| The time has come to step into the realm of Maya and create your own world, top to bottom. Being told what Maya can do is one thing, but you can learn much more by diving in, exploring its features, and discovering what it's capable of. To the uninitiated, it might seem as though not that much goes into the production of a project. As you will find out in this chapter, however, there's a lot to it. Besides engaging the creative side of your brain, you also have to apply your organizational and problem-solving skills. You can create amazing scenes, but if they aren't organized efficiently , they can cause problems for coworkers or others who must work with your scenes. Or it could be troublesome for you when you return to edit your scene three months later! We're going to familiarize you with the steps that CG artists typically go through in Maya when building a project from scratch. Even if you already have some Maya experience, you might learn something. One of the best ways to learn new techniques is by watching what other people do ”sometimes you'll discover alternative, better ways of accomplishing things. This chapter is going to be an exciting opportunity for you to discover what Maya has to offer as you complete a small project from beginning to end. You'll get a feel for the workflow the software package has right out of the box and will be introduced to the following concepts: -
Getting more comfortable with the Maya interface In the previous chapters, you've learned the basics of the Maya interface. In this chapter, you'll apply that knowledge and increase your comfort level when working with Maya. -
Learning the steps of the animation process In completing this mini-project, you'll model, light, texture, animate, and render ”all the major steps every animation project requires. -
A little bit of everything Work through a tutorial that touches on most of the basic and intermediate features Maya has to offer. You will have the opportunity to use soft body dynamics, path animation, NURBS, texturing, and more! -
Basic scene organization You'll learn how to work with layers for organizing your scene efficiently. -
Simple modeling and editing with NURBS Using one of Maya's two main modeling tools, you will go through a tutorial to create objects for your scene. -
Render your first scene in Maya After finishing the tutorial in this chapter, you will have an impressive animation to render and show off! Key Terms isoparm A curve on a NURBS patch that helps give a visual indication of surface topology. vertex An X, Y, Z description of a point's location in 3D space. Vertices can be connected with line segments known as edges. Three or more edges connected in a polygon shape represent a polygon face (which produces the surface). control vertices (CVs) Very similar to the vertex for a polygon, except CVs are used with NURBS. material A surface definition, including such factors as color and shininess . Phong, Blinn, and Lambert are examples of different material types you work with in Maya. raytracing A rendering method used to create realistic reflections and refractions on surfaces such as mirror and glass. Raytracing also renders more realistic shadows. As a high-quality alternative to reflection mapping, raytracing needs more computation, thus causing longer render times. dynamics A physics simulation. Rather than manually animate, you apply mass to objects, add gravity and other factors, and let Maya figure it out. soft body dynamics Dynamics applied to "squishy" objects. When the object collides with something, it not only rebounds, but also flexes and jiggles. project A way to organize your scene information. Made up of several folders, a project contains a collection of scene files and other files, such as textures, generated for your scene. | Hotkeys to Memorize spacebar hold Hotbox q Select mode w Translate mode e Scale mode r Rotate mode t show manipulators 4 change current view to Wireframe mode 5 change current view to Shaded mode F2 Switch to Animation user interface F3 Switch to Modeling user interface F4 Switch to Dynamics user interface F8 Component Selection mode spacebar tap with mouse cursor over a view maximize or minimize viewport Alt+v play or stop Time Slider playback Ctrl+a open Attribute Editor f focus on object right-click on object display a shortcut menu of available functions Ctrl+d duplicate g repeat last command p create a parent object z undo Shift+Z redo b+LMB-drag resize brush when sculpting an object |  |
