Acknowledgments
Author
The Book's Web Site
Getting Oriented
Focus and Approach of This Book
A Necessarily Nonlinear Approach to Learning 3D Animation
Perhaps the Most Important Principle
3DbyBuzz.com
What Maya (R) Does and Does Not Do
The Special Needs of Gaming
Workflow Within and Around Maya
Other Applications Commonly Used by Animators
The Big Picture
Inside Maya
Other Application Needs
Working with Prefab Content
The Cabana of Cool Concepts
The Small Subset Approach to Learning 3D Animation
Every Animation App Is Unique
How to Use This Book
Prerequisites
Contents of This Book
A Motivational Example
Art and Engineering
A Final Note
The Maya Interface and Modeling Concepts in Maya
The 3D World of Modeling and Animation
Seeing the 3D World through the Eyes of Maya
A Warning: The Maya Interface Can Be Intimidating, Don't Be Dispirited
The Main Window
A Note on Changing Geometry Modes
The Hypershade
An Object and Its Attributes
The Render View for Creating Single Render Tests
Render Settings and the Batch Renderer for Creating Multiframe
Renderings for Video
How to Find Something in the Maya Interface
Maya's Data Folders
Two Kinds of Modeling in Maya
Terminology
Meshes
Surface-And Not Solid-Modeling
Vector versus Raster Graphics
Polygon and NURBS Modeling
Choosing between Polygon and NURBS Modeling
NURBS Modeling Modes
Maya Is Always Rendering
Subdivision Is Alive and Well
CUDA
Curved Lines, Bezier, and NURBS
Core Tools: Translate, Scale, and Rotate in Maya
Some Trig
Translation, Scaling, and Rotation in 3-Space
In Sum
Reference
Modeling, Creating Materials, and Rendering
Modeling as a Subjective Process
Deliberate Modeling
Models and Objects
Top-Down Modeling
Adding Detail with Precision
Choosing the Model Hierarchy
Building Models in Separate Scenes and Using Display Layers
Create Versions of Models That You Can Retreat To
In Sum
More on Layers in Maya
Using Curved Lines and mental ray to Make a NURBS Glass Dish
From Curved Lines to Smooth Surfaces
Creating a Series of NURBS Curves
Revolution!
Putting a Glass Material on the Dish
Two Software Renderers
Two Important Perspectives
Rendering by Tracing Rays
Glass in mental ray
The Background
More mental ray Computations: Quality
More mental ray Computations: Indirect Lighting
Shadows as Roots of Models
mental ray's Advantage
The Renderer's Main Job
Using Polygon Extrusion to (Start to) Make a Hand
Polygon Modeling: Basic Shapes
Recursive Refinement
The Hand
Using NURBS Lofting and Extrusion to Make a Saguaro Cactus
Using Reference Images
NURBS Extrude
Sculpting
Lofting
Projection
Loft Again
In Sum
Hierarchies of Objects, a Polygon Example, Detailed Polygon Modeling, and a NURBS Example
Basic Concepts
Modeling Hierarchies
Objects
Formal Notions
Hierarchies
Another Example
Extending the Notion of a Hierarchy
The Importance of the Outliner
Using Bevel, Extrude, Detach, and Combine to Make a Mailbox
A Working Set of Polygon Modeling Tools
Creating a New Edge
Beveling
Extrusion
Detach
The Clip
Beveled Letters
Making a Polygon Moai
Rapa Nui
A Modeling Exercise: Making a Moai on Your Own
Making a Moai with Polygon Modeling
Smoothing and Rendering
Smoothing a Polygon Model: Many Choices
Smooth Tool
Using the Smooth Tool Locally
Adding Faces and Manipulating New Faces, and Beveling Edges
Manipulating Normals to Smooth Edges
Smoothing with mental ray, without Changing the Geometry
Surgically Mending an Imperfect Model
Merging Edges in a Single Piece of Geometry
Removing a Face with Merge to Center
Filling in a Hole in a Polygon Model with a Bridge Tool
Making Small and Graceful Changes to a Model
Sliding an Edge
Soft Move
Aligning Objects
Using the Sweep of a Cylinder and Resizing to Make a Breadbox
A NURBS Surface
The Sweep of a NURBS Surface
Nested Objects
Finishing the Geometry of the Breadbox
Materials, Bump Maps, Lights, Projection versus Normal Textures, Connecting NURBS Surfaces, and Layered Textures
The Bottom Line
Working with Maya Materials to Make a Tabletop
Ways to Surface a Model
Textures and Materials for the Maya Software Renderer
Bump Maps
Finishing the Table Scene
Materials or Textures?
Lights
Ambient Light and Shadows
Directional Light and Shadows
Point Light and Shadows
Spotlights and Shadows
Area Light
mental ray Light Shaders
mental ray 2D and 3D Lights
Depth Map versus Raytraced Shadows
The Varnished Table
Being Creative with Textures for Bump Maps: Making a Road and a Sidewalk
More Bump Maps
Completing the Scene: Creating a Light Pole and Painting 3D Geometry to Make Grass
Creating a Layered Texture in Pixelmator
Photographs for Textures
Working outside of Maya
The Uses of Bit-Mapped Images
Blending Layers
Rusty, Painted Metal
Layering Capability Native to Maya
Brief Note: Various Color Systems
Cylindrical Projection of an Image Texture on the Cactus
Projection or Normal Texture?
Projecting Textures
Conversion to Polygons
Types of Projections
Tiling
Adjusting the Projection of a Texture
Stitching NURBS Surfaces to Make Carpeted Stairs
Isoparms
Connecting Stairs
Putting a Material on the Stairs
Using the Append to Polygon Tool for Connecting Two Stairs
Using a File Texture as a Material's Color and Making a Material Stick
A Texture as a Color of a Material
Assigning an Image to a Material's Color Attribute
Adjusting and Fixing the Material Placement
Adjusting the Material's Ambient Color Attribute
Using Polygon Face Extrusion and a File Texture as a Lambert Color to Make an Ice Rink
Extruding the Wall
Using a File Texture for the Fence
Using Two Layers for Ice
Textures versus Geometry: Bump Maps versus Displacement Maps
Bump Maps versus Displacement Maps in Maya
Bump Maps
Displacement Maps
The Resulting Render: Comparing Bump Maps to Displacement Maps
Particle Dynamics
Use Emitters Sparingly
Saving Render Time
Rocket Pollution and Hardware Particles
The Attributes of the Emitter and the Particles
Using Software Particles in nDynamics to Create Trix
nDynamics in Maya
Particle Dynamics Engines and Solvers
Emitting Trix into the Glass Bowl
Colliders
Scaling the Trix
Ramp Textures
The Trix's Ramp
Gravity
Action!
An Aside
Creating a Cloth Flag with nDynamics
nDynamics Meets Geometry
A Flag
Putting a Texture on the Flag
Making the Flag Flap
Creating Rain with nDynamics
Downward Gravity versus the Upward Bounce of a Collider
Two Planes: Rain Clouds and the Ground
Rain Particles
The Ground
Making It Rain
Instancing
Specialized Dynamics Applications
A First Look at Adding Animation
Moving an Object along a Motion Path
Creating a Path
Putting an Object on a Path
From the Camera's Perspective: A River Ride
Keyframing an Object
The Timeline
Creating Keyframes
Using the Graph Editor to Reuse Animation
The Graph Editor
Motion Cycles
Driven Keys
Using Skeletons to Simulate Natural Movement
Inverse Kinematics versus Forward Kinematics
Inverse Kinematics in a Leg
The Power of Inverse Kinematics Skeletons
The Fuzzy Border between Modeling and Animating
Using NURBS, Shatter, and Fur to Make an Egg and Crack It
Smooth Modeling for an Egg
Cracking the Egg with the Shatter Tool
A Chick and Fur
Maya Fur and nHair: An nDynamics Effect
Using Blend Shape to Animate the Leg of the Chick Being Born
Animating a Chick Leg with a Blend Shape
Using a Bend Deformer to Animate Rolling Up a Pool Cover
The Bend Deformer
Animating a Swimming Pool Cover
Bouncing a Squishy Ball with a Squash Deformer
Keyframing the Ball
Running and Rendering the Scene
Using the Lattice Deformer to Damage Our Mailbox
Morphing the Mailbox
The Rendered Result
A Note on Using the Lattice Deformer
Using Deformers for Modeling: An Important Detail
Light Fog, Fluids, and Another Look at Materials
Fixing a Tiled Texture with Overlays
Experimenting with Textures
Adding Noise to the Tiling Lines
Two Final Notes on Tiling
Making a Seamless Texture with Maya Paint
Painting a Seamless Tiled Texture
Creating and Tiling a File Texture
Making Glass Bottles with NURBS and mental ray
The Three Bottles
mental ray Settings
A Bottle inside a Bottle
The Render
Glass and Particles for a Single-Frame Image
The Scene
Fluid Containers
mental ray Glass
The Background
Rendering Settings
Using Light Fog and Glow to Create a Night Scene
Fog
A Sidewalk and Street Scene with Fog
Making a Material Behave Like a Light
The Render
An Example Model: A Closet
Multiple Coordinate Systems in Maya
Opening and Closing Doors with the Rotate Tool, and Bounding Boxes
Adding Detail to the Doors with the Interactive Split Tool
The Render
One More Look at World Space versus Object Space
Making a Shirt out of nCloth and Rendering from a Camera's Perspective
A Shirt Made of nCloth: Starting with a Basic Shape
A NURBS Hanger
Extruding Sleeves, Making Arm and Neck Holes, and Refining the Shape of the Shirt
A Passive Collider Hanger and Fields
Letting the Cloth Drape on the Hanger and Creating a Camera
The Camera's Perspective and Rendering
Timing Animation to a Soundtrack and Rendering Multiple Frames
Opening up the Time Slider: Making Room for Audio
Sound in Maya
Guiding the Keyframing of a Scene with the Sound Wave
Rendering with the Batch Renderer
Using the Graph Editor in Maya to Fine-Tune Animation
Frame and Value
The Rotation Curve
A Useful Tool: fCheck
Light Linking to Accentuate the Closet Doors
Controlling Lights
Why Control Lights Artificially?
Three-Point Lighting
Fill Lights in Maya
Placing and Positioning Models in a Scene
Controlling Lights from the Hypershade
Specialized Animation Techniques
Skeletons, Inverse Kinematics Handles, Rigging, and
Skinning a Simple Humanoid
HIK: The Skeleton Maker in Maya
Maya's Skeleton Generator
Skinning
The Rig
Solvers
Making Your Character's Body More Organic
Controlling the Movement of a Skeleton: Pinning and Constraining, and the Sticky Checkbox
A Last Remark
Active Rigid Objects and Gravity: A Bowling Ball and Pins
The Bowling Ball and Pins: Collisions
Four Rigid Bodies
Making the Ball Move: Gravity!
Calculating Collisions
Using Soft Body Dynamics to Age a Moai Statue
Turning the Moai into a Soft Body
Before and After
Using the Channel Box for Keyframing the Transparency of a Moai
Making Our Moai Disappear
Using an Expression to Rotate a Doorknob
The Rendering
A Note on Using the Outliner Window
Using Maya Expressions and Variables to Animate Models
Example 1: Applying an Expression to the Visibility Attribute of an Object That Has a Material with a Glow Intensity
Example 2: Our Squashing Ball
More Maya Embedded Language (MEL)
Creating an Ocean Water Swell
Using nCloth as Water and Applying Gravity
The Ball Falls through the Water and Creates a Rippling Swell
Specialized Materials and Material Effects
Making a Toon Cow
The Vector Renderer
The Toon Shader
Making a Graffiti-Covered Wall with Paint Effects
The Paint Effects Canvas
Painting on an Image
Choosing a More Realistic Effect
The mental ray Sky Dome
The Rendering
Baking a Material
A Homemade Sky Dome
The UV Texture Editor
The (u, v) Surfacing Problem
A Planar Projection of a Normal File Texture and Using the Move and Scale Tools to Adjust It
Using the Scale Tool in the UV Editor
Rotating and Flipping
A Closer Look at the UV Editor: Creating and Manipulating UV Maps
A Doorknob's (u, v) Texture Mapping
The UV Smudge Tool
A Comparison of Different UV Editor Mappings
Multi-App Maya Workflow, Managing Complex Scenes, and Sculpting Applications
The Inter-App Workflow Dilemma
Plug-Ins That Work Pretty Well
Specialized Modeling: Bipeds
Exterior Environments: Vue and Terragen
Specialized Modeling: Sculpting with ZBrush
Stand-Alone Renderers: Maxwell, Octane, and Indigo
Translating Materials: The Rendering Plug-In's Main Job
Sculpting Applications and Sculpting with Maya
ZBrush and Mudbox
Reducing Meshes in Maya
Maya's Soft Modification Tool
Advanced Light and Materials Properties and Effects
Ambient Occlusion
Global Illumination and Final Gathering
Caustics
Light Emitting Materials: Irradiance
Coloring mental ray's Glass Material
Coloring a Material with Lights
Using Anisotropy with mental ray to Control the Transparency of Frosted Glass
Using the Penumbra and Drop-off Settings on a Maya Spotlight
Adjusting the Resolution Attribute of a Directional Light in Maya
Adding Raytrace Shadows and mental ray Sun and Sky to the Bottle
The Cabana
A Beginner's Project: Basic, Top-Down Architectural Modeling
Reuse
Reference Images
Modeling with Texturing and Animating in Mind
The Cabana
Using Prefab Content to Flesh Out a Scene
Building the Cabana: Workflow
A Note on Animating Humans
The Cool Concepts of the Cabana
Cool Concepts
Index
