2010
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
- Lesson 2: Sculpting a polygon mesh
- 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
- Assets
- Hair
- Fluid Effects
- Fur
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lessons
- Lesson 1: Assigning a fur description
- Introduction
- Lesson setup
- Duplicating objects across an axis of symmetry
- Renaming surfaces on a model
- Assigning objects to a reference layer
- Assigning a fur description preset to a model
- Reversing surface normals
- Modifying the fur direction
- Painting fur attributes
- Modifying the color of a fur description
- Creating a new fur description
- Beyond the lesson
- Lesson 2: Rendering fur
- nCloth
- Introduction
- Preparing for the lessons
- Lesson 1: Creating nCloth collisions
- Lesson 2: Creating nCloth constraints
- Lesson 3: Creating nCloth Clothing
- Introduction
- Lesson setup
- Making the dress into an nCloth object
- Making the character wear the dress
- Caching nCloth to speed up playback
- Adjusting the fit of the dress
- Defining the behavior of nCloth clothing
- Painting nCloth properties
- Open the second scene for the lesson
- Setting the initial state
- Constraining nCloth clothing
- Improving the quality of the nCloth simulation
- Smoothing nCloth clothing
- Beyond the lesson
- nParticles
- Introduction
- Preparing for the tutorials
- Lesson 1: Creating nParticles
- Lesson 2: Creating a smoke simulation with nParticles
- Lesson 3: Creating a liquid simulation with nParticles
- Introduction
- Lesson setup
- Creating a Water style nParticle object
- Adjusting Liquid Simulation attributes
- Adding fluidity to the nParticles
- Open the second scene for the lesson
- Convert nParticles to a polygon mesh
- Cache your nParticle simulation
- Adding Motion Streak
- Open the third scene for the lesson
- Render your liquid simulation
- Assigning material shaders
- Rendering a simulated frame
- Beyond the lesson
- Live
- Index
Using creation expressions to set a constant color . . . . . . . . 645
Using runtime expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
Modifying runtime expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
Beyond the lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649
Chapter 13
Scripting in Maya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
Some basic concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
Preparing for the lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655
Lesson 1: Commands in MEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656
Entering MEL commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
Observing script history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658
Modifying object attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
Editing Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 664
Beyond the lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665
Lesson 2: Saving scripts to the Shelf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
Setting up the scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
Recording the script history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668
Compare the rendered images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670
Saving the history as a button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
Beyond the Lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673
Lesson 3: Using Variables in MEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Setting up the scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Storing scene information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Create a row of barrels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677
Stacking the row of barrels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678
Using MEL built-in functions to calculate the Y offset . . . . . . 679
Creating dynamics with MEL commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
Beyond the lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Lesson 4: User interface creation and procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Creating a window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
Window naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 686
Introduction to procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
Loading a script file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
Linking the user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
Saving the script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
Using the saved script file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
Beyond the lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702
Lesson 5: Using Python in Maya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
Entering Python commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704
Using flags in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
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