Name: Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015 By Todd Palamar
SKU: 9781118862513
Price: 11.69 USD
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Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015 Summary

Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015: Autodesk Official Press by Todd Palamar

Expand your skills with complete Maya mastery Mastering Autodesk Maya is the ultimate guide to the popular 3D animation software. Author Todd Palamar draws on his extensive professional animation experience to help readers take their Maya skills to the next level. Written for those who already know the basics of this enormous program, the book covers advanced topics and professional techniques for modeling, animation, texturing, and visual effects. Fully updated to reflect Maya's latest features, the book takes a hands-on approach to instruction, providing readers with a diverse set of tutorials designed by real-world professionals to showcase 3D animation and visual techniques used in industry settings. Complete and comprehensive, the book makes an excellent desk reference for the working animator, and is an ideal resource for those seeking Maya certification. The unique combination of challenging material and practical instruction make this one-of-a-kind guide the ultimate Maya handbook. Topics include: Animation using inverse kinematics, keyframes, and deformers Hard surface and organic modeling Proper rigging techniques, and working with Maya Muscle Xgen, Paint Effects, and rendering with mental ray Texture mapping, compositing, nParticles, and more Virtual filmmaking and scene management The most complex skills are useless if they can't be applied, so the book emphasizes the practical, day-to-day uses of each skill, and discusses which solutions best fit which scenario. For the computer animation professional seeking a more in-depth mastery of this popular animation program, Mastering Autodesk Maya is an excellent investment in the future of your career.

About Todd Palamar

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 several editions of Mastering Autodesk Maya.

Introduction xxiii Chapter 1 ? Working in Autodesk Maya 1 Creating and Editing Nodes 1 Using the Hypergraph 3 Connecting Nodes with the Node Editor 7 Creating Node Hierarchies in the Outliner 11 Displaying Options in the Outliner 15 The Channel Box 18 The Attribute Editor 22 Working with Shader Nodes in the Hypershade 25 Creating Maya Projects 34 Creating a New Project 34 Editing and Changing Projects 36 The Bottom Line 37 Chapter 2 ? Introduction to Animation 39 Using Joints and Constraints 39 Joint Basics 39 Point Constraints 41 Aim Constraints 41 Inverse Kinematics 44 IK Handle Tool 45 Creating a Master Control 48 Keyframe Animation 51 Creating Keyframes 51 Auto Keyframe 53 Moving and Scaling Keyframes on the Timeline 54 Copy, Paste, and Cut Keyframes 56 The Graph Editor 58 Animation Curves 59 Editing Animation Curves 64 Weighted Tangents 68 Additional Editing Tools 69 Breakdowns and In-Betweens 72 Pre- and Post-Infinity 75 Playblast and FCheck 78 Driven Keys 80 Creating a Driven Key 80 Looping Driven Keys 82 Copying and Pasting Driven Keys 83 Motion-Path Animation 86 Motion Trails 88 Animating Constraints 90 Animation Layers 94 Creating an Animation Layer 94 Layer Mode 96 Other Options in the Layer Editor 98 Layer Hierarchy 99 Merging Layers 102 Grease Pencil 103 The Bottom Line 105 Chapter 3 ? Hard-Surface Modeling 107 Understanding Polygon Geometry 107 Polygon Vertices 108 Polygon Edges 108 Polygon Faces 109 Working with Smooth Polygons 111 Understanding NURBS 112 Understanding Curves 113 Understanding NURBS Surfaces 115 Surface Seams 118 NURBS Display Controls 118 Using Subdivision Surfaces 119 Employing Image Planes 119 Modeling NURBS Surfaces 123 Lofting Surfaces 131 Attaching Surfaces 134 Converting NURBS Surfaces to Polygons 137 Modeling with Polygons 139 Using Booleans 139 Cleaning Topology 144 Creating Your Own Polygons 147 Multi-Cut Tool 151 Combining and Merging Geometry 153 Bridge Polygon 155 Mirror Cut 159 The Bottom Line 161 Chapter 4 ? Organic Modeling 163 Implement Box Modeling 163 Shaping Using Smooth Mesh Polygon Geometry 164 Connect Components 177 Slide Edge Tool 179 Offset Edge Loops 181 Employ Build-out Modeling 182 Extrude Along a Curve 184 Sculpting Polygons 188 Soft Select Tool 188 Sculpting Polygons Using Artisan 190 Use Retopology Tools 194 Importing and Exporting 194 Alembic Cache Files 195 Slide on Surface 195 Quad Draw 198 Reduce 205 The Bottom Line 206 Chapter 5 ? Rigging and Muscle Systems 207 Understanding Rigging 207 Creating and Organizing Joint Hierarchies 209 Orienting Joints 217 Naming Joints 220 Mirroring Joints 222 Rigging the Giraffe 223 IK Legs 224 FK Blending 226 Rotate Plane Solver 229 Creating Custom Attributes 232 Spline IK 236 Human Inverse Kinematics 242 Skeleton Generator 243 Character Controls 244 Interoperability 247 Skinning Geometry 247 Interactive/Smooth Binding 248 Weighting the Giraffe 248 Geodesic Voxel Binding 256 Painting Skin Weights 257 Editing Skin Weights in the Component Editor 262 Copying Skin Weights 262 Mirroring Skin Weights 263 The Maya Muscle System 263 Understanding the Maya Muscle System 264 Using Capsules 264 Creating a Muscle Using the Muscle Builder 266 Editing Muscle Parameters 270 Converting the Smooth Skin to a Muscle System 274 Sliding Weights 275 The Bottom Line 277 Chapter 6 ? Animation Techniques 279 Working with Deformers 279 ShrinkWrapping Geometry 279 Using Textures to Deform Objects 282 Animating Facial Expressions Using Blend Shapes 286 Creating Blend Shape Targets 290 Creating Blend Shapes 296 Painting Blend Shape Weights 296 Adding Targets 300 Animating a Scene Using Nonlinear Deformers 302 Creating a Wave Deformer 302 Squashing and Stretching Objects 304 Twisting Objects 305 Creating a Jiggle Effect 307 Applying Jiggle Deformers 307 Painting Jiggle Weights 308 Optimizing Animations with the Geometry Cache 310 Creating a Geometry Cache 310 Editing the Cache Playback 311 Applying Motion Capture 312 The Bottom Line 315 Chapter 7 ? Lighting with mental ray 317 Shadow-Casting Lights 317 Shadow Preview 318 Depth Map Shadows 320 mental ray Shadow Map Overrides 324 Raytrace Shadows 326 Indirect Lighting: Global Illumination 327 Tuning Global Illumination 332 Working with Photon Maps 334 Color Bleeding 336 Importons 336 Caustics 337 Caustic Light Setup 340 Indirect Illumination: Final Gathering 342 Light-Emitting Objects 342 Final Gathering Maps 347 Using Lights with Final Gathering 352 Image-Based Lighting 353 Enabling IBL 353 IBL and Final Gathering 354 Physical Sun and Sky 356 Enabling Physical Sun and Sky 356 Editing the Sky Settings 358 mental ray Area Lights 360 Light Shaders 363 Physical Light Shader 363 Tone Mapping 366 Photometric Lights and Profiles 367 The Bottom Line 367 Chapter 8 ? mental ray Shading Techniques 369 Shading Concepts 369 Diffusion 372 Reflection 372 Refraction 373 The Fresnel Effect 374 Anisotropy 375 Creating Blurred Reflections and Refractions Using Standard Maya Shaders 375 Reflection Blur 375 Refraction Blur 376 mental ray Shaders 380 Using the mia Material Presets 380 Adding Shaders to Individual Polygons 383 Creating Thick and Thin Glass 384 Other mia Material Attributes 386 Layering Shaders 389 Building a Layered Car Paint Shader 390 Diffuse Parameters 392 Flake Parameters 393 Specular Reflection Layer 394 Glossy Reflection Parameters 395 Rendering Contours 396 The Bottom Line 398 Chapter 9 ? Texture Mapping 399 UV Texture Layout 399 What Are UV Texture Coordinates? 400 Mapping the Giraffe Leg 404 Unfolding UVs 406 Mapping the Giraffe Head 408 Mirroring UVs 411 More UV Tools 414 Arranging UV Shells 416 Additional UV Mapping Considerations 418 Transferring UVs 419 Multiple UV Sets 419 Optimizing Textures 420 Bump and Normal Mapping 421 Bump Maps 421 Normal Maps 422 Creating Normal Maps 423 Applying Normal Maps 428 Displacement Mapping 430 Subsurface Scattering 435 Fast, Simple Skin-Shader Setup 435 Subsurface Specularity 439 Viewport 20 443 The Bottom Line 445 Chapter 10 ? Paint Effects 447 Using the Paint Effects Canvas 447 The Paint Effects Window 448 Painting in Scene Mode 451 Painting on 3D Objects 453 Understanding Strokes 454 The Anatomy of a Paint Effects Stroke 455 Brush Sharing 458 Understanding Brush Curve Nodes 459 Designing Brushes 460 Starting from Scratch 461 Tubes 464 Growing Flowers 466 Adding Leaves 471 Create Complexity by Adding Strokes to a Curve 475 Shaping Strokes with Behavior Controls 478 Applying Forces 478 Displacement, Spiral, and Bend 479 Animating Strokes 481 Animating Attribute Values 483 Adding Turbulence 483 Animating Growth 485 Modifiers 486 Surface Collisions 486 Rendering Paint Effects 488 Illumination 488 Shadow Effects 489 Shading Strokes and Tubes 491 Texturing Strokes 493 Converting Strokes to Geometry 497 The Bottom Line 499 Chapter 11 ? Rendering for Compositing 501 Render Layers 501 Creating Render Layers 502 Render Layer Overrides 505 Creating Overrides for Rendering Cameras 509 Material Overrides 510 Render Layer Blend Modes 510 Render Passes 516 Upgrading Materials for Rendering Passes 518 Rendering Multiple Passes from a Single Render Layer 519 Creating an Ambient Occlusion Render Pass 523 Setting Up a Render with mental ray 530 File Tokens 532 Specifying Frame Range 535 Renderable Cameras 536 File Formats and the Frame Buffer 536 Starting a Batch Render 537 Command-Line Rendering 538 mental ray Quality Settings 541 Tessellation and Approximation Nodes 541 Unified Sampling 543 Filtering 543 The Bottom Line 544 Chapter 12 ? Introducing nParticles 545 Creating nParticles 545 Drawing nParticles Using the nParticle Tool 546 Spawning nParticles from an Emitter 549 Emitting nParticles from a Surface 552 Filling an Object with nParticles 554 Making nParticles Collide with nRigids 559 Passive Collision Objects 559 Collide Strength and Collision Ramps 563 Using nParticles to Simulate Liquids 566 Creating Liquid Behavior 567 Converting nParticles to Polygons 571 Shading the nParticle Mesh 573 Emit nParticles Using a Texture 575 Surface Emission 575 Using Wind 580 Shading nParticles and Using Hardware Rendering to Create Flame Effects 583 Shading nParticles to Simulate Flames 583 Creating an nCache 586 Using the Hardware Render Buffer 587 nParticles and Fields 589 Using Multiple Emitters 590 Volume Axis Curve 593 Working with Force Fields 600 Painting Field Maps 602 Using Dynamic Fields 605 Rendering Particles with mental ray 609 The Bottom Line 612 Chapter 13 ? Dynamic Effects 615 Creating nCloth Objects 615 Making a Polygon Mesh Dynamic 616 Applying nCloth Presets 619 Making Surfaces Sticky 621 Creating nConstraints 623 Making nCloth Objects Expand Using Pressure 627 Additional Techniques 629 Creating an nCache 629 Creating nCloth and nParticle Interactions 631 Creating an nParticle Goal 632 Controlling Collision Events 635 Bursting an Object Open Using Tearable nConstraints 637 Rigid Body Dynamics 639 Creating an Exploding Tower 639 Tuning the Rigid Body Simulation 641 Baking the Simulation 642 Crumbling Tower 644 Soft Body Dynamics 646 Creating Flying Debris Using nParticle Instancing 647 Adding nParticles to the Scene 647 Sending the Debris Flying Using a Field 650 Creating a More Convincing Explosion by Adjusting nParticle Mass 652 Instancing Geometry 653 Animating Instances Using nParticle Expressions 656 Randomizing Instance Index 656 Connecting Instance Size to nParticle Mass 660 Controlling the Rotation of nParticles 664 Bullet Physics 665 The Bottom Line 670 Chapter 14 ? Hair and Clothing 671 Understanding XGen 671 Creating an XGen Description 672 Rendering an XGen Description 678 Animating Using Dynamic Curves 681 Using Dynamic Curves with IK Splines 682 Creating an IK Spline Handle from the Dynamic Curve 686 Using Forces 687 Adding Hair to a Character 688 Applying Hair to a Surface 689 Determining Hair Shape 692 Styling Hair 695 Start and Rest Positions 696 Painting Follicle Attributes 698 Modifying Curves 700 Curling, Noise, Sub Clumping, and Braids 701 Rendering Hair 701 Creating Clothing for Characters 702 Modeling Clothes for nCloth 703 Using Constraints 705 Connecting Buttons to the Shirt 710 Applying Forces 713 Painting nCloth Properties 713 The Bottom Line 717 Chapter 15 ? Maya Fluids 719 Using Fluid Containers 719 Using 2D Containers 720 Adding an Emitter 721 Using Fields with Fluids 725 Using 3D Containers 728 Fluid Interactions 729 Emitting Fluids from a Surface 729 Making Flames 732 Igniting the Fuel 734 Filling Objects 736 Rendering Fluid Containers 742 Create Fluids and nParticle Interactions 744 Emitting Fluids from nParticles 744 Creating Flaming Trails 748 Creating Water Effects 750 Bifrost Liquid Simulation 750 Shading Bifrost Liquids 757 Creating an Ocean 761 The Bottom Line 764 Chapter 16 ? Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking 767 Organizing Complex Node Structures with Assets 767 Creating an Asset 768 Publishing Asset Attributes 772 Using the Asset Editor 773 Viewing Assets in the Node Editor 775 File References 775 Referencing a File 776 Bounding-Box Representations 778 Determining the Image Size and Film Speed of the Camera 780 Setting the Size and Resolution of the Image 780 Setting the Film Speed 782 Creating and Animating Cameras 782 Creating a Camera 783 Setting Camera Attributes 786 Limiting the Range of Renderable Objects with Clipping Planes 791 Composing the Shot Using the Film-Back Settings 793 Creating a Camera-Shake Effect 795 Using an Expression to Control Alpha Offset 798 Creating Custom Camera Rigs 801 Swivel Camera Rig 801 Swivel Camera Rig Asset 803 Applying Depth of Field and Motion Blur 806 Rendering Using Depth of Field 807 Creating a Rack Focus Rig 810 Adding Motion Blur to an Animation 814 Using Orthographic and Stereo Cameras 818 Orthographic Cameras 818 Stereo Cameras 819 Using the Camera Sequencer 821 The Bottom Line 825 Appendix A ? The Bottom Line 827 Chapter 1: Working in Autodesk Maya 827 Chapter 2: Introduction to Animation 827 Chapter 3: Hard-Surface Modeling 829 Chapter 4: Organic Modeling 830 Chapter 5: Rigging and Muscle Systems 831 Chapter 6: Animation Techniques 832 Chapter 7: Lighting with mental ray 833 Chapter 8: mental ray Shading Techniques 834 Chapter 9: Texture Mapping 835 Chapter 10: Paint Effects 836 Chapter 11: Rendering for Compositing 838 Chapter 12: Introducing nParticles 839 Chapter 13: Dynamic Effects 840 Chapter 14: Hair and Clothing 841 Chapter 15: Maya Fluids 842 Chapter 16: Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking 844 Appendix B ? Autodesk Maya 2015 Certification 847 Index 851

Additional information

Sku

CIN1118862511G

ISBN 13

9781118862513

ISBN 10

1118862511

Title

Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015: Autodesk Official Press by Todd Palamar

Author

Todd Palamar

Condition

Used - Good

Binding type

Paperback

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc

Year published

20141003

Number of pages

912

Prizes

N/A

Cover note

Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.

Note

This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015 Todd Palamar

Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015 by Todd Palamar

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Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015 Summary

Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015: Autodesk Official Press by Todd Palamar

About Todd Palamar

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