I am going to hit 1 here just so
| | 00:29 | we can go out to the raw model itself.
| | 00:31 | And let's say I take a Vertex, and I
want to let's say reshape this character's
| | 00:35 | beltline or something like that.
| | 00:36 | Now if I move this on one side, I need
to have it also move on the other side.
| | 00:41 | Well, one way to do it is to make sure I
select everything exactly precisely and
| | 00:46 | instead of move, I scale things, but
that can get really complex very quickly.
| | 00:52 | Another way is to use the Reflection tools.
| | 00:54 | Now we kind of covered this a little bit
before, but let me show it to you again.
| | 00:58 | So, for example, if I select a part of the
model, and let's say I wanted to move it.
| | 01:03 | All I have to do is select the Move
tool and either double-click here or click
| | 01:08 | on the Move tool settings.
| | 01:10 | You will notice that in here I have,
towards the bottom, something called
| | 01:14 | Reflection Settings.
| | 01:15 | So all I have to do is turn this on and
then tell it around what axis to reflect.
| | 01:19 | In this case, we are reflecting along
the X axis, which is this red X.
| | 01:23 | So as long as this is on X I should be okay.
| | 01:27 | So anything I select on this side
now gets selected on the other side.
| | 01:32 | So now as I model and reshape
this, everything is reflected.
| | 01:37 | Now the one problem with this is that
it only works for manipulating geometry.
| | 01:43 | So, for example, if I wanted to move
a face, I could easily move a face and
| | 01:48 | have that reflected.
| | 01:49 | But if I wanted to add geometry,
such as add an edge loop or Extrude a
| | 01:55 | face, then it won't.
| | 01:58 | So, for example, if I select all of the
faces on the inside of one foot, and I
| | 02:04 | do an Extrude, it doesn't
reflect on the other foot.
| | 02:09 | So I am going to go ahead and
hit Ctrl+Z twice to undo this.
| | 02:12 | And know in order to actually have this
completely symmetrical, including adding
| | 02:17 | geometry, then that's using a
tool called Duplicate Special.
| | 02:21 | I am going to go back in
Object mode and select my object.
| | 02:25 | So let me show you very quickly how to
duplicate objects, and then I'll show you the trick.
| | 02:29 | Under Edit, we have a tool called Duplicate.
| | 02:31 | If you hit Ctrl+D, you can just duplicate an
object and you can actually make copies of it.
| | 02:36 | Very simple.
| | 02:37 | It's almost like copy-and-paste, so
all I have to do is select an object,
| | 02:40 | Ctrl+D, and we have an object.
| | 02:43 | But the real cool one is called
Duplicate Special, which is Ctrl+Shift+D. Now in
| | 02:49 | order to do this I need to
actually cut my model in half first.
| | 02:53 | So select our model, and I
am going to go into Face mode.
| | 02:57 | And I'm just going to select the
faces on the right side of my model.
| | 03:01 | In fact, I've got Reflection still turned on.
| | 03:04 | Let me turn that off here.
| | 03:05 | So I've got the faces on just one side
of the model selected, and now all I have
| | 03:10 | to do is hit the Delete key,
and I've cut my model in half.
| | 03:14 | Well now I have half a model, but I
still need to model that symmetrically.
| | 03:19 | Well this is where Duplicate Special comes in.
| | 03:21 | I am going to go into Edit > Duplicate
Special, and let's go into the Options.
| | 03:26 | Instead of making a copy, which
actually just copies the object, I am going to
| | 03:30 | make what's called an Instance.
| | 03:32 | Now what an Instance is, it's a copy
that still points back to the original.
| | 03:37 | So any changes to the
original are reflected on the copy.
| | 03:41 | So this is really cool if you want to edit one
thing, and it affects a number of other things.
| | 03:46 | It's really kind of a cool tool for that.
| | 03:48 | But also what we want to do is we
want to make sure that this is mirrored.
| | 03:52 | So if I just Duplicate Special with
the Instance and nothing else, let's
| | 03:56 | go ahead and do that.
| | 03:57 | Now I have got two copies of the same object.
| | 04:00 | And what the Instance does is it allows
one change to affect the other. Okay.
| | 04:05 | Well we are kind of halfway there.
| | 04:07 | That's pretty cool.
| | 04:08 | So now as I model this, it's
actually affecting the copy, pretty cool.
| | 04:13 | But what I really need to
do is have this flipped over.
| | 04:18 | So one thing I could do is I can
actually mirror this by scaling it.
| | 04:22 | I could scale this say -1
and that would flip it around.
| | 04:26 | And that's a great way of doing it, but
that's actually a two-step process.
| | 04:29 | I can actually do this in one step by
selecting the object, going back into
| | 04:33 | Duplicate Special, selecting Instance.
| | 04:36 | And then for Scale, I am going to do
-1 around my reflected axis, which in
| | 04:42 | this case is my X axis.
| | 04:44 | And that actually copies it and
flips it and also creates an Instance.
| | 04:49 | So now anything I do to
one side affects the other.
| | 04:52 | So now when I go back into my foot and
I select these faces, I am just going to
| | 04:58 | Shift+Select these and I Extrude them,
| | 05:02 | they now Extrude on the other side as well.
| | 05:06 | And then when I scale these
down and move it, everything now
| | 05:11 | models symmetrically.
| | 05:13 | So if I were to just pick some
vertices here and move them, you can see that
| | 05:18 | it's doing what Reflection is doing,
but it's also allowing me to add geometry.
| | 05:24 | So in this case, for the character's
knee let's say I wanted to add in some edge
| | 05:28 | loops so that his actual knee can bend.
| | 05:31 | Well, then all I have to do is
go into Insert Edge Loop tool.
| | 05:34 | Click on that, and I can add them in.
| | 05:36 | And notice how it adds in
on the other side as well.
| | 05:40 | So once I have this, I can just work on one
side of my character, or whatever else I
| | 05:45 | am modeling, and the
other side will follow along.
| | 05:48 | This is a great tool for doing
any sort of symmetrical modeling.
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| Combining objects | 00:00 | Many times when you model with
polygons, you model things separately.
| | 00:04 | You'll model one part over here,
and another part over here.
| | 00:07 | There are times when you'll need to
stick them together as one object.
| | 00:12 | You can do that by using
a function called Combine.
| | 00:15 | Let me show you the basics of how that works.
| | 00:17 | Let's go ahead and just
make two very simple spheres.
| | 00:20 | So I have Sphere1 and Sphere2.
| | 00:25 | In fact, I am going to shade these.
| | 00:26 | Let me go ahead and turn off the Grid, so
we have a little bit better view of this.
| | 00:30 | So I actually have two separate objects.
| | 00:32 | You can see here we have two separate names.
| | 00:34 | I have Sphere1 and Sphere2.
| | 00:36 | If I Shift+Select them, I
still have two separate objects.
| | 00:40 | So you can see one is green and one is white,
which means that the green one is selected last.
| | 00:44 | Now if I wanted to combine these into
one polygonal object, I can do that using
| | 00:49 | what's called Combine.
| | 00:51 | So all I have to do is go Mesh >
Combine, and watch what happens.
| | 00:55 | It's now one object.
| | 00:56 | Now it's renamed it polySurface1, but
now when I select one, it selects both.
| | 01:02 | Even though they look like separate objects,
Maya treats them as one polygonal object.
| | 01:08 | For example, if I move vertices in these or
whatever, I can actually model these together.
| | 01:13 | Well, let's say you did this,
and you kind of wanted to undo it.
| | 01:17 | Well, there is also another complementary
tool for this, and that's called Separate.
| | 01:21 | So if you bring something in, and
it's combined, you can just separate it.
| | 01:26 | Now this is actually something that you
probably see a lot with models that you
| | 01:29 | buy online, or something like that you
bring them in, and they'll be all stuck
| | 01:33 | together, and you may want to take the
hat off the character, or something like
| | 01:36 | that, and you can use
Separate usually to do that.
| | 01:39 | So now these are separate objects.
| | 01:41 | Now let me show you a little bit
more of a practical use for this.
| | 01:45 | Let's go back to the
character that we were modeling.
| | 01:47 | So I'm going to go ahead
and open up Dog_Rough03.
| | 01:51 | That's his name, Rough.
| | 01:53 | Here I have my symmetrical modeling
that I was working with in my last
| | 01:56 | movie, but there's got a couple of time
where we have to kind of stick him back together.
| | 02:00 | So I still have just, like with the
spheres, I have two separate objects.
| | 02:06 | They're two shelves.
| | 02:07 | So the easiest way to stick them
back together is to use Combine.
| | 02:11 | So let's go ahead and do Mesh > Combine.
| | 02:14 | But when I do that, notice how I
still have this scene, and I still have two
| | 02:19 | open edges that need to
be stuck together as well.
| | 02:23 | Now I can actually stick these
together using a couple of different tools.
| | 02:27 | Under Edit Mesh, in fact, I'm
going to tear this off here.
| | 02:30 | We have what's called the Merge
Edge and the Merge Vertex tool.
| | 02:34 | Let me show you how the
Merge Vertex tool works first.
| | 02:37 | All you do is you go into Vertex mode here.
| | 02:39 | Let's go ahead and zoom in,
so we can see one of these.
| | 02:44 | You just go to Merge Vertex.
| | 02:45 | What it does is when you go over a
vertex, in fact, let's zoom in really
| | 02:49 | closer you can see this,
| | 02:51 | you can see that as my mouse gets
over that vertex, it highlights.
| | 02:55 | So all I have to do is left-click, and then
drag it to the vertex I want to merge it to.
| | 03:00 | So if I do this, bam! Those are merged.
| | 03:03 | I can just do this throughout.
| | 03:06 | If I want to, I can jus,t work my way
around, and kind of basically zip him up.
| | 03:10 | Now another way to do it is
to use the Merge Edge tool.
| | 03:14 | You select your first border edge.
| | 03:17 | What a border edge is
kind of like the open face.
| | 03:19 | So it's like the top of the bowl, or
in this case, the edge of this shell.
| | 03:24 | Then, you select the second border
edge, and then you hit Enter, and then
| | 03:28 | it should zip him up.
| | 03:30 | Now we can do this multiple
times, in two different ways.
| | 03:34 | We ca either use Merge
Vertex, or we can Merge Edge.
| | 03:38 | So we can select Edge, Edge,
Enter, and go on from there.
| | 03:43 | So either way works fine.
| | 03:44 | So go ahead and work your way
around this character and stitch him
| | 03:48 | back together.
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| Using the Polygon Bridge tool | 00:00 | Maya does have multiple ways of
connecting together multiple surfaces.
| | 00:06 | Another really handy tool to know
is called the Polygon Bridge tool.
| | 00:10 | Now I'm going to use this tool to
actually stick our character back together,
| | 00:13 | but this time using a different method.
| | 00:15 | So again, I have two halves of the character.
| | 00:19 | Just like before, I'm going to go
ahead and select both sides, and I'm going
| | 00:22 | to do Mesh > Combine.
| | 00:24 | I have a bit of a gap between the character.
| | 00:27 | Typically, I can just stitch him up in
the middle, but another way to do it is
| | 00:30 | to use the Polygon Bridge tool.
| | 00:32 | So I'm going to go into my Front Viewport.
| | 00:35 | I am going to turn off X-Ray here, so we can see.
| | 00:38 | Now I'm going to go into Face mode.
| | 00:41 | What I'm going to do is select both of
these rows of faces right down the middle.
| | 00:45 | So I'm basically going to select
everything down the middle and hit Delete.
| | 00:51 | What this does is it basically leaves two
very open edges, basically two shells here.
| | 00:58 | Now, I'm going to go back in the Object mode,
select my object and go Edit Mesh > Bridge.
| | 01:04 | Let's try that again.
| | 01:05 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and tear
this off, so you can see how this works here.
| | 01:08 | So I'm going to do Edit Mesh > Bridge.
| | 01:11 | What happens is it actually finds the
two open edges automatically, and creates
| | 01:17 | a bridge of polygons.
| | 01:19 | Now what's really cool about this is
that if I go into the Attribute Editor, you
| | 01:22 | can see I have a BridgeEdge right here.
| | 01:25 | I can actually dial in how many vertices I want.
| | 01:28 | So, for example, if I want 1, this
would actually be a duplicate of what I did
| | 01:31 | in the last lesson, or if I want 0,
I can even make it more simple.
| | 01:35 | So now I've got my character completely
stitched together with a minimum of effort.
| | 01:41 | It makes a very easy way to
connect open edges together.
| | 01:45 | Now the Polygon Bridge tool really does
have a few limitations, and that is it
| | 01:50 | really does need edges that are
open to each other on each side.
| | 01:54 | So open edges, almost like two halves
of a coconut, or something like that, and
| | 01:58 | they need to have shells that
are open and facing each other.
| | 02:02 | Then, the geometry has to be pretty
much the same between the two, and then
| | 02:05 | it'll just do the rest.
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| Connecting components and splitting polygons | 00:00 | There are times when you'll need to
create geometry that doesn't follow the
| | 00:04 | standard edged loop paradigm, times
when you'll have to actually kind of draw
| | 00:09 | out your polygons on a surface.
| | 00:12 | There is a couple of tools in
Maya that allow you to do this.
| | 00:15 | Let's go ahead and start by creating a
plane, shading it, and I'm going to go
| | 00:20 | ahead and move that above
the grid so we can see it.
| | 00:23 | I'm also going to give myself some details.
| | 00:25 | So I'm going to give myself about five
or six subdivisions in each direction.
| | 00:29 | Now let's go ahead and take
a look at the Edit Mesh menu.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to tear this off, so we can
actually have this right over here.
| | 00:35 | There are two tools that we can use,
that can really help us to define
| | 00:39 | geometry very precisely.
| | 00:41 | One is called the Split Polygon tool.
| | 00:44 | The other one is called Connect Components.
| | 00:46 | Let me show you how each of these works.
| | 00:48 | First of all, the Split Polygon tool
allows you to basically cut polygons in
| | 00:53 | hallf, or cut faces in half.
| | 00:56 | So when I select this, it
says click to drag on first edge.
| | 01:00 | So I'm going to drag on this edge and release.
| | 01:03 | So I'm left-clicking, dragging, releasing.
| | 01:05 | Left-click, drag, release, and
then I can just keep selecting edges.
| | 01:12 | In fact, it'll give me a straight line to line
up to if I want to, or I can go to other edges.
| | 01:19 | Then, when I'm done, press Enter.
| | 01:22 | Now I've got edges along with my polygons.
| | 01:26 | It allows me to basically just cut
through my polygons like a knife.
| | 01:30 | So if I wanted to add in a little bit
of detail somewhere, like a crease or
| | 01:34 | something like that, I can just draw it in.
| | 01:36 | Now with Maya 2011, there is
actually a new way of doing this.
| | 01:40 | That's called Connect Components.
| | 01:42 | This is actually a little bit more versatile.
| | 01:43 | Let me show you how this one works.
| | 01:45 | Now with this one, you can
actually select any type of component.
| | 01:48 | So I can just Shift+Select a bunch of
edges, and select Connect Components.
| | 01:56 | Once I do that, it'll go ahead and
split those edges in half and just connect
| | 02:01 | them, a lot simpler.
| | 02:02 | Now another way of doing it is by
connecting other types of components.
| | 02:06 | So, for example, I could select a
number of different faces, and just do
| | 02:11 | Connect Components as well, or I can
do it with Vertices faces, really ay
| | 02:16 | combination of components.
| | 02:18 | In fact, if I wanted to, I could right-
click and go into what's called Multi
| | 02:21 | mode, select some faces, select a
vertics, select an edge, and then another
| | 02:29 | edge, and then let's connect all of those.
| | 02:33 | That's what it does.
| | 02:34 | So again, both of these tools, Split
Polygon and Connect Components allow us
| | 02:40 | to further refine the surface of a
mesh by adding in geometry in very, very
| | 02:46 | specific places.
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| Poking and wedging faces | 00:00 | There are two more tools that allow you
to create additional geometry in Maya.
| | 00:05 | Those are called Poke and Wedge Face.
| | 00:07 | So, let's take a look at these.
| | 00:09 | We are going to start
with the cube, very simple.
| | 00:11 | We are going to shade that, and then I
want to go ahead and add in some detail.
| | 00:14 | So we are going to go into my Channel
box here, to the polyCube, and just make
| | 00:19 | sure that I have got about four
subdivisions of height and depth.
| | 00:23 | Now, let's take a look at these tools.
| | 00:25 | They are actually here under the Edit Mesh menu.
| | 00:28 | I am going to just go ahead and tear
off that menu so we can take a look at it.
| | 00:31 | They are right here:
| | 00:32 | Poke and Wedge face, and
they both work on faces.
| | 00:35 | So, I am actually going to go into
Face mode here and just select one face.
| | 00:40 | Let's just start with Poke.
| | 00:42 | So, what Poke does is it
basically just subdivides the face.
| | 00:46 | It kind of draws an X from corner to corner
on the face and puts a vertex in the middle.
| | 00:51 | So really, what it does is give you
geometry that allows you to create kind of
| | 00:54 | like this pyramid shape.
| | 00:56 | Now, this particular tool only works on one
face at a time, or works on a per-face basis.
| | 01:02 | So, even if I were to select multiple
faces and I did Poke Face, each individual
| | 01:08 | face would have the same effect.
| | 01:11 | So, this doesn't really change its effect
depending upon how many faces you select.
| | 01:16 | So, it's basically on a per-face basis.
| | 01:18 | Now, the next one is called Wedge Face.
| | 01:21 | What that does is it takes one or more
faces and rotates them around a line of edges.
| | 01:28 | So, for this one though, you need to
be able select a face and an edge.
| | 01:32 | So, I am going to right-click and go
into Multi-mode and go ahead and select
| | 01:38 | these two faces and then see that edge?
| | 01:41 | I am going to Shift+Select that as well.
| | 01:44 | So, now I have some faces and an edge selected.
| | 01:47 | Now, all I have to do is just
click on Wedge Face, and there it goes.
| | 01:51 | So, you can see how this works.
| | 01:54 | It basically just takes this edge
and then rotate those faces around it.
| | 01:58 | Now, if I go into Wedge Face,
you can see I have an Angle.
| | 02:02 | So, I can actually tell it what angle I
want to wedge those faces and also how
| | 02:07 | many divisions I can use.
| | 02:10 | If I actually go into my
Options here, they'll show up as well.
| | 02:15 | Now, Wedge also works for
multiple faces and multiple edges.
| | 02:19 | So, let's do this one more time.
| | 02:21 | We go into Multi-mode.
| | 02:22 | I am going to select these four faces
and then one, two edges, so you can see
| | 02:26 | that it actually works
for multiple edges as well.
| | 02:30 | So, you can see how Wedge can be very
handy for creating things like maybe
| | 02:34 | air-conditioning ducts, or connecting any
sort of square objects, that sort of thing.
| | 02:40 | So, both of these have their uses.
| | 02:42 | So, just go ahead and learn the tools.
| | 02:44 | I am sure there will be an
opportunity to use them as you work with Maya.
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| Working with polygon booleans | 00:00 | Now, anybody who has done 3D modeling
will probably be familiar with booleans.
| | 00:05 | Booleans allow you to take multiple
objects and combine them to either add or
| | 00:09 | subtract detail from each author.
| | 00:13 | So, let's go ahead and start
off with a very simple situation.
| | 00:16 | I am going to go ahead and
start off with a cube here.
| | 00:20 | Then, inside of it, I am going to
draw a little bit of a cylinder.
| | 00:26 | I am going to go ahead
and move that cylinder up.
| | 00:29 | Let's shade everything so we
can see what we've got here.
| | 00:33 | So, now I have got this cylinder,
and it's kind of poking into this cube.
| | 00:38 | So, what I want to do is use this
cylinder as kind of a cutting tool to actually
| | 00:43 | cut into the surface of the cube.
| | 00:45 | We can do that by using booleans.
| | 00:48 | Now, booleans are actually found
underneath the Mesh menu, and there is actually
| | 00:53 | a sub-menu here, because there
are three types of booleans.
| | 00:56 | There is Union, Difference, and Intersection.
| | 00:59 | So, let's take a look at how these work.
| | 01:01 | In fact, I am going to turn on X-ray
and also turn on Wireframe unshaded, so you
| | 01:07 | can kind of see what we have got here.
| | 01:09 | So, I am going to go ahead and select
my cube first and my cylinder second.
| | 01:13 | Let's just go ahead and go down to these.
| | 01:15 | So, go ahead and take a look at Union.
| | 01:17 | What Union does is it actually
combines the two into one object.
| | 01:22 | So, let's go ahead and turn off X-
ray, so we can actually see this.
| | 01:25 | Now, I've got both of
these combined into one object.
| | 01:28 | But also, their faces are
kind of welded together.
| | 01:31 | So, for example, if I were to model this,
you can see how it all kind of sticks together.
| | 01:36 | So, if I were to take, for example, some of
these vertices, it all kind of holds together.
| | 01:42 | So, I am going to go ahead and undo this.
| | 01:45 | Turn on x-ray again, so we can see what happens.
| | 01:47 | Now, the next one is called Difference.
| | 01:49 | What this is a great way to cut holes.
| | 01:51 | In fact, let's off x-ray so you can
actually see how this works shaded.
| | 01:56 | So, when I select the Difference,
| | 01:58 | what's this is going to do is the last
object picked is going to cut a hole in
| | 02:02 | the first object it picked.
| | 02:03 | Now, this is a great way to create
a little bit of a hole in the cube.
| | 02:07 | So, let's go ahead and undo that,
and we are going to one more.
| | 02:10 | Let's see what Intersection looks like.
| | 02:11 | An intersection really carves away
everything but what's common to both.
| | 02:16 | So, in this case, it will be just
that lower part of the cylinder.
| | 02:21 | Let's go ahead and go back to Difference.
| | 02:23 | I am going to go ahead and select
this, and let's do Difference again.
| | 02:26 | One of the things I want to show is
that boolean is great for creating
| | 02:31 | these sorts of surfaces.
| | 02:32 | But as soon as the surface starts to
deform, you are going to have problems.
| | 02:36 | So, I really recommend booleans just
for what I will call hard surfaces, things
| | 02:42 | that don't change shape.
| | 02:43 | Because as soon as you start modeling
into a surface that's had booleans, you
| | 02:48 | are going to start to
get really weird artifacts.
| | 02:50 | So, for example, if I wanted to move these
around, you are going to start to get like creases.
| | 02:55 | You can kind of see this crease coming up here.
| | 02:57 | When you go to render, if you've
changed the shape of the object in any way
| | 03:02 | after you do a boolean, there is a
possibility that you are going to get creases
| | 03:07 | and wrinkles and all sorts of
weird effects on your object.
| | 03:11 | Booleans work great, but they are
really best for hard surface, solid
| | 03:16 | objects that don't deform.
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| Modeling with nonlinear deformers | 00:00 | One way to reshape geometry in Maya
is to use some animation tools called
| | 00:05 | Non-linear deformers.
| | 00:07 | These are meant for animation, but
they can also be used for modeling.
| | 00:11 | Let's take a look at how these work.
| | 00:13 | Now, these are actually animation tools so
they will be under the Animation menu set.
| | 00:17 | I am going to here into Animation, and
they are here under Create Deformers.
| | 00:21 | But before we actually use any of these,
we need to create something to deform.
| | 00:24 | So, I am going to go over to my shelf
here, and under Polygons, I am just going
| | 00:28 | to select a cylinder.
| | 00:29 | I am going to go ahead and create a
cylinder here and zoom out and shade it,
| | 00:33 | so we can see what we are working with.
| | 00:35 | Now, all I need to do is select my
object and apply a deformer to it, and I
| | 00:39 | can change its shape.
| | 00:40 | So, let's go into Create Deformers.
| | 00:43 | The ones we are going to look at
right now are called Non-linear deformers.
| | 00:46 | So, I am actually going to go
ahead and tear off this menu.
| | 00:49 | Then, just select my cylinder
and then just click on Bend.
| | 00:53 | Now, it's created what's called a bend handle.
| | 00:57 | Now, we can't really see this.
| | 00:58 | But if we go into x-ray mode, you'll see it's
got this little up and down the middle of it.
| | 01:05 | If we go to the Attribute Editor,
you'll notice we have what's called a bend.
| | 01:09 | So, actually, I could select my cylinder.
| | 01:11 | Let me go into Wireframe mode here.
| | 01:13 | I can select the bend, which is
actually a separate object in the scene.
| | 01:18 | So, once I have that bend selected,
| | 01:21 | I can go to the parameters here,
and I can use it to bend my object.
| | 01:26 | So, let's go ahead and turn on shading here.
| | 01:29 | So, you can see now I can
actually use that to bend the object.
| | 01:33 | Now, the actual the deformer
itself is separate from the object.
| | 01:38 | So, if I move it, it's going to
change the way that my object deforms.
| | 01:43 | Or if I rotate it, it's going to rotate
the deformation around a different axis.
| | 01:49 | Now, I can also change what is's
called the High and Low Bound of this.
| | 01:54 | So, I can change basically where
the bend starts and where it stops.
| | 01:58 | So, you can kind of see how this would
be very easy for creating like some pipes
| | 02:02 | or something like that and make a bend in them.
| | 02:04 | You could actually use this tool.
| | 02:06 | Now, with a non-linear deformer
because it is a separate object, you need to
| | 02:11 | make sure that once you
have the shape that you want,
| | 02:15 | you actually bake it in.
| | 02:16 | Now, we can do that by
actually deleting the object's history.
| | 02:20 | We do that under Edit >
Delete By Type > History.
| | 02:25 | What this does is it deletes
the history on this object.
| | 02:28 | When I do that, it gets rid of the bend,
and it kind of bakes in the effect.
| | 02:33 | I want to make sure that you know that
there is a Delete By Type for a specific object.
| | 02:37 | There is also Delete All by Type, which
deletes everything out of the whole scene.
| | 02:43 | So, you want to make that you
just have it on the specific object.
| | 02:46 | So, just do Delete By Type > History on
your selected object, and you will be okay.
| | 02:50 | I'll go ahead and undo that.
| | 02:52 | I am going to delete my
bendhandle and show you some of the other
| | 02:56 | non-linear deformers.
| | 02:57 | So, I am going to go ahead
and select my cylinder again.
| | 02:59 | Let's go ahead and use Flare.
| | 03:01 | Now, when I have Flare, again, it
brings up a handle here, and I can do what's
| | 03:06 | called a flare on each side.
| | 03:08 | So, what you can do is basically
flare at the bottom or at the top.
| | 03:13 | Another way to manipulate
this is actually go over here.
| | 03:16 | We have on our toolbar,
| | 03:17 | we have a thing called Manipulator tool.
| | 03:19 | If I click on this,
| | 03:20 | I can actually grab these little handles here,
and just interactively work with this as well.
| | 03:27 | So, this here will work on a
number of different objects.
| | 03:30 | You can use it with lighting.
| | 03:31 | You can use it with some of the modeling tools.
| | 03:34 | If you select this Manipulator tool, you can
actually affect the parameters in the Viewport.
| | 03:39 | So, you don't even have to go over to
your Attribute Editor. It's kind of cool.
| | 03:41 | So, I am going to go ahead and
again select my handle and delete it.
| | 03:46 | Let's go ahead and see what
some of these other ones do.
| | 03:48 | Here, we have a Sine wave one
and again, it's pretty obvious.
| | 03:52 | Another one will be Squash.
| | 03:54 | This is actually kind of nice.
| | 03:55 | It's good for squash and stretch.
| | 03:57 | So, again, we can either squash or stretch.
| | 04:01 | Again, this works just fine
with Manipulator tool as well.
| | 04:04 | It really nice to creating rubbery effects.
| | 04:07 | This is actually probably
more of an animation effect.
| | 04:09 | But again, you can use this
as a modeling tool as well.
| | 04:12 | All I have to do is once I'm done with this,
| | 04:15 | just go ahead go to Edit >
Delete By Type > History, and I've
| | 04:19 | actually model that shape.
| | 04:21 | So, let's go ahead and do a few more.
| | 04:23 | We've got once here. It's Twist.
| | 04:24 | This will be great for making something
like a machine screw, or something like that.
| | 04:29 | The last one is Wave.
| | 04:31 | Go ahead and change the wavelength.
| | 04:32 | Let's go ahead change this amplitude.
| | 04:34 | So, again, it kind of sends
wave-shape through the objects.
| | 04:38 | So, you can see how we've kind of
got that wave kind of coming in.
| | 04:41 | Again, some of these work a
little bit better for animation.
| | 04:44 | You can also them as modeling tools.
| | 04:47 | So, go ahead and play with
the Non-linear deformers.
| | 04:49 | You know that they're there.
| | 04:50 | You can use them to create some
very nice effects on your model.
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| Modeling with lattices | 00:00 | Lattices are another animation
deformers that can be used to deform geometry.
| | 00:05 | Now, what are lattices?
| | 00:06 | It's basically just a box of points.
| | 00:08 | And when you deform that box, it
basically reshapes whatever is inside.
| | 00:13 | So, for example, if I have this
character's head, and let's go ahead and just
| | 00:17 | select the whole head, including the
eyes, and let's go to Animation, under
| | 00:23 | Create Deformers, let's go into Lattice.
| | 00:25 | Now I want to actually go into my tools here.
| | 00:28 | And typically, it defaults to 2, 5 and 2.
| | 00:32 | But actually, let's go ahead and just make
that 4, 4 and 4, and then just go Create.
| | 00:38 | Now what it does is it creates a 4 x 4
x 4 box around whatever I had selected.
| | 00:45 | Now all I have to do in order to use
this is just right-click over this, and I
| | 00:50 | can select either the object
itself or the points in the Lattice.
| | 00:54 | So, for example, if I select these
Lattice points and grab them, by moving the
| | 00:59 | points, I can actually
deform what's inside the box.
| | 01:04 | So if I wanted to, for example, make
his head a little bit wider, I could scale
| | 01:11 | that box a little bit out, or let's say I
wanted to give him a bigger forehead, I
| | 01:15 | could take the top of the
box and move that as well.
| | 01:18 | So as you can see, we can
actually manipulate the box and globally
| | 01:23 | reshape what's inside.
| | 01:24 | This is really great if you have like a
stock model and you want to reshape it
| | 01:29 | to more of your liking.
| | 01:30 | You can actually do your basic
deformation using the Lattice, and then go in,
| | 01:34 | and tweak the mesh itself.
| | 01:36 | Now the Lattice is actually an
object that's separate from everything else.
| | 01:41 | So here I have my head,
and here I have my lattice.
| | 01:45 | Now because the Lattice is deforming
everything inside, you can move the Lattice
| | 01:50 | and everything will move with it,
because you are essentially moving the points,
| | 01:54 | But if you move what's inside, if you
actually move the object, you can actually
| | 01:59 | take that object outside the
lattice and just easily change it.
| | 02:04 | Now this is actually where it can
become a really good animation tool because
| | 02:08 | you can actually animate an object
through this and have it deform.
| | 02:12 | But just like with the non-linear
deformers, if you want this to become a
| | 02:16 | modeling tool, you'll have to
bake the change into the surface.
| | 02:20 | So what you do is you select the
objects that are deformed by it, then you
| | 02:24 | just go Edit > Delete by Type >
History, and now your deformations are
| | 02:29 | basically baked in.
| | 02:31 | Now you can also use Lattices
on just portions of a model.
| | 02:36 | So if I wanted to, I could zoom
in to the nose of this character,
| | 02:40 | right-click, go to for Vertex.
| | 02:41 | Now if I wanted to, I could use soft
selection, or I can also just create a
| | 02:48 | Lattice around this character's nose.
| | 02:50 | So again, Create Deformers > Lattice,
and it will just create the Lattice around
| | 02:55 | the vertices that I had selected.
| | 02:58 | And again, I can just take my Lattice
points and turn them into Pinocchio, or
| | 03:03 | do whatever I want.
| | 03:05 | So as you can see, Lattices are really
great way to globally reshape geometry.
| | 03:11 | Now remember, they are separate objects.
| | 03:13 | So there is some possibility of
actually moving one but not the other.
| | 03:16 | And when you're done, you want to
make sure that you delete history on the
| | 03:20 | object to bake in the deformation.
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|
|
4. NURBS Modeling TechniquesIntroducing NURBS modeling| 00:00 | Before we get started, let's go ahead
and make sure we have our project set.
| | 00:04 | So I'm going to go File > Project > Set,
and make sure we've set this to Chap_04.
| | 00:11 | Maya has two forms of modeling.
| | 00:14 | As we've seen, we can use polygonal
objects to create surfaces in Maya.
| | 00:19 | There's also another form of modeling,
and that's called NURBS modeling.
| | 00:23 | And NURBS is actually an acronym.
| | 00:25 | It stands for Non-uniform Rational B-Splines.
| | 00:28 | And that's the last time I'll ever say that.
| | 00:30 | I have two spheres on the screen here.
| | 00:33 | One's made of polygons.
| | 00:34 | One's made of NURBS.
| | 00:35 | The violet colored sphere is made of polygons.
| | 00:39 | And as you can see, we've got all the
standard stuff that we've been working
| | 00:43 | with, which is vertices, edges, faces and so on.
| | 00:46 | Now the one thing about a polygonal
surfaces is that as you deform it, you get
| | 00:52 | kind of this chunky behavior.
| | 00:55 | Now we can get rid of some
of this by subdividing it.
| | 00:58 | But again, you really do need a fair amount
of detail to get a good polygonal surface.
| | 01:04 | Now with NURBS, let's go ahead and select this,
you'll notice that it has a lot less detail.
| | 01:09 | The thing about a NURBS surface is
that we actually have curved surfaces.
| | 01:14 | It actually defines a curvature. Where here on
a polygonal surface each face is actually flat,
| | 01:21 | it's actually a flat plane,
| | 01:22 | on a NURBS surface, it's
actually a curved surface.
| | 01:26 | It's defined as a curve, which is really
great because you can zoom into a NURBS
| | 01:31 | surface as close as you want, and
it will still retain its curvature.
| | 01:35 | That's because its surface
is mathematically defined.
| | 01:38 | NURBS surfaces have different types
of components than a polygonal surface.
| | 01:44 | So if I right-click over this,
you'll see, instead of faces and edges and
| | 01:48 | vertices, I have what's called a Control
Vertex, Isoparms, Hulls and a few others.
| | 01:55 | The most important one is Control Vertex.
| | 01:57 | So let's go ahead and select that.
| | 02:00 | And notice how there's actually, again,
less detail in the NURBS surface, but it
| | 02:05 | defines a much bigger range of curvature.
| | 02:07 | So if I selected these Control
Vertices, you can see that just manipulating
| | 02:13 | these gives me a much more kind of
rubbery, easier surface, a much more organic
| | 02:18 | type of surface than a polygonal
surface, which is composed of planes.
| | 02:22 | Now we have a number of
other types of components.
| | 02:26 | Now if I take a look at the Hulls, you can
kind of see how the NURBS surface is constructed.
| | 02:33 | You can almost use an analogy of
this is a polygonal model that's been
| | 02:37 | subdivided, but there is some difference.
| | 02:40 | So don't take that analogy too far.
| | 02:43 | But you can see how we have these
Hulls, and around the Hulls we have kind of
| | 02:47 | what we would normally call edges in
the polygonal model, but in a NURBS model,
| | 02:51 | it's called an Isoparm.
| | 02:53 | So let's go ahead and right-
click over it and select Isoparm.
| | 02:57 | And then if you left-click and drag,
you can just drag out any one of
| | 03:00 | these Isoparm lines.
| | 03:03 | These are very similar to what edge
loops would do in a polygonal surface.
| | 03:08 | But really, what we're just doing is
defining a latitude or longitude line.
| | 03:13 | And in this particular case, these
Isoparms really just determine a place where
| | 03:17 | we will do some sort of action on a surface.
| | 03:21 | So just really just know that they are there.
| | 03:22 | So Isoparms, again, run in two directions.
| | 03:25 | We have latitude and longitude types of lines.
| | 03:28 | Now the other thing about NURBS
surfaces is that they always are
| | 03:32 | four-sided patches.
| | 03:34 | So when you create a more
sophisticated object, a lot of times you'll have to
| | 03:39 | use multiple NURBS surfaces and
tie them together in clever ways.
| | 03:44 | So actually, I'm going to go ahead
and go back to Object mode here
| | 03:47 | and select these spheres and delete them.
| | 03:50 | And then in this file, I
have a layer called Scooter.
| | 03:54 | Now just go ahead and turn that on.
| | 03:56 | And this is actually fully formed
object made entirely out of NURBS.
| | 04:01 | Now if I select on any one of these,
you'll see that each part of this is
| | 04:06 | actually a separate object.
| | 04:08 | So what we're doing is actually
we're creating objects that are kind of
| | 04:12 | built out of sheets.
| | 04:14 | Each NURBS patch is, again, a four-sided patch.
| | 04:18 | And then we can fold it and bend it
and twist it in any sort of way to
| | 04:22 | make interesting parts, like, for example,
the front part of the shell of the scooter.
| | 04:27 | You can see how it's almost of four-sided patch.
| | 04:29 | And then the fender and wheel
basically look like a four-sided patch.
| | 04:33 | It's kind of revolved around.
| | 04:37 | The back shell of this, you
can see how it's wrapped around.
| | 04:40 | And you can see also with these closed
types of NURBS surfaces, you can see this
| | 04:44 | darker line here is kind of where
everything intersects, so it kind of wraps around.
| | 04:49 | Now as we start working with NURBS surfaces,
you'll see how this actually works in practice.
| | 04:54 | So this is really just an introduction
to get you familiar with NURBS surfaces
| | 04:59 | and how they're used to
build sophisticated objects.
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| NURBS primitives| 00:00 | Probably the easiest way to start
modeling with NURB surfaces in Maya is to
| | 00:04 | start with Primitives.
| | 00:05 | This is very similar to
what we do with polygons.
| | 00:08 | You start with a Primitive.
| | 00:09 | With NURB surfaces, you could
actually start with either Curves or
| | 00:13 | Primitive surfaces.
| | 00:15 | So there really are two basic starting points.
| | 00:17 | But let's go ahead and take a
look at some of the NURBS Primitives.
| | 00:20 | Now, we can get to these
either through the menu.
| | 00:23 | We can go Create > NURBS Primitives.
| | 00:25 | In fact, I can just tear
this off, so we have this ready.
| | 00:29 | Or we also have a shelf here with a lot
of the surfaces pretty much preset, and
| | 00:34 | a lot of actually the NURB's
operations are all right here as well.
| | 00:38 | So let's go ahead and
start by creating a sphere.
| | 00:42 | Basically, just select
sphere and drag on the grid.
| | 00:47 | I will go ahead and shade that.
| | 00:48 | In fact, I'm going to turn off the
grid here, so we can just see this.
| | 00:51 | Now, notice how the sphere actually has
a line, a darker line down the middle.
| | 00:58 | This is where the patch actually intersects.
| | 01:01 | What a NURB surface is is a four-sided
rectangle that's kind of scrunched up at the
| | 01:07 | top to create a sphere.
| | 01:09 | So we can kind of see how this works.
| | 01:11 | If I go into my Channel Box, and under
makeNurbSphere, if I just take my Sweep
| | 01:17 | and I unsweep it, you can see how we
can kind of open up this NURBS sphere.
| | 01:25 | And you can see now, basically what it is a
shelf that's kind of closed on both ends.
| | 01:30 | So what you have is you don't have a
continuous surface like you do with a polygon.
| | 01:35 | You actually have a patch that's kind
of scrunched up, and this can actually
| | 01:38 | affect the way that you model.
| | 01:39 | So just be aware that it's there.
| | 01:41 | Now, some of the other controls we
have are Start and End Sweep here.
| | 01:45 | And we also have our Radius, which
is the size of it, and we also have
| | 01:50 | the number of Sections, which is the amount
of detail that we want in our NURBS surface.
| | 01:54 | Now, one of the things about NURBS
surfaces is that they are naturally smooth.
| | 01:58 | So you don't need as much
detail to create a smooth surface.
| | 02:02 | Now, I'm going to jump around a little
bit here, and let's go ahead and look
| | 02:06 | at the NURBS Cylinder.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to go ahead and just drag
that out and create a NURBS Cylinder.
| | 02:13 | With the NURBS Cylinder, we
actually have three separate objects.
| | 02:17 | Again, you cannot connect things
like you can in a polygonal object.
| | 02:21 | So if I select the top or the bottom of
the sphere, you'll notice that they are
| | 02:26 | actually separate objects.
| | 02:29 | So the caps of this cylinder are actually
separate, and you can actually see the names here.
| | 02:34 | We have topCap, bottomCap and the Cylinder.
| | 02:38 | So if I wanted to, I could actually
just hit Delete and delete those.
| | 02:41 | And so now what I have is kind
of like this hollow cylinder.
| | 02:44 | And the reason I'm doing this is to,
again, show you a little bit about how NURBS
| | 02:48 | surfaces are constructed.
| | 02:50 | If we go into our INPUTS, we can again
play with our Sweep and you can see how,
| | 02:56 | again, this is a four-sided
patch that's been wrapped around.
| | 03:01 | It's almost like we took a label and
wrapped it around a bottle, or took a piece
| | 03:06 | of sheet metal and rolled
it around to make a tin can.
| | 03:09 | That's kind of how NURBS surfaces work,
and if you remember the sphere, all we
| | 03:15 | have to do to actually create a
sphere is to kind of wrap up the top end.
| | 03:19 | So if I took these Control Vertices
and kind of scrunched them up a little bit,
| | 03:23 | we'd start to get what we
would have as basically a sphere.
| | 03:26 | So if I start doing this you can see
how I can start to approximate a sphere
| | 03:30 | just by binding up those top control
vertices, and that's really exactly how a
| | 03:36 | sphere is made using a NURB surface.
| | 03:39 | But again, when it's all said and
done, it really is just a patch that's
| | 03:43 | been wrapped around.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to go back in
Object mode and delete this.
| | 03:47 | And let's take a look at one more.
| | 03:49 | We're going to actually
take a look at the Torus.
| | 03:53 | And what you can see with the Torus is
that it's basically a NURBS surface that's
| | 03:57 | been wrapped around into a cylinder.
| | 03:59 | So remember that cylinder we have.
| | 04:01 | And then the cylinder has been bent around,
almost like a garden hose to match itself up.
| | 04:07 | So again, in this case,
we've got one Sweep here.
| | 04:12 | So this is a cylinder that's been swept around.
| | 04:15 | And then we also have a Minor Sweep,
which is basically the sweep that
| | 04:22 | creates the cylinder.
| | 04:23 | So you can see how we have this is the
cylinder, and then the cylinder itself is
| | 04:30 | kind of wrapped around.
| | 04:31 | But again, when we look at this, it really
is just topologically a four-sided patch.
| | 04:37 | So we've got one, two, three, four
corners, four outside edges, and the whole
| | 04:43 | thing is just stitched together
very cleverly to make a Torus.
| | 04:49 | Now, with other types of objects, we
actually aren't going to be as clever.
| | 04:53 | So, for example, a NURBS Cube, if I
create that, really, all this is is
| | 05:01 | some four-sided patches.
| | 05:03 | So if I go into my cube, you can see
it's actually created just four separate
| | 05:10 | patches that represent a cube.
| | 05:13 | So I could actually just move those
away from each other, and you can see that
| | 05:18 | it's really just separate objects.
| | 05:19 | Whereas in a polygonal object, these
would all be kind of stuck together.
| | 05:24 | The big point of this is that
topology is very important in a NURB Ssurface.
| | 05:29 | You kind of have to think about how
would I take a piece of sheet metal and wrap
| | 05:34 | it around to make this particular object?
| | 05:37 | There is really no room for like branching
objects, or joints, or that sort of thing.
| | 05:42 | You have to go through some special
techniques to make those things happen.
| | 05:45 | And of course, we'll show you those.
| | 05:47 | So those are some of the basic NURBS Primitives.
| | 05:49 | And a lot of times these can be very
good starting places for building your
| | 05:52 | own objects.
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| Using the NURBS curve tools| 00:00 | There will be times when starting with
a primitive is not enough, and you'll
| | 00:04 | have to be a little bit more
customized in how you build the NURBS surfaces.
| | 00:08 | This is where you can start
building surfaces out of curves.
| | 00:12 | Here, I have a basic surface.
| | 00:14 | This is actually the rear end of
that scooter we've been playing with.
| | 00:17 | And as you can see, we have a surface,
but also, if you look a little bit
| | 00:22 | more closely, you'll see that we can
actually click on these curves that
| | 00:27 | actually define the surface.
| | 00:29 | So if I can highlight one of these
curves, you can actually move that curve
| | 00:33 | around, and you can see how the curve
itself defines how that surface is built,
| | 00:40 | Either by scaling, or moving, or even
rotating that curve, we can change how
| | 00:46 | the surface is built.
| | 00:47 | This is just a simple demonstration of how
curves are used to build surfaces in Maya.
| | 00:52 | Now, before we actually start building
any surfaces, we need to learn how to draw
| | 00:57 | and manipulate curves.
| | 00:59 | So I'm going to go ahead and select all
of these and just hit Delete, and let's
| | 01:03 | go ahead into Drawing mode here.
| | 01:06 | Now, we can create curves either through
the Curves Shelf or through the Create menu.
| | 01:12 | In fact, I'm going to go
ahead and tear this off.
| | 01:14 | There are several ways to draw curves in Maya.
| | 01:18 | We have what's called the CV Curve,
the EP Curve, the Bezier Curve.
| | 01:23 | We also have one called the Pencil Curve,
and we also have tools to make arcs as well.
| | 01:28 | Let's go ahead and just
start with the basic Curve tools.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to actually jump out
here and go into a Top viewport.
| | 01:39 | And let's go ahead and select the CV Curve.
| | 01:41 | Now, what the CV Curve does is it allows
you to draw out what's called a NURBS Curve.
| | 01:47 | So let's go ahead and just left-click into this,
and notice how we have kind of a box shape.
| | 01:53 | And then left-click again
to create your second vertex.
| | 01:57 | Now, notice how this actually is shaped like
the letter U. This is actually our U direction.
| | 02:03 | In the NURBS surface, we
actually have two directions:
| | 02:06 | the U direction and the V direction.
| | 02:09 | These are similar to
latitude and longitude lines.
| | 02:12 | So for curves, these all just
basically have a U direction.
| | 02:16 | So this determines the direction of our curve.
| | 02:18 | And then we can lay down a third point.
| | 02:20 | Now notice how we're just laying
down straight lines, and we really don't
| | 02:25 | have our curve yet.
| | 02:26 | This is because it takes a minimum
of four points to define a NURB Curve.
| | 02:32 | So as soon as I click on that
fourth point, I get the actual curve.
| | 02:36 | And then once I have this
curve, I can just start drawing.
| | 02:40 | And once I am done, all I have to do
is hit Enter, and that ends my mode.
| | 02:47 | Now, if I want to edit this curve, I
can just right-click over it and go
| | 02:51 | into Control Vertex.
| | 02:54 | Curves themselves have their own
components, and the most important ones are
| | 02:58 | Control Vertices, which
allow us to reshape the curve.
| | 03:06 | We also, if we right-click over this,
we have what are called Curve Points.
| | 03:10 | And these are very similar
to isoparms on a NURB surface.
| | 03:13 | And if we right-click over it again,
we can go into Hull, which is, again, very
| | 03:17 | similar to what we have with a NURB Surface.
| | 03:21 | Now, if I take a look at this Hull,
you'll notice that it's very similar to a
| | 03:24 | NURB surface in that the Hull
itself is always to the outside of the
| | 03:29 | curvature of the surface.
| | 03:31 | So if I was to curve this, if I was to go
into a Control Vertex here and move it on
| | 03:36 | the inside and take a look at the Hulls,
you'll see that the curvature of the
| | 03:42 | surface always is on the inside
of that acute angle of the Hull.
| | 03:46 | So whatever the smallest angle is,
the curve will be on the inside of that.
| | 03:52 | And that can actually be very
important for how you define a NURBS surface.
| | 03:56 | So that's probably the most common way to draw
a NURBS surface is by using the CV Curve tool.
| | 04:03 | Now, there is another tool, which
actually can be very handy as well, and that's
| | 04:07 | called the EP Curve tool.
| | 04:09 | And this also draws a NURB surface.
| | 04:11 | It just draws it a little bit differently.
| | 04:13 | And notice how as soon as I set down
my third point, I actually get my curve.
| | 04:18 | So we don't have that
four-point limitation here.
| | 04:21 | Also, notice as I draw, these are all
Xs and not the other shapes that we have
| | 04:28 | with the NURB surface.
| | 04:29 | So as soon as I'm done drawing this
curve, all I have to do is hit Enter,
| | 04:33 | and now I have a curve.
| | 04:34 | But here is a key feature, is that when
I right-click over this, and I go back
| | 04:39 | into Control Vertex, notice
how suddenly it's changed.
| | 04:44 | It's become an actual NURBS surface.
| | 04:46 | I have my initial point, I have
my U, and I have Control Vertices.
| | 04:51 | In fact, if I right-click
here you can see the Hulls.
| | 04:53 | And so really, the EP Curve tool is
just a separate way to draw NURBS Curves.
| | 05:01 | So those are the two basic
ways to draw NURBS Curves in Maya.
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| Creating Bézier curves| 00:00 | Maya 2011 has a new feature that
allows you to draw Bezier curves.
| | 00:05 | Now these are actually different than
NURBS curves in the way that they're
| | 00:09 | drawn and manipulated.
| | 00:11 | So let's take a look at how to draw those.
| | 00:13 | Let's go into our top viewport.
| | 00:16 | Go ahead and create a Bezier curve.
| | 00:19 | Now in order to create a Bezier curve,
what have to do is you have to click to
| | 00:23 | lay down the first point, and if you drag,
you're dragging out a Bezier handle.
| | 00:28 | Now, anybody who has drawn in
Illustrator, or any type of graphic drawing program,
| | 00:33 | should be familiar with
this method of drawing curves.
| | 00:36 | So again, all you have to do is click
and drag, and what you are doing is you're
| | 00:39 | dragging out the tangent to that curve.
| | 00:44 | So the farther apart they are, the
narrower the angle, and are the closer
| | 00:49 | together, the sharper the angle.
| | 00:52 | So again, I can just click and drag.
| | 00:54 | Now, if I don't drag, if I just click, I
can create corners, which is actually a
| | 00:59 | very nice thing that you can do.
| | 01:02 | Or if I drag again, I can
create whatever type of curve I want.
| | 01:06 | And to end the entry all
you have to do is hit Enter.
| | 01:09 | Once I have this curve, when I go to edit
it, my control vertices are Bezier handles.
| | 01:15 | It's very different than that EP curve tool,
because it doesn't revert this to a NURBS curve.
| | 01:22 | It retains the Bezier quality of the
handles and the manipulation of this curve.
| | 01:29 | Now, these curves can be used to
do any sort of operation in Maya.
| | 01:33 | They're just manipulated differently.
| | 01:35 | Now, another thing also notice that
we do have a U-direction here, so this
| | 01:40 | actually shows the direction of the curve.
| | 01:45 | So Bezier curves are really handy,
particularly if you're working in motion
| | 01:48 | graphics and you are bringing stuff in
from Illustrator, because a lot of those
| | 01:52 | will have Bezier handles as well.
| | 01:54 | And you can certainly use
those features now in Maya.
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| Creating text| 00:00 | Anyone involved in motion graphics will
probably want to create Text within Maya.
| | 00:06 | Maya actually has some
very nice text-creation tools.
| | 00:09 | Let's go into Create, and you'll
see we have what's called Text.
| | 00:14 | So if we actually hit the tTool options
here, this will us some options our text.
| | 00:18 | Now, we can actually type in
whatever type of text we want here.
| | 00:23 | So this is actually the text itself.
| | 00:26 | And then for the font, if we click
this little triangle, it brings up a very
| | 00:29 | nice Select Font window.
| | 00:32 | And you can actually go
through and view these font-by-font.
| | 00:35 | So if I wanted to I could increase the
size of my font so I can actually see it,
| | 00:39 | and then if I want, I can
just step through some of these.
| | 00:43 | I'm actually using my arrow keys, so I
can actually just step through these, and
| | 00:46 | we can see exactly which ones we like.
| | 00:48 | So, for example, if this is the
particular font I want, I could actually do
| | 00:51 | Bold, Bold Italic, really whatever.
| | 00:54 | And also we have what's called a writing system.
| | 00:56 | So if you want to use
different types of characters you can.
| | 01:00 | So once we do this, we can
click OK, and this is my Font.
| | 01:04 | Now, once I've selected my text and my font,
I can select what type of output I want.
| | 01:10 | Now, we've been working with curves, so
we can actually output to curves, but we
| | 01:14 | also can output to what are called Trim
surfaces, Polygonal surfaces and Bevels.
| | 01:19 | So let's go through each of these, so I
can show you all the different options.
| | 01:23 | So now I've typed in my text, chosen my font,
and we're going to output this as Curves.
| | 01:28 | So let's go ahead and do Create.
| | 01:29 | And so now we've got this output as Curves.
| | 01:33 | If I do this again, Create > Text,
| | 01:39 | this time I'm going to
output it as what's called a Trim.
| | 01:42 | Now, what this does is it creates
a NURB surface and uses Curves to
| | 01:48 | actually trim that out.
| | 01:49 | So basically it creates kind of like a
piece of paper, or a label, or something
| | 01:54 | that's been kind of cut
out of a flat image here.
| | 01:58 | Now, we'll get into these types
surfaces a little bit later, just know
| | 02:01 | that they're there.
| | 02:03 | And let's go ahead and go Create > Text again,
and this time I am going to output it as Poly.
| | 02:07 | Now, when I click on that, notice we
have a ton if options that come up.
| | 02:11 | Well, one is what type of output do we want?
| | 02:14 | Do we want it to output as triangles, quads?
| | 02:17 | What type of tessellation, which
means how do you want the surface to be
| | 02:20 | constructed, and also we can give the
height and width of the Font as well.
| | 02:26 | So let's go ahead and just
leave those at the defaults.
| | 02:28 | And when you click that out, you can
see now, I've got an actual polygonal
| | 02:33 | surface, because this is actually a polygon.
| | 02:36 | So I can actually go through and
edit vertices and faces and so on.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to go ahead and delete
this, and let's just do one more.
| | 02:46 | And the last one is called Bevel, and this
actually will Bevel the corners of this.
| | 02:52 | So we actually want to
say how deep do you want it?
| | 02:54 | How much do want the text extrudeed,
and do you want to create Caps at the
| | 02:59 | start and end, and what
type of Bevel do you want?
| | 03:02 | Do you want concave, convex? All sorts of ones.
| | 03:05 | I'm just going to leave this at the default,
so we can kind of see what we have here.
| | 03:08 | And what this does is it actually
creates an actual surface, and it bevels the
| | 03:13 | edges however we want.
| | 03:15 | And this is actually kind of nice for
like the 3D text effects and that sort of
| | 03:19 | stuff that you want.
| | 03:21 | Those are actually several
different ways to create text within Maya.
| | 03:26 | One of the tricks I like to use is I
just create a single letter and output
| | 03:30 | it as a Curve, because sometimes a letter is
actually very close to a shape that I want.
| | 03:35 | So, for example, if I want kind of
an oval shape, I might output a Times
| | 03:39 | Roman O, and that way I have a very
nice, round shape that I can use to
| | 03:44 | extrude into something else.
| | 03:47 | So these are some of the basic text tools.
| | 03:49 | So knock yourself out.
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| Manipulating NURBS curves| 00:00 | Maya has a number of tools that you can
use to manipulate curves once they're drawn.
| | 00:07 | So let's take a look at some of those.
| | 00:09 | Let's go ahead and just
create a very simple curve.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to use the CV Curve tool,
and I'm going to lay out a couple points
| | 00:16 | here to create a Curve.
| | 00:18 | So now if I want to manipulate this
curve, I could very easily just move the
| | 00:23 | Control Vertices around.
| | 00:25 | So if I want to, I can just right-click
over the Curve and select Control Vertex.
| | 00:29 | As you can see, all the vertices come up.
| | 00:33 | And I can move those, and I can
also move those in multiple directions.
| | 00:38 | If you want the curve to go above or below
the drawing plane, you can certainly do that.
| | 00:43 | Because you're working with a curve, the
CVs on that curve are basically in order.
| | 00:50 | So we have our first vertex.
| | 00:52 | We have our second vertex, and
then everyone after that is in order.
| | 00:56 | So another way to very quickly select
vertices is just to use your arrow keys.
| | 01:01 | So if you go up, down, left and right,
you can just very easily step through
| | 01:06 | any of the vertices.
| | 01:08 | This can really save you, if you've
got something that's really tight.
| | 01:11 | So you can actually just select an
available vertex, so just walk your way down
| | 01:15 | to the one that you really need.
| | 01:17 | Now, you can actually get into more
sophisticated editing using what's called
| | 01:21 | the Curve Editing tool.
| | 01:22 | Now that's found under Edit Curves
in the Surfaces menu, and we go into
| | 01:28 | the Curve Editing tool.
| | 01:29 | Now, watch what happens.
| | 01:31 | This little manipulator comes up.
| | 01:33 | Now, what this has is it has a number
of different handles, and each handle
| | 01:37 | does a specific thing.
| | 01:39 | So if I go to the middle handle, this kind of
blue box here, I can actually move the vertex.
| | 01:46 | So this is almost the same as just
moving the Control Vertex by selecting Move.
| | 01:51 | But the nice thing about this is that I
can grab this little handle to the other
| | 01:55 | side of it, and I can
just run this down the track.
| | 01:59 | So I can actually go in between.
| | 02:01 | Let's say I'm between these two Control
Vertices, and then I can just move that.
| | 02:06 | So I can actually pick any part of the
curve and manipulate it and be able to
| | 02:11 | actually -- if I want this of the curve
to actually be on that grid point, I can
| | 02:17 | actually move it there, which is kind of nice.
| | 02:19 | Now, another handle here affects the curvature.
| | 02:22 | So if I go to this one that's kind of in
front of it, it's almost like a Bezier Curve.
| | 02:27 | So this allows me to squish and squash
the curve itself, and then if I grab that
| | 02:32 | box, again its very similar to a
Bezier handle for a NURBS curved surface.
| | 02:40 | Now, these other ones are actually just
snapping points, these little blue and red dots.
| | 02:45 | What they do is they just snap
that tangent to the curve point.
| | 02:49 | So if I wanted this handle to be
exactly on the blue axis, which is the Z axis,
| | 02:55 | I could just snap that to it.
| | 02:57 | That's another way to manipulate NURBS curves.
| | 03:00 | Now the final way is actually
kind of more of a way to add details.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to go ahead and hit W
to go back into Move mode, and then
| | 03:08 | right-click over this to go
back into Object mode here.
| | 03:11 | Now, we've been working with NURBS
curves that have been open on both the ends,
| | 03:15 | but there is a way to actually close that curve.
| | 03:18 | So if you wanted, for example, a circle,
or some sort of closed topology, you
| | 03:22 | can just go into Edit Curves and go Open
/Close Curves, and what that will do is
| | 03:27 | that will add in the detail it
needs to actually close that curve.
| | 03:30 | And then, all you have to do
is just manipulate the vertices.
| | 03:35 | If you have a closed curve and you
want to open it, again go into Object mode
| | 03:39 | and then just go Open/Close Curves.
| | 03:42 | So basically, it just toggles it.
| | 03:43 | Now, what it will do is it will actually
close that curve and open it at that first vertex.
| | 03:50 | So that vertex is actually very important,
| | 03:52 | because when I open the curve, it's
actually going to basically break the hull
| | 03:56 | between the last vertex and the first one.
| | 04:00 | So those are some basic ways
to manipulate NURBS Curves.
| | 04:03 | And go ahead and practice with these
tools and be able to use them to precisely
| | 04:09 | place and manipulate your curves.
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| Refining NURBS curves| 00:00 | Many times when you're drawing a curve,
you'll need to either add detail into an
| | 00:04 | existing curve, or break curves
apart, or even join them together.
| | 00:08 | So let me show you some tips and
tricks for how to refine the curves that
| | 00:13 | you're working with.
| | 00:14 | So let's just go ahead and
create a simple CV Curve.
| | 00:18 | I am going to kind of make this kind of an S
shape, or something like that, and hit Enter.
| | 00:24 | Let's just take a look at this.
| | 00:26 | Take a look at some of these Edit Curve
tools that allow us to refine the curve.
| | 00:31 | First one I'm going to show
you is the Add Points tool.
| | 00:34 | Now what this does is it allows you to
extend your curves a little bit further.
| | 00:39 | So, for example, if I drew this and I
actually wanted to go a little bit further
| | 00:42 | with that drawing, I can
just use the Add Points tool.
| | 00:45 | And what that does is it just basically
picks up where I left off and allows me
| | 00:49 | to add more points to an
existing curve. Very, very simple.
| | 00:54 | Now, if I wanted to refine within the
curve rather than just extending the
| | 00:59 | curve, I would have to
insert what's called a Knot.
| | 01:02 | Let's show you the hull here.
| | 01:05 | So when we take a look at these hulls,
you'll notice that in between each of
| | 01:08 | these, we can add in additional vertices.
| | 01:10 | And that's what Insert Knot does.
| | 01:14 | So what we need to do here is
actually tell it where we're going to insert.
| | 01:18 | So let's say I've got a
pretty long stretch right here.
| | 01:21 | Let's say I want to insert a
Knot right around in this area.
| | 01:24 | What I need to do is I, first of all,
need to set a point for that action.
| | 01:29 | So if I right-click over it, and I go
into Curve Point, what that does isit allows
| | 01:35 | me to move this red spot
along the line wherever I want.
| | 01:41 | And so then I'll position that right
about where I want to insert that Knot or
| | 01:45 | Control Vertices and then just go Insert.
| | 01:49 | Now, it doesn't look like much happened.
| | 01:51 | But if we go into the Control vertices,
you'll notice that it inserted a CV
| | 01:56 | right at that point.
| | 01:57 | Okay, so that's of a way to basically
insert geometry, or insert Control Vertices
| | 02:04 | into an existing curve.
| | 02:05 | The other thing you may have to do is
actually reverse the direction of a curve.
| | 02:12 | Now, curves do have direction.
| | 02:13 | We have the initial point, and then we
have this second point which shows up as
| | 02:18 | a 'U' and that tells me that the
curve starts here and ends over here.
| | 02:23 | If I want, I can just select the curve itself,
and then just hit Reverse Curve Direction.
| | 02:30 | And really, not much happens to the curve,
except now, my first Vertex is at the
| | 02:35 | end, and everything else flows along accordingly.
| | 02:38 | Now, the other two tools allow you
to basically break apart curves and
| | 02:46 | bring them back together.
| | 02:48 | They're called Attach and Detach.
| | 02:50 | So let's just take this simple curve,
and we'll detach it first and then
| | 02:54 | re-attach it back together.
| | 02:56 | We're going to start this the same way
that we did with Insert Knot, which is to
| | 03:00 | define a point along which we're
going to cut the curves or detach them.
| | 03:05 | So I need to right-click over this, go
to Curve Point and determine that point
| | 03:10 | where I want to break the curves apart.
| | 03:12 | So let's say right here, and once I do
that, once this curve point is set, then
| | 03:17 | I can hit Detach Curves.
| | 03:19 | And when I do that, notice what happens.
| | 03:21 | I now have two curves.
| | 03:23 | So I have one, two curves.
| | 03:25 | So basically what it did is it
cut everything apart at that point.
| | 03:30 | And now if I want to bring them back
together, all I have to do is do is just
| | 03:37 | select both of them and go Attach Curves.
| | 03:41 | And what it will do is it will basically
connect those curves together as if all
| | 03:45 | the CVs were the same.
| | 03:47 | So notice how here it doesn't quite
-- it kind of interpolates and where it
| | 03:52 | actually starts to
interpolate is from that CV points.
| | 03:55 | So if I went into my Control Vertices,
you'll notice that I have basically CV here.
| | 03:59 | What it's done it's
inserted a couple of CVs here.
| | 04:05 | So these are some basic
tools for refining curves.
| | 04:09 | You can use these to customize your
curves before you actually get into building
| | 04:14 | surfaces from the curves.
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| Offsetting NURBS curves| 00:00 | There are times when you'll need to
take a curve and create an offset, so you
| | 00:05 | can actually create kind of
like a thickness to an object.
| | 00:08 | One good example would be in the
scooter, the shell or the basic body of that
| | 00:13 | scooter was actually created with these
curves that are shown along the front.
| | 00:19 | But in order to give this body a
little bit of thickness, we also needed to
| | 00:23 | create some additional
curves for the other side.
| | 00:27 | In other words, we're
creating two surfaces here.
| | 00:29 | One of those surfaces also
needs to have additional thickness.
| | 00:34 | So we can actually create that
using what's called the Offset tool.
| | 00:37 | So actually, I'm going to go ahead and
just show you, this is very, very simple.
| | 00:41 | I'm actually going to
delete most of these curves.
| | 00:43 | Let's just pick one of these curves.
| | 00:46 | So, what we can do is we can take
this and offset it so that it mirrors
| | 00:52 | the original curve.
| | 00:55 | All we have to do is select Edit
Curves > Offset and Offset Curve.
| | 01:00 | Now there's another option here called
Offset Curve On Surface, which pretty
| | 01:03 | much does the same thing, but we're
actually just using normal curves here.
| | 01:07 | So, let's go ahead and use Offset Curve.
| | 01:09 | What it does is it creates a copy of the
curve and offsets it by a specific amount.
| | 01:14 | We can change that either by working
with the Tool settings, which is in here,
| | 01:18 | or we can select the curve after
it's been offset, and go into either the
| | 01:24 | Channel Editor or the Attribute
Editor and find the offset value.
| | 01:30 | Then what we can do is we
can then dial in the distance.
| | 01:33 | Let's say we want this to be a
negative distance, and then also what sort of
| | 01:40 | Density and Tolerance, that sort of thing.
| | 01:42 | But the most important
one is this actual Distance.
| | 01:45 | Once we have that distance dialed in,
then we can work with the curve.
| | 01:51 | If we leave History turned on,
affecting one curve will keep the other one
| | 01:59 | completely together, which is kind of cool.
| | 02:03 | So then, when we actually do this and
multiply it by the number of curves it
| | 02:07 | takes to actually build that scooter body,
| | 02:10 | we have something like this.
| | 02:12 | So, the initial curve, plus the offset
curve gives us the thickness that we need
| | 02:18 | to create that body.
| | 02:20 | Now this can be used in all sorts of other ways.
| | 02:22 | This is just one example, but as you
can see, Offset Curve is a great way to
| | 02:27 | create thicknesses or borders using curves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | There are a number of different ways to
edit and reshape a surface within Maya,
| | 00:05 | so let's go ahead and
take a look at some of those.
| | 00:07 | First of all, we'll need a surface.
| | 00:09 | So let's go ahead and create a NURBS sphere.
| | 00:14 | I'm going to shade that by hitting 5 and
let's go ahead and just turn off the grid.
| | 00:19 | Probably, the easiest way to reshape
a surface is just to pull the control
| | 00:23 | vertices, or the CVs, around.
| | 00:26 | So all I'm going to do is right-click
over this to pull up my Marking menu, hit
| | 00:30 | Control Vertex, and there they are.
| | 00:32 | All I have to do is just select them.
| | 00:34 | Hit W to move, and I can move them.
| | 00:38 | I can grab a bunch of them.
| | 00:39 | I can rotate them, scale them.
| | 00:42 | I can do basically whatever I want.
| | 00:44 | Now, this is just one of several
different ways to reshape the surface.
| | 00:49 | Now, if you're working with Control
Vertices, one nice way to select them is
| | 00:55 | to use the Arrow keys.
| | 00:56 | Now, this is very similar to how
you would use them on NURBS curves.
| | 00:59 | You can just select an individual or a
group of CVs, and then you could just use
| | 01:04 | your Arrow keys to walk
around and pick different ones.
| | 01:09 | So, this might be an easier way to pick CVs.
| | 01:11 | You can pick one that's readily
available and then walk your way down into one,
| | 01:14 | or something like that.
| | 01:16 | So that's one way of picking multiple CVs.
| | 01:19 | Another way is to edit
with hulls instead of CVs.
| | 01:23 | We can get to this just by, again,
right-clicking, pulling up our Marking
| | 01:27 | menu and selecting Hull.
| | 01:28 | Now, you'll see this kind of looks a
little bit like a polygonal mesh around our
| | 01:34 | NURBS surface, and in some ways,
hulls kind of represent edge loops.
| | 01:38 | So if I click on the Hull, notice how it
selects the whole ring of CVs all the way around.
| | 01:46 | So, I can just select that hull and
move it around, so if I wanted to, for
| | 01:50 | example, do this or this.
| | 01:52 | So this is a really great way to very
quickly select either the latitude or the
| | 01:57 | longitude lines of a surface.
| | 01:59 | So, I can click on a vertical one here,
and you can see how I can select either
| | 02:03 | the U or V direction of that surface.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to jump back out to Object
mode here and just click on this, and
| | 02:12 | there's another tool, very similar
to what we have with NURBS curves,
| | 02:15 | that's called the Surface Editing tool.
| | 02:17 | So if I go into Edit NURBS in my
Surfaces menu, all the way down, almost to the
| | 02:23 | bottom, there is an option
here called Surface Editing tool.
| | 02:26 | Select that, and it brings up a tool
that's very similar to the Curve Editing
| | 02:31 | tool we just looked at.
| | 02:32 | What this does is this allows me to
move around on the surface and edit it.
| | 02:37 | So, for example, if I grab that box, I
can actually pull or push the surface.
| | 02:44 | This little button here moves it
around, so I could actually go anywhere I
| | 02:49 | want on that surface.
| | 02:51 | Then I can grab that box and pull and push it.
| | 02:55 | This one, this longer one
is kind of more my tangent.
| | 02:59 | So if I grab the very end of this, you
can see how I can squish or stretch it.
| | 03:05 | So I can make a pinch if I
want, or I can expand it.
| | 03:09 | This box here allows me to
actually move that tangent.
| | 03:13 | So this makes it kind of a
little bit like a Bezier curve.
| | 03:17 | I can also move that left or right.
| | 03:20 | So, if you look at the object here,
we can actually go back in Object mode.
| | 03:24 | You can see how that's
actually affected the surface.
| | 03:30 | The final one is a tool that
allows me to open and close surfaces.
| | 03:34 | Again, this is very similar
to opening and closing a curve.
| | 03:38 | So, if I go into my makeNurbSphere
here -- let's go ahead and just take that
| | 03:43 | sweep and kind of make it
more of an open surface here.
| | 03:47 | So if I want to, I could actually
have Maya close the surface for me.
| | 03:52 | So, I go into Object mode here.
| | 03:54 | I go into Edit NURBS, and we
just have Open/Close Surfaces.
| | 03:58 | This is a little different than
dialing it closed through the sweep.
| | 04:02 | It actually kind of, again,
interpolates one end of the curve to another
| | 04:07 | to create that cap.
| | 04:10 | We can, again, open that as well.
| | 04:14 | So, those are some basic tools for
editing and reshaping NURBS surfaces, and you
| | 04:21 | can use these when you're fine-
tuning your surfaces and your models.
| | 04:24 | So now that we understand how to edit
NURBS surfaces, let's go ahead and put
| | 04:29 | some of that to use.
| | 04:30 | So I'm going to go ahead and open a scene.
| | 04:33 | That's called Scooter_Reference.
| | 04:35 | Now, what this is is just a reference for
that scooter that we've been playing with.
| | 04:39 | So let's go ahead and use some NURBS
editing tools to make some parts for this scooter.
| | 04:43 | So, let's go ahead and start off with
this front fender here for the scooter.
| | 04:48 | So, I've got this reference set up, so
let's go ahead and model against this reference.
| | 04:53 | We're going to go into my side viewport,
and we're just going to go ahead and
| | 04:59 | create a NURBS sphere, and I'm going
to position it somewhere towards the
| | 05:04 | center of that wheel.
| | 05:05 | I kind of want to drag it so it's
about the same size as that fender.
| | 05:10 | Well, of course, we have a sphere here,
and the fender is really just a half a
| | 05:14 | sphere, if you really think about it.
| | 05:15 | So let's go ahead down to our
makeNurbSphere input in our Channel box, and let's
| | 05:22 | go ahead and just kind of cut this in half.
| | 05:24 | So, I'm going to turn my Start Sweep up
to 180, and that kind of cuts that in half.
| | 05:29 | Then let's just right-click
over this and go Control Vertex.
| | 05:33 | Now, all we have to do is just start reshaping.
| | 05:38 | In fact, I really want to rotate this
a little bit first, so I'm going to go
| | 05:40 | ahead and select this in Object mode
and rotate it, so it's about the right
| | 05:44 | angle to what I have here.
| | 05:48 | Then I'm going to go into Control Vertex.
| | 05:50 | Now just grab, I'm going to just box-
select some of these and just start
| | 05:55 | moving them around.
| | 05:56 | So you can see I can very easily model this
against my reference and create the shape I want.
| | 06:05 | Now, down here, where it comes to a point,
you kind of want to pull that out, and
| | 06:12 | then you want to get those bottom ones
and just pull them again, so we have a
| | 06:16 | point, and then just modify that.
| | 06:19 | So, as you can see, we've
got a pretty good shape.
| | 06:26 | But the problem is we've
only reshaped it from one side.
| | 06:29 | So, I need to actually go into another
viewport here, because what I've got is
| | 06:33 | I've got a very wide sphere. So I've got it.
| | 06:36 | It's shaped very nicely from this
direction, but not from this direction.
| | 06:40 | So, in this case, we have to jump into
our front viewport and just hit R for
| | 06:45 | scale and scale that down so
it's just about right. There we go!
| | 06:51 | Pretty simple!
| | 06:52 | So, now we've got a
basic fender for our scooter.
| | 06:55 | We're going to go ahead and keep working
on this same project and start building
| | 07:00 | as we learn new modeling tools.
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| Refining NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | As you're editing NURBS surfaces,
there's got to be points where you'll need to
| | 00:05 | either insert or delete detail from a surface.
| | 00:09 | So let me show you some tools
that can help you with that.
| | 00:12 | The first thing we need to do is, of course,
we need to start with a surface here.
| | 00:15 | So let's go ahead and just, again, start
with our Sphere and turn off the Grid here.
| | 00:20 | When we're adding or subtracting
detail or cutting things in half,
| | 00:25 | we need to define a point where that happens.
| | 00:28 | Now, when we edited NURBS Curves, we
inserted what was called a Curve Point.
| | 00:33 | Well, we don't have that on NURBS surfaces,
but we do have something almost identical.
| | 00:37 | It's called an Isoparm.
| | 00:40 | So what you do is you right-click
over your object, and from the Marking
| | 00:43 | menus, you select Isoparm.
| | 00:46 | Then, you left-click somewhere in
the window to drag out an Isoparm.
| | 00:50 | Now, we can drag out either one in the U
direction or the V direction, just depending.
| | 00:57 | We can make an Isoparm that
goes this way or this way.
| | 01:02 | Now, once you have that Isoparm selected,
you can actually perform actions at that point.
| | 01:08 | So, let's say we wanted to
add some more detail in here.
| | 01:11 | All we have to do is make sure
that that Isoparm is selected.
| | 01:15 | Then we can go Edit NURBS > Insert Isoparms.
| | 01:18 | What this does is it's going to
insert another ring of CVs, right there.
| | 01:24 | So, now when I go to edit it, you can
see now I've got a whole new hull with a
| | 01:29 | bunch of CVs in there.
| | 01:31 | So, we can do this for either direction.
| | 01:33 | So let's go back to Isoparm mode here,
and let's go ahead and insert one this way.
| | 01:40 | So again, I'm just going to go ahead
and repeat that operation by going Recent
| | 01:44 | Commands > InsertIsoparms,
and there it is again.
| | 01:47 | So, it's a great way to add in
additional detail where you need it.
| | 01:53 | You just set the point using
Isoparms and then do Insert Isoparms.
| | 01:57 | Isoparms can also be used to cut surfaces.
| | 02:02 | So, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:04 | So, I'm going to go ahead
and right-click over this.
| | 02:06 | Go Isoparm, and let's go ahead and cut
this sphere in a little bit less than half.
| | 02:11 | So I'm going to bring it right to about there.
| | 02:14 | So, instead of inserting Isoparms,
I'm going to do what's called Detach
| | 02:19 | Surfaces, very similar to Detach Curves.
| | 02:22 | So, when we detach a surface, what happens?
| | 02:25 | It makes one, two different surfaces.
| | 02:28 | So, now I've got a surface that's
basically cut in half. Kind of cool!
| | 02:35 | Now, this is a great way, if you want to start
with a sphere and make like a hemisphere or something
| | 02:41 | like that, it's a really great
way to do something like that.
| | 02:45 | Once I have two surfaces, I can also connect
them back together by doing Attach Surfaces.
| | 02:53 | They have to line up.
| | 02:54 | Once they do, you actually create a
third surface that basically lines up.
| | 02:59 | Now, I cut it right there, so the
new surface has an extra Isoparm in
| | 03:03 | there, where I cut it.
| | 03:06 | So, those are some very basic ways to
refine, add detail, cut surfaces, and
| | 03:12 | manipulate your NURBS surfaces
a little bit more completely.
| | 03:16 | So, let's go ahead and use
this in a real-world situation.
| | 03:21 | So, I'm going to go ahead and open up a scene.
| | 03:23 | I'm going to open up Scooter_01.mb,
which is basically where we left off
| | 03:29 | with that last scooter.
| | 03:30 | We have our fender here.
| | 03:32 | So let's go ahead and add in
some tires and a few other things.
| | 03:36 | So, first of all, I'm going to create a tire.
| | 03:40 | Now, a tire is basically a torus that's kind of
been reshaped, because a torus is actually round.
| | 03:45 | We actually have kind of
a flat slide on the tire.
| | 03:48 | So I'm going to start in my Side View.
| | 03:50 | So we're going to go ahead and do a
Create > NURBS Primitives > Torus.
| | 03:56 | I'm going to click as close as I can to
the center of that wheel, and drag it up
| | 04:01 | until it hits the ground.
| | 04:02 | Now, once I drag it, it's going to
ask me again to drag the section radius,
| | 04:07 | which is basically the diameter of
that torus, but I'm actually pretty close
| | 04:11 | right here, so I'm not going to do that.
| | 04:13 | So, now that I have this torus, you can see,
well, this looks pretty close to a tire.
| | 04:18 | But if I look at it from the front there,
it's actually more of a balloon tire.
| | 04:23 | Most tires are actually kind of flat
along the bottom to give more traction.
| | 04:27 | So, let's go ahead and do a
little trick to make that flatter.
| | 04:32 | I'm going to do that by inserting an Isoparm.
| | 04:34 | So, I'm going to go ahead and right-
click over this, select Isoparm, and then
| | 04:39 | kind of right about here, I'm going to
set my Isoparm, and then just go Edit
| | 04:46 | NURBS > Insert Isoparms.
| | 04:48 | So, now I have some additional detail
that I can use to flatten out that tire to
| | 04:53 | make it little bit more square.
| | 04:55 | Now, I'm going to do that one more
time on the other side, right about there.
| | 05:00 | Again, I can use my Spacebar and just
do Recent Commands > InsertIsoparms.
| | 05:04 | So, now I've got the detail I need in
order to make that tire a little bit more
| | 05:10 | square, but I have to select those rings.
| | 05:14 | So, I can actually do that through hulls.
| | 05:16 | So I can select that hull and
Shift+Select the other hull.
| | 05:20 | So, what I'm doing is I'm selecting
this one, and this one, and leaving
| | 05:24 | the center one alone.
| | 05:25 | All I have to do now is scale those up a
little bit, and maybe even pull them part.
| | 05:30 | You can see now, I've got that tire a little
bit flatter, and a little bit more like a tire.
| | 05:36 | So, now we go back into Object mode, and
now I've got a tire that looks a little
| | 05:40 | bit more like a tire.
| | 05:43 | So, the next thing we can do is let's go
ahead and cut a surface to make our headlight.
| | 05:49 | So I'm actually going to go into my
Front View, because what I'm going to do is
| | 05:54 | create a sphere, a NURBS sphere here.
| | 05:57 | I'm going to make it about
the same size as that headlight.
| | 06:00 | Now, this headlight is actually a
little bit oval, so I'm going to go ahead
| | 06:03 | and scale it a little bit up like this, and
just make sure that I'm completely centered.
| | 06:09 | In fact, if I want to, I can type 0
into my Translate, to center that.
| | 06:15 | Then, all I have to do is
position it from the side.
| | 06:18 | So I'm going to go ahead
and position it this way.
| | 06:21 | But also, if you notice, this
headlight is a little bit flattened.
| | 06:24 | So, I'm going to go ahead and
position my center here, and just flatten
| | 06:27 | that just a little bit.
| | 06:29 | So now, I've got something
that's about the right size.
| | 06:33 | So now, let's go ahead and cut this
in half to make the actual headlight.
| | 06:38 | So again, I'm going to go into
Isoparm, select the ring that I want right
| | 06:44 | about there, then all we have to do
is do Edit NURBS > Detach Surfaces, and
| | 06:51 | it's been cut in half.
| | 06:51 | So I select the back part,
delete it, and there we go.
| | 06:55 | Now I have my headlight, and the tire.
| | 06:59 | If I want, I could actually take that
tire, and let's go into the Side View here.
| | 07:03 | I can take that tire, hit Ctrl+D for
Duplicate, and duplicate that tire, because
| | 07:11 | they are going to be identical. So there we go!
| | 07:14 | So now we've got some
more parts for our scooter.
| | 07:17 | We also know a little bit more
about how to refine NURBS surfaces.
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| Using NURBS Revolve| 00:00 | Now, let's go ahead and start
making some NURBS surfaces out of curves.
| | 00:06 | Probably, the easiest surface
to make is called a Revolve.
| | 00:10 | It's also known as a lathe in some
of the packages, and you may already
| | 00:14 | be familiar with it.
| | 00:15 | But let me just go ahead and start from scratch.
| | 00:17 | First thing we need is a curve.
| | 00:19 | Let's go ahead into our Front Viewport
here, and let's just do a classic Revolve
| | 00:26 | problem, which is a wine glass.
| | 00:28 | I'm actually going to go
ahead and create a curve.
| | 00:31 | So let's go ahead and
select our Bezier Curve tool.
| | 00:33 | Now before I actually create this curve,
I'm going to turn on Grid Snapping here.
| | 00:40 | What this does is it allows me to snap
to each one of these grid points, so that
| | 00:45 | way I know things are
going to be exactly straight.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to go to my origin and click there.
| | 00:52 | Then go out just a little bit here,
so maybe right around here, and again,
| | 00:56 | click here, and I'm not clicking
and dragging, because what I want is a
| | 01:00 | straight line, in this case.
| | 01:02 | Then I'm going to click
up here and actually drag.
| | 01:07 | Then drag again, move up a little bit, drag.
| | 01:13 | I'm also snapping these handles.
| | 01:14 | I may have to refine these a little bit.
| | 01:16 | So let's go ahead and do this, do this,
and then I want to make sure that the
| | 01:25 | center is exactly centered.
| | 01:27 | So I want to snap there.
| | 01:28 | Now I'm going to turn off snap and
maybe go ahead and do some refining here,
| | 01:32 | going to hit Enter, and then go back in
the Control Vertex, and just do a little
| | 01:37 | bit of refining here, and just
change my curves just a little bit here.
| | 01:45 | So, now I've kind of got
the shape of a wine glass.
| | 01:48 | This is close enough.
| | 01:49 | I can probably spend a
lot more time refining this.
| | 01:52 | Actually, I'm going to go ahead
and bring this up just a little bit.
| | 01:56 | I want that to be kind of
flat. There we go, okay.
| | 01:58 | So, now I've got this curve, and this
curve is kind of in the shape of a wine glass.
| | 02:07 | So, in order to actually make this into a
wine glass, I need to revolve it around an axis.
| | 02:14 | In order to do that, I need to create a surface.
| | 02:17 | So we have a Surfaces menu here,
and this is all the different types of
| | 02:21 | surfaces that we can create.
| | 02:23 | In this case, I'm going to create a Revolve.
| | 02:25 | So let's go ahead and just click Revolve,
and shade that, and you can see that
| | 02:30 | I've kind of made this chalice.
| | 02:32 | Now, this works great, because I've
actually snapped everything to the center,
| | 02:37 | so this kind of came out perfectly.
| | 02:39 | But there are times when you may not
have such great results, so I'm going to
| | 02:43 | actually select this surface, and delete it.
| | 02:47 | Then go ahead and reselect my curve.
| | 02:49 | Let me show you some hints for
actually making this work well.
| | 02:54 | Now, what happens is is it will
revolve around the pivot point of that curve.
| | 03:00 | So, in this case, the pivot point was
at 00, which is the default pivot point
| | 03:05 | for any curve that you draw.
| | 03:06 | So, when it revolved, it revolved around
this vertical axis, and that was great.
| | 03:11 | But if I hit the Insert key and move that,
it's going to revolve around another axis.
| | 03:19 | So let's say I moved it out this
way here, and I did another revolve.
| | 03:24 | What's going to happen is that pivot
point, because it's out here, is going to
| | 03:29 | create a slightly different result.
| | 03:31 | So if I go and I find that curve and I
select it, you'll see that that pivot
| | 03:39 | point represents the center of that Revolve.
| | 03:41 | So, before I do the Revolve, I need to make
sure that that pivot is in the right place.
| | 03:46 | So again, I'm going to go ahead and
select that surface and delete it and
| | 03:51 | reposition this pivot, so
that it's in the right place.
| | 03:55 | In fact, I can use Snapping
here to snap it exactly to 0.
| | 04:02 | The other thing you can do with
Revolve is you don't have to revolve around
| | 04:05 | any particular axis.
| | 04:07 | So, for example, here, I'm
revolving around the vertical axis.
| | 04:11 | In fact, when I do revolve, if I bring
up the tools here, you'll see that it
| | 04:15 | actually determines what axis
preset it's going to revolve around, and
| | 04:20 | typically, it's going to default to Y.
But you don't have to default to Y. You
| | 04:25 | can default to really anything.
| | 04:26 | So, if I want it to revolve
around X, I could do that, and I get a
| | 04:30 | completely different result.
| | 04:32 | Now, another thing you can do is you can
actually change the way the Revolve works.
| | 04:37 | So, if I go into the inputs of this
object here, I can also do stuff like change
| | 04:43 | the number of sections, so
how detailed is that Revolve?
| | 04:47 | I can also change the axis at anytime.
| | 04:49 | So if I didn't want it to be on the X
axis and make it on the Y axis, I can just
| | 04:54 | change that as well. Great!
| | 04:57 | Okay, so let's go ahead and do
a practical application of this.
| | 05:00 | I'm going to go ahead and open up a
scene, and I'm going to open Scooter_02,
| | 05:08 | which is our scooter in progress.
| | 05:10 | I've very cleverly added in another curve here.
| | 05:15 | What this curve is is it's going to
be our hubcap, or a rim for our tire.
| | 05:20 | Let's go ahead and hit W. I want to
make sure that the pivot point of that is
| | 05:27 | exactly on the edge of the curve.
| | 05:30 | Now, I can do that by
what's called Snap to points.
| | 05:34 | So if I hit Snap to points, make sure
I turn off grids, it should snap right
| | 05:37 | to the end of that.
| | 05:41 | If not, go ahead and just
position that as closely as you can.
| | 05:45 | Now once we have this, all I have to do is
determine which axis I want to revolve around.
| | 05:56 | Now remember, the axes are
RGB, XYZ. So this is Red.
| | 06:00 | I need to revolve around X.
| | 06:02 | So, I'm going to go ahead to Surfaces >
Revolve, and then go ahead and pull up
| | 06:06 | my Tool options, make sure
this is set to X, and go Revolve.
| | 06:11 | There we go, got a magic hubcap here.
| | 06:13 | So now I can select my hubcap, and
notice how when I do that Revolve, that pivot
| | 06:20 | point actually goes to the origin.
| | 06:22 | Whenever I create a surface like this,
it's always going to create the pivot
| | 06:25 | point at the origin.
| | 06:26 | So if I want, I could just do Modify >
Center Pivot, and that puts the pivot
| | 06:32 | right at the center of that hubcap, and
just move it into place. There we go!
| | 06:37 | Pretty good!
| | 06:38 | So, maybe move it up a
little bit, and in. There we go.
| | 06:42 | Okay, so now if I wanted to make the
opposite hubcap, all I have to do is
| | 06:46 | duplicate and scale it.
| | 06:47 | So I'm going to go ahead and hit Ctrl+D
to duplicate that, but I want to scale
| | 06:52 | it in the opposite direction.
| | 06:53 | Now remember, we're going to scale it
in the X direction, so I'm just going to
| | 06:57 | type -1 to scale that in the
opposite direction, and bingo! There we go!
| | 07:05 | So, now if I want to, I can select both of
these, duplicate them, and make my other hubcap.
| | 07:17 | There we go! We've got some nice
hubcaps here for our scooter.
| | 07:21 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and save this out.
| | 07:23 | Just remember that when you use Revolve,
you've got to make sure that that pivot
| | 07:27 | is in the right place.
| | 07:28 | That's really the key for making Revolve work.
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| Using NURBS Loft| 00:00 | One very common method for
creating NURBS surfaces is the Loft.
| | 00:05 | Lofting takes multiple curves and
just stretches a surface over them.
| | 00:11 | So we can actually create
some very simple curves here.
| | 00:14 | So let's just go ahead and create a CV curve.
| | 00:16 | Let's go ahead and just draw
out a simple curve, and hit Enter.
| | 00:23 | If I want, I can just
create a duplicate of this curve.
| | 00:27 | In fact, let's go ahead and just do an Offset.
| | 00:28 | We will make an Offset curve here, and
go ahead and move that over a little bit,
| | 00:34 | and maybe even duplicate that again.
| | 00:36 | We can just go ahead and hit Ctrl
+D to duplicate that if we want.
| | 00:39 | So now I have got three separate curves.
| | 00:42 | In fact, I am going to move
this curve up a little bit.
| | 00:45 | And all we have to do to create a loft is to
select the curves in order, so one, two, three.
| | 00:51 | I am holding down my Shift key here,
and then go into Surfaces > Loft.
| | 00:57 | What that does, let's shade this, is
it stretches a surface over the curves.
| | 01:03 | So I have got basically the surface, but
the surface is actually defined by the curve.
| | 01:10 | So, if I wanted to, I could actually
go select the curve itself, and move
| | 01:15 | it, and the surface will change.
| | 01:19 | So if I can select that
curve there, I can move it.
| | 01:22 | You can also edit the curve.
| | 01:23 | So, for example, I will right-
click over this and go Control Vertex,
| | 01:27 | it may be a little tricky because you
don't want to select the surface, but you
| | 01:32 | can go ahead and just reshape that
curve, and it will reshape the surface.
| | 01:36 | So this surface is
actually tied to those curves.
| | 01:40 | That is, it's tied to until you turn off History.
| | 01:43 | So much like we did when we were
using the non-linear deformers, we can
| | 01:48 | bake this surface in by just going
Delete by Type > History, and again,
| | 01:53 | it's not Delete All by Type.
| | 01:55 | It's Delete by Type > History, and that
goes ahead and breaks those two apart.
| | 01:59 | So now, the curves don't affect the surface.
| | 02:04 | So this is a really great way to create
surfaces, because what you can do is you
| | 02:08 | can draw out all of your curves and
then use those as kind of like ribs to
| | 02:14 | stretch the NURBS surface over.
| | 02:17 | So let's go ahead and do a more
practical application of Lofting.
| | 02:21 | I am going to go ahead and do
Open Scene > Scooter_03 > Open.
| | 02:27 | This is, again, the scooter that we have
been playing with, and if you noticed, I
| | 02:30 | have actually drawn some curves for
you here, and all I did was I took a NURBS
| | 02:35 | circle and just reshaped those
curves into kind of like an oval.
| | 02:42 | So basically, it's just a
circle that's been reshaped.
| | 02:45 | In fact, if I want to, I can turn off
this Referencing to kind of see these
| | 02:48 | a little bit better.
| | 02:50 | So what I have done is I have reshaped
that into kind of flat oval to represent
| | 02:55 | the outline of that hubcap.
| | 02:58 | And once I have done that, I can use those
loft together the back end of the scooter.
| | 03:04 | So all I need to do is select one, two,
three, and then four, so this is going
| | 03:10 | to be the metal part along the
bottom and do Surfaces > Loft.
| | 03:16 | It basically creates that shell.
| | 03:21 | Now we can also do the same
thing for most of the seats.
| | 03:25 | So we can actually grab that curve at
the top there, and it's a little hard to
| | 03:30 | grab these things here.
| | 03:31 | So let's -- there we go.
| | 03:32 | Okay, so we have got the curve, one, two,
three, and again, I can just repeat my
| | 03:38 | command by holding down Spacebar and do Loft.
| | 03:40 | So now I have the basic part of my
seat and my shell, but one thing, notice I
| | 03:46 | don't have the top of the seat. Okay.
| | 03:48 | We are going to do that using a different
method, and we will get to that little bit later.
| | 03:52 | But as you can see, Loft is a great way
to create surfaces from multiple curves.
| | 03:58 | So the curves remain live like this,
until you actually hit Delete History.
| | 04:04 | So as you can see, there is a number of
places where you can use Loft to create
| | 04:08 | very precise surfaces.
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| Using NURBS Extrude| 00:00 | The NURBS Extrude command is also a
very handy way to create NURBS surfaces.
| | 00:05 | What it does is it takes a profile,
or a shape, and it extrudes it along a
| | 00:11 | path, much like how you'd maybe
extrude a piece of metal into a channel, or
| | 00:15 | something like that.
| | 00:17 | So, let's go ahead and create an Extrude.
| | 00:19 | Now, in order to do this, we
need two curves. We need one.
| | 00:23 | That's the Path, and the
other, that's the Outline.
| | 00:26 | So let's start with the Path.
| | 00:27 | We're going to go ahead and create a
CV Curve, and I'm going to draw a curve
| | 00:31 | that looks a little bit like a question mark.
| | 00:33 | So I'm just going to go ahead and
create something that looks a little bit like
| | 00:38 | that, hit Enter, and this is my Path.
| | 00:42 | Now, I also need an outline, or a
shape, to extrude along this path.
| | 00:47 | So, I'm going to go into my Front
Viewport, and I'm going to do Create > NURBS
| | 00:52 | Primitives, and let's
just create a little circle.
| | 00:54 | Let me go ahead and drag that.
| | 00:57 | So, now I have a circle, and a path,
but I want to go ahead and position this
| | 01:03 | circle pretty close to the end of that path.
| | 01:06 | So that kind of starts right about there.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to go ahead and position
that right around the same place.
| | 01:11 | So, now what I have to do is select my
Outline, select my Path, and then Extrude.
| | 01:19 | So, go to Surfaces > Extrude.
| | 01:22 | Now, what this does is it actually takes that
curve, that outline, and sweeps it along the path.
| | 01:28 | In fact, you can take a
look at that right there.
| | 01:31 | Let's go back into Wireframe mode here.
| | 01:36 | Take a look at this.
| | 01:37 | You can see that this path, and
this outline don't quite match up.
| | 01:44 | Well, we have a number of options
in the tool to help facilitate that.
| | 01:48 | Now, we can get to these, either
beforehand by selecting the Curve tools, but
| | 01:54 | we're not going to do that.
| | 01:55 | We're actually going to just adjust
them afterwards, and we can do that through
| | 01:58 | the Attribute Editor or the Channel Box.
| | 02:00 | So, let's go into the Attribute Editor,
make sure that Surface is selected, and
| | 02:06 | then go into the extrude node.
| | 02:08 | Now, here we have all of the options we want.
| | 02:10 | We have our Profile Curve.
| | 02:12 | We have our Path Curve.
| | 02:13 | We have the Type of Extrude.
| | 02:16 | Now, typically, we're wanting to do Tube,
but we can also do Distance or Flat.
| | 02:22 | You can see how those work,
but we really want Tube.
| | 02:26 | One of the other ones is where
do we want to start this extrude?
| | 02:30 | Do we want to start at the closest end
point of the path, which means, at the
| | 02:34 | bottom of this question mark? Do we
want to do it at the Component Pivot?
| | 02:38 | You can see how we have slight changes,
which is at the -- or do we want to do
| | 02:43 | it at the center of the bounding box
of the profile, which is very similar.
| | 02:48 | I usually keep it to
closest end point of the path.
| | 02:50 | Now, the most important one is do we
want to use the Profile Normal, which
| | 02:54 | actually will snap it very close?
| | 02:56 | Another one is called Fixed Path, which
will make sure that the path itself is fixed.
| | 03:02 | Typically, I find that Fixed Path is
probably the closest way to get this as
| | 03:06 | close as possible to that path.
| | 03:09 | Now, in addition, we've got some
additional parameters here. One is Rotation.
| | 03:15 | You can actually rotate that, to
give a kind of the twisty effect, or we
| | 03:19 | can also scale this.
| | 03:20 | So, if you wanted that to go to a point
at the very end, you can just scale that
| | 03:23 | down to 0 at the end, or
scale it up if you want.
| | 03:27 | So, those are some of the
basics of how to create an extrude.
| | 03:30 | So let's go ahead and use that to
create some more stuff for our motorcycle.
| | 03:34 | So, I'm going to go ahead and do File
> Open Scene, and let's do Scooter_04.
| | 03:39 | Now, if you recall, the seat of this,
actually has a little bit of piping around it.
| | 03:47 | So, let's go ahead and use an Extrude, and
this top curve here to create the piping.
| | 03:52 | In fact, I've got this actually
arranged here so that I can actually turn off
| | 03:56 | the Surfaces, so we can just see the Curves.
| | 03:58 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 03:59 | I'm going to go ahead and select this curve.
| | 04:01 | This will be our profile.
| | 04:03 | In fact, I'm going to
turn off Reference as well.
| | 04:06 | So, what I'm doing here is I'm hitting
this V key to turn off the Surfaces, and
| | 04:10 | to turn off the Reference here.
| | 04:12 | Another way to do it would be to actually
just under Show, just turn off Surfaces.
| | 04:18 | But if I did that, I wouldn't be able
to see the results of my Extrude.
| | 04:21 | So I don't really want to do that.
| | 04:24 | Let's go into the Side View here.
| | 04:27 | Again, we're going to zoom in.
| | 04:29 | Again, for the piping around the seat,
again, we're going to need a circle.
| | 04:33 | So, let's do Create > NURBS Primitives >
Circle, and make a tiny, little circle.
| | 04:38 | Let's try and get it as close
as possible to that outline.
| | 04:41 | So that's going to be about the size
of my piping, and then let's go in here,
| | 04:45 | and make sure that we've got that there. Yes.
| | 04:47 | Now, because this curve
was centered, it's very easy.
| | 04:50 | This is all pretty much
lined up the way we want.
| | 04:52 | So, I'm going to go ahead and select my
Outline, Path Second, Surfaces > Extrude.
| | 05:03 | That pretty much worked.
| | 05:05 | So, let's go ahead and
turn on our Surfaces here.
| | 05:07 | You could see that, yeah, I've
got my piping. But you know what?
| | 05:10 | That piping is actually a little bit too big.
| | 05:13 | So, I'm actually going to go to my circle here.
| | 05:16 | I can actually go down to
makeNurbCircle here, and just bump down my Radius.
| | 05:21 | Instead of .152, I'm going to
make it .1. That should work.
| | 05:26 | So now I have this surface.
| | 05:28 | If I want, I could actually do that
Extrude again, but another way to do it is
| | 05:32 | just to take this surface itself,
duplicate it, center the pivot, and just move
| | 05:40 | that second surface down.
| | 05:41 | So I have the piping along the bottom as well.
| | 05:45 | That should work pretty
closely, yeah. So there we go!
| | 05:49 | So now I've got the piping
of my seat of my scooter.
| | 05:53 | So, as you can see, Extrude is a great
way to sweep an outline along a path to
| | 05:58 | create a NURBS surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using NURBS Planar| 00:00 | There are times when you want to make
regular shapes out of a NURBS surface.
| | 00:05 | These are the times when
we'll need to use Planar.
| | 00:09 | Now what Planar does is it basically
takes a flat NURBS plane and uses a
| | 00:13 | curve to clip it out.
| | 00:16 | Now, in order to use this tool, we need
to draw curves that are perfectly flat.
| | 00:20 | So, let's go ahead and do one.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to go into my Top View.
| | 00:28 | Under Create, let's go ahead
and use a Bezier curve here.
| | 00:31 | Let's just draw out a simple heart.
| | 00:34 | So, I'm going to go ahead and
draw out a simple heart shape.
| | 00:48 | I'm going to hit Enter here, and
then just use Edit Curves > Open/Close
| | 00:53 | Curves to finish that off.
| | 00:54 | Okay, so now I've got a very simple shape.
| | 00:58 | Also, make sure that that shape is flat,
which is why I drew it in the Top View.
| | 01:02 | Now once I have that Curve selected, all
you have to do is do Surfaces > Planar.
| | 01:08 | Now what this does is it
-- well, let's shade this,
| | 01:11 | it makes a surface that kind
of hangs out between that curve.
| | 01:16 | Now, the real trick to this is that
it's not creating a surface of this
| | 01:22 | shape. What it's doing is it's creating a
plane and using the shape to trim out the plane.
| | 01:29 | It's almost like if you took a piece of
paper and you cut it out into a heart.
| | 01:33 | So if I wanted to, I could edit this surface.
| | 01:36 | For example, if you go into Control
Vertex mode of this surface -- well,
| | 01:41 | actually, a better way to look at it
is through the Hull mode of the surface.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to turn off the grid here.
| | 01:46 | You'll see that what it did was it
created a patch, a plane, that matches the
| | 01:53 | boundary of that curve.
| | 01:56 | Now that I have this plane,
it's actually trimmed out.
| | 02:01 | So, there's actually geometry
beyond the edges of that curve.
| | 02:05 | In fact, let's go ahead in here.
| | 02:11 | So if I took this curve and edited it, and I
kept that curve within the plane, it's fine.
| | 02:17 | There is a problem that arises.
| | 02:18 | As soon as this curve goes outside of
the plane, notice how that disappears, and
| | 02:22 | I have an error condition.
| | 02:23 | Because what it is is it can't fit a
plane, if these aren't aligned in place.
| | 02:31 | So as soon as I undo that, it should come back.
| | 02:33 | Now, you can take this surface and
move it off of the curve, and if you want,
| | 02:41 | you can delete history, which
actually kind of frees it from that curve.
| | 02:45 | So now, I can move this curve around
and reshape it, but it's not going to
| | 02:50 | reshape the surface.
| | 02:52 | So now the surface is
kind of free of that curve.
| | 02:57 | What I can do now is I can
actually take this curve,
| | 03:01 | by hitting the Control Vertices, I
can actually now kind of move it in 3D.
| | 03:08 | It's still going to have that trim edge.
| | 03:10 | That actually kind of just cuts
it, almost like a piece of paper.
| | 03:14 | So again, we can use this tool in our Scooter.
| | 03:18 | So let's go ahead and open our Scooter
file, which is Scooter_05, and I'm going
| | 03:24 | to go ahead and turn off my Reference here.
| | 03:29 | Also, I've got all of my surfaces here,
so I'm going to turn these off, so we
| | 03:32 | just have these curves to play with.
| | 03:33 | So, what I want to do here is I want to
actually make a top for my seat, because
| | 03:39 | right now, I've got a seat with a hole in it.
| | 03:41 | Let's go ahead and just turn this off and
select that curve that defines the top of the seat.
| | 03:50 | That particular curve is flat.
| | 03:52 | I've made sure that that's flat.
| | 03:54 | All we have to do is do Planar.
| | 03:57 | Now, I've got the top of my seat.
| | 03:59 | In fact, when I turn everything else
on, you could see now I've got what
| | 04:02 | looks like a nice seat.
| | 04:04 | So, if I select that Planar, hit Edit,
delete history, I can actually select
| | 04:10 | the vertices in the middle here, and
kind of puff up that seat, give it a
| | 04:15 | little bit of loft.
| | 04:16 | So there, I've got a seat that's
got a little bit of bump to it, a little
| | 04:19 | bit softer looking. There we go!
| | 04:22 | So now, I've got even more of my Scooter done.
| | 04:27 | So what Planar can be used for is
stuff like this, like this seat. It's also
| | 04:32 | really good for working with Text.
| | 04:34 | If you need to have a piece of text
that's visible, you can take a curve that's
| | 04:37 | shaped like the text, and throw our
Planar onto it, and it will go ahead and
| | 04:41 | make that curve visible.
| | 04:43 | So, those are some great ways to use Planar.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Stitching NURBS surfaces| 00:00 | There are times when you want to
take multiple NURBS surfaces and kind of
| | 00:04 | stick them together.
| | 00:06 | Now one of the problems with NURBS is
that you do only have square Patches to
| | 00:10 | deal with, and a lot of times the
topology of a character or model doesn't match
| | 00:17 | that of square Patches.
| | 00:18 | So in those cases, you'll need
to use a tool called Stitch.
| | 00:22 | Let me show you the basics of
Stitch and some ways to use it.
| | 00:26 | We're going to start off
with a very simple object.
| | 00:28 | We're going to start off with a plane.
| | 00:30 | And I'm going to go ahead and give it
a few Patches like maybe three in each
| | 00:34 | direction, shade this -- and let's
go ahead and turn off the grid here.
| | 00:39 | And I'm going to duplicate it.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to select it, hit Ctrl+D
and position these two right here.
| | 00:48 | There are times when we want to Stitch
all or part of these two surfaces together.
| | 00:53 | And we can do that by using one of
three Stitch tools, so if we go into Stitch,
| | 00:58 | you'll see we have three tools here:
| | 01:01 | One is Stitch Surface Point, one is Stitch
Edges and the third is called Global Stitch.
| | 01:06 | Let's go ahead and start with the
most straightforward of these, and
| | 01:10 | that's Stitch Edges.
| | 01:12 | So all you have to do with Stitch
Edges is just go ahead and select the tool,
| | 01:17 | notice how my cursor changes.
| | 01:19 | And all I have to do is select two edges.
| | 01:21 | So one, two, and what happens is it
snaps them together and sticks one to the
| | 01:27 | other, and then it gives you this
little zipper which allows you to control
| | 01:31 | exactly how that stitch happens.
| | 01:34 | And once this is done, all you have to
do is hit Enter, and now I actually still
| | 01:38 | have two separate planes, but
they are locked into place.
| | 01:41 | So no matter how I move these
planes, they are still locked together.
| | 01:47 | So I'm going to go ahead and undo that.
| | 01:49 | Now there is also another way to stitch,
and that's using Stitch Surface Points.
| | 01:54 | And this is actually a little
bit more of a discrete method.
| | 01:58 | You're actually stitching
Control Vertex to Control Vertex.
| | 02:01 | Now, let me show you how that works.
| | 02:03 | All we have to do is select two
sets of opposing CVs or Control Vertices,
| | 02:09 | and then we can stitch
those Surface Points together.
| | 02:12 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go Control Vertex over this one, and
| | 02:16 | then right-click again, do
Control Vertex over this one.
| | 02:19 | So, now we have the CVs
available on both separate surfaces.
| | 02:23 | So I'm going to go ahead and Shift+
select the CVs that oppose each other, and
| | 02:29 | then do Stitch Surface Points.
| | 02:31 | Now, if I look at the Control Vertices
of each, you'll notice what happens is
| | 02:36 | that it comes along, and then
it snapped these two together.
| | 02:42 | So let's do this one more time.
| | 02:43 | Let's go ahead and select this one, and
this one, and again, do Stitch Surface Points.
| | 02:48 | Now what this is doing is it's just
stitching this a point at a time, but again,
| | 02:53 | the effect is the same.
| | 02:54 | It actually stitches those together.
| | 02:57 | So, if I went and I did a few more of
these, let's say I did these ones here,
| | 03:03 | did Stitch Surface Points, you
can see how I can start to actually
| | 03:07 | approximate what we have here with the
Stitch Edge tool, which actually only
| | 03:11 | took me one operation to do.
| | 03:14 | So, this is actually something that
you probably not use nearly as often,
| | 03:18 | because it really takes a lot more time,
because you have to do this a point at a time.
| | 03:22 | But it gives you a lot more control.
| | 03:23 | So sometimes there are places where
you'll just want to stitch just a little bit
| | 03:27 | of a surface together, and
that's where you'll use this.
| | 03:31 | Now, the third one is called Global Stitch,
and that's actually the easiest one to use.
| | 03:35 | Now I've already set up a scene
that's ready to go for Global Stitch, and
| | 03:40 | it's called Stitch.mb.
| | 03:41 | So let's go ahead and open that.
| | 03:44 | Now what this is, it is just I've
pulled this out of a NURBS model.
| | 03:47 | It's actually the eye of a character,
and you can see this is the eye part, and
| | 03:52 | then this is the brow, and that's
kind of the top part of the cheek.
| | 03:55 | A lot of times, with characters what
we'll do is in order to get the complex
| | 04:00 | topology of a face or body,
| | 04:02 | we'll actually model it in multiple
Patches, very similar to what you would do
| | 04:07 | with polygonal modeling, but with Patches.
| | 04:09 | But again, what we have here
is we have separate Patches.
| | 04:13 | So, I've got my cheek as a separate
object, the eye is a separate object, and
| | 04:18 | so when I move these around, they don't
stick together, but Stitch can take care of that.
| | 04:25 | Now if I wanted to, I can go through
and stitch all of these together using
| | 04:27 | Stitch Edges, but probably the
easiest way to do it is using Global Stitch.
| | 04:32 | So all I have to do is select
everything that I want, and this model has to be
| | 04:37 | pretty close together, but if we notice,
there is a little bit of a gap there.
| | 04:41 | It's not exactly perfectly aligned.
| | 04:44 | It's close, but not perfect.
| | 04:46 | And so when I do Global Stitch, you can
actually have a bit of a separation, so
| | 04:51 | you can say what's the Maximum separation,
Modification resistance all that sort of stuff.
| | 04:56 | So, these are controls as to how
accurate do you want this to be.
| | 04:59 | Now, I'm just going to leave this at
the defaults and hit Global Stitch.
| | 05:03 | Now, what's happened is it's gone through,
and it's actually done Stitch Edges
| | 05:06 | on all edges that are
pretty close to each other.
| | 05:09 | If you notice, it's gotten rid of
that gap, and it's actually stitched
| | 05:13 | everything together.
| | 05:14 | So now when I select one of these
surfaces, it actually sticks together.
| | 05:19 | So this whole part of the character is
actually now all flexible and stuck together.
| | 05:26 | Pretty cool!
| | 05:27 | Okay, so let's take a quick look
at how to use Stitch in modeling.
| | 05:31 | And so let's go back to our Scooter.
| | 05:34 | So I'm going to open up Scooter_06,
and I've got one little part here that I
| | 05:42 | want to use Stitch on.
| | 05:43 | So let's go ahead and see how
we can use that on our Scooter.
| | 05:46 | Let me turn off the Reference here.
| | 05:49 | What I did was I used loft to actually
create this front kick panel here on the Scooter.
| | 05:56 | Now what I want to do now is
create the front part of that Scooter.
| | 06:00 | Let me go ahead and hide this geometry here.
| | 06:05 | And you can see what I have here are the
original curves that I used to create that loft.
| | 06:10 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
go ahead and select some of these curves.
| | 06:14 | Now, first thing I want to do is
actually create the start of this surface, of
| | 06:19 | the front part of that Scooter.
| | 06:20 | So, I'm going to just select these
middle four curves, and I'm going to do an
| | 06:28 | Edit Curves > Offset.
| | 06:30 | So I'm going to do an Offset Curve.
| | 06:35 | And for distance, I'm actually going
to do it like about a -0.4 or -0.5,
| | 06:40 | somewhere in that range.
| | 06:42 | Let me go ahead and turn on the Scooter here.
| | 06:46 | Now what I've done is I've only
duplicated the middle four curves and offset
| | 06:50 | them. The edge curves here, the ones
that define the edges I haven't duplicated.
| | 06:57 | Because here, let me show
you a little trick here.
| | 06:59 | So what I'm going to do here is I'm
going to select the edges, the curves that
| | 07:04 | define the edge of that kick plate,
and then I am going to select the ones in
| | 07:10 | the middle and actually do a loft.
| | 07:12 | So what I'm going to do is
this one, this, this, this, this.
| | 07:23 | So I've selected them in order from here to
here, and notice how I selected the outside ones.
| | 07:29 | So now when I do a Surface > Loft,
it actually creates that panel.
| | 07:35 | And because I use the same curve for
this right and left edge, those actually
| | 07:40 | are pretty much the same.
| | 07:42 | But I still have to deal with the top
and the underside. These two little holes,
| | 07:48 | I need to deal with those.
| | 07:49 | Well, the easiest way to deal
with those is to use Stitch.
| | 07:53 | So I'm going to use my
Stitch Edges tools right here.
| | 07:56 | So, I'm going to select both of these.
| | 07:58 | I'm going to go Edit
NURBS > Stitch > Stitch Edges.
| | 08:02 | Now, I'm going to select that kick
plate first, the inner one, and then
| | 08:07 | select the outer one.
| | 08:08 | Notice how that snaps and
stitches, beautiful, great.
| | 08:13 | So now let's go ahead to
the underneath part of it.
| | 08:16 | And again, let's select
this surface, and this surface.
| | 08:19 | Recent Commands > Stitch Edges, select
the kick plate first, and then the front
| | 08:25 | part and there we go, beautiful.
| | 08:29 | So now I've got basically
the shell of my Scooter.
| | 08:35 | So I've got this kick plate, and the
front plate, and now I've got something
| | 08:39 | that looks a little bit more like a Scooter.
| | 08:42 | So, as you can see, Stitch is a great
way to stick together edges and actually
| | 08:47 | align things very precisely,
and very, very quickly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Refining NURBS ModelsExtracting NURBS curves from surfaces | 00:00 | When working with NURBS surfaces,
there will be times when you'll need to
| | 00:04 | tie surfaces together.
| | 00:06 | And probably one of the best techniques
for helping to do this is to be able to
| | 00:10 | extract curves from a NURBS surface
and use those to build other surfaces.
| | 00:16 | So let me show you
what I'm talking about here.
| | 00:18 | Let's go ahead and just create a
simple, simple sphere and shade that.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to turn off the Grid.
| | 00:26 | Okay, so what I want to do is be able to
extract a curve from this NURBS surface.
| | 00:32 | So in order to do that, I need to
define a point on the surface from which
| | 00:37 | to extract that curve.
| | 00:39 | So I can do that by right-
clicking over it and going into Isoparm.
| | 00:43 | which is what we use to detach the surfaces
and also add in new rows of Control Vertices.
| | 00:52 | So all I'm going to do is just set an
Isoparm point here, and then I'm going to
| | 00:58 | go into my Surfaces menu and under Edit Curves,
| | 01:01 | I'm going to select Duplicate Surface Curves.
| | 01:05 | And what this will do is it'll create
a curve at the Isoparm point I defined.
| | 01:11 | So now that I have this curve, I have a
curve that's actually locked to that surface.
| | 01:16 | So if I, for example, were to deform
this surface, History will enable that
| | 01:21 | curve to basically kind of
be stuck to that surface.
| | 01:25 | But it is a separate curve.
| | 01:27 | It's not a curve on a surface,
which is a different thing.
| | 01:30 | What I can do is then I can actually
take that curve and Duplicate it, and just
| | 01:35 | use that to create another surface.
| | 01:38 | So, for example, if I selected this
curve and this curve, and its surface is
| | 01:43 | loft, I could actually have a loft that
intersects perfectly with this sphere.
| | 01:50 | So let's go ahead and do a more
practical application of this.
| | 01:53 | First thing I'm going to do is go
ahead and set my project to my Desktop,
| | 01:58 | Chap_05, and then I'm going
to go ahead and open a scene.
| | 02:03 | And we have a scene out here called
Scooter_08, and that's our scooter.
| | 02:08 | So what we can do is we can extract
curves on a surface to build part of, for
| | 02:14 | example, this headlight.
| | 02:15 | So this headlight, all I have is
the front part of a headlight bulb.
| | 02:19 | But we also have a little ring around
that headlight, and we also have the body
| | 02:23 | of this kind of headlight casing.
| | 02:25 | So we can extract a curve from the
headlight to build the casing and also
| | 02:30 | build that little ring.
| | 02:31 | So I'm just going to go ahead and zoom in here.
| | 02:34 | In fact, I'm going to turn
off my Reference right now.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to go over to my Channel
box and under layers, just hit that the V
| | 02:43 | and then just select this headlight.
| | 02:45 | Right-click over it, Isoparm, and then
just go all the way to the end there.
| | 02:50 | And select that Isoparm at the very end.
| | 02:53 | Edit Curves > Duplicate Surface Curves.
| | 02:56 | So now I have a curve, here I have
the surface, and then I have the curve.
| | 03:00 | Now sometimes it's going to be a little hard
to select just the curve and not the surface.
| | 03:05 | So what I'm going to do is up here
I'm going to turn off my Select Mask for
| | 03:11 | Surface objects, which means I can no
longer select surfaces, but I can select
| | 03:16 | curves, because curves is still turned on.
| | 03:19 | So now that I have this curve, this curve
exactly matches the outline of that headlight.
| | 03:25 | So I can just make a copy of that.
| | 03:27 | So just do Duplicate and also do
Center Pivot, and then move this out.
| | 03:37 | In fact, I'm going to need my Reference here.
| | 03:39 | So I'm going to actually go into
my Side View and turn on Reference.
| | 03:44 | And I'm just going to position this,
maybe scale it down just a little bit so it
| | 03:50 | kind of matches the outline of this.
| | 03:52 | And then I'm going to duplicate it
again, which is Ctrl+D and then move it
| | 03:57 | again, and I'm just going to do little
bit of a rotate and a scale to get this
| | 04:06 | about where I want it, a
little bit more scale here.
| | 04:09 | So now that I have this, I can select one,
two, three curves, do Surfaces > Loft.
| | 04:17 | So now I've lofted out the
front part of this housing.
| | 04:19 | Now the back part's can be
constructed a little bit differently.
| | 04:22 | We'll get to that in a bit.
| | 04:23 | But I can also use this exact same curve
to create the ring around the headlight.
| | 04:29 | So all I need to do is Create and Extrude.
| | 04:32 | But remember, Extrude uses two curves.
| | 04:35 | So I need to create another one.
| | 04:37 | So I'm going to go in to
Create > NURBS Primitives > Circle.
| | 04:40 | I'll just create a small
circle right around here.
| | 04:44 | But I want that circle to be little bit squashed.
| | 04:46 | I want this to have a little
bit more of an oval outline.
| | 04:49 | So I'm going to select that circle,
select the curve that I extracted from the
| | 04:54 | headlight and then just do Surfaces > Extrude.
| | 04:59 | Now, this doesn't look quite
right, but we can fix that.
| | 05:03 | So let's go into our Attribute Editor for this.
| | 05:08 | And let's change some of our parameters here.
| | 05:11 | So this is where some of these
parameters can come in handy.
| | 05:14 | First thing I'm going to do is change
my Component Pivot, and then I want to
| | 05:17 | make sure I do Fixed Path.
| | 05:19 | So when I have these two in
place, it will snap to the outline.
| | 05:23 | Now, it just depends on what your
situation is as to which one of these will work.
| | 05:27 | But for this particular situation, it
will be Component Pivot and Fixed Path.
| | 05:32 | So now I'm going to go back to my
Layer Editor and turn off my reference.
| | 05:35 | So you could see I've got the start
of that headlight casing as well as the
| | 05:39 | chrome ring that goes
around the headlight itself.
| | 05:44 | So those are some the applications of
extracting surface curves, and as you can
| | 05:48 | see, it's a great way to select parts
of a surface and extract it, so you can
| | 05:53 | build additional surfaces that match.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating curves on a surface | 00:00 | There are times when you'll want to extract a
curve from a surface that isn't an Isoparm.
| | 00:07 | And Maya allows you to actually draw
curves on surface and then extract them as well.
| | 00:13 | So let's take a look at how to
draw curves onto a NURBS surface.
| | 00:18 | Let's go ahead and start with a sphere.
| | 00:20 | Let's go ahead and shade it, and
I am going to turn off my Grid.
| | 00:24 | So what we can do is we can actually use
our NURBS surface as a canvas, where we
| | 00:31 | can actually draw curves on that
surface and have them stick to the surface.
| | 00:36 | Because, if you remember, a NURBS
surface really is just a plane.
| | 00:41 | So if you really think about it, this sphere
is just a scrunched up version of a plane.
| | 00:47 | So I can actually use that
plane as a drawing board.
| | 00:52 | But I have to tell Maya
that this is where I'm drawing.
| | 00:55 | And we do that by hitting this
little magnet key that it says Make the
| | 00:59 | selected object live.
| | 01:01 | And when I do that, it changes color slightly.
| | 01:04 | And now whenever I select a Drawing
tool, or a NURBS Curve tool such as the CV
| | 01:10 | Curve, I can only draw on that surface.
| | 01:15 | So once I have this curve on the surface,
I can turn off Make object live, and
| | 01:21 | now that curve is locked to the surface.
| | 01:24 | In fact, if I go into Control Vertex
here and I deform the surface, it actually
| | 01:29 | sticks to that surface.
| | 01:31 | I am going to go ahead and delete that.
| | 01:33 | And let's do the same thing for this sphere.
| | 01:36 | Now we can do, again, Make object live, and
this time let's go ahead and use a different tool.
| | 01:43 | Let's use the EP Curve
tool, but it works the same.
| | 01:46 | So all I have to do is just start sketching
out whatever curve I want and then hit Enter.
| | 01:52 | Now once that curve is done, I
can move it along the surface.
| | 01:57 | But also notice how I can't
move it away from the surface.
| | 02:01 | I can only move it in the U and V direction,
which is similar to X and Y in a 2D image.
| | 02:08 | So I can only move it
along the U and V direction.
| | 02:11 | Now I can do whatever I want to that curve.
| | 02:13 | I can do any of these Curve tools.
| | 02:16 | I can to Open or Close Curves, for
example, to make that into a circle.
| | 02:20 | Now if I wanted to, I could actually
duplicate this and use it as the basis for
| | 02:25 | another NURBS object.
| | 02:27 | So I can do Edit Curves > Duplicate Surface
Curves, which is what we just did for isoparms.
| | 02:34 | And now I have a completely separate
curve that's attached to this first one,
| | 02:40 | except the problem is is that this
curve still is live because we actually do
| | 02:44 | have History turned on.
| | 02:46 | But if I want to, I can make sure that
this curve is selected, Delete History.
| | 02:52 | And now this is kind of freeform,
so no matter what I do to this curve,
| | 02:56 | this curve stays still.
| | 02:57 | So I can also just duplicate this curve by
itself, just by doing Ctrl+D, or Duplicate.
| | 03:05 | And I can take all of these curves and
just select them, and I can use them to
| | 03:10 | make a surface, such as a Loft.
| | 03:12 | So now that I have this Loft, this curve
here is actually still attached to this sphere.
| | 03:19 | And if I want to select this sphere, I
got to make sure I turn off Make live,
| | 03:23 | but I can select that sphere, and now
that curve is locked to that sphere.
| | 03:27 | And even if I change the shape of this
sphere, the curve is still locked, and I
| | 03:35 | still always will have a connection to that.
| | 03:38 | So I am sure you can see lots of
opportunities for ways to build things with Maya,
| | 03:43 | because once you lock a curve to a
surface you have a really firm foundation
| | 03:47 | with which to build intersecting surfaces.
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| Projecting curves on surfaces | 00:00 | There is going to be incidences where you
won't want to draw directly onto a NURBS surface.
| | 00:05 | You want to draw your curve outside of the
surface and then place it onto a NURBS surface.
| | 00:11 | And we do this by
projecting curves onto a surface.
| | 00:14 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:16 | I have got my scooter here, and
actually, let's go into my Side View.
| | 00:22 | And I am going to go into my layers here,
and I am going to hit V on Reference,
| | 00:27 | and then also let's go ahead and hit R,
make sure that that is just Reference.
| | 00:31 | So we are going to make sure that these
are set to V and R for that Reference layer.
| | 00:36 | And what I want to do is actually
draw -- there some vent holes here.
| | 00:39 | Let's go ahead and turn on XRay.
| | 00:42 | If we zoom in here, there is
actually some vent holes in this fender.
| | 00:47 | So this particular fender here is
supposed to have a couple of little slots in
| | 00:50 | there to vent the heat from the engine.
| | 00:54 | So if I wanted to, I could actually
make this live and then try and draw that
| | 01:01 | curve on the surface.
| | 01:02 | But one of the things you'll see is that
as I draw, the curvature of this surface
| | 01:08 | is actually going to affect how I draw.
| | 01:10 | So I am not going to be able
to get perfectly straight lines.
| | 01:14 | See how that's kind of getting all gloopy there?
| | 01:17 | And so that's really not what I want.
| | 01:19 | So I am going to go ahead
and do this in a different way.
| | 01:24 | So I'm going to actually draw the curve
I want and then just project that onto
| | 01:29 | the surface, and this will
actually be a lot more accurate.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to go ahead
and start by creating a circle.
| | 01:36 | I am just going to go
ahead and create a circle here.
| | 01:39 | And now I am going to
position it over where I want to go.
| | 01:44 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and pull
this forward a little bit, so that it's
| | 01:47 | actually in front of that
surface, so I can kind of see that.
| | 01:52 | And I am going to start off
by just doing some scaling.
| | 01:55 | I am going to scale this so that it's
pretty close to that shape, and move it
| | 02:01 | into place right here.
| | 02:03 | And then I am going to just use my
Control Vertices here and do my final shaping.
| | 02:09 | So I am going to make this, kind of
like this, so I am basically moving these
| | 02:13 | vertices so that they are almost
vertical and then placing this here.
| | 02:17 | And then I am going to scale
these down just a little bit.
| | 02:20 | So that's pretty close to
the vent shape that I want.
| | 02:24 | Let me go ahead and put that in
Object mode here, and let's go ahead and
| | 02:29 | position that the way that I want.
| | 02:32 | Okay, so now that I have got this
pretty much positioned, you can see that when
| | 02:36 | this is actually placed onto this
surface, it's going to be very close.
| | 02:43 | So in order to do this, I need to
do what's called a Projection.
| | 02:46 | So I need to kind of throw it on to the surface.
| | 02:50 | The big key here is picking the direction
that I project the curve onto the surface.
| | 02:56 | So in this case, I drew this in my Side
View, so that's really the direction I
| | 03:00 | want to do the projection as well.
| | 03:03 | So I am going to keep that curve
selected, Shift+Select that fender.
| | 03:08 | Let's make sure that it's selected, okay.
| | 03:11 | And make sure my Side View is Full Screen here.
| | 03:14 | And then I just do Edit
NURBS > Project Curve on Surface.
| | 03:17 | And let's take a look at what
some of the options are here.
| | 03:19 | There's really not many.
| | 03:20 | One is Project Along the Active view, which
is what we were doing, and that's a default.
| | 03:25 | The other is Project Along Surface normal.
| | 03:27 | And what that does is it makes the
closest point on the surface to the curve
| | 03:31 | the direction of the projection.
| | 03:33 | And that may or may not work, but I
know it's going to work for Active view.
| | 03:36 | So let's go ahead and do Project.
| | 03:38 | Now what this does is it actually has
taken this curve, and it's projected
| | 03:44 | it onto the fender.
| | 03:49 | So now I have a place to do an action.
We'll actually cut the hole a little bit later.
| | 03:54 | And if you notice actually this curve
is live, so if I affect, or deform this
| | 04:01 | originating curve, it's going
to affect the curve underneath.
| | 04:06 | So in order to break that
connection, I need to delete History.
| | 04:09 | So I am going to do Delete by Type >
History, and now that's disconnected.
| | 04:14 | But I have the shape of the hole here,
so what I can do is just move this down,
| | 04:18 | and let's do the same thing.
| | 04:21 | Edit NURBS > Project Curve on Surface.
| | 04:24 | Select this, delete History.
| | 04:27 | Select my originating curve.
| | 04:29 | Move it down one more time.
| | 04:32 | Select this, Project.
| | 04:34 | Select my surface, Edit >
Delete by Type > History.
| | 04:39 | So now using that one curve I have
actually, I have created three curves on
| | 04:44 | surface, and those will be
used to create that vent hole.
| | 04:49 | Now there is another way to project a
curve around surface, and that's by
| | 04:52 | projecting through your Active view.
| | 04:55 | So I am actually going to turn
off Reference here, so we can this.
| | 05:00 | And I have got the end of this
headlight shell, and I haven't actually attached
| | 05:06 | it to this handlebar.
| | 05:07 | So in order to see this, I need to actually be
an XRay mode, so let's go ahead into XRay.
| | 05:12 | And I am actually going to turn on
Wireframe on Shaded, so we have a little bit
| | 05:17 | better way to look at this.
| | 05:20 | And now one of the things you could do is you
can actually project through the Active view.
| | 05:24 | So if I am projecting this way, then I
actually will be able to project this
| | 05:30 | fairly precisely through this tube.
| | 05:33 | But notice how the outside edge of
this headlight opening is not quite the
| | 05:38 | same as the handlebar.
| | 05:40 | So I'm actually going to over-project that.
| | 05:42 | So I can do one or two things.
| | 05:44 | Probably the easiest way to do it
is to actually duplicate this curve.
| | 05:47 | So I am going to go Edit > Duplicate,
take this curve and just squash it down.
| | 05:56 | And then so now I've got that
curve ready to go onto that handlebar.
| | 06:04 | Now I want to make sure that this curve
is within the boundaries of that handlebar.
| | 06:10 | Select both of them, Project Curve on Surface.
| | 06:15 | So now -- turn off -- I've got
this curve and this curve on surface.
| | 06:25 | Let's go ahead and Delete
History on the handlebar.
| | 06:28 | Let's select this curve and these two curves.
| | 06:31 | So what I'm doing is I am selecting
the end of the headlight and the curve
| | 06:35 | on the handlebar, and then we could do a Loft,
and now I've got a connection between those two.
| | 06:44 | So now I have got my connection
between my headlight shell and the handlebar.
| | 06:50 | So those are some ways to use
projected curves on a surface, and ways to take
| | 06:55 | existing curves and attach them to
other surfaces to create new geometry.
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| Trimming NURBS surfaces | 00:00 | In Maya, curves on surface can also be
used to do what are called Trims, which
| | 00:05 | allow you to trim away either what's
inside or outside the curve itself.
| | 00:12 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:13 | So I am going to take a surface here.
| | 00:15 | Let's just go ahead and take a simple
plane, and let's go ahead and shade that.
| | 00:25 | So if I want to, I could just
draw a curve on this surface.
| | 00:27 | All I need to do is just hit this
Magnet buttons, make it Live, do Create, and
| | 00:33 | let's just do a CV Curve.
| | 00:34 | Let's just go ahead and
create a lovely heart shape.
| | 00:43 | And I am going to go ahead and Close that Curve.
| | 00:45 | Now, this only works with Closed Curves,
because what you need to do is have an
| | 00:49 | inside and an outside.
| | 00:51 | So if you don't have a Closed Curve, there's
no way to determine what's in and what's out.
| | 00:56 | So once I have this, I am going to go ahead
and turn off my Magnet and select my Surface.
| | 01:00 | So now I have a surface with a
Closed Curve on that surface.
| | 01:05 | So what I can do is I can use this
to either trim away what's inside or
| | 01:09 | outside of that curve.
| | 01:10 | So I can do that by
doing Edit NURBS > Trim tool.
| | 01:14 | So what do we want to keep? Do we want
to keep what's outside or what's inside?
| | 01:18 | Well, let's keep what's inside and hit Enter.
| | 01:22 | Now, if you remember from last chapter, we
did this using what's called Make Planar.
| | 01:28 | This is actually the same sort of tool,
because what I have got is I have got my
| | 01:33 | Surface, and I have got this Curve on the
Surface, and really, all we are doing is we
| | 01:39 | are just doing kind of a
little rendering trick here.
| | 01:41 | We are just trimming away the parts of
that surface that are outside the curve.
| | 01:45 | And this is a great way to make
irregularly-shaped NURBS patches.
| | 01:50 | Now, remember a NURBS
patch is always four sided.
| | 01:53 | So you really can't shape it into
something like this, but by using Trim, you can.
| | 01:59 | And now if I want to, I can go into,
for example, my Control Vertices, and
| | 02:03 | again, this all sticks together,
very similar to Make Planar.
| | 02:07 | So let me show you a little bit more
of a practical application for this.
| | 02:11 | We are going to go ahead and open our scene.
| | 02:14 | It's called Scooter10.
| | 02:15 | Now, this is the scene that we had,
where we kind of placed all these curves on
| | 02:21 | the engine housing of this scooter.
| | 02:23 | Let me go ahead and move this away so we can
actually see this a little bit more closely.
| | 02:29 | So what I can do is I can actually
use Trim to keep parts of this and trim
| | 02:35 | away the other parts.
| | 02:36 | So all I have to do is do Edit NURBS >
Trim tool, and again, I am going to click
| | 02:41 | on what I want to keep, hit Enter, and
now, if you notice, I don't know if you
| | 02:48 | can see this, I have got holes.
| | 02:50 | So now I have kept the
outside and trimmed away the inside.
| | 02:56 | So now I have this original curve here,
and I can just duplicate that and use
| | 03:02 | this to make -- so I am going to go
ahead and select this Trim Edge here.
| | 03:06 | I actually can right-click
over this and say Trim Edge.
| | 03:11 | So I am going to select this Trim Edge,
select this, do a Loft, and now I have
| | 03:16 | got kind of like an inset, so it
looks like this has some thickness here.
| | 03:22 | And I can do that for all of these.
| | 03:24 | And by using the Trim tool, I have cut
out three holes, and then duplicating
| | 03:29 | those curves and using a Loft, I have
actually created some thickness for those.
| | 03:33 | So the Trim tool is a great way to
create holes or irregularly-shaped objects
| | 03:39 | in a NURBS surface.
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| Using the NURBS Fillet tool | 00:00 | There are times when you're going to
need Maya to create automatic transitions
| | 00:04 | between surfaces, and these are
the places where you use Fillets.
| | 00:09 | Now, anybody familiar with the CAD
program is probably familiar with a Fillet.
| | 00:13 | Typically, what it does is it creates
a rounded edge between two surfaces.
| | 00:17 | So let's look at the basic types of
Fillets, and then there's one more type, a
| | 00:21 | more sophisticated type of Fillet,
which we'll show you in another file.
| | 00:24 | So I have these two planes, and instead
of this hard corner, I want to create a
| | 00:29 | corner that's a little bit more rounded.
| | 00:31 | So I'm going to move this up and over,
so I have space for a rounded Fillet.
| | 00:37 | Now, you can find Fillets under Edit
NURBS > Surface Fillet, and there's
| | 00:41 | three of them here.
| | 00:42 | In fact, I'm going to tear off
this menu so we can see them.
| | 00:45 | We have Circular Fillet,
Freeform Fillet, and Fillet Blend.
| | 00:49 | So let's take a look at
how Circular Fillet works.
| | 00:52 | In order for this to work, I need to select
the objects first, and then do a circular Fillet.
| | 00:56 | So what I need to do is I need to
select the point on that surface where I want
| | 01:03 | to create the Fillet.
| | 01:04 | Now, in this case, I just want to
create it between the two edges.
| | 01:08 | So all I have to do is select the Isoparms.
| | 01:11 | You can also do Circular
Fillets between curves on the surface.
| | 01:15 | So if I wanted to, I could, for example,
select this, make it live, and draw a
| | 01:20 | curve, and use that as the basis for a Fillet.
| | 01:23 | But let's just do this the
easy way, and do it with Isoparms.
| | 01:27 | What I need to do is select my first
surface, right-click over it, select Isoparm.
| | 01:34 | And then just slide that so
I have the very end Isoparm.
| | 01:37 | So that is selected.
| | 01:40 | Now, I'm going to right-click over
the second surface and select Isoparm.
| | 01:44 | Now, in order to select this, I have to
hold down the Shift key and do the same thing.
| | 01:48 | So while holding down the Shift, I select
that Isoparm. Now they're both selected.
| | 01:53 | Great!
| | 01:54 | All I have to do is click
Circular Fillet, and there it is.
| | 01:57 | Now, what this does is it
creates a third surface.
| | 02:00 | So we have one, two, three surfaces, and
this third surface has its own attributes.
| | 02:06 | This is the Fillet.
| | 02:07 | If I look here, you can see I've got
this node here called RBF surf 1 (rbfSrf1).
| | 02:13 | That's really how it calculates that Fillet.
| | 02:17 | So basically it just calculates the
Radius for that Fillet from there, and
| | 02:22 | that's how it works.
| | 02:23 | Now, if I want, I could actually move
these surfaces, but they only affect the
| | 02:27 | Fillet if you move them in a certain direction.
| | 02:29 | So it's pretty much designed for
this to be pretty much fixed in place.
| | 02:33 | Now, the Freeform Fillet has a few more
controls, not too many, but let me show
| | 02:37 | you how this one works.
| | 02:39 | Again, very similar process. All I have
to do is select the Isoparm, and then go
| | 02:44 | over to the second surface, go into
Isoparm mode, and Shift+Select the second
| | 02:49 | Isoparm, Freeform Fillet. There we go!
| | 02:53 | Now, since I have my Attribute Editor
open, you can see the attributes for this.
| | 02:59 | You can actually do what's called Bias,
which basically just biases the Fillet
| | 03:04 | towards one surface or the other,
and then there's also a Depth Control.
| | 03:08 | So if you want, you can make this a
little bit tighter of a curve, or maybe
| | 03:13 | a more narrow curve.
| | 03:14 | It just depends on how
you want to work with this.
| | 03:18 | So those are the two basic,
kind of more of the CAD type Fillets.
| | 03:22 | Now, there is a third one, and
that's called the Fillet Blend tool.
| | 03:25 | That's a little bit more freeform,
and it works in a very different way.
| | 03:28 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 03:30 | We're going to open our
little Scooter file here.
| | 03:33 | We're playing with Scooter11.
| | 03:35 | Let me get back into my Channel Box here.
| | 03:40 | So what I've got here is
I've got this headlight.
| | 03:43 | If you remember, what I did was I
extracted a curve from the headlight,
| | 03:46 | projected it on the handlebar, and then
just did a loft between these two surfaces.
| | 03:52 | To my eye, that looks a little bit
ugly, because we have this really sharp
| | 03:55 | angle here, and then another sharp angle here,
and I want this to be a little bit smoother.
| | 04:00 | Fillet Blend will actually do that for us.
| | 04:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this, delete it, and we're going to redo
| | 04:05 | it using Fillet Blend.
| | 04:07 | Now, Fillet Blend works
differently than these two.
| | 04:11 | These two, you select the
Isoparms and then the tool.
| | 04:14 | Fillet Blend works the opposite way.
| | 04:16 | You select the tool, and then you
select the curves that you're going to use.
| | 04:21 | So it's a little bit different operation.
| | 04:23 | So I'm going to go ahead
and select Fillet Blend.
| | 04:28 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this Isoparm on that headlight casing.
| | 04:34 | Then it says select more
curves if you want or press Enter.
| | 04:37 | Well, I'm going to press Enter.
| | 04:39 | Now it says, select curves for the right edge.
| | 04:42 | I'm going to go ahead and select that curve.
| | 04:46 | Then it says, press Enter. Boom!
| | 04:49 | Okay. Now, this actually looks a lot better,
because what it does is it tries to
| | 04:53 | maintain tangency where
it intersects the surface.
| | 04:58 | So I've got this, and it's trying to make this
as tangent as possible to each of these surfaces.
| | 05:04 | So notice how it comes in and has
a really nice, more organic curve.
| | 05:08 | Now, this gives me a much, much better
result than just doing a simple loft.
| | 05:16 | So those are some of the ways you can
use Fillets to automatically fill in
| | 05:21 | between multiple surfaces.
| | 05:23 | Now, depending upon the type of
modeling you want to do, really depends upon
| | 05:27 | what type of Fillet you want to use.
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| Sculpting NURBS and polygonal surfaces | 00:01 | Probably one of the neatest tools
in Maya is called the Sculpt tool.
| | 00:05 | Now, this is actually a suite
of tools, the artisan tools.
| | 00:09 | And what they allow you to do is use
a brush-based interface to select the
| | 00:13 | objects as well as sculpt the surfaces.
| | 00:16 | Now, we used it a little bit with Paint
Select, but you can also use it to do 3D
| | 00:22 | paint onto objects as well, as sculpt surfaces.
| | 00:26 | So let me show you how to
use it as a sculpting tool.
| | 00:29 | I am going to start off with a
NurbsSphere, and let's shade that.
| | 00:34 | But for this sphere, I
actually want a lot of detail.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to go into my
makeNurbSphere input and just ramp up my detail
| | 00:44 | here, so it's around 30 or
40, somewhere in that range.
| | 00:46 | So I really just want a lot of detail here.
| | 00:49 | And now I want to sculpt this.
| | 00:51 | And in order to do that, I go
under Mesh > Sculpt Geometry tool.
| | 00:55 | Now when you select this, just make the
habit of selecting the Tool options, and
| | 00:59 | let me show you why.
| | 01:00 | Because when you select the tool options,
you get this control panel, which is
| | 01:05 | actually very important,
because this is all of your controls.
| | 01:08 | Now notice how when I place my mouse over
this surface, this little brush appears.
| | 01:17 | Now, this brush is pressure-sensitive.
| | 01:19 | If you have a tablet, you can use it.
| | 01:21 | I don't have a tablet, so I am
just going to use this with the mouse.
| | 01:24 | And all you have to do is left-click
and drag, and you can sculpt that surface.
| | 01:30 | How we sculpt the surface depends
upon these parameters in this tool here.
| | 01:36 | So we have one here which determines the size
and shape of the brush, so how big is the brush?
| | 01:42 | Now, I can change my brush size by
just holding down the B, B for brush, and
| | 01:48 | left-clicking and dragging.
| | 01:49 | So I can just drag that in to make a
smaller or larger brush, and notice
| | 01:53 | how that changes here.
| | 01:55 | We also can change the Profile of the brush.
| | 01:57 | Do we want the brush to be softer
on the edges, harder on the edges?
| | 02:01 | Do we want a very hard brush?
| | 02:02 | Do we want a square brush?
| | 02:04 | We can also load brushes,
which are basically just bitmaps.
| | 02:08 | And then we can also
determine what sort of operation.
| | 02:11 | Do you want to Push the mesh in?
| | 02:13 | Do we want to Pull it out? Let's go Pull.
| | 02:16 | So we can actually pull the mesh out.
| | 02:19 | Do we want to Smooth the mesh,
which basically means kind of get rid of
| | 02:24 | everything that we did,
and put it back to normal?
| | 02:29 | Do we want to Relax the mesh?
| | 02:32 | By relaxing the mesh, what you are doing is
you are actually moving the vertices apart.
| | 02:38 | We can also Pinch the mesh.
| | 02:40 | In other words, pull the vertices together.
| | 02:42 | So notice how this detail is coming together.
| | 02:46 | And we can also use an Erase.
| | 02:47 | And what an erase does, it just puts back to
the original geometry before I ever use the tool.
| | 02:52 | Now, another parameter you want to take
a look at is called the Reference Vector.
| | 02:57 | Now typically, we want this to work
along the normal, so that when I paint like
| | 03:02 | this, it pulls perpendicular to the surface.
| | 03:06 | But we can change it to do whatever we want.
| | 03:09 | We can move it along any axis.
| | 03:11 | We can move it according to the First
normal that we touch, or to the U and V.
| | 03:16 | Now typically for me, I just keep it on
Normal, because that's the easiest way to work.
| | 03:20 | And also, we can change our
stroke, so that we have reflection.
| | 03:25 | So if I turn on Reflection, what happens
is it will reflect around a specific axis.
| | 03:34 | So we can reflect around the origin.
| | 03:39 | We can reflect around a
specific axis, or we can invert that.
| | 03:46 | So if we go around the Z axis, I can
actually do symmetrical modeling here.
| | 03:51 | Now this is great for sculpting, but
also I find it's a really great tool
| | 03:56 | for tweaking meshes.
| | 03:58 | So if want to just kind of paint in
like a crease, or make sure that my
| | 04:02 | character's eyebrows are bulgy enough,
I can do that using the Sculpt tool.
| | 04:06 | Now, in addition to all of this,
we have our stylus pressure.
| | 04:10 | And if you have a stylus, you can map that
stylus pressure to any one of these parameters.
| | 04:17 | Now, this tool not only works for NURB surfaces.
| | 04:19 | It also works for polygonal surfaces.
| | 04:21 | So I am actually going to go
ahead and open a scene here.
| | 04:24 | We have a scene out here called Head,
which is a character's head here.
| | 04:28 | And I can select this, and in Polygons,
under Mesh, we have what's called the
| | 04:34 | Sculpt Geometry tool, which is
essentially the exact same tool, but for polygons.
| | 04:40 | So I am going to turn off Reflection here.
| | 04:42 | And let's say I wanted to make the
character's nose a little bit different shape.
| | 04:46 | I can do that.
| | 04:48 | I am going to go ahead and move my brush down,
and then I can just start to pull and push.
| | 04:54 | In fact, this is a little bit big on scale.
| | 04:57 | I can also change how much
displacement I have here.
| | 05:01 | So actually I am going to turn that
way down, and this is the amount that it
| | 05:06 | actually is pushing and pulling.
| | 05:07 | So we are going to dull that down a
little bit, and we are going to give him a
| | 05:11 | little bit more of a W.C. Fields
kind of bulbous kind of nose here.
| | 05:16 | So you can see how you can use this
to really just tweak a model very,
| | 05:21 | very, very quickly.
| | 05:22 | And let's say I want to give him a
little bit bigger cheeks. I can do that.
| | 05:27 | And again, this is just by brushing, and if
I used Reflection, I could do that as well.
| | 05:34 | So as you can see, the Sculpt tools
really can come in very, very handy for
| | 05:39 | sculpting both NURBS and polygonal geometry.
| | 05:43 | So go ahead and use the tool and get
familiar with it, because it will come in
| | 05:48 | very, very handy as you work with Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting NURBS to polygons | 00:00 | When you model in NURBS, a lot times the
reason you're doing it is to get a very
| | 00:04 | smooth flowing surface.
| | 00:06 | But there're times when you want to
convert NURBS surfaces to Polygons.
| | 00:11 | So let's say, for example,
you're working in games.
| | 00:13 | Most game engines don't accept NURBS.
| | 00:14 | They accept polygon.
| | 00:15 | So you'll have to
convert your models to Polygon.
| | 00:19 | So let me show you some
techniques for conversion.
| | 00:22 | Let's go ahead and take a very
simple NURBS object and convert it.
| | 00:27 | We convert under the Modify menu.
| | 00:30 | So we go Modify > Convert, and
we're going to go NURBS to Polygons.
| | 00:35 | So now there're a number of options here.
| | 00:36 | Let me just go through these.
| | 00:39 | Now, how you convert a NURBS to
Polygon really depends on the type of surface
| | 00:44 | and your desired result.
| | 00:46 | So we have a bunch of different options.
| | 00:49 | So first of all, what do we want to
output, or what's our Tessellation method?
| | 00:53 | In other words, how do we
convert a NURBS surface to Polygons?
| | 00:57 | Now remember, a NURBS surface is
a mathematically-defined surface.
| | 01:01 | And so how are we going to tessellate that,
or break that down into discrete Polygons.
| | 01:07 | So we can output Triangles or Quads.
| | 01:10 | I typically go for Quads.
| | 01:12 | And then we can do several
different Tessellation methods.
| | 01:16 | So if we go General, this actually
tells us how much detail we want.
| | 01:21 | So, for example, if we want Per span
number of iso parameters on U and V, this
| | 01:27 | will actually convert that.
| | 01:29 | So for every one of these,
we'll have three Polygons.
| | 01:33 | So when we do Tessellate, you'll see
how for each one of these we get three.
| | 01:38 | But this is also polygonal.
| | 01:40 | So you're going to have
hard edges between those.
| | 01:42 | Do this one more time.
| | 01:44 | Let's go Convert > NURBS to Polygons.
| | 01:47 | And let's do another option here.
| | 01:50 | The other option would be just Count.
| | 01:52 | How many Polygons do we want?
| | 01:55 | Now, this is great for game engines,
because sometimes you would just have a hard
| | 01:59 | limit as I can't have more
than x number of polygons.
| | 02:02 | Well, you can just say well, this
cannot be any more than 200, and you rock.
| | 02:08 | Our Standard fit, basically what this
does is it allows Maya to determine how
| | 02:14 | many Polygons based upon
the curvature of the surface.
| | 02:17 | So if you have something that's broad
and flat, it will have very few Polygons.
| | 02:22 | If something is really tight and needs
additional detail, it will add in that detail.
| | 02:27 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:29 | So you can see how for this, that works.
| | 02:32 | So if now actually were to modify
this, and, for example, added in some
| | 02:36 | curvature here -- in fact, if you
want, you can see how this is live.
| | 02:43 | So if I do Wireframe on Shaded, you can
see how it's adding in detail right here
| | 02:49 | as the curvature changes.
| | 02:51 | So that's basically the
more of the smart tessellation.
| | 02:54 | Now, this may not give you the
regular tessellation you want.
| | 02:59 | But it will give you the most accurate
and the most efficient type of tessellation.
| | 03:03 | So let's go ahead and delete this.
| | 03:05 | And let's select our
slightly deformed sphere here.
| | 03:09 | And let's do one more Convert and show you
the last option, which is by Control points.
| | 03:14 | And when we Tessellate that way, all
it does is basically just every CV -- in
| | 03:21 | fact, let's go ahead and
take a look at the Hull.
| | 03:23 | Basically what it does it just takes
the Hull of the object and converts it to
| | 03:28 | a polygonal surface.
| | 03:29 | So for each one of these squares, or
quadrilaterals in the Hull, it creates a polygon.
| | 03:36 | So those are some of the ways
to convert NURBS to Polygons.
| | 03:40 | Now, the method you choose really depends
upon what you what your desired result to be.
| | 03:45 | Do you need a very specific number of Polygons?
| | 03:47 | Do you need your polygons to
be in a very specific order?
| | 03:50 | Those are decisions you're going to
have to make as you do the conversion.
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|
|
6. Organizing Maya ScenesWorking with the Outliner | 00:00 | Now as you start modeling more and more
things in Maya, you're going to need to
| | 00:04 | be able to organize your scenes.
| | 00:06 | Up until this point, we've just been
kind of modeling stuff in the scene and
| | 00:11 | we really haven't been doing much organization.
| | 00:14 | Probably the most centralized place
where you can organize things in Maya is
| | 00:18 | called the Outliner.
| | 00:20 | You can get to it one of two places.
| | 00:22 | One is just as a separate window.
| | 00:24 | You can go into the Outliner.
| | 00:26 | And the other is through a viewport.
| | 00:28 | So, for example, if I went into a four
view here, I could actually-- let me go
| | 00:33 | ahead and close this.
| | 00:34 | I can make one of the
panels into the Outliner itself.
| | 00:39 | So there is really a
couple of ways of doing this.
| | 00:40 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead
and turn this back into a Top view.
| | 00:45 | And let's go ahead and
float the Outliner. Here we go.
| | 00:51 | And I'm going to go ahead and open this up.
| | 00:53 | So what your Outliner shows you is
basically everything that's in the scene.
| | 00:58 | So you can see I've got my
scooter pretty much modeled.
| | 01:02 | And it's actually got a lot of parts in it.
| | 01:05 | So if I scroll down, you can see
there's a whole bunch of stuff here.
| | 01:09 | And a lot of it kind of needs to be organized.
| | 01:12 | Now, we need to organize
things in Maya for one of two ways.
| | 01:14 | One is so it's easy to access and also so
that the objects itself kind of tie together.
| | 01:21 | So, for example, if I grab the
HandleBar and I wanted to rotate that, well,
| | 01:26 | I want to make sure that the handle bar
rotates the whole front end of the scooter.
| | 01:31 | So you can also create
assemblies within the Outliner.
| | 01:35 | So let's take a look at some
of the basics of the Outliner.
| | 01:38 | So as you can see, basically
everything is listed here in the Outliner.
| | 01:43 | And you can see that different things
actually have different little icons.
| | 01:47 | So NURBS surfaces will show up like this.
| | 01:50 | If it's a Polygonal surface,
it'll show up with this little icon.
| | 01:54 | NURBS curves show up like this.
| | 01:57 | So each different type of
object will have its own little icon.
| | 02:01 | And then next to each one is a little plus sign.
| | 02:04 | Now, that actually shows you what's underneath.
| | 02:06 | Now, that could be just a subobject, or
it could be whole hierarchies of objects.
| | 02:12 | And we'll get into that in little bit.
| | 02:14 | Then we also can display just the main
objects or do we also want to display
| | 02:20 | what are called the shapes, which
is what that little plus sign goes?
| | 02:24 | Do we want to display attributes?
| | 02:25 | So, for example, for a NURBS plane,
you could actually display all of the
| | 02:31 | attributes for that NURBS plane.
| | 02:32 | And I think that's pretty heavy on the display.
| | 02:35 | So typically I turn that off.
| | 02:37 | We can also display as to whether
objects are connected, that sort of stuff.
| | 02:41 | We can also show certain types of objects.
| | 02:44 | I only want to see NURBS objects.
| | 02:46 | I can just show the NURBS objects.
| | 02:49 | So let's say I want to see
just the cameras in the scene.
| | 02:53 | You can just show just the cameras.
| | 02:55 | Or if I want to see cameras and
polygonal objects, you can do that.
| | 03:00 | So this allows you to kind of filter
through everything in the scene by type of object.
| | 03:07 | And of course there's a Help menu
that shows you how to use certain things.
| | 03:11 | Now there're other things
you can do in the Outliner.
| | 03:14 | One is you can actually rename stuff.
| | 03:17 | So, for example, if I selected this
front tire, you'll notice that it's actually
| | 03:20 | named Torus1, which is
how I originally created it.
| | 03:24 | If I want to I can double-click in this
and type in the name, FrontTire, okay.
| | 03:27 | Now, I also, if I wanted to, I could actually
do that here, just change that name as well.
| | 03:35 | So there're two different places where
you can change the name of an object,
| | 03:39 | and they both sync up.
| | 03:41 | So, for example, if I wanted to change
the name of this rear wheel, I could just
| | 03:45 | go RearTire as well.
| | 03:47 | Now, the nice thing about the Outliner is it
allows you to pick objects by name in the scene.
| | 03:53 | Now, if I want to, I can use my Shift+
Select tools to select multiple objects or
| | 03:59 | if I Ctrl+Select, I can pick individual objects.
| | 04:04 | So Shift+Select allows me to pick a range.
| | 04:07 | Ctrl+Select allows me to
pick and choose one by one.
| | 04:11 | So that's another way of selecting
multiple objects. You can select them by name.
| | 04:16 | Now, this also brings up another
important point I need to make, and that is put
| | 04:20 | descriptive names on everything.
| | 04:22 | So, for example, yeah, I can see that
this is a fender here, but when I'm in the
| | 04:27 | Outliner, a lot of times you'll
have things that say nurbsCurve,
| | 04:31 | duplicatedCurve, and I have no idea
whether nurbCircle5 is here, here, or here.
| | 04:37 | But if I actually give it a descriptive
name, then I know immediately what it is.
| | 04:42 | So, for example, I know that this is
my hubcap and I know that this is that
| | 04:47 | ring in front of my headlight.
| | 04:49 | So by giving things descriptive names,
you're really making it much easier to go
| | 04:54 | through your scene later,
debug it, and work with it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Grouping objects | 00:00 | When you work with a lot of objects in
Maya, there's always the need to create
| | 00:04 | groups of objects so that you
have things organized in your scene.
| | 00:08 | So let's take a look at grouping in Maya.
| | 00:11 | I have this scene, which is my scooter.
| | 00:14 | And we have a bunch of
different types of objects in here.
| | 00:16 | Let's go ahead into our
Outliner and see what we have.
| | 00:20 | We have some nurbsPlanes here, and
those contain the reference images we used
| | 00:24 | to build the scooter.
| | 00:25 | We also have the actually
geometry of the scooter.
| | 00:29 | We also have a bunch of curves in here,
which we'll use to build the scooter.
| | 00:33 | Now, a lot of these we can
probably delete out of the scene.
| | 00:37 | But typically I like to at least keep a
master copy with all of the things used
| | 00:41 | to build the object before I start
deleting things out of the scene.
| | 00:45 | And when I do that, I like to organize things.
| | 00:48 | So let's go ahead and
organize this scene a little bit.
| | 00:50 | Now, the first thing I'm going to do is
just go ahead and select at the very top
| | 00:54 | of this list these nurbsPlanes.
| | 00:57 | And those are the image planes I
used to map the reference, so I could
| | 01:02 | actually build this.
| | 01:03 | Now, if I want to I create what's
called a group, and that will actually
| | 01:06 | group these together.
| | 01:08 | We do that by either hitting Ctrl+G
for Group or just hitting the Group menu
| | 01:14 | option here under Edit > Group.
| | 01:16 | When I do that, watch what happens.
| | 01:17 | Well, these kind of disappear.
| | 01:19 | But when you create a new group, it
actually goes to the bottom of the list.
| | 01:22 | So I go to the bottom of my Outliner.
| | 01:24 | And here I have an object called group.
| | 01:26 | So if select something else here, I can
select my curves or whatever, but then
| | 01:31 | when I hit Group, it
actually selects all three of these.
| | 01:34 | So this is a great way to organize
and select multiple objects as well.
| | 01:38 | Now, if I hit this plus sign to the
left of this, you'll see that I have each
| | 01:43 | individual nurbsPlane is
located within this group.
| | 01:48 | So now I've created kind
of almost like a folder.
| | 01:50 | And I've put all of these objects in the folder.
| | 01:52 | And the folder is basically the group.
| | 01:54 | Now if I want to take something out of
the group, all I have to do is select it,
| | 02:00 | then middle-click and drag.
| | 02:02 | Now notice, as I move up,
my cursor changes a little bit.
| | 02:05 | When I'm in between two
objects, I get a single line.
| | 02:09 | And when I'm directly over
another object, I get a double line.
| | 02:13 | So when I drag this up to the point
where I get a single line and let go.
| | 02:18 | When I drag it to a single line, I'm actually
dragging it in between the two objects.
| | 02:23 | And so, what that does is it actually
takes it out of the group or takes it
| | 02:26 | out of the hierarchy.
| | 02:28 | So when I select this group now, I've only
selected the two planes that are remaining.
| | 02:32 | So this one here is now outside of that group.
| | 02:36 | If I want to put it back in, all
I have to do is select the plane,
| | 02:40 | middle-click and drag.
| | 02:42 | And again, you notice how we have
the double line and the single line.
| | 02:46 | So I want to drag it over
group so I have a double-line.
| | 02:49 | And once I let go over group1,
it jumps back into that group.
| | 02:54 | So now I've got a hierarchy.
| | 02:56 | Now, I can do the same
thing for everything else.
| | 02:58 | So, for example, all my curves
are pretty much in the same place.
| | 03:01 | So I'm going to select the bottom
curve, scroll all the way up to this
| | 03:05 | one called bezier1.
| | 03:07 | Hold down Shift, and now I've
selected all the curves in my scene.
| | 03:11 | And I'm just going to hit Ctrl+G for group.
| | 03:14 | Now if I want I can name these.
| | 03:16 | So I can, for example, double-
click on this and type Curves.
| | 03:22 | So now all my curves are that one group.
| | 03:24 | Now double-click here.
| | 03:26 | I can call this, for example, Ref for reference.
| | 03:29 | So now this is all my reference.
| | 03:31 | And these are my Curves.
| | 03:32 | And rest of the stuff is my actual scooter.
| | 03:36 | So if I wanted to I could, for
example, select everything on the scooter
| | 03:40 | and group that as well.
| | 03:43 | And we can just call that ScooterGroup.
| | 03:46 | So now I have my ScooterGroup.
| | 03:48 | And what's really nice is that now when
I select this ScooterGroup here from the
| | 03:53 | Outliner, I can actually move my
scooter pretty much anywhere I want.
| | 03:57 | So as you can see, grouping is a
great way to organize your scenes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating hierarchies | 00:00 | Hierarchies are another great way
to organize your scenes in Maya.
| | 00:04 | They're actually very similar to groups,
but what we can do is actually drag
| | 00:08 | objects on to each other to create
what are called hierarchies or basically
| | 00:12 | levels of organization within a scene.
| | 00:16 | So let's go into our Outliner window here.
| | 00:19 | And you'll notice here,
we have a bunch of groups here.
| | 00:21 | Now actually by creating a group,
you're actually creating a hierarchy because
| | 00:26 | underneath the ScooterGroup we have
all of the different objects that are
| | 00:31 | contained within that group.
| | 00:32 | So this is basically a one-level hierarchy.
| | 00:34 | But let's say I wanted to go a
little bit deeper with this organization.
| | 00:38 | Let's say I wanted to select this
handlebar and turn it and have the front
| | 00:43 | wheels turn with the handlebar.
| | 00:44 | Well, we can do that by using hierarchies.
| | 00:47 | So what we have to do is basically
select everything the handlebar is attached
| | 00:52 | to and drag it underneath.
| | 00:54 | So, for example, I'm going to
select all of these parts here, so the
| | 00:57 | handles, the headlight, the steering column,
the fender and also the wheels and the hubcaps.
| | 01:05 | So once I've selected all of that,
they're all selected in the Outliner,
| | 01:09 | then all I have to do is
drag them over the HandleBar.
| | 01:12 | And notice how I can tell it to the
HandleBar because I need it descriptively.
| | 01:15 | It's one good reason to name things.
| | 01:18 | So all I do is middle-click and drag
directly over the word HandleBar. Let go.
| | 01:23 | And if I scroll down you can see
now when I select that HandleBar, now
| | 01:27 | everything is selected.
| | 01:28 | Now unfortunately, the pivot of
this HandleBar is in the wrong place.
| | 01:32 | So if I wanted to, I could do
Insert and put that in the right place.
| | 01:38 | But still it's kind of hard to select this.
| | 01:40 | A lot of times what I do with this sort of
set up is I create what's called a Locater.
| | 01:46 | Create > Locater.
| | 01:47 | And what this is is just a separate
object in the scene that allows me to kind
| | 01:52 | of further organize the scene.
| | 01:53 | But also it gives me like a little
handle with which to grab the scene.
| | 01:58 | So if I rotate this to match the
orientation of that steering column and then
| | 02:04 | just move it into place, I should be
able to again do another hierarchy.
| | 02:09 | So basically drag the handlebar
underneath this, and then I'll have this nice
| | 02:14 | handy thing to select whenever
I want to rotate that HandleBar.
| | 02:18 | And if you notice here, it's
actually outside of that ScooterGroup.
| | 02:21 | So all I need to do is middle click and
drag it over there, and that brings it
| | 02:26 | one level down into the hierarchy.
| | 02:28 | But I still need to drag the
HandleBar on top of the locator.
| | 02:32 | And so now, it's within that hierarchy.
| | 02:35 | So now all I have to do is rotate this.
| | 02:38 | And I've got my wheel rotating just fine.
| | 02:43 | And now, I can do the same
thing for the actual scooter itself.
| | 02:46 | I could create a simple Locator here.
| | 02:50 | And it actually, by default,
creates it at the origin at 000.
| | 02:54 | So if I wanted to, I could actually
grab the ScooterGroup itself, drag it
| | 02:59 | over that locator, and I could say call this
Scooter_Loc, and I could call this one Steering.
| | 03:07 | And so now I have two locators in
the scene that I can actually animate.
| | 03:10 | So if I select this,
I can move my scooter around.
| | 03:15 | And if I select this, I can steer it.
| | 03:18 | Now, the reason I'm doing this is
because a lot of times it's much easier to
| | 03:23 | animate the locators than actually
animate the geometry, because that way I'm
| | 03:27 | kind of one level removed from
the actual objects themselves.
| | 03:30 | So it makes animation sometimes a lot easier.
| | 03:32 | And this is kind of just one of the
ways I set up objects in Maya to make
| | 03:36 | it easier to animate.
| | 03:37 | Now, one thing also I want to
show you how to select hierarchies.
| | 03:42 | Now, up along here, we have
basically three buttons. One is Select by
| | 03:45 | component type, which allows me to
select components such as control vertices
| | 03:49 | and that sort of thing.
| | 03:50 | Here, I have Select by object.
| | 03:52 | So I can select individual objects.
| | 03:56 | If I select this, then it allows me
to select hierarchies in combinations.
| | 04:00 | For example, if I select all of this,
it actually goes to the very top of the
| | 04:04 | hierarchy, which allows me
to select the entire scooter.
| | 04:07 | Now typically, what I like to do is
keep this on object type and then just
| | 04:11 | select the locators.
| | 04:13 | And again, that makes it much easier
to animate when you're in the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating objects| 00:00 | There are many times in Maya
where you want to duplicate objects.
| | 00:04 | Now, we've done a little bit of
duplication up until this point.
| | 00:08 | But let's go through this a
little bit more thoroughly.
| | 00:11 | Now, if I select an object, like for
example this house, I can just very
| | 00:15 | simply duplicate it.
| | 00:16 | So, we've already used the Duplicate command.
| | 00:19 | So, either you hit Duplicate or Ctrl+D,
and I can turn one house into two.
| | 00:25 | So, for example, now I have two houses.
| | 00:29 | That's really just a very simple command.
| | 00:31 | Now, another way to duplicate is to do
what's called Duplicate with Transform.
| | 00:37 | Now, this is actually kind of nice,
because if you repeat just what I did, which
| | 00:40 | is Ctrl+D, and then do a bit of a
transform, all you have to do is do Shift+D
| | 00:47 | and it will keep repeating that.
| | 00:49 | A great way to like layout a street of
houses, for example. A great easy way to do it.
| | 00:54 | What it does is it remembers the last
transform you did after the duplication,
| | 00:58 | or basically everything that has
been transformed after the duplication.
| | 01:02 | Then as soon as you hit Shift+D
it just repeats it. Pretty cool!
| | 01:05 | Now, another way to do this is to
do what's called Duplicate Special.
| | 01:09 | We've actually used this a little bit
when we were modeling the character body.
| | 01:13 | But let's go through this again.
| | 01:14 | Now, we've got a couple of
things that we can do with this.
| | 01:18 | Under Duplicate Special, we can take
this object, and we can just copy it, and
| | 01:23 | we can make any number of copies we want.
| | 01:25 | Let's say we wanted say 10 copies, and we
wanted to translate them in z 100 units apart.
| | 01:33 | If you go Duplicate Special,
boom, does it. Very simple.
| | 01:37 | Now, another way to do this is to
do it with what's called an instance.
| | 01:41 | Now, what an instance does is it
basically creates an object that is
| | 01:47 | referenced to the original.
| | 01:49 | So, if I create 10 houses that are
instanced, I can't edit my first house.
| | 01:56 | Now, notice how I've edited that
and I can change all of them.
| | 02:00 | This is really great for let's say
you had a bunch of telephone poles and
| | 02:03 | you really didn't know exactly what height
those crossbars are on the telephone poles.
| | 02:08 | Well, you could still Duplicate Special.
| | 02:10 | Go back to the first one, and you can
rearrange all of them and make them all the same.
| | 02:16 | Another way to use Duplicate Special is not
just with Translation, but also with Rotation.
| | 02:22 | Let's me show you a little trick here.
| | 02:24 | Now, I have got this scene here.
| | 02:26 | Basically, I want to create a little
planet populated with houses with a
| | 02:30 | road down in the middle.
| | 02:32 | Ultimately, we are going to make our character
pop on the scooter and drive down that street.
| | 02:36 | But I need to create some houses on this street.
| | 02:39 | So, first thing I want to do is actually be
able to position this house where I want it.
| | 02:44 | So, probably the best thing to do is
to center the pivot of this house to the
| | 02:49 | center of the earth.
| | 02:51 | So, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:53 | Let me go ahead and zoom out, hit Insert.
| | 02:55 | I am going to move this pivot down.
| | 02:58 | I am going to zoom in.
| | 03:00 | I want to make sure that that is centered.
| | 03:03 | So, I am going to hit Insert again.
| | 03:05 | So, now once I have this pretty much
centered to the planet, now when I rotate it,
| | 03:11 | it's actually almost the same as
Translation, because I can rotate this all
| | 03:14 | the way around, and it will always
stick to that planet, because really instead
| | 03:20 | of translating, we are kind
of using more of a rotation.
| | 03:23 | So, all I want to do is make sure
I position that and there we go.
| | 03:27 | Now, I want to go ahead and
rotate all of these around that planet.
| | 03:31 | So, how many of these do I need?
| | 03:33 | I am going to go into Duplicate Special.
| | 03:36 | Let's go ahead and just make 10
of these go around the earth here.
| | 03:40 | Now, I've already got one, so
I only need 9 additional ones.
| | 03:44 | Then I am not going to translate it,
so I want to make sure all these are 0.
| | 03:48 | But I want to rotate it, and I want to
rotate this around the red axis or the X axis.
| | 03:55 | So, 36 degrees between each one
and just do Duplicate Special.
| | 04:01 | So, now I've got a little
planet with some houses on it.
| | 04:05 | What's really cool is I can go
into my outline, and we can play with
| | 04:08 | some hierarchies here.
| | 04:09 | We can take all of our houses, and
middle-click and drag them onto the planet.
| | 04:14 | So, now I can rotate it round X.
| | 04:17 | In fact, let's go ahead and get
our camera, pretty much aligned here.
| | 04:22 | So, I've got my perspective view aligned.
| | 04:24 | So, all I have to do is take X, middle-
click and drag, and you can see how I can
| | 04:27 | make these houses come over the hill,
which is kind of that effect that we
| | 04:31 | wanted to get, that kind of almost
Fleischer type of effect of the houses moving
| | 04:36 | by, which is a great effect. So, very simple.
| | 04:39 | Duplicate allows you to duplicate objects,
and Duplicate Special is really cool,
| | 04:44 | because it allows you to very
precisely control how many objects you have as
| | 04:49 | well as their placement.
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| Understanding the Hypergraph | 00:01 | Maya's Hypergraph window is probably
one of the more important windows you
| | 00:03 | need to know in Maya.
| | 00:05 | It's actually kind of similar to the Outliner
| | 00:07 | that allows you to organize your scene and
visualize the organization of your scene.
| | 00:12 | But it also goes a lot deeper.
| | 00:14 | So, let's take a look at it.
| | 00:15 | We can find it under Window, and
there are actually two options here:
| | 00:19 | Hierarchy and Connections.
| | 00:21 | Now, they both actually launch the
Hypergraph just in different modes.
| | 00:26 | So, we are going to take a look
at Hypergraph:Hierarchy mode first.
| | 00:30 | This is really just a way to
look at the hierarchy of your scene.
| | 00:33 | I am going to go ahead and
reposition this, so we can see it.
| | 00:36 | If we actually highlight this window,
you'll notice that, well, we've got a lot
| | 00:40 | of blocks in here and these
are actually our hierarchy.
| | 00:43 | Now, if we want to actually navigate this,
we navigate this just like a viewport.
| | 00:47 | So, we hold down the Alt/Option key
Right-click to zoom, Middle-click to pan.
| | 00:53 | Now, there is no orbit,
because it's a 2D window.
| | 00:55 | Now, if I zoom out a little bit,
you'll notice that I have several different
| | 00:59 | hierarchies, and these
are the ones we set up before.
| | 01:01 | So, for example, if I select Scooter, that
actually selects the whole Scooter hierarchy.
| | 01:05 | If I can zoom in here and see
there is my locater, there is my group.
| | 01:09 | Then within that group
are all of these surfaces.
| | 01:12 | Now, if I move all the way down here,
you can see this is all the Steering setup
| | 01:16 | that I had for this particular scooter.
| | 01:19 | Now, if I want I can actually use
this very similar to the Outliner
| | 01:22 | in that, I can actually reorganize my hierarchy.
| | 01:26 | It's actually almost
exactly the same as the Outliner.
| | 01:29 | All I have to do is just middle-click and drag.
| | 01:31 | So, if I middle-click over this and
drag it away from the hierarchy, you'll see
| | 01:36 | it creates its own separate hierarchy.
| | 01:38 | So, this is actually completely
outside of the Scooter hierarchy.
| | 01:42 | In fact, if I wanted to, I can
take a look at it in the Outliner.
| | 01:46 | You can see now I've got
two separate hierarchies.
| | 01:49 | In fact, if I wanted to, I could middle
click and drag this in the Outliner and
| | 01:54 | you can see how it
instantly updates in the Hypergraph.
| | 01:58 | So, again, I can just middle-click and drag
over any node and it'll go ahead and refresh.
| | 02:03 | Now, when you have a lot of objects in
the scene, you'll need to be able to zoom.
| | 02:09 | So, we have a couple of nice zoom
options here and they're pretty much labeled.
| | 02:13 | We can frame all, we can frame just the
selection, we can frame the hierarchy or
| | 02:18 | just the branch of that hierarchy.
| | 02:21 | Now, these two buttons here,
these actually determine the modes.
| | 02:24 | These are actually the same modes we
see here, Hierarchy and Connections.
| | 02:29 | So, this one puts it into
Hierarchy mode, which is where we are.
| | 02:32 | The other one puts it into what's
called Connections mode, which we'll get to.
| | 02:36 | This actually shows you
how an object is constructed.
| | 02:39 | Now, in addition to being able to
frame things, we can also create bookmarks.
| | 02:44 | So, if you have a very complex hierarchy, you
can create those spots so you can jump between.
| | 02:49 | We also can go into Options, and we
have some very nice display options, what
| | 02:55 | type of things do we want to display.
| | 02:57 | Under Show, we also have some very
similar options to what we had in the Outliner.
| | 03:02 | What type of options do we want to show?
| | 03:04 | Do we just want to show Ggeometry?
| | 03:06 | Do we just want to show NURBS
or polygonal objects, and so on?
| | 03:09 | So, we can hide and show nodes by object.
| | 03:13 | So, those are some of the
basics of Hypergraph:Hierarchy.
| | 03:17 | So, in that mode, it's actually a
really good replacement for the Outliner.
| | 03:22 | For some people, having that visual
representation makes it a little bit easier.
| | 03:27 | Now, either one, works just fine.
| | 03:29 | It's just really whatever your preference is.
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| Working with Hypergraph connections| 00:00 | The Hypergraph can also be used to
show how objects are connected together.
| | 00:06 | Let's actually build a very simple NURBS
object, and we'll go ahead and show you
| | 00:10 | how it works with the Hypergraph.
| | 00:12 | I am just going to create a circle.
| | 00:14 | Then I am going to duplicate that
circle using Ctrl+D and I am going to go
| | 00:18 | ahead and just move that up a little bit.
| | 00:21 | Then I am going to go
Shift+D to repeat that translation.
| | 00:25 | So, now I have three curves.
| | 00:27 | I am going to Shift+Select them all,
Surfaces > Loft, and let's go ahead and shade that.
| | 00:31 | So, now I have a loft and I have a
couple of circles defining that loft.
| | 00:37 | So, let's take a look at how this
structure looks in the Hypergraph.
| | 00:40 | So, I am going to go ahead and
select my lofted surface, go Window >
| | 00:45 | Hypergraph:Connections.
| | 00:47 | Now, what this does is it shows
exactly how my object is built.
| | 00:53 | So, I have a circle, another circle,
a third circle, all feeding into what's
| | 00:59 | called a loft, which creates a
loftedSurface, and then that's shaded.
| | 01:04 | Now, notice how when I select each
one of these, it actually shows up in my
| | 01:09 | Channel box and if I click on my
Attribute Editor, when I select the lofted
| | 01:14 | surface, that comes up in my Attribute Editor.
| | 01:18 | If I select the actual
loft itself, it shows that.
| | 01:21 | If I select nurbsCircle, it actually shows that.
| | 01:24 | In fact, I can go back to my
makeNurBCircle and change the initial radius of
| | 01:29 | that circle as well.
| | 01:30 | In fact, that's what that node is.
| | 01:33 | So, what I have is I have a complete
history of how this object is built.
| | 01:38 | I can just click through it and just find
whatever I want and manipulate it there.
| | 01:43 | So, this is really great way
to actually show how objects are
| | 01:48 | connected together.
| | 01:49 | Now, because I'm in the Hypergraph
window, I actually can go into another mode.
| | 01:54 | So, for example, right now I am
in Input and Output connections.
| | 01:57 | But if I go into Hierarchy mode, it will
show each individual object in the scene.
| | 02:02 | If I select nurbsCircle and go into
Connections, it will show how that is connected.
| | 02:07 | If I select my loft and go into
Connections, it will show how that loft is built.
| | 02:13 | So, each individual object
will be connected differently.
| | 02:17 | By selecting it and bringing it up in the
Hypergraph, you can how your object is constructed.
| | 02:23 | So, this is a really great way to
navigate the construction of your object and
| | 02:28 | also display how objects are put together.
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| Hiding and showing objects | 00:00 | When you work in Maya, a lot of times you'll
have a lot of different objects in the scene.
| | 00:04 | There will be times when you'll need to
hide things or show things, so that you
| | 00:09 | can isolate something and work
on it a little bit more closely.
| | 00:12 | Now, we can do this in Maya
through the Hide and Show functionality.
| | 00:18 | You can find this under Display.
| | 00:20 | There are two options here. One
is Hide, and the other one is Show.
| | 00:25 | They are complementary.
| | 00:26 | So, let's go ahead and start with Hide.
| | 00:28 | We can basically hide a selection.
| | 00:31 | So let's say I select this planet.
| | 00:33 | I can just hide it.
| | 00:35 | Now, you think it's gone away, but
actually if you look in the Outliner, you'll
| | 00:39 | see that the planet is still there.
| | 00:42 | All the houses are here, and this little
planet is here, but notice how it's grayed out.
| | 00:47 | That means that that is hidden.
| | 00:49 | If we want to show it, we can just
go Show Selection or Show Last Hidden.
| | 00:55 | So, for example, here I
would just Hide Selection.
| | 00:58 | I can do a whole bunch of stuff here,
and then I can go show the last thing I
| | 01:03 | hid, which is kind of nice.
| | 01:05 | It's a great way to make something go
away for little bit, and then bring it back.
| | 01:09 | I can, for example, select just this
house and let's say I really want to work
| | 01:13 | on this house, but there
are other things in the way.
| | 01:16 | I could just do Hide Unselected Objects,
and then that would isolate just that house.
| | 01:22 | I can do Undo just to undo
that operation very quickly.
| | 01:26 | If I wanted to, I can also hide geometry by type.
| | 01:29 | So, let's say I didn't want to see any
NURBS surfaces or polygonal surfaces,
| | 01:33 | or anything like that.
| | 01:34 | I could also hide that.
| | 01:35 | I can hide lights, cameras, and so on.
| | 01:37 | I can really just hide
anything I want in the scene by type.
| | 01:41 | Then from the Show menu, the most
important one is basically Show Selection.
| | 01:45 | So, I can select something in the
Outliner or the Hypergraph and just show that.
| | 01:49 | I could show my last hidden, or I
can show certain types of geometries.
| | 01:53 | Another thing we can do is we can show
certain types of kinematics, which is for
| | 01:58 | character animation deformers.
| | 01:59 | We could hide or show lattices and so on.
| | 02:02 | So, this is really just a very simple function.
| | 02:04 | It's just you hide it and then you show it.
| | 02:07 | If it's hidden, it shows
up in gray in the Outliner.
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| Creating layers | 00:00 | Layers help you to organize
your scene even more exactly.
| | 00:05 | What you could do is take specific
objects and organize them into layers.
| | 00:10 | Now, layers work in actually three
different types of layers in Maya.
| | 00:14 | You find it in the Channel Box.
| | 00:16 | Actually, at the bottom the
Channel Box is the layer manager.
| | 00:19 | We have Display layers, which are
for what we see in the viewports.
| | 00:24 | We have Render layers, which are
what we can actually render out.
| | 00:29 | When we get into rendering,
we can talk a little bit about that.
| | 00:32 | Then we have Animation layers, which
allow you to create layers of animation.
| | 00:38 | So, I could actually create a walk
and then on top of the walk do some
| | 00:41 | animation and have those all layered.
| | 00:44 | We're going to focus just
on Display layers right now.
| | 00:48 | Now, we've worked a little bit with layers.
| | 00:50 | We've been able to turn on and off
existing layers, but let me show you how to
| | 00:54 | actually create layers.
| | 00:56 | So, for example, let's say I wanted to
create a layer for the planet itself.
| | 01:01 | All I have to do is select my object or the
objects that I want to put into the layer.
| | 01:06 | Then in the Layers menu, all I have
to do is left-click on this and we can
| | 01:11 | either create an empty layer or a
layer from the selected objects.
| | 01:16 | So, once I do that, it creates this layer.
| | 01:18 | Now, if I want to name this layer, I can
double-click on it and give it a name.
| | 01:23 | Now you can't have the same name as an object.
| | 01:25 | So I have this object called Planet
in the scene, so I'm actually going to
| | 01:28 | call this Planet_layer.
| | 01:30 | So now I have that.
| | 01:31 | Now, in this layer menu, we
actually have a couple of options here.
| | 01:35 | We have a visibility option, which
we've played with, which we can just toggle
| | 01:39 | on and off, so we don't have to see
the planet, or if we want, we have
| | 01:44 | another option here.
| | 01:45 | This turns it into Template mode so
you can see it, but it's not rendered.
| | 01:51 | In other words, it's kind of templated.
| | 01:53 | It would be the same as right-
clicking over something and going Actions >
| | 01:57 | Template, or in addition to
template it, we can create what's called a
| | 02:01 | reference, which is R, which allows you to
see it but not select it. This is great!
| | 02:07 | This is what I use for image planes,
like for example when I was modeling
| | 02:10 | that scooter, I could have those planes
behind the scooter, but not have them selected.
| | 02:14 | So, for example, here if I had this
just open, and I was working on something,
| | 02:18 | I could very easily select this accidentally.
| | 02:21 | We can also create multiple layers.
| | 02:23 | So let's go ahead and turn this layer off.
| | 02:26 | I'm just going to select
everything else that's in the scene.
| | 02:29 | Then we can just do Create Layer from
Selected, and we're going to make another
| | 02:33 | layer called Houses. Save.
| | 02:37 | So, now I have two layers.
| | 02:38 | I have the planet and the
houses that live on the planet.
| | 02:42 | Now if I want, I can, again, do
those same things for the House layer.
| | 02:46 | I can reference it.
| | 02:48 | I can make it a template, or I
can make it just totally available.
| | 02:52 | I also can turn on and off visibility.
| | 02:54 | Now, there is also another thing we
can do is we can reorganize layers.
| | 02:58 | So, we actually have a little stack
controls here, which allow us to move
| | 03:01 | things up and down.
| | 03:03 | Then you can also right-click over a layer,
and we can do some other options here.
| | 03:07 | We can select the objects in that layer.
| | 03:10 | We can set all layers invisible,
template, reference, and so on.
| | 03:14 | You could also set a layer to be a bounding box.
| | 03:17 | So, for example, if you just want to
see bounding boxes or whatever, Set All
| | 03:21 | layers > Visible, and go Full
Detail rather than Bounding Box.
| | 03:26 | So you can set selected layers, for
example, to Shaded, Unshaded, Textured,
| | 03:31 | Untextured, and so on.
| | 03:32 | So there are a number of things you can do
with each individual layer, or with all layers.
| | 03:37 | So let's say at the selected layer I
just wanted to do Bounding Box, so I know
| | 03:41 | that the planet is there but I
don't really need to see it, and so on.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to undo that.
| | 03:46 | Then we have two additional buttons
here which just mimic this right-click
| | 03:50 | here, and that's Create a new layer and
Create a new layer and assign selected objects.
| | 03:56 | So, those are some of the basics about
how to create and organize layers within Maya.
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| Working with selection masks| 00:00 | Selection masks are a way to
restrict what you select within a scene.
| | 00:06 | Now we've used them a little bit, but let's
go through them a little bit more completely.
| | 00:10 | Now in a complex scene like this, I
might want to select certain types of
| | 00:14 | objects and not select others.
| | 00:17 | I can restrict this by using
these selection masks right here.
| | 00:22 | So we have two types of Selection Masks.
| | 00:24 | One is per object, so, for example, if
I turn all objects off, I won't be able
| | 00:30 | to select anything in the scene.
| | 00:32 | But let's say I turn on only NURBs surfaces.
| | 00:37 | So if I right-click over this, that
will allow me to select NURBs, Poly
| | 00:41 | Surfaces or whatever.
| | 00:42 | So let's go ahead and just select only
NURB Surfaces, so I still can't select this,
| | 00:47 | but I can select parts of the
scooter, which was built-in NURBs.
| | 00:52 | Let's say I only have Poly Surfaces.
| | 00:54 | That means I can select everything, but
the scooter, which most of the rest of
| | 00:59 | the stuff in the scene is polys.
| | 01:01 | Or I can select all off, and let's
say I wanted to select handle objects.
| | 01:07 | Now we really haven't gotten into
handles too much, but let's say we are
| | 01:10 | animating this character and we
actually have some handles here.
| | 01:14 | So, for example, here I have handles at
the wrist of the character to move the arm.
| | 01:19 | We can also turn on what are called
miscellaneous objects right here and under
| | 01:23 | there we have such as IK
Effectors, Locators, and Dimensions.
| | 01:27 | So let's go ahead and just turn all of
those on and then I won't be able to
| | 01:29 | select anything but that little
steering control that I have for the scooter.
| | 01:35 | So as you can see, we can basically
refine or restrict what we select, which
| | 01:40 | makes it a little bit easier to work in a scene.
| | 01:43 | So a lot of times in a scene I will
go ahead and make little handles out of
| | 01:47 | locators, or another great way to
make handles is out of curve objects.
| | 01:52 | That way I'm not selecting geometry.
| | 01:54 | I'm just selecting those handles.
| | 01:55 | So I don't have to dig through the
scene to find one thing to select.
| | 01:59 | So then we go ahead and
turn All objects on here.
| | 02:02 | Now I am actually going to go into
Component mode, and when I go into Component
| | 02:06 | mode that allows me to restrict by component.
| | 02:10 | So here I have object level selection,
here I have component level selection.
| | 02:15 | So, for example, if I was modeling this
NURBs surface, I would be able to select
| | 02:21 | control vertices, or I could turn them off.
| | 02:24 | Let's go ahead and turn all components off.
| | 02:26 | So that means I can't select anything,
and then I can maybe select hulls.
| | 02:30 | I can turn those on and off, and I can do
the same for something like polygonal objects.
| | 02:36 | So I could turn vertices
and faces on and off as well.
| | 02:39 | That's just another way to refine
exactly what you select, which may make your
| | 02:44 | modeling tasks a little bit easier.
| | 02:47 | So just be aware that these tools are
all here and these actually can be very,
| | 02:52 | very handy when you model
or work in a complex scene.
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|
|
7. Creating MaterialsOverview of renderers | 00:00 | Once you have an object modeled, it
comes time to start adding color and surface
| | 00:06 | quality to that model.
| | 00:07 | These are called materials, and they're
really kind of like painting your model.
| | 00:11 | So, for example, if we modeled
something in Maya it would be like sculpting
| | 00:15 | it in clay, but we would then paint it in
order to give it more of a realistic look.
| | 00:21 | So in Maya we use materials along with
textures to give the surface its look.
| | 00:27 | So let's first of all talk about
materials, and those really are just the way
| | 00:31 | that a surface shades.
| | 00:33 | So here I have five spheres and each
of them has a different shading model.
| | 00:39 | Now before we get into any of this, let me
talk a little bit about Maya and rendering.
| | 00:46 | We are going to get deeper into
rendering a little bit later, but let's just
| | 00:48 | give you a quick brief
overview of how to render.
| | 00:51 | So first thing you want to know is that
we have a Rendering menu set, and under
| | 00:55 | that we have a lot of options here.
| | 00:58 | One is called Render > Render Current Frames.
| | 01:00 | So if I do that, that will just
ahead and render the frame that I have.
| | 01:04 | Now if you notice in this, we actually
have a number of different renderers.
| | 01:09 | So the default render is
called the Maya Software Renderer.
| | 01:12 | We also have what's
called the mental ray renderer.
| | 01:15 | These are the two most popular renderers.
| | 01:17 | Then there is also what's called a
Hardware and a Vector Renderer, and these are
| | 01:22 | a little bit more custom.
| | 01:23 | They're more for particle effects
or other types of special effects.
| | 01:26 | So in Maya Software Renderer we can
just hit this button, and it will render.
| | 01:31 | We can also switchover to mental
ray, and it will render as well.
| | 01:35 | Now notice a little bit of a
difference here, because by default, mental ray
| | 01:38 | actually turns on ray tracing, which
is what is giving us these reflections.
| | 01:43 | Now another way to adjust the renderer
is to go into the Render Settings window,
| | 01:48 | which is under here, Rendering Editors >
Render Settings, and that brings up the
| | 01:53 | settings and actually this
is where I usually render from.
| | 01:55 | So if I click here, this will render
the current frame and this here will
| | 02:00 | bring up Render Settings.
| | 02:01 | Now let's take a look at this Render
Settings window, and most important one
| | 02:05 | is to decide which renderer to use, the Maya
Software Renderer or the mental ray renderer.
| | 02:10 | Each one has its advantages.
| | 02:12 | Typically, once you get into
professional production, you'll probably be using
| | 02:16 | mental ray most of the time, but the
Maya Software Renderer has some advantages
| | 02:20 | and one is that it's a little bit faster.
| | 02:23 | It's actually in some ways a little bit
easier to control, but it's not nearly
| | 02:27 | as robust as mental ray.
| | 02:28 | Now this window has different tabs
depending upon what type of render you have.
| | 02:33 | So the Common tab basically just
determines how big the image is, image size, as
| | 02:38 | well as some other stuff such as what
image format you want to render in and
| | 02:43 | whether or not you are actually going
to be saving to a file, but we'll get to
| | 02:46 | that as we actually get into rendering.
| | 02:48 | So when we turn on mental ray, you will
notice a number of different tabs show up.
| | 02:51 | One is for render passes, one is turn
on different types of rendering features.
| | 02:56 | The next one is for Quality.
| | 02:58 | How much quality you want?
| | 03:00 | Then some other indirectlighting.
| | 03:02 | This is for more realistic
lighting and other additional options.
| | 03:06 | We are not going to get
too deep into this right now.
| | 03:08 | I think right now the most important
thing is that you know that there are two
| | 03:11 | different renderers, and we need to
switch between them from time to time.
| | 03:15 | Now typically I am going to be using
the Maya Software Renderer, but there will
| | 03:18 | be times where I will be doing mental
ray specific stuff and then we'll have to
| | 03:22 | change our renderer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understand the basics of materials | 00:00 | Now as you start to add color and
texture to surfaces, you're first going to
| | 00:05 | want to determine what type of
material you want to apply to that surface.
| | 00:11 | Now Maya has a whole bunch of
different types of materials.
| | 00:15 | But the main materials fall
into five different types.
| | 00:19 | So let me show you these.
| | 00:20 | Here I have five spheres, and
each of them has a material applied.
| | 00:26 | Now I can assign materials by going into
the Rendering menu, selecting an object
| | 00:32 | here, and going Assign New Material.
| | 00:35 | Now when I do this, what comes up is a
menu, and you'll notice here I have a lot
| | 00:40 | more than five basic materials.
| | 00:43 | I have Anisotropic, Blinn, Hair.
| | 00:46 | You know, which one do I use?
| | 00:47 | And if you go down here, you'll notice
you have a lot of ones here that start
| | 00:51 | with M. And anything that starts with mi
is a mental ray shader and can only be
| | 00:55 | rendered in mental ray.
| | 00:57 | So you should be aware of that if
you're using the Maya Software Renderer.
| | 01:00 | But the basic ones are
conveniently held in two places.
| | 01:04 | If you're using the default interface
of Maya under the Rendering shelf, you'll
| | 01:08 | find a bunch of ones here.
| | 01:10 | You'll find one called Anisotropic,
Blinn, Lambert, Phong, and Phong E.
| | 01:16 | You'll also find them here under
Assign Favorite Material.
| | 01:20 | And again, Blinn, Lambert, Phong, and Phong E,
but this particular menu can also be modified.
| | 01:26 | So I like to use the ones
that are on the default shelf.
| | 01:29 | So let's go-ahead and render these.
| | 01:31 | And I'll go through each one of these shaders.
| | 01:35 | So I'm just going to go
ahead and have them selected.
| | 01:37 | and just do a Render Current Frame.
| | 01:40 | And if you notice here, the big
difference between all of these is the way
| | 01:44 | that it reflects light.
| | 01:46 | So the Anisotropic shader has kind
of an off-center or a non-symmetrical
| | 01:52 | highlight, and this is
supposed to stimulate metals.
| | 01:54 | So a lot of times if you look at
brush metal, the highlights of brush metal
| | 01:58 | aren't necessarily symmetrical.
| | 02:00 | The next one is called Blinn and
what Blinn does, it gives a very kind of
| | 02:05 | generalized type of highlight.
| | 02:07 | That's probably the shader that I use the most.
| | 02:09 | The next one is called Lambert, and
what a Lambert shader has is no reflection
| | 02:14 | at all, or no specular highlights.
| | 02:17 | So this is something like, for example,
if you wanted to create rubber or cloth
| | 02:21 | or something that's not
reflective, you may start with a Lambert.
| | 02:25 | The next one has a very strong kind of
light, and that's called the Phong and
| | 02:29 | that's actually more akin to like
plasticky type of surfaces, and the one next
| | 02:34 | to it is called Phong E, which is actually
related, but it's more for glass type surfaces.
| | 02:39 | Now as you work with each one of these
materials, you'll decide which material
| | 02:45 | you want, depending upon
what type of surface you want.
| | 02:48 | So the material itself is really just
how light interacts with the surface.
| | 02:53 | It's not anything to do with the
color or the texture of the surface.
| | 02:57 | So, for example, I could have a rubber
ball, but the color of the ball could be
| | 03:02 | blue or green or could be checkerboard.
| | 03:04 | That doesn't really matter, but just
looking at that I would know that it's made
| | 03:08 | of rubber just because of the way
light interacts, and the same with, for
| | 03:12 | example, something like plastic.
| | 03:13 | If I had a plastic object, it can be
any color or any texture, but I would kind
| | 03:18 | of know it was plastic, just
by the way it reflects light.
| | 03:22 | So let's go ahead and select one of these.
| | 03:24 | I am going to select this second one here, and
that actually has what's called a Blinn shader.
| | 03:28 | If I select this and go into the
Attribute Editor, you'll notice that there is
| | 03:32 | a node here and usually is the last node is
the actual material that's applied to this object.
| | 03:40 | Now each material has its own separate controls.
| | 03:43 | So if I go through this shader for the
Blinn, the first one is actually what
| | 03:48 | type of the shader is it?
| | 03:50 | So I could actually
change the type of shader here.
| | 03:52 | So, for example, if I wanted to make it
into a Lambert, I could and again it
| | 03:56 | would be more like that rubber ball.
| | 03:58 | So we can change any number of these attributes.
| | 04:00 | We can change the color of it, so
I could make it green, or red, or
| | 04:04 | whatever color I want.
| | 04:06 | I can change the Transparency,
Ambient Color, which is kind of how much it glows.
| | 04:11 | Incandescence is
very similar, but not quite.
| | 04:15 | I can also add stuff like Bump
Mapping, Translucence that sort of stuff.
| | 04:19 | And now we come down to
what's called Specular Shading.
| | 04:21 | Specular is really important, because
that's really defines that highlight, and
| | 04:25 | we really determine what a
surface looks like by those highlights.
| | 04:29 | For example, if this was more of a
mottled surface, let's say instead of smooth
| | 04:34 | highlight, we had kind of a mottled
one, like we would if we looked at an
| | 04:37 | orange or a piece of fruit, would
have something a little bit more mottled,
| | 04:41 | and really those highlights are what
tell the eye the quality of the surface.
| | 04:46 | So we can change the
eccentricity of that highlight.
| | 04:50 | We can change how it rolls off.
| | 04:52 | We can change the color or the brightness,
and we can also change stuff like reflectivity.
| | 04:57 | So if I turn on Raytracing, then
this can also be a reflective surface.
| | 05:02 | Now there are a number of other
ones such as options for Raytracing.
| | 05:06 | If this was refractive or reflective,
more like glass, that sort of thing.
| | 05:11 | Now each material has its
own separate attributes.
| | 05:15 | So, for example, if I select this blue
sphere that has a Phong shader, notice
| | 05:20 | that Color, Transparency, Ambient is
all the same, but when I get down to the
| | 05:24 | Specular Shading, these
parameters are different.
| | 05:27 | So it has something called Cosine Power to
determine the size and character of that highlight.
| | 05:33 | We also have Specular Color and
Reflectivity, but this is a little bit different.
| | 05:38 | Now if I select the Anisotropic one,
which is this first one, we can change the
| | 05:43 | angle of that highlight.
| | 05:45 | We can also change the spread in X
and Y and just kind of change the
| | 05:49 | character of that highlight.
| | 05:52 | So I am not going to go deep into
everything here, but really what I want to
| | 05:55 | take away from this is that materials are
really what determine the character of the surface.
| | 06:01 | They are kind of like the foundation.
| | 06:03 | So on top of the material, you're
going to layer in your color, your texture,
| | 06:08 | bump mapping and so on, but it
really all starts with the materials.
| | 06:12 | So choose your material type wisely.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and applying maps | 00:00 | As you start adding materials to
objects, you're also going to want to start
| | 00:03 | adding color and texture to those objects.
| | 00:08 | So let's go ahead and play a little bit with
texture and show you how to work with that.
| | 00:12 | I am going to go ahead and create just
a very simple object in NURBS > Sphere,
| | 00:16 | and let's go ahead and shade that.
| | 00:18 | I am going to hit 3 to make
sure that that is rendered fully.
| | 00:22 | And I am also going to make sure I am
in High Quality rendering mode here.
| | 00:24 | So make sure my Render is set to High Quality.
| | 00:27 | So let's go ahead and first of all
add a material and then we are going to
| | 00:31 | start playing with textures.
| | 00:32 | So I can add a material here either by
going Rendering, Lighting/Shading > Assign
| | 00:37 | New Material, and I like just going
into the shelf and I am just going to go
| | 00:40 | ahead and apply a Blinn material to this.
| | 00:43 | Now once I do that, the Attribute Editor
for that Blinn material should come up,
| | 00:48 | and I can certainly add in some color.
| | 00:51 | I can just pick a color here or, if I
wanted to, I can actually go a little bit
| | 00:55 | more complex and add a texture.
| | 00:59 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:01 | If you notice here to the right
of the Color attribute, there is a
| | 01:04 | little checkerboard.
| | 01:05 | In fact, you have a lot of little
checkerboards here and each one of those can
| | 01:09 | contain what's called a texture.
| | 01:12 | So if I click on that, what it does
is it brings up what's called a Render
| | 01:16 | Node, and those contain all the different
types of textures that we can apply to an object.
| | 01:20 | In fact, if you notice here we can
highlight it by 2D, 3D, Environmental
| | 01:25 | Textures, other types of textures, and so on.
| | 01:27 | Now each one has its own
different characteristics.
| | 01:31 | 2D textures basically work like bitmaps.
| | 01:35 | And so you can have things like
Bulge, Checker, Cloth, image files.
| | 01:39 | So, for example, if I wanted to bring in an
actual picture, I'll bring that in as 2D texture.
| | 01:44 | Fractals, which are noises,
Grid, so on and so forth.
| | 01:48 | Movie file, so if you actually
wanted to have a sequence of the images,
| | 01:51 | let's say you wanted to project
something on a movie screen and actually
| | 01:54 | have that actually move.
You can do that as well.
| | 01:58 | We also have what are called 3D
textures, which work in 3 dimensions.
| | 02:01 | These are things like Rock, Wood.
| | 02:04 | So, for example, the texture of the
wood actually goes through the wood.
| | 02:06 | That's the kind of things
that we want with 3D textures.
| | 02:09 | I am going to actually select a 2D texture, and
let's just go ahead and use a very simple one.
| | 02:14 | Let's just use this one called Cloth.
| | 02:16 | Then you can see the texture sample
here once I select it, but you're not
| | 02:20 | seeing it in the window.
| | 02:21 | We can turn that on by either
hitting the 6 key or Hardware Texturing.
| | 02:25 | Now you can see that, well, I have got
this texture now mapped to my spheres,
| | 02:30 | so it is not just plain color.
| | 02:31 | Now each texture object
here has its own parameters.
| | 02:35 | So, for example, I have one called Gap Color.
| | 02:37 | I have what's called U Color, which is
these weaves here, and I have my V Color,
| | 02:42 | and I can certainly change them if I want.
| | 02:44 | So I can make it a different type
of cloth, do something like that.
| | 02:48 | I can change the width.
| | 02:49 | Really these are all what
are called parametric textures.
| | 02:52 | They are a little bit different than a bitmap.
| | 02:53 | In that I have values that I can dial in.
| | 02:57 | Now this texture is actually
applied through the material.
| | 03:01 | So now that we have kind of dialed in
our texture, we need to see how it works
| | 03:05 | within the actual material itself.
| | 03:07 | Now if you remember, I applied a Blinn
shader to this, and then I applied this
| | 03:12 | Cloth texture within the Blinn.
| | 03:14 | But if I want to jump up to that
Blinn shader, you'll see that there is
| | 03:18 | really no tab here for it.
| | 03:20 | Well, in order to get there, we
have to use these input and output
| | 03:23 | connection arrows here.
| | 03:25 | So the one I want to check here is the
output connection, so this is actually
| | 03:29 | going to the Blinn itself.
| | 03:31 | Going up one level brings you to
the Blinn, and if I want, I can go back
| | 03:35 | down, here is my color for my material,
and I can just go back down and go
| | 03:40 | into that Texture Sample.
| | 03:42 | If I want to come back up, I go to that Blinn.
| | 03:45 | So if I want I can also add
textures into other slots.
| | 03:49 | Now Color is one of the ones that we would
normally do, but there are also other ones,
| | 03:54 | such as Transparency, Ambient Color and so on.
| | 03:57 | So, for example, if I wanted to go into
Transparency here, I can actually change
| | 04:02 | it to something else.
| | 04:03 | So let's say, for example, Checker.
| | 04:04 | So if I take a Checker, you can see
that when the color is dark, it's opaque.
| | 04:09 | When it's light, it's transparent.
| | 04:12 | So now I have Cloth plus a
checkerboard transparency, and when I go to render that,
| | 04:19 | you can see that that
shows up very clearly in the render.
| | 04:22 | And again with this, I need to go to
my output connection to go up here.
| | 04:26 | And you can see I have my Blinn,
and now I have a Cloth and a Checker.
| | 04:30 | So each one of these you can add in
for any sort of parameter, so you can
| | 04:34 | actually change that for Specular Color,
Bump Mapping is a really important one
| | 04:39 | and we will get to that a little bit
later, Ambient Color and so on. So each one
| | 04:43 | of these attributes can
also have a texture map on it.
| | 04:46 | Now, I am going to blow your mind
just a little bit more, because we can
| | 04:49 | actually go into one of these.
| | 04:50 | Let's go into Cloth.
| | 04:51 | You can see that the actual colors
themselves also have little texture map buttons.
| | 04:57 | So, for example, the U color of this
texture sample can also be another color.
| | 05:02 | So you can really go very deep into the
rabbit hole with all of this, but just
| | 05:06 | understand that in addition to color
you can add texture to just about any
| | 05:10 | attribute in the material.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using bitmaps as texture | 00:00 | Many times you'll need to use your
own images in Maya and that involves
| | 00:05 | loading a bitmap image.
| | 00:07 | So we can do that very easily.
| | 00:09 | Let's just go ahead and
create a simple plain. Shade it.
| | 00:13 | And I am going to go ahead
and turn off the grid here.
| | 00:15 | So first thing we have to
do is assign a material.
| | 00:17 | I am going to show you that trick here.
| | 00:18 | If we right-click over this to pull
up our Marking menu, if you go down to
| | 00:22 | the bottom here, we can actually assign a
new material or assign a favorite material.
| | 00:26 | So let's go ahead and assign a Lambert to this.
| | 00:30 | And that brings up my Attribute Editor.
| | 00:32 | Now for this, let's just go ahead and
put a bitmap into the Color channel.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and click on
this little Texture icon here and it's
| | 00:41 | going to bring up my Create Render Node.
| | 00:44 | Now I just want to scroll down, make sure 2D
Textures is highlighted, and just select File.
| | 00:49 | Now nothing comes up.
| | 00:51 | Well, that's because I need to do a
second step here and that's load the image.
| | 00:55 | So I just hit my little folder option
here, and I have a very nice picture of a
| | 00:59 | donut here, and we can just go ahead and
open that up, and if I hit the number 6
| | 01:04 | to do hardware texturing, it should show up.
| | 01:07 | Go ahead and scale that so it's
the right length, and there we go.
| | 01:11 | Now if I want, I can go ahead
and adjust the bitmap itself.
| | 01:15 | So if I select my Lambert, go into the
Color channel, and then just go ahead and
| | 01:19 | hit my connection here,
| | 01:20 | I can scroll down and you'll see that
actually I have some additional options.
| | 01:25 | If you're using high dynamic range
images, you can change the float value here.
| | 01:30 | But the one I actually like is Color Balance.
| | 01:32 | So you can actually change your default color.
| | 01:35 | So if you want you can tint this,
with any sort of color you want.
| | 01:40 | I am not going to do that,
so let's go ahead there.
| | 01:42 | Or we can change what's called Color Gain,
which is basically the top end of your color.
| | 01:46 | So you can actually change how bright this is.
| | 01:49 | We can also change Color Offset,
which is kind of the lower value.
| | 01:52 | So that kind of brings the black levels up.
| | 01:54 | That kind of makes it a little bit
brighter, or maybe a little too bright in
| | 01:57 | this particular case.
| | 01:58 | And then we can also do
Alpha Gain, Alpha Offset.
| | 02:01 | We also have a number of different effects.
| | 02:03 | One of them is called Filter, and this
actually determines how Maya filters the
| | 02:08 | bitmap so it doesn't get jaggies, that
sort of thing, and here is a place where
| | 02:12 | you can actually invert a bitmap.
| | 02:14 | So if you right-click
over that, you can do that.
| | 02:16 | And then we also have UV coordinates,
and that's really how this image maps to
| | 02:22 | the object that it's on.
| | 02:24 | When you work with bitmaps, you're
actually working with files outside of
| | 02:28 | your actual Maya file.
| | 02:29 | For example, if I were to save this,
the actual image of that donut would still
| | 02:34 | be in that JPEG file that I loaded.
| | 02:36 | So this can make it hard sometimes to
manage projects, because you may bring the
| | 02:40 | Maya binary over, but the
bitmaps may not come along.
| | 02:44 | So this is a really good time to use
projects, because if you store your
| | 02:49 | images in the source images directory
of the project, then all you have to do
| | 02:53 | is move the entire project and everything
will link up when you get it to your new computer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Hypershade window | 00:00 | Now as you start creating more and more
complex materials in Maya, you are going
| | 00:04 | to need to manage those.
| | 00:06 | Now we can certainly manage textures
by clicking on them and going into the
| | 00:10 | Attribute Editor and managing them
one at a time on a per-object basis, but
| | 00:15 | probably the best way to do it
is by using the Hypershade window.
| | 00:19 | So I'm going to ahead and close this
down and let's go ahead and bring up
| | 00:23 | the Hypershade window.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to go into
Rendering Editors' Hypershade.
| | 00:28 | Now Hypershade is similar to the
Hypergraph, but it is a different window.
| | 00:32 | So here's where we find it, and there it is.
| | 00:34 | Now the Hypershade window has a
number of different panels that we can use.
| | 00:39 | Along the top there are a number of
menus, most of which duplicate the
| | 00:43 | functionality of the graphic options
here in these panels, and then we also have
| | 00:48 | a little bit of a Graphic panel here.
| | 00:51 | Now probably the first thing you'll
notice is this big Create menu here,
| | 00:55 | and this allows you to create new materials,
very similar to the floating Create menu.
| | 01:01 | So, for example, if I right-clicked
over this and did Assign New Material,
| | 01:05 | it would bring up an Assign New Material
and allow me to create a material, and
| | 01:09 | I can do that same thing here in Maya and
just create the material and then apply it.
| | 01:15 | Now up until this point what we have
been doing is we have been creating the
| | 01:19 | materials on a per-object basis.
| | 01:21 | But typically in Maya what you want to
do is you want to create the materials in
| | 01:25 | the Hypershade window and then apply
them, because what you can do is you can
| | 01:29 | create standard materials.
| | 01:31 | So, for example, here I have a wood
texture and I can apply it to this picture
| | 01:35 | frame, but I can also apply it to
any other object that is made of wood.
| | 01:41 | Now here we actually have all of our
materials in the scene, so we have a number
| | 01:46 | of tabs here. The first one is called
the Materials tab and this shows you
| | 01:50 | everything that's in the scene.
| | 01:52 | So, for example, I have this Wood texture.
| | 01:54 | If I double-click on it, you would
actually bring up the Attribute Editor for
| | 01:58 | that material and I can edit it.
| | 02:00 | So, for example, I could go into the Color here.
| | 02:03 | I can change the color
of that texture and so on.
| | 02:05 | Now if I want to go into the Photo,
which is that photo in the picture frame,
| | 02:09 | I could double-click on that, go in
here, change the photo, and so on.
| | 02:14 | I am going to go ahead and close this down
so we can actually see a little bit better here.
| | 02:17 | Now what you can do in Maya is
actually apply these materials to really any
| | 02:23 | object in the scene.
| | 02:25 | So, for example, let's just go
ahead and create a simple cube.
| | 02:28 | Right now, that has no texture on it,
but I can right-click over one of the
| | 02:35 | Materials in my Hypershade and
do Assign Material To Selection.
| | 02:41 | So when I do that it assigns
that Wood texture to my box.
| | 02:46 | This one texture is affecting both
objects, so if I were to double-click on
| | 02:52 | this and change the color, you can see how it
changes on both the picture frame and the cube.
| | 02:59 | So this makes it easy to make a library of
standard materials that you can use within scenes.
| | 03:04 | Now there are additional tabs in
the Hypershade. Probably the next most
| | 03:09 | important one is for the textures themselves.
| | 03:11 | So, for example, we have all of these
different textures creating the surfaces
| | 03:15 | in our scene, and I can actually go
just directly to the textures, and
| | 03:19 | double-click on those and manipulate those.
| | 03:21 | And also like with materials where I
can have one material affecting many
| | 03:25 | objects, I can also do the same with textures.
| | 03:28 | I can have, for example, one picture
of a donut, but I can use it several
| | 03:31 | different ways in several different materials.
| | 03:34 | Now there are some additional tabs
here, most of which we will be using too much,
| | 03:38 | but one is for Utilities, one is for
the Lights in the scene, Cameras in the scene.
| | 03:42 | So, for example, I could double-click
and get into my Camera Attributes, that
| | 03:47 | sort of thing, shading
groups so on and so forth.
| | 03:50 | Now along the bottom here we have
what's called a Work Area. Now this is very
| | 03:54 | similar to Connection view in
Hypergraph, and what I can do is view the
| | 03:58 | connections that make the material.
| | 04:00 | So if I go to Materials and then right
-click over the Photo material, I can
| | 04:04 | graph that network and this shows me
exactly how this particular material is comprised.
| | 04:10 | So I have a Photo node and I can
actually double-click on this and get to that
| | 04:14 | node, which is receiving its color
information, in fact, if I hover over that
| | 04:19 | little line there, it will tell me
File1.outColor > Photo.color, so this is
| | 04:24 | actually determining the color channel.
| | 04:26 | And if I double-click on that I can see
my file and I can also see how the file
| | 04:30 | is mapped to that image, and we
can do the same for my Wood texture.
| | 04:34 | So I can right-click over this
graph network and see how that
| | 04:39 | material is created.
| | 04:41 | This is a really great way to see
how your materials are constructed.
| | 04:44 | And this really works well when you start
getting things that are actually very complex.
| | 04:48 | so you have you know Bump Maps and
Transparencies and in a lot of different
| | 04:52 | things feeding into other things.
| | 04:53 | You can actually look at them here,
but you can also author them here, so you
| | 04:57 | can actually disconnect and reconnect
all of your nodes within this Work Area.
| | 05:03 | So those are some of the basics of the
Hypershade window and I'd suggest that
| | 05:07 | you start using it to manage
your materials as you work in Maya.
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| Working with mental ray materials| 00:00 | Mental ray is probably the most popular
renderer within Maya, and that's because
| | 00:04 | it has a lot more features
than the Maya Software Renderer.
| | 00:08 | Now mental ray has its own
suite of materials that you can use.
| | 00:13 | They don't work in the Maya Software Renderer.
| | 00:16 | So let's take a look at some of these.
| | 00:18 | Let's give ourselves a surface to work with.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to go ahead and just create
a simple sphere and shade that and turn
| | 00:25 | off my grid here, and let's go
ahead and assign a new material.
| | 00:29 | Now when I assign a new material,
you'll notice that we have Maya specific
| | 00:34 | materials and we also have a
mental ray specific materials.
| | 00:38 | So these ones work with the Maya
Software Renderer. A lot of these actually will
| | 00:43 | work with mental ray, such
Anistrophic, Blinn, Phong and so on.
| | 00:47 | The mental ray ones will only work with
mental ray, so let's take a look at some of these.
| | 00:53 | Probably one of my favorites is what's
called the dgs_material. Now what this
| | 00:57 | does is it actually
creates a very shiny surface.
| | 01:00 | You can actually create almost like a
glass-like effect. Go ahead and give
| | 01:04 | this some color here.
| | 01:05 | Let's go ahead and dig a quick
render of this, and when I do you'll
| | 01:08 | notice nothing shows up.
| | 01:10 | That's because I've set my
renderer to this Maya Software Renderer.
| | 01:13 | This will only work if I use mental
ray so either I can change it here in the
| | 01:18 | Renderer View menu, or go to my Render
Settings menu and make sure that I have
| | 01:23 | Render using mental ray.
| | 01:24 | And once I do, you can hit Render and
you can see how this shows up,and you
| | 01:28 | can see I have a very specific
highlight or specularity on this.
| | 01:33 | And this actually is really good for
stuff like glass, that sort of thing,
| | 01:36 | because when you go to this dgs_
material you have a very nice index of
| | 01:41 | refraction and transparency that
can give you highly realistic effects.
| | 01:45 | I am going to go ahead and keep this
selected, and let's go to Assign New
| | 01:49 | Material and go down to some other ones.
| | 01:51 | Another really nice one is called
Metallic Paint. Now what this does is gives
| | 01:55 | you a very almost like metal type of paint.
| | 01:58 | So, for example, if I were to do kind
of like a gold type of color, you could
| | 02:02 | actually have a Base Color
and what's called a Lit Color.
| | 02:06 | So that's almost like two different
colors on this surface itself, so this can
| | 02:10 | give you a very nice result here and
kind of looks very kind of metallically.
| | 02:14 | Almost like a gold spray paint type of material.
| | 02:18 | Maya actually does have its own
Blinn and Lambert and Phong materials.
| | 02:23 | It also has some additional ones.
| | 02:25 | One here is called cooktor, which
actually is kind of a nice surface similar to
| | 02:30 | a Phong, but it actually gives you
a different index of refractions, which is
| | 02:34 | really nice for simulating glass.
| | 02:37 | You could actually simulate different
index of refractions for different colors,
| | 02:42 | which is kind of nice.
| | 02:43 | Another really handy one is the Skin
surface, so if I go into fast_skin.
| | 02:50 | Now what this does is it
actually asks me for light maps.
| | 02:53 | I'm just going to go ahead and just do
Create New, and that will automatically
| | 02:56 | give it to me, and I just select this
object again and you go into fast_skin.
| | 03:02 | Now the reason it asks for a light
map is because what this does is it does
| | 03:05 | what's called sub-surface scattering.
So it actually calculates how much light
| | 03:10 | penetrates into the surface of the object.
| | 03:13 | So if I do a quick render of this you
can see how it gives me a very nice skin
| | 03:17 | texture, because this is great for if
you're animating characters and you need
| | 03:22 | some skin that looks highly
realistic, you can use this.
| | 03:25 | This is also actually pretty good for
stuff like marble, which has kind of that
| | 03:28 | semi-luminescent material.
| | 03:31 | An actual real-world application is
the Car Paint material, but we're going to
| | 03:36 | ahead and open a scene here.
| | 03:37 | We're going to actually open a scene
called Scooter_15, and this is our scooter.
| | 03:41 | So let's go ahead and start
adding some materials to it.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to go ahead and add one to
this engine compartment here underneath the seat,
| | 03:50 | so let's go ahead and select this
and go into Lighting/Shading and go
| | 03:55 | Assign New Material.
| | 03:57 | In this case I'm going to make sure
I have mental ray selected and we're
| | 04:00 | actually going to do mi_car_paint_phen,
which actually stands for phenomena.
| | 04:06 | And this actually gives you a very nice
sparkle metal flake paint job, so let's
| | 04:10 | go ahead and just do a quick render
and see what this looks like, and you can
| | 04:13 | see it gives a very nice reflective
car paint phenomena and you can see the
| | 04:18 | flakes in here and you'll notice that
the flakes are actually a little big, so
| | 04:22 | what we can do is we can start
playing with the parameters here.
| | 04:24 | We can change the color.
| | 04:26 | Let's say I don't want it quiet so red.
| | 04:28 | Let's say I kind of want it more of a darker red.
| | 04:31 | We can also change what's called the Lit
Color, which is kind of almost like the
| | 04:34 | over spray, the over painting of it.
| | 04:36 | So when you actually do really good
car paint job, you paint a base coat and
| | 04:40 | then you paint kind of a semi-
transparent coat over that and that's what this is,
| | 04:45 | so we can actually make that maybe
even a little bit more orange-y, maybe even
| | 04:50 | a little bit more saturated if we want.
| | 04:52 | We can also create Bias so that one
is more predominate over the other.
| | 04:57 | We can also create what are called flakes.
| | 04:59 | So if I wanted to, I can make my
flakes a little bit more yellow.
| | 05:02 | I can also create the size of my
flake, which is called the Flake Scale.
| | 05:07 | So let's say I wanted to make
my flakes a little bit smaller.
| | 05:10 | Let's go ahead and make them .05 and
let's go ahead and take another quick
| | 05:15 | render of this and see what this looks like.
| | 05:17 | So now my flakes are actually a
little bit scaled, a little bit down, and I
| | 05:20 | think they actually look a little
bit better than they did before.
| | 05:24 | Now that we have this
material, let's go ahead rename it.
| | 05:28 | I'm going to call it Scooter_Color,
and once I do, I've got this in
| | 05:32 | my Hypershade window.
| | 05:33 | It didn't show up, but I can actually--
let's go ahead and rename that one more time.
| | 05:37 | There we go.
| | 05:38 | So now I have my Scooter_ Color here,
and let's go ahead and start applying this
| | 05:43 | to the rest of my scooter.
| | 05:45 | So if I want I can go through and say
well, I definitely want the fender.
| | 05:48 | Let me go ahead and scroll down here.
| | 05:50 | So I'm going to select my Scooter_Color.
| | 05:52 | I'm going to select my fender, right-
click over this Assign, and I can actually
| | 05:57 | just do a multiple select here,
and I can assign those, and so on.
| | 06:05 | So what you can do is you can actually
work your way through the scooter and
| | 06:08 | actually assign this material to every
part of it and this is really how we
| | 06:13 | will start texturing this.
| | 06:15 | Now the one problem is with this handle
bar, because all we've got here is we've
| | 06:18 | got this handle bar as part of the
hierarchy, so when I select this,
| | 06:22 | I'm actually selecting the
wheel and everything else.
| | 06:25 | So what I need to do is actually go
into my Outliner, find that Scooter group
| | 06:30 | here, and find that handle bar, and
actually deselect everything else.
| | 06:36 | There we go. The handle bar shape is
what I want and then I'm going to assign
| | 06:43 | my material to the shape,
not the whole hierarchy.
| | 06:47 | So there we go. So now I've got at least
this color of the car paint on my scooter.
| | 06:53 | As you can see, this is a really
good start for shading my scooter.
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| Using displacement and bump mapping | 00:00 | Bump and displacement mapping
allow you to create surfaces that are
| | 00:05 | not completely smooth.
| | 00:06 | Let's go ahead and create a simple sphere.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to go ahead and
just put a Blinn shader on this.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to go to my Rendering
tab and just put Blinn material.
| | 00:16 | Now if I scroll down here, you'll notice
that there is a slot here for Bump Mapping.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to go ahead
and just insert a 2D texture.
| | 00:27 | Let's just go ahead and put that
Cloth texture on there, and you really
| | 00:30 | don't see it come up, but we have
this Cloth texture attached to the Bump
| | 00:36 | Map node, and so we can use this as
a bump map, and we can also give it a
| | 00:41 | Depth, so how bumpy is it?
| | 00:43 | So let's take a quick render,
see what that looks like.
| | 00:46 | You'll say oh yeah.
| | 00:47 | That looks a lot more 3D, so it
makes that Cloth texture look like it's
| | 00:52 | deforming that surface.
| | 00:53 | But there is a problem with bump mapping,
and that is if we look at the edge of
| | 00:58 | this sphere-- so I'm just
going to zoom in kind of.
| | 01:01 | What happens is is that it renders very
smoothly, so this is really just a rendering trick.
| | 01:08 | It doesn't actually deform the surface.
| | 01:11 | It just shades the surface to make it
look like it's kind of an irregular and
| | 01:15 | bumpy, but it actually
doesn't deform the surface itself.
| | 01:19 | So we can get actual deformation of the
surface by using a deformation map, so
| | 01:24 | I'm going to go ahead and apply another
Blinn material, so we're actually going
| | 01:27 | to kind of reset it, so now we have a
simple sphere here, and we're going to
| | 01:31 | add displacement map.
| | 01:33 | But if we look here there is really no
place to add a displacement map. Where we
| | 01:37 | actually have to add
this is in the master node.
| | 01:40 | So if we go here to this tab, you'll see
that we have kind of the container that
| | 01:44 | contains that shader and down here we
have what's called the Displacement material.
| | 01:48 | Now displacement is applied as
a material, not as a texture.
| | 01:52 | That's why we're doing it here.
| | 01:53 | And so we can just apply this here, and
then again we're just going to add in
| | 01:58 | that cloth, and again, we don't
see it until we actually render it.
| | 02:02 | Now you can see exactly the
difference. So we actually now very
| | 02:07 | strong displacement.
| | 02:08 | Now the one issue with this
is that this surface here.
| | 02:11 | If you're displacing outward, the
actual surface is going to become bigger
| | 02:16 | than what you see here.
| | 02:18 | So, for example, let's go ahead and just
put a simple plane underneath this and
| | 02:25 | when I do that and actually render this,
what you here is that this is actually
| | 02:30 | poking through the floor.
| | 02:32 | So this is actually adding geometry
that you do not see in the viewport.
| | 02:37 | When you start using displacement maps like
this, you kind of need to do test renders.
| | 02:41 | A lot of times people will put
displacement maps on ground planes to make them
| | 02:45 | appear rocky or bumpy, and then when
the character starts walking, his foot
| | 02:50 | actually goes into the displacement, so
you have to be kind of careful and just
| | 02:54 | do test renders to make
sure that everything is okay.
| | 02:57 | So those are the differences
between bump and displacement mapping.
| | 03:00 | Now remember, bump mapping
is really just a shading.
| | 03:03 | It doesn't really deform the
actual geometry, and it's great for most
| | 03:07 | situations, but those places we
actually need to change the geometry, then you
| | 03:12 | use a displacement map.
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| Using the Ramp Shader | 00:00 | The Ramp material is probably one
of my favorite materials in Maya.
| | 00:04 | It allows you to change the color of an
object depending upon the way that you look at it.
| | 00:10 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:11 | We're going to start off with just a
simple torus this time, and we're going to
| | 00:15 | apply the Ramp material, which is here,
or you can find it in the Assign New
| | 00:19 | Material menus, but let's just
do it over here in the shelf.
| | 00:22 | So I'm going to assign it and
our Attribute Editor comes up.
| | 00:25 | This one is called a Ramp shader, and
the cool thing about the Ramp shader is
| | 00:29 | the way that it handles color.
| | 00:31 | So, what you can do is you can make the
color of the object a ramp or a gradient.
| | 00:36 | So, for example, if I want I could
change the initial color to something like red,
| | 00:41 | and then if I click inside this
bar here, I can make a second color.
| | 00:46 | So again, all I have to do is just
highlight this, touch this, and I can go from
| | 00:51 | red to blue, for example.
| | 00:53 | What we've got is we've got it going
from red to blue, but we need to determine
| | 00:57 | how it's determining that.
| | 00:59 | So we can either do it from the angle
of the light that's shining on it, the
| | 01:03 | brightness, which means the illumination.
| | 01:05 | One I like to do, and this actually is
probably the most obvious way to use this
| | 01:08 | is by doing Facing Angle.
| | 01:10 | So, if we take this, we'll see that the
pixels that are closest to us that are
| | 01:15 | most facing us are blue.
The ones that are on the edge are red.
| | 01:21 | So when I do a quick render of this,
you can see how every edge that's facing
| | 01:25 | away is kind of a different color.
| | 01:28 | Then this is a great way to
create slightly richer shading.
| | 01:31 | So if we want it to do blue to red,
that's actually pretty extreme, but we could
| | 01:35 | also do blue to like
maybe even a saturated purple.
| | 01:38 | So you can see how you can get this
really nice, almost second light effect on
| | 01:42 | the surface, and it gives a
much more character to the surface.
| | 01:46 | And if you want you can go really
extreme and say you can go from green to blue
| | 01:50 | or something like that.
| | 01:51 | Now we can also use the same sort of
options for any number of parameters.
| | 01:55 | Incandescence, Specularity, Reflectivity.
| | 01:58 | A nice one that I like to use is for
Transparency because you can use this ramp
| | 02:02 | to create classy effects without going
through all the problems of ray tracing.
| | 02:08 | Let's go ahead and click in here and
make the color kind of a light gray here.
| | 02:12 | So what that means is that the stuff
that's facing us is transparent, but as
| | 02:16 | you get towards the edges, as the surface starts
to face away, it actually gets less transparent.
| | 02:24 | This is also great for doing things
like x-ray or electro-luminescent
| | 02:28 | type effects as well.
| | 02:30 | These are just some of that ways that
you can use the Ramp shader to create some
| | 02:34 | very interesting effects.
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| Using the 3D Paint tool | 00:00 | Maya also has a very basic 3D Paint package,
which you can use to paint your own textures.
| | 00:06 | Let's take a look at how this works.
| | 00:08 | I'm going to go ahead and create a sphere.
| | 00:10 | Let's turn off my grid here, and
I want to assign a material to this.
| | 00:14 | So I'm going to go into Rendering, and
let's just go ahead and assign a Blinn material.
| | 00:21 | Now, once I have that material
assigned, let's go ahead and do 3D painting.
| | 00:26 | So we can find this under the
Texturing menu > 3D Paint Tool.
| | 00:30 | Now, this is very similar to
the Artist and Paint tools.
| | 00:34 | I want to go ahead and click that tool
option right there, make sure I bring that up.
| | 00:39 | Now when this comes up, what happens
is it gives me a nice little interface.
| | 00:44 | Very similar to the Sculpt Surfaces interface,
| | 00:47 | in that you have a brush which you
can use to paint, but if I try and paint,
| | 00:51 | notice how this error message comes up.
| | 00:53 | "Some surfaces have no file texture assigned."
| | 00:56 | Okay, well what this means is that I
need to have a texture map assigned to my
| | 01:02 | channel before I can paint into it.
| | 01:04 | So, the first step I have to do is go
all the way down at the bottom here under
| | 01:08 | File Textures, and then I need to
select which attribute I want to paint.
| | 01:13 | So typically we paint Color.
| | 01:15 | But we can also paint Transparency,
BumpMap, Displacements, really almost any
| | 01:20 | value can be painted.
| | 01:21 | We're going to select Color here,
and then all we have to do is
| | 01:25 | Assign/Edit Textures.
| | 01:27 | Click that button, and it brings up a
menu where we can select the size of the
| | 01:33 | textures that we want to use.
| | 01:34 | In this case, I'm going to go
ahead and type in 512 by 512.
| | 01:39 | And then we can also
select what image format to use.
| | 01:42 | The default is Maya's IFF format, but
if you want you can make it a TIFF,
| | 01:47 | TARGA, JPEG, really whatever format you want.
| | 01:51 | I'm just going to leave it at IFF for this.
| | 01:53 | And then just do Assign/Edit Textures.
| | 01:56 | Now once this is assigned, now I
have something into which to paint.
| | 02:01 | So I can select my brush, left-click and
drag, and I can paint textures, very simple.
| | 02:07 | Now, if I want to change the size of
my brush, again it's very similar to
| | 02:11 | Sculpt Surfaces. Just hold down the B
key, B for brush, and I just click and
| | 02:16 | drag, and I can make it smaller or bigger.
| | 02:18 | If you want to change the color, change it
right here. Make a darker color, whatever.
| | 02:23 | If I want to change the opacity, a
little bit more of an opaque so we can get
| | 02:26 | more of a water color effect.
| | 02:28 | I can also change the type of brush I have.
| | 02:31 | So I can go a harder edge
brush, softer edge brush.
| | 02:35 | I can also load brushes or create my own.
| | 02:38 | Now, we also have Paint Operations.
| | 02:40 | We can Smear, Blur. So you do have a
little bit of that Photoshop functionality
| | 02:45 | where you can Smear, you can Blur.
| | 02:49 | You can Clone, or you can Erase.
| | 02:52 | So now what we're painting is we're
actually painting into a texture map and
| | 02:55 | the texture map is located in the Blinn shader.
| | 02:59 | So notice how this Blinn now has a color
map here, and that color map is right there.
| | 03:04 | So this is what I have actually
painted and it's actually in that map.
| | 03:08 | Now what I have to do eventually is once
I've got this all painted, I do need to
| | 03:12 | save out that texture.
| | 03:13 | So I can just hit this
button here called Save Textures.
| | 03:16 | Now, it tells me the scene has not been saved.
| | 03:18 | Now, the first thing I need to do is save
my scene out, and let's just call it 3Dpaint.
| | 03:24 | Then I go back into my 3D Paint tool and
I saved my textures and they are saved out.
| | 03:29 | Now where it saves it is
actually kind of important.
| | 03:32 | Let me go ahead and close this out and
I'm going to select my sphere here and
| | 03:36 | let's go into the texture for that sphere.
| | 03:38 | I'm going to go into Blinn, into Color,
DPaintTextures\3Dpaint, and then it
| | 03:43 | names it automatically
by the name of the object.
| | 03:47 | So if I hit my Folder, we can
actually go into this, 3DPaintTextures >
| | 03:50 | 3Dpaint, and there it is.
| | 03:54 | There is our image.
| | 03:55 | So, it actually has a very set
place where it saves these images.
| | 03:59 | And the reason I'm showing you this is
because there is going to be a time where
| | 04:03 | you want to bring it into Photoshop or
something else and actually fine-tune it
| | 04:07 | using some of those additional
tools and you need to be able to find this.
| | 04:11 | So, this is probably the easiest way
to locate it is just click on the shader
| | 04:15 | and see where it's saved.
| | 04:17 | So those are some of the
basics of Maya's 3D Paint tool.
| | 04:21 | Now remember you can
paint, in addition to Color,
| | 04:23 | you can paint Transparency,
Bump Maps, pretty much anything you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Applying TexturesTexture-mapping NURBS surfaces | 00:00 | When you start applying textures to an
object, you'll often need to control how
| | 00:05 | those textures are placed.
| | 00:07 | There is a number of different ways
to control text replacement in Maya.
| | 00:11 | So let me show you some
of the simplest ones first.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to start with NURBS based surfaces.
| | 00:16 | So the best way to look at this is to
start with the plane, and we'll just
| | 00:20 | show you very simple tools just to how to
control placement of a texture on a NURB surface.
| | 00:26 | So, first thing I want to do
is put a material on there.
| | 00:31 | In this case, I'm just going to use a
lambert, and then let's go ahead and put
| | 00:34 | an actual texture into the Color channel.
| | 00:37 | So, I'm going to select a File and
because I'm in Chapter 8, I'm going to be in
| | 00:43 | my Chapter 8 > sourceimages.
| | 00:45 | We're going to find our
lovely donut picture here.
| | 00:48 | Okay, and then we're going to hit this
number 6 key to shade that, and let's
| | 00:52 | make sure we're also in High Quality Rendering.
| | 00:55 | This will actually help a lot with viewing this.
| | 00:59 | So, by default, Maya takes the corners
of your image and pins it to the corners
| | 01:06 | of the NURBS surface.
| | 01:08 | Very simple, it's almost a one-to-one mapping.
| | 01:11 | So, no matter how much I change the
size of that NURBS surface, let's say I go
| | 01:16 | back to my original makeNurbPlane here,
and I add in patches. I make it wider.
| | 01:23 | I make it bigger, whatever.
| | 01:25 | It's always going to map one-to-one to that.
| | 01:28 | Now, we can change this by
going into the mapping type.
| | 01:32 | So I'm going to go into my Color
channel and then go down into my texture.
| | 01:38 | And notice there's actually two here.
| | 01:40 | There is one for the actual file.
| | 01:42 | The other one is called place2dTexture.
| | 01:45 | So I can either get to it by
hitting this tab or if I go down one more
| | 01:50 | input, I'll find it.
| | 01:52 | Now let me show you how this
works in the Hypershade very quickly.
| | 01:56 | I have my lambert here, my lambert2.
| | 01:58 | Let's go ahead and graph that.
| | 02:01 | So, if I double-click on the actual
lambert itself, you can see I can go down to
| | 02:07 | the file and then if I
click here I go down one more.
| | 02:11 | So basically, what I'm doing is I'm
going backwards, backwards to the actual
| | 02:16 | place 2dTexture, which
is where I'm at right now.
| | 02:19 | Now, this allows me to control how the
texture is placed on that NURBS surface.
| | 02:25 | By default, again, it's a
one-to-one relationship.
| | 02:28 | So this is one and this is one.
| | 02:30 | So, if I brought this down, let's say,
to 0.75 by 0.75, you'd see that well,
| | 02:38 | it only gives you a fraction of this and the
rest is just the default color of the texture.
| | 02:43 | So we start here at the bottom-
right and then we go up 0.75 by 0.75.
| | 02:48 | If I want, I can also rotate that
frame or I can translate the frame.
| | 02:55 | So let's say I make it 0.25 and so on.
| | 02:58 | So I can actually slide it left and right,
shrink it up and down, and rotate it.
| | 03:03 | I also can add in Repeats.
| | 03:05 | So, if I want to repeat it
more than once, I can do that.
| | 03:09 | Now this is repeating within that frame.
| | 03:14 | So, it's repeating within the 0.75.
| | 03:17 | So, if I want to repeat it twice over the
whole thing, I can do it that way as well.
| | 03:22 | And then with the translation of 0, there we go.
| | 03:26 | So, this is how many times
it's tiling within this frame.
| | 03:32 | So, if you have an image and you want
like a texture of a fabric or something,
| | 03:36 | and it's a little bit too coarse,
you can just tighten it up right here.
| | 03:40 | And again, you can rotate
and do all sorts of stuff.
| | 03:42 | Now probably the cooler way to do this
or the more interesting way to do this is
| | 03:47 | to use what's called interactive placement.
| | 03:49 | Now before I do that, I'm actually going
to bring my Repeats back up to 1 so we
| | 03:53 | have a full solid image to work with.
| | 03:56 | And then all I have to do is hit
this Interactive Placement button.
| | 04:00 | And what it does is it lights up.
| | 04:01 | It gives me this big red frame around my image.
| | 04:06 | Now, I can manipulate this
by using my middle-click.
| | 04:10 | So if I middle-click on one side,
notice how that changes. I can scale that.
| | 04:18 | So, middle-click, middle-click on the
top, middle-click on the bottom, and
| | 04:22 | middle-click in the middle.
| | 04:24 | I can move this around, or if I'm at
the sides, that's how I can rotate.
| | 04:30 | Notice how as I do this, these
numbers are actually all changing here.
| | 04:34 | So as I move this, my translation is changing.
| | 04:38 | If I scale it up, my
coverage is changing, and so on.
| | 04:44 | And all this comes back up when I render,
so you can see how this is actually affected.
| | 04:48 | Now this mapping is
actually in the texture itself.
| | 04:53 | So, when I go into my Hypershade window,
I can actually graph this and you can
| | 05:01 | see that this texturing is
within the actual material itself.
| | 05:06 | So if I created any other surface,
even a polygonal surface, this would apply.
| | 05:12 | So all I have to do is now is go into
my Hypershade, select this plane, assign
| | 05:19 | to selection, and we'll
have the exact same effect.
| | 05:23 | So, basically, what's happening here
is we're changing the way that this maps
| | 05:27 | within the material.
| | 05:29 | This is great for setting global parameters.
| | 05:32 | There are other ways to actually map on
a per object basis, but typically, when
| | 05:37 | you start off texturing, you want to
make sure that your material itself is at
| | 05:41 | the right scale and the right
number of repeats and so on and so forth.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Projecting textures onto surfaces| 00:00 | Maya has several tools that allow you
to map a texture directly to an object.
| | 00:06 | For this exercise, let's go ahead
and actually open up our Scooter.
| | 00:13 | Now, as you can see, I've done most of
the textures on this Scooter, and they
| | 00:16 | are actually very simple.
| | 00:17 | We have the car paint texture, and then
a little bit of a leather texture, and
| | 00:21 | then the rest is pretty much just
rubber for that wheels that sort of thing.
| | 00:25 | But the one texture that we
don't have on this is the headlight.
| | 00:29 | Now, the reason we don't have this is because I
want to use an actual image for the headlight.
| | 00:35 | So let's go ahead and map that on.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to go ahead and select the
headlight, and assign a Phong E material,
| | 00:43 | which is probably the most similar to glass.
| | 00:46 | And then in the texture field here,
I'm going to go ahead and select File.
| | 00:51 | And then under Image there is actually an
image of a headlight that I want to use.
| | 00:55 | So we've got this kind of very
simple image that we're going to use.
| | 00:59 | I'm going to hit Open.
| | 01:00 | Now, when I take a look at this-- if
we look at this image, you notice how the
| | 01:04 | grain of the headlight is
basically horizontal and vertical.
| | 01:09 | What I've got here is kind
of more of a radial texture.
| | 01:12 | In fact, let's go ahead and turn on
High Quality Rendering so we can see that
| | 01:15 | a little bit better.
| | 01:17 | And you can see how what it's doing is
it's actually spinning it around another.
| | 01:21 | Now this section in artifact of the way
that the default texturing works which
| | 01:25 | is to basically map the corners of
the image to the corners of the NURBS
| | 01:30 | surface, and so I have a corner here, a
corner in the center, then it goes all
| | 01:34 | the way around and then these
two corners are pinned together.
| | 01:36 | That's how you make that sphere.
| | 01:39 | We need to map this differently.
| | 01:41 | So how we're going to do this.
| | 01:43 | Let's just go ahead very quickly
and just create another material.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to do Phong E again and then
in Color, I'm going to select this and
| | 01:52 | then under 2D Textures, under File,
instead of just clicking, I'm going to
| | 01:57 | right-click over this.
| | 01:59 | And by default, it says just
create texture which is what we just did.
| | 02:03 | But what we want to do this
time is Create as projection.
| | 02:07 | So again, I'm right-clicking over
the node. Create as projection. Let go.
| | 02:12 | Now this actually shows up
a little bit differently.
| | 02:16 | If you notice here, it created a
little object down here at the bottom, which
| | 02:20 | is my Texture Mapper.
| | 02:22 | But before we get into that we need to
load the image into the texture here.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to go ahead into
Image Name > Headlight. Open. Okay?
| | 02:31 | And actually even with the
default that looks pretty close.
| | 02:35 | If you look here we're getting a
little bit of a mapping error, but it's
| | 02:38 | actually a lot better.
| | 02:40 | Now this mapping is accomplished by a
separate object in the scene and this
| | 02:45 | allows us to interactively place that texture.
| | 02:48 | So all I have to do is grab that
object and just move it in the scene, or I
| | 02:53 | want to be a little bit more precise,
what I can do is go into the Attribute
| | 02:57 | Editor and move up one output connection,
and that allows me to manipulate the
| | 03:03 | actual projection itself.
| | 03:05 | And there is this very handy button
here it says Fit to Bounding Box.
| | 03:09 | When I do that, it basically fits that
texture to the outside of that headlight.
| | 03:15 | And if I want, I can still grab the
corners of this and adjust it and do
| | 03:20 | whatever I want, but actually
probably the best way to do this is just to
| | 03:24 | fit that to the bounding
box, and I should have it.
| | 03:26 | Now if you notice that actually is a
lot better placement of that texture and
| | 03:31 | it's really placing it in the way that we want.
| | 03:33 | So, if I do a quick render of
this, you can see how this looks.
| | 03:38 | So that looks much, much better.
| | 03:42 | So, when you want to actually precisely
place textures in a scene, what you need
| | 03:47 | to do is as you apply that render node,
right-click over it and go Apply as
| | 03:53 | Projection, and that allows you to
adjust it as a projected texture rather than
| | 03:57 | mapping it directly to the surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Texture-mapping polygonal surfaces | 00:00 | In Maya, applying textures to a
polygonal surface is a little bit different
| | 00:04 | process than it is with NURB Surfaces.
| | 00:07 | With polygons, you can actually apply a
texture per polygon, so every polygon in
| | 00:13 | your model could actually
have a different texture.
| | 00:15 | This gives you a lot of flexibility in
the way that you can texture an object.
| | 00:20 | Let me show you some basics.
| | 00:21 | Let's go ahead and just take
a simple object and shade it.
| | 00:28 | Now if I want to I could apply a
material very simply to this, just by
| | 00:32 | going over the Rendering tab,
picking the material and applying it.
| | 00:36 | Then I can change it to
whatever color I want and so on.
| | 00:41 | Now with the polygonal surface what's
really nice is that each individual face
| | 00:47 | can have a separate texture.
| | 00:49 | So, for example, if I selected a
handful of these faces, I could just apply
| | 00:56 | another material to it and
give it its own separate color.
| | 01:01 | So every part, every face of the
model can have its own material and its
| | 01:09 | own mapping as well.
| | 01:12 | So all I'm really doing is just
selecting faces and applying maps.
| | 01:17 | So if I selected these faces,
I could just right-click over this, select
| | 01:21 | whatever material I wanted, and off we'd go.
| | 01:24 | Now once I've got these materials,
they would still show up in the Hypershade.
| | 01:30 | So now that I've got all these different
materials, they're all showing up here. Move this down.
| | 01:38 | If I changed them in any way,
they'd reflect on that particular model.
| | 01:44 | So this is a really good way to
assign multiple textures to an object.
| | 01:49 | So let's do something a
little bit more practical.
| | 01:51 | We are going to go ahead and open a
scene in our Chapter 8 folder called Dog_10.
| | 01:56 | This is just our dog
finally completely modeled.
| | 02:02 | Now I kind of just went
through and added some extra parts.
| | 02:05 | Now we have a separate head, the eyes
are separate, the ears, and the arms and
| | 02:11 | gloves are separate.
| | 02:13 | In fact, let's just work on the body.
| | 02:14 | I am actually going to select the head
here and I'm just going to go ahead and
| | 02:18 | do Display > Hide Selection.
| | 02:20 | So all we are working with
is the actual body itself.
| | 02:23 | Now if I wanted to, I could texture this
by separating everything out like I've
| | 02:29 | done with the arms here.
| | 02:30 | So, for example, if I wanted to have
a texture for the arms, I could make a
| | 02:35 | texture say called Shirt,
and I could give it a color.
| | 02:41 | Let's say let's make it kind of a purply kind
of color, something like this. There we go.
| | 02:46 | And I could apply that also just by
going here, going into the Hypershade, or
| | 02:52 | just right-clicking here and we
can find our existing material Shirt.
| | 02:57 | If I want to, I can do them for gloves.
| | 02:59 | So I could even select both of these
and apply a material here and we could
| | 03:04 | call that gloves, and let's
give him whitish kind of gloves.
| | 03:12 | But then when I get to the body, let's
say I wanted to make the shoes and the
| | 03:16 | pants a different color than the shirt.
| | 03:18 | This is where selecting things out a
polygon at a time is really beneficial.
| | 03:23 | In fact, in order to really see these
polygons, I am going to hit my number 1 key
| | 03:27 | so that we are not smoothing anything,
so I can see exactly what I'm shading here.
| | 03:32 | Let's go ahead and start with the shoes.
| | 03:35 | Let's go ahead and just go right-click
over this, go Face, and then in fact it's
| | 03:40 | probably easier in a Side viewport,
because I can get an exact-- you can see
| | 03:44 | where the feet kind of come in here.
| | 03:47 | So all I have to do is just Shift+Select that.
Make sure I have got all of that selected.
| | 03:51 | Well, not all.
| | 03:53 | I can select this and this and this and this,
and now let's go ahead and make some shoes.
| | 03:58 | So he is going to have kind of shiny shoes.
| | 04:00 | So I am going to put a Blinn on there,
which has a little bit of shine to it.
| | 04:04 | Then I just want to give
him kind of a dark color.
| | 04:06 | Almost black shoes, not
quite black, and there we go.
| | 04:09 | Now I've got this model here and if I
go back into Object mode here, you'll see
| | 04:15 | that I've got two materials on this.
| | 04:17 | I've got lambert1, which is the
default material, and then I've got this one
| | 04:21 | called blinn2, which was the shoes.
| | 04:23 | In fact, I need to rename this.
| | 04:24 | Let's called that Shoes.
| | 04:27 | Now let's go ahead and do some more.
| | 04:29 | Let's do the shirt.
| | 04:30 | So I am going to go ahead and right-click
over this, go Face, select all of these faces.
| | 04:37 | See if I got them all.
| | 04:41 | Then jump out of here, and let's make
sure I've got all of these faces here.
| | 04:44 | I could also use Paint select for
this, but this is actually coming
| | 04:52 | together fairly quickly. Here we go.
| | 04:56 | So you can see how you get very, very
detailed here, and select all of these.
| | 05:03 | So once I've got all of these selected,
I already have the material I have
| | 05:06 | created for the shirt.
| | 05:07 | That's when I did the arm.
| | 05:08 | So all I have to do is right-click over
this, go Assign Existing Material > Shirt.
| | 05:15 | Now that I've got that selected,
all I have left are the pants.
| | 05:20 | So then I can just go ahead and select
those out and let's go ahead and just
| | 05:25 | do that very quickly.
| | 05:26 | Let's go ahead and select these polygons here.
| | 05:29 | Okay, and again this is a lot of detail work.
| | 05:38 | So I am just going to do this very
roughly, so that way I am not going
| | 05:42 | to waste all of your time here.
| | 05:45 | I am just holding down the
Shift key and selecting these.
| | 05:56 | I am just making sure I have got all of
those selected, and I can probably-- Oops!
| | 06:00 | There is a big patch that I missed.
| | 06:02 | Okay, so I have got most of this selected here.
| | 06:08 | Now all I have to do again is
just make a material for the pants.
| | 06:11 | Well, I want a Lambert, because I
don't want his pants to be shiny.
| | 06:14 | He is not wearing plastic
pants or anything like that.
| | 06:17 | Then let's just give it a color.
| | 06:18 | I am going to start with kind of a
light blue maybe, something like that.
| | 06:22 | So you can play with that
all you want. Now there it is.
| | 06:27 | So if I do a 3, you can
see how it pretty much maps.
| | 06:31 | There are a couple of little spots
that I need to take care of right here.
| | 06:37 | I can just right-click over that.
| | 06:40 | lambert3 is what I had for pants.
| | 06:42 | In fact, I can probably rename it.
| | 06:44 | Let's go ahead and rename
that pants, and off you go.
| | 06:49 | So as you can see, with polygonal
models you can assign a material to the
| | 06:52 | entire model, or you can go down a face
at a time and apply materials very, very precisely.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying UV mapping | 00:00 | Texturing polygonal surfaces is a
little bit different than NURBS surfaces.
| | 00:05 | Polygonal surfaces have their own set
of tools for precisely applying a texture
| | 00:10 | map such as a bitmap or a procedural map.
| | 00:13 | So let's go ahead and start off
with a simple cube and shade that.
| | 00:19 | Let's go ahead and just apply a
simple texture. Let's apply a Lambert.
| | 00:24 | Now for this we want to import
something like a bitmap, so that we can have
| | 00:28 | something to apply to this.
| | 00:30 | So I am just going to go
and create a render node.
| | 00:32 | And this time I am going to actually do
a File. Just use that Donut image that
| | 00:38 | we've been playing with here.
| | 00:39 | So in order to see this in the
window, I need to do what's called
| | 00:45 | Hardware Texturing.
| | 00:46 | You can see that what's happened is
it's kind of mapped this donut image--
| | 00:52 | However it decided it was the best
way to map this image, it mapped it.
| | 00:56 | Well, if we want more precise control, we
can do that by creating what's called UVs.
| | 01:03 | So we go into our Polygonal menu
set and we go under Create UVs.
| | 01:08 | In fact, I am going to tear this off.
| | 01:12 | We've got a number of different options
here and each one of those can map the
| | 01:19 | entire surface or can map groups of faces.
| | 01:23 | So remember how we applied
materials to groups of faces?
| | 01:26 | We can do the same thing with this.
| | 01:28 | We can just select an individual
face and map that individual face.
| | 01:32 | Right now, I am just going to go ahead
and map the whole cube, so we can kind
| | 01:36 | of see how this works.
| | 01:37 | So when I do planar mapping, what it does
is it creates this object that maps a plane.
| | 01:46 | So all I have to do is grab the edges of this
object, and move it, and I can manipulate it.
| | 01:53 | In fact, if I go into the Attribute
Editor, you'll see there is actually a node
| | 01:57 | that's created called polyPlanarProjection.
| | 02:01 | I can actually manipulate the values here.
| | 02:03 | So let's say, well, I actually want it
from the top-down as well, then I can
| | 02:07 | just take that away and maybe rotate it
along the X axis for example and that
| | 02:13 | will go ahead and make
this go from the top-down.
| | 02:17 | And really you can
manipulate this however you want.
| | 02:21 | You can even rotate it.
| | 02:23 | There are all sorts of
parameters here that you can play with.
| | 02:26 | Now, if we don't want Planar Mapping,
we've got a number of other ones.
| | 02:29 | We've got Cylindrical Mapping, which
creates as you can see here, it creates a
| | 02:34 | bit of a cylinder and
we can scale the cylinder.
| | 02:37 | We can move it up and down.
| | 02:40 | We can do what's called Spherical Mapping,
which again very simply it creates a sphere.
| | 02:46 | So it projects that texture
from a sphere around the object.
| | 02:50 | Now, for a cube, that might not work as well.
| | 02:53 | There is another one called
Automatic Mapping and what this does is it
| | 02:57 | projects from each plane.
| | 03:00 | So, for example, every side gets its
own image plane and then I can give it as
| | 03:09 | many planes as I want right here.
| | 03:11 | I can give it a scale.
| | 03:13 | I can do all sorts of things.
| | 03:15 | So this actually is probably
the best for mapping generically.
| | 03:18 | There is also one called Best Plane
Texture tool, and again for all of these,
| | 03:22 | you need to be in Object mode.
| | 03:23 | So make sure you go into Object mode.
| | 03:27 | Another one is called Create UVs Based
on Camera, and that will actually project
| | 03:32 | it from the direction that you're looking at.
| | 03:34 | Now all of this is great, but let's go
ahead and use this in a more precise context.
| | 03:39 | Let's go ahead, and use it in
a more of a real life example.
| | 03:42 | So I am going to go ahead and open
a scene called Dog_11 and that's our
| | 03:48 | famous little dog here.
| | 03:49 | So let's go ahead and start off with his head,
and let's apply a texture map to his head.
| | 03:54 | Now I've created a map that
maps precisely from the side.
| | 03:58 | So what I've done is I've actually taken
a side view of him and actually created
| | 04:03 | a texture map that worked well from
this view and that actually makes it much
| | 04:09 | easier to map, because he is symmetrical.
| | 04:12 | So let's go ahead and first of all just
place the map on and see what that does.
| | 04:17 | So I am going to go ahead and create a
Lambert material, click on Render Node,
| | 04:24 | go into File, and there should be
a file out there called Dog_Head.
| | 04:28 | Now this looks kind of weird, but bear
with me. This will actually work really well.
| | 04:33 | Well, it looks super weird now, because it's
really not mapped all that well to his head.
| | 04:38 | But we can do a Create UVs
to actually make this work.
| | 04:42 | So we are going to go ahead
and do Planar Mapping. Wow!
| | 04:46 | That's almost perfect.
| | 04:48 | So I want to make sure that I'm
projecting along with the rotation here of 90
| | 04:52 | degrees and my Projection Width and
Projection Height seem pretty good.
| | 04:58 | Actually, I probably can raise his
brow a little bit, but this is actually
| | 05:02 | looking pretty good just the first time out.
| | 05:04 | You'll notice there is a little spot on
the back of his head, so I can just again
| | 05:08 | expand that and off you go. So that's one way.
| | 05:14 | Let's go ahead, right-click
and go back into Object mode.
| | 05:16 | So now I've got that map on his head.
| | 05:19 | If I want, I can also
create a texture map for his eye.
| | 05:23 | Now typically, how I create a simple pupil is
I use what's called a ramp for the Render Node.
| | 05:30 | So let's go ahead and apply a Phong E,
which gives him kind of a glassy eyed
| | 05:34 | look and then under Color,
let's go ahead and put in a Ramp.
| | 05:38 | Well, that doesn't look right.
| | 05:40 | Well, this doesn't look right either.
| | 05:42 | I am going to look at this texture sample here.
| | 05:43 | I want to make sure that I
set it to Type: Circular Ramp.
| | 05:50 | So again, I'm looking here, not here.
| | 05:52 | We will map this a little bit later here.
| | 05:55 | What I want to do is make sure that
my internal color is black, and then
| | 05:59 | each one of these colors is white,
because it's just going to be a
| | 06:04 | black-and-white eye.
| | 06:05 | I am really tight on
space here, so bear with me.
| | 06:10 | Then I just want to move this here.
| | 06:14 | So now I've got, you can see basically what
I am doing is I am creating a circle here.
| | 06:18 | Now I have to map this here.
| | 06:21 | Well, again we can do
that by using a planar map.
| | 06:24 | So I am going to do Create UVs > Planar Mapping.
| | 06:27 | Now, this one is going the wrong way.
| | 06:30 | So I need to rotate this.
| | 06:32 | So I am going to go ahead and
zero this out and see what that does.
| | 06:35 | That actually works pretty good except
it needs to rotate a little bit more.
| | 06:40 | So I am going to do negative say about
20 or so, and maybe even a little bit
| | 06:46 | more, maybe 22 or 23.
| | 06:49 | Again, what I am trying to do is line
this up, so that this is rotated so that
| | 06:53 | that spot is centered, so maybe even 24 degrees.
| | 06:58 | That actually looks pretty good.
| | 07:00 | So if I want, I can actually take that
polyPlanarProjection and again I can scale it.
| | 07:06 | If I want this to be a little bit more
circular, I can do it that way as well.
| | 07:10 | So now I will go back into Object
mode and you can see I have my eye.
| | 07:14 | Now, for this eye, well,
I have already got it mapped.
| | 07:17 | So I am just going to go ahead and
delete this and just do Ctrl+D and move
| | 07:21 | the other one over, so that way I don't
have to repeat that process and there we go.
| | 07:27 | Let's go ahead and fix his ears.
| | 07:29 | Let's go ahead and finish this guy up.
| | 07:32 | So I am going to go ahead and select
his ears and just right-click, Assign
| | 07:36 | Existing Material, and that's going to
be the black for his ears. And one more.
| | 07:42 | We need to go ahead and select the head,
and let's go ahead and get that nose.
| | 07:45 | Then I go ahead and select Face, and
then just lasso-select all the faces on the
| | 07:52 | head, right-click, and again he
is going to have a black nose.
| | 07:57 | So there we go, so, there.
| | 08:01 | So now our dog is completely textured.
| | 08:04 | As you can see, we've used several
different methods of assigning materials by
| | 08:08 | polygon and also mapping him.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the UVW Editor| 00:00 | Now, when you texture polygons, there
will be places where you will need to
| | 00:04 | go in very discreetly and map
an image to a polygon on almost a
| | 00:10 | pixel-by-pixel level.
| | 00:11 | And you can do that by using UV
Mapping and the UV Map Editor.
| | 00:15 | So let's take a quick look at how to do this.
| | 00:18 | I am going to go ahead into a polygon.
I am going to create a polygonal cube.
| | 00:25 | I want to make it a very specific size.
| | 00:27 | Let's go ahead and just make it 10x10x10.
| | 00:28 | So I am going to highlight all those
and type in the number 10, shade it, and
| | 00:35 | let's go ahead and apply a material.
| | 00:37 | It doesn't really matter what type of material.
| | 00:39 | In this case I am doing a Phong.
| | 00:41 | And then put a file in there.
| | 00:43 | In this case, for the file, we are going
to use something called the UVW_Map.jpg.
| | 00:49 | As you can see, it's a very precise map.
| | 00:51 | What the intention is is to apply each
one of these to the face of the cube.
| | 00:56 | So I have six faces on the cube.
| | 00:58 | I have six numbers, and so I
want to make sure I map each one.
| | 01:02 | So when I open that and shade this by
using hardware texturing, you can see
| | 01:06 | that well, the mapping is
not quite there, but it's close.
| | 01:11 | And if I wanted to, I could go through
and do a planar mapping on each one, but
| | 01:16 | then I'm only planar mapping the entire one.
| | 01:19 | I really need to get down on the
pixel-by-pixel level in this image.
| | 01:24 | I can do that using the UV Texture Editor.
| | 01:28 | So when I open this up, well, first of
all, it comes up blank, but then all I
| | 01:32 | need to do is select my cube.
| | 01:36 | This floating window is
actually a viewport as well.
| | 01:39 | So I can just hold down my Alt or
Option key and navigate this like a viewport.
| | 01:44 | So as you can see, I'm actually pretty
close in the way that this is mapped, but
| | 01:50 | I need to be a little bit more precise.
| | 01:53 | So if I go in here, what I can do is I
can actually select components on this
| | 01:59 | model and edit them here.
| | 02:01 | So if I were to right-click over this,
normally I would edit this by using
| | 02:06 | Vertices, Edges, or Faces,
but that changes the shape.
| | 02:09 | It does not change the texture mapping.
| | 02:11 | UV does allow you to change the texture mapping.
| | 02:14 | So if select UV and then just click
on one of these vertices, you'll notice
| | 02:19 | how it comes up here, and I can actually
manipulate that and move it in the 3D space.
| | 02:30 | Now, notice here how it's actually
selecting two of these, because what I've got
| | 02:35 | here is I've actually got that number 5
corner and actually this vertex and
| | 02:41 | this vertex share three faces: one, two, three;
| | 02:45 | one, two, three.
| | 02:47 | So that's why I am getting two of these.
| | 02:49 | So I want to make sure that these
all fit in properly and then I can
| | 02:54 | select another one.
| | 02:55 | Let's say I select this one here.
| | 02:57 | That's the border between 2 and 3.
| | 02:58 | It's actually the border between 2, 3, and 6.
| | 03:05 | Then I can also select, for
example, we can go down here.
| | 03:08 | We can select this one here, which
is the border between 4, 3, and 6.
| | 03:15 | Again, you can see how I can
very precisely place this texture.
| | 03:20 | So all I have to do is just work
through this a point at a time and match up
| | 03:30 | every vertex to my cube.
| | 03:33 | Now, this UV Texture Editor is
a lot more complex than this.
| | 03:37 | You can actually do all sorts of great things.
| | 03:39 | Now, I am not going to get too deep into
it, but you have a number of tools here
| | 03:43 | that allow you to, for example, to use Lattices.
| | 03:45 | So, for example, if I selected a bunch
of these, I can actually have a Lattice
| | 03:49 | deform all sorts of these.
| | 03:51 | You can actually move a whole shell.
| | 03:54 | You can smooth the UVs between stuff.
| | 03:57 | You can also use what's called a Smudge tool,
or also be able to Select Shortest Edges.
| | 04:03 | There are all sorts of tools that
allow you to select and move these UV
| | 04:07 | coordinates around on a particular model.
| | 04:10 | So let's take a look at something
that's a little bit more complex.
| | 04:13 | So we are going to go ahead and open the scene.
| | 04:14 | We are going to open one called Dog_12,
which is basically the dog that we had before.
| | 04:20 | So if you recall, I mapped this bitmap
on the dog, to his head, just by using
| | 04:25 | a planar, but if I wanted to actually go in and
tweak it, I can still use that UV Texture Editor.
| | 04:31 | They're not exclusive.
| | 04:33 | So you can actually apply your rough
coordinates over here using Create UVs and
| | 04:38 | then you can edit them here
using the UV Texture Editor.
| | 04:42 | So as you can see, I've got both
sides of this dog's polygons mapped
| | 04:47 | against this texture.
| | 04:49 | So if I were to right-click here and do
UV, I could actually go in and readjust
| | 04:56 | exactly and fine-tune exactly how
that texture maps to that surface.
| | 05:05 | So you get a lot of control
with the UV Texture Editor.
| | 05:08 | So go ahead and play with it, get used
to it, and I'm sure it will help you in
| | 05:13 | fine-tuning and tweaking your text replacement.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Basic Deformations and RiggingCreating joints| 00:00 | So once you have your character built
and textured, you can now start animating
| | 00:06 | or actually getting your
character ready to animate.
| | 00:09 | Getting your character ready
to animate is called rigging.
| | 00:12 | Now we are going to just do a very
simple rig, just to kind of get your feet wet
| | 00:15 | in rigging a character.
| | 00:17 | Here I have our little dog and let me
just show you the basic rig and then
| | 00:21 | we'll go ahead and get started.
| | 00:23 | Now the character himself is
basically a couple of objects.
| | 00:27 | We've got the body.
| | 00:28 | We've got the head.
| | 00:30 | We've got the arms and the hands.
| | 00:33 | Now in order to actually animate him we
need to do what are called deformations.
| | 00:38 | We also need to create what
are called joints and skeletons.
| | 00:41 | In fact, if I hit this button to X-ray
joints, you can see that each arm has a
| | 00:47 | little skeleton in it.
| | 00:48 | So if I grab the hand and move that,
you can see that his arm bends to deform.
| | 00:54 | Now this isn't a
complete, fully rigged character.
| | 00:57 | We actually have another title
that shows you how to do that.
| | 01:00 | But I am going to show you just
enough to get him on the scooter and
| | 01:03 | actually animating.
| | 01:05 | So I've got the hands and the arms set up here.
| | 01:08 | Also, I have got a little bit of
a setup for the head, and I've got
| | 01:11 | what's called a blend shape.
| | 01:13 | If I go into Window > Animation >
Editors > Blend Shape, you can see I've got
| | 01:17 | something set up for his blinks.
| | 01:20 | So I can actually blink his eyes, which is nice.
| | 01:24 | It makes him come to life.
| | 01:26 | Also, I have a little bit
of deformer on the ears.
| | 01:29 | So if I go into my Attribute Editor,
you can see I can manipulate his ears so
| | 01:34 | that they are a little bit floppier.
| | 01:37 | So all of these are really just basic
tools that are all put together to rig the
| | 01:42 | character to get him going.
| | 01:45 | So let's go ahead and open up a blank character.
| | 01:48 | I have got a file here called Dog_15,
and this is basically our same character
| | 01:54 | without any rigging.
| | 01:55 | So what we need to do first is
insert the skeleton into his arm.
| | 02:01 | So let me show you a little bit
about some of the animation tools.
| | 02:04 | We have a whole menu set called
Animation and we also have some animation
| | 02:09 | tools here on the shelf. We can use either.
| | 02:13 | Now the one we are going to talk about
right now is under Skeleton and it's
| | 02:17 | called the Joint tool.
| | 02:18 | Now what this does is it allows you to
draw what are called skeletons or joints.
| | 02:24 | And what these joints do is they're used
as-- they are basically proxy objects.
| | 02:29 | They are just objects that are in the scene.
| | 02:30 | They don't render, and they give you the
tools you need to actually deform other things.
| | 02:36 | So let's go ahead and just
use the basic joint tool.
| | 02:38 | I will show you how to draw one, and
then we will put one in the character's arm.
| | 02:43 | So under Skeleton we have
what's called the Joint tool.
| | 02:46 | We can either get to it
here or here on the shelf.
| | 02:49 | I am going to go here to Joint tool.
| | 02:51 | And when we do, our cursor changes and
all you do is left-click, and what we've
| | 02:57 | done is we've laid down what's called a joint.
| | 03:00 | Now what this is is it's kind of
a joint like an elbow or a shoulder.
| | 03:05 | What we're doing is we are actually
drawing the points where things bend.
| | 03:08 | So if I click again, you can see it's
created another joint and in between
| | 03:13 | those it's drawn something similar to a bone.
| | 03:16 | So if I draw three of these, and then
hit Enter, you can see I've created what's
| | 03:21 | called a joint chain.
| | 03:23 | So I could select one and then rotate it.
| | 03:26 | I can also move it to
reshape the joints, and so on.
| | 03:32 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at this in the Outliner.
| | 03:35 | So I am going to go into Window > Outliner.
| | 03:37 | You'll see here we've got joint1 and
then if I expand this, you will see that
| | 03:43 | it's automatically created a hierarchy.
| | 03:46 | So I have joint1, joint2, and joint3.
| | 03:50 | Now these are basically just proxy objects.
| | 03:53 | So each joint is actually that circular object.
| | 03:59 | This kind of bone shaped object that's
in between them really isn't selectable.
| | 04:04 | It really just is a visual guide that says,
oh, I've got joints between these objects.
| | 04:10 | So if I were to change out the hierarchy,
let's say I was to select joint2 and
| | 04:15 | I was in the Outliner and I middle-
clicked and I dragged it above the joint,
| | 04:19 | you will notice that once the hierarchy
is broken this connection disappears.
| | 04:24 | The joint is still there, but there's
no indication of connection between them.
| | 04:29 | So all I have to do is just middle-
click on joint2, drag it again over joint1,
| | 04:34 | and the hierarchy goes back to
normal, and the connection is visible.
| | 04:40 | So let's take a look at the
joints in the Attribute Editor.
| | 04:43 | So if you look at the joint, you will
see it really only has one tab here.
| | 04:47 | And one is for transform attributes.
| | 04:49 | How far it's moving.
| | 04:50 | So if I move it, you can
see that these numbers change.
| | 04:53 | If I rotate it or scale it, whatever I
do, these numbers basically just reflect
| | 04:59 | what's going on in the Channel Box right there.
| | 05:02 | Now in the Attribute Editor, you
also have a couple of other ones.
| | 05:07 | We can actually create
what are called draw styles.
| | 05:11 | So we are drawing this as a bone.
| | 05:14 | You can also draw it as a circle.
| | 05:18 | In your viewport and let's go into
Perspective viewport here, you could actually
| | 05:22 | see these as circles rather than bones.
| | 05:25 | We could also see them
as what are called sticks.
| | 05:29 | So you can actually have
something as a renderable object.
| | 05:32 | So this will actually render.
| | 05:33 | We can show them as squares.
| | 05:35 | Really whatever you want.
| | 05:37 | I am going to leave it at Bones, because
that's probably the easiest way to visualize this.
| | 05:41 | We can also create what are called
joint labels, so if we wanted to, we could
| | 05:47 | actually create a label and we
could call it whatever we want it.
| | 05:51 | Now this really matters when you're
rigging human type characters, because you
| | 05:55 | can actually give these names.
| | 05:57 | You can call it a shoulder
and actually draw a label.
| | 06:02 | So I can say this is my shoulder,
this is the elbow, for example, and draw
| | 06:07 | that label and you could say, well,
this is actually my left elbow and this
| | 06:12 | is my left shoulder.
| | 06:14 | Now this is kind of nice for
reference, but there's also a deeper, deeper
| | 06:19 | purpose to this and that is when you
get seriously into character animation
| | 06:24 | and you get into things like motion
capture, that sort of thing, it's great to
| | 06:29 | be able to tell Maya that this is a
shoulder, and that's an elbow, and then when
| | 06:33 | your mapping something like
motion capture data to your character.
| | 06:37 | It will know to place the elbow
motion on that particular joint.
| | 06:41 | So it's great for mapping
one character to another.
| | 06:45 | Now we are not going to get nearly as deep
into that, but just know that it's there.
| | 06:49 | So now that you understand a little
bit about joints, let's go ahead and draw
| | 06:51 | some for our character.
| | 06:53 | I am going to go hop back out and
actually I am just going to go and
| | 06:56 | select this and delete it.
| | 06:57 | Let's go ahead and draw some
new bones for our character.
| | 07:01 | I am going to go into my side
view and zoom into my character.
| | 07:06 | Now what I want to do is I've got
this arm and I want to be able to draw a
| | 07:11 | joint that goes from the
shoulder, to the elbow, to the wrist.
| | 07:17 | So let's go ahead and draw that.
| | 07:19 | I am going go ahead and select my Joint
tool, and then for my shoulder, I am not
| | 07:23 | going to go right dead center on the shoulder.
| | 07:25 | I am going to go slightly above it,
just imperceptibly above it, and I am just
| | 07:31 | going to lay down that first joint.
| | 07:34 | Then for the elbow, I am going to go
right about here, right in the center.
| | 07:38 | There's actually a little bit of
detail here that allows my joint to bend.
| | 07:42 | So what I modeled this, I put a
couple of extra edge loops here and here.
| | 07:47 | So I just want to make sure that it goes here.
| | 07:49 | And again, for this one I want to
go slightly below the center line.
| | 07:54 | Now there is a reason that I'm doing
this. Snd then for the third one, for
| | 07:57 | the wrist, I just want to make sure I go
beyond the wrist and again I want to go above.
| | 08:01 | So now I am going to hit Enter.
| | 08:03 | Now what I wanted to make sure is that I've
got it going a little bit of a V along the axis.
| | 08:10 | So I want to make sure that the elbow is
a little bit lower, and that's going to
| | 08:13 | help the deformation when we get
what's called inverse kinematics.
| | 08:17 | So now that I have this drawn, I can go
back into my Perspective view and frame all,
| | 08:23 | and you can see that well, I drew
it, but I drew it along the center line.
| | 08:27 | So all I need to do now is just move
that and center it to my character.
| | 08:33 | Now there's a really handy tool in the
viewport and that's called X-ray joints.
| | 08:37 | When it's off, all the joints are hidden.
| | 08:41 | But when it's on, you can
actually see joints through the mesh.
| | 08:45 | And this is very handy when
you're doing character animation.
| | 08:48 | So I just want to make
sure that this is centered.
| | 08:51 | Now if I want, I could actually label
this and just go ahead and say, well,
| | 08:55 | this is left shoulder, and this is
left elbow, and this is left wrist.
| | 09:13 | Now that I have this,
I can certainly duplicate it.
| | 09:17 | So all I have to do is select the root
of the joints and just hit Ctrl+D for
| | 09:22 | duplicate and move the other side over.
| | 09:25 | Now I have modeled this symmetrically,
so I know that everything is going to
| | 09:28 | be the right size.
| | 09:30 | Then all I have to do is just rename,
and in fact, if I want to, I can go into
| | 09:34 | my Outliner and now I have this one
called LShoulder1, but actually it's
| | 09:37 | supposed to be Rshoulder, so basically just
rename this, RElbow and RWrist, and there we go.
| | 09:55 | So now the skeleton is all set up
and ready to go and ready to deform
| | 10:00 | the character's mesh.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Deforming a mesh using the Skin tool| 00:00 | Probably the biggest reason for
drawing a skeleton into your character is so
| | 00:04 | that that skeleton can be used to deform a mesh.
| | 00:07 | So let's take a look at how to deform meshes.
| | 00:10 | Let's go ahead and start
with a very simple cylinder.
| | 00:14 | We are just going to start with something very,
very simple, and then we'll work our way up.
| | 00:17 | So I am just going to go ahead and
create a simple polygonal cylinder and kind
| | 00:23 | of shape it like let's say the
leg or the arm of a character.
| | 00:30 | Now in order to deform this with the skeleton,
we need to go ahead and draw one in there.
| | 00:34 | So let's go ahead and do a very simple skeleton.
| | 00:37 | We are going to go Skeleton > Joint tool
and again, just draw one, two, three joints.
| | 00:45 | Now again what I am doing here is I
tend to draw things a little bit in this
| | 00:48 | V-shape and that just indicates the
direction of the bend, which helps later on
| | 00:52 | when you get more sophisticated into rigging.
| | 00:55 | So all I need to do in order to deform
this mesh is to create what's called a skin.
| | 01:02 | Now there are three types of skin.
| | 01:03 | There is Smooth Bind,
Interactive Skin Bind and Rigid Bind.
| | 01:08 | So let me show you the basics of these.
| | 01:10 | I am actually going to go
into my Perspective window here.
| | 01:12 | So all you have to do is select the
skeleton and all the joints or the hierarchy
| | 01:16 | of the skeleton and then Shift+select
your mesh. Then you can bind the skin.
| | 01:22 | So in this case, I am just going
to do what's called Smooth Bind.
| | 01:26 | Now Smooth Bind basically works
by what's called vertex weight.
| | 01:30 | So whatever vertex is closest to the joint
gets weighted more closely to that joint.
| | 01:36 | So once I have my Smooth Bind done, all I
have to do is select the joint and rotate it.
| | 01:42 | Let's go ahead and shade this.
And it will bend accordingly, very simple.
| | 01:47 | It's probably the
simplest way to skin a character.
| | 01:50 | I am going to see if I can undo this, let's go
ahead, yeah, so I have got this undone now.
| | 01:54 | So let's go ahead and select our joint
chain and select our mesh and let's go
| | 02:02 | ahead and do the second one,
which is called Interactive Skin Bind.
| | 02:06 | Now what this does, it's a
little bit more sophisticated.
| | 02:09 | What it does, it create these little
shapes around your joints and whatever part
| | 02:15 | of the mesh that falls into that
shape gets deformed by that joint.
| | 02:21 | So I can actually get interactive.
| | 02:24 | That is why they are
called Interactive Skin Bind.
| | 02:26 | I can actually scale this up or down.
| | 02:29 | I select a different joint.
| | 02:30 | I can actually scale that up or down,
and control very interactively how much of
| | 02:37 | that mesh gets deformed by that joint.
| | 02:40 | So now when I rotate that joint,
again it manipulates the mesh.
| | 02:46 | Now on this simple type of geometry
you might not see much of an effect, but
| | 02:50 | just know that that's how that work.
| | 02:52 | So I am going to go ahead and undo that.
In fact, another way to undo it is just
| | 02:58 | to go Edit > Delete by Type > History,
and now go ahead and get rid of any
| | 03:03 | deformation you have on it.
| | 03:05 | Again, I am going to select the
skeleton and the mesh and then let's do
| | 03:10 | what's called Rigid Bind.
| | 03:12 | Rigid Bind is the oldest
type of deformation in Maya.
| | 03:15 | It was the first type of deformation they had,
and this doesn't have really soft selection.
| | 03:19 | It's basically just the vertex is
either on one joint or the other.
| | 03:25 | So it's basically either it's on this
joint, or it's on this joint, and that's it.
| | 03:31 | But Rigid Bind has a number of other
tools that allow you to put lattices
| | 03:36 | around joints, that sort of thing, to
allow you to control a little bit more
| | 03:40 | closely how the bend works.
| | 03:43 | So those are some of the basics of Bind Skin.
| | 03:45 | Let's go ahead and use those on our character.
| | 03:48 | Let's go ahead and open him up.
| | 03:49 | I saved it out as Dog_16
and here we have the joints.
| | 03:56 | I did not put a skeleton through the hand.
| | 03:58 | So I'm going to actually move those out
so that we don't get so confused here.
| | 04:03 | So all we really want to
deform is this particular arm.
| | 04:07 | So for this really almost any one of
those binding should work because it's
| | 04:12 | really not all that sophisticated.
| | 04:14 | We really don't need the Interactive Skin Bind.
| | 04:17 | So in this particular one I am just
going to do Bind Skin > Smooth Bind and
| | 04:22 | that's the easiest way to do it.
| | 04:24 | So now I've got my arm
bending along with my character.
| | 04:30 | Let's go ahead and move that, pan back.
| | 04:35 | And we can do that again.
| | 04:36 | Select Skeleton, select the arm,
Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.
| | 04:46 | Now if you wanted, you could use
Interactive or Rigid Bind. Any one of those will
| | 04:49 | actually work for this
simple of a piece of geometry.
| | 04:53 | Just know that we have three different
ways to bind a skin to a skeleton in Maya
| | 04:59 | and each one has its own advantages.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating IK handles| 00:01 | Now when you're working with joints in
a character, there are several ways that
| | 00:04 | you may want to animate it and there
are times when you want to animate it and
| | 00:10 | actually fix points of the joint in place.
| | 00:13 | And to do this use what's
called Inverse Kinematics.
| | 00:17 | So I am going to go ahead and
just create a simple, simple joint.
| | 00:20 | We're going to go into Animation > Joint Tool,
and I am going to select create a simple joint.
| | 00:26 | Now this is the main reason why I tend to draw
drawing with a little bit of an angle to them.
| | 00:31 | So let me show you why I do this.
| | 00:33 | Is we are going to go ahead and hit
Enter, and I've created a simple joint chain.
| | 00:37 | Now this could be an arm or leg and
typically IK is used on what's called the legs.
| | 00:43 | So if we wanted to animate this, at this
point all we could do is animate it with rotation.
| | 00:50 | So if I wanted to, let's say this is
a leg, I could rotate it at the hip.
| | 00:54 | I could rotate it at the knee.
But if I wanted to, for example, bend the
| | 01:01 | characters leg and keep the foot
in place, I really can't do that.
| | 01:05 | I can't manipulate this with translation
without all the joints moving in one direction.
| | 01:11 | So right now it's only rotations, and
that's what's called forward kinematics.
| | 01:17 | So basically you start at
the root and move forward.
| | 01:21 | So, for example, let's go ahead and
create a very simple situation here.
| | 01:24 | Let's go ahead and create a simple sphere.
| | 01:29 | Let's say I wanted the end
of this to touch the sphere.
| | 01:32 | Let's say I wanted the
character to pick something up.
| | 01:34 | So what I need to do is position this,
and then I need to rotate this in order
| | 01:41 | so that it actually touches the sphere.
| | 01:43 | I can't just grab the end
and say here, touch the sphere.
| | 01:47 | But I can do, using what's
called inverse kinematics.
| | 01:50 | So I am going to go ahead and undo my way out
of this, and let's go ahead and set this up.
| | 01:56 | So in order to set up IK, what we
need is a joint chain, and then we create
| | 02:01 | what's called an IK handle.
| | 02:03 | So we go under Skeleton
and we select IK Handle Tool.
| | 02:07 | So go ahead and go to the top.
| | 02:09 | So that's the start of my chain,
and this is the end of my chain.
| | 02:16 | Now what it's done is it's
created another little object here.
| | 02:20 | So you can see here, I've got now my
joints have changed the color which means
| | 02:24 | they are under the control of
something else, and I've got this little brown
| | 02:28 | thing here at the bottom,
and that's called an IK handle.
| | 02:30 | You can see it right here.
| | 02:32 | Now if I go into my Outliner, you can see now
I've got my joints and I've got an IK Handle.
| | 02:39 | Now what the IK Handle does is it
takes control of that joint chain.
| | 02:44 | So if I move this, now the joints always stretch
between the beginning and end of that IK handle.
| | 02:54 | So now if I have that problem of I
want to set the end of my chain wherever I want,
| | 02:59 | I can do that very simply and this
is great, particularly for the feet and
| | 03:03 | legs of characters, but also really
for any sort of mechanical object.
| | 03:07 | Let's say you had a robot
and you wanted to pick it up.
| | 03:09 | You can very easily set
up an IK handle to do that.
| | 03:12 | So now I can place my foot
basically anywhere I want.
| | 03:17 | But there's still a little bit of a
problem here in that my top joint is
| | 03:22 | still free-floating.
| | 03:23 | Now in some cases this might be the
way you want this to work, but there are
| | 03:27 | times when I want to take this and
make sure that my bottom joint is locked.
| | 03:32 | So we can address this by going
into the attributes of the IK handle.
| | 03:36 | So select the IK handle, go into the
Attribute Editor, and now we can see we
| | 03:41 | have a number of attributes for the IK handle.
| | 03:45 | First of all, it tells you what the
start and end joint of the skeleton are,
| | 03:50 | then it goes into what's
called the IK Handle Attributes.
| | 03:55 | What I'm looking for is called Stickiness.
| | 03:58 | So when Stickiness is off, when I
move this the whole assembly moves.
| | 04:05 | But when I select my IK handle and
turns Stickiness on or make it sticky, now
| | 04:14 | that joint is sticky and it
doesn't move. So this is great.
| | 04:17 | So now I can actually move both ends
of the chain and both ends stick to
| | 04:23 | where they want to go.
| | 04:24 | So now there's also additional
attributes here for my IK Solver and one of the
| | 04:30 | most important ones is called IK Blend.
| | 04:33 | Now there are times when you
want to animate something using IK.
| | 04:38 | So, for example, let's
say I'm walking a character.
| | 04:41 | But there are also times when you
want to revert back to forward kinematics
| | 04:45 | or rotational control.
| | 04:47 | So, for example, if I position this here
and then I-- let's say a character wants
| | 04:51 | to walk and then swim and when it's
swimming you want to go back to rotations.
| | 04:56 | So what you can do is you can actually
turn it down by IK Blend and now the IK
| | 05:01 | handle is basically turned off
and I can rotate my joints now.
| | 05:05 | So if I rotate my joints, I can basically
turn this off. And this can be animated.
| | 05:11 | And as soon as it comes back on it snaps back.
| | 05:16 | Now there are other types of
parameters for this is as well.
| | 05:19 | Such as how a joint will twist.
That's if you have multiple joints.
| | 05:22 | You can certainly use more than two
joints in an IK chain and also another one
| | 05:27 | called Spring Solver and that's for
dynamics, which we won't be getting into.
| | 05:32 | So let's go ahead and take our
character and set him up with an the IK chain.
| | 05:36 | So let's go ahead and open the scene.
| | 05:38 | We have got Dog_17, which is our current dog.
| | 05:43 | And so now we have got these arms here
and I can rotate the joints, but I can't
| | 05:48 | move them with my IK chain.
| | 05:51 | So all I have to do is go into my IK
Handle tool, select my first joint and my
| | 05:58 | last joint, and now I've got my arm set.
| | 06:03 | Now I want my hand.
| | 06:05 | So let's go into our Outliner
here and see how this is all set up.
| | 06:09 | I've got my handle here, but I want
my hand or my glove of my character
| | 06:15 | to control the handle.
| | 06:16 | Well the easiest thing to do is just to take
that handle, drag it and create a hierarchy.
| | 06:21 | So I am middle-clicking,
dragging it above the left glove.
| | 06:25 | So now when I select the left glove,
the handle itself is underneath.
| | 06:30 | So now by selecting that glove,
moving the glove moves the arm.
| | 06:35 | So those are some tips and tricks for
using IK handles and as you can see,
| | 06:40 | it's a great way to make sure your
character's hands and feet stay where you
| | 06:44 | want them to be placed.
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| Creating blend shapes| 00:00 | Now, there are going to be times when
you want to animate the shape of something.
| | 00:05 | You want be able to move
from one shape to another.
| | 00:09 | Maya's Blend Shapes really helps with that.
| | 00:12 | Let me show you some real basics of it,
and then we'll apply it to our character.
| | 00:16 | So, let's go ahead and just create a
simple object here, and let's say I have a
| | 00:24 | sphere and I am going to
go ahead and duplicate it.
| | 00:31 | Do Ctrl+D, duplicate it, and
then Shift+D to duplicate it again.
| | 00:38 | So, this original sphere, I am going
to go ahead and keep that the way it is.
| | 00:43 | Then I am going to create to what I call shapes.
| | 00:46 | So, I am going to select some vertices
of these, and maybe even go into soft
| | 00:51 | selection, so make sure I have that turned on,
and just kind of deform one of these spheres.
| | 01:02 | Then go ahead into the other
one and deform the second one in a
| | 01:06 | slightly different way.
| | 01:08 | So, now I have these three objects here.
| | 01:12 | Now, they all were created
based upon the same objects.
| | 01:16 | So, I've got this sphere and then I
have got the same sphere basically with
| | 01:20 | just a different shape,
and this one has another one.
| | 01:24 | It's the same object, just a different shape.
| | 01:27 | Now, what I can do is I can actually
animate between all of these shapes using
| | 01:31 | what's called Blend Shape.
| | 01:32 | Now all I have to do is Shift+Select the
shapes I want to use and then my master object.
| | 01:39 | So, I select my master object last.
| | 01:42 | So, in this case I am
going to select my sphere last.
| | 01:44 | You know it's selected last when it's
bright green and everything else is white.
| | 01:49 | Then all I have to do is make sure I
go into Animation and then under Create
| | 01:53 | Deformers at the top of the list
we have one called Blend Shape.
| | 01:56 | So when I do that, well not much happens.
| | 02:01 | But actually something happens behind the scene.
| | 02:04 | So, if we look down here under INPUTS
we have what's called blendShape, and we
| | 02:09 | have a value for each one of these.
| | 02:11 | So, Sphere3 and Sphere2 each
can now contribute to this.
| | 02:16 | Probably the easiest way to do
this is by using an Animation Editor
| | 02:20 | called Blend Shape.
| | 02:21 | When I open that up it brings up this
little floating window and it allows me
| | 02:27 | to use these sliders to dial
in each one of these shapes.
| | 02:31 | So, if I wanted to look
like this one, I dial it in.
| | 02:34 | If I wanted to look like that one, I dial it in.
| | 02:37 | If I wanted half one and half the
other, then I can dial that in as well.
| | 02:43 | This is a really great way to
create all sorts of shape animation.
| | 02:48 | So, for example, you could
have a flowing blade of grass.
| | 02:51 | You could animate between those.
| | 02:53 | Or in this case with Character
Animation you can use it for blinks.
| | 02:56 | You can use it for mouse shapes,
such as dialog, that sort of thing.
| | 03:00 | It's very handy for a lot
of different applications.
| | 03:03 | So, let me show you an
application that works for our character.
| | 03:06 | I am going to go ahead and open a
scene, Dog_18, and this is our basic dog.
| | 03:13 | Now, what we've got is I've
created a second head for the dog.
| | 03:20 | So, let's go ahead and do a simple blink.
| | 03:22 | So, I am going to go ahead and
just take this head and duplicate it.
| | 03:30 | Then I am going to take my
duplication and I am going to model it.
| | 03:34 | So, we are going to go
ahead and select some vertices.
| | 03:37 | Soft Selection, I still have Soft
Selection on, which actually will help with this.
| | 03:41 | Then I can just go ahead and
start manipulating my surface.
| | 03:47 | All I have to do is just go ahead and
select the vertices for the upper and
| | 03:53 | lower lid and dial them closed.
| | 03:57 | Well, I am going to go ahead
and just do it very quickly.
| | 04:02 | Once we do that, all I have to do is
select this, select my head, and then
| | 04:06 | just do Blend Shape.
| | 04:08 | Go to my Blend Shape window and you
can see I'm getting a blink, but it's
| | 04:15 | not quite the same.
| | 04:17 | I am actually going to go
ahead and Delete History on this.
| | 04:19 | Let's go ahead and just use my preset head here.
| | 04:25 | So, I've got in my Outliner.
| | 04:29 | You'll find there's an actual
object here called Head_Blink.
| | 04:33 | Then all we have to do is do
Display > Show > Selection.
| | 04:38 | You can see that I've actually modeled that.
| | 04:41 | It took a little bit of time, so I
didn't want to go through that whole process.
| | 04:44 | But all I did was exactly what I did before.
| | 04:46 | Took the head, copied it and then
modeled it, so that I have the blink.
| | 04:51 | So, all I have to do is select this
head, select the head that I'm using,
| | 04:55 | Create > Blend Shape.
| | 04:57 | So, now that I have that Blend Shape,
I can go in to my Animation Editors and
| | 05:02 | now I've got a very nice blink.
| | 05:04 | You got to make sure that as these
things blink that they come out and
| | 05:10 | completely cover the eye,
because the eyes are somehwat spherical.
| | 05:13 | So, now I've got my
character so that he can blink.
| | 05:17 | Now, this Blend Shape can be
used for all sorts of things.
| | 05:19 | You could obviously use it for mouth position.
| | 05:21 | So, if you want to open his mouth or
make him smile, do that sort of stuff,
| | 05:25 | you can certainly do that.
| | 05:26 | You can also use it in any
other type of organic animations.
| | 05:30 | So, if you wanted to just model a
couple of different shapes, you can then just
| | 05:34 | blend between those.
| | 05:35 | It's really a great way to animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging nonlinear deformers| 00:00 | There are other ways to do
deformations that can be animated.
| | 00:04 | We looked at a couple of them in
modeling and those were called the
| | 00:07 | Nonlinear Derformers.
| | 00:08 | Those can also be used for animation.
| | 00:11 | So, let's just show you how to animate
those to rig up this character for that.
| | 00:14 | We have the character ears and as
he moves around, you typically want to
| | 00:19 | see a floppy eared character.
| | 00:21 | So, we can do that very simply using
what's called the Nonlinear Deformer.
| | 00:25 | So I am going to select the ear, Create
Deformers, and under Nonlinear, remember these?
| | 00:32 | We used them in modeling.
| | 00:34 | The one I want to use here
is called the Bend Deformer.
| | 00:38 | So, when I select this, you can see what
happens is this little object comes up here.
| | 00:43 | I can click and see it in the Outliner
here, and it's called the bend1Handle and
| | 00:49 | if I show this in X-ray mode,
you can kind of see how that looks.
| | 00:54 | If I go to the Attribute Editor for
this handle, you can see that-- there is
| | 00:58 | actually a node here called bend1
and it can actually bend that ear.
| | 01:03 | But if you notice, the ear itself is
not bending along where it should bend.
| | 01:09 | It should actually be bending where it's
attached to his head, which is right about here.
| | 01:14 | All I have to do is select my deformer
and then just move it up, so that the
| | 01:21 | center of that is right around
where that ear attaches to the head.
| | 01:26 | Now, once I have that, so
then I can just start bending it.
| | 01:30 | Now, one thing you couldn't do also is
change what's called this High and Low Bound.
| | 01:34 | Now by making the Low Bound a little
bit bigger, you can see how it extrudes
| | 01:39 | down beyond the bottom of that head,
and I can also restrict my High Bound.
| | 01:46 | This just gives me a better
visual clue as to what I've got.
| | 01:49 | So, all I have to do is select this,
and now I can bend his ear accordingly.
| | 01:54 | So, I am going to go ahead and set that to 0.
| | 01:57 | Let's go ahead and just
do that for his other ear.
| | 02:00 | So, I am going to select the ear,
Create Deformers > Nonlinear > Bend.
| | 02:07 | Then I know right away that I am
going to have to move this up to the point
| | 02:11 | where the ear attaches.
| | 02:15 | Then just go ahead and dial
in that High and Low Bound.
| | 02:18 | Now, this is really just a visual cue.
| | 02:22 | So, you don't absolutely
have to do this part of it.
| | 02:24 | But I like doing it, so that way I know
a little bit more closely what I'm doing
| | 02:28 | with this particular character, and there we go.
| | 02:31 | So, that's how you make the
character's ears all floppy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finalizing the character| 00:00 | So now we have our dog pretty much rigged.
| | 00:03 | We've got everything kind of in place.
| | 00:05 | So I've got my arms, my gloves actually
move the hands, and my ears are floppy,
| | 00:11 | and I've got the blinks.
| | 00:12 | But I still haven't tied him
altogether into a complete character.
| | 00:18 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:19 | I've got my Outliner here.
| | 00:21 | You'll notice that each part is separate.
| | 00:25 | I don't really have a whole hierarchy here.
| | 00:27 | So if I selected my body, you'll
notice I can just move that away.
| | 00:31 | He is not all tied together.
| | 00:33 | This is where hierarchies really come in handy.
| | 00:36 | So, for example, if I want the head to
move along with the body, then I need to
| | 00:40 | place it under the body in the hierarchy.
| | 00:43 | So I'm going to go ahead and middle-
click over the head. Drag it directly over
| | 00:50 | that body node in my Outliner.
| | 00:52 | So now, everything goes together.
| | 00:56 | But underneath my head, I really need to
have my eyes and my ears also go together.
| | 01:03 | So, let's go ahead and take both of
these eyes, drop them over the head.
| | 01:08 | So now, that all works together.
| | 01:12 | Let's go ahead to the ears.
| | 01:14 | Here is an issue that's
going to come up with ears.
| | 01:16 | If I drag the ears themselves
over the head and I move them, these
| | 01:24 | deformers don't go with them.
| | 01:26 | So let me show you what the
problem is going to be here.
| | 01:30 | If I take this bend and I bend that ear
| | 01:34 | and then I actually move the head of the
character, notice how that gets all weird.
| | 01:42 | Well, that's because the actual
shape of that is controlled by this bend.
| | 01:50 | So I need to move the bend
itself along with the head.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to middle-click up both of
these and put those so that they move
| | 01:59 | along with the head as well.
| | 02:00 | So now, if I select this and bend it,
it should just go along with the head.
| | 02:09 | Okay, so you need to make sure that
those deformers go along with the objects
| | 02:15 | that they're deforming.
| | 02:16 | Now we have a similar problem with the arms.
| | 02:21 | So what's really moving the arms on
this character are two things,. Because I
| | 02:26 | have IK setup, I've got this shoulder
which is set up to move and I've got the
| | 02:33 | glove, which is set up to move the other end.
| | 02:37 | So you think, okay, so I've got the
shoulder of the skeleton and the glove
| | 02:43 | moving along with the character.
| | 02:46 | So I need those to be under the body.
| | 02:49 | I need those within that body hierarchy.
| | 02:51 | So I can middle-click on
these, and drag them over here.
| | 02:55 | So now when I move the body, everything moves.
| | 02:59 | Now the one thing that I did not put
underneath this hierarchy is the actual arm
| | 03:04 | itself, because the arm is
deformed by the skeleton.
| | 03:10 | If I would've drag this under the body,
then what I would be getting will be--
| | 03:15 | You see how that jumps?
| | 03:16 | Why that is is because what's
happening is is he is getting a
| | 03:20 | double deformation.
| | 03:21 | So as soon as I put it under that body,
the position of the body is deforming it
| | 03:27 | because it's in a hierarchy.
| | 03:29 | Then the shoulder joints are performing
it because it has a skin modifier on it.
| | 03:36 | So what I need to do is take these arms, and
make sure that they are not in that hierarchy.
| | 03:42 | So, I'm going to go ahead and do the right arm.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to make sure that
the right arm is under the body.
| | 03:48 | Then these two things, the actual
things that deform, I really can't touch.
| | 03:53 | So I'm going to go ahead and put those
into a group and just call that Deformed.
| | 04:01 | In some rigs, you'll actually see
people type the letters "do not touch."
| | 04:05 | But I'm just going to go Deformed.
| | 04:07 | That way I know that these are things
that are already being deformed by other
| | 04:11 | things in the scene.
| | 04:12 | So now I can select my character and I
can move him around and then I can also
| | 04:17 | move his arms and his head.
| | 04:19 | Now the reason I didn't do the lower
body is because ultimately he'll be
| | 04:23 | sitting on the scooter.
| | 04:25 | So his lower body will be
pretty much fixed in place.
| | 04:28 | All that's really going to be
moving is his arms and his head.
| | 04:32 | If I wanted to, I can actually go
through and use all of these same techniques
| | 04:35 | to rig the entire character
and make him entirely deformable.
| | 04:39 | But for this situation, we're just
going to work with the arms and the head.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging the character to the scooter| 00:01 | Now, the whole goal of this project is
to actually get the dog on the scooter
| | 00:05 | and have him ride the scooter.
| | 00:08 | So we've got the dog already.
| | 00:10 | Let's bring in the scooter
and finish out the process.
| | 00:14 | So we're going to go ahead and instead
of Open, we're actually going to use a
| | 00:18 | new function here and that's called Import.
| | 00:20 | Now, I have saved out the
scooter that we were working with.
| | 00:24 | I just called it Scooter_Final.
| | 00:26 | It should have everything we need in it.
| | 00:28 | So let's go ahead and import Scooter_Final.
| | 00:31 | Now, what that does is it brings the
contents of another scene into your scene.
| | 00:36 | Now, when we import, we can import Maya files.
| | 00:39 | We can also import other types
of files, such as FBX or OBJ.
| | 00:44 | So if you're bringing in other types
of geometry, you do it here, but we're
| | 00:48 | just using Maya files.
| | 00:49 | So let's go ahead and bring in
Scooter_Final.mb. There it is.
| | 00:54 | So since we have placed everything in
the center, you can see that everything is
| | 00:58 | pretty close and I plan for this to
have it actually pretty close in size.
| | 01:04 | All we have to do now is
position the dog on the scooter.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to go ahead and take my dog's
body and I'm going to go into my Side viewport.
| | 01:16 | Let's go ahead and just
do some positioning here.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to go ahead and move it, just
so his rear end is kind of on that seat.
| | 01:26 | Now, the thing is is that his legs
aren't bending here, but that's okay
| | 01:31 | because when he is riding this, his feet are
just going to be solid to the scooter itself.
| | 01:37 | So I really don't need to rig
his legs for this individual scene.
| | 01:40 | Now if you're going to use this dog
somewhere else, yeah, you'd have to rig his legs.
| | 01:45 | But for this, let's just go ahead and do this.
| | 01:47 | So I'm going to go ahead and just select
vertices of the body and just move his legs.
| | 01:55 | I'm literally just going to model
him so that his legs are in place.
| | 01:59 | It's kind of a hack way to do
it, but it works really well.
| | 02:02 | Sometimes when you're in production,
the shortest distance between the two
| | 02:07 | points is the best methods.
| | 02:08 | So all I had to do is just kind of model
him so that his feet are on the scooter.
| | 02:14 | So go back in Object mode, and there he is.
| | 02:18 | He is pretty much on the scooter.
| | 02:18 | Now, I could probably do a little bit
more tweaking here, maybe set him down on
| | 02:22 | the seat a little bit, but
for now that's pretty good.
| | 02:25 | Now, I also need to get his
hands onto the handlebars.
| | 02:29 | That's pretty simple.
| | 02:31 | So all I need to do is just move those
gloves down so that they fit the handlebars.
| | 02:37 | Now, he does need to be
grasping these handlebars.
| | 02:40 | For the scene I have, he is not
going to take his hands off those.
| | 02:44 | So again, I'm just going to
do some very simple modeling.
| | 02:46 | Now, I could do this in one of two ways.
| | 02:48 | I could just model a hand this close
and do a blend shape, or I can just very
| | 02:53 | simply model it into place.
| | 02:56 | So I'm just going to go ahead and
rotate some of these vertices and literally
| | 03:01 | just get his hand on that handlebar.
| | 03:04 | I'm going to go ahead and select this
edge loop here, double-click on this.
| | 03:10 | I'll go ahead in here and rotate that.
| | 03:15 | Again, I'm just trying to position this
so that his hand is there. Very simple.
| | 03:20 | Let's go ahead and do the
same thing for his other hand.
| | 03:22 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this hand and move it down and onto that
| | 03:34 | handlebar, maybe move it out
a little bit. There we go.
| | 03:38 | Pretty much what I want.
| | 03:40 | Again, I'm just going to go ahead and do
just a really quick modeling of his hands.
| | 03:49 | So I'm just going to grab those
vertices, rotate them, and move them down.
| | 03:55 | Then for this one here, I'm going
to go ahead into Edge mode here.
| | 03:59 | Double-click on this edge,
and then rotate that as well.
| | 04:05 | So there we go, very simple.
| | 04:08 | His hands are now on the handlebars.
| | 04:10 | But we still have a problem,
because he is not attached to the scooter.
| | 04:16 | If I were to grab this main node of
the scooter and move it, well, the scooter is
| | 04:21 | just going to drive off without him.
| | 04:23 | We don't want that to happen.
| | 04:24 | Also, when I rotate the handlebars of
the scooter, I want his hands to be stuck
| | 04:31 | to those handlebars as well.
| | 04:33 | So let's go ahead into this
and do some work in the Outliner.
| | 04:37 | So I've got my Scooter locator.
| | 04:40 | Underneath this locator is
everything that comprises that scooter.
| | 04:44 | So what I want to do is take my body of
my character, middle-click and drag, and
| | 04:50 | place it underneath that locator.
| | 04:51 | So now when I select this locator,
he is moving with the scooter.
| | 04:57 | So all I have to do is animate this
locator and he will animate with it.
| | 05:02 | But I still need to figure out the handlebars.
| | 05:05 | Well, the handlebars are
really just a separate locator.
| | 05:08 | They are just this locator to which
everything in the handlebars is connected.
| | 05:13 | So if I go down here, you'll see that
I've got this locator here called Steering.
| | 05:22 | Underneath that are all the shapes
that comprise the fender and the steering
| | 05:29 | columns and the headlights and everything.
| | 05:31 | So all I need to do with this is just,
again, just another little hierarchy trick.
| | 05:35 | I need to grab both gloves, which
are actually in the body right now, and
| | 05:40 | middle-click and reconnect them and put
them underneath that Steering locator.
| | 05:49 | So now when I select that,
notice how it selects the gloves.
| | 05:53 | Now when I steer this, his
hands will go with it. Very simple.
| | 06:00 | So now he is all set and ready to go.
| | 06:03 | So now we've got-- we can move the
scooter, we can steer the scooter, and we can
| | 06:13 | turn his head, so that he looks
at us as he drives the scooter.
| | 06:18 | So now that we've got all of this set,
we're ready to animate our scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
| 10. Animating in Maya |
