The UV Texture Editor lets you view and interactively edit the UV texture for polygon, NURBS, and subdivision surfaces within a 2D view.You can select, move, scale, and generally modify the UV topology for a surface .Relax, Unfold, Smudge Tool, and Lattice Tool, The UV Texture Editor contains tools that allow you to modify the UV texture coordinates, you can perform such actions as rotating and flipping UVs as well as cutting and sewing UVs in order to achieve the UV layout you require.
The diffusion of light within the
top layer of the skin.
The important effects of subsurface scattering are very difficult to see until they are absent, and it becomes obvious that “something is missing”. Therefor this effect is very easy to overdo and to put too strong an sss effects in a
renderings an apparent “softening” of bumps and small structures, and a small “bleed” of light into shadow areas, diffusing the otherwise sharp shadow edges
Modifying a bump texture
The bump texture is too crater-like to be a convincing orange. The bumps are
too numerous and too deep. A quick way to fix this problem is to scale up the
entire texture. To interactively position a 3D texture
Double click the place3dTexture1 swatch, to the left of the Brownian
color swatch.
This node controls the 3D texture’s position, scale, and rotation. The
visual display of this node is a large cube that surrounds the sphere in
the scene view. This is the texture placement cube.
Click the Interactive Placement button in the Attribute Editor. A
manipulator appears for the texture placement cube.
In the scene view, click on the center scale box to activate the center
scale option. Scale the whole texture placement cube to about twice the
original size (until the Scale attribute values are about 2).
Now when you render, the bumps on the surface appear wider and
smoother, like the bumps on an orange skin. For example, the bumps in
the area surrounding the highlight do not appear to be as deep as they
were before you scaled the texture.
Scaling a texture placement cube is a common way to tune the texture’s
display. Scaling does not actually change the pattern, but enlarges or
shrinks it relative to the surface.
Now that you’ve changed the surface texture through scaling, move the texture
placement cube above the sphere drag the green arrow up,
to see how that affects the texture.
Editing the material attributes associated with shading materials affects how
they appear in the rendered image. In this way, Maya provides the option of
allowing you to create images as they would appear in the real world or in
your imagination.
Click Accept to close the Color Chooser.
If you compare the color in the Color attribute box with the sphere’s
color in the scene view, you’ll notice a difference.
The color you assigned is only one aspect of surface appearance. The
appearance also depends on how the surface reacts with light. The main attributes that control the reaction to light are under the Common
Material Attributes heading. As an example of these attributes, you will
change the Diffuse setting.
In the Attribute Editor, drag the Diffuse slider to its right to increase the
color brightness as viewed in the scene view.This will help create the illusion of a bright orange.
In visual arts, a texture is any kind of surface detail, both visual and tactile.
In Maya, a texture is a collection of attributes that creates surface detail.
Textures have a more specialized display purpose than materials. For example,
you can use textures to create the appearance of a marbled pattern, bumps,
or a logo image on the side of a can.a texture is also referred to as a texture node. A node is a
collection of attributes (or actions) with a common purpose. A shader is
sometimes called a shader node or material node.
To display a texture on a surface, you apply a texture node to an attribute of
the surface material. In the next steps, you apply a texture to the Color attribute
of the Phong E material.
Select Lighting > Use All Lights Hot key: 7.
This lights up the scene view only with lights you’ve created, not with default lighting. If you later
want to see the scene view with default lighting again, select Lighting
Use Default Lighting Hot key: 6.
When you render the scene, by default, Maya uses all lights you’ve created.
If you don’t create any lights, Maya creates a temporary default directional
light for you and then deletes it when the render is complete.
Shadows are the darkened areas that appear on a surface when an object gets
in the path of a light source. Shadows are cast onto the area of a surface that
doesn’t directly receive light. Shadows ground the objects in your scene and
aid in defining their three-dimensional appearance.
Lighting and camera techniques are one of the most crucial aspects to consider
when working with artificial characters and objects. The more realistic the
lighting and shading appear, the more convincing the scene will appear to the viewer. A prerequisite to creating effective 3D rendered animation is to study the lighting and camera effects used in live-action film. Your goal is to create the desired scene ambience while keeping the lights and camera view as unobtrusive as possible.
When you open the scene, Maya lights the scene with default lighting provided by an imaginary light fixture. It emanates light infinitely from a point above and behind the active scene view camera. There is no icon that represents the default light in the scene view.
Blending keyframe and motion path animation
Blending between motion path and keyframe animation types is possible in
Maya. Blending between the two animation types allows you to take advantage
of the characteristics each animation type can provide without having to
expend a lot of effort in determining where the change between the two types
must occur.
To the right of the Color slider, click the Map button
The Create Render Node window appears and lists the various textures
you can connect to the color attribute of the Lambert material assigned
to the counter surface.
In the Create Render Node window, scroll through the list of textures,
and from the list of 3D Textures, click Granite.
The procedural texture gives the counter the look of a stone granite
counter top when it is rendered, and provides the context for the scene.
Press 6 to see a shaded and textured display of the granite texture on the
counter top surface.
In the Attribute Editor, under Granite Attributes change the Filler Color
from the default reddish-brown to a beige color as follows:
Click the color box to the right of Filler Color.
Path animation allows you to animate an object along a path specified by a curve. In this way, the curve controls the motion of the object. With keyframe animation, Maya calculates the motion of the object for the animation based on the positions that were set at the keyframes. With path animation the motion for the object is defined by its location along the path curve.
With keyframe animation, you key an attribute value to a time in the Time
Slider. You repeat this process with different values at different times to animate
the object.
When you must animate multiple objects or attributes that interrelate, setting
keyframes can quickly become a complex task. Set Driven Key is a technique
for driving one object’s or attribute’s animation from another attribute.
With driven keys, you relate an attribute value to the value of another attribute.
A change in the driver attribute alters the value of the driven
attribute. In this way the animation of the driven attribute doesn’t need to
be manually set
Each curve graphs how an attribute changes value during the animation.
The column of numbers at the left represents attribute values that can
be animated, while the row of numbers at the bottom represents time
frame values. At each point on the curve, you can see the value of an
attribute at a particular time. The small black squares on the curves
represent points where you’ve set keys.
To animate the object, you key its position at different times of the playback
range. The playback range is defined by the Time and Range slider. The Time
and Range slider controls allow you to playback or scroll through your
animation or move to a specific point in time of your animation so you
can set keyframes.
To set the playback range for the scene
The Time Slider displays the playback range and keys you’ve set for a
selected object. Keys are displayed as red lines. The box at the right of
the Time Slider lets you set the current frame time of the animation.
If you need to bounce the ball more sharply off the ground and speed up
the ball’s horizontal movement. You’ll use the
Graph Editor to make both modifications.
The Graph Editor is an editor that graphically represents the various animated
attributes in your scene. The animated attributes are represented by curves
called animation curves. You edit animation curves in the Graph Editor.
Model symmetry
Whenever you model an object, take advantage of any symmetry
that the form provides.
one half of the model and then later copy it across the model’s axis of
symmetry. Place the sketch along the symmetrical line, its center line
(YZ plane).
To delete the faces on the left half of the mesh
Snap to Grids lets you move selected components to the closest
grid line or grid intersection point.
Duplicating an existing object is a useful way to make an exact copy of it
without having to start over. When you duplicate an item the copy takes on
the characteristics of the original. Using the Duplicate Tool you can
additionally apply transformations to the copy move, rotate, scale.
Camera tools
In Maya, you view the scene through a set of virtual cameras. These cameras are either orthographic or perspective in nature. You can adjust how these cameras view the scene using the Camera Tools.
The three primary methods for manipulating the camera view are dolly, tumble, and track.
Polygonal Modeling
Polygon surfaces are a network of three-or-more sided flat surfaces called faces that get connected together to create a poly mesh.
Polygon meshes have vertices, faces, and edges.
The wireframe lines on the mesh represent the edges of each face. The regions
bounded by the edges are faces. Where the edges intersect each other is the
location of a point called a vertex.
When a polygon mesh is rendered, its edges can be set to appear hard or
smooth. As a result, polygons can easily represent both flat as well as curved
Using 2D reference images
You can use front, side, and top views from drawings, sketches, or photographs
to help visualize your 3D model in Maya, much like an architect or engineer
creates their designs from the plan and elevation views of a blueprint.
You can import 2D images into your orthographic camera views as image
planes. An image plane is a 2D object (plane) that places an image file in the
scene view. By default, an image plane only appears in the camera to which
the image plane is connected. Image planes are also used to create backgrounds
and environments when rendering.
To smooth and subdivide the cube primitive
With the cube still selected in the scene view, select Mesh > Smooth >
and set the following options in the window that appears:
Click the Smooth button The cube primitive is smoothed and is rounded at its corners. The cube
has also been subdivided into smaller faces.
The polygon faces are still four-sided even though their shape and position have been modified by the smooth operation.
Modeling a polygon mesh in shaded mode gives you a better sense of the 3D volume that the model occupies as well as how any
surface details appear.
You can control the shading of an object separately in each view.
cursor over any transformation tool icon you see the name of the tool appear
next to the mouse cursor. The tool’s name also appears in the Help Line at the bottom of the Maya
window. The Help Line has an additional purpose: it displays summary
instructions as you use tools that require several steps.
The Channel Box
The Channel Box is an editing panel that provides you access to an object’s
transformation information and much more. It provides information on three
distinct areas for any type of object: The transform node, shape node, and
input node. Nodes are where information about object types are kept track of within Maya.
Nodes are comprised of attributes.
Attributes refer to information related to
what the node is designed to accomplish. In this case, information about the
primitive cylinder’s Y axis rotation is referred to as the Rotate Y attribute. You
will learn more about nodes later in this tutorial.
When you moved and rotated the cylinder primitive using the Move Tool,
you were doing this by your own visual judgement. This will usually be
sufficient for many of your creative applications.
If you need to control the attribute of an object with more accuracy you can
do this by entering the precise values into the appropriate attribute field of
the Channel Box.
In the Channel Box, adjust the attribute values so they match the above
image by clicking in the field and entering the correct numerical values.
This accurately positions the base in your Maya scene.
Maya named the cylinder primitive when it was first created. Rename
the cylinder to something more meaningful to your project.
