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
Level setting may need to be increased. When a different preset was
selected (Production to Preview), the refraction levels changed.
■ There are spotted areas on the table surface directly in front of the
bottle. This can be corrected by adjusting the photon quality settings.
■ The desired caustic effect in the shadow has appeared but is not very
pronounced. You want to achieve an effect where the shadow has
brighter regions as a result of light being refracted through the surfaces
of the bottle.
Adjusting the refraction levels
When the refraction levels are set too low, light rays do not refract through
all of the surfaces enough to provide a realistic indication of a translucent
surface when raytraced. This results in the object appearing opaque when it
should appear translucent.
Increasing the Refractions setting allows the renderer to calculate what is seen
through the surfaces of the glass by allowing the light rays to refract the correct
number of times.
In the next step, you change the Refraction settings so that the bottle will
appear translucent when rendered.
To increase the refraction levels
1 In the Render Settings window, select the Quality tab and then open the
Raytracing attributes.
2 In the Raytracing section set the following:
■ Refractions: 6
■ Max trace depth: 8
The Refractions setting sets the number of times a light ray can be refracted.
When the setting is too low the ray does not penetrate through all of the
surfaces. The Max Trace Depth setting limits the total Refraction and
Reflection settings. By setting it to 8, you ensure that two reflection and
six refraction calculations can occur.
Photons refract in a manner similar to light rays when rendering. Increasing
the Refractions setting for the Caustic Photons ensures that the renderer can
correctly calculate the caustics that should occur with the bottle. In this case,
468 | Chapter 9 Rendering