Mastering Autodesk Maya 2014

Todd Palamar began his career creating traditional special effects for low-budget horror movies and quickly gravitated to computer animation. After working on numerous straight-to-video movies, he entered the video game industry. Todd has extensive freelance experience, including dozens of military and game-style simulations, corporate commercials, and theme park rides. In addition, he has written several Maya books, including Maya Studio Projects: Photorealistic Characters and Mastering Autodesk Maya 2013.

Introduction xxiii Chapter 1 Working in Autodesk Maya 1 Creating and Editing Nodes 2 Using the Hypergraph 3 Connecting Nodes with the Node Editor 7 Creating Node Hierarchies in the Outliner 12 Displaying Options in the Outliner 16 The Channel Box 19 The Attribute Editor 23 Working with Shader Nodes in the Hypershade 25 Creating Maya Projects 35 Creating a New Project 35 Editing and Changing Projects 37 File Path Editor 38 Organizing Complex Node Structures with Assets 38 Creating an Asset 38 Publishing Asset Attributes 43 Using the Asset Editor 44 Viewing Assets in the Node Editor 46 File References 46 Referencing a File 47 Bounding Box Representations 50 The Bottom Line 51 Chapter 2 Virtual Filmmaking 53 Determining the Image Size and Film Speed of the Camera 53 Setting the Size and Resolution of the Image 54 Setting the Film Speed 56 Creating and Animating Cameras 57 Creating a Camera 57 Setting Camera Attributes 63 Limiting the Range of Renderable Objects with Clipping Planes 67 Composing the Shot Using the Film-Back Settings 69 Creating a Camera-Shake Effect 71 Using an Expression to Control Alpha Offset 75 Creating Custom Camera Rigs 77 Swivel Camera Rig 78 Swivel Camera Rig Asset 80 Applying Depth of Field and Motion Blur 83 Rendering Using Depth of Field 84 Creating a Rack Focus Rig 87 Adding Motion Blur to an Animation 91 Using Orthographic and Stereo Cameras 98 Orthographic Cameras 98 Stereo Cameras 99 Using the Camera Sequencer 101 The Bottom Line 105 Chapter 3 Modeling I 107 Understanding Polygon Geometry 107 Polygon Vertices 108 Polygon Edges 108 Polygon Faces 110 Working with Smooth Polygons 110 Using Subdivision Surfaces 112 Understanding NURBS 113 Understanding Curves 113 Understanding NURBS Surfaces 117 Surface Seams 119 NURBS Display Controls 120 Employing Image Planes 120 Modeling NURBS Surfaces 126 Lofting Surfaces 131 Intersecting Surfaces 136 Trim Surfaces 137 Working with Trim Edges 139 Fillet Surfaces 142 Creating Rail Surfaces 147 Lofting Across Multiple Curves 154 Live Surfaces 156 NURBS Tessellation 160 Modeling with Polygons 161 Shaping Using Smooth Mesh Polygon Geometry 161 Insert Edge Loops 166 Extruding Polygons 169 Edge Creasing 172 Mirror Cut 177 The Bottom Line 182 Chapter 4 Modeling II 183 Modeling with Deformers 183 Using a Lattice 183 Soft Modification Tool 188 Combining Meshes 189 Using Bevel Plus 193 Creating the Curves 193 Projecting the Curve 196 Bevel Edges 200 Using Curves 205 Create an Extrusion Curve 205 Extrude Along a Curve 207 Drawing Curves on a Live Surface 209 Converting NURBS Surfaces to Polygons 211 Employing Revolved Surfaces 211 NURBS Extrusions 215 Boolean Operations 217 Using Booleans 218 Cutting Polygons 223 Sculpting Polygons Using Artisan 224 Advanced Polygon-Editing Tools 229 Append a Polygon 229 Interactive Split Tool 230 Spin a Polygon Edge 232 Bridge Polygons 232 Reduce 234 The Bottom Line 235 Chapter 5 Animation Techniques 237 Using Joints and Constraints 237 Joint Basics 237 Point Constraints 239 Aim Constraints 239 Inverse Kinematics 242 IK Handle Tool 243 Creating a Master Control 246 Keyframe Animation 249 Creating Keyframes 249 Auto Keyframe 251 Moving and Scaling Keyframes on the Timeline 253 Copy, Paste, and Cut Keyframes 254 The Graph Editor 256 Animation Curves 257 Editing Animation Curves 262 Weighted Tangents 267 Additional Editing Tools 268 Breakdowns and In-Betweens 271 Pre- and Post-Infinity 273 Playblast and FCheck 276 Driven Keys 278 Creating a Driven Key 279 Looping Driven Keys 281 Copying and Pasting Driven Keys 282 Motion-Path Animation 284 Motion Trails 287 Animating Constraints 289 Animation Layers 293 Creating an Animation Layer 293 Layer Mode 294 Other Options in the Layer Editor 297 Layer Hierarchy 298 Merging Layers 301 Grease Pencil 302 The Bottom Line 304 Chapter 6 Animating with Deformers 307 Animating Facial Expressions Using Blend Shapes 307 Creating Blend Shape Targets 310 Creating Blend Shapes 316 Painting Blend Shape Weights 318 Adding Targets 321 Creating a Custom Mouth Control 322 Connecting the Controls to the Blend Shape 325 Animating Blend Shapes Sequentially 329 Creating the Base Mesh 329 Creating the Blend Shape Targets 332 Creating the Blend Shape Sequence 333 Animating with Lattices 335 Creating a Lattice 335 Using the Lattice Membership Tool 337 Adding an Object to an Existing Lattice 338 Animating Lattices 339 Animating Object Components with Clusters 342 Adding Cluster Objects 342 Painting Cluster Weights 343 Applying Cluster Components 345 Constraining Clusters 347 Animating a Scene Using Nonlinear Deformers 348 Creating a Wave Deformer 349 Squashing and Stretching Objects 351 Twisting Objects 352 Creating a Jiggle Effect 354 Applying Jiggle Deformers 354 Painting Jiggle Weights 355 Optimizing Animations with the Geometry Cache 357 Creating a Geometry Cache 357 Editing the Cache Playback 359 The Bottom Line 360 Chapter 7 Rigging and Muscle Systems 363 Understanding Rigging 363 Creating and Organizing Joint Hierarchies 365 Orienting Joints 372 Naming Joints 374 Mirroring Joints 377 Rigging the Giraffe 378 IK Legs 378 FK Blending 381 Rotate Plane Solver 383 Creating Custom Attributes 387 Spline IK 390 Human Inverse Kinematics 397 Skeleton Generator 397 Character Controls 398 Interoperability 401 Skinning Geometry 402 Interactive/Smooth Binding 403 Weighting the Giraffe 403 Painting Skin Weights 410 Editing Skin Weights in the Component Editor 415 Copying Skin Weights 415 Mirroring Skin Weights 417 The Maya Muscle System 417 Understanding the Maya Muscle System 417 Using Capsules 418 Creating a Muscle Using the Muscle Builder 420 Editing Muscle Parameters 425 Converting the Smooth Skin to a Muscle System 427 Sliding Weights 429 The Bottom Line 430 Chapter 8 Paint Effects 431 Using the Paint Effects Canvas 431 The Paint Effects Window 432 Painting in Scene Mode 436 Painting on 3D Objects 437 Understanding Strokes 439 The Anatomy of a Paint Effects Stroke 439 Brush Sharing 442 Understanding Brush Curve Nodes 444 Designing Brushes 445 Starting from Scratch 446 Tubes 449 Growing Flowers 450 Adding Leaves 456 Create Complexity by Adding Strokes to a Curve 459 Shaping Strokes with Behavior Controls 462 Applying Forces 462 Displacement, Spiral, and Bend 463 Animating Strokes 465 Animating Attribute Values 467 Adding Turbulence 467 Animating Growth 469 Modifiers 470 Surface Collisions 470 Rendering Paint Effects 472 Illumination 472 Shadow Effects 473 Shading Strokes and Tubes 475 Texturing Strokes 478 Converting Strokes to Geometry 481 The Bottom Line 483 Chapter 9 Lighting with mental ray 485 Shadow-Casting Lights 485 Shadow Preview 486 Depth Map Shadows 488 mental ray Shadow Map Overrides 494 Raytrace Shadows 497 Indirect Lighting: Global Illumination 498 Global Illumination 499 Tuning Global Illumination 503 Working with Photon Maps 506 Color Bleeding 508 Importons 509 Caustics 509 Caustic Light Setup 513 Indirect Illumination: Final Gathering 514 Light-Emitting Objects 515 Final Gathering Maps 520 Using Lights with Final Gathering 525 Image-Based Lighting 526 Enabling IBL 527 IBL and Final Gathering 527 Physical Sun and Sky 529 Enabling Physical Sun and Sky 529 Editing the Sky Settings 531 mental ray Area Lights 532 Light Shaders 536 Physical Light Shader 536 Tone Mapping 540 Photometric Lights and Profiles 541 The Bottom Line 542 Chapter 10 mental ray Shading Techniques 545 Shading Concepts 545 Diffusion 548 Reflection 548 Refraction 549 The Fresnel Effect 550 Anisotropy 551 Creating Blurred Reflections and Refractions Using Standard Maya Shaders 551 Reflection Blur 551 Refraction Blur 554 Basic mental ray Shaders 555 DGS Shaders 556 Dielectric Material 561 mental ray Base Shaders 564 Car Paint Materials 571 Diffuse Parameters 575 Specular Parameters 575 Flake Parameters 575 Reflection Parameters 576 The mia Material 577 Using the mia Material Presets 578 Add Bumps to the Rubber Shader 579 Create Beveled Edges Using mia-roundcorners 581 Creating Thick and Thin Glass and Plastic 582 Other mia Material Attributes 584 Controlling Exposure with Tone Mapping 587 Rendering Contours 589 The Bottom Line 592 Chapter 11 Texture Mapping 595 UV Texture Layout 595 What Are UV Texture Coordinates? 596 Mapping the Giraffe Leg 600 Unfolding UVs 607 Mapping the Giraffe Head 610 Mirroring UVs 613 More UV Tools 616 Arranging UV Shells 618 Additional UV Mapping Considerations 621 Transferring UVs 621 Multiple UV Sets 622 Optimizing Textures 622 Bump and Normal Mapping 623 Bump Maps 624 Normal Maps 624 Creating Normal Maps 625 Applying Normal Maps 631 Displacement Mapping 633 Subsurface Scattering 638 Fast, Simple Skin-Shader Setup 638 Subsurface Scattering Layers 643 Subsurface Specularity 645 Viewport 20 647 The Bottom Line 649 Chapter 12 Rendering for Compositing 651 Render Layers 651 Creating Render Layers 652 Render Layer Overrides 655 Creating Overrides for Rendering Cameras 659 Using Different Shaders on Render Layers 661 Material Overrides 663 Render Layer Blend Modes 663 Render Passes 669 Upgrading Materials for Rendering Passes 671 Rendering Multiple Passes from a Single Render Layer 673 Creating an Ambient Occlusion Render Pass 678 Render Pass Contribution Maps 685 Lights and Contribution Maps 688 Render Pass Sets 691 Setting Up a Render with mental ray 692 File Tokens 693 Specifying Frame Range 697 Renderable Cameras 697 File Formats and the Frame Buffer 698 Starting a Batch Render 699 Command-Line Rendering 700 Creating a Batch Script 704 mental ray Quality Settings 706 Tessellation and Approximation Nodes 706 Unified Sampling 708 Filtering 709 The Bottom Line 709 Chapter 13 Introducing nParticles 711 Creating nParticles 711 Drawing nParticles Using the nParticle Tool 712 Spawning nParticles from an Emitter 715 mitting nParticles from a Surface 718 Filling an Object with nParticles 720 Making nParticles Collide with nRigids 725 Passive Collision Objects 725 Collide Strength and Collision Ramps 731 Using nParticles to Simulate Liquids 734 Creating Liquid Behavior 734 Converting nParticles to Polygons 738 Shading the nParticle Mesh 740 Emit nParticles Using a Texture 742 Surface Emission 742 Using Wind 748 Shading nParticles and Using Hardware Rendering to Create Flame Effects 751 Shading nParticles to Simulate Flames 752 Creating an nCache 754 Using the Hardware Render Buffer 756 nParticles and Fields 758 Using Multiple Emitters 759 Volume Axis Curve 762 Working with Force Fields 768 Painting Field Maps 770 Using Dynamic Fields 773 Rendering Particles with mental ray 777 The Bottom Line 781 Chapter 14 Dynamic Effects 783 Creating nCloth Objects 783 Making a Polygon Mesh Dynamic 784 Applying nCloth Presets 786 Making Surfaces Sticky 789 Creating nConstraints 791 Making nCloth Objects Expand Using Pressure 795 Additional Techniques 797 Creating an nCache 798 Creating nCloth and nParticle Interactions 800 Creating an nParticle Goal 800 Controlling Collision Events 803 Bursting an Object Open Using Tearable nConstraints 805 Rigid Body Dynamics 807 Creating an Exploding Tower 807 Tuning the Rigid Body Simulation 809 Baking the Simulation 811 Crumbling Tower 813 Soft Body Dynamics 814 Creating Flying Debris Using nParticle Instancing 815 Adding nParticles to the Scene 816 Sending the Debris Flying Using a Field 819 Creating a More Convincing Explosion by Adjusting nParticle Mass 821 Instancing Geometry 822 Animating Instances Using nParticle Expressions 824 Randomizing Instance Index 824 Connecting Instance Size to nParticle Mass 828 Controlling the Rotation of nParticles 833 The Bottom Line 834 Chapter 15 Fur, Hair, and Clothing 835 Adding Fur to Characters 835 Preparing Polygons for Maya Fur 835 Creating a Fur Description 837 Editing the Fur Description: Baldness 838 Editing the Fur Description: Direction 844 Editing the Fur Description: Length 847 Test-Render Fur 849 Applying a Color Map 851 Applying Map Offsets and Multipliers 852 Enhancing the Realism of Fur 854 Rendering Fur Using mental ray 855 Animating Using Dynamic Curves 857 Using Dynamic Curves with IK Splines 857 Creating an IK Spline Handle from the Dynamic Curve 861 Using Forces 863 Adding Hair to a Character 863 Applying Hair to a Surface 864 Determining Hair Shape 867 Styling Hair 871 Start and Rest Positions 871 Painting Follicle Attributes 873 Modifying Curves 875 Curling, Noise, Sub Clumping, and Braids 876 Rendering Hair 876 Creating Clothing for Characters 878 Modeling Clothes for nCloth 878 Using Constraints 880 Connecting Buttons to the Shirt 886 Applying Forces 888 Painting nCloth Properties 888 The Bottom Line 892 Chapter 16 Maya Fluids 895 Using Fluid Containers 895 Using 2D Containers 896 Adding an Emitter 897 Using Fields with Fluids 901 Using 3D Containers 904 Fluid Interactions 905 Emitting Fluids from a Surface 905 Making Flames 908 Igniting the Fuel 911 Filling Objects 912 Rendering Fluid Containers 917 Create Fluids and nParticle Interactions 919 Emitting Fluids from nParticles 920 Creating Flaming Trails 924 Creating Water Effects 926 Filling a Container 926 Adding Surface Detail 928 Rendering Liquids 929 Creating an Ocean 931 The Bottom Line 934 Appendix A The Bottom Line 937 Appendix B Autodesk Maya 2014 Certification 959 Index 963