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
to a value of 1. If you move the mechanical arm, the cargo box will move
somewhere between its first and second position. This occurs because
each constraint has equal influence on the cargo box at this point.
Before you can animate the objects in the scene, you also need to reset the
default weight values for each constraint, so that one parent constraint has
full influence on CargoBox when the other does not.
To set the weighting for the parent constraints
1 In the Hypergraph, select only CargoBox.
2 In the ChannelBox, set the following:
■ Platform W1: 0
3 Select only SwivelBase.
4 In the ChannelBox, set the Rotate Y value to 0.
The mechanical arm and cargo box are rotated back.
5 In the Hypergraph, select only CargoBox.
6 In the main menu, select Constrain > Set Rest Position.
Setting a rest position for CargoBox sets a position for the cargo box when
no constraints are acting upon it. If the rest position is not set, CargoBox
will be repositioned to the second constraint position.
7 In the ChannelBox, set the following:
■ ArmControl W0: 0
At this point, both parent constraints are set to have no influence on the
cargo box because their weight attributes are set to zero. When you
animate the components in the scene, the weight attributes for the parent
constraints will be set and keyframed depending on which constraining
object (Arm or Platform) is required to have full influence.
In the next steps, you plan the action for animation of the IK system.
Planning an animation for an IK system
Now that the mechanical arm and cargo box are fully set up for animation
it’s a simple matter to pose the arm and set keyframes. Prior to setting any
keyframes you should take a few moments to plan the action for the scene.
294 | Chapter 6 Animation