Introduction xix
Chapter 1 Working in Autodesk Maya 1
Color Management 1
Creating and Editing Nodes 3
Using the Hypergraph 3
Connecting Nodes with the Node Editor 8
Creating Node Hierarchies in the Outliner 13
Displaying Options in the Outliner 17
The Channel Box 20
The Attribute Editor 24
Working with Shader Nodes in the Hypershade 27
Creating Maya Projects 35
Creating a New Project 36
Editing and Changing Projects 37
The Bottom Line 38
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 52
Auto Keyframe 54
Moving and Scaling Keyframes on the Timeline 55
Copy, Paste, and Cut Keyframes 57
The Graph Editor 59
Animation Curves 60
Editing Animation Curves 65
Weighted Tangents 69
Additional Editing Tools 70
Breakdowns and In-Betweens 74
Pre- and Post-Infinity 76
Playblast and FCheck 79
Driven Keys 81
Creating a Driven Key 81
Looping Driven Keys 84
Copying and Pasting Driven Keys 85
Motion-Path Animation 88
Motion Trails 90
Animating Constraints 93
Animation Layers 97
Creating an Animation Layer 97
Layer Mode 99
Other Options in the Layer Editor 102
Layer Hierarchy 103
Merging Layers 106
Grease Pencil 107
The Bottom Line 109
Chapter 3 Hard-Surface Modeling 111
Understanding Polygon Geometry 111
Polygon Vertices 111
Polygon Edges 112
Polygon Faces 113
Working with Smooth Polygons 114
Understanding NURBS 115
Understanding Curves 116
Understanding NURBS Surfaces 118
Surface Seams 121
NURBS Display Controls 121
Using Subdivision Surfaces 122
Employing Image Planes 122
Modeling NURBS Surfaces 126
Lofting Surfaces 134
Attaching Surfaces 136
Converting NURBS Surfaces to Polygons 139
Modeling with Polygons 140
Using Booleans 141
Cleaning Topology 146
Creating Your Own Polygons 148
Multi-Cut Tool 151
Combining and Merging Geometry 153
Bridge Polygon 155
Mirror Cut 159
The Bottom Line 160
Chapter 4 Organic Modeling 163
Implement Box Modeling 163
Shaping Using Smooth Mesh Polygon Geometry 164
Multi-Cut with Edge Flow 175
Slide Edge Tool 177
Offset Edge Loops 178
Employ Build-Out Modeling 179
Extrude along a Curve 181
Sculpt Polygons 185
Soft Select Tool 185
Sculpting Tools 187
Use Retopology Tools 189
Importing and Exporting 189
Alembic Cache Files 190
Slide on Surface 190
Quad Draw 193
Reduce 198
The Bottom Line 199
Chapter 5 Rigging and Muscle Systems 201
Understanding Rigging 201
Creating and Organizing Joint Hierarchies 203
Orienting Joints 211
Naming Joints 212
Mirroring Joints 215
Rigging the Giraffe 216
IK Legs 216
FK Blending 219
Rotate-Plane Solver 221
Creating Custom Attributes 225
Spline IK 230
Human Inverse Kinematics 237
Skeleton Generator 237
Character Controls 239
Interoperability 241
Skinning Geometry 242
Interactive/Smooth Binding 243
Weighting the Giraffe 243
Geodesic Voxel Binding 250
Painting Skin Weights 253
Editing Skin Weights in the Component Editor 258
Copying Skin Weights 259
Mirroring Skin Weights 260
The Maya Muscle System 260
Understanding the Maya Muscle System 260
Using Capsules 261
Creating a Muscle Using the Muscle Builder 262
Editing Muscle Parameters 268
Converting the Smooth Skin to a Muscle System 270
Sliding Weights 272
The Bottom Line 273
Chapter 6 Animation Techniques 275
Working with Deformers 275
ShrinkWrapping Geometry 275
Using Textures to Deform Objects 278
Delta Mush 281
Animating Facial Expressions Using Blend Shapes 283
Creating Blend Shape Targets 286
Creating Blend Shapes 292
Painting Blend Shape Weights 294
Adding Targets 297
Animating a Scene Using Nonlinear Deformers 298
Creating a Wave Deformer 299
Squashing and Stretching Objects 300
Twisting Objects 302
Creating a Jiggle Effect 304
Applying Jiggle Deformers 304
Painting Jiggle Weights 305
Optimizing Animations with the Geometry Cache 307
Creating a Geometry Cache 307
Editing the Cache Playback 308
Applying Motion Capture 309
The Bottom Line 311
Chapter 7 Lighting with mental ray 313
Shadow-Casting Lights 313
Shadow Preview 314
Depth Map Shadows 316
mental ray Shadow Map Overrides 320
Raytrace Shadows 322
Indirect Lighting: Global Illumination 323
Color Bleeding 326
Indirect Illumination: Final Gathering 326
Light-Emitting Objects 327
Using Lights with Final Gathering 331
Image-Based Lighting 332
Enabling IBL 332
IBL and Final Gathering 333
Physical Sun and Sky 335
Enabling Physical Sun and Sky 335
Editing the Sky Settings 337
mental ray Area Lights 338
Light Shaders 341
Physical Light Shader 341
Tone Mapping 343
Photometric Lights and Profiles 344
The Bottom Line 345
Chapter 8 mental ray Shading Techniques 347
Shading Concepts 347
Diffusion 350
Reflection 351
Refraction 351
The Fresnel Effect 353
Anisotropy 353
Layering Shaders 354
Creating Reflections and Refractions 355
Creating Metals and Plastics 362
Adding Shaders to Individual Polygons 364
Building a Layered Car Paint Shader 365
Base Parameters 367
Flake Parameters 369
Specular Reflection Layer 370
Glossy Reflection Parameters 370
The Bottom Line 371
Chapter 9 Texture Mapping 373
UV Texture Layout 373
What Are UV Texture Coordinates? 374
Mapping the Giraffe Leg 376
Unfolding UVs 381
Mapping the Giraffe Head 381
Mirroring UVs 384
More UV Tools 387
Arranging UV Shells 388
Additional UV Mapping Considerations 391
Transferring UVs 392
Multiple UV Sets 392
Optimizing Textures 392
Bump and Normal Mapping 393
Bump Maps 393
Normal Maps 394
Creating Normal Maps 396
Applying Normal Maps 400
Displacement Mapping 402
Subsurface Scattering 407
Fast, Simple Skin-Shader Setup 407
Subsurface Specularity 411
ShaderFX 415
The Bottom Line 417
Chapter 10 Paint Effects 419
Using the Paint Effects Canvas 419
The Paint Effects Window 420
Painting in Scene Mode 424
Painting on 3D Objects 425
Understanding Strokes 427
The Anatomy of a Paint Effects Stroke 427
Brush Sharing 430
Understanding Brush Curve Nodes 431
Designing Brushes 433
Starting from Scratch 433
Tubes 436
Growing Flowers 438
Adding Leaves 444
Create Complexity by Adding Strokes to a Curve 447
Shaping Strokes with Behavior Controls 450
Applying Forces 450
Displacement, Spiral, and Bend 451
Animating Strokes 453
Animating Attribute Values 455
Adding Turbulence 456
Animating Growth 457
Modifiers 458
Surface Collisions 459
Rendering Paint Effects 460
Illumination 461
Shadow Effects 461
Shading Strokes and Tubes 463
Texturing Strokes 466
Converting Strokes to Geometry 469
The Bottom Line 471
Chapter 11 Rendering for Compositing 473
Render Layers 473
Creating Render Layers 474
Render Layer Overrides 477
Creating Overrides for Rendering Cameras 479
Material Overrides 481
Render Layer Blend Modes 481
Render Passes 486
Rendering Multiple Passes from a Single Render Layer 488
Creating an Ambient Occlusion Render Pass 492
Setting Up a Render with mental ray 494
File Tokens 494
Specifying Frame Range 497
Starting a Batch Render 498
Command-Line Rendering 499
mental ray Quality Settings 502
Tessellation and Approximation Nodes 502
Sampling 504
Filtering 504
The Bottom Line 504
Chapter 12 Introducing nParticles 507
Creating nParticles 507
Drawing nParticles Using the nParticle Tool 508
Spawning nParticles from an Emitter 512
Emitting nParticles from a Surface 515
Filling an Object with nParticles 518
Making nParticles Collide with nRigids 523
Passive Collision Objects 523
Collide Strength and Collision Ramps 528
Using nParticles to Simulate Liquids 531
Creating Liquid Behavior 531
Converting nParticles to Polygons 536
Shading the nParticle Mesh 537
Emitting nParticles Using a Texture 539
Surface Emission 539
Using Wind 545
Shading nParticles and Using Hardware Rendering to Create Flame Effects 549
Shading nParticles to Simulate Flames 549
Creating an nCache 551
Using the Hardware Render Buffer 553
Controlling nParticles with Fields 556
Using Multiple Emitters 556
Volume Axis Curve 560
Working with Force Fields 566
Painting Field Maps 569
Using Dynamic Fields 572
Rendering Particles with mental ray 576
The Bottom Line 579
Chapter 13 Dynamic Effects 581
Creating nCloth Objects 581
Making a Polygon Mesh Dynamic 582
Applying nCloth Presets 585
Making Surfaces Sticky 587
Creating nConstraints 589
Making nCloth Objects Expand Using Pressure 593
Additional Techniques 595
Creating an nCache 595
Creating nCloth and nParticle Interactions 597
Creating an nParticle Goal 598
Controlling Collision Events 601
Bursting an Object Open Using Tearable nConstraints 603
Crumbling Tower 604
Soft Body Dynamics 606
Creating Flying Debris Using nParticle Instancing 607
Adding nParticles to the Scene 607
Sending the Debris Flying Using a Field 610
Creating a More Convincing Explosion by Adjusting nParticle Mass 612
Instancing Geometry 613
Animating Instances Using nParticle Expressions 615
Randomizing Instance Index 615
Connecting Instance Size to nParticle Mass 620
Controlling the Rotation of nParticles 624
Bullet Physics 626
The Bottom Line 629
Chapter 14 Hair and Clothing 631
Understanding XGen 631
Creating an XGen Description 632
XGen Library 637
Rendering an XGen Description 638
Animating Using Dynamic Curves 642
Using Dynamic Curves with IK Splines 642
Creating an IK Spline Handle from the Dynamic Curve 647
Using Forces 648
Adding Hair to a Character 649
Applying Hair to a Surface 649
Determining Hair Shape 653
Styling Hair 656
Start and Rest Positions 656
Painting Follicle Attributes 658
Modifying Curves 660
Curling, Noise, Sub Clumping, and Braids 660
Rendering Hair 661
Creating Clothing for Characters 662
Modeling Clothes for nCloth 662
Using Constraints 664
Connecting Buttons to the Shirt 670
Applying Forces 671
Painting nCloth Properties 671
The Bottom Line 675
Chapter 15 Maya Fluids 677
Using Fluid Containers 677
Using 2D Containers 678
Adding an Emitter 679
Using Fields with Fluids 683
Using 3D Containers 686
Fluid Interactions 687
Emitting Fluids from a Surface 687
Making Flames 690
Igniting the Fuel 693
Filling Objects 694
Rendering Fluid Containers 700
Creating Fluids and nParticle Interactions 702
Emitting Fluids from nParticles 702
Creating Flaming Trails 706
Creating Water Effects 708
Bifrost Liquid Simulation 708
Shading Bifrost Liquids 714
Guiding Liquid 717
Creating an Ocean 720
The Bottom Line 722
Chapter 16 Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking 725
Organizing Complex Node Structures with Assets 725
Creating an Asset 726
Publishing Asset Attributes 730
Using the Asset Editor 731
Viewing Assets in the Node Editor 733
File References 733
Referencing a File 734
Bounding-Box Representations 736
Determining the Image Size and Film Speed of the Camera 737
Setting the Size and Resolution of the Image 738
Setting the Film Speed 740
Creating and Animating Cameras 740
Creating a Camera 741
Setting Camera Attributes 744
Limiting the Range of Renderable Objects with Clipping Planes 747
Composing the Shot Using the Film-Back Settings 750
Creating a Camera-Shake Effect 752
Using an Expression to Control Alpha Offset 755
Creating Custom Camera Rigs 758
Swivel Camera Rig 758
Swivel Camera Rig Asset 760
Applying Depth of Field and Motion Blur 764
Rendering Using Depth of Field 764
Creating a Rack Focus Rig 767
Adding Motion Blur to an Animation 771
Using Orthographic and Stereo Cameras 774
Orthographic Cameras 774
Stereo Cameras 775
Using the Camera Sequencer 778
The Bottom Line 782
Appendixes
Appendix A The Bottom Line 783
Chapter 1: Working in Autodesk Maya 783
Chapter 2: Introduction to Animation 784
Chapter 3: Hard-Surface Modeling 785
Chapter 4: Organic Modeling 786
Chapter 5: Rigging and Muscle Systems 787
Chapter 6: Animation Techniques 788
Chapter 7: Lighting with mental ray 789
Chapter 8: mental ray Shading Techniques 790
Chapter 9: Texture Mapping 791
Chapter 10: Paint Effects 792
Chapter 11: Rendering for Compositing 794
Chapter 12: Introducing nParticles 795
Chapter 13: Dynamic Effects 796
Chapter 14: Hair and Clothing 797
Chapter 15: Maya Fluids 798
Chapter 16: Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking 799
Appendix B Autodesk Maya 2016 Certification 803
Index 807
