List of Figures

Chapter 2: A Primer on Mathematics

Figure 2.1: A triangle for use in the following equations.

Figure 2.2: A triangle in need of solving.

Figure 2.3: A vector visualized in 3D space.

Figure 2.4: The standard depiction of the vector.

Figure 2.5: Vector addition.

Figure 2.6: Vector subtraction.

Figure 2.7: The dot product is visualized.

Figure 2.8: Finding the cross product.

Chapter 3: MEL Basics

Figure 3.1: The Command Line.

Figure 3.2: The Command Shell.

Figure 3.3: The Script Editor.

Figure 3.4: Script Editor options.

Figure 3.5: The Polygon Sphere Options box.

Chapter 5: The Script File

Flowchart 5.1: What a typical flowchart looks like.

Chapter 6: Geometry

Flowchart 6.1: Icosahedron generator flowchart.

Figure 6.1: The intersecting rectangles defining the icosahedron.

Figure 6.2: The locators in the viewport.

Figure 6.3: The remapped vertex numbers .

Figure 6.4: Vertex creation order and normal direction.

Figure 6.5: The separate objects that form the icosahedron.

Figure 6.6: Merge Vertex Options box.

Flowchart 6.2: Grass generator flowchart.

Figure 6.7: Variety of grass looks.

Figure 6.8: The creation settings for the blade of grass.

Figure 6.9: The bend result.

Figure 6.10: Using negative bend to put the flat side down.

Flowchart 6.3: The flowchart for our procedure.

Figure 6.11: Ten random blades of grass.

Figure 6.12: Five hundred blades of grass.

Figure 6.13: Densely packed grass.

Figure 6.14: Generating 1000 pieces in a much sparser area.

Figure 6.15: Determining area.

Figure 6.16: 40,000 pieces of grass.

Figure 6.17: Organic-looking grass.

Figure 6.18: A density setting of 100.

Figure 6.19: A density of 1500.

Figure 6.20: Density of 325.

Figure 6.21: A 1x1 patch of grass with our new density setting at 50%.

Figure 6.22: A 6x6 patch of grass with our new density setting at 50%.

Figure 6.23: The results.

Figure 6.24: Our goal, the geodesic sphere.

Figure 6.25: Bisecting edges to produce a circle.

Flowchart 6.4: Our procedure visualized.

Figure 6.26: A circle defined by five vertices.

Figure 6.27: The circle defined by bisecting the edges of our five-sided circle.

Figure 6.28: The circle is now more defined.

Figure 6.29: The subdivided edges.

Figure 6.30: Two subdivisions. triangulated.

Figure 6.31: A sphere, but the edges of the icosahedron are still unsmoothed.

Figure 6.32: The finished geodesic sphere.

Chapter 7: Animation

Flowchart 7.1: The plan for our first tool.

Flowchart 7.2: The second tool is somewhat more complex.

Figure 7.1: The up and downstream connections.

Chapter 8: Expressions

Figure 8.1: The flying ball.

Figure 8.2: Moving the wing pivot points into position.

Figure 8.3: The Expression Editor window.

Figure 8.4: The Graph Editor shows the sine wave results.

Figure 8.5: Adding a dynamic attribute.

Figure 8.6: The ball with a skeleton controlling its deformation.

Figure 8.7: Creating a driven key animation.

Chapter 9: Lighting and Rendering

Figure 9.1: A raytraced reflecting sphere.

Figure 9.2: A cubic reflection mapped sphere.

Flowchart 9.1: Auto-reflect flowchart.

Figure 9.3: A diagram of how reflection maps work.

Figure 9.4: The cube in cubic reflection.

Figure 9.5: The guide image used as a reflection.

Figure 9.6: The reflection reference geometry.

Figure 9.7: The six renders assigned as the reflection maps.

Figure 9.8: Multiple executions of the reflection script.

Flowchart 9.2: Adding the render smoothing attribute.

Flowchart 9.3: Flowchart of the attribute modification script.

Flowchart 9.4: Modified flowchart.

Figure 9.9: The Render Globals window.

Figure 9.10: The added attributes.

Figure 9.11: The connections to defaultRenderGlobals .

Figure 9.12: The Pre and Post Render setup.

Figure 9.13: The viewport view.

Figure 9.14: The rendered view.

Figure 9.15: Editing a scriptNode in the Expression Editor.

Chapter 10: Creating Tools in Maya

Figure 10.1: A window with all options on.

Figure 10.2: The typical Confirm dialog.

Figure 10.3: A Prompt dialog.

Figure 10.4: A Progress window.

Figure 10.5: A columnLayout with five buttons .

Figure 10.6: A rowLayout with five buttons.

Figure 10.7: A gridLayout with nine buttons.

Figure 10.8: A four-paned paneLayout.

Figure 10.9: A window containing a tabLayout.

Figure 10.10: The same frameLayout, both open and closed.

Figure 10.11: The same window; the second view has a scrollLayout.

Figure 10.12: A shelfLayout.

Figure 10.13: Nesting layouts.

Figure 10.14: Packing 500 buttons into a single window.

Figure 10.15: Various fields.

Figure 10.16: Using groups vs. individual elements.

Figure 10.17: A slider vs. a scroll control.

Figure 10.18: Color Picking Sliders.

Figure 10.19: The textScrollList control.

Figure 10.20: Checkboxes in use.

Figure 10.21: A six-button radio collection.

Figure 10.22: Various buttons.

Figure 10.23: Using the text control for labeling.

Figure 10.24: Placing an image in a window.

Figure 10.25: The different separators available.

Figure 10.26: A window design diagram.

Figure 10.27: Breaking down the user interface elements.

Figure 10.28: Designing the UI layout hierarchy.

Figure 10.29: Further refinement of the UI hierarchy.

Figure 10.30: Visualizing the hierarchy in the Hypergraph with transforms.

Figure 10.31: The textField window.

Figure 10.32: The window created using the default Maya values.

Figure 10.33: The same window, using our template.

Figure 10.34: Our proposed UI.

Figure 10.35: Breaking down the UI elements.

Figure 10.36: The results.

Figure 10.37: The results with thinner buttons.

Figure 10.38: The window width is now based on the names of the lights in the scene.

Figure 10.39: The addition of a scrollLayout.

Figure 10.40: The Grass Generator UI design.

Figure 10.41: Breaking down the window to the formLayout.

Figure 10.42: Inserting a columnLayout.

Figure 10.43: The finished UI mapping.

Figure 10.44: The window in which we will build.

Figure 10.45: Adding the Grass Style and Detail pull- downs .

Figure 10.46: Adding the Density slider.

Figure 10.47: The dimension fields are added.

Figure 10.48: The labeled floatFields and the added separators.

Figure 10.49: Adding the buttons to the columnLayout makes a rather non-dynamic window.

Figure 10.50: Now using the formLayout to control element placement.

Figure 10.51: The finished window.

Chapter 11: Customizing the Maya Interface

Figure 11.1: A typical marking menu.

Figure 11.2: A popup menu.

Figure 11.3: The checkbox, optionBox, and radioButton menuItem options.

Figure 11.4: The subMenu.

Figure 11.5: Disabled menu items.

Figure 11.6: The basic modeling view of Maya.

Figure 11.7: Adding a menu to the main interface.

Figure 11.8: the Maya 4.0 Startup Scripts directory in Windows.

Figure 11.9: Popup menu attached to controls.

Figure 11.10: Possible design for the window.

Figure 11.11: Alternative design for the proposed window.

Figure 11.12: The best possible design.

Figure 11.13: UI element breakdown.

Figure 11.14: The finished window, with popups.

Figure 11.15: The default Marking menu for joints in Maya.

Figure 11.16: The addition to the Marking menu now appears.

Figure 11.17: A Modeling panel with focus.

Figure 11.18: The difference between focus and under pointer status of panels.

Figure 11.19: Entering code into the Hotkey Editor.

Figure 11.20: The Maya Blend Shape Editor.

Figure 11.21: Blender window breakdown.

Figure 11.22: The first build of the UI.

Figure 11.23: The properly sized modeling panel.

Figure 11.24: th2:Project Conclusion and Review

Figure 11.25: A Modeling pane.

Figure 11.26: The new blend shape editing panel.

Figure 11.27: The Outliner, designed to be a vertically oriented editor.

Figure 11.28: Maya does not prevent the user from resizing panels into unusable sizes.

Figure 11.29: Panel entry for our new panel.

Figure 11.30: The Blendshape Plus panel in the Maya interface.

Figure 11.31: Tearing off the panel gives us a free window with the creation of our scripted panel.

Figure 11.32: A panel with all the default HUDs active.

Figure 11.33: The Heads-Up sector layout.

Figure 11.34: The HUD remains the same.

Figure 11.35: HUDs are removed as the panel is resized.

Figure 11.36: Block layout.

Figure 11.37: Our NURBs HUD.

Chapter 12: File Handling in MEL

Flowchart 12.1: The plan for our data gathering script.

Figure 12.1: The default Maya fileDialog window.

Figure 12.2: Our scene report plan as viewed in a Web browser.

Flowchart 12.2: The procedure to write out the file.

Flowchart 12.3: The flowchart of the procedure that reads in skinning data.

Flowchart 12.4: A diagram to clarify the code used to parse our data.