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
■ A rim light so the object stands out against the background
Three-point lighting is used extensively in film, photography and computer
graphics.
Setting up the scene
Here, you create some primitive objects to display lighting and shading .
1 Select File > New Scene to create a new scene.
2 Select Window > General Editors > Script Editor to open the Script Editor.
3 Create a ground plane by typing the following:
polyPlane -height 40 -width 40;
A plane appears at the origin.
The height and width flags specify the dimensions of the plane.
4 Create a NURBS torus by typing the following
torus -axis 0 1 0 -heightRatio 0.5;
A torus appears at the origin.
The axis of the torus specifies the orientation of the major axis of the
torus. The height ratio flag specifies the ratio of the major radius of the
torus to the height of the torus.
5 Reposition the torus so it is not intersecting the plane by typing the
following with the torus selected.
move 0 0.5 0;
The move command takes the argument (x, y, z), specifying how much
and in what direction to move the selected or named object. This above
command moves the torus 0.5 units up on the Y-axis.
6 Bring focus to the selected torus in the scene view by pressing f.
7 Render the scene by clicking the render button
on the Status Line.
The Render View opens with a rendered image of the scene.
Setting up the scene | 607