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
■ Textures can be applied to a shading material to enhance the realism of
the final image. For example, logo graphics, bumps, and so on, can be
added to enhance the detail on the surface.
■ Textures can be 2D or 3D in nature. Each has its unique techniques for
application and placement.
Placement of textures
When you put the Mayakist logo on the surface, the letters appeared straight.
The letters are actually skewed in the texture. We skewed the logo for your
use in this lesson so that it looks straight when stretched onto the surface.
In your own work, skewing texture images is usually too difficult and
impractical. A more practical Maya technique for assigning and positioning
file textures is to use texture projection. With this feature, you project the
texture onto the surface as if you are projecting a slide image onto a screen.
The texture is positioned where the projection strikes the surface. Instead of
a skewed Mayakist logo, you could use a straight logo and project it onto the
sphere. You could tune the angle of projection so that the curvature of the
surface skews the logo just as in the lesson. To assign textures as projections,
you turn on the As Projection option at the top of the 2D Textures section of
the Create Render Node window.
The placement of texture projections is similar to the placement you performed
for the bump map (3D) texture. Like the bump map texture, you need to
parent the texture projection (the place3dTexture node) to the object in order
to avoid the texture placement changing when the object moves.
Layered textures
Suppose you want to add a scarred pattern to the orange skin. Because you
can only have one texture assigned to the Color attribute you can use a Layered
Texture to combine two or more texture maps.
The Layered Texture is a texture node that lets you composite or layer several
textures on top of each other. You assign it to a material’s attribute just like
other textures. Within the Layered Texture’s attribute controls, you can connect
422 | Chapter 9 Rendering