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
2 Click left_shoulder, and then click left_wrist. This creates an IK handle
for the left arm.
3 Select Skeleton > IK Handle Tool.
4 Click right_shoulder, then click right_wrist. This creates an IK handle for
the right arm.
5 Practice posing and animating the handles.
Posing and animating using forward kinematics
As the last part of the lesson, you can optionally practice posing and animating
the character by rotating joints that are not controlled by IK handles—the
ball joints of the feet, and joints from the back_root through the upper_neck.
Rotating such joints is forward kinematics.
With the exception of the back_root, you’ll invariably rotate rather than move
the joints that aren’t part of an IK handle. If you move the joints, the bones
lengthen. This deforms bound skin undesirably unless you are creating
cartoon-like distortions.
Because you’ve already set keys for IK handles, some joint rotations on non-IK
handle joints will be restrained by the IK handle positioning. If this interferes
with the intended poses, you can remove all prior animation from an IK handle
by selecting Edit > Keys > Delete Keys. You can also use Delete Keys to remove
all animation from keys you’ve set with forward kinematics.
Beyond the lesson
In this lesson you learned how to:
■ Create a skeleton with bones and joints.
■ Pose the skeleton using Inverse Kinematics.
Additional things to consider when working with skeletons:
■ The appropriate number of joints in a skeleton depends on the anatomical
parts of the character you want to manipulate. More joints means finer
control at the expense of greater complexity.
318 | Chapter 7 Character Setup