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
3 At the top of the Hypergraph panel, select the Scene Hierarchy icon to
ensure the Hypergraph is displaying the scene hierarchy.
4 In the Hypergraph panel, select View > Frame All.
The Hypergraph displays the hierarchy for all of the objects in the scene.
This approach to viewing the entities in the scene provides a very
graphical approach to viewing all of the various nodes in your scene.
In the Hypergraph, each node is represented as a rectangle labelled with
an icon that denotes the type of information it represents (for example,
surface, shading, and so on). Each node has a unique name assigned to
it when it is first created. When you rename your objects, you are actually
renaming the node associated with that object.
Some nodes display with a line connecting them. This denotes that they
are in a hierarchy and have a dependency structure based on how they
were originally grouped.
For the temple’s column objects, the hierarchy displays each of the named
objects under a node labelled group1. Group1 is the parent node for this
hierarchy of objects.
In Maya, when the parent node (sometimes referred to as the root node)
is moved, rotated, or scaled in any way, the child nodes (sometimes
referred to as the leaf nodes) underneath are also affected.
When you select objects at the top level of a hierarchy and move them,
the objects within the hierarchy or group follow.
NOTE This system of nodes, attributes, and hierarchies may initially appear
somewhat complex, but it is one of the most powerful features of Maya. The
node based architecture provides flexibility and power to create complex
models, shaders, and animations.
54 | Chapter 2 Maya Basics