2009
Table Of Contents
- Contents
- Overview
- Maya Basics
- Polygonal Modeling
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lesson
- Lesson 1: Modeling a polygonal mesh
- Introduction
- Setting modeling preferences
- Using 2D reference images
- Creating a polygon primitive
- Modeling in shaded mode
- Model symmetry
- Selecting components by painting
- Selecting edge loops
- Editing components in the orthographic views
- Editing components in the perspective view
- Drawing a polygon
- Extruding polygon components
- Bridging between edges
- Adding polygons to a mesh
- Splitting polygon faces
- Terminating edge loops
- Deleting construction history
- Mirror copying a mesh
- Working with a smoothed mesh
- Creasing and hardening edges on a mesh
- Beyond the lesson
- NURBS Modeling
- Subdivision Surfaces
- Animation
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lessons
- Lesson 1: Keyframes and the Graph Editor
- Lesson 2: Set Driven Key
- Lesson 3: Path animation
- Lesson 4: Nonlinear animation with Trax
- Introduction
- Open the first scene for the lesson
- Creating clips with Trax
- Changing the position of clips with Trax
- Editing the animation of clips
- Reusing clips within Trax
- Soloing and muting tracks
- Scaling clips within Trax
- Open the second scene for the lesson
- Creating clips from motion capture data
- Extending the length of motion capture data
- Redirecting the motion within a clip
- Beyond the lesson
- Lesson 5: Inverse kinematics
- Introduction
- Open the scene for the lesson
- Understanding hierarchies
- Viewing hierarchies using the Hypergraph
- Creating a skeleton hierarchy
- Parenting a model into a skeleton hierarchy
- Applying IK to a skeleton hierarchy
- Creating a control object for an IK system
- Constraining an IK system
- Limiting the range of motion of an IK system
- Simplifying the display of a hierarchy
- Applying parent constraints on an IK system
- Planning an animation for an IK system
- Animating an IK system
- Beyond the lesson
- Character Setup
- Polygon Texturing
- Rendering
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lessons
- Lesson 1: Rendering a scene
- Introduction
- Open the scene for the lesson
- Creating shading materials for objects
- Refining shading materials for objects
- Maya renderers
- Rendering a single frame using IPR
- Rendering using the Maya software renderer
- Batch rendering a sequence of animation frames
- Viewing a sequence of rendered frames
- Beyond the lesson
- Lesson 2: Shading surfaces
- Lesson 3: Lights, shadows, and cameras
- Lesson 4: Global Illumination
- Lesson 5: Caustics
- Dynamics
- Painting
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lessons
- Lesson 1: Painting in 2D using Paint Effects
- Lesson 2: Painting in 3D using Paint Effects
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lessons
- Brushes and strokes
- Rendering Paint Effects strokes
- Paint Effects on 3D objects
- Creating a surface to paint on
- Painting on objects
- Using turbulence with brush stroke tubes
- Using additional preset brushes
- Mesh brushes
- Converting mesh strokes to polygons
- Modifying a converted polygonal mesh
- Beyond the lesson
- Lesson 3: Painting textures on surfaces
- Expressions
- Scripting in Maya
- Index
Hypergraph window (Window > Hypergraph: Hierarchy) and selecting Edit >
Ungroup.
Beyond the lesson
In this lesson you learned some basic techniques of polygonal modeling:
■ You can create complex polygonal models with surprisingly few techniques.
■ Starting from a primitive surface such as a cube, you can smooth, scale,
move, extrude, split, and rotate components of the primitive to create a
low resolution version of the model you want to create.
■ You must frequently adjust vertices to fine-tune the shape, and finally
smooth the edges between faces where desired in order to produce the
final version of your model.
■ Another method for previewing a smoothed version of the mesh before it
is smoothed is via Smooth Mesh Preview. Press the 2 or 3 key while the
mesh is selected to preview it in a smoothed state. Press the 1 key to return
it to the unsmoothed state.
Polygonal modeling has many timesaving features not covered in this lesson:
■ For example, Boolean operations (union, difference, and intersection) are
a common way to create a new object from the interaction of two existing
objects.
■ If you’re planning to use your polygonal surfaces where the poly count is
constrained, such as with interactive games, Maya has a number of tools
for minimizing the number of polygonal faces of an object such as the
Reduce Tool. Fewer faces means simpler geometry. This is critical when
fewer polygons means increased interactive performance with games
applications. You can view the polygon count on your mesh by selecting
the mesh and then choosing Poly Count.
■ Maya also has a category of tools called Deformers. Deformers let you bend,
twist, and scale your objects by enveloping the object in a cage-like
manipulator called a lattice deformer that you can manipulate.
■ The NURBS chapter in this guide describes how to use the Sculpt Geometry
Tool to modify a surface by pushing, pulling, and smoothing a surface
without first selecting vertices. Though the lesson shows how to shape a
132 | Chapter 3 Polygonal Modeling