IntroductionWelcome | 00:04 | I am George Maestri and welcome to Maya
Essentials 2: Polygonal Modeling Techniques.
| | 00:09 | In this course we are going to go over some of
the basics of polygonal modeling techniques in Maya.
| | 00:14 | We are going to show you how to create some
basic polygonal objects and modify them using
| | 00:20 | Soft Select, and we're also going to
take a look at subdivision surfaces.
| | 00:25 | After that, we're going to start using some
more advanced tools such as the Extrude tool
| | 00:30 | and the Bevel tool.
| | 00:31 | We'll also be going to show you
how to cut faces and split polygons.
| | 00:37 | We're going to work with Edge Loops, which are
ways to create and organize the detail in your model.
| | 00:45 | Finally, after that we are going to discuss
a couple of other additional tools such as
| | 00:49 | Booleans and Lattices.
| | 00:52 | Let's get started with Maya
Essentials 2: Polygonal Modeling Techniques.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a lynda.com Premium Subscriber,
or you got this course on DVD, you will get a
| | 00:06 | copy of the exercise files
that I use in this course.
| | 00:09 | Now if you want to follow along with those files, go
ahead and copy them to your Desktop like I have here.
| | 00:17 | The exercise files folder has a number of
subfolders here, and we have one for each
| | 00:22 | chapter in the course.
| | 00:24 | Now each one of these folder is a standard Maya
project with a standard Maya directory structure.
| | 00:31 | So when you start a chapter, go into Maya
and make sure you do File > Set Project and
| | 00:39 | go to your Desktop and
find the appropriate tools.
| | 00:44 | So go ahead and select
ModelingTools as your project and hit Set.
| | 00:49 | Now when you do that, you will be
able to find your assets very easily.
| | 00:53 | All you have to do is to do an Open Scene,
and it should show up as the first folder.
| | 00:59 | So go ahead and get that set up, and we can
get started with Maya Essentials 2: Polygonal
| | 01:05 | modeling Techniques.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Polygonal Modeling ToolsCreating polygonal objects| 00:00 | Maya has two main forms of modeling,
Polygonal modeling and NURBS modeling.
| | 00:06 | This course is about Polygonal modeling, so
let's go ahead and get started by creating
| | 00:10 | some basic polygonal primitives.
| | 00:13 | Now we can do this in a number of places,
we can use the Create menu, and we have an
| | 00:19 | option here called Polygon Primitives.
| | 00:21 | If we want we can select any of these, or
if we are going to be doing a lot of work
| | 00:26 | here we can click on this
dotted line here and tear this off.
| | 00:30 | You can also go over to the Polygon
shelf if you have your shelves visible.
| | 00:36 | And in this you'll see a lot of the polygonal
primitives are available, not all of them but a lot of them.
| | 00:42 | So let's go ahead and get started by creating some
basic primitives, we're going to start with a sphere.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to go ahead and just go Create >
Polygon Primitives > Sphere, and you can see my cursor
| | 00:54 | changes and Maya gives me a
little hint to drag on the grid.
| | 00:59 | So all I have to do is left-click
and drag, and there I have my sphere.
| | 01:04 | And if I hit the 5 key on the keyboard
we can shade it to see what it looks like.
| | 01:10 | Now if want to have a little bit more
control over this I can go ahead and delete this by
| | 01:14 | hitting the Delete key, and we can go into
Polygon Primitives > Sphere, but in this case
| | 01:21 | let's go ahead and click on
this little box here to the right.
| | 01:26 | Now you notice all of these menu options
have this and what this does is it just brings
| | 01:31 | up my Tool Settings, which is how
I'm going to create this object.
| | 01:36 | So what this does is basically just tells us what
are the defaults, how many divisions do we have?
| | 01:42 | So if we dial this down to say 10 instead
of 20, you can see we have less detail here.
| | 01:48 | And also notice that as I release this it
goes into my Select Tool Settings, so I can
| | 01:54 | go ahead and just close that here.
| | 01:56 | So each one of these has its own settings,
but let's go ahead through some of the other
| | 02:01 | basic primitives that we have in Maya.
| | 02:04 | Again, I'm just going to go ahead
and select this sphere and delete it.
| | 02:09 | And let's go ahead and just create a basic Cube.
| | 02:12 | Now Cube doesn't have to be an exact cube, it's
more like a box, and let's just go ahead and do that.
| | 02:17 | You just basically left-click and what
we're doing here is we're dragging out the base
| | 02:22 | of that cube or box.
| | 02:24 | And once we drag that then we have to click a
second time to drag the height of the object.
| | 02:32 | And again I'm going to go ahead and delete this.
| | 02:34 | Now if we want we can also use the tool
shelf here, so let's go ahead and use that, and
| | 02:38 | let's go ahead and create a Cylinder.
| | 02:40 | Now this is very similar to creating a box,
we left-click and drag to set our radius,
| | 02:47 | let go, and then left-click
and drag again to set our height.
| | 02:51 | Now we don't have to go up, we can also go
down, as you can see, and this is the case
| | 02:56 | with most of these tools.
| | 02:58 | Now there are other ones that
are a little bit more simple.
| | 03:01 | We can go into, for example, a Cone and in
the Cone, it's very similar to a Cylinder
| | 03:08 | we just click and drag twice to create that
Cone. Again, once to create the base, and once
| | 03:15 | to create the height.
| | 03:17 | Something is simple as a plane only requires one
set of clicking, because it's just a two-dimensional
| | 03:23 | instead of a three-dimensional object.
| | 03:27 | And one of the other ones is a Torus.
What a Torus is it's basically a donut shape.
| | 03:32 | So again we're going to go ahead and drag
out the radius of the Torus, and then left-click
| | 03:38 | again, and then we can drag left
and right to create the circumference.
| | 03:44 | And as we can see we have a number of other
ones here let's go through -- one that's a
| | 03:49 | little bit more complicated is a Pipe,
and that's basically a double Cylinder.
| | 03:55 | So again we left-click to create
the outline of the Pipe, let go.
| | 04:00 | Drag up for the height, again let go, and then we
can drag again left and right to create the thickness.
| | 04:09 | So, as you can see, we have a number of
basic primitives that you can use with Maya.
| | 04:15 | Typically, we use these as starting points
to model more complex objects, a lot of times
| | 04:22 | we'll start with a box or sphere, and then
we'll manipulate it and modify it to create
| | 04:27 | the shape that we want.
| | 04:29 | So as you start modeling, one of the things
you should probably do is start thinking about
| | 04:33 | what's the basic shape of the object.
| | 04:37 | And when you can get that then you
can start with the proper primitive.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying polygonal objects| 00:00 | There are times when you want to be very precise about
the way that you create your polygonal objects in Maya.
| | 00:07 | Typically, we use a click and
drag method that is approximate.
| | 00:12 | If you want to get more specific, we can do that in
Maya, and let me show you several ways to do that.
| | 00:18 | First of all let's just
start with a simple sphere.
| | 00:20 | We're going to create polygonal primitives
sphere, and again just like we did before,
| | 00:25 | we're just going to go
ahead and left-click and drag.
| | 00:28 | As I'm left-clicking and dragging, I don't
really have a guide as to how big this sphere is.
| | 00:34 | So, if I wanted it to be a very specific size,
it's not easy to do just by clicking and dragging
| | 00:41 | interactively, but if we want, we can go back to the
original creation parameters of this and change them.
| | 00:50 | We can find those in two places.
| | 00:53 | Here in the Channel Box, we can scroll down,
and you'll see we have something here called
| | 00:59 | INPUTS and in this case we have a polySphere1.
| | 01:02 | If I click on that, you'll notice some
parameters open up--in fact, I'm going to go ahead and
| | 01:07 | bring this down so we can see this.
| | 01:09 | And you can see we have the Radius, the number
of Subdivisions, and as well as how it creates
| | 01:16 | the UVs, but for the geometry, the Radius and the
Subdivisions are really what we want to look at.
| | 01:22 | So let's say we wanted this to be
instead of 5.7, we wanted it to be exactly 5.
| | 01:27 | So all we have to do is type in that number.
You'll notice that it jumps right to 5.
| | 01:32 | We also can do the same technique we use for
translation and rotation, and that's the middle
| | 01:38 | clicking and dragging left to right, so if
I select the subdivision's access, middle-click
| | 01:43 | and drag left to right, you can see I
can increase or decrease that interactively.
| | 01:48 | If I select both of them by Shift-selecting them,
I can change both of those at the same time.
| | 01:55 | So these are great ways to get very
specific dimensions on your object.
| | 02:00 | Now if we want we can also do
this in the Attribute Editor.
| | 02:05 | So if I go into the Attribute Editor, you'll see that
we have sphere, which is basically just the geometry.
| | 02:12 | The shape of the sphere which is basically
the surface, but what we are really looking
| | 02:17 | for is the same thing we saw in the
channel box, which is a polySphere1.
| | 02:21 | And when we create that, you can see how we
have dial here from the Radius, Subdivisions,
| | 02:28 | and then we also have a box here for
how you create the UVs for the object.
| | 02:34 | Now this works the same for almost any objects.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to ahead and select this and
delete it, and let's go ahead and just go
| | 02:39 | do a simple cube, so again, I'm going to left-click,
drag, let go, left-click and drag to set the height.
| | 02:47 | Now as I create this you can see already in
my Attribute Editor, I have a number of tabs,
| | 02:53 | one for the master of the
cube, where it is in space.
| | 02:57 | One for the actual shape of the cube, which is
the geometry, the polygons, and that sort of stuff.
| | 03:03 | And this one here, polyCube1, which
is a very similar name to polySphere1.
| | 03:08 | And again, we have Width, Height and Depth, so
we have very specific creation parameters here.
| | 03:14 | So if I wanted to, I could type in a very
specific number for the Width, a very specific
| | 03:19 | number for the Height and a
very specific number for the Depth.
| | 03:23 | I also have the amount of subdivisions I can
use, so if I want, I can add or subtract detail
| | 03:30 | just by dialing these in.
| | 03:33 | Just as we saw with the sphere, I can go
over to the channel box and see the same thing.
| | 03:40 | So if I scroll down here, you can see I have an input
called polyCube1 and all of those numbers are there.
| | 03:47 | So again, if I want, I can change my
subdivisions, simply by middle-clicking and dragging or
| | 03:53 | if I want, I can just highlight as much as
I want and just type in a number that will
| | 03:58 | affect all of them.
| | 04:01 | So these are some simple ways to create very
precise objects with exactly the detail that you want.
| | 04:08 | Don't worry too much, about when you create an object,
you can always go back and change it later in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing polygonal components| 00:00 | Now as you start working with polygonal modeling,
you are going to want to reshape your objects.
| | 00:06 | You're going to want to move things around, make
it a different shape than the standard primitives.
| | 00:11 | So let me show you some of the basics of
how polygonal objects are constructed and how
| | 00:15 | you can do just simple basic editing of them.
So let's go ahead and just create a simple box.
| | 00:22 | So I'm going to go ahead and go into
Polygon Primitives > Cube, and then just drag out a
| | 00:28 | cube, and then drag up the height,
and I'm going to hit 5 to shade.
| | 00:34 | And let's go ahead and give
it a little bit more detail.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to keep this selected, go
into the Channel Box and find polyCube1.
| | 00:42 | And let's go ahead and make
this Subdivisions 3 on each side.
| | 00:46 | So I'm going to go ahead and highlight
Width through Depth and just type in the number
| | 00:50 | 3 just to give it a little bit more detail.
| | 00:54 | Now this is a very basic polygonal object,
and all polygonal objects have three basic
| | 01:00 | components that comprise them.
| | 01:03 | And these are really just the same as the
three dimensions that we're using in Maya.
| | 01:08 | We can get to these in one of two ways, probably the
most common way is to simply right-click over the object.
| | 01:16 | If I right-click over this you'll see I get
this marking menu, and in it I have all of
| | 01:22 | my different components that
I can select for my object.
| | 01:27 | The most important ones we're going to
look at are Vertex, Edges, and Faces.
| | 01:32 | We also have some other ones, one is
called UV, and that's for texturing the object.
| | 01:38 | Multi mode allows you to select vertices,
edges and faces, and Object mode allows you
| | 01:44 | to go back to the original object.
| | 01:48 | So I'm going to go ahead and right-
click, and let's start with Vertex.
| | 01:51 | Now, as you can see, the display changes
just a little bit, and I get these little dots
| | 01:56 | here at the corners where
all these lines intersect.
| | 02:00 | A vertices is a point, it's the one-
dimensional point of the object.
| | 02:06 | Now each one of these is editable, so I can
left-click and drag and say select that corner,
| | 02:13 | and if I want I can go over to my
Move tool, and I can start reshaping it.
| | 02:18 | So if I want to I can left-
click and drag here, move this.
| | 02:21 | If I want I can select multiple ones.
| | 02:24 | So if I wanted to I could drag over here
and select this entire corner and move it.
| | 02:29 | Now in addition to vertices we have
the lines connecting the vertices.
| | 02:34 | So that's the next dimension,
and that's called an Edge.
| | 02:39 | If I right-click over this and go into Edge
mode, you can see that now I can select any
| | 02:45 | one of these lines.
| | 02:46 | So if I select this line here by left-clicking
on it, I can move the edge, in other words
| | 02:53 | the line connecting these two vertices.
| | 02:57 | Now again just the same as with
vertices I can select multiple edges.
| | 03:03 | Now one of the nice things about Maya is
that it does recognize connected edges.
| | 03:09 | If I hover over say this middle one here and
click on it I can select one, if I double-click
| | 03:15 | on it I can select what's called an Edge Loop, and
this allows me to move that detail around very quickly.
| | 03:22 | This is great for adjusting
things on very complicated models.
| | 03:27 | If you want to select something like this just double-
click on it, and you can select a whole Edge Loop.
| | 03:35 | Now the third component is called a Face.
| | 03:38 | So let's go ahead and right-click over this
and go into Face mode here, and as you notice
| | 03:43 | here my cursor changes, and I'm selecting
now the planes that are defined by the edges.
| | 03:49 | So again, we have vertices, and we have
the edges defined by the vertices, and now we
| | 03:54 | have the planes defined by the edges.
| | 03:58 | So I can left-click on one of these and select
it, and as you can see, I can move that face.
| | 04:03 | Again, I can select multiple faces just by
holding down the Shift key and moving those as well.
| | 04:12 | Now if I want to deselect I can always just
click somewhere where there's no geometry.
| | 04:17 | Now if I double-click on a
face I select the entire object.
| | 04:22 | There is another way to select components in
Maya, and that's using what's called Multi mode.
| | 04:28 | So again, if I right-click over this and go
into Multi, this allows me to select faces,
| | 04:34 | vertices, edges, really anything.
| | 04:37 | Anything I click on, I can edit.
| | 04:41 | And there are times when
we will need to do that.
| | 04:43 | But typically I tend to stick to vertices,
faces, and edges because it's simpler and
| | 04:50 | easier to understand.
| | 04:52 | Now there is one more way to select these,
and that's by using Component mode here.
| | 04:59 | So we can select by component type.
| | 05:01 | So if I click on this button
here, notice how these change.
| | 05:06 | And this allows me to
select points, faces, or edges.
| | 05:11 | So if I select that I can select my
edges, if I select this I can select faces.
| | 05:18 | In some ways this is kind of an artifact
of the way that Maya used to work, typically
| | 05:23 | the marking menus is the best way to go.
| | 05:26 | But there are some additional advantages you
have to this and that we can select additional
| | 05:31 | types of objects, but for most of what you're
using the marking menus really are the way to go.
| | 05:36 | So, as you can see, there's a number of different ways
to select the parts that comprise an object.
| | 05:43 | And once you select those, you can edit
and reshape your object anyway that you want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Soft Select| 00:00 | As your models get more complex, you
want to model a little bit more organically.
| | 00:06 | Selecting individual faces and edges is
great for simple models, but as you get more and
| | 00:12 | more vertices you'll want to
have a little bit softer selection.
| | 00:17 | I have a very simple object here, it's a very
simple airplane, and let's go ahead and just
| | 00:22 | left-click on the body of this airplane.
| | 00:24 | Let's say I wanted to
reshape the tail of this airplane.
| | 00:28 | Well, I can certainly do that, I can zoom in
here right-click over this and select some vertices.
| | 00:36 | Now if I were to just select those
vertices and move them, you can see how it kind of
| | 00:41 | breaks up, because well this is a
really kind of smooth organic shape.
| | 00:46 | And if I just move a few of those
vertices, it kind of destroys that smoothness.
| | 00:52 | So with models like this a lot of times
what we want to do is use Soft Selection.
| | 00:58 | So the easiest way to get a Soft Selection
is to just double-click on the tool, and that
| | 01:04 | brings up our tool Settings.
| | 01:06 | We can also get to it here by clicking on
this little tool icon at the top right corner.
| | 01:12 | Now this has our settings for the Move
tool and how we want the Move tool to work.
| | 01:18 | As we've seen we can use
the move access, and so on.
| | 01:21 | but really what I want to do is scroll down here to
this little section here that says Soft Selection.
| | 01:28 | Now when I click this on, you
can see how my display changes.
| | 01:33 | I have these vertices enabled, and then as
soon as I click it on you can see how it falls
| | 01:37 | off over a distance.
| | 01:41 | And this distance is
determined by this Falloff radius.
| | 01:44 | So if I bring it up I get more,
and if I dial it down I get less.
| | 01:50 | So I'm going to actually dial it down to
about one and half or so, somewhere in that range
| | 01:55 | say I'm getting 1.3 here, and that comprises
most of the tail, but not the rest of the plane.
| | 02:03 | So once I do that then I can just start
moving this and reshaping the tail of the plane.
| | 02:10 | And I don't have to be
limited to just the Move tool.
| | 02:13 | I can go into the Rotate tool, and it will
still be active as well as the Scale tool.
| | 02:19 | So if I want to make this bigger or smaller or
wider, I can do that, and I can also move this.
| | 02:27 | What it does is it falls off from whatever
you have selected, and this is a Falloff radius.
| | 02:34 | If I select one, it will
only fall off from that one.
| | 02:37 | If I select the bunch it will fall
off from the outside of that group.
| | 02:42 | Now if want we can also change how it falls off.
I can create my own Falloff curve here.
| | 02:50 | All I have to do is click in
here, and I can create a falloff.
| | 02:55 | So if I wanted it to select at the top and the
bottom I can change that just by left-clicking
| | 03:01 | on this line and dragging.
| | 03:04 | So now as I move it, you can see how
it changes that a little bit there.
| | 03:09 | Now if I don't want that I can get rid of
these just by hitting that little X there,
| | 03:13 | and that will go ahead
and put it back to normal.
| | 03:16 | Now I also have different types of
Interpolation, do I want Linear or Smooth Interpolation?
| | 03:22 | I also have some Curve presets here and
these are just presets for these curves that we
| | 03:27 | can make by ourselves if we want.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to go ahead and just
put it back to the default one here.
| | 03:32 | And then we also have a Color option here,
and this just basically changes how we see this.
| | 03:38 | Do we want to see it in color
and what colors do we want to see.
| | 03:41 | So, for example, I want to go from
yellow through red to black, that's great.
| | 03:46 | But let say I don't want to go through red,
I can just left-click on the red, and I can
| | 03:50 | change that color to whatever
I want blue, green, whatever.
| | 03:55 | And then also I can change where this is at.
It's just a way of doing visual displays.
| | 04:00 | This really works the way
that a Ramp works in Maya.
| | 04:03 | If I want to create another one I can just
click on their and create another option here
| | 04:09 | and change the color again.
| | 04:10 | So if I wanted it to go yellow to orange to
green, I could do that just change that to
| | 04:15 | orange and again, it's just a
way that you want to configure it.
| | 04:20 | As your models get more and more complex,
you're going to be using this more and more.
| | 04:26 | Now one thing to remember is
that Soft Selection stays toggle.
| | 04:30 | So once I've toggled it on, if I select
something else in my object or another object, Soft
| | 04:36 | Selection will still be enabled.
| | 04:39 | So always remember to click it off once
you're done with it or else you may run into issues.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing with the Reflection settings| 00:00 | Many things in this world are symmetrical
so Maya has a couple tools that you can use
| | 00:05 | to help model things symmetrically.
| | 00:08 | A good example of symmetrical object would
be characters or this plane, and this plane
| | 00:14 | has wings that go left and
right and are symmetrical.
| | 00:17 | So let's say we wanted to change
the shape of the wings on the plane.
| | 00:21 | Well, I could select the plane, right-click
over it, select vertex, and then just left-click
| | 00:27 | and drag to select these
vertices at the end of the wing.
| | 00:30 | But if I move them on the left side
they don't reflect to the right side.
| | 00:36 | But we can make that
happen using the tool Setting.
| | 00:38 | So I'm going to go ahead and just show my tool
Settings here, and let's go ahead and scroll down.
| | 00:44 | Now we've worked with Soft Selection,
but let's go down to Reflections Settings.
| | 00:50 | If I click this on it will
reflect what I have selected.
| | 00:55 | In this case, you're not really seeing
anything because it's reflecting over the X axis, and
| | 01:01 | if we look here we see that the
planes actually oriented along the Z axis.
| | 01:07 | So I'm going to go ahead and select Z instead
of X, and you'll notice as soon as I do that
| | 01:12 | it reflects across this axis and now when
I move what's on one side of the plane the
| | 01:19 | other side of the plane follows along.
In fact, this works great with Soft Select.
| | 01:24 | So if I click on Soft Select here, and I can
even dial up my Falloff radius a little bit here.
| | 01:30 | I can again just make my wings
bigger or smaller and do it organically.
| | 01:36 | Now I'm going to go ahead and click off Soft Select
here, and let's go back down to Reflection Settings.
| | 01:42 | We have what's called a Reflection space.
| | 01:45 | Now in this case we're using the Object
space, but we also can use World space.
| | 01:52 | In this case they're aligned, but there are
many times when you want to reflect around,
| | 01:56 | say the World rather than the Objects.
So this is where you can change that.
| | 02:00 | We also have Tolerance which says if it's within
this much then go ahead and considerate it reflection.
| | 02:07 | Then we also have, do you want to Preserve seam.
| | 02:10 | Now this really is more for NURBS base modeling.
We won't really deal with that using polygons.
| | 02:16 | So, as you can see, reflection is a
great way to model symmetrical objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Displaying subdivision surfaces| 00:00 | When you start working with polygonal models, you
realize that the edges of the model are straight lines.
| | 00:07 | So the less detail you have in
your model, the more jagged it looks.
| | 00:13 | But Maya has ways to automatically smooth
this out, and it's called Subdivision Surfaces.
| | 00:20 | We have this fish here, and if I select it you can
see how the geometry on the fish is fairly jagged.
| | 00:28 | It's made of straight lines and even the tail,
you can see how we've got cut of a point here
| | 00:34 | in the tail, and the lines between
this are really more angular than curved.
| | 00:40 | And a fish really is a little bit
more for organic shape, it's more curvy.
| | 00:45 | So we can actually get this effect by
using what are called Subdivision Surfaces.
| | 00:48 | And this is actually automatically in
Maya, if you use the Mental Ray Renderer.
| | 00:54 | For a subdivision surfaces,
we have three display modes.
| | 00:59 | If you hit the 1 key on your keyboard,
you get the display of the polygonal object.
| | 01:06 | If you hit the 2 key, the polygonal object
goes to what's called a cage, and we can see
| | 01:12 | the smooth object underneath.
| | 01:16 | Now if we hit the 3 key, we just see the
smooth object or the subdivided object.
| | 01:22 | So let's go back to that 2
key and see what we have.
| | 01:26 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this tail.
| | 01:31 | This is the original polygonal object, then
you can see it's just this wire frame that's
| | 01:35 | around of this smooth object.
| | 01:37 | This is called the subdivision cage.
| | 01:40 | And I can still use this as a modeling tool.
| | 01:44 | So if I right-click above this and select
Vertex, I can actually select these vertices
| | 01:50 | and go into my Move tool and adjust them.
| | 01:54 | So I can still model and manipulate
the shape of the object however I want.
| | 02:00 | And what I'm doing is I'm actually
manipulating the original polygonal object, which if I
| | 02:05 | hit the 1 key would be this.
| | 02:07 | And as you can see, it affects the shape
underneath, in other words, the subdivided shape.
| | 02:14 | If I hit the 3 key, you can see I'm still
modeling, but, the actual point that I'm moving
| | 02:19 | is off of the model.
| | 02:21 | So in other words, I'm still modeling with
the original object, it's just invisible.
| | 02:27 | I can go through, and I can
actually reshape my object.
| | 02:30 | I can make things thinner or bigger, and it
maintains this kind of smooth organic shape.
| | 02:38 | This is a great way to
work with polygonal objects.
| | 02:41 | You model and plan for the subdivision.
| | 02:46 | Now the one thing you have to remember when using
this method is that it only renders in Mental Ray.
| | 02:51 | I've got this really smooth object here and
if I go into my Render Settings window, it
| | 02:58 | defaults to the Maya Software Renderer.
| | 03:00 | So if I click on this icon here and just do
a quick render, you will see that the Maya
| | 03:06 | Software Renderer is just
rendering the original object.
| | 03:11 | Mental Ray however, will subdivide this.
| | 03:14 | So if I change my renderer here, in my
Render View window to the Mental Ray Renderer and
| | 03:20 | do another quick render, it's smoothed out.
| | 03:24 | Just remember that when you start using
subdivision surfaces, plan to render in Mental Ray.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Smoothing objects| 00:00 | Subdivision surfaces are great for smoothing a
low resolution object into a high resolution object.
| | 00:08 | But there are times when we'll actually
need that added resolution, either for modeling
| | 00:12 | or rendering or if we're using a different
type of renderer other than mental ray, we
| | 00:17 | may need to smooth our objects.
| | 00:19 | And we can do that in Maya
by using the Smooth command.
| | 00:23 | Now we get to this by making sure we have
the Polygon menu set selected, and then we
| | 00:30 | go into Mesh, and we have
an option here called Smooth.
| | 00:34 | So all I have to do is select my object, go Mesh >
Smooth, and it instantly adds detail to the object.
| | 00:43 | So when I select this object, you can see
how it's actually subdivided the object.
| | 00:48 | It's turned every face into four faces.
So it's really just cut everything in half.
| | 00:55 | So this was originally a face,
and now it's subdivided it by four.
| | 00:58 | And as you can see, this smoothes out the
model, but it doesn't completely smooth it
| | 01:04 | out, we still have a few points here, but
this could add enough detail into your model
| | 01:10 | to create whatever it is you want to do.
| | 01:13 | Now we don't have to smooth the whole
model, we can also smooth parts of the model.
| | 01:19 | I'm going to go ahead and hit Ctrl+Z to
undo, and get back to my low-res model.
| | 01:25 | And if we want, we can just select faces.
So let's say I want it to just smooth the tail.
| | 01:30 | All I have to do is right-click over the tail, go
into Face mode, and then select the faces in the tail.
| | 01:38 | And now when I do Mesh > Smooth, it
will only smooth that part of the object.
| | 01:44 | Mow this may or may not be something you'll
want to do, because, as you can see, we get
| | 01:48 | a lot of little dead ends here, where the high-
res model stops and the low-res model begins.
| | 01:55 | Typically we will want to smooth
everything at the same level of detail.
| | 01:59 | But just know that you can
apply it to parts of the model.
| | 02:02 | Again, I'm going to go ahead
and hit Ctrl+Z to undo this.
| | 02:06 | And let's go ahead back into Object mode.
I'm going to right-click, select Object mode.
| | 02:11 | And let's go ahead and
smooth this one more time.
| | 02:14 | There are times when you'll need more detail,
and we can get that in the Smooth command.
| | 02:19 | So I'm going to go and Smooth, and this
time I'm going to select the option's box here.
| | 02:24 | I'm going to go to the right here, and
click on this little box here, and this gives me
| | 02:28 | some settings for this tool.
| | 02:31 | What I really want to see
here is this Division levels.
| | 02:35 | When its set 1, it's subdivides everything once.
| | 02:37 | If I turn it up to 2, it
subdivides everything twice.
| | 02:42 | So the first level of subdivision
gives you four times as many polygons.
| | 02:47 | The second level gives you 16.
| | 02:50 | If we go one more level, we're getting 64,
and, as you can see, as you go higher and
| | 02:55 | higher, it gets more and more detail.
| | 02:58 | And it's very easy to actually blow up Maya.
You don't want to go too high.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to leave it
in at 2 and just hit Smooth.
| | 03:05 | And when I do that, you can
see how it smoothes it even more.
| | 03:09 | They give me a very high-res
various version of the object.
| | 03:13 | Maya does have History, and so I can go
back in my history and actually change this.
| | 03:21 | We can get to this either in the
Channel Box or the Attribute Editor.
| | 03:24 | So if I select my Channel Box, you
can see I have INPUTS polySmoothFace.
| | 03:30 | And this gives me my level of Divisions.
I can also see this in my Attribute Editor.
| | 03:36 | If I go over here, I'll have a polySmoothFace
tab here, and you can see my Division levels
| | 03:42 | are here, and if I want, I can actually dial it down
just by typing in 1, and that'll actually dial it down.
| | 03:49 | So again, I can bring it
up or down, however I want.
| | 03:52 | If I bring it up to 3, I get a lot of detail.
So you want to be careful by going too high.
| | 03:59 | If I want, I can actually dial this down to 0.
| | 04:02 | So this is a way to get variable levels of
detail, but as soon as you start modeling
| | 04:07 | over this you're not going to be able to change this as
easily, because it will change whatever you model as well.
| | 04:14 | Just remember, if you want to smooth your
model outside of subdivision surfaces, the
| | 04:19 | Smooth command will work for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing reference images| 00:00 | There many times in Maya where you'll
need to model against a reference image.
| | 00:05 | This may be a drawing or a photograph, but
it's something that you'll need to match in Maya.
| | 00:12 | So let's take a look at how
to import a reference image.
| | 00:17 | So the first thing we want to do is create a
piece of geometry on which to map the image.
| | 00:23 | Typically for reference
images we tend to use NURBS Planes.
| | 00:28 | And that's simply because, they map
a lot easier than Polygonal Planes.
| | 00:34 | So even though we're actually doing
polygonal modeling, we're going to create one NURBS
| | 00:38 | surface on which to map our image.
| | 00:42 | So the first thing I want to
do is take a look at the image.
| | 00:44 | Now I should already have my project set,
if you don't just do File > Set Project and
| | 00:51 | make sure it's set to ModelingTools.
| | 00:54 | Now let's take a look at the
image that we're going to map.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to go into File
and let just do a View Image.
| | 01:02 | And this is just a simple
image viewer within Maya.
| | 01:05 | Now the image I have is in the sourceimages
folder of the project, and it's called FishSide.jpg.
| | 01:13 | And as you can see, it's just
a very simple drawing of a fish.
| | 01:17 | In fact, if we open it you can
actually see the image viewer.
| | 01:22 | Now the one thing I want to take a
note of is the dimensions of the image.
| | 01:28 | Up here in the tile bar of this you'll see
we have the name of the image, and then the
| | 01:33 | actual aspect ratio in pixels.
| | 01:36 | So this is 700x500, which is very conveniently
reduced to 7x5 or 5x7, so it's very common size image.
| | 01:46 | So I just need to create a 5x7
plane on which to map this.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to ahead and close
this and let's create the plane.
| | 01:56 | I'm going to do this in the Side View,
because I'm modeling from the side I want to make
| | 02:00 | sure that the image is mapped from the side.
| | 02:03 | So I'm going to go out of my Perspective View
tap my spacebar, highlight my Side View with
| | 02:08 | the mouse and tap my spacebar again.
| | 02:11 | Now let's go ahead and create the NURBS Plane.
| | 02:13 | We can do that under the Surfaces toolbar
right here, this is a NURBS Plane, or we can
| | 02:18 | go under Create > NURBS Primitives > Plane.
| | 02:23 | Then it instructs us to drag on the grid,
and this is very much the same as creating
| | 02:27 | a Polygonal Plane, you just drag, and that's it.
| | 02:29 | Now I'm going to actually
creating a square plane.
| | 02:33 | It's because of the way that Maya sets
its creation parameters for NURBS Planes.
| | 02:38 | If we go into the Channel Box and scroll
down to INPUTS, you'll see that I have a couple
| | 02:44 | of parameters here for makeNurbPlane.
| | 02:46 | One is the Width which is a dimension.
| | 02:49 | The other one is a Length Ratio.
| | 02:52 | Unlike the Polygonal Plane which has a specific
length and width, the NURBS Plane has a Width and a Ratio.
| | 03:00 | That gets a little confusing, so typically
what I like to do is just set the Ratio to
| | 03:05 | 1, and that way I know it's completely square.
| | 03:08 | Then I can also set the Width to 1 as well.
| | 03:12 | And then however I scale it will be the size.
| | 03:15 | So now I know it's 1x1, and it's square.
| | 03:19 | If I scale it, I can scale
it to exactly the size I want.
| | 03:25 | Scaling it in Z is going to be my
Width, so I want to make that 7.
| | 03:31 | And scaling it in Y is going to be my
Height, so I want to make sure that's 5x7.
| | 03:38 | So now I have a NURBS Plane
that is 5 units by 7 units.
| | 03:43 | Now once I have this I don't have to
keep it this size, I can certainly scale it.
| | 03:48 | I can just select my Scale tool, and if I
scale it evenly, I can scale it really however
| | 03:55 | big or small I want.
| | 03:58 | But now that we have this in place.
Let's go ahead and actually apply the image.
| | 04:02 | The first thing I want to do is I
actually want to see my shading in this.
| | 04:06 | So I'm going to hit 5 and make sure I'm in Shaded
mode here, and then I'm going to apply a shader to this.
| | 04:14 | So I'm going to go into the Rendering shelf
here and select this one here, it's called
| | 04:20 | Lambert Material, and just
go ahead and click on this.
| | 04:24 | And you'll see that I have my NURBS Plane and
in my Attribute Editor I have a number of tabs.
| | 04:30 | The right-most tab should be lambert2.
| | 04:34 | And this is really just the
color of this material I applied.
| | 04:38 | Now we're not going to get too deep into materials,
but you can see I can change the color of this.
| | 04:43 | But I really want the color
to be the image that I created.
| | 04:46 | So I can do that by going over here to this
little checkerboard and just left-click on
| | 04:51 | that, and you'll get this giant menu called
Create Render Node down here you'll see one
| | 04:58 | called File, and that's the one we want.
| | 05:01 | So if I left-click on that it will bring up
this File Attributes dialog here and under
| | 05:05 | Image Name I just have to click the folder,
and then I can scroll to my sourceimages and
| | 05:12 | make sure I have my FishSide.jpg,
open that, and it should map.
| | 05:19 | Now we're not seeing this in the viewport.
| | 05:21 | That's because we have to do one more step,
and that is turn on Hardware Texturing.
| | 05:26 | So I'm going to into Shading
and select Hardware Texturing.
| | 05:30 | And when I do that, I can see my fish.
| | 05:33 | Now once you have this in place
you can start modeling against it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with reference images| 00:00 | Once you have your reference image in
place, you can start modeling against it.
| | 00:05 | Now, we are going to be using this fish model to
demonstrate a number of different modeling techniques.
| | 00:11 | So we will be using it throughout the course.
| | 00:14 | What I want to do is set up some layers, so
that way, I am not accidentally selecting
| | 00:19 | the fish instead of what I'm actually modeling.
| | 00:22 | So, we do that by selecting the nurbsPlane
onto which the fish is mapped, and going into
| | 00:29 | our Channel box, and
finding the layers panel here.
| | 00:33 | If we click on layers, all we have to
do is select Create layer from Selected.
| | 00:39 | Once I do that, layer1 comes up, and we'll
just leave that as it is we don't need to
| | 00:44 | rename it, and we have several options here.
| | 00:46 | We can now turn our Plane on or off, we can
also click on this button here, and either
| | 00:53 | template it, or reference it.
| | 00:56 | And when we reference it, we can see it but we
can't select it, which is exactly what we want to do.
| | 01:03 | So now that we have this in place let's
go ahead and start modeling against it.
| | 01:08 | Before we start modeling, we need to decide
which primitive we are going to use as the
| | 01:13 | basis for our model.
| | 01:16 | We can select really anything from a sphere
to a box to a Taurus, really whatever we want.
| | 01:22 | But we need to select something that's going to
actually work in terms of a basis from which to model.
| | 01:28 | Typically, the cube or the
box is the best place to start.
| | 01:33 | There are times when you may need a sphere
or some other geometry, but in most cases,
| | 01:39 | it's best to start with a box,
because it gives you the most flexibility.
| | 01:43 | Before I actually draw this I do
need to get into an orthographic view.
| | 01:48 | So, I am going to go ahead and tap my Spacebar,
highlight my Side view, and let's go into that.
| | 01:55 | Now, as you can see, my Side
view is still set to wireframe.
| | 01:58 | So, I am going to hit 5 to shade, and I'm
also going to need to go into Shading, and
| | 02:03 | set Hardware Texturing for this viewport.
| | 02:06 | Now, remember Hardware
Texturing is viewport-dependent.
| | 02:09 | So, every time you want to see this image
in a viewport, you need to make sure you turn
| | 02:14 | on Hardware Texturing.
| | 02:16 | You can't just turn it on once and
have it show up in of every viewport.
| | 02:21 | So now that we have this we can draw our cube.
| | 02:23 | So, I am going to go Create > Polygon Primitives >
Cube, and I just want to sketch out the rough volume
| | 02:30 | of this character's body.
| | 02:32 | I don't need to be specific, I
just want to kind of get it rough.
| | 02:36 | So now I have the base of my cube or my box,
now I need to set my height, and I can do
| | 02:43 | that by hitting the Spacebar, going into my
Perspective window, and just dragging that
| | 02:48 | out just a little bit, not too much.
| | 02:51 | So now that I have this in place,
I've got the basics from which to model.
| | 02:56 | I'm going to need more detail within this box.
| | 03:00 | Now, we can do that in one of two places, we
can go into the Attribute Editor, and under
| | 03:05 | polyCube, we have our subdivisions.
| | 03:08 | So, if I select this polyCube tab,
I can up my subdivisions here.
| | 03:14 | Another way to do it is in the Channel box.
| | 03:17 | So if I go into my Channel box, and scroll down,
you'll see I have an input called polyCube,
[00:03:2.37]
and again just expand that by clicking on it, and
you'll see I have the exact same things for subdivisions.
| | 03:29 | So, in this case, I want to add
four subdivisions for the width.
| | 03:35 | What that does is it gives me enough detail to do
the tail as well as enough detail to extrude the mouth.
| | 03:44 | Subdivisions for height, that's stuff
that's in this direction here I really don't need
| | 03:50 | that, I just want to leave my Height at 1, and
then for Depth, I am also going to type in 4.
| | 03:57 | When you start modeling, always be
aware of how much detail you're adding.
| | 04:01 | You don't want to add too much detail, you
need to add just enough to make the shape.
| | 04:07 | So now that we have this in place let's go
ahead start reshaping it, and getting this
| | 04:10 | closer to fish shape.
| | 04:13 | So I am going to go ahead and bring up my
Side view here by tapping on the Spacebar.
| | 04:18 | Let's go ahead and start modeling.
| | 04:20 | So I can right-click over my cube, select
Vertex, and then just left-click and drag,
| | 04:27 | and select these vertices,
and start moving them.
| | 04:30 | You can see I can start reshaping this cube.
But I really can't see what's behind this.
| | 04:37 | I don't know how accurate I am
because well the cube is blocking the fish.
| | 04:41 | Well, we can actually fix that
by turning on what's called X-Ray.
| | 04:46 | So I go into Shading,
find X-Ray, and turn it on.
| | 04:50 | Now, what this does is it makes everything
in the scene semitransparent, and I can now
| | 04:55 | use that as a way to actually see the lines
that I am trying to match when I model this.
| | 05:02 | So, all I'm doing again is just
grabbing vertices, and moving them.
| | 05:06 | So, I am going to box
select these, and move them.
| | 05:10 | Now, one of the things you can do is you don't
have to just use the Move tool, you can certainly
| | 05:15 | use any other tool.
| | 05:17 | So, if I want, I can scale them, I
can also rotate these if I need to.
| | 05:22 | Really, whatever tool I need
to get this shape into place.
| | 05:28 | For these corners here, I'm going to
move these points back a little bit here.
| | 05:34 | And again, I want to get this kind of
positioned close to the mouth, not quite there.
| | 05:39 | I want to start getting a
box here around this eye.
| | 05:43 | We do need to model the character's eye.
| | 05:47 | And again, I am just roughing out this shape,
and I need to pay attention to where the fins
| | 05:52 | are going to be, and I'm roughing out the
shape and also planning for future modeling.
| | 05:59 | Now, of course this is just rough, so we
can always change it, and this is also one of
| | 06:04 | the benefits of working
from low-res to high-res.
| | 06:08 | If you make a mistake, it's
very easy to move one vertex.
| | 06:11 | If you have a couple of dozen
vertices, it's going to be a lot harder.
| | 06:15 | So, always better to start simple, block out
the basic shape, and then add some more detail,
| | 06:22 | and just keep adding detail as you need it.
| | 06:25 | So, those are some of the basics
of how to model against reference.
| | 06:30 | Now again, we are going to be using this fish
model throughout the course, so if you want,
| | 06:35 | you can save out your work, or
I will also be saving out mine.
| | 06:39 | So if you're following along with the
exercise files, you can use those as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Editing Polygonal ModelsUsing the Extrude tool| 00:00 | In this chapter we are going to take a look
at Editing Polygonal models, and we are first
| | 00:04 | going to start off with the Extrude command
which allows us to add detail to a model.
| | 00:10 | Now we're working with our fish and our
reference image here, but right now I just want to show
| | 00:15 | you the basics of the tool, and then we'll
apply it to the model we're working on.
| | 00:19 | I have created two layers here, one is Reference
which is the one we created in the last chapter,
| | 00:26 | and if I make that invisible that hides the
reference, and then I created another layer
| | 00:30 | for the Geometry, and I'm just
going to go ahead and hide that as well.
| | 00:34 | Now let's go ahead and just
create a simple object to extrude.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to start off with a simple sphere.
| | 00:40 | So I am just going to go to my Polygon tool
shelf, select a Sphere and just drag that out.
| | 00:48 | Extrude allows us to add detail.
| | 00:50 | There is a number of ways to do this.
| | 00:52 | We can extrude edges, points or faces.
| | 00:55 | The typical way to use this is
with faces, so let's start with that.
| | 01:00 | I am going to right-click
over this sphere and select Face.
| | 01:05 | And then, as you can see, as I move my
mouse I can select any number of faces, so I am
| | 01:08 | just going to pick a face here,
and let's use the Extrude command.
| | 01:13 | So I am going to make sure I am in my
Polygon menu set, and let's go Edit Mesh > Extrude.
| | 01:18 | And as soon as I do that, this
little manipulator gizmo shows up.
| | 01:24 | So if I grab the blue arrow and pull it a
little bit to my right, you can see I can
| | 01:30 | pull it out and add detail.
| | 01:33 | If I move the other way, I
can push it in to make a hole.
| | 01:36 | I am going to go ahead and pull it out here,
and then if we want we can continue on.
| | 01:42 | I can scale either up or down, I can
also add what are called Divisions.
| | 01:48 | So all I have to do is click on this and I
can scroll up any number of divisions I want.
| | 01:55 | I can create a Thickness which is basically
how much it comes in or out, and then an Offset.
| | 02:02 | It's almost like scale, but
it's a little bit more accurate.
| | 02:06 | And once I have that, all I have to do is
just click off of this and there we go, so
| | 02:11 | I have got my Extrude.
We can also do this for multiple faces.
| | 02:16 | So if I Shift-select multiple faces here I can
go ahead and extrude again, Edit Mesh > Extrude
| | 02:26 | and again same things.
| | 02:27 | This time I am going to push this one in,
Division works on the whole, we have our Offset,
| | 02:33 | and we have our Thickness here.
| | 02:36 | Each one of these can work either in
the positive or the negative space.
| | 02:41 | Now we don't just have to extrude faces, we
can also extrude other types of components,
| | 02:47 | so we can extrude edges.
| | 02:50 | So if I right-click over this and go to Edge
mode, and let's say I select this edge here.
| | 02:56 | I can do Edit Mesh > Extrude and just extrude
that edge, and when I extrude an edge what
| | 03:03 | I'm getting is just a face that kind
of sits out in the middle of nowhere.
| | 03:08 | So it's really just kind of creating that
face, and I still have a lot of those same
| | 03:12 | controls, obviously this vertical scale won't
work because it's one-dimensional, but I can
| | 03:18 | scale it using the X axis here, and then
some of these will work, the Divisions work, and
| | 03:25 | Thickness also works as well.
| | 03:29 | That's another way to extrude.
| | 03:30 | We can extrude faces, edges, and of course
the last one is point, so if I want to I can
| | 03:36 | select a Vertex which is also a point and
select that one, and then just do Edit Mesh > Extrude,
| | 03:44 | and as you can see, it just
extrudes that face into a point.
| | 03:50 | So those are some great ways to add
detail and further refine your model.
| | 03:56 | Now let's go ahead and put this
to a little bit more practical use.
| | 03:59 | I am going to go ahead and go back into
Object mode here, select my Sphere, hit Delete.
| | 04:06 | And let's go ahead and turn on our layers.
| | 04:09 | And I am going to go ahead and select this fish
geometry, and let's start extruding the fish's tail.
| | 04:16 | Right-click over this geometry here, select
Face, and then just Shift-select those two
| | 04:23 | faces right there at the back.
| | 04:26 | Now probably the easiest way to do
this is still in an orthographic viewport.
| | 04:30 | So I am going to go ahead, tap my spacebar,
highlight my side view and go into that view
| | 04:37 | and remember, I have these two faces selected,
so all I have to do is do Edit Mesh > Extrude,
| | 04:42 | you can see my little gizmo comes
up here, and I can extrude this face.
| | 04:49 | Now if I want I can continue to extrude.
| | 04:52 | So if I wanted to, I could extrude it this
much here and add another division or if I
| | 04:57 | wanted to I could extrude again.
| | 04:59 | And probably a really handy way to do
this is to just use your recent commands.
| | 05:04 | So if I hold down my spacebar under Recent
Commands you will see I have got a number
| | 05:09 | of commands here but the one I want to look
at here is called PolyExtrude, so when I select
| | 05:14 | that, it just reactivates
my Extrude command again.
| | 05:18 | I can now use this as
the base to create my tail.
| | 05:23 | Let's go ahead and add one more extrude, I am
going to hold down my spacebar, PolyExtrude,
| | 05:28 | go that far, and now I want to extrude up
to create the rest of this character's tail.
| | 05:35 | So I can go back up into Perspective view
and just hold down my Shift key, select these
| | 05:42 | two along the top, and I can do it also in the top
view, so just go Edit Mesh > Extrude, extrude those up.
| | 05:51 | If we want we can bring this up
and add a couple of divisions.
| | 05:55 | So I have enough detail to model this
tail, and we can do the same on the bottom.
| | 06:00 | We can hold down and Shift-select these two
faces and again just do Recent Commands > Extrude
| | 06:07 | doing it from the menu, bringing it out
and just giving it a couple of Divisions.
| | 06:13 | So now once we have this basic geometry,
you can see well I've got this kind of like a
| | 06:17 | T-bar sitting on the back of my character's tail,
but that can easily be modified into an actual tail.
| | 06:25 | So all I have to do is go into an
Orthographic view, go into Vertex mode and start pulling
| | 06:32 | vertices all over the place.
| | 06:34 | So all I have to do is again just match the
outline that I have here to actually get a
| | 06:39 | reasonably good looking tail.
| | 06:42 | Now I am just going to get the flow so that
each level of edges kind of follows the other.
| | 06:49 | Now once I get into this tail area here,
you can see how I may have to pull this out, I
| | 06:55 | am pulling out this corner here to make the
tail, and then I am kind of collapsing this
| | 07:02 | outside corner to again just follow that curve,
and as you can se we can very easily start
| | 07:09 | to get the shape of this fish.
| | 07:14 | Really with just a few extrudes and some
pulling and pushing of vertices, we've got a pretty
| | 07:20 | good start to our fish's tail.
| | 07:23 | Obviously we can continue to modify this but I'm
sure you kind of get the hint as to how this works.
| | 07:31 | The basic takeaway here is that Extrude is
a great way to add detail, and you can add
| | 07:36 | it either through faces, edges, or vertices.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keeping faces together | 00:00 | Now when we extrude, by default Maya keeps the faces
stuck together, so we can extrude things as groups.
| | 00:09 | We can select multiple faces
and just extrude them as a block.
| | 00:13 | Maya does have the ability to extrude faces
individually even though they are right next
| | 00:18 | to each other, this can actually
create some interesting modeling effects.
| | 00:23 | So let's take a look at how that
works and also how it works on our model.
| | 00:28 | So like I did before I'm going to go over
to my layers here, and I'm just going to go
| | 00:32 | ahead and turn off my two layers, and then
I'm going to create a very simple sphere.
| | 00:41 | Typically with Maya, if I select multiple
faces, so if I right-click over this and select
| | 00:47 | Face and just highlight a couple of faces here.
| | 00:51 | When I extrude, it will basically extrude
the entire group, and this is because we have
| | 01:00 | an option called Keep Faces
Together, you can see that here.
| | 01:05 | In fact, if I tear off this menu, you can see
I have this toggle called Keep Faces Together,
| | 01:11 | and that is by default checked.
| | 01:15 | Now if I don't have that checked watch what
happen, so let's go ahead and select basically
| | 01:21 | the same group of vertices,
and then let's do an Extrude.
| | 01:30 | It does not keep the faces together.
| | 01:33 | So it gives me individual
discrete faces, that can be very handy.
| | 01:41 | For example, if I want to create a spiny thing or
something like that, this might be a great way to do that.
| | 01:47 | So I could, for example, select
a bunch of faces here, Extrude.
| | 01:54 | Change my Offset down to almost to zero, add
in some Divisions, worry about my Thickness,
| | 02:02 | and you can see I can actually
create some interesting effects.
| | 02:06 | But again, if I click Keep Faces Together
on then I get this sort of effect where I
| | 02:11 | extrude everything at once.
| | 02:14 | We can use us this in modeling, obviously, as
you can see, here to create some interesting
| | 02:18 | effects, but we also can use it on our fish.
| | 02:21 | So let's go ahead and go back into Object
mode, I'm right-clicking here, and then just
| | 02:25 | going to select that and delete it.
| | 02:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn on my
Geometry and my Reference and get everything positioned
| | 02:32 | here, and let's start worrying
about modeling the mouth of this fish.
| | 02:38 | So what I'm going to do is just extrude
basically a top and bottom face here, and I can do that
| | 02:44 | in a number of ways.
| | 02:45 | One way to do it would be just to select
individual faces and extrude them, but let's go ahead
| | 02:51 | and use Keep Faces Together as a modeling tool.
| | 02:55 | So I'm actually going to go ahead and turn
that off and make sure I have these two faces
| | 03:00 | selected, and then just do an extrude.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to go ahead and extrude those
just enough to give me some detail for the
| | 03:10 | mouth, and then I'm going to add in a
couple of Divisions, say one or two.
| | 03:15 | When I do that what happens is this top and
bottom face are actually separate. In fact,
| | 03:22 | if I zoom in here you can see I've got a
little bit of a crease here, and this is actually
| | 03:27 | pretty cool, because it gives me the space I need
to actually create the mouth at top and bottom jaw.
| | 03:36 | Let's go into our Side view, I'm just
going to use my spacebar to jump back and forth
| | 03:40 | here, and I'm going to zoom in here, and now we can
go a vertex at a time and start modeling this out.
| | 03:49 | So I'm just going to use my Move tool with my
vertices here, and I'm going to start creating
| | 03:56 | this mouth, and I can move these ones here,
that gives me a little more detail here with
| | 04:02 | which to do front part of the character.
| | 04:06 | Now this mouth starts pretty much here, so I'm just
again just trying to get this pretty much aligned.
| | 04:15 | In this particular character the top lip
kind of protrudes a little bit beyond the bottom
| | 04:20 | lip, so I'm going to go ahead and make sure
I get that top lip modeled in, and then for
| | 04:26 | the bottom lip I'm actually going to go
into Face mode and select these faces.
| | 04:31 | You can see as I pull them out I've got
that bottom jaw, and I'm just going to go ahead
| | 04:36 | and move that, so that I get it into place,
and then right-click again, go into Vertex mode.
| | 04:42 | Again, I'm just kind of editing this so
that it looks like my reference image.
| | 04:50 | And then I can go ahead and
select these and move them in together.
| | 04:54 | Now I don't have to do this mouth completely
closed, I can keep it somewhat open, and I'm
| | 05:01 | just trying to get this shape in place.
| | 05:04 | So now I've got quite a bit of this fish
already done, I've got the tail, and I've got the
| | 05:09 | mouth, I still need obviously to do the
top and side fins as well as the eye, but, as
| | 05:15 | you can see, we've got a lot
of detail just using Extrude.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Wedging faces | 00:00 | Now, in addition to Extrude, there are
other ways to add detail to your model, and one
| | 00:06 | of them is called Wedging a Face.
| | 00:09 | Now, what this does is allows us to actually
angle, it's almost like an Extrude, but it's
| | 00:14 | an Extrude around an axis.
So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:19 | I've got a simple box here, and I have
got some additional detail on that box.
| | 00:24 | Now, to wedge a face, we actually have to
select multiple components, we have to select
| | 00:29 | a face or faces, and an edge
around which to rotate those.
| | 00:35 | So let's show you how this works.
| | 00:37 | We're going to right-click over this and
we're going to select Multi instead of Face, and
| | 00:43 | then I'm going to Left-click, select
one face, Shift and Select one edge.
| | 00:49 | So I have this face, and this edge selected.
| | 00:53 | Then under Edit Mesh let's go Wedge Face.
Now, if we want, we can choose the options here.
| | 01:02 | But I am just going to go ahead and leave
those at the defaults here, and let's go ahead
| | 01:05 | and just to Wedge Face.
| | 01:07 | As you can see, what happens is it's kind
of like an Extrude, but it extrudes around
| | 01:13 | the axis determined by the edge.
| | 01:17 | I can certainly go into my Channel Box here,
and see my Wedge Face options here, or I can
| | 01:23 | do the same in my Attribute Editor.
| | 01:25 | So, if I go into polyWedgeFace, you see I
have my Wedge Angle, doesn't have to be 90,
| | 01:32 | it can be 45, and I can add or
subtract as many divisions as I want.
| | 01:39 | I am going to go back over to my Channel Box, and
you notice I actually have some layers in this scene.
| | 01:45 | So I am going to go into Object mode, select
my object, and delete it, and let's go ahead
| | 01:51 | and turn on these layers here, and
as you can see, we have our fish.
| | 01:57 | Now let's use the Wedge Command
to create some fins for our fish.
| | 02:02 | I can't quite see what we're doing here.
| | 02:05 | Let me go into my Side View here.
I am just again hitting the spacebar.
| | 02:10 | Quite honestly, I am going to make this fin a
little bit different than the drawing, okay,
| | 02:14 | we're going to take some artistic license here.
| | 02:16 | So, I am going to go ahead and wedge this face
here and use that as kind of the base for the fin.
| | 02:24 | So, we can actually do
that in the Perspective View.
| | 02:26 | So I am going to go jump out here, and go
into Perspective, and again, right-click Multi,
| | 02:33 | click on this face, and then click on this
edge, and then let's just go ahead and do
| | 02:40 | a wedge, Edit Mesh > Wedge Face.
| | 02:44 | Well, that's way too much for the fin.
| | 02:47 | But what we can do is we can
actually find our inputs here.
| | 02:50 | You can see polyWedgeFace here, and I
can take my Wedge Angle, and bring it down.
| | 02:55 | Let's just bring it down to something small
like say 15 degrees, and only 2 subdivisions.
| | 03:01 | So, what I have here now is I've just got
basically just kind of like a little bump
| | 03:07 | on the side of the fish here.
| | 03:09 | So, if I hit 3 on the keyboard, you can
see how I've kind of created that little base
| | 03:15 | from which we can extrude the fin.
| | 03:18 | Again, I am just going in Subdivision
Surface mode, and if we hit 1, we go back into Poly
| | 03:23 | mode, if I hit 2, you can
see how that's working here.
| | 03:27 | So I am going to go back into Poly mode here
by hitting 1 on my keyboard, and now I actually
| | 03:33 | want to create some detail for this fin.
| | 03:36 | So, we're actually going to do an Extrude here.
| | 03:38 | So I am going to select this polygon here,
Edit Mesh > Extrude, and go ahead and just extrude
| | 03:45 | that out to about the size of the fin that
I want, add in 2 divisions, and make a total
| | 03:52 | of 3, and I am actually going to scale this down a
bit because we're actually going to do another wedge.
| | 03:58 | So now that I have got this here, I have got
this beginning of a fin, but I actually want
| | 04:03 | the fin to come up on both sides.
| | 04:05 | So again, I am going to make sure I'm in Multi
mode here, and I'm going to select this face,
| | 04:11 | hold down the Shift key, this face, this face,
so all of the top faces on that fin, and then,
| | 04:18 | Shift Select this edge here.
Now, I can wedge multiple faces around one edge.
| | 04:25 | I have got these three faces selected and one
edge, and again, we're going to do Edit Mesh > Wedge.
| | 04:32 | Notice how it puts in another
wedge face here on my inputs.
| | 04:36 | This is way too much.
| | 04:37 | So I am going to turn that Angle down to say
about 20, and my Divisions down to say just
| | 04:44 | 2 or actually maybe a
little bit bigger angle here.
| | 04:47 | Now, what I'm doing here is I'm just
selecting this and middle-clicking and dragging to get
| | 04:52 | exactly what I want here.
| | 04:54 | And if I want, I can do the same for Divisions,
middle-click and drag to add some divisions.
| | 04:59 | So, it looks like about 36 degrees with 3
divisions seems to be about the right number.
| | 05:06 | Well, let's do the same for the bottom, and
this time we'll use the tool settings when
| | 05:10 | we select the tool.
| | 05:12 | So again, I am going to select 1, 2, 3 faces,
and that bottom edge, Edit Mesh > Wedge Face.
| | 05:20 | Let's go into the Options here.
| | 05:22 | And we had 36 degrees and 3 divisions,
Wedge Face, there we go! Now, I've got the basis
| | 05:32 | of a pretty nice fin here.
| | 05:34 | This is actually a little
bit more of a dramatic fin.
| | 05:37 | But, as you can see, Wedge Face is a
really good way to make this happen.
| | 05:43 | If I go into my Side View here, you can see
I can continue to edit this by just grabbing
| | 05:50 | vertices and moving them however I want.
| | 05:55 | So now, again I'm just hitting my
spacebar to go in and out of these windows here.
| | 06:00 | If I right-click here, go into Object mode,
and then just hit the 3 key on my keyboard,
| | 06:05 | I can see how that is subdividing.
| | 06:07 | You can see I've got more of a fan shaped fin.
| | 06:13 | Wedge Shape can really help create fanned
type of objects, and it's just another way
| | 06:18 | to add detail to your models.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Bevel tool | 00:00 | Many times when you're creating objects
you will want to have round or beveled edges,
| | 00:05 | a lot of times this is great for motion graphics
or working with text or even if you do something
| | 00:10 | like build a table you may want the
edge to not be perfectly right angle.
| | 00:15 | So the Bevel tool works great
for giving these sorts of effects.
| | 00:20 | Let's just do something really, really simple.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to go ahead and create a polygon
cube, I'm going to go ahead and drag out the
| | 00:27 | cube here, left-click, and then left click
to drag it up, I am going to go ahead and
| | 00:32 | hit '5' to shade it.
| | 00:34 | And so now I've got this cube, but if you
notice all the edges are pretty sharp, and
| | 00:39 | let's say we don't want such sharp edges.
| | 00:41 | We want to make it kind of little bit
more round, little bit more beveled.
| | 00:45 | What we can do that by beveling
either faces, edges or vertices.
| | 00:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and then right-click, select
face, and let's just go ahead and select this one top face.
| | 00:57 | And beveling is pretty much as simple as selecting
Edit Mesh > Bevel, and when I do that it gives the default.
| | 01:05 | And as you can see, all of these options
here they come up in the Channel box but if
| | 01:12 | we want we can go into the
Attribute Editor as well and see them.
| | 01:17 | So we should have a polyBevel1 tab in the
Attribute Editor, and this gives us really
| | 01:23 | all the controls we need
to control how this bevels.
| | 01:28 | Right now, by default the Offset is .5, we
don't have to have it at .5 which is basically
| | 01:34 | just halfway between as it
almost like a 45 degrees angle.
| | 01:38 | But if we want we can dial it
down, make it bigger or smaller.
| | 01:42 | So at one basically the face goes to nothing
and add zero there's basically no bevel, so
| | 01:49 | somewhere in between is what we want.
| | 01:51 | So let's go ahead and just
give us slight bevel to that edge.
| | 01:54 | And as you can see,
we've got a pretty cool bevel.
| | 01:58 | Let's say we wanted more of a rounded edge,
well we can do that in the next value here
| | 02:03 | by dialing up the number of Segments.
| | 02:05 | So if I want to I'll give it a lot more
segments or just a few, and that will round the edge
| | 02:11 | rather than just make it a chamfer.
| | 02:13 | Now we also have other options here such as Smoothing
Angle, and this really just affects how this renders.
| | 02:21 | Now all of these options are available before
you start the tool so if I did Edit Mesh > Bevel
| | 02:28 | and selected this tool options here you could
see I get them when I create the original bevel.
| | 02:35 | Now typically what I like to do is just do
the bevel, and then go to the Attribute Editor
| | 02:40 | to change it there because
it's a little more interactive.
| | 02:42 | But you can also do it before you apply the
bevel, and that can be actually pretty handy
| | 02:47 | because then you can set up your
parameters, and then continually apply that bevel.
| | 02:52 | But I'm just going to go head and
close this, we're not going to do that.
| | 02:55 | Well let's go ahead and take a look at how
to bevel other types of components we just
| | 02:59 | beveled the face, and let's go ahead
and take a look at how to bevel an edge.
| | 03:03 | So I'm going to go ahead and right-click
over my object, select Edge mode, and then I'm
| | 03:08 | going to double-click on this edge, and
what that does is it selects all of the edges.
| | 03:14 | So one click selects that one edge,
double-click selects all the connected edges.
| | 03:20 | We can do the same thing we did before, Edit
Mesh > Bevel, and as you can see, we get that
| | 03:26 | same effect, and if I go into my Attribute
Editor you see I have polyBevel1 which is
| | 03:34 | the original bevel and polyBevel2 which
is the one I just created for this edge.
| | 03:41 | So I can dial back my offset if I want, as
you can see, it's probably a little better,
| | 03:46 | add a smaller angle here.
| | 03:47 | I can certainly add more segments just like I
did before, and I can adjust this however I want.
| | 03:54 | So now this first top edge here I did as a
face, and this one here in the corner that
| | 04:02 | one I did as an edge, and of
course we also can bevel vertices.
| | 04:06 | So I'm going to spin this around and go to
the backside here, and right-click, select
| | 04:13 | Vertex, and just select this lone vertex at
the back that still is the only one that has
| | 04:18 | a corner attached to it.
| | 04:20 | And let's go ahead and do one more bevel.
| | 04:22 | So we're going to do Edit Mesh > Bevel, now,
as you can see, it adds one more poly bevel
| | 04:29 | into my attributes and again
I can start working with it.
| | 04:34 | So let's go ahead and zoom in
and see what this looks like.
| | 04:38 | As my Offset goes to zero you can see this
is what happens when you bevel just a vertex.
| | 04:43 | You get this kind of triangular detail here,
but you still get bevels along every edge
| | 04:49 | that is connected to that vertices, and
again just like with all of these we could add in
| | 04:54 | segments if we need them, and
make them a little bit more round.
| | 04:59 | So, as you can see, Bevel is a great way to
create rounded corners or chamfered corners,
| | 05:05 | and so it's a very handy tool to use in
creating a lot of different types of objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cutting faces and splitting polygons | 00:00 | Many times in polygonal modeling we'll want
to add detail to our models, and so a couple
| | 00:06 | of tools that we can use to add some details
are the Cut Faces and Interactive Split tool.
| | 00:13 | So we're going to start off with the Cut
Faces tool, and basically what it does is access
| | 00:17 | kind of a knife that cuts your
model along a line that you define.
| | 00:23 | If I select my cube here and go into
Edit Mesh we'll have a Cut Faces tool.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to go ahead to my options here, and
I want to make sure this is set to Interactive.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to go ahead and Enter Cut tool
and Close, and make sure it's on Interactive.
| | 00:40 | Notice how my cursor changes, then all I
have to do is just left-click and drag, and as
| | 00:46 | you can see, it's creating this line on my
model, and this line actually represents a
| | 00:52 | knife edge that is going to
split this model along the line.
| | 00:57 | So as soon as I let go you'll see I get
an edge that happens right along that line.
| | 01:04 | And this is great if I want to say
cut the model in half or something.
| | 01:08 | Now if you do this Interactive tool in a prospective
viewport obviously you're going to get something at an angle.
| | 01:15 | Now if you wanted a little bit more square
and right angles to the model then you can
| | 01:21 | actually use some other options in the tool.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to go-ahead and hit Ctrl+Z to undo.
| | 01:26 | And let's go in Edit Mesh > Cut Faces tool,
select the Options, instead of Interactive
| | 01:32 | we can actually do it along a specific plane.
| | 01:35 | So in this case let's just select the YZ plane.
| | 01:39 | And as soon as we do that and hit Cut, it
actually brings up this gizmo and allows us
| | 01:45 | to slide this cut plane
anywhere we want in the model.
| | 01:52 | And once we do that all we have to
do is click off, and there it is.
| | 01:57 | Now this is very similar to inserting an
edge loop or adding an edge loop to a model, and
| | 02:04 | so sometimes for regular model such as this
cube, you may want to use that tool instead
| | 02:10 | of the Cut Faces tool.
| | 02:13 | Now the real power of this Cut Faces tool
comes when you have non regular models where
| | 02:18 | you have kind of an organic
shape that you want to cut in half.
| | 02:22 | Well, something like this cone would be a
better example of some of the power of this.
| | 02:27 | So we're going to leave the options the same.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to go into my Cut Faces tool here, and
let's just keep it on YZ plane, and let's hit Cut.
| | 02:35 | And once I do that you can see how this is
actually just sliding this edge interactively
| | 02:40 | along this cone, and so it creates it kind of
an irregular cut which can be very beneficial
| | 02:46 | if that's what we want.
| | 02:48 | And as soon as I click off of
it you can see how that sticks.
| | 02:52 | And what's really nice is that this is an
edge that we can use for a lot of things.
| | 02:55 | Let's say I wanted to cut a hole in this and
just go-ahead and go into Face mode, and then
| | 03:00 | maybe select all of these
faces here, Shift+select that one.
| | 03:06 | Make sure they're all there, and then I'm
just going to hit Delete, and you can see
| | 03:09 | I've got most of these faces done.
I'll go ahead and delete that and clean it up.
| | 03:14 | So you can see how this can be very handy
in creating holes or cutting things in half
| | 03:19 | that sort of thing.
| | 03:21 | Now another way to add detail is
using the Interactive Split tool.
| | 03:26 | What that does is basically allows you to
draw whatever shape you want on your object,
| | 03:30 | and just add edges as you need them.
So we're going to go back to the cube here.
| | 03:35 | And I'm going to go into Edit Mesh, and
we're going to go into Interactive Split tool.
| | 03:41 | And let's take a look at
some of the options for this.
| | 03:44 | Basically all it has is some Snap options here and
the other option is do we want to detach the edges.
| | 03:53 | So once we cut this do we want to actually
cut it out like a cookie cutter or do we just
| | 03:58 | want to leave those shapes there, and we're just
going to go ahead and leave it at the defaults here.
| | 04:02 | I'm going to go ahead and close that.
| | 04:04 | You can see how as I move my cursor over this
I get this little dot that snaps to my model.
| | 04:12 | Once I left-click on that you can see how
I can create an edge wherever I want so as
| | 04:18 | soon as I left-click on
that, that, that, and so on.
| | 04:23 | So if I wanted to I could actually create almost
any shape I want, and once I hit Enter it locks it in.
| | 04:32 | And so now I have this irregular shape, and
I've basically cut out this shape on the top
| | 04:36 | of my object, and I can use that
for further modeling if I want.
| | 04:41 | So if I wanted to I can take those
edges and move them around if I want.
| | 04:45 | So this is a great way to add
irregular detail to a model.
| | 04:50 | So those are two very, very handy tools on
how to add additional detail in your model.
| | 04:56 | As you start modeling you'll probably
find places where you can use these tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Bridge tool| 00:00 | One very handy tool that Maya has is the Bridge tool,
and this allows you to bridge gaps in your model.
| | 00:08 | Here is a really good example.
| | 00:10 | We have this cup here, and I have the handle,
but the handle is incomplete, and what we
| | 00:15 | need to do is to bridge this partial handle to
the slot on the cup where we need to connect it.
| | 00:24 | And we can do that using the Bridge tool.
| | 00:27 | The easiest way to do this is to select
the edges that we are going to bridge.
| | 00:33 | Now what we need is we need open edge faces.
| | 00:36 | So in other words this is a hole here.
| | 00:38 | So I need to have something that's kind of
an open edge here, and if we look at the other
| | 00:44 | side here on the end of the handle you will
see again I have a hole with an open edge,
| | 00:50 | and that's really what we need.
| | 00:52 | So all I'm going to do here is just right-click
over the cup, select edge, and then I'm going
| | 00:58 | to double-click on the edge of that hole,
and then do the same thing on the handle.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to hold down the
Shift key and double-click.
| | 01:06 | What double-click does is it selects the edge loop,
and in this case we are selecting that open edge.
| | 01:13 | Once I have all that selected, all I have to
do is to Edit Mesh > Bridge, and once I do you
| | 01:18 | can see how it bridges.
| | 01:21 | Now we do have some
parameters for the Bridge tool.
| | 01:24 | If I go in to Edit Mess > Bridge here, you can see the
parameters are basically Divisions and Smoothing angle.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to go ahead and close that, because we
have those same parameters here in the channel box.
| | 01:37 | So if I go under CupShape into INPUTS
you'll see here I've got polyBridgeEdge1.
| | 01:43 | I also have the same thing
in the Attribute Editor here.
| | 01:47 | All I have to do now is dial up or
down the number of divisions that I want.
| | 01:53 | Now if I want I can also create and offset.
| | 01:56 | So if I want to, I could type in a number such
as 1, and it will go ahead and flip it one edge.
| | 02:02 | So in other words, it'll twist it by one edge.
If I do it by 2 it will twist it two edges.
| | 02:08 | Typically, we want to keep that at 0.
| | 02:11 | We only really use that if
our edges are out of sync.
| | 02:16 | Then we also have a Smoothing angle.
Again, that just goes to rendering.
| | 02:20 | Now once we have this, it's
pretty much stuck together as a model.
| | 02:24 | So if I were to do subdivision surfaces,
you'll see that is completely connected.
| | 02:30 | So that's just a very quick tutorial on the
Bridge tool, and I hope you'll find some really
| | 02:34 | cool places to use that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Working with Edge LoopsSelecting and editing edge loops | 00:00 | As you start modeling more and more complex
objects, the placement of the detail within
| | 00:05 | those objects becomes more important.
| | 00:08 | You want your detail to flow along the
natural lines of motion of your object.
| | 00:14 | Particularly, if you want to deform and animate your
objects, character animation is particularly important.
| | 00:20 | So, when you place your detail, you want to
pay attention to what are called Edge Loops,
| | 00:26 | and those are basically just loops of edges that
define the detail in lines of motion of the object.
| | 00:32 | So here I have a very simple character,
and it's actually composed of several pieces.
| | 00:37 | We have a lower body and upper
body, a head, and the eyes as well.
| | 00:41 | But let's just focus on
the torso and the upper body.
| | 00:46 | So if I select this you'll see that this is
built out of a fairly regular type of geometry.
| | 00:53 | We have loops of edges here that go around
the body as well as around the arms, and those
| | 01:00 | loops of edges really define
the profile of the character.
| | 01:05 | Now, if we want, we can select
those edges or those edge loops.
| | 01:11 | So if I right-click over
this and go into Edge mode here.
| | 01:14 | I can select one edge, and I have that.
| | 01:17 | But I really want to select the loop of edges.
Now I can do that in two ways.
| | 01:22 | If I double-click on in the edge that will
select the select the edge loop, or if I select
| | 01:27 | a single edge loop and hit the right
arrow key, it will also select that.
| | 01:32 | So you can either double-click or right arrow.
Now once I have this I can start editing.
| | 01:38 | So if I wanted to, I can move this to
basically reshape this. I could scale it and make him
| | 01:44 | skinnier or fatter if I wanted to.
| | 01:47 | Another thing you can do is you
can select successive edge loops.
| | 01:51 | So let's say I'm working here on the
character's arm, and I select say, for example, this one
| | 01:59 | here, and I right arrow to select the loop.
| | 02:02 | Now if I left arrow, I can
start stepping through the loops.
| | 02:06 | And again, right and left arrow then
allow you to step through the loops.
| | 02:12 | So again, if I select one edge, I can right
or left arrow to select the loop and then
| | 02:18 | move through and basically just
step through each one of these loops.
| | 02:22 | So this is a really easy way
to select parts of your model.
| | 02:27 | Now another way to select parts of the
model is to use what are called Edge Rings.
| | 02:32 | Okay, so edge loops basically in this case
is the horizontal loop of edges here, but
| | 02:39 | we also have the vertical edges.
| | 02:40 | Now if I double-click on one of these, I can get an
edge loop that goes around the front of the character.
| | 02:47 | But let's say I wanted this ring of edges here.
| | 02:49 | I can do that simply by selecting one of these
vertical edges, and then hitting the up or down Arrow.
| | 02:57 | So if I do that, it selects what's called
the edge ring, and that's kind of similar
| | 03:02 | to an edge loop, but what it more represents
is basically both this loop and that loop.
| | 03:07 | And so we have basically selected
these edges, but also these vertices.
| | 03:11 | So this might be an easier way to, for example,
skinny up the character or make him a little
| | 03:16 | bit heftier, and we can also scale
these up or down if we wanted to.
| | 03:21 | And again, if we go up or down arrow, we
can step through these edge rings as well.
| | 03:29 | So those are some really simple ways to
select edge loops and edge rings, and as you start
| | 03:35 | working with more complex models, you'll find that these
tools help a lot in selecting within complex geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Slide Edge tool | 00:00 | Sometimes you'll encounter the need to
rearrange the detail of your model, but you don't want
| | 00:05 | to reshape the model.
| | 00:08 | In that case, the Slide Edge tool will help
you to rearrange the detail in your model
| | 00:12 | and keep your model pretty much intact.
So let me show how this works.
| | 00:17 | We've got this basic character here.
So I'm going to select the torso.
| | 00:21 | And if notice here we've got some edge
loops towards the torso here on the arm, and if
| | 00:26 | I wanted to--let's say I wanted to move this
edge loop a little bit further to the right.
| | 00:32 | In other words, center it a little bit more.
| | 00:35 | Well, if I were to go into Edge mode here by
right-clicking, and I can just double-click
| | 00:40 | to select edge loop, and if I wanted to I
could move this, but as you can see, as I
| | 00:46 | move this it's maintaining its profiles.
| | 00:49 | So it's not changing.
| | 00:51 | So in order to really do this I would have
to move it, and then scale it, but again it
| | 00:58 | gets kind of clumsy when we do that.
| | 01:00 | So it's not really the
best way to manipulate that.
| | 01:04 | The easier way to do it is to
do what's called a Slide Edge.
| | 01:08 | So if I double-click on this, I can
go into Edit Mesh > Slide Edge Tool.
| | 01:15 | Now it gives me this little hint,
Drag with a middle mouse button to slide.
| | 01:19 | Okay, well, that's pretty easy.
So I'm going to middle mouse button and slide.
| | 01:24 | As you can see, this basically allows me to
slide the edge along the surface without changing
| | 01:31 | the actual profile of the object all that much,
and this allows me to rearrange my detail
| | 01:38 | so maybe the character deforms
better or operates better in some way.
| | 01:43 | So I can do this the
same on the other side here.
| | 01:45 | So I'm going to go ahead into Select mode,
double-click on this edge, and then I'm going
| | 01:50 | to go Edit Mesh > Slide Edge Tool.
| | 01:52 | Now let's a look at some of the options here.
There's really not much.
| | 01:56 | There is Relative and Absolute, and
then if you want you can also use snapping.
| | 02:02 | So where actually going to do Relative, and
then just again middle mouse button to slide.
| | 02:08 | So I'm just going to slide, and there we go.
| | 02:12 | So this is the great way to
rearrange the detail on your model.
| | 02:17 | Now this doesn't have to
just work with edge loops.
| | 02:20 | You can use it for just
single edges or groups of edges.
| | 02:23 | Let's say, I wanted to move this
part of the characters chest up or down.
| | 02:27 | All I've to do is Shift-select these two,
and then go into the Slide Edge mode, and
| | 02:33 | then middle mouse button, and again
you're moving left and right to slide.
| | 02:37 | So I can slide that, rearrange that
detail without really reshaping the model.
| | 02:44 | So you see how handy this tool can be.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Spinning edges| 00:00 | Another way to reorganize
detail in Maya is to spin edges.
| | 00:04 | Now we can move edges by selecting the edge loops
and either just physically moving them or sliding them.
| | 00:12 | But if we want to reorient them, we
have to use what's called Spin Edge.
| | 00:17 | So I have a very simple head here, and
let's go ahead and zoom in on the face here.
| | 00:23 | Now I'm going to go into Edge mode
here and select this edge on the cheek.
| | 00:29 | Now in this case, this edge is
basically going along the eye.
| | 00:33 | Basically, it's kind of in the
same orientation of the eye socket.
| | 00:37 | But let's say I wanted it to go in a different
direction because the face isn't deforming
| | 00:42 | exactly the way that I want.
| | 00:44 | I can spin this edge by just holding down
the Ctrl and Alt key or the Command+Option
| | 00:50 | key on the Mac, and just
hitting the Left and Right arrows.
| | 00:55 | As you can see, I can spin this around.
| | 00:57 | So if this geometry here works better for
me, then I can do that. Or if I want, I can spin
| | 01:02 | it this way so that this edge is going in a
different direction, or I can leave it the same.
| | 01:08 | So as you can see, as each different orientation
basically highlights a different direction of the face.
| | 01:16 | This will give him a little bit
more of that kind of hound dog look.
| | 01:20 | So I can have more over crease along the nose.
| | 01:24 | Or if I wanted to do it this way, this
would kind of accentuate the pouch under the eye
| | 01:29 | or if I do it this way, it will give you a
little bit more room here if you wanted to do a sneer.
| | 01:34 | So each one of these can have a different
effect on how the model behaves when you animate it.
| | 01:41 | So as you start modeling, just understand that
the Spin Edge tool is a great way to get you
| | 01:46 | out of modeling dead ends.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting and offsetting edge loops | 00:00 | Now many times, you'll want to add detail to your
model using edge loops, and Maya has a couple
| | 00:07 | of tools that allow you to insert and
add additional detail using edge loops.
| | 00:13 | So let's take our sample character here.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to, again, select my torso, and we
have a tool here called Insert Edge Loop.
| | 00:21 | So let's say we wanted some
more details say around the torso.
| | 00:26 | All we have to do is go Insert Edge Loop,
and then left-click wherever we want that
| | 00:33 | edge loop to happen.
| | 00:35 | Once we do, we've got a new
edge loop that we can use.
| | 00:40 | So again, all we have to do is just do Edit
Mesh > Insert Edge Loop, and wherever we click,
| | 00:47 | it's going to put an edge loop at a right angle.
| | 00:50 | So if I click on this vertical edge, it's
going to create one at a right angle to it.
| | 00:55 | If I click on this horizontal edge,
it'll do this edge loop there.
| | 01:00 | I'm just going to go ahead and undo that.
| | 01:02 | So as you can see, this is a
very easy way to insert detail.
| | 01:06 | So now I have a little bit more detail
around this torso, if I wanted to shape him or make
| | 01:11 | him a little bit more detailed.
| | 01:14 | Now we also have another tool, and that's
called Offset, and that basically works the same way.
| | 01:20 | So I'm actually going to select his lower body here,
and again we are going to go into Edge mode here.
| | 01:27 | What offset does is this basically brackets
an existing edge loop with additional edges.
| | 01:33 | So if I go into Edit Mesh and do Offset Edge
Loop, you can see--I'm going to go ahead and
| | 01:40 | select this horizontal set of edges--and
you can see how I'm getting an additional set
| | 01:46 | of edges that bracket that edge loop.
| | 01:49 | Let's do this on the other side as well.
| | 01:51 | So this is just another way
to add detail to your model.
| | 01:55 | So as you start working with a model,
probably one of the best ways to do it is to block
| | 02:00 | out the model roughly and then just insert edge
loops as you need them to add additional detail.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Building an eye socket| 00:00 | Now let's use our tools to
actually create an eye for our fish.
| | 00:06 | We're new some Edge Loop tools as well as some
Extrude tools to create the detail we need
| | 00:11 | for the fish's eye.
| | 00:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and select my fish
here, and let's go ahead and turn on Shaving to
| | 00:18 | X-Ray so we can see what we're doing here.
| | 00:21 | Now first thing I want to do is add the enough
detail so I can get the circular outline of this eye.
| | 00:27 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead and do this
in my side viewport, so I'm just hitting my
| | 00:32 | spacebar to go into my side view.
| | 00:36 | So in order to have enough detail, I need to
have an inset here to create the edge of the
| | 00:42 | eye, and then maybe some
additional edge loops to create the detail.
| | 00:47 | So first thing I'm going to do is just
right-click over my model and select this face,
| | 00:52 | and then I want to basically inset that. And the
easiest way to do that is to use the Extrude tool.
| | 00:59 | I am actually going to do this in the Perspective
view so you can se this a little bit more clearly.
| | 01:05 | And I'm going to go Edit Mesh > Extrude, okay.
| | 01:07 | And I'm actually not going to extrude it
forward or back, I'm just going to inset it, which
| | 01:14 | means I'm going to change this offset so that it's
inside of this model, okay? So I'm actually doing it at .2.
| | 01:24 | And what this does is it basically just
creates a face that's co-planer with the original
| | 01:29 | one but is just inset.
| | 01:31 | So as you can see, this is starting to
give to the outline for the eye.
| | 01:35 | But this is still kind of square, so if I
were to say smooth this you could see it's
| | 01:41 | not really going to smooth as well as I want.
| | 01:43 | So again I'm just hitting the 3 key to smooth.
| | 01:46 | I am going to go back and hit the 1 key, and
let's go ahead and add some additional detail.
| | 01:52 | So we're going to actually add in some edge
loops. So I'm going to go right-click, go into
| | 01:56 | Edge mode here, and we are going
to go Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop.
| | 02:01 | The first thing I want to do is create an
Edge loop that's right around the center of
| | 02:06 | each one of these, so I'm going to
click here. We have an Edge loop here.
| | 02:11 | And then create another one right here.
| | 02:15 | Now what that does is it gives me enough
detail to shape this exactly the way that I want.
| | 02:20 | So now I'm going to right-click on this, go
into Vertex mode, and just select these corners
| | 02:26 | right here. So 1-2-3-4, and then I'm
going to use the Scale tool, and I'm just going
| | 02:32 | to scale those down in Y and across in Z,
and that gives me my circular outline.
| | 02:40 | But it's not quite as
big as the eye that I want.
| | 02:43 | So I can go ahead and to scale everything up.
| | 02:46 | So I am going to go in to Face mode, I'm
just Shift-selecting all of these here, and I'm
| | 02:52 | just going to go ahead and scale them out
and up, go ahead and select the vertices that
| | 03:00 | are along the outside of this,
and again scale up that eye.
| | 03:09 | So that's pretty close.
| | 03:12 | So now that I have that, let's go ahead and
turn off X-Ray mode here, and you could see
| | 03:17 | I've got the outline of the eye,
but I still don't have the eye socket.
| | 03:23 | And that we can do just
by using another Extrude.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to right-click, go into
Face mode, select these four faces.
| | 03:32 | And then I'm going to Edit Mesh > Extrude, and
I'm going to go ahead and extrude those in,
| | 03:37 | this creates a little lip.
| | 03:39 | And if I want, maybe I can scale this up just
a little bit, in just so that it kind of goes
| | 03:46 | in and out. And then I'm going to extrude
it one more time, and again I'm just doing
| | 03:51 | this very shallow, I'm not going too deep
with this extrude, I really just want to create
| | 03:57 | a lip for the subdivision surface to work.
| | 04:00 | Now once I have that second extrude, I can
hit the Delete key and delete those original
| | 04:05 | faces, so now I actually have an eye socket.
| | 04:08 | Now if I go in to subdivision mode by hitting
the 3 key on the keyboard you can see I have
| | 04:13 | a pretty nice little eye socket there and
so when I fit my eye to my character, and
| | 04:18 | this should be pretty close.
| | 04:21 | Now just remember, as you add detail just
add enough detail to get the shape you want.
| | 04:28 | With Polygonal modeling, less is often the
best option to do, so only at enough detail
| | 04:35 | to get the shape that you want.
| | 04:37 | And use Subdivision Surfaces
to smooth it all out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Refining Polygonal Models Working with object history | 00:00 | In Maya, modeling is basically just a
series of operations. You're going to start with
| | 00:05 | a primitive object, and then you're going
to do things to it. You may extrude, you may
| | 00:11 | add edges, and Maya keeps
track of each one of these.
| | 00:15 | It actually keeps a running history
of everything you do to an object.
| | 00:20 | So let's take a look at
some really basic operations.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to go ahead and just create a
very simple box, so a polygonal box here.
| | 00:31 | And as you can see, when I create it, it
has an input, and this input here is called
| | 00:38 | polyCube2, and this gives me all of the
information I need to create this cube.
| | 00:44 | So, if I wanted to, I could add some
subdivisions in the height, and so on.
| | 00:50 | And this also shows up in the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:52 | So we have the basic cube, and then we
have tabs for everything in that object.
| | 00:59 | Now let's say we wanted to do something to this.
Let's say we wanted to do an Extrude.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to go ahead and right-click
over this and go into Face mode, and let's just
| | 01:07 | go ahead and do an Extrude.
| | 01:08 | We're going to do Edit Mesh > Extrude.
| | 01:12 | And as I extrude this, you'll see that
under INPUTS, we get another option here.
| | 01:18 | So, if I go back into Object mode, select my
cube, you'll see that I have my basic cube,
| | 01:24 | and then in the Channel Box, I have my
polyCube which is what created that cube, and then
| | 01:30 | on top of that, I have a polyExtrudeFace.
| | 01:33 | In this case, it's polyExtrudeFace11, and we
can see that in the Attribute Editor as well.
| | 01:40 | So this is the history, we have a cube,
the shape, and then we have the Extrude Face,
| | 01:47 | and that's my Extrude.
| | 01:48 | So, if I wanted to, I can go
back and change this if I wanted.
| | 01:52 | Now let's say we added another extrude to this.
| | 01:55 | Let's go ahead and just right-click over Face,
and let's go ahead and extrude these two faces
| | 02:00 | here, go Edit Mesh > Extrude, and let's go
ahead and just drag out those faces, and then just
| | 02:07 | go back into Object mode.
| | 02:09 | You'll see that we have another tab here for
the second one. So ExtrudeFace11 was the first
| | 02:15 | one, then ExtrudeFace12.
So, basically it goes backwards.
| | 02:19 | We have the cube and all the stuff that we
used to create the cube, then we have that
| | 02:24 | first extrude, and then
we have the second extrude.
| | 02:28 | So, this topmost one is the
last thing that we've done.
| | 02:31 | So again, I can go back and change this.
| | 02:33 | So, I have this sense of live history, and
you can also see this in the Channel Box here.
| | 02:39 | Now, if we want, we can
also see it in the hypergraph.
| | 02:44 | So if we go into Window > Hypergraph: Connections,
you'll see that all of these are interconnected nodes.
| | 02:52 | So, I have my polyCube2--in fact, if we go
into our Attribute Editor, you can see it.
| | 02:57 | This is my polyCube2, ExtrudeFace, this is my
ExtrudeFace11, this is my ExtrudeFace12, and so on.
| | 03:05 | So I can actually select each one
of these in the hypergraph as well.
| | 03:10 | Now, as you start modeling, you're going to
get more and more and more of these nodes,
| | 03:15 | and if you have a really complex object,
you could have dozens of nodes on that object.
| | 03:21 | And what happens is that it
tends to weigh down the object.
| | 03:26 | Now, if you have a fast computer, you might
not notice it, but if you have a lot of objects
| | 03:30 | in you scene, you probably will because what
happens is that Maya recalculates the whole
| | 03:36 | modeling operation every
time you touch the object.
| | 03:40 | So, in this case, when I touch the object,
it's actually recalculating from the cube
| | 03:45 | to the Extrude and everything else.
| | 03:48 | And so, there are times when we want to
simplify this. So once we have our model in place, and
| | 03:53 | we really like it, and it's exactly the
way we want, we can get rid of that history.
| | 03:58 | Now, there are times when we want to keep
the history in case we want to go back and
| | 04:02 | change something or tweak something, but
once we get it to the point where we really like
| | 04:06 | it, we can delete history.
So, we have this object here.
| | 04:11 | So under the Edit menu option,
we have Delete by Type > History.
| | 04:16 | We have actually two of these, we have
Delete by Type or Delete All by Type.
| | 04:21 | So, if we wanted to delete all the history in
the scene, we can go Delete All by Type > History,
| | 04:27 | and that would completely clear out all
that history in the scene, or if we just wanted
| | 04:31 | to do it for this particular object,
we just do Delete by Type > History.
| | 04:37 | What happens then is all of those tabs go
away, and this just becomes a simple shape.
| | 04:43 | Now, we can do this for the
model that we've been working on.
| | 04:47 | So, I'm going to go ahead and delete this object
here, and I have hidden our good friend, the fish.
| | 04:54 | So, what did we have here is we basically
have a record of everything we've done to
| | 04:59 | this fish, and this is
actually quite a bit of stuff.
| | 05:02 | We started with a polyCube, we tweaked it
a little bit, we extruded a bunch of faces,
| | 05:07 | then we tweaked those faces. And as you can
see, we've got all of this history for this
| | 05:12 | object, and it's
actually getting pretty complex.
| | 05:15 | So, if I go through all of this stuff,
you can see, wow! I've got a lot of history.
| | 05:20 | I've done lot stuff to this object.
| | 05:22 | But once it's to the point where you kind
of like it, and you can delete the history,
| | 05:26 | so at this point, this might be a
good time to delete this history.
| | 05:30 | We can always model from here forward, but
if we like what we have here, then we can
| | 05:36 | just go ahead and solidify it,
and then move on kind of fresh.
| | 05:40 | Again, we can do Edit > Delete by Type > History, and
now this kind of just simplifies it a little bit.
| | 05:48 | And if we wanted to, we can actually change
name of this. We can actually change the name,
| | 05:51 | say, to Fish, give a little
bit more descriptive name.
| | 05:55 | So, as you can see, History is important in
Maya because it allows you to go back, revise
| | 06:00 | things, and change them.
| | 06:02 | But once you've got your model the way you
want, it's often a good idea to delete history
| | 06:07 | to lighten up your model and your scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling symmetrically| 00:00 | Many of the things you create in Maya are going
to be symmetrical. Now this fish is no exception.
| | 00:06 | Now we saw how to use symmetry in say the
Move tool and the Rotate tool, but we also
| | 00:13 | can do a more complex and sophisticated way
of symmetrical modeling, and this involves
| | 00:19 | using what are called Instances.
So let's go ahead and take this fish.
| | 00:24 | Now I've only been modeling one side of the
fish--in fact, I'm going to go ahead and turn
| | 00:29 | off this Reference layer here,
so we can see what we have.
| | 00:32 | So on this fish I've really only being
modeling the left side of the fish. So this particular
| | 00:38 | side here, I've done the
fin and the eye, and so on,
| | 00:42 | but I don't have anything else on the other side.
| | 00:45 | So if I wanted to I can actually flip this
model and make it symmetrical, so that way
| | 00:51 | I can have what's on the left side show
up on the right, and then if I start modeling
| | 00:56 | on one side, it shows up on the other as well.
| | 01:00 | So let me show how you to do this.
| | 01:01 | Now the first thing I want to do is I want to create
a central line from which to cut this fish in half.
| | 01:07 | So in order to do that, I kind of want to
snap it to the center line, so I'm going to go
| | 01:12 | ahead and jump out here by hitting my spacebar
and jump back into the front view again by
| | 01:18 | hitting spacebar, and I'm just going to go
ahead and turn on Snap to Grids, and what that
| | 01:26 | will do is that will snap this
center pivot of my object to a grid.
| | 01:30 | So I'm just going to go ahead
and snap him to the center grid.
| | 01:33 | So now I know that he is
centered on this Z axis. Okay.
| | 01:39 | So now you can see he is
centered on that Z axis.
| | 01:43 | Now if we want, we can readjust him to our
reference here, so I'm going to turn off snap
| | 01:48 | and make my reference visible--and actually
he's pretty close here. I'm just going to
| | 01:52 | go ahead and move him up just a little bit
to rematch all of that reference that we have,
| | 01:58 | then I'm going to go ahead
and flip off reference again.
| | 02:02 | So now that I have him in place, I still
need to create a center line from which to cut
| | 02:07 | him in half, and we can do
that by doing in insert edge loop.
| | 02:11 | So probably the easiest way to that is
just go Edit Mesh > Insert Edge Loop Tool, and I
| | 02:18 | want to make sure that this edge loop aligns
with that center line, so you can see I'm
| | 02:22 | moved too far to one side or the other, and I
just kind of want to get this pretty close to center.
| | 02:28 | We don't have to get it exact, but close enough.
| | 02:31 | So there I go. I've got it pretty close to that
center line, and then let's just go into Object mode here.
| | 02:39 | So now that I have this, what I really want to do
is select this right side of the model and delete it.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to go into my front view here,
and you can see here is my fin, and so this
| | 02:51 | is the side that I modeled, and this
over here is the side that I didn't.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to right-click here, go into
Face mode, and just select all of these faces
| | 03:00 | on this one side. So you can see here I've got
those faces, and then just hit the Delete key.
| | 03:07 | Once I do that, you can see I've got kind of a
half shell of my fish, so I've got one half,
| | 03:13 | so I need to mirror that side of the fish
on the other side, so I'm going to go into
| | 03:17 | Object mode, select my fish, and then we're
going to do a special type of duplicate.
| | 03:21 | We're going to Edit > Duplicate, but we're going to
do what's called Duplicate Special, and I'm
| | 03:26 | going to go ahead and select my options here.
| | 03:30 | So, what I'm going to do is instead of a Copy,
I'm going to create what's called an Instance.
| | 03:35 | Now an Instance is basically a copy of the object,
but it maintains a connection to the original.
| | 03:41 | So if I'm model the original, the Instance
changes to match, and that's really what we want.
| | 03:46 | So we want to create an Instance, but we
also want to make it a mirror image, so we want
| | 03:51 | to flip it along one axis.
| | 03:53 | And if I look here, you can see that it's
actually pointed along the red or the X axis
| | 04:00 | so I want to scale it -1 on the X axis.
| | 04:04 | Once I do that, I can just hit Duplicate
Special, and what it does is flips it and creates a
| | 04:11 | model that's symmetrical but also that
maintains a history connection to the original.
| | 04:18 | So, if I were to select say some vertices
on this one fin here, you can see how as I
| | 04:25 | move it, it moves one side to the other, so no
matter what I do to one side, it can affect the other.
| | 04:33 | So, now that I have that, we can start
modeling this. So let's say I wanted to make this a
| | 04:40 | little bit smoother. Let's say I didn't
wanted it to be so boxy. So I could, for example,
| | 04:44 | select these edges along the top
here or these vertices and change them.
| | 04:50 | Or I could, for example, bring these down. And that
gives him a little bit more of a curve along there.
| | 04:56 | Or let's say I wanted to actually make
him a little bit fatter in the middle, so
| | 05:01 | if I wanted to, I can select some faces
here or some edges, and I can move them.
| | 05:07 | So let's say I wanted to select these
vertices here, and I just wanted to move that part
| | 05:13 | of the body out, so let's go ahead and just
maybe select some of this and maybe what we
| | 05:18 | can do is do a Soft Select.
| | 05:23 | So let's go ahead and just move those out.
| | 05:24 | For example, get him a little bit chubbier
here, or if we want we can make the mouth a
| | 05:31 | little bit thinner. And as you can see,
we can start modeling this symmetrically.
| | 05:35 | So even if I were to do something like an
extrude or anything that adds geometry, that
| | 05:41 | still would maintain that history.
| | 05:44 | So this is a great way to
do symmetrical modeling.
| | 05:47 | So, I'm just going to do a few of these
operations here, and quite honestly, I've got a lot of
| | 05:53 | this character already modeled.
| | 05:55 | So I'm not going to do too much here, but
just really want to show you that this is
| | 05:59 | another way to create models symmetrically.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining objects | 00:00 | Now when you start modeling, you may actually
model your object in pieces, and there will
| | 00:05 | be times when you'll need to combine
those pieces back into a single object.
| | 00:11 | So here I have a fish and a fish one.
| | 00:15 | So I actually I have two
separate objects in my scene.
| | 00:18 | Now we can bring those
two together using Combine.
| | 00:21 | Now before we do this on the fish, let me
just show you this kind of more theoretically here.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to actually go over to my layers and
just hide my geometry here, which is my Fish layer.
| | 00:32 | And let's just go ahead
and create two objects here.
| | 00:36 | Let's go ahead and create a sphere and go
ahead and create a cone, left-click and drag
| | 00:44 | to set our radius and then left-click
and drag again to create the height.
| | 00:48 | Actually, I'm going to go
ahead flip that cone over.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to go ahead and just rotate it.
| | 00:54 | In fact, I'm just going to
rotate it 180 degrees here in X.
| | 00:59 | Let's go ahead down to down my INPUTS here,
and I'm going to dial down my radius so it's
| | 01:04 | smaller than that sphere or
just around the right side.
| | 01:07 | Now let's say I wanted to create
something as simple as an ice cream cone.
| | 01:11 | Well, if I wanted to, I could create the ice cream
separate from the cone, and I would have two objects.
| | 01:18 | So I would have this one object and another,
and if I go in to my Outliner you can see
| | 01:24 | I would have a sphere and a cone.
| | 01:28 | But let's say I wanted this to be one
object, so I can model it all together.
| | 01:32 | Well, I can do that by combining the sphere
and the cone into a single polygonal object.
| | 01:38 | So all I have to do is select
them from all and go Mesh > Combine.
| | 01:43 | So you can see now I'm going to go for my cone and
the sphere to a single object called a polySurface.
| | 01:52 | So now this is all one object.
| | 01:55 | It's not two separate objects.
| | 01:57 | So now I can move it as one if I'm going to model
it, which is the reason we really want to do this.
| | 02:03 | I can model it all as one.
| | 02:07 | Now if I don't want to have this anymore,
I can just go back and Object mode, select
| | 02:11 | my object, and I can go Mesh > Separate,
and that separates those two objects.
| | 02:18 | So now it separates them out
into additional polySurfaces.
| | 02:24 | Because these started as a sphere and a cone,
and you can see in the history we have a cone,
| | 02:29 | the sphere, they united together,
and then they separated together.
| | 02:33 | So there is an individual history operation that
actually bring them together and separate them.
| | 02:40 | Now I'm going to go ahead and just
select all of the stuff and delete it.
| | 02:43 | Let's go on to our fish.
| | 02:46 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn on my
geometry layer which has my little fish in it.
| | 02:51 | And basically now that we've modeled this fish
symmetrically let's go ahead and combine him
| | 02:57 | together so that way we can stitch
him back together and make him one piece.
| | 03:03 | The first step of that is
to combine the two halves.
| | 03:08 | So I'm going to go ahead and each
half here and just go Mesh > Combine.
| | 03:15 | So now we have both halves as one object,
but the problem is we still have a little
| | 03:20 | bit of seam going down the middle there.
| | 03:22 | We can fix that by merging the vertices, and we are
going to show you how to do that in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Merging vertices | 00:00 | So as you start putting multiple objects
together, there can be times when you want to attach
| | 00:06 | multiple parts together.
There are a number of ways of doing it.
| | 00:09 | Probably the most common way is to do what's
called a Merge Vertices, and basically what
| | 00:15 | it does is it takes two vertices
and it merges them into one.
| | 00:21 | Let me show you how this works on
just a single set of vertices here.
| | 00:26 | So I've got this fish here, and
I've got this seam down the middle.
| | 00:31 | If I go into Vertex mode, you can see I've
got these two vertices that are basically
| | 00:36 | just mirror opposites.
| | 00:38 | If I bring them together by scaling them, you can see
how it looks like they're together, but they're not.
| | 00:46 | If I were to, for example, select this edge
here and move it, you can see how I can just
| | 00:51 | pull this right apart.
| | 00:53 | We have to stick these two
vertices together and make it into one.
| | 01:00 | The way we do that is by
using the Merge command.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to go into Vertex,
select both of my vertices.
| | 01:07 | You can see, I still
have one, two vertices here.
| | 01:10 | So I'm going to go ahead and just rubber band
select those, so I have them both in my selection set.
| | 01:16 | And then I'm going to go Edit Mesh > Merge.
| | 01:18 | When I do that, let me go
ahead and show the options here.
| | 01:23 | We basically only have one option, and
that's Threshold, and that is if they're less than
| | 01:28 | this distance apart,
they're going to stick together.
| | 01:31 | And I'm pretty sure that those are already
less than that distance apart, and so I'm
| | 01:35 | just going to go ahead and click Merge.
| | 01:38 | And when I do, it merges them into one
vertex, so now I have that stuck together.
| | 01:47 | So if I go into my edge here and try and
pull that apart, I can't pull it apart anymore,
| | 01:52 | because now those two
edges share the same vertex.
| | 01:57 | Now there's another way of doing this,
and that's called Merge to Center.
| | 02:00 | So if I go into Vertex here and select these
two, I can go Edit Mesh > Merge To Center, and
| | 02:07 | what that does is it just takes those two
vertices and snaps them to whatever point
| | 02:13 | is halfway between them.
| | 02:15 | So let me show you how to do this one more time.
| | 02:17 | So we go Edit Mesh, you can probably see it
a little bit better here, Merge To Center.
| | 02:25 | We could actually go through the whole model
and zip it up that way, but probably the easiest
| | 02:29 | way is just to do a select of all of them.
| | 02:32 | So, I'm going to zoom in here, and just do
a really narrow box select of all of these
| | 02:40 | vertices down the middle.
| | 02:43 | So I should be able to get all the vertices on
either side here, and make sure I've got them all.
| | 02:49 | So now that I have that, I need to squish them so
that way they are coincident, and I can merge them.
| | 02:58 | So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in here
and just use my Scale tool, and I'm just going
| | 03:03 | to scale this until it's right over the middle
there, and that should make them fairly coincident.
| | 03:08 | So it should get them pretty close.
| | 03:12 | Once I do that, then I'll have to do is to Edit Mesh >
Merge, and that should merge everything together.
| | 03:21 | So now my fish is stuck together again.
| | 03:25 | What I did was I cut him in half, flipped
him, modeled him a little bit, and now I've
| | 03:30 | stuck him back together.
So let's go ahead and just check this.
| | 03:33 | So typically what I do is I like to
select the face and just move and make sure that
| | 03:37 | the other faces stuck to it.
| | 03:39 | So if everything sticks together,
you have a successful merge.
| | 03:44 | Another way to do it is to, again, hit the 3
key on the keyboard to see how it subdivides.
| | 03:51 | If there's an edge that's open, you'll
pretty much see it once it starts to subdivide.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finalizing the fish model| 00:00 | So now that you have your fish model all merged
together, it's time to start finalizing the model.
| | 00:08 | Now I've added in two additional objects--in fact
let's go in X-Ray mode here so you can see these.
| | 00:14 | And basically I've created two
hemispheres to represent the eyes.
| | 00:20 | So let's take off X-Ray here.
| | 00:23 | And now if I go into Subdivision Surface mode,
you can see how the eyes fit into the fish.
| | 00:30 | Now this fish is still a little bit boxy,
and we still don't have the top fin, so let's
| | 00:35 | go ahead and finish some of this modeling
and just show you some of the techniques we
| | 00:40 | use to kind of refine and finalize the model.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to go back into Poly mode. I'm
going to hit 1 on my keyboard, and I'm going to
| | 00:48 | go over to my layers here and turn on my
Reference. That way I can see this fin.
| | 00:55 | The first thing we want to
do is extrude that top fin.
| | 00:59 | I'm going to go into Face mode, and I want to
select these three faces here on both slides.
| | 01:07 | Now this is actually pretty wide, but we'll go
ahead and skinny this up after we extrude it.
| | 01:15 | All I have to do now is just do Edit Mesh > Extrude,
and we're going to go ahead and extrude these.
| | 01:22 | You can see they're pretty big, so I'm
actually going to go ahead and dial down the offset,
| | 01:29 | and also add in a few more divisions, so that
way we've got some detail to work with here.
| | 01:35 | In fact, I'm going to add four divisions here,
and this will give us enough to actually make
| | 01:41 | the fins the way that we want.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to go into my side view
here, and let's go into Vertex mode.
| | 01:51 | And I'm going to select just the ones
towards the top here. So you can see I've selected
| | 01:58 | everything on that fin, and let's just go
ahead and scale that down, and maybe also
| | 02:05 | move it up, and this is where we
really start to add in our detail.
| | 02:11 | And because this is a fin, I really do want it
to be pretty skinny, especially towards the top.
| | 02:17 | In fact, if I want, I can make
these top ones even skinnier.
| | 02:22 | So again, I'm just
selecting vertices and scaling them.
| | 02:27 | Let's go ahead and subdivide
just to see what this looks like.
| | 02:30 | It's kind of got this
bumpiness going into it.
| | 02:34 | So if we want we can also start
selecting just individual vertices here.
| | 02:39 | So I have them in my selection set,
and we can start moving those in.
| | 02:43 | In fact, if we want, we can still use
some of the symmetric modeling tools.
| | 02:48 | So I'm going to go down here--I'm double-clicking on
my Move tool and just using some reflection here on X.
| | 02:54 | I just want to select these here and just
use my reflection to kind of make the top
| | 03:03 | a little bit more angular. And as you
can see, I'm doing this as I work here.
| | 03:10 | Also another way to do this is this is kind
of more the old-fashioned way is to simply
| | 03:14 | use scale, another thing you
can do is start using Soft Select.
| | 03:19 | So I can actually soft select these, and I
can even dial my Falloff radius a little bit
| | 03:24 | here, and scale them so they come together.
| | 03:28 | So he has a more of a pointy nose here.
Let's go ahead and finish up these fins.
| | 03:34 | So I'm going to turn off Soft Select here,
and let's go ahead and just get this fin a
| | 03:40 | little bit more in order.
| | 03:42 | Again, I'm just using my Move tool to move
these, and I'm trying to match this fin, and
| | 03:49 | I'm just box selecting these vertices.
| | 03:51 | And one of the things I want to do is take a
look at how it works with Subdivision Surfaces
| | 03:57 | on, so I'm toggling between 1 and 3 the
keyboard here just to see how this is subdividing.
| | 04:06 | One of the things you want to look at
with your edges is the flow of the edge.
| | 04:10 | You want them to kind of have a nice arc here.
| | 04:13 | So again just think of the line of action here.
| | 04:16 | And I'm just going to go ahead
and try and match this shape.
| | 04:21 | And then as I do that I'm going to toggle
between my polygonal model and my subdivided
| | 04:27 | model just to make sure that
I'm getting it pretty close.
| | 04:30 | So now that I have that, you can see how that
fin is starting to look better. In fact, if
| | 04:35 | I want I can move this bottom row of vertices--
in fact, I can actually do this is an edge loop.
| | 04:41 | So right-click over this double-click on it, move
that down, and maybe even scale that in a little bit.
| | 04:50 | What I'm doing is I'm just really going through my model,
and I'm starting to make it a little bit more organic.
| | 04:59 | For example, this tail
looks a little thick here.
| | 05:03 | So what I want to do is go ahead and skinny
up that tail, but I also want to turn on Soft
| | 05:08 | Select so that way when I make the tail
skinnier, that I do it with a little bit of falloff,
| | 05:15 | so that way it makes the
body look pretty organic.
| | 05:19 | And now also towards the bottom of this character--
I'm going to go ahead and turn off my Reference
| | 05:23 | here, so we can see this.
| | 05:25 | I wanted to take some of these ones along
with bottom, here maybe this one, this one,
| | 05:31 | this one here, and just move them down.
| | 05:33 | Again, this will tend to smooth
him out. Turn off Soft Select here.
| | 05:39 | We can spend a lot of time tweaking this, but
you just want to get the model looking nice
| | 05:44 | as it subdivides and make sure
that you match the original reference.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Additional Polygonal ToolsWorking with polygon booleans | 00:00 | Now let's take a look at some additional
modeling tools that we can use in Maya.
| | 00:05 | We're first going to take a look at Booleans.
| | 00:08 | Now Booleans are just a way to add and subtract
objects to create things like holes or protrusions,
| | 00:16 | that sort of thing.
I'm going to start by creating a Polygonal Cube.
| | 00:21 | I'm going drag this out in my perspective
window and drag up my height. The size and
| | 00:28 | shape really doesn't matter all that much.
| | 00:31 | And then let's go ahead and create
something with which to intersect this, so I'm going
| | 00:36 | to start with a cylinder.
| | 00:38 | So I'm going to select a cylinder, and
this time I'm doing it from the tool shelf.
| | 00:41 | You can certainly do it from the Create menu as well.
| | 00:44 | And I'm just going to create a
slightly taller cylinder here.
| | 00:48 | And then I'm going to hit 5 to shade that.
| | 00:50 | I've got this cylinder, and I've got this box.
| | 00:53 | So we can use this cylinder as a tool with
which to affect the cube, or we can do it
| | 00:58 | the other way round if we want.
But let's start with the cylinder.
| | 01:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and move this
cylinder up just position it over the top of that box,
| | 01:10 | and then I'm going move it down,
so that it intersects that box.
| | 01:14 | So if I hit 4, so you can see in
Wireframe that it's going to be down inside that.
| | 01:21 | So I'm going to back into shaded mode here.
| | 01:23 | So now I have two objects. I have a box and
a cylinder, so I'm going to select the box
| | 01:28 | first, Shift-select the cylinder, and then
under Mesh we are going to go into Booleans,
| | 01:34 | and we have three types of Booleans here.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to pull this off.
We have Union, Difference, and Intersection.
| | 01:42 | So Union combines them together and makes
them one object, so in fact, I can probably
| | 01:48 | see this best if I turn on X-Ray here.
| | 01:52 | When I do Union, what it does is it gets
rid of anything that is overlapping and turns
| | 01:59 | this into one object, so I am going to turn off
X-Ray here, and you can now I have one object here.
| | 02:07 | So that's a really fast
way to stick things together.
| | 02:10 | Now one of the things you have to beware of
with Booleans is that the geometry that it
| | 02:15 | creates is what we would call non-regular.
| | 02:19 | So you don't have regular series of edge loops
with which to deform and further shape this model.
| | 02:27 | It pretty much is the way that it is.
If you start to reshape it, you are going
| | 02:31 | to start to get all sorts of little errors here.
| | 02:34 | So if I start to move this you'll start to
see, it'll probably break up a little bit,
| | 02:40 | starting to get this weird invisible
edge here that I really can't see.
| | 02:45 | So Booleans are typically best for things
that are solid surface, things and don't deform,
| | 02:50 | mechanical parts, that sort of things.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to go ahead and just do a
Ctrl+Z and undo my way out of this.
| | 02:59 | Let's go back in X-Ray and just undo.
So now I've undone my way out of this.
| | 03:05 | So now I'm back to having a
separate cylinder and a separate cube.
| | 03:11 | Let's go ahead and again, select the
Cube and then select the Cylinder Glass.
| | 03:16 | Now, when you select that Cylinder Glass, it
becomes the operator, so we're operating on the cube.
| | 03:23 | So if I do a Difference, what
happens is it creates a hole.
| | 03:28 | So Union sticks them together, Difference,
creates, basically subtraction or uses the
| | 03:34 | cylinder to dig a hole in the cube.
| | 03:37 | So I'm going to ahead and undo that, and
again, select them both, and then if we want, we
| | 03:42 | can to do Intersection, which in this case
leaves only that which overlaps, so in other
| | 03:49 | words, it takes parts of the cube and part
of cylinder that are not overlapping and then
| | 03:54 | makes that into one object.
| | 03:56 | Each of these has its own benefit, and also
remember again, that you should probably using
| | 04:01 | these on objects that don't deform, because the
geometry that a Boolean creates is not very deformable.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Crease tool | 00:00 | When you model with polygons, a lot of times
you be using subdivision surfaces, so you'll
| | 00:05 | allow Maya to smooth your object for you.
| | 00:10 | But sometimes the default smoothing that
Maya provides isn't exactly what you want.
| | 00:16 | Let's take a look at how the Crease tool can affect
this and give you exactly the curvature that you want.
| | 00:23 | So first thing I'm going to do is just
create a very simple object. I'm going to go ahead
| | 00:26 | into Create, and I'm going to create the basic
cube or box, and the shape isn't all that important.
| | 00:33 | Then I'm going to add some details, so I'm
going to go over to my Channel Box, open up
| | 00:37 | my polyCube input, and then I'm going to
select all my Width, Height, and Depth, and we're
| | 00:42 | going to three Subdivisions for each.
| | 00:46 | And then when my shade it you can
see I've of got a 3x3x3 cube.
| | 00:50 | Now let's add one more level of complexity to
this, and I'm going to add a little extrusion
| | 00:55 | here, so I'm going to right-click, go in to
Face mode and just Shift-select each one of
| | 01:02 | these faces along one of the bottom
edges, and let's do Edit Mesh > Extrude.
| | 01:06 | Extrude it out, and then over here just left-click
and drag to give it a couple of divisions.
| | 01:12 | So now we've got a cube with a
little foot coming out on it.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to back in select mode here.
| | 01:20 | Let's go ahead and go into Object mode.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to smooth this by
hitting the 3 key on the keyboard.
| | 01:27 | Maya world create that subdivision
surface, and it will smooth this object.
| | 01:33 | And if we hit the 2 two key,
we can actually see the cage.
| | 01:36 | Now let's take a look at how this smoothes.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to go ahead and my spacebar and
jump out, and let's find, in this case the
| | 01:43 | front window, and you can see how right here
the curvature of this is really just a very
| | 01:51 | even curvature depending upon how
far away this edges from this edge.
| | 01:56 | So if I right-click over this select these
vertices here and just move them in, you
| | 02:01 | can see how I can tighten
this up or expand it out.
| | 02:07 | If I wanted to make this curve tighter, I
could drag this detail out if I wanted to.
| | 02:13 | And that's one way of creating sharper
corners is to just place the detail closer together.
| | 02:19 | But you'll never get a perfectly sharp
corner by doing that, and you also have to add in
| | 02:25 | additional detail to create that sort of affect.
| | 02:30 | So we can do this in a different way by
using Crease. So let's back out into perspective
| | 02:36 | view here, and I'm going to
go back in the Object mode.
| | 02:40 | Let's go ahead into Edit Mesh, and
we should be able find a Crease tool.
| | 02:44 | So once I select this, it says
Select Components to Crease.
| | 02:50 | It automatically puts me into a Component Select
mode, so I going to go ahead and select these edges.
| | 02:58 | And then middle mouse button to drag. And
as you can see, as I drag it, they come in,
| | 03:05 | and it actually creases up that edge.
| | 03:08 | So I can do the same from bottom edge here.
I can just Shift-select the bottom edge, and
| | 03:13 | again, middle mouse button to drag.
| | 03:16 | So now I'm getting kind of a crease here.
| | 03:19 | I can do this for corners, so let's say I
wanted this to actually be a tough corner
| | 03:23 | here, I could again select this corner and
Shift-select this corner, middle-click and
| | 03:28 | drag, I get a very flat edge.
| | 03:32 | Now these corners here are determined by
these edges, so if I wanted to, I could again make
| | 03:39 | that a square edge there.
| | 03:41 | So, as you can see, this works pretty well.
| | 03:44 | I don't have to do edges, so I can right-
click over this and do a vertex at a time.
| | 03:51 | So if I were to select, say, this vertex and
this vertex--and again, I'm Shift-selecting--
| | 03:56 | I can make those come to a point, and if I
wanted this whole front edge to be there,
| | 04:01 | again, I could do that.
| | 04:03 | And now what that's doing is it's just
tightening up the vertices. If I wanted to do edges,
| | 04:09 | I could do that as well.
| | 04:11 | I could again, Shift-select
these edges and tighten them up.
| | 04:15 | As you can see, this is a great way to
control exactly how your models smoothes, and I'm
| | 04:22 | sure you can find all sorts of ways to use this.
| | 04:26 | One really esoteric way of doing it is to
actually create creases in the character's
| | 04:31 | face, if you want to create laugh lines or
furrows in the character's brow, you can use
| | 04:35 | a crease tool to do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with lattices | 00:00 | When you model organic objects, there are a lot of
times you will need to deform the entire object.
| | 00:07 | Now we've used soft select to deform parts of
the object, in other words to do local modeling.
| | 00:13 | But if we want to do something little bit
more global, we can use what are called Lattices.
| | 00:17 | Now lattices basically just put a box or a
lattice around your object, and then you manipulate
| | 00:24 | the box and your object
deforms to match the box.
| | 00:28 | So let's take a look at how this works.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to select my object here, in this
case the fish and lattices are actually found
| | 00:36 | in the Animation menu set.
Now we've been working in Polygons here.
| | 00:41 | Let's go into Animation, and under Create
Deformers we find an option called Lattice, which is
| | 00:48 | what we are looking for.
| | 00:50 | And let's go ahead and
just select the options here.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to click on this little box here,
and you see the default options for lattice
| | 00:57 | is 2 Divisions, 5 Divisions and 2, depends
on how you model your object, as to which
| | 01:05 | direction these follow along.
| | 01:08 | Typically it's X, Y, and Z.
But in lattices this is called S, T, and U.
| | 01:14 | A lot of times what I like to do is just
apply the defaults and modify them later, so that
| | 01:18 | way I know exactly how I'm getting my divisions.
| | 01:21 | So I'm just going to go ahead and
create the default lattice here.
| | 01:25 | As you can see, it's got one, 2 Divisions
in the X direction, 5 in the Y, 2 in the Z.
| | 01:32 | So if I select my lattice, now my lattice
is actually a separate object than my fish.
| | 01:38 | So if I select my fish, you'll see
that the lattice is affecting the fish.
| | 01:44 | But I can also select the lattice itself.
| | 01:47 | So I have this object here called ffd1Lattice,
if I scroll down to my Channel Box, you'll
| | 01:52 | see how many divisions I have.
| | 01:55 | I can also do this in the Attribute Editor.
You can see my ffd here.
| | 02:00 | So my S Divisions here are along my X
direction, I'm going to leave those at 2.
| | 02:06 | My T Divisions are 5, so that's great, and my
U Divisions are along the length of the fish.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and make those 6.
| | 02:16 | So now that I have this, I
can start editing this lattice.
| | 02:20 | I edit the lattice by right-clicking over
it, and it's actually a new type of object.
| | 02:26 | So we have object mode, very
similar, but we also have lattice point.
| | 02:31 | So what I can do is I can grab these
lattice points here and move them around.
| | 02:35 | So If I left-click and drag and just box
select the whole end of that, I can affect this left
| | 02:44 | and right, I can wiggle his fins, I
can do pretty much whatever I want.
| | 02:48 | If I wanted to make him a
little bit taller, I can do that.
| | 02:52 | And again, it's a very easy way
to manipulate the object globally.
| | 02:57 | So if you want to make him a little bit
skinnier or fatter or longer or shorter, whatever,
| | 03:03 | you can do that using a lattice.
It makes a lot of sense.
| | 03:07 | Now the one thing about this is that
the lattice and the object are separate.
| | 03:13 | If I take my object, and I move him outside
of that lattice, you can see how the lattice
| | 03:19 | affects him relative to
where he is in location to that.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to right-click over this
lattice, and let's do an extreme deformation.
| | 03:27 | Let's makes him really tall, and let's
go ahead and make his fins a lot longer.
| | 03:33 | And then if I actually select this object here, you
can see how it affects the way that he is deformed.
| | 03:41 | Now this can be both a blessing and a curse.
| | 03:44 | If you accidentally move your object,
then the deformation gets affected.
| | 03:49 | But one of the things you can do as a special effect
is you can animate the lattice on or off of the object.
| | 03:56 | So you can actually animate the object
going through the lattice, you are going to have
| | 03:59 | like a spacewalk type effect.
| | 04:02 | Once you're done with this, if you like it,
you can always just go ahead and do Edit >
| | 04:07 | Delete by Type > History, and that will
remove the lattice, and your model is now fixed.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with nonlinear deformers | 00:00 | In addition to lattices there are other ways
to globally deform an object and these are
| | 00:06 | called Nonlinear Deformers.
| | 00:08 | They work very similar to lattices in that
they are an animation tool, and we find under
| | 00:14 | the Create Deformers menu.
| | 00:16 | So let's take a look at
how to use some of these.
| | 00:19 | I am going to select my fish first and zoom in
here a little bit, and under Create Deformers
| | 00:25 | we have a whole list of what
are called Nonlinear Deformers.
| | 00:30 | These are Bend, Flare, Sine,
Squash, Twist, and Wave.
| | 00:33 | In fact, I am going to click on this little
dotted line here and pull those off, so we
| | 00:38 | don't have to keep going through our menus.
| | 00:40 | Each one of these does a very specific thing, and
they can be very handy for modeling and for animation.
| | 00:48 | So I am going to go ahead and select my fish,
and let's go ahead and go from the top down.
| | 00:50 | We are going to into the Bend modifier.
| | 00:52 | So I am just going to go
ahead and left-click on that.
| | 00:55 | And as you can see, this little line comes
up, and I have a new object here just like
| | 01:01 | I had with the lattice deformer, it is a separate
object, it's called Bend 1, and I have a handle here.
| | 01:08 | And if you scroll down here in the
channel box, you will see I've got my inputs.
| | 01:13 | The most important one is Curvature, so if
I select that and middle-click, you can see
| | 01:18 | that I can actually bend this left or right.
| | 01:22 | Well, for this fish, I really don't want
to bend him around the vertical axis, I want
| | 01:27 | to bend him around the horizontal axis.
| | 01:30 | So just like with the lattice,
we can actually move the deformer.
| | 01:34 | So I'll make sure these are all at the defaults
and select this handle, make sure it's selected
| | 01:39 | and go into rotate mode and just rotate that.
| | 01:43 | In fact, I can even just type that in, I am
going to rotate that 90 degrees, so that it's horizontal
| | 01:49 | rather than vertical.
| | 01:50 | So I am rotating at 90 degrees in X.
| | 01:53 | So now I will go into my bend 1 input,
select Curvature, and now I can bend him left and
| | 02:01 | right along that axis, which is kind of cool.
| | 02:06 | That means that I can
actually affect just the fish.
| | 02:10 | Now if I want, I can also do
it just for parts of that fish.
| | 02:16 | So I am going to go head and select this
handle from my Bend modifier and delete it, then
| | 02:21 | right-click, go into Vertex mode here for my fish
and just select, say, the last half of the character.
| | 02:29 | In fact, if I want to, I could actually double-
click on my Move tool here, and let's scroll down
| | 02:37 | and do a Soft Select, so I am
selecting just the back part of that fish.
| | 02:43 | Now let's go ahead and add a Bend modifier.
| | 02:45 | And when I do, you can see it
moves it a little bit further back.
| | 02:49 | That's because I'm only
affecting that which I had selected.
| | 02:53 | I am going to Rotate this same 90 degrees in X
to make it horizontal, and if we go into the
| | 03:01 | Bend tool here, you can see I can just use
the Curvature to affect that fin, but you
| | 03:07 | can see that, well, it's not really
affecting the fin the way that I want.
| | 03:11 | But what we can do is we can actually change
the lower and upper boundary, so I am going
| | 03:16 | to go ahead curve this a little bit, and I
am going to keep the lower boundary at a lower
| | 03:22 | number, and then just change
that high boundary down to 0.
| | 03:26 | So it's basically going to not bend on the
last half of it, but just this top half of it.
| | 03:32 | So now when I Curve it, you can see I
am bending just the tip of that tail.
| | 03:36 | I am going to go ahead and select this and
delete it, and let's move on to the cylinder.
| | 03:42 | I am going to select the cylinder, we are
going to go into the Flare tool here, and
| | 03:47 | this basically allows us to flare at the
top and bottom, so if I select my Flare handle
| | 03:53 | here, scroll down in my channel box, and again,
I can go Curve, and again, I am middle-clicking
| | 03:59 | and dragging, so you can
see how I can flare that.
| | 04:02 | I've got an X and Y direction, so I
can squish it or squash it a little bit.
| | 04:08 | I can do that the same on the top as well.
| | 04:11 | So I am going to select this delete it, and
then just go ahead select my cylinder again,
| | 04:17 | and let's take a look at the Sine Wave,
very similar, we get a sine handle here, and I
| | 04:22 | if I scroll down in my
channel box, I get my inputs.
| | 04:25 | We have Amplitude that goes up and down, and
a Wavelength, so how many different iterations
| | 04:31 | of this are we going to have?
| | 04:33 | And again, I am going to just touch the Delete key.
And then this one is very handy, it's called Squash.
| | 04:39 | I am going to go head and select my cylinder,
hit Squash, and it's basically a Squash and Stretch.
| | 04:44 | It's similar to Flare but a little
bit simpler in the way that it works.
| | 04:50 | So again, I've got a Factor and again I am
just middle-clicking and dragging so this
| | 04:54 | is kind of a Squash and Stretch sort of thing.
| | 04:57 | We've got lower upper bounds, we have
got an extension, so on and so forth.
| | 05:03 | Now I am going to go ahead select the Cube here,
and let's go ahead and look at the Twist modifier.
| | 05:09 | So I select Twist. Now this is a great
one for creating, well, twisty shapes.
| | 05:14 | So if I scroll down here on this twist handle,
open up this input, you can see that the start
| | 05:21 | angle and end angle allow me to a
twisty sort of affect, which is kind of nice.
| | 05:26 | So I have a start angle and an end angle,
and I can create a screw like effect here.
| | 05:33 | If I select by object here, obviously I
would have a lot of detail, but if I go into my
| | 05:37 | polyCube here, and create more divisions,
you can see I can actually get a fairly nice
| | 05:44 | screw shape, which is great! So if you
need to do that sort of effect, you can do it.
| | 05:49 | Again, with my twist here,
I can create all of that.
| | 05:53 | So I am going to go ahead and select my twist
handle, delete it. And then the last one is Waves.
| | 05:59 | So I am going to select my box, hit Wave, and
once I have this you can see I've got an Amplitude.
| | 06:06 | If you move this here, you
can see how this is working.
| | 06:09 | You have a Waveform that's going this way.
| | 06:11 | So if I wanted to, I could rotate this so
that it's going more along that axis there,
| | 06:19 | so I've got a Wavelength, and I can
do an offset or drop-off, and so on.
| | 06:26 | Each one of these can be used as a modeling
or an animation tool, but as you can see,
| | 06:33 | they are great ways to globally
deform objects in a more organic way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
Conclusion Goodbye| 00:00 | So that pretty much wraps up Maya
Essentials 2: Polygonal Modeling Techniques.
| | 00:05 | Now these are some basic polygonal modeling
techniques that you can use to create your own models.
| | 00:11 | Maya has a lot more tools, but hopefully
you've gotten to hang of the basics of polygonal
| | 00:17 | modeling and can apply
these to all of your projects.
| | 00:21 | So with that, this is
George Maestri for lynda.com.
| | 00:25 | Hope to see you next time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
