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
joint is in a position that creates a slight forward bend. The forward bend
ensures that you will be able to animate the leg easily in a direction
natural for a leg.
4 Press Enter (Windows and Linux) or Return (Mac OS X) after creating the
toe joint. This completes the joint chain.
5 Select Window > Hypergraph: Hierarchy.
The Hypergraph is a convenient place to select, rename, and parent
objects. It is similar to the Outliner, but it has features tailored for
character setup. For example, it depicts all parent-child relationships in
an easy-to-read indented format.
The Hypergraph shows the default names given to the joints just created:
joint1, joint2, and so on. The joints have a hierarchical relationship.
Joint1 is the parent of joint2, which is the parent of joint3, and so on.
Joint1 is the root of the hierarchy. If you reposition joint1, you reposition
the whole joint chain.
In the scene view, joints are represented by spherical icons. Bones separate
the joints, and are represented by elongated pyramid icons. The narrow
part of a bone points in the downward direction of the hierarchy.
The reason you create the hip joint first and the toe joint last is to have
the hip at the top of the hierarchy and the toe at the bottom. You’ll
usually want the toe (and other joints) to move whenever you move the
hip, but not necessarily vice versa. In general, joint chains emanate from
the interior of the character outward.
6 Rename the joints as left_hip, left_knee, left_ankle, left_ball, and left_toe.
To rename a joint, right-click the joint name in the Hypergraph and select
Rename from the drop down menu. Type the new name and press Enter.
7 In the front view, click the left_hip joint to select it. Move it along the
X-axis to the center of the top of the left leg. (In this lesson, left and right
Creating joints | 307