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
Discussion: creating a simple window
In your window, you created elements for your user interface, called controls.
All user interface controls must be created within a layout. Layouts instruct
Maya how to arrange the user interface elements in the window.
There are many different types of layouts—for example, formLayout and
rowLayout—but the simplest and easiest to use is the columnLayout. The
columnLayout lays out your controls in a column, one underneath the other.
For more information on layouts, see Layouts of the MEL and Expressions
guide.
Within the layout you created a text control, with the text command. The
label flag’s argument is the text displayed in the window.
The button is created by the button command. The argument of the command
flag is a MEL command that is executed when the button is pressed. In this
case, pressing the button executes the deleteUI command, which deletes the
window you just created.
Scripts spanning multiple lines
In this script, individual commands span multiple lines. Commands can span
multiple lines as long as the end line character is at the end of the command.
One convention in MEL is to have the command keyword on one line, and
pair the modifier flags and values on separate lines underneath the command,
as in this example.
Strings can’t be split up over multiple lines without the use of a special
character. To split a string over multiple lines, use the back slash (\) character.
For example:
print "With the \\ character, you can \ split a string over \
multiple lines.";
To have a backslash appear in a string, you must use a double backslash. The
backslash character is an escape character. Escape characters tell the script
interpreter that the character that follows is literal. Certain special symbols
can be created using the escape character in combination with other characters.
For example, to display quotes within a string:
print "Jim said \"Hello!\" to the Maya user";
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