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
In practical usage, the Diffuse setting makes a surface appear brighter.
The name diffuse comes from a property in physics that describes how
light spreads after it strikes a surface. A surface with a high diffuse property
spreads the light that strikes it, making the object appear brighter.
Like the Diffuse attribute, the other Common Material Attributes also
refer to general characteristics of light and the way a surface reacts to
light.
The next section in the Attribute Editor, Specular Shading, contains
attributes that control the appearance of shiny highlights on the surface.
Next, you’ll alter the surface specularity—the amount of light that reflects off
a surface, resulting in shiny highlights.
Modifying surface specularity
When light reflects in a concentrated manner off of a surface, a specular
highlight results. Specular highlights can be thought of as “pseudo” reflections
of bright areas in the scene (sunlight, bright lights, and so on). Modifying the
specular attributes affects the perceived reflectivity for a surface. When you
reduce the specularity, you in turn reduce the perceived reflectivity.
To modify the specularity of a material
1 In the Specular Shading section of the Attribute Editor, move the
Eccentricity slider back and forth to change the size of the shiny
highlights.
2 Move the Specular Roll Off slider to change the blend between highlighted
and other areas of the surface.
Changes to this attribute do not alter the surface in the scene view, so
you need to check the Material Sample in the Attribute Editor (see the
408 | Chapter 9 Rendering