IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I am George Maestri, and
welcome to Maya 2011 New Features.
| | 00:08 | Maya 2011 has introduced a number of
new features to make the software more
| | 00:12 | robust and easy to use.
| | 00:14 | Probably the most important new
feature is the brand-new interface that gives
| | 00:17 | Maya an updated look.
| | 00:19 | Included in this new interface is a
great new color chooser and enhancements to
| | 00:23 | a number of important menus.
| | 00:25 | For those who do NURBS modeling, the
addition of Bezier Curves gives you a whole
| | 00:29 | new way to draw in Maya.
| | 00:31 | Polygonal modelers will appreciate
the new Connect Component and Spin Edge tools,
| | 00:35 | as well as Object Level Soft Selection.
| | 00:38 | Character animators will
appreciate the new rigging tools in Maya.
| | 00:41 | These include new ways to visualize
and select joints, colored feedback for
| | 00:46 | adjusting skin weights, and interactive
skin bind, which is a whole new way to
| | 00:50 | connect a character to a skeleton.
| | 00:52 | So let's get started
with Maya 2011 New Features.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | lynda.com Premium members can download
the Exercise Files used in this tutorial.
| | 00:08 | When you download those Exercise Files,
go ahead and just place them on your
| | 00:12 | Desktop, like I have here.
| | 00:15 | And when you open those
Exercise Files, you'll notice that there is one
| | 00:18 | folder per chapter.
| | 00:21 | So when we actually go into each
chapter, that's where the folder will be.
| | 00:26 | And each folder has the Maya files
needed for that particular chapter.
| | 00:33 | So go ahead and place the
Exercise Files on your Desktop and let's continue.
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1. The New Maya InterfaceOverview of the new Maya interface| 00:00 | Without a doubt, the most noticeable new
feature in Maya 2011 is the updated interface.
| | 00:07 | Probably the biggest change in
the interface is the color scheme.
| | 00:11 | Now, Autodesk has made Maya 2011 a lot
darker and they have also added this
| | 00:16 | kind of nice gradient in the viewports.
| | 00:18 | Now, this just makes it a
little bit easier on the eyes.
| | 00:22 | Now, in terms of how much the
interface has changed, it really hasn't
| | 00:26 | changed all that much.
| | 00:27 | In fact, I have got Maya 2010 open here,
and you can see that, well, pretty much
| | 00:33 | everything is in the same place.
| | 00:35 | The only thing about Maya
2010 is that it's a lot brighter.
| | 00:39 | So if I minimize this, you can see how
pretty much everything is in the same place.
| | 00:44 | You still have your menu sets here,
we still have our shelves, we still have
| | 00:50 | controls for the viewports, navigation
is identical, and everything is pretty
| | 00:55 | much in the same place.
| | 00:57 | But there are some other subtle
interface tweaks under the hood that you'll
| | 01:01 | notice as you go through Maya and I'll be
showing you those in the rest of this chapter.
| | 01:07 | Probably the first thing I want to show
you is the File > Open and File > Save
| | 01:13 | menu, which has changed a little bit.
| | 01:15 | So let's go ahead to our File >
Open menu and let's go into Open Scene.
| | 01:20 | Now, you can see that the File > Open
menu is a lot bigger and a lot different than
| | 01:25 | it was in previous versions of Maya.
| | 01:28 | One of the nice things here is we
can actually choose different bookmarks.
| | 01:33 | Now, on this Windows system it's
actually going to choose My Computer.
| | 01:37 | And also, if you notice in all the
windows we have these little dotted lines,
| | 01:41 | and when you mouse over those, they
highlight and they allow you to basically
| | 01:47 | resize windows and window panes.
| | 01:49 | So you can actually make
things bigger and smaller.
| | 01:52 | So if you have a really long file
name, you can actually expand it to
| | 01:55 | create room for that.
| | 01:58 | And then also we can take a
look at our default project.
| | 02:01 | We can also, if we have multiple
projects, we can use this pull-down menu.
| | 02:06 | We also have a pull-down menu here
that allows us to go to different windows.
| | 02:11 | So I am going to go back
to my Chap01 window here.
| | 02:14 | Here, along the right-side, we have our
navigation controls and in fact, if we
| | 02:19 | mouse over these, you can see as the
window hints, we can actually go to back,
| | 02:23 | to the previous directory, we can go up
a level, we can actually create a new
| | 02:28 | folder, and we can actually
do different types of views.
| | 02:31 | We can do List View or we can do a Detail View.
| | 02:35 | Along here we have options.
| | 02:37 | Now, this will change depending
upon what type of file you are using.
| | 02:42 | Now, for just basic Maya files, it's
just going to have General Options and
| | 02:46 | Referencing, but if you have
different types of files, we will have File
| | 02:50 | Type Specific Options.
| | 02:53 | So we can also along the bottom
here select what type of file we want.
| | 02:57 | I am just going to go
ahead and select All Files.
| | 02:59 | I am going to select Head_01 and open
that, and that's just a little head model
| | 03:04 | here that we can select.
| | 03:06 | Now let me go ahead and
show you the other menus.
| | 03:10 | We can also do a Save Scene As,
and again, we have a little bit of a
| | 03:15 | different menu here.
| | 03:16 | We have all of the same things, such
as bookmarks, the project and so on.
| | 03:21 | Along the side here we have options.
| | 03:23 | So we can change the type of file and
we can also copy things such as 3D Paint
| | 03:29 | Texture Options, Referencing Options.
| | 03:32 | This is important if you
are using referencing files.
| | 03:35 | You can also change the type of file,
whether you want Maya ASCII or binary.
| | 03:39 | I am going to go ahead and cancel this,
because what I want to show you is
| | 03:42 | another menu here, which is the Export menu.
| | 03:46 | So we're going to go File > Export All,
and everything here is pretty much the same,
| | 03:52 | but let's go ahead and
scroll down and select FBX export.
| | 03:57 | And when you do that, you'll notice that a
bunch of File Type Specific Options come up.
| | 04:04 | So what we can do here, these are
the options for exporting FBX files.
| | 04:09 | Now, previously you would have gotten a
separate window with these options and
| | 04:12 | what's really nice is that these
options just kind of show up as you save.
| | 04:16 | So you can, for example, use all of
your FBX options, such as what type of
| | 04:21 | geometry you want to export, whether
or not you want to export animation
| | 04:24 | or cameras and so on.
| | 04:27 | You can also change your FBX Plug-in
version, which you used to be able to do in
| | 04:32 | the other Export window, but now it's
all kind of in one big window, which
| | 04:37 | actually makes it very, very nice.
| | 04:39 | So again, we can just go ahead and give it
a name and then just go ahead and export it.
| | 04:44 | So that's kind of a brief overview of
the general interface as well as the File
| | 04:50 | > Open and Save menus, and we are
going to go ahead onto some additional
| | 04:55 | options in the next lesson.
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| Working with tabbed windows in Maya| 00:00 | The next new interface feature I want
to show you concerns the Channel Box and
| | 00:05 | the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:07 | There is a lot of new ways to control
these as well as tear them off, float them
| | 00:11 | above the workspace, and also there is
a nice new tabbed interface that allows
| | 00:15 | you to get easy access to
these important windows.
| | 00:19 | So I'm going to go ahead and select this
model, which is in the scene, and right
| | 00:24 | now I'm in the Channel Box.
| | 00:26 | Now, typically how we would get
between the Channel Box and the Attribute
| | 00:30 | Editor, we'd go up to the top right
here and just click this button and that
| | 00:35 | would rotate between the
Channel Box and the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:39 | But what Maya 2011 adds are these
little tabs along the side, so all I have to
| | 00:45 | do is just click on one or the other
and I can switch between the Attribute
| | 00:50 | Editor and the Channel Box.
| | 00:52 | Now, there is another way to use this,
which is, if I click on it, I can go into
| | 00:57 | the Attribute Editor. If I click on
it a second time, it goes away, which
| | 01:02 | actually gives me more space to work in.
| | 01:05 | And if I click on it again, it returns.
| | 01:09 | And the same for the Channel Box.
If I click on it one time, the Channel Box comes up.
| | 01:14 | Click on it a second time.
It goes away. I have more workspace.
| | 01:19 | Click on it again and it returns.
| | 01:22 | Now, this window that has the Channel
Box also has a bar along the side, which
| | 01:27 | allows me to scale it up and down.
| | 01:30 | And then along the top you'll notice I
have again these little dots and what
| | 01:34 | this does, it allows me to tear off
either the Channel Box or the Attribute
| | 01:39 | Editor and float it above the workspace.
| | 01:42 | So all I have to do is left-click, hold,
and drag, and you'll notice the Channel
| | 01:49 | Box tears off and the Attribute
Editor comes up along the side.
| | 01:54 | Now, if I want I can tear off
the Attribute Editor as well.
| | 01:59 | So all I need to do, again, is just
click and drag and now I have the Attribute
| | 02:04 | Editor floating above the workspace.
| | 02:06 | Now, this is a little tight on my
monitor, but if you have multiple monitors or
| | 02:12 | a larger monitor, this could be a
nice way to organize your workspace.
| | 02:17 | If you want to put it back the way it
was, all you have to do is click on the
| | 02:21 | window and drag it to the side, and
you'll notice here that this little dotted
| | 02:26 | line comes up once you get it
to the exact side of the window.
| | 02:29 | If I move it a little too far
up or down, this won't come up.
| | 02:33 | So you want to make sure that you get
that little dotted line and there it is.
| | 02:37 | Now, I can do the same
for the Channel Box as well.
| | 02:40 | You notice how once I get this over,
it kind of expands right there and all I
| | 02:45 | have to do is just drop it in that
little space and I'm back to normal.
| | 02:49 | So I have my Attribute Editor,
my Channel Box, or nothing.
| | 02:54 | So those are some really great ways
to organize your workspace with these
| | 02:58 | very important windows.
| | 03:00 | So go ahead and start using
this as you work with Maya.
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| Exploring the new Color Picker| 00:00 | One of the features, I really like is
the new color picker and this gives you a
| | 00:04 | lot more options in creating and
customizing the colors in your Maya scene.
| | 00:11 | Now I've got this model open. I'm just going
to go ahead and select it, because really I
| | 00:15 | just want something that has color on it.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to go into my Attribute
Editor and then I'm going to scroll over here
| | 00:22 | until I find a lambert4, which is
the skin color on this particular model.
| | 00:28 | Now what I want to do is scroll down
until I find this Color attribute here
| | 00:33 | and I'm going to single-click on this
and when I do this, it brings up a
| | 00:38 | small color picker.
| | 00:41 | This is actually new in terms of the
interface, but it's actually probably
| | 00:45 | fairly familiar to anybody who has used Maya.
| | 00:49 | We have what's called Color History,
which is the history of all the colors
| | 00:52 | we've put on this model, as well as some
stock colors like some stock grays and
| | 00:57 | the standard red, yellow and green and so on.
| | 01:01 | We also have a color wheel
with a color picker here.
| | 01:06 | We can also select via RGB values and
we can change those from 0 to 1, 0 to 255
| | 01:14 | or we can also use HSV or
Hue/Saturation and Intensity.
| | 01:20 | Now, this color picker is very similar
to what we've used in Maya before.
| | 01:24 | What's really cool is the new large color pickers.
| | 01:27 | I'm going to go ahead and click off of
this and when I double-click on this,
| | 01:32 | it's going to bring up the big color picker.
| | 01:36 | This in actually gives us a lot more control
over how we select and organize our colors.
| | 01:43 | Though along the top it has a Color
History, very similar to the one we saw on
| | 01:47 | the smaller color window and this
basically just gives the most recent colors
| | 01:51 | that we selected along
with some standard colors.
| | 01:54 | Now down here we actually have a color
wheel, and which again is very similar
| | 02:00 | to what we've had before which allows us to
basically select different types of colors and so on.
| | 02:06 | But we also have four different ways to
select colors. So we have a color wheel.
| | 02:11 | We have another one called Spectrum
which is pretty self-explanatory.
| | 02:15 | You just click on the color you want and so on.
| | 02:18 | We also have another one called Image.
| | 02:20 | Which I think is really cool, because
what you can do is you can actually hit
| | 02:24 | this Load button and you can actually
load in a JPEG or TIFF or TARGA or really
| | 02:30 | any image that Maya supports.
| | 02:32 | And you can actually eyedropper out a
color from that image. This is great,
| | 02:38 | if you want actually match an image
on the logo or in the backing plate or
| | 02:42 | something like that.
| | 02:43 | You can just take the color out of an
existing image. And the last one is called
| | 02:49 | the Blend and again this
is pretty self-explanatory.
| | 02:52 | You literally just click within
this window and you get the color.
| | 02:56 | Now if we go down further you can
see we have Numeric Input which again is
| | 03:00 | very similar to what we have before, RGB and
HSV, we can also change the values for the RGB.
| | 03:06 | Then the one I actually like, I'm going
to go ahead and minimize all these and
| | 03:11 | just open up the one called Color Palettes.
| | 03:13 | Now what this does is actually brings up
a standard color palette. What's really
| | 03:19 | nice is that I can actually load and save these.
| | 03:22 | So if I have stock colors from the
client or that we're using in a production,
| | 03:29 | I can actually load those from a gile, or
I can save out my stock colors to a file.
| | 03:36 | Now if I want to create a custom palette,
all I have to do is go into my color
| | 03:41 | selector, pick a color, for example
this dark red, and if I want to add it into
| | 03:47 | one of these slots, all I
have to do is right-click.
| | 03:53 | Once I right-click it adds it to
the slot. If I left-click it basically
| | 03:58 | just picks the colors.
| | 03:59 | So for example, if I want it to be
blue, I can just pick blue. If I want it to
| | 04:04 | be this skin color, all I
have to do is select this.
| | 04:08 | But if I change a color and want to
add that into this palette, right-click
| | 04:15 | is what does it.
| | 04:18 | And again, once we
customize a palette we can save it.
| | 04:23 | So as you can see this new
color picker is really powerful.
| | 04:26 | It's going to give you a lot more
options in how to select and organize
| | 04:31 | your colors within Maya.
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| Using the new Shelf Editor| 00:00 | The final new interface feature I
want to show you is the new Shelf Editor.
| | 00:06 | Now this may not be
something that a lot of people use.
| | 00:08 | But what it does is it allows you to
customize all of the icons on your shelves
| | 00:14 | and also create new shelves.
| | 00:15 | Now in order to get to it,
you basically have to have the Shelf window open and
| | 00:20 | then just click on this little down-
arrow and go into the Shelf Editor.
| | 00:25 | Now before I get into this, I want
to show you the old Shelf Editor.
| | 00:29 | And you'll see the differences immediately.
| | 00:31 | So I'm going to go into Maya 2010.
| | 00:34 | And again, the Shelf Editor is
pretty much in the same place.
| | 00:37 | So just go Shelf Editor.
| | 00:39 | And this is what it looked like before.
| | 00:41 | We had three tabs here. One for Shelves.
| | 00:43 | So you pick a shelf.
| | 00:45 | And then you pick the Shelf Contents.
| | 00:47 | And then you can edit the
commands that those shelves contain.
| | 00:52 | It's actually kind of cumbersome
compared to the new interface which actually
| | 00:56 | has two scrolling palettes.
| | 00:59 | So for example if I wanted to go
into say the Hair palette, I could
| | 01:04 | actually just go into that.
| | 01:05 | And it will automatically changed the
contents and actually selected the palette.
| | 01:11 | So for example if I go into
Fluids, you'll see it selects Fluids.
| | 01:14 | I go into subdivision
surfaces. It selects that.
| | 01:18 | And then I can select any one of those
tools within that or add new tools or
| | 01:23 | edit whenever I want or I can go into for
example create a custom shelf and so on.
| | 01:30 | Now the other nice new thing is that
it actually gives us little bit more
| | 01:33 | control over how any one icon looks.
| | 01:36 | So for example a Sculpt Geometry tool
here, we can actually change the label
| | 01:41 | color, the label background.
| | 01:44 | We can also create custom background colors.
| | 01:46 | So for example, if I tag this on
and off, you can see how that changes.
| | 01:50 | And again, my brand-new color picker
here, I can actually change that to
| | 01:55 | whatever color I want or I
can turn it back off if I want.
| | 02:00 | As you can see we have a lot of new options.
| | 02:02 | So for each of these we
also have two additional tabs.
| | 02:05 | One is the Command that you get
when you single-click on it.
| | 02:09 | So this would just create
the Sculpt Geometry tool.
| | 02:12 | Now these are what are called MEL commands.
| | 02:15 | Now if we go and do double-click one, we
actually have Sculpt Geometry tool option.
| | 02:19 | So now we have a double-click
option for objects on the shelf.
| | 02:23 | So for example, if I double-clicked on this,
I would actually get the options as well.
| | 02:28 | So as you can see the Shelf
Editor has been very much updated.
| | 02:32 | And it's actually much more
functional, easier to use.
| | 02:36 | And if you create custom tools,
you will really appreciate this new Shelf Editor.
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2. Modeling ToolsWorking with Bezier curves| 00:00 | One of the most important new modeling
features in Maya 2011 is the Bezier Curve tool.
| | 00:06 | Now you maybe familiar with Bezier
curves by using Adobe Illustrator or 3DS Max
| | 00:11 | or any number of other packages that use them.
| | 00:14 | Now Maya 2011 finally has
this method of drawing curves.
| | 00:18 | And it will serve you very, very well.
| | 00:20 | I think this is a very important feature.
| | 00:21 | Now we can get to Bezier
curves in one of two places.
| | 00:25 | Under the Create menu, we have Bezier
Curve tool or we can also go over to our
| | 00:31 | Curves shelf and select
the Bezier Curve tool here.
| | 00:34 | Now before I draw the curve,
I actually want to go into an
| | 00:38 | orthographic viewport
so I get a nice flat curve.
| | 00:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and just jump
out here and highlight my top menu and
| | 00:45 | hit my Spacebar and come back in.
| | 00:47 | So I'm going to go ahead and
select the Bezier Curve tool.
| | 00:50 | And as you notice the cursor changes to
an Input mode, this little cross, very
| | 00:55 | similar to how we draw a NURBS curve.
| | 00:57 | With the NURBS curve, you would just
start clicking and the curve would draw.
| | 01:01 | With the Bezier, you have to make a decision.
| | 01:03 | You have to either left-click
and drag or just left-click.
| | 01:08 | And let me show you what the difference is.
| | 01:11 | If I left-click and drag, you'll see
that what it does is it pulls out the very
| | 01:18 | familiar Bezier handle.
| | 01:20 | And what this does is it really
determines the shape of the curve.
| | 01:24 | Now we really won't see this
until we draw a second point.
| | 01:28 | So I'm going to go ahead
again and left-click and drag.
| | 01:31 | And you can see how this handle
defines the shape of the curve.
| | 01:36 | Now what's happening is, is that the
curve is actually becoming tangent to the
| | 01:41 | handle at that point.
| | 01:43 | And so the length of the point
determines the angle of the tangent.
| | 01:48 | And the angle of the handle determines
where that tangent comes into that point.
| | 01:53 | So again let me draw one more curve.
| | 01:55 | And you can see how you can make
that tangent go to this way or this way.
| | 01:59 | And the longer the tangent, the
less steep the angle and so on.
| | 02:04 | So because these handles are tangent,
it really helps you to draw a straight line.
| | 02:08 | So let's say I wanted to
draw a straight line here.
| | 02:11 | All I have to do is make sure that
this tangent is parallel to the line.
| | 02:16 | And I can be pretty much assured
that that line is going to be straight
| | 02:20 | between these two points.
| | 02:22 | Now another way to draw the point with
the Bezier Curve tool is to just click.
| | 02:27 | Now what this does is it creates a corner.
| | 02:30 | So if I click here, you can see
that well, it doesn't really create a corner.
| | 02:34 | Well, it does create a corner but
this side of the curve is actually still curved.
| | 02:39 | If I click again and don't drag, you
can see how this corner was created.
| | 02:45 | Let me do that one more time.
| | 02:46 | And you can see how I can create a
very nice series of straight lines.
| | 02:51 | Now when you want to create straight
lines and corners, the Bezier Curve tool is
| | 02:56 | going to be a lot easier then
the NURBS curve tools in Maya.
| | 03:00 | And I think this is one reason why
people are going to start using these types
| | 03:04 | of curves a lot more.
| | 03:05 | And again if I want to go back to my
other input method, I can just go ahead and
| | 03:10 | just click and drag.
| | 03:11 | Now once you're done with the input,
you can just go ahead and either hit the
| | 03:17 | Select mode or hit Escape.
| | 03:20 | And that'll go ahead and bring
it into the regular curve mode.
| | 03:23 | Now Bezier curves are pretty
much like any other curve in Maya.
| | 03:28 | You can do other types of
operations with Beziers.
| | 03:32 | So for example if we wanted to
open or close a curve, I can do that.
| | 03:35 | All I have to do is go over to
Surfaces, EditCurves > Open/Close Curves.
| | 03:41 | So you can see how I've
actually closed this curve out.
| | 03:44 | Now if you want to go ahead and edit
the curve, it's very similar to how you
| | 03:49 | would edit a NURBS curve.
| | 03:51 | All you have to do is just right-click
over the curve and select Control Vertex.
| | 03:56 | And this will bring up all of the vertices.
| | 03:59 | So I can select this.
| | 04:01 | And I can move it around.
| | 04:02 | So if I wanted to, I can
select the center which is vertex.
| | 04:07 | And that just repositions it.
| | 04:09 | If I select one of these ones on the
end, which is the handle, again I can
| | 04:13 | reshape the curve however I want.
| | 04:17 | Now for these particular points, which
have no handle, which are these corner
| | 04:21 | points again, all I can do is just
adjust the position of the curve.
| | 04:26 | And again there's no
tangent because these are corners.
| | 04:28 | I'm going to hit Escape.
| | 04:30 | Now I'm going to go ahead,
back out to Object mode.
| | 04:34 | And let's go back into
our Perspective View here.
| | 04:38 | And one of the other things I want to
show you is that Bezier curves can also be
| | 04:42 | used to build NURBS surfaces.
| | 04:45 | So if I take this particular curve and
let me just make a couple of copies of this.
| | 04:50 | I'm going to hit Ctrl+D, make one
copy and then I'm going to do that again.
| | 04:55 | Ctrl+D and so now we have three Bezier curves.
| | 05:00 | And let's just go ahead and do a simple loft.
| | 05:02 | hold down the Shift key.
| | 05:05 | Select them 1, 2, 3 and
then go into Surfaces > Loft.
| | 05:11 | You can see I've created a surface.
| | 05:13 | I'm going to go ahead and
shade that by hitting 5.
| | 05:15 | And you can see now I have a NURBS surface.
| | 05:19 | Again, if want to edit the surface, however,
you can see that this is a NURBS surface.
| | 05:25 | It has control vertices and hulls.
| | 05:29 | And the important thing here is
that it's not a Bezier patch surface.
| | 05:34 | It is a NURBS surface.
| | 05:36 | Now if you were to do is in a package
like Maya, you could actually have a
| | 05:39 | surface that has Beziers on it, but
this actually creates a NURBS surface.
| | 05:45 | And this is how it works in Maya.
| | 05:47 | But if you wanted to, you can go into the
originating curves, select Control Vertex,
| | 05:53 | and reshape those.
| | 05:55 | And that kind of gives you
a pseudo Bezier patch here.
| | 05:59 | So you can actually change this
surface by just changing these curves.
| | 06:03 | So as you can see this gives you a
lot of power and a couple of new ways to
| | 06:09 | create curves, very easy way to create
corners and a much better way to create tangents.
| | 06:15 | So go ahead and just play with Bezier curves.
| | 06:18 | You get used to them very,
very quickly. And I'm sure
| | 06:20 | it will become a very important
part of how you model NURBS surfaces within Maya.
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| Using the Connect Components tool| 00:00 | The next modeling tool I want to show you
Maya 2011 is the Connect Components tool.
| | 00:06 | Now what this does is it allows you to
draw edge loops fairly interactively on
| | 00:12 | any sort of polygonal model.
| | 00:14 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:16 | I'm going to go into Polygon mode and
then we're going to go into our Polygon shelf.
| | 00:21 | And I'm just going to go ahead and
select a plane and then just draw that out.
| | 00:26 | Now I'm actually going to go
into my plane shape here and select
| | 00:33 | Subdivisions width and height, middle
-click, and drag and give myself some
| | 00:38 | detail to work with.
| | 00:39 | And I'm going to go ahead and shade this.
| | 00:41 | And then just pull that above the
grid so we can see what we're working on.
| | 00:45 | So now in order to use Connect
Components, you have to select some components.
| | 00:51 | So the easiest way to do this, again,
is to right-click over this and it let us
| | 00:55 | go into Multi mode, which allows us to
select faces, edges, vertices in any
| | 01:01 | sort of combination.
| | 01:03 | Now I'm going to show you how
to use this, very, very simply.
| | 01:06 | I'm just going to go ahead and select an edge.
| | 01:08 | And then Shift+Select another edge.
| | 01:10 | So I have two edges selected.
| | 01:13 | I'm going to go into Edit
Mesh and find Connect Components.
| | 01:18 | Now once I've done that,
let's take a look at how it works.
| | 01:22 | Now all it did was it split the edges in
half and connected them. So this is great.
| | 01:29 | But the really cool thing about
this is that you can connect multiple
| | 01:33 | components together.
| | 01:35 | Let's go ahead and select a
bunch of different components.
| | 01:37 | So let's go ahead and just
start selecting some edges.
| | 01:41 | I'm just going to hold down
the Shift key, select some edges.
| | 01:44 | And then maybe select a vertice or
two and then maybe some more edges.
| | 01:50 | So now I've kind of drawn a bit of a
path upcoming from here to this vertice and
| | 01:56 | then to these edges.
| | 01:58 | So now let's go ahead and do Connect
Components again and see what happens.
| | 02:02 | You can see what it's done is it actually
split the edges and connected the vertices.
| | 02:08 | So we have a whole new edge loop
that we've drawn onto this model.
| | 02:13 | Now this also works for faces.
| | 02:16 | So let's go ahead and select a couple of faces.
| | 02:18 | And again let's just do Recent
Commands > Connect Components.
| | 02:22 | And you can see what it's done
is it's bisected these faces.
| | 02:28 | So what I can do is I can select some
faces, maybe an edge, a vertice, and so on.
| | 02:34 | And then just do Connect Components.
| | 02:37 | And it will again connect whatever I have.
| | 02:42 | So let's go ahead and see how
to use this on an actual model.
| | 02:45 | I'm going to go ahead and
open a scene called Head_01.ma.
| | 02:51 | It's just a basic polygonal head.
| | 02:53 | Now one of the reasons you'd want to
use Connect Components is to refine or
| | 03:00 | add detail to a model.
| | 03:02 | So let's go ahead into this particular model.
| | 03:05 | And let's say I wanted some additional
detail along the cheek or something like
| | 03:09 | that in order to give myself some more
room to do like a facial deformation or
| | 03:15 | something like that.
| | 03:16 | So again, I'm just going to go into
Multi mode and then just start selecting.
| | 03:21 | So I'm going to go ahead
and select that vertices.
| | 03:24 | Maybe select this edge.
| | 03:26 | Select the couple of edges here.
| | 03:29 | And let's go ahead and maybe
select the vertices and an edge.
| | 03:34 | And again, just by going Connect
Components, you can see how I've added in some
| | 03:40 | detail to this model so I can actually
re-sculpt it or add for example, a crease
| | 03:45 | or something like that very, very, very easily.
| | 03:49 | So as you can see, Connect Components
allows you to add detail very specifically
| | 03:55 | and very easily into a polygonal model.
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| Using the Spin Edge tool| 00:00 | Another great new modeling tool in
Maya 2011 is called the Spin Edge tool.
| | 00:06 | Now what this does is it takes an edge
and allows you to change its orientation
| | 00:13 | or spin it around the model.
| | 00:16 | Now, I have a Maya file open
and this file has a simple plane.
| | 00:20 | Now, what I've done is I've actually
used Connect Components to draw two
| | 00:25 | diagonals across this plane, and this
will give me some additional edges so we
| | 00:31 | can illustrate the Spin
Edge tool a little bit easier.
| | 00:34 | So, in order to do this,
we need to select an edge.
| | 00:39 | So, I'm going to right-click, go into Edge
mode, and let's go ahead and select this edge.
| | 00:45 | Now, we can get into the
Spin Edge tool in two ways.
| | 00:48 | One is through the menu.
| | 00:50 | The other is through the Keyboard Shortcut.
| | 00:52 | Let me show you where it is on the menu.
| | 00:54 | Under Edit Mesh, we have Spin
Edge Forward and Spin Edge Backward.
| | 01:00 | But this tool really works much
better as a keyboard shortcut.
| | 01:05 | And the keyboard option is Ctrl+Alt+Right or
Ctrl+Alt+Left and that means the Left arrow.
| | 01:12 | There on the Mac, you're going to
using Control+Option+Right/Left.
| | 01:16 | So let's go ahead and use the keyboard
shortcut rather than the menu, so you
| | 01:20 | can see how this works.
| | 01:21 | So, I'm just going to hit Ctrl+Alt+Arrow key.
| | 01:25 | So, I'm just going to Arrow Right, Arrow Left,
while holding down Ctrl+Alt or Control+Option.
| | 01:30 | And you can see how that spins.
| | 01:33 | Now, if I actually go over to this
edge, you can see this is a little bit
| | 01:35 | easier, you can see how it kind of
spins around and actually gives you a number
| | 01:40 | of different options.
| | 01:42 | Maybe an edge like this, you can
see how it can spin clockwise or
| | 01:45 | counterclockwise, just
depending on which Arrow key I press.
| | 01:50 | There's something like this might
not spin as much, because it's on a
| | 01:55 | triangulated edge already.
| | 01:58 | It really works a little bit better
on ones where you actually have the
| | 02:01 | option for multiple ones.
| | 02:03 | But you can see how this works and
you can see how it really gives you much
| | 02:08 | wider control over your edge orientation,
and they can help you get yourself out
| | 02:14 | of little modeling jams that
you've gotten yourself into.
| | 02:17 | So go ahead and memorize these two
keystrokes, because I'm sure this is going
| | 02:21 | to come in very handy if you ever
do any sort of polygonal modeling.
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| Soft selecting objects| 00:00 | Another new feature in Maya 2011
are some changes to Soft Select.
| | 00:05 | Now, I have a file here called
SoftSelect.ma and that's open.
| | 00:09 | Let me show you what's in this file.
| | 00:11 | We have actually two layers. We have a
layer which has a sphere and a plane and
| | 00:17 | another one which has some bowling pins.
| | 00:21 | So, let's go-ahead and bring up layer
two which has the sphere on the plane, and
| | 00:26 | I want to refresh your
memory on how Soft Select works.
| | 00:31 | So Soft Select really is just a
way to organically model within Maya.
| | 00:36 | So for example, if I were to just model
this sphere, I could right-click over it
| | 00:42 | and select Vertex and that will
give me access to all the vertices.
| | 00:46 | And if I wanted to,
I could just move those around.
| | 00:50 | But as you can see, this is
a very harsh way to model.
| | 00:53 | It's not really organic.
| | 00:55 | I'm just kind of pulling very specific vertices.
| | 00:58 | So, if undo that and actually turn on
Soft Select, if I double-click on the Move tool
| | 01:04 | you could see how we have
actually a soft selection rollout here.
| | 01:09 | And if I turn on soft Selection, you
can see that what it does is actually that
| | 01:14 | whole sphere lights up.
| | 01:16 | But if I dial this number down, you can
see how the Falloff, which is indicated
| | 01:22 | in red, only affects part of the model.
| | 01:25 | So, for example, if I dial it down to
somewhere around between four and five,
| | 01:29 | you can see how I can now
organically shape this model.
| | 01:35 | Now, this has been in Maya for quite a
while and you're probably familiar with this.
| | 01:39 | So, let me show you another feature of
Soft Select that you may not know about,
| | 01:44 | and it's in the Falloff mode pulldown.
| | 01:48 | So, typically this defaults to Volume,
but if we pull this down and go to
| | 01:53 | Global, what happens is, is that
the Falloff actually falls off on to other objects.
| | 02:01 | So now instead of just manipulating the
sphere, the actual sphere of influence
| | 02:07 | of the Soft Select actually
falls off onto to the plane.
| | 02:10 | So, when I move this vertices what it
does is actually sculpts the plane as well
| | 02:15 | and if I wanted to, again, I
could bring this up or down, and again,
| | 02:20 | manipulate this plane however I
want as I am manipulating the sphere.
| | 02:26 | Now, this has already been in Maya for a
while and you may or may not know about it.
| | 02:30 | Now, the new feature is the one
below it and it's called Object mode.
| | 02:35 | So, let me show you how this works.
| | 02:37 | I'm actually going to keep it in Global mode.
| | 02:39 | We're going to go ahead and unselect
that sphere and actually turn on the layer
| | 02:45 | that has the bowling pins.
| | 02:46 | So, let's make that our active layer.
| | 02:50 | So if I select this lead pin in the
array of bowling pins, you'll see I already
| | 02:55 | have Global Falloff mode, and if I
move that pin, you can see how the
| | 03:01 | bowling pins deform.
| | 03:02 | And this pretty what we were
doing before with Global Falloff.
| | 03:09 | Now this is actually a deformation,
but the new feature allows us to actually
| | 03:14 | just change the objects themselves.
| | 03:18 | Notice, when I select Object Falloff
mode, the vertices disappears and when I
| | 03:23 | move the pin, the other pins
follow and they retain their shape.
| | 03:30 | This really isn't a modeling tool;
it's more like an Arranging tool because
| | 03:35 | what it does is it allows you to arrange
objects in the scene, but use Falloff.
| | 03:40 | So for example, if I increase this
Falloff Radius, you can see how I can move
| | 03:45 | most of the pins. I could actually
arrange the pins in the opposite direction,
| | 03:49 | move them up or down.
| | 03:51 | If I selected another pin, again,
the Falloff would work for that pin.
| | 03:55 | Or if I select multiple pins and so on.
| | 03:58 | So you can see how this tool can be very,
very handy for arranging objects in the scene.
| | 04:04 | Let's say you have a bunch of trees or
may be some telephone poles or something
| | 04:07 | like that, you can use Object
Falloff to globally change objects without
| | 04:15 | changing their shape.
| | 04:16 | So I'm sure you can envision how this
can affect your work and make things a
| | 04:21 | lot easier when organizing scenes.
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| Exploring the Pinch Brush tool| 00:00 | The last modeling tool I want to show
you is an addition to the sculpting tools.
| | 00:05 | Now this works either on sculpt surfaces,
which is for NURB surfaces, or sculpt
| | 00:11 | geometry, which is for polygonal objects.
| | 00:15 | Now I'm going to show you this on a
polygonal object because I think it'll be a
| | 00:18 | little bit more clear.
| | 00:20 | So I'm going to use that same head that
we were using before and I'm just going
| | 00:25 | to go ahead and select it and then under
Mesh I'm going to go Sculpt Geometry tool,
| | 00:32 | and make sure I select my options here,
which brings up this Options panel.
| | 00:37 | I'm sure you're pretty familiar with
the Sculpt Geometry tool, but let me go
| | 00:40 | ahead and just do a quick refresher here.
| | 00:43 | We have a brush which you can see,
which cover the model. We can change the
| | 00:48 | brush size by touching the B key,
B for brush, and just left clicking and
| | 00:54 | dragging, and that gives us our brush size,
and then we can also do a number of
| | 00:58 | operations. One is to Push or Pull.
| | 01:01 | So for example, if I pulled then
we can pull out some vertices.
| | 01:05 | We can also adjust our
displacement strength here.
| | 01:08 | So for example, I can pull out his
brow or his eyebrows or something like
| | 01:14 | that if I wanted to.
| | 01:15 | Now the tool that I want to show you
is actually called the Pinch Brush.
| | 01:20 | Now this actually does exactly what it
says, which means it pinches vertices,
| | 01:25 | which means it moves vertices closer together.
| | 01:28 | Typically, you would use this in
something like maybe wrinkles, where you want
| | 01:32 | to bring wrinkles together and make them a
little bit more deep or a little bit more enhanced.
| | 01:38 | But let me just show you right here on
his brow you can see what happens is
| | 01:41 | what it does is it actually
pulls these vertices together.
| | 01:45 | It actually takes the center point and
then it just tries and contract things to
| | 01:50 | make them a little bit closer together.
| | 01:53 | Now if I keep doing this you can kind
of see an enhanced version of the effect.
| | 01:58 | So this is really just a very simple
addition to the sculpt surfaces tools, but
| | 02:04 | you can see how this can actually be
very helpful in organizing your geometry
| | 02:10 | and actually changing how your detail
is aligned without changing the actual
| | 02:15 | shape of your object.
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|
|
3. Rigging ToolsExamining the new Smooth Bind features| 00:00 | Maya 2011 has a number of new Rigging
features that we want to take a look at.
| | 00:05 | The first feature is a
new option to Smooth Bind.
| | 00:09 | Now if you recall Smooth Bind binds the
character's mesh to the skeleton so the
| | 00:14 | skeleton can deform the mesh.
| | 00:16 | Now I have a file here with actually
three arms and you'll understand why I
| | 00:20 | have three in just a second, but
they're really just the same rig.
| | 00:24 | It's just an arm and a hand and then I
have the hands actually animating and I
| | 00:30 | actually have the elbows bending,
so that we can see the deformation.
| | 00:35 | So in order for this to work I need to
make sure that I'm on Frame 1 of the timeline.
| | 00:42 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in to
this first arm and I'm just going to do
| | 00:47 | a standard Smooth Bind.
| | 00:49 | Now if you've ever done character
rigging, this should be familiar to you.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
the root of the skeleton, left shoulder,
| | 00:57 | then Shift+select the actual mesh, and
then I'm going to make sure I have my
| | 01:02 | Animation menus up, and then just go to
Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind and I want
| | 01:08 | to take a look at these options.
| | 01:11 | By default these are pretty
much what the options will be.
| | 01:14 | The one I want to look at
is called Skinning method.
| | 01:17 | Now this actually gives us three options.
This is actually what's new in Smooth Bind.
| | 01:24 | So let's go ahead just do the default,
which actually is the old method called
| | 01:28 | Classic Linear, and let's just
go ahead and bind that skin.
| | 01:32 | Now once we've done that you can see the
skin actually follows the skeleton, but
| | 01:37 | we actually have a little bit of a
problem here. If you look, this elbow, we've got
| | 01:42 | a big divot here, and this is actually
symptomatic of Smooth Bind. You tend to
| | 01:48 | get this sort of dent in joints like an elbow.
| | 01:54 | So they have a new skinning method
called Dual Quaternion that actually should
| | 01:59 | address a lot of this.
| | 02:00 | So I'm going to go ahead to my second
arm, again same procedure, select the
| | 02:07 | root of the skeleton, Shift+select the mesh
and let's go back into Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.
| | 02:15 | In this case, instead of Classic Linear,
I'm going to do Dual Quaternion, select
| | 02:20 | that and do Bind Skin.
| | 02:23 | I want to make sure I get both of
these on the screen so you can see the
| | 02:26 | difference. And when we go to the full
bend here, notice how this one has a very
| | 02:31 | extreme divot and this one is more
natural, and the new one is using a Dual
| | 02:37 | Quaternion Skinning method.
| | 02:40 | Now we have one more skinning method
in that list, so let's just go ahead and
| | 02:44 | use this third arm and just to see how it works.
| | 02:47 | Now the third one is called Weight Blended,
and let's just go ahead and bind that.
| | 02:54 | Now this actually gives you an
effect almost exactly like the original.
| | 02:59 | Again, it gives you a little bit more
of a divot, but between the three you can
| | 03:03 | see that there really are subtle
differences in the way that these joints work.
| | 03:09 | Now for something like a character,
Dual Quaternion may become the new standard
| | 03:16 | default way of binding
character's skin to a skeleton.
| | 03:21 | So go ahead and play with it on your
characters and see how it works for you.
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| Using the Paint Skin Weights enhancements| 00:00 | Another new feature of Maya 2011 are some
additions to the Paint Skin Weight tool.
| | 00:05 | Now this is the tool you use to customize
how a skin is actually connected to a skeleton.
| | 00:12 | Now anybody who's done rigging
should be familiar with this.
| | 00:15 | Now I have an arm that's already been
skinned and you can see that as I move my
| | 00:22 | time slider you can notice some problems.
| | 00:25 | Well, this one here is obviously the
most glaring problem. We have a vertex that
| | 00:29 | was mis-assigned, but also if you look
over here towards the chest area,
| | 00:35 | you notice when this elbow bends that the
chest also flexes just a little bit, and
| | 00:42 | that's really enough to create some problem.
| | 00:44 | So we really need to get rid of both of these.
| | 00:46 | So let's go ahead and look at how the new
features in Paint Skin Weights can help us.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to go ahead and select the mesh,
go into Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Paint
| | 00:56 | Skin Weights tool and again select
this box so we get into our options.
| | 01:01 | Now I'm working on a small screen, so
you can see I've got a little bit of a
| | 01:06 | small space, so I'm going to have to
scroll. Hpefully you'll be able to see
| | 01:09 | more of this in your window.
| | 01:11 | Now the first new feature is the ability to use
gradients or color to paint your Skin Weights.
| | 01:18 | So if I scroll down here and go into
Paint mode and open up this Gradient
| | 01:23 | rollout, you'll notice here that
we can actually use a color ramp.
| | 01:27 | Now if this is not turned on, it will
revert to default, which is really just a
| | 01:31 | black and white method, or we can turn
it on and this really gives us a much
| | 01:36 | richer feedback, so we can actually
see a little bit more clearly how each
| | 01:42 | individual joint affects the deformation.
| | 01:46 | So I can actually scroll up here to my
Influences. You can just move through
| | 01:50 | this and see exactly how things are
being deformed and which bone is deforming
| | 01:58 | which part of the mesh.
| | 02:00 | Now regarding these problems we
could certainly try and fix them just by
| | 02:04 | painting them away but I want to
show you a new method of how to fix
| | 02:09 | vertices one at a time.
| | 02:10 | And if we scroll all the way up, you'll
notice that we actually have some tools here.
| | 02:14 | Copy, Paste, and another one is
called the Weight Hammer, which we'll get
| | 02:21 | into, and then we also have ones that
allow us to move weights from selected
| | 02:26 | vertices to different joints.
| | 02:28 | Now all of this involves selecting
individual vertices and we can do that by
| | 02:34 | scrolling down, and instead of
using Paint mode we use Select mode.
| | 02:40 | Now notice how all the vertices kind of
lined up on this particular mesh and now
| | 02:46 | we can select individual vertices.
| | 02:49 | So for example, if I wanted to I could
select this very tippy-top corner vertice
| | 02:54 | here and then use Copy and
Paste to paste its weight.
| | 02:59 | So if I scroll this, you'll notice how
when this part flexes only the lower
| | 03:05 | part of this chest is flexing.
| | 03:07 | Up here this actually
isn't affected all that much.
| | 03:11 | So what I can do is actually I can use
this weight to effect this other one, so
| | 03:15 | I can actually just Copy and Paste this.
| | 03:17 | So let me go in a little bit further here.
| | 03:20 | So let's scroll this one more time,
so you can see that this is moving a lot,
| | 03:24 | but this is not.
| | 03:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and Copy this
weight. Now you only can do that for one vertex.
| | 03:32 | If you select multiple vertices,
they may have multiple weights, so you
| | 03:36 | can't Copy multiple. You can only
Copy one, but you can Paste multiple.
| | 03:42 | So I can select this one vertex and
hit Paste, and so what I've done is I've
| | 03:48 | copied from here, pasted here the
weight of that vertex, and you'll notice that
| | 03:54 | now that vertex is pretty much rock
solid. But the rest of it still is moving.
| | 04:00 | But we can fix that very simply by
just doing a larger select and then
| | 04:05 | just pasting again.
| | 04:06 | And notice how that snapped right into place.
| | 04:09 | So now we have a much better deformation.
| | 04:13 | Now there's still more that we can tweak
here, but I just wanted to show you how
| | 04:17 | this works. We can
certainly work through this later.
| | 04:20 | Now another one I want to show you is
the one called the Weight Hammer and this
| | 04:25 | works kind of a little bit differently.
| | 04:28 | Now if I wanted to, I could actually
just go in here and just Copy this vertex
| | 04:33 | weight and Paste it there, and that
pretty much would work I would think.
| | 04:38 | But actually the cooler way to do it is
to use what's called the Weight Hammer.
| | 04:42 | Now what this does is it averages the
closest vertices to that vertex and then
| | 04:48 | it just applies those
weights to this individual vertex.
| | 04:52 | So for example, for this one it would
actually average this one and the one
| | 04:57 | on the opposite side.
| | 04:59 | So all I have to do is select that
vertex and then just hit the Weight Hammer.
| | 05:03 | Notice how that just snaps right into place.
| | 05:08 | So now when I flex my arm,
I've got a much better deformation.
| | 05:13 | So you can see how these new tools
allow you to get down to the vertex level
| | 05:19 | with in the Paint Skin Weights
interface, and this will really help you to
| | 05:24 | customize your character's
deformation very precisely.
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| Working with the Interactive Skin tool| 00:00 | Maya 2011 has a whole new way to
skin characters and it's called
| | 00:04 | Interactive Skin Bind.
| | 00:08 | Now, this is actually very familiar
to those who've used 3ds Max, because I
| | 00:12 | think the technology has been gleaned from that.
| | 00:15 | It's actually very similar to
the way that Max skins characters.
| | 00:19 | So let's go ahead and take
a look at what we have here.
| | 00:21 | I have got an arm that's bending at the elbow,
very familiar to what we've been doing before.
| | 00:26 | So let's go ahead and select the root
of that skeleton, Shift+Select the skin,
| | 00:31 | and let's go into Skin > Bind Skin and
you'll see we have a third option now
| | 00:37 | called Interactive Skin Bind.
| | 00:39 | So I am going to go ahead and click on
the little box here, so we can get our
| | 00:44 | options and we have very similar options
to what we would have with Smooth Bind.
| | 00:50 | Bind to the joint hierarchy, bind to
the closest member of the hierarchy, that
| | 00:54 | yes, we want that. Closest volume, by minimum
weight, that sort of thing. This is brand new.
| | 01:00 | Volume Type, do you want a Capsule or a Cylinder?
| | 01:04 | In other words, do you wanted to have
a flat end or a rounded end, and you'll
| | 01:08 | see what I mean once we actually do
the bind. And also the skinning method.
| | 01:12 | Again, we have Classic Linear,
Quaternion or Weight Blended.
| | 01:16 | I am actually going to keep at a
Classic Linear, and also the number of
| | 01:20 | influences, which is how many joints
can actually influence a given vertex.
| | 01:26 | So I am going to go ahead and just leave
these at the defaults and just do Bind Skin.
| | 01:31 | Now notice what happens. You get a capsule
or a cylinder depending on what you selected.
| | 01:39 | Let's go ahead and select a different
joint. Let's go ahead and select this
| | 01:41 | elbow and what you can see here is
that it creates, it's kind of like this
| | 01:46 | little capsule that gives
me the weights within it.
| | 01:52 | So when the character moves, the
capsule actually moves with the bone and that
| | 02:00 | capsule determines which
vertices are captured by that bone.
| | 02:06 | So for example, this one here can go
like this or we have this one and so on.
| | 02:12 | And you can see it's very
interactive, very visual.
| | 02:15 | Now one of the really cool things
is that if you can see this, you can
| | 02:19 | actually manipulate it.
| | 02:20 | So all I have to do is just Left+Click+
Drag and I can resize my capsule, so I
| | 02:28 | can make it more influential or less
influential, even to the point where it's
| | 02:33 | not influencing anything.
| | 02:35 | I can also do it for this side as well.
| | 02:38 | So if I stretch this out, that means
it's actually this bone affecting all of
| | 02:44 | this mesh, and if I shrink it down,
you'd see it's affecting a lot less.
| | 02:48 | Now we can use this to actually
affect how the deformation happens.
| | 02:56 | We can affect this even further by
going into Skin > Edit Smooth Skin >
| | 03:02 | Interactive Skin Bind Tool, and
just clicking that options box there.
| | 03:08 | And now these are the
options for this particular tool.
| | 03:12 | Notice it's very similar to Paint
Skin Weights, but we can't paint.
| | 03:17 | But we do have some nice skin binding settings.
| | 03:20 | So we have Influences, which
allows us to select the joints.
| | 03:24 | Reflection Settings, which like the
Paint Skin Weights allows us to mirror it on
| | 03:30 | to the other side of the character.
And then the Skin Binding Settings, which is
| | 03:36 | really just how much does it
falloff after it gets away from the joints.
| | 03:41 | So what we have here is a falloff curve.
| | 03:43 | Now we can actually create our own falloff
curve or we can select custom falloff curves.
| | 03:50 | So you notice how this curve kind of
changes. Or I can actually just draw out
| | 03:55 | myself by left clicking. I can even
put my own ones in there by just clicking
| | 04:00 | however I want, and if I want to
get rid of that, you'd just hit the X.
| | 04:04 | So let's try that again.
| | 04:05 | If I want to move these,
I just go ahead and move that point.
| | 04:11 | If I want to add a point, all I have to
do is just click on that line somewhere,
| | 04:16 | and I can add a point.
| | 04:17 | If I want to get rid of an added point,
all you have to do is click on this X.
| | 04:22 | Now what we can do is we can actually
use this to create a custom falloff for
| | 04:30 | that particular joint.
| | 04:32 | So in some ways it's an easier way to
manipulate skin weights, because it's very
| | 04:38 | visual and very interactive.
| | 04:40 | Unlike Paint Skin Weights, it doesn't
have that fine degree of control that you
| | 04:46 | get with Paint Skin Weights, which is
the ability to take individual vertices
| | 04:51 | and assign them weights
and copy and paste and so on.
| | 04:54 | So this particular method will
probably work for simpler characters or
| | 04:58 | characters that are constructed very,
very broadly, so that this sort of
| | 05:04 | deformation can work.
| | 05:06 | But go ahead and try it on you
characters, see how it works and if you like it,
| | 05:10 | you have one more way to skin a character.
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| Understanding new joint drawing styles| 00:00 | Another terrific new rigging feature in
Maya 2011 is the ability to change the
| | 00:06 | way that joints are drawn.
| | 00:07 | This actually will save you a lot of
time when actually building skeletons,
| | 00:11 | because it actually will allow you to create
kind of default handles that are easy to grab.
| | 00:16 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:18 | I have got this Simple_Character open
and in fact let me go ahead and go into
| | 00:24 | Outliner mode, so I can actually see
what my geometry is, and in fact I am
| | 00:28 | going to change my Shading to X-Ray
Joints, so we can actually see all of the
| | 00:32 | joints in this character.
| | 00:34 | So if I select a particular joint and
I go into the Attribute Editor, you'll
| | 00:39 | notice that under the main Attribute
panel for this, we actually have an
| | 00:46 | option here for Joint.
| | 00:48 | And we can change our Draw Style.
| | 00:51 | So in this case we have Bone, which
is the default, but if I open this up,
| | 00:56 | you'll see that I
actually have a number of them.
| | 00:59 | So let's go through a couple of these and
show you how they would work within a character.
| | 01:04 | So for something like the hips,
I would select maybe something like
| | 01:08 | Multi-child as Box.
| | 01:10 | Now what that does is it finds all of
the outlying connections to this and it
| | 01:16 | draws a box between them.
| | 01:18 | So it goes to that bellybutton and then
it goes to the hips, and it goes to the
| | 01:21 | base of that skeleton, and it creates a box.
| | 01:24 | So that way I know that this is the hips.
| | 01:27 | Now for something like the elbow,
you may want to create like a handle.
| | 01:32 | So I can grab it and manipulate it.
| | 01:35 | So in that case, I may want
to do something like a circle.
| | 01:38 | Now we have four types of circles.
We have the default Circle, which goes
| | 01:43 | perpendicular to the direction of
the joint or you can specify XY, XZ and
| | 01:50 | then YZ exactly what direction you want that
circle to be in. But the default typically works.
| | 01:57 | So that's what I am going to select.
| | 01:59 | So when I do that, what it does is it
actually creates a little circular handle.
| | 02:04 | So when I'm actually manipulating this
character, now all I have to do is grab
| | 02:07 | that circle and then I can manipulate that arm.
| | 02:11 | Now we can do the same for something
like the knee, but instead of a Circle,
| | 02:18 | we could select a Square.
| | 02:20 | And again, just like with the Circle
you could actually change the orientation
| | 02:24 | to whatever you want.
| | 02:25 | But generally the default again does work.
| | 02:29 | So I am going to go ahead and do that,
but if you notice that this is actually
| | 02:33 | a little too small.
| | 02:34 | So what we can do is, we can actually
use this Radius parameter and bring it up.
| | 02:39 | So let's say we make it a Radius of 3.
Well, that's actually a little bit too big,
| | 02:43 | so let's make it a Radius of 2, and once
I have that now I have a square that I
| | 02:49 | can select and actually manipulate that knee.
| | 02:53 | Now there is one more and that's called Sticks.
| | 02:56 | So let's go ahead and select this
thigh and we can actually go in to Stick.
| | 03:01 | Now what Stick does is it actually
creates geometry, so you can actually see it.
| | 03:07 | This may be something that you'll
want to use if you want to actually just
| | 03:10 | render the skeleton running around
or something. This can help a lot, but
| | 03:14 | typically Bone will do you just find for this.
| | 03:18 | So Stick is really more for those where you
really want to see what the joints are doing.
| | 03:23 | So as you can see this could be very,
very handy in setting up a skeleton.
| | 03:28 | You really don't have to do as many
constraints to constrain the bones to
| | 03:33 | say circles or squares in order to actually
get your rig to work the way that it wants.
| | 03:38 | You can just click into the bone
and get the circle or the square.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Constraining objects to polys| 00:00 | The last little rigging thing I want
to show you is actually a constraint.
| | 00:04 | It's called Point On Poly.
| | 00:07 | It allows you to finally constrain an
object to an actual point on a polygonal object.
| | 00:13 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:14 | I'm going to go to Polygons.
| | 00:16 | And I'm just going to
create a very simple object.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to create a sphere.
| | 00:19 | Let's go ahead and shade that by hitting 5.
| | 00:22 | And then I want to create an object
that I'm going to constrain to this.
| | 00:26 | So let's just create a very
small little cube or a box.
| | 00:31 | So I've got two objects.
| | 00:33 | And what I want to do is constrain
this cube to the surface of this sphere.
| | 00:40 | So what I need to do is
select a component of the sphere.
| | 00:44 | I can select the face, an edge or a vertex.
| | 00:48 | To make this really simple, I'm
just going to select the Vertex.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to right-click over this.
| | 00:53 | Go into Vertex mode.
| | 00:55 | And then just go ahead and
pick one of the vertices.
| | 00:59 | Now I'm going to Shift-Select the box.
| | 01:03 | So I have two things selected.
| | 01:05 | First, I select the
component. Then I select the box.
| | 01:09 | Now all that's left to do is
go Constrain > Point on Poly.
| | 01:15 | And let's take a look at the options.
| | 01:17 | There really aren't that many.
| | 01:18 | You can constrain all axes or a specific axis
and as with any constraint you can add a weight.
| | 01:25 | So let's go ahead and add that constraint.
| | 01:28 | And what happens is the center
of that cube snaps to that point.
| | 01:37 | And I go back to Object mode
and I move that sphere around.
| | 01:39 | Of course the object is going to stick.
| | 01:41 | But if I scale it, notice how
it still sticks to the surface.
| | 01:46 | But it doesn't scale.
| | 01:49 | So even if I scale it wider, you can
see how it sticks to the surface at that
| | 01:54 | vertex no matter what.
| | 01:55 | And in fact, I can even go back into
Component mode and select Vertices and
| | 02:02 | just move them around.
| | 02:05 | And the object will still stick.
| | 02:08 | This is great for sticking objects to anything.
| | 02:11 | You can conceivably use it for
something like buttons on a character or maybe a
| | 02:17 | bowtie, really any sort of object that
you want to stick to a place on another
| | 02:22 | object, you can now do it.
| | 02:24 | And I'm sure you can see the possibilities
that you can have with this sort of constraint.
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|
|
4. Animation ToolsUsing the Camera Sequencer| 00:00 | Let's take a look at some
animation features in Maya 2011.
| | 00:04 | The first thing we're going to look
at is called the Camera Sequencer.
| | 00:08 | And what this does is it allows you
to block out your camera motions within Maya.
| | 00:14 | It's a great way to do
previsualization, that sort of thing.
| | 00:18 | So let's take a look at the scene we're
going to be working with. It's a simple
| | 00:21 | scene with an airplane on a field.
| | 00:24 | And it's called CamSequencer.ma.
| | 00:26 | Now before we actually get started,
let's make sure we have our projects set
| | 00:31 | to Chapter 4 under Exercise Files and that way
all of our textures will be sure to show up.
| | 00:39 | Now this scene has three cameras in it.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to actually bring up
the Outliner here so we can see.
| | 00:45 | We've got camera1, which is what
we're looking through right now.
| | 00:50 | We have camera2, which is this one, and
if we look through we'll see the camera2
| | 00:56 | is actually a close-up of
the cockpit of this airplane.
| | 01:00 | And then we also have camera3 and if
we looked through that one, it's actually
| | 01:05 | a shot of the propeller starting up.
| | 01:07 | Now this particular camera actually
has a little bit of animation on it.
| | 01:10 | So Frame 4 to 24, it does a quick little pullout.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to go ahead back to
camera1 and let's go ahead and use the Camera
| | 01:20 | Sequencer to sequence between these shots.
| | 01:24 | We can find the Camera Sequencer under
Window, > Animation Editors > Camera Sequencer.
| | 01:30 | Now this window actually has a number of
controls. I'm not going to into all of them.
| | 01:35 | The most important ones are the
Timeline,. It has actually time slider here,
| | 01:40 | and then it has a number of buttons here, and
the most important one here is Create Shot.
| | 01:44 | And then there's another really nice
one here, Frame All, which actually will
| | 01:47 | frame everything in the shot.
| | 01:49 | And then we also have ones
that allow us to Cut and Trim.
| | 01:53 | These are basically video editor functions.
| | 01:56 | you almost have to think of this as
kind of like a timeline or a video editor.
| | 02:01 | It's very similar to the
Clip Editor in animation.
| | 02:04 | So under here we also have File,
which allows us to import things such as Audio and
| | 02:09 | Editorial, which are files from
digital editing systems such as Final Cut.
| | 02:14 | We can also edit, which means it allows us
to do trims and cuts and pastes and all
| | 02:19 | that, and then we can also View the
cameras. We can actually go into the
| | 02:24 | Attribute Editors of the cameras.
| | 02:26 | Now this is probably the most important
one, which is Create. This allows us to
| | 02:30 | create a shot or camera.
| | 02:31 | we'll get back to this one.
| | 02:33 | We can also group shots and most
importantly we can actually Playblast these shots.
| | 02:38 | Now the Camera Sequencer does not flow
all the way through to animation. You can't
| | 02:42 | sequence cameras and then render all of that.
| | 02:46 | This is really just for Playblast, so
it's really just for testing. It doesn't
| | 02:50 | flow through to final output.
| | 02:53 | So just be aware of that.
And of course, we have a Help menu.
| | 02:56 | So let's go ahead and actually add some
cameras in to the sequencer. I'm going
| | 02:59 | to scroll this down a little
bit, so we can see the window.
| | 03:03 | So I'm going to actually go ahead and
create a shot and I'm actually going to
| | 03:06 | go here to the options, and make
sure that I bring up the Options window.
| | 03:11 | And now we can give our shot a
name. So let's go ahead for camera1,
| | 03:15 | let's call it the Long Shot, and
we're going to actually make that camera1.
| | 03:19 | Then we can also give it
a start and an end time.
| | 03:22 | Now this is a start and end time on the
timeline, and then once we can do that,
| | 03:27 | we can actually create the shot.
| | 03:29 | Now if you notice here, this kind of
jumps out to this perspective window, but
| | 03:34 | if we scrub this you'll see that we
actually have this shot in our little sequencer.
| | 03:40 | Now this is very similar to a video clip.
| | 03:44 | We can actually left click and drag and
move this along the timeline. If we want
| | 03:48 | to scale the clip, we can actually go
to one of these little numbers in the
| | 03:53 | bottom corner and just go
ahead and scale it up or down.
| | 03:57 | Now this is actually stretching it, so
if there was animation it would actually
| | 04:01 | condense the animation as well.
| | 04:04 | So let's go ahead and put a second shot in here.
| | 04:07 | Let's go ahead and go Create Shot,
and let's this time go to camera2 and
| | 04:13 | that's our close-up.
| | 04:14 | So let's go ahead and just make that
close-up, and again let's just keep this
| | 04:18 | from 1 to 30, because it's really is
a static shot here so we don't really
| | 04:22 | need to worry too much.
| | 04:23 | And now also notice how when I had
this time line here it's actually put this
| | 04:29 | clip underneath, very similar to
what you'd see in a video editor.
| | 04:34 | Now this second shot, camera2, is not going
to show up until this one, camera1, goes away.
| | 04:40 | So as soon as I go to this frame, I have my cut.
| | 04:43 | So you can see how this works.
| | 04:44 | If I wanted to, I could actually bring
this up to this timeline here and just
| | 04:49 | butt them up together, so
this is basically a cuts only edit.
| | 04:52 | So once I have this I can actually play it.
| | 04:58 | And I can get the timing of my scene.
| | 05:01 | Now if I wanted to add in another shot,
well, I need a little bit more space here.
| | 05:05 | So one of the first things I could
do is probably just hit this Frame All
| | 05:09 | button and that frames everything,
or I can just use my standard camera
| | 05:13 | navigation and I could just right-
click and zoom out a little bit, and then if
| | 05:19 | I middle click, I can drag.
| | 05:22 | So let's go ahead and add in that third
shot. I'm going to go ahead add in this
| | 05:27 | particular shot. Now this is actually a shot
of the prop, and that's going to be camera3.
| | 05:32 | Now remember camera3 had some
animation on it. It started at Frame 4 and went to
| | 05:38 | Frame 24, so I'm actually going to make
this a little bit longer than that that.
| | 05:42 | Let's start at 1, end at 30, and do Create Shot.
| | 05:48 | And let's go ahead and
just put this right after.
| | 05:50 | So now what we have is we go from shot1
to shot2, which is a close-up, to shot3.
| | 05:57 | Now notice when I continue to scrub through
this, it actually does that little pullout.
| | 06:03 | So the animation on the camera or
actually any changes to the camera actually
| | 06:09 | will show up in these clips.
| | 06:12 | So once I have all these, I can
actually do a Playblast or if your system is
| | 06:17 | fast enough, you can just go ahead and
play this in real-time, and you could see
| | 06:23 | how you can very quickly block out shots.
| | 06:26 | Now if I wanted to, I could actually
put one shot over the other the other.
| | 06:30 | There are a number of other things you
can do with this, but I just wanted to
| | 06:34 | show you some of the
basics of it to get you started.
| | 06:36 | It really is very intuitive and
self-explanatory once you get into it.
| | 06:41 | So go ahead and play with it, explore
all the other features, and use it to
| | 06:47 | block out your shots.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Additions to the Curve Editor| 00:00 | Now we have a scene open here with
some animation. It's really just a plane
| | 00:05 | flying by. It's like a little two-second shot.
| | 00:07 | But this shot actually has
some fairly complex animation.
| | 00:11 | We're actually animating the camera.
We're animating the airplane.
| | 00:15 | We're animating the propeller of the
airplane and a couple of other things.
| | 00:20 | Now when you have an animation that has
multiple curves, sometimes you want to
| | 00:26 | manage those curves and be able
to see multiple curves at once.
| | 00:30 | So let's take a look at some of
the new changes in the Graph Editor.
| | 00:34 | We're going to go into Window >
Animation Editors > Graph Editor and bring up my
| | 00:39 | Graph Editor, and I want a little bit
of a tight screen here so I'm going to
| | 00:43 | make sure that we can see both the
viewport and the Graph Editor, and let's go
| | 00:48 | ahead and just select something.
| | 00:49 | Let's say I select the airplane itself.
| | 00:52 | This is actually the PlaneBody.
| | 00:54 | Now the first major change is the
ability to stack animation curves.
| | 00:59 | Now previously in Maya, you actually
get what we have here, is you have the
| | 01:03 | curves all laid over each other.
| | 01:07 | Now sometimes this is good and most
people are used to working this way, but
| | 01:10 | there are times when you'll want to
have the curves a separate so you can
| | 01:14 | actually see them a little bit more clearly.
| | 01:17 | Because when you get a lot of animation
curves, you kind of get like this rat's
| | 01:20 | nest of curves that's kind of hard to decipher.
| | 01:24 | So to help with that, Maya has a
new thing called Stacked Curves.
| | 01:29 | So if we go into View and we just
click on Stacked Curves, what happens is it
| | 01:34 | actually stacks the curves on top of each other.
| | 01:37 | But by default it -- well, you can hardly
see it. Actually it's more complex now.
| | 01:41 | So we need to change something.
| | 01:43 | So actually I'm going to go over to the
options here and what we can do is we
| | 01:47 | can actually change the spacing of the curve.
| | 01:50 | We can have minimum/
maximum value, plus the Spacing.
| | 01:53 | So if we bring that spacing up to a
high number, in this case let's say 25 and
| | 01:59 | hit Apply, you can see how that
actually brings these curves apart.
| | 02:04 | Now once I have these curves apart,
I can actually select each curve separately.
| | 02:10 | So then I can see them in sequence
rather than laid on top of each other and
| | 02:14 | this can be actually be very handy
when working with animation curves.
| | 02:18 | Now I'm going to go ahead and turn off that.
| | 02:20 | Let's go back to our standard view
here and I also want to point out another
| | 02:24 | thing and that's these little pins that
are along the side of each animation curve.
| | 02:30 | Now what this does is it allows
you to actually pin a curve and then
| | 02:34 | select something else.
| | 02:36 | So in this shot we're working with
the plane, which is moving, but also if I
| | 02:41 | select the camera, you'll
see that the camera is moving.
| | 02:44 | So let's say I wanted to actually
compare the camera to the airplane.
| | 02:49 | Well, I could certainly select both, or
another way to do it is just pin the curves that
| | 02:55 | I want on the camera and then go
ahead and just select the airplane.
| | 03:00 | Now what's happened is the camera
curves that are pinned still show up in my
| | 03:06 | Graph Editor even though
I'm selecting something else.
| | 03:10 | So let's say I select the propeller
of the airplane, or maybe even the
| | 03:14 | driveshaft of the airplane, or the
actual airplane itself. Whatever I select,
| | 03:19 | these camera curves will remain pinned.
| | 03:23 | So this is great if you're working with,
say for example, two objects that need
| | 03:27 | to coordinate when they animate, you
can pin the appropriate curves in one,
| | 03:32 | and then you won't have to worry about
deselecting it when you go to work with the other one.
| | 03:38 | You could just pin them and
they'll remain in your Graph Editor.
| | 03:42 | So those are the two major changes in
the Graph Editor. So stacking curves
| | 03:47 | and pinning curves will really help
you to deal with the complexity of
| | 03:51 | multiple animation curves.
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| Working with multiple audio files| 00:00 | Another nice little animation feature
is the ability to import multiple audio
| | 00:05 | files into Maya and be able
to use them simultaneously.
| | 00:09 | Now we've been able to import multiple
audio files before, but you only can use
| | 00:14 | one at a time and now you can actually
mix and move around the audio files and
| | 00:19 | this is done through Trax.
| | 00:21 | So if you go into our Animation Editors
and go into our Trax Editor, all we have
| | 00:27 | to do is just import the audio file.
| | 00:30 | So we go Import Audio and then
we select the sound and we import.
| | 00:35 | Now this is pretty much what we've done
before, and you can see how it shows up
| | 00:39 | here on the timeline.
| | 00:40 | But what we can also do is we can
actually import multiple audio files.
| | 00:45 | So I can import Sound_02 and now I
have two tracks and these will mix and you
| | 00:53 | can also move them around
and adjust them accordingly.
| | 00:56 | Now this is great if you have like
multiple characters in a scene and you want
| | 01:00 | to have different tracks and you want
to be able to either hear them together
| | 01:03 | or separately, so you can actually
bring in each character's dialogue as a
| | 01:08 | separate track and then animate those
and then you can hear them together at
| | 01:13 | the end if you want.
| | 01:14 | Now notice how this works
on the timeline as well.
| | 01:19 | So when I bring in multiple audio
tracks, notice how this first track here,
| | 01:24 | you can notice how it shoes up as a bar, and
this is because we are using the Trax sound.
| | 01:33 | So if I right-click over this timeline,
you can see my sound is actually using
| | 01:37 | my trax sound, just like before.
I can select one audio file or the other.
| | 01:43 | Now if I want to actually mix these,
then I have to use the Trax sounds and go
| | 01:49 | into the Trax Editor to move these
around and adjust them the way that I want.
| | 01:55 | So this will be a really good benefit,
particularly for those people working
| | 01:58 | with multiple characters in a scene
or anybody working with audio in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Rendering ToolsReviewing the Hypershade Window improvements| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and take a look at some
of the rendering features in Maya 2011.
| | 00:04 | But before we get started, let's go
ahead and set a project so that our
| | 00:07 | textures will show up.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to go File > Project > Set.
| | 00:12 | And let's make sure we have Chapter 05 set.
| | 00:16 | And then let's go ahead and open a file.
| | 00:18 | It's called Plane_01.ma.
| | 00:23 | This is just a simple airplane
that has some textures on it.
| | 00:27 | The first thing we're going to take a
look at is the new Hypershade window.
| | 00:32 | There have been some additions to it.
| | 00:34 | So let's go ahead and take a look at that.
| | 00:35 | We're going to find that under
Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade.
| | 00:41 | Before I actually go into that, let me
point out that there is one thing missing
| | 00:45 | from the Rendering Editors window,
and that's Multi-Lister, which had been
| | 00:49 | around since before Maya
was a leftover from alias.
| | 00:54 | And so that has finally been taken out of Maya.
| | 00:58 | And now Hypershade is the only
way to edit shaders and textures.
| | 01:03 | So let's go ahead into Hypershade
and take a look at this new window.
| | 01:06 | Now like the new
interface it actually is sleeker.
| | 01:10 | It looks a little bit nicer.
| | 01:12 | Let's go ahead and actually quickly
jump over to Maya 2010 and take a look at
| | 01:16 | the old Hypershade window.
| | 01:17 | And you can see it's pretty similar.
| | 01:20 | You have all of your Create Maya nodes here.
| | 01:23 | You've got your Materials, Textures,
all of your tabbed interface here.
| | 01:26 | And we have our work interface here,
similar to what it is in Maya 2011.
| | 01:31 | So let's take a look at some
of the changes in the interface.
| | 01:34 | The first thing you'll notice is that this
actually now has two vertical panes here.
| | 01:40 | What you're going to find is
you're going to find one main entry for
| | 01:43 | each renderer in Maya.
| | 01:45 | So in this case we have the standard
Maya renderer and all of the different
| | 01:50 | render nodes that we can use for that.
| | 01:52 | And then we also have the mental ray
renderer here and all the default render
| | 01:58 | nodes we can use for that one.
| | 01:59 | Now notice that under each of these we
have multiple nodes, so each one of these
| | 02:04 | is really kind of a folder
containing additional render nodes.
| | 02:08 | So you have to click on one of these.
| | 02:11 | And you can get just one, such as
the shadow transparency, or you can get
| | 02:15 | dozens of them like we have here, which has
all the different types of mental ray shaders.
| | 02:22 | So since we have so many different
ones of these, one of the nicer new
| | 02:27 | features is this search box.
| | 02:30 | You can type a word and all the
different render nodes that have those
| | 02:34 | letters will show up.
| | 02:36 | And of course, you can use global such
as asterisk and question mark and so on.
| | 02:41 | So for example, if I type phong for
phong, I get the five different types of
| | 02:46 | phongs that we have.
| | 02:47 | We have Phong, Phong E in the Maya
renderer, as well as in the mental ray
| | 02:52 | renderer, as well another mental ray
phong, which is the illumination phong.
| | 02:57 | So that's kind of nice.
| | 02:58 | And we can also again just delete
that and go into whatever we want and
| | 03:04 | just search manually.
| | 03:06 | Now another nice little feature is this
little slider here which basically is a zoom.
| | 03:11 | So we can zoom in or out.
| | 03:14 | Depending upon how good your eyesight is,
you can probably get more on the screen.
| | 03:19 | And my eyesight is not so good, so I can
just make it bigger so I can read everything.
| | 03:24 | And then also another one is if we go
up to the top here, we have this one
| | 03:27 | called Favorites, which means that you
can actually create favorite render nodes
| | 03:33 | that you can easily access.
| | 03:35 | Again, we really can dig through a lot of these.
| | 03:38 | So you kind of want to be able to
bookmark the ones that you like.
| | 03:41 | So for example, if you're using car paint
a lot, you can just right-click over it.
| | 03:47 | And when you right-click, you
can just add it to Favorites.
| | 03:50 | So now I've got a mental ray shader.
| | 03:52 | Under Materials, I have car paint.
| | 03:55 | Or if I want, I can go, let's say I
wanted to add the dgs_material and so on.
| | 04:00 | So now under Favorites I've got
these already setup and ready to go.
| | 04:05 | Now the rest of the window, even
though it looks a little bit different,
| | 04:08 | operates very much in the same
way as the previous version of Maya.
| | 04:13 | So I'm not going to go into
a full Hypershade tutorial.
| | 04:17 | But I just want to let you know what
the differences are and what some of the
| | 04:20 | cool new features in the
Hypershade window can do for you.
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| Using Viewport 2.0 | 00:00 | Another nice new rendering feature is
actually a viewport rendering feature and
| | 00:04 | that's called Viewport 2.0.
| | 00:07 | Now this is a new way of
rendering viewports within Maya.
| | 00:11 | Now I have the same file opened.
| | 00:13 | Let's take a look at the
renderer for the viewports.
| | 00:17 | By default, you'll have
Default Quality Rendering.
| | 00:20 | If we choose High Quality Rendering,
you get a little bit better quality.
| | 00:26 | And then we also now have Viewport 2.0,
which will give you even better quality.
| | 00:33 | Now you'll see the quality probably
the best on things such as shadows,
| | 00:38 | transparency, and the things that are
kind of difficult for a renderer to use.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to go back to
Default Quality Rendering.
| | 00:45 | And let's take a look at this
scene a little bit more in depth.
| | 00:48 | I'm going to zoom out here.
| | 00:50 | And in this scene if you go over
here you're going to find a light.
| | 00:53 | And I want to make sure I have my
Attribute Editor open for that light.
| | 00:59 | And I'm going to actually go ahead.
| | 01:01 | And once I've got that lighte selected,
I'm going to go back into my Camera
| | 01:05 | viewport here, my Perspective viewport.
| | 01:07 | So I'm going to go down to
the Spotlight Attributes.
| | 01:11 | And I'm just going to turn on some shadows.
| | 01:13 | So we can see what shadows looks like.
| | 01:15 | So I'm going to go ahead
and turn on Shadow Color.
| | 01:17 | Make sure I have Depth Map Shadows turned on.
| | 01:20 | I want to make sure that that's going.
| | 01:22 | And then under Lighting I
want to turn on Shadows.
| | 01:26 | Now when you turn on
Shadows, notice what happen.
| | 01:29 | You get kind of this blocky?
You can't really see the shadow.
| | 01:33 | And that's really kind of what
happens with Default Quality Rendering.
| | 01:36 | This is really just optimized for speed.
| | 01:40 | You use this mostly in
modeling, that sort of thing.
| | 01:43 | Now if we go to High Quality Rendering,
you'll see that the shadow looks better.
| | 01:48 | You know you can actually kind of see
the shadow, but we still have a lot of
| | 01:52 | blockiness on this shadow.
| | 01:55 | Here is where Viewport 2.0 comes in very handy.
| | 01:58 | Let's take a look at this one.
| | 02:00 | So I click on Viewport 2.0.
| | 02:02 | And notice how the shadow is no longer blocky.
| | 02:04 | It also gives you a much more accurate
representation of what the shadow is.
| | 02:10 | So now that because I have the
light selected, I can play with some of
| | 02:13 | the shadow parameters.
| | 02:14 | So for one thing is let's say I can
turn up the resolution of the shadow map.
| | 02:18 | And notice how that really changes.
| | 02:21 | If I turn it way down, you can see the
banding that you would get in rendering
| | 02:25 | that or if I keep it fairly low,
around 500-600, you can see that I have kind
| | 02:30 | of a blurry shadow.
| | 02:32 | We can also blur or unblur the
shadow by using this Filter Size.
| | 02:35 | If you want a very specific shadow or
if you want a much more soft shadow, you
| | 02:40 | can up the Filter Size.
| | 02:41 | And you can see exactly
how that works in viewport.
| | 02:46 | So let's take a look at some
of the options for Viewport 2.0.
| | 02:51 | Under Renderer, I'm going to select Viewport 2.
0 and go over to the option box. Click that.
| | 02:58 | And let's see what these display options are.
| | 03:00 | And let me just run you
through these very quickly.
| | 03:02 | The first one is Consolidate World.
| | 03:04 | Now what that does is it basically tries
to group like textured objects together.
| | 03:09 | The bottom line for any of these is speed.
| | 03:13 | So if you click all of these on,
you're going to get a much better speed.
| | 03:17 | Now Light Limit tells you how many
lights Viewport 2.0 can use maximum.
| | 03:22 | Of course more lights will slow it down.
| | 03:24 | But a faster graphics card will speed things up.
| | 03:28 | So you kind of have to balance those two.
| | 03:30 | And then of course we have Textures.
| | 03:32 | Again, bigger numbers are going
to run it a little bit slower.
| | 03:36 | I just tend to go with the
defaults, because they work pretty well.
| | 03:39 | Now another thing you have to be
aware of with Viewport 2.0 is that
| | 03:43 | not everything works.
| | 03:46 | Things like Manipulators
Component mode won't work.
| | 03:49 | So if I select the cowl of this
airplane and I right-click over it and then
| | 03:54 | go into Control Vertex mode, you're not
going to be able to see the control vertices.
| | 03:58 | But if I go into Default Quality
Rendering mode, you will see them.
| | 04:04 | So that's a big difference.
| | 04:05 | You're not going to use
Viewport 2.0 for things like modeling.
| | 04:09 | And there are number of other things
that are not supported in Viewport 2.0.
| | 04:13 | So be sure you read the manual for the
list or if it doesn't work, that means
| | 04:18 | it's probably not supported yet.
| | 04:20 | Now this is a new feature, so I'm sure
as Maya progresses more and more these
| | 04:25 | features will be added into Viewport 2.0.
| | 04:29 | So Viewport 2.0 is a much more accurate
way to render viewports, but you have to
| | 04:33 | do it at the expense of a number of features.
| | 04:36 | So right now I really suggest that you
just use it as kind of a rough out for
| | 04:41 | your rendering before you
actually go into doing render tests.
| | 04:45 | That's probably the best
way to use this new feature.
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| Panning and zooming in 2D| 00:00 | Another viewport rendering feature is the
ability to pan and zoom in 2D on a viewport.
| | 00:08 | Now you may think that well, I can
pan in zoom the camera in the viewport.
| | 00:11 | So for example, if I have this
viewport here, I could just zoom this way.
| | 00:15 | But what you're doing is
you're actually moving the camera.
| | 00:19 | This new method allows you to zoom in
while retaining your camera position.
| | 00:27 | Let's take a look at this.
| | 00:28 | So I have got a camera viewport active.
| | 00:32 | And all I have to do is pull down View
and select the Camera Attribute Editor.
| | 00:37 | And this just gives me all
the attributes for my camera.
| | 00:40 | So the one we're looking for is
actually a brand-new set of attributes.
| | 00:44 | If you scroll down it's under Display Options.
| | 00:48 | So if I open that up, scroll down, you'll see
I have a sub-option here called 2D Pan/Zoom.
| | 00:55 | Now what this does is it allows me
to zoom in to the scene without moving
| | 01:02 | my camera.
| | 01:04 | So this is great if you
want to do fine detailed work.
| | 01:07 | Let's say you're kind of working
against the backing plate or you need to do
| | 01:11 | some fine detailed work and kind of get in
close, but you don't want to move the camera.
| | 01:17 | Well, this is where you'd go.
| | 01:19 | If we enable this by clicking this box
what lights up is a Pan and a Zoom attribute.
| | 01:27 | So let's go ahead and take a look
at Zoom first. The lower the number,
| | 01:32 | the bigger the zoom.
| | 01:33 | So for example, if I did .5,
it would zoom in that much.
| | 01:40 | If I go bigger than 1, let's say I do it
at 2, that means we've actually zoomed out.
| | 01:47 | So if I want to get in for some really
close and detailed work, I just put a
| | 01:50 | low number into that.
| | 01:52 | And now I can come in--
| | 01:53 | Let's say I wanted to tweak the
positioning or if I wanted to model something.
| | 01:57 | I could actually do that
without affecting the camera.
| | 02:02 | So even though, I've got the camera
zoomed in using Pan/Zoom, when I go to
| | 02:07 | Render what happens is it
actually renders the actual camera.
| | 02:12 | So this is really great for actually
kind of getting in close without having
| | 02:15 | to zoom your camera.
| | 02:18 | Now I can also do what's called the Pan.
| | 02:20 | So for example, if I put in a
number here it will actually pan.
| | 02:24 | Now this can actually be, again,
larger numbers might not work so well.
| | 02:28 | So if I put in let's say a number like .
2 you can see how I can pan. So .2 or .1.
| | 02:36 | And you can see that I can actually pan
left and right using these numbers as well.
| | 02:40 | And 0 is just where the camera is.
| | 02:43 | Now if I wanted to, I can also render this.
| | 02:45 | So if I click this on and then I hit
Render, you can actually have this rendered
| | 02:50 | exactly the way you want.
| | 02:52 | And again, if I turn it off, then
it goes back to the original camera.
| | 02:57 | So you can see how this can be really
beneficial for when you want to do some
| | 03:00 | fine detail work without moving the camera.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, that's just about it
from Maya 2011 New Features.
| | 00:04 | Hope you enjoyed working with Maya's new
interface and all of the rest of the features.
| | 00:08 | Until next time, I am
George Maestri for lynda.com.
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