Autodesk Maya 2014 Essentials

Paul Naas is a professional animator and educator. He runs the Multimedia and Computer Graphics program at Canada College in Redwood City, California, and has done animation work for companies such as Disney, Cisco, bZillions/C2 Gaming, and the Children′s Discovery Museum. He is also a professional cartoon artist. Paul has a Master of Fine Arts in Animation from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco.

Introduction xvi
Chapter 1 Understanding the Maya Interface 1


Exploring Interface Elements 2


Views 2


Time Slider 3


Range Slider 4


Toolbox Window 4


Shelves 5


Moving Views and Manipulating Objects 5


Using Maya Windows and Menus 8


Setting Preferences 10


Preferences Window 10


Settings Used for the Tutorials 12


Getting Help 12


Chapter 2 Creating Your First Animation 15


Using Good Scene–File Management 15


Creating and Animating a Bouncing Ball 18


Selecting a View and Turning On the Resolution Gate 18


Creating a Ball 19


Setting Movement Keyframes 21


Refining Movement in the Graph Editor 24


What’s Wrong with the Way My Ball Is Bouncing? 24


Adjusting Spline Tangents 25


Breaking Tangents for Fast Direction Changes 26


Using Animation Principles to Improve Your Work 28


Squash 28


Stretch 29


Creating a Playblast of Your Animation 31


Chapter 3 Modeling with Polygons, Part 1 35


Understanding Polygons 35


Vertex 35


Edges 36


Constructing a Good Model 37


The Importance of Quads 37


The Problem With Ngons 38


Getting Started and Using the Main Modeling Tools 38


Setting Up View Planes 39


Starting with a Cube 42


Extruding Faces 43


Box Modeling and Building a Character 45


Refining the Character’s Geometry 55


Using the Insert Edge Loop Tool 56


Using the Split Polygon Tool 60


Shaping Your Character 65


Chapter 4 Modeling with Polygons, Part 2 69


Creating Edge Loops 69


Getting Started: Deleting Edges and Setting Tool Options 70


Building Your Edge Loops 72


Adjusting Vertices, Polygons, and Edges, and Adding Details 80


Creating Eyebrows 86


Chapter 5 Modeling with Polygons, Part 3 91


Refining and Cleaning Up 91


Adding Geometry for Good Deformations 91


Cleaning Up the Model 96


Positioning Your Character for Rigging 98


Adding Eyeballs 100


Mirroring Your Model 102


Deleting History 106


Chapter 6 Sur facing Your Character 109


Creating a Surface 109


Using the Hypershade Window 109


Using the Marking Menu 114


Laying Out UVs 117


Understanding the UV Space 117


Performing the UV Layout 118


Texture Mapping 126


Creating a Color Map 126


Applying Your Color Map 128


Applying Additional Surfaces 132


Chapter 7 Get ting Bent Out of Shape: Blend Shapes 135


Understanding Blend Shapes and How They Work 135


Deformer Order 135


Blend Shapes 136


Creating Deformers for Your Character 137


Planning for Facial Deformers 138


Creating Your Facial Blend Shapes 139


Setting Up the Blend Shape Interface 144


Chapter 8 Dem Bones: Set ting Up Your Joint System 147


Understanding How Joints Work 147


Building Joint Chains 148


Picking the Correct View for a Chain 148


Starting in the Middle (of the Character) 148


Naming Joints 153


Creating the Leg Chain 154


Creating the Arm Chain 157


Putting It All Together 162


Mirroring Joint Chains 162


Using Variables for Naming 163


Connecting All Your Chains 165


Putting It to Use: Connecting the Joints to Your Model 168


Using Smooth Bind 168


Skinning Joints to Your Model 168


Parenting the Eyes to the Skeleton 170


Chapter 9 Weighting Your Joints 173


Understanding Joint Weighting and Why It’s Important 173


Joint Influence on Deformation 173


Why You Used the Options You Did at the End of the Last Chapter 174


Adjusting Weights 174


Strategies for Assigning Weights 175


Paint Skin Weights Tool—Add 175


Paint Skin Weights Tool—Replace 176


Painting Your Weights 176


Mirroring Weights 183


Chapter 10 Rigging Your Character 185


Understanding Basic Rigging Concepts 185


Forward Kinematics 185


Inverse Kinematics 186


Setting Up the Leg Controls 186


Creating Leg IK Chains 186


Creating an External Control Handle 190


Connecting the IK Chains to the Handle 192


Using Pole Vector Constraints for Controlling the Knee 194


Setting Up the Torso Control 196


Creating the Torso Control Handle 196


Connecting the Torso Control 197


Setting Up the Character Control 198


Creating the Character Control Handle 198


Connecting the Character Control Handle 199


Creating a Custom Shelf 200


Chapter 11 Set ting the Scene: Creating an Environment 205


Building a Room 205


Creating the Floor and Walls 206


Texturing the Floor and Walls 208


Building Props 213


Creating a Table 213


Creating a Poster 217


Chapter 12 Making It Move: Animating Your Character 221


Setting Up Maya for Animation 221


Setting Key Tangents 221


Creating a Camera and Turning On the Resolution Gate 222


Locking Down the Camera 224


Animating Your Character 226


Creating a Pop–Thru 226


Timing the Pop–Thru 230


Adding Breakdown Poses 231


Polishing the Animation 233


Chapter 13 Let There Be Light: Lighting Your Shot 237


Understanding the Three–Point Lighting System 238


Key Light 238


Fill Light 239


Rim Light 240


Using the Maya Lights 241


Directional Light 241


Spot Light 242


Point Light 243


Lighting Your Scene 244


Placing Your Lights 244


Setting the Intensity of Your Lights 247


Casting Shadows 250


Performing Light Linking 252


Chapter 14 Rendering and Compositing Your Scene 255


Making 2D Images Out of 3D Scenes 255


Smoothing Your Model 256


Setting Your Render Preferences 257


Running a Batch Render 260


Finding Your Frames 261


Performing Compositing 261


Compositing Your Frames 262


Using Other Compositing Options 266


Appendix A Autodesk® Maya® 2014 Certification 269


Index 275