Mastering Autodesk Maya 2014 (eBook)

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