Rendering!

Okay, so as a reminder of that class we spent talking about the Batch Render process in Maya, I have made up this helpful set of screenshots and explanations!

First, up, open the Render Settings window from Window --> Rendering Editors. You should see this:
This is the Common tab, where your generic frame size, time range, file name, etc. stuff is set. A breakdown of items you'll find in this window:

1.) Render using. Make sure this pulldown menu is set to Maya Software.

2.) File name prefix. This is where you'll enter a name for your rendered images. Preferably, use "yourName_final" or something like that.

3.) Frame / Animation ext is what defines how the images are named, if they are a still or an animated image sequence. Basically, if you're making a still image, just use name.ext [Single Frame], and if you're rendering an image sequence use name.#.ext.

4.) Image Format. Use PNG, Targa, or Tiff. DO NOT use Maya IFF (almost nothing besides Maya can read this file type).

5.) Set your Start Frame / End Frame to the frames you want your animation to start / finish playing on. If you are using name.ext [Single Frame] from #3, this area will be grayed out and only the current frame will be rendered.

6.) Frame Padding determines how many leading zeros will be added to your file name's frame number. Just set this to 3 or 4. DO NOT leave it at 1 (the default).

7.) Renderable Camera. If you have created a second camera (besides the default, persp) from which you intend to render your scene you will need to set it here. Don't forget this one!

8.) Image Size presets. This is the frame size of your image. You can enter a custom size below, but I'd suggest sticking to the presets. I will be compiling our show reel at HD 720, so if you are doing animation that's probably a good size.

9.) Path / File Name preview. This area, near the top of the Render Settings window, will show you a preview of where your images will be saved and what they will be called. Double check this for errors before you render! Also, you can't change the path where they are rendered yet -- we haven't covered that aspect of the software in our class.

With those Common settings ready, move over to the Maya Software tab (#10):
11.) The Quality dropdown menu is the last setting you'll need to alter. Basically, just set it to Production and it will fill out all the details below (and there are a lot of them).

Once all of that is set, change to your Rendering menu set from the pulldown at the top left of your main Maya window and find the Render menu. Locate Batch Render there and click it.

Maya will chug away for a while (progress updates will appear in your Status Line at the bottom right of the Maya window) and produce your desired image / image sequence at the path determined in point #9 above. To assemble them into a movie file, you'll need a copy of Quicktime Pro (or Premier, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, etc. -- but I'm only writing instructions for Quicktime), which is installed on all our lab computers.

In Quicktime, go to File --> Open Image Sequence... and select the first image (probably called something like Jed_final.0001.tga) of your rendered sequence. Also change the Frame Rate to 24fps (which is what all of your Maya projects should be set to), and hit OK. Quicktime will import all your frames and assemble them into a movie. Play it to see if it looks how you want it to. If it doesn't, fix the problems in Maya, re-render, and repeat this assembly process in Quicktime with the fixed image sequence.

You have one final step. With a completed movie in Quicktime, you need to export it as a standalone movie. Go to File --> Export... Here you'll need to set a few things. First, make sure you're exporting as a Movie to Quicktime Movie:
Then press the Options... button, where you'll see sections for Video, Sound, and Prepare for Internet Streaming. Just uncheck Sound and Prepare for Internet Streaming, as you need neither of them. In the Video section, press the Settings... button:
Where you'll see this screen:
If you know how video transcoding works, feel free to play around with these settings to make your movie look its best. But if you're unfamiliar, just copy the settings from my image above exactly. Now just hit OK on every dialog box which has opened up and save your new movie. Quicktime will bring up a progress bar and chug away for a minute or two, finally producing a tidy little movie file for you.

Email that movie file, your Maya scene file (or several, if you are using referencing), and your texture files to me before noon tomorrow to make it into the final showing reel. If you are just making still images, simply attach those instead of a movie file to your email. If the files are too large for a single email, feel free to send me several!

Assignment 7: Layered Animation

Whew, okay, good to be done with last week's work. This week we'll be taking our first steps into the wonderful world of animation via the Bouncing Ball Express and a process called "layered" or "component" animation.

The first thing to make sure of when starting this project is, of course, to set your Maya environment to the Animation menu set from the pulldown at the upper left of your workspace. Now, go ahead and create a primitive: either a polygon or NURBS sphere. The sphere will be your new bouncing ball. Also create three NURBS circles to act as your ball controllers. You'll probably want to scale their components (F8 for Component Mode) each a little differently to make them visible near each other, like in the picture below:

Parent these three controllers in order from the largest (as parent) to the smallest and then Delete History (Edit --> Delete by Type menu) on them. Name the controllers translate_ctrl, scale_ctrl and rotate_ctrl, in that order, and then parent the ball under rotate_ctrl (the smallest circle). You may also wish to create a NURBS or polygon plane primitive to act as your floor plane. Otherwise, just use the generic Maya grid to represent the floor plane.

Now you're all set and ready to animate! You'll want to set up Maya's windows so you can see your soon to be created keyframes a little more clearly. Press the 4th icon in the view presets toolbar at the left of the screen to choose the Persp/Graph preset so that the Graph Editor is included in your workspace. You can also find this preset under the Window --> Saved Layouts menu.

To get things started off quick, let's set an initial key. Because this is a layered approach to animation, we're only going to animate one aspect of this bouncing ball at a time. We'll start with the up and down motion, which means the Translate Y channel. Select translate_ctrl and translate it "up" along the Y axis to a "drop" height of your choice (don't make it too high or you'll be bouncing forever!). Now select the Translate Y channel of translate_ctrl in the Channel Box and right click on it. From the popup menu choose Key Selected.

You'll notice that a new dot appeared in the graph editor on the first frame where you created this keyframe, and a channel called Translate Y appeared under the name of your controller in the Graph Editor. Now click and drag the Time Slider at the bottom of your screen to advance to a new frame. Go a good 6 or 8 frames forward. At this new frame, translate translate_ctrl back down the Y axis until it comes in contact with the floor plane. Select the Translate Y channel, right click, and Key Selected. Another dot appears in your Graph Editor, now with a green line connecting it to your first keyframe on frame 1. Congratulations, you're animating! Repeat this process for several more up and down poses, making each bounce progressively shorter and quicker. When you're done you should see something like this:

If you need more frames to work with, go ahead and adjust the Range Slider by typing in higher numbers in the boxes to the right of the gray slider. This will add available frames to your project and let you look at a larger expanse of time in the Time Slider. If you're having trouble seeing all your keys in the Graph Editor remember that you can use the Right and Middle Mouse Buttons + the Alt/Cmd key to pan or zoom around the window. If you hold down Shift + Alt/Cmd + RMB you can lock the zoom command to one axis or another, depending on the direction your mouse is moving when you first click. This takes some practice but is very helpful. Alternatively, you can press the f key while you have the graph editor highlighted and have Maya intelligently frame all your keys to the size of the window.

Now, your next goal will be to adjust the tangent types for some of your keyframes. When you play back your animation you'll notice that the ball doesn't bounce so much as it does wave up and down. To fix that we'll be selecting the keyframes at the bottom of our ball's bouncing motion and altering their tangent types from Plateau to Linear. Select a keyframe on the Translate Y channel in the Graph Editor at the bottom (or "impact") pose of your ball bounce and notice the tangents are flat and even. By default they are set to the Plateau type, which will give an even in and out to the keyframe; deceleration and acceleration, in other words. Click the upsidedown "V" shaped icon from among the tangent types at the top of the Graph Editor to change this keyframe's tangents to a Linear type. Do this to the other down/impact keys in your ball bounce. Now the graph itself should actually look a lot like the trajectory of a bouncing ball.

The next layer of your animation will be to create the squash & stretch the ball experiences on impact and acceleration. Go to frame 1, where your animation begins at the apex of the first drop. Select scale_ctrl and then select the three Scale channels from the channel box. Right click and Key Selected. In your Graph Editor you should have three new dots representing those scale channels. Move to one frame before your first impact pose and stretch scale_ctrl out until the ball is elongated, then squash scale_ctrl to an inverse degree. You don't want your ball to change volume, so every time you stretch it out to be longer, you need to squash it in to make it skinnier; if you just stretch it out the ball will feel as though it is gaining volume and if you just flatten it out without stretching it thin like a pancake it will feel as though it is losing volume. Remember to maintain volume in any shape being squashed & stretched! Anyway, when you have a nicely elongated ball on the frame before your impact, key the scale channels.

Now move to the frame of the first impact and flatten the ball out somewhat, stretching it out on the other two axes to maintain volume. Again, key the scale channels. Repeat the stretching pose on the frame following the impact. Finally, go to the apex of the next bounce and reset your scale channels to 1 so that your ball is again completely spherical. Do this to each impact and apex frame in your animation, with the amount of squash and stretch decreasing with every bounce.

You may find it necessary to adjust the height of your bounces and impacts when you see them with a component of scale animation. To do so, select translate_ctrl again and just move your keyframes up and down in the graph editor using the Middle Mouse Button. To lock your movement to either up/down or left/right hold down the Shift key while clicking and dragging with the MMB.

With the scale layer of your animation complete you can now add horizontal movement to your bounce. Select translate_ctrl and set a key at the first frame on the Translate X channel. Now go to several frames after the end of your bounce and translate translate_ctrl to somewhere new on the Z axis. Key it there. In your graph editor you should see a new blue line formed between two keyframes representing your ball's new side to side movement. Play back the animation and you'll notice a problem: the ball accelerates into this movement, then decelerates back to a stop. We only want it accelerating, so we're going to use that same Linear Tangents tool from the first up/down layer of our animation to change the tangents on our first keyframe from Plateau, with the soft out tangent, to Linear. Your ball will now move properly from side to side!

The next thing we can see wrong with our animation is that the squash & stretch we added earlier now looks kind of funky. We want to fix this by angling our ball during the stretched poses to match the direction they are moving in. Select your translate_ctrl at frame 1 and key the Rotate X channel with a value of 0. Now, advance to the frame right before your first impact, when your ball is most elongated. Rotate translate_ctrl so that the ball is tilted in the direction of its motion. On the frame of impact, rotate translate_ctrl back to 0, and then in the opposite direction as it leaves the impact on the frame following that. At the apex of the next bounce, again key Rotate X with a value of 0. Repeat this process for each bounce, using progressively smaller rotation values. When you play back the animation you should see the ball angling in the proper direction of its elongation. We're almost there!

The final thing to do for your animation is to give the ball an overall rotation. If you haven't guessed it yet, select rotate_ctrl and give the Rotate X channel a key at the first frame and the final frame. The amount of rotation you'll need depends on how far the ball travels, but give it a solid few hundred degrees to start out with. Just like with your side-to-side movement on the Translate Z channel of translate_ctrl you'll have to select the first key of your rotation and set it to Linear Tangents. To check your ball's rotation, slap a checkerboard material onto it and use the Shading menu --> Hardware Shading mode (6 key) to preview the texture. If it's not rolling enough, move that final keyframe to a higher / lower number with your MMB and the Shift key. Rolling too much? Move it in the opposite direction up / down.

When you want to see your glorious new animation play back in real time, press the Play button at the lower right side of the screen. If it's playing back frantically that means the playback mode may be set incorrectly. To fix this, just right click on the Time Slider and choose Playback Speed --> Real Time.

That should just about do it. Send me your finished animation as a Maya scene file with the name "yourName_HW07.ma" before class on Monday, and email me with any questions about the assignment. Also remember to check out the file I sent to everyone if you get lost in this process -- it includes the finished version of the ball bounce we did in class for you to inspect / reverse engineer. Just don't try to resubmit that file to me -- I'll be hiding a node in there to mark it.

Assignment 7: Layered Animation

Whew, okay, good to be done with last week's work. This week we'll be taking our first steps into the wonderful world of animation via the Bouncing Ball Express and a process called "layered" or "component" animation.

The first thing to make sure of when starting this project is, of course, to set your Maya environment to the Animation menu set from the pulldown at the upper left of your workspace. Now, go ahead and create a primitive: either a polygon or NURBS sphere. The sphere will be your new bouncing ball. Also create three NURBS circles to act as your ball controllers. You'll probably want to scale their components (F8 for Component Mode) each a little differently to make them visible near each other, like in the picture below:

Parent these three controllers in order from the largest (as parent) to the smallest and then Delete History (Edit --> Delete by Type menu) on them. Name the controllers translate_ctrl, scale_ctrl and rotate_ctrl, in that order, and then parent the ball under rotate_ctrl (the smallest circle). You may also wish to create a NURBS or polygon plane primitive to act as your floor plane. Otherwise, just use the generic Maya grid to represent the floor plane.

Now you're all set and ready to animate! You'll want to set up Maya's windows so you can see your soon to be created keyframes a little more clearly. Press the 4th icon in the view presets toolbar at the left of the screen to choose the Persp/Graph preset so that the Graph Editor is included in your workspace. You can also find this preset under the Window --> Saved Layouts menu.

To get things started off quick, let's set an initial key. Because this is a layered approach to animation, we're only going to animate one aspect of this bouncing ball at a time. We'll start with the up and down motion, which means the Translate Y channel. Select translate_ctrl and translate it "up" along the Y axis to a "drop" height of your choice (don't make it too high or you'll be bouncing forever!). Now select the Translate Y channel of translate_ctrl in the Channel Box and right click on it. From the popup menu choose Key Selected.

You'll notice that a new dot appeared in the graph editor on the first frame where you created this keyframe, and a channel called Translate Y appeared under the name of your controller in the Graph Editor. Now click and drag the Time Slider at the bottom of your screen to advance to a new frame. Go a good 6 or 8 frames forward. At this new frame, translate translate_ctrl back down the Y axis until it comes in contact with the floor plane. Select the Translate Y channel, right click, and Key Selected. Another dot appears in your Graph Editor, now with a green line connecting it to your first keyframe on frame 1. Congratulations, you're animating! Repeat this process for several more up and down poses, making each bounce progressively shorter and quicker. When you're done you should see something like this:

If you need more frames to work with, go ahead and adjust the Range Slider by typing in higher numbers in the boxes to the right of the gray slider. This will add available frames to your project and let you look at a larger expanse of time in the Time Slider. If you're having trouble seeing all your keys in the Graph Editor remember that you can use the Right and Middle Mouse Buttons + the Alt/Cmd key to pan or zoom around the window. If you hold down Shift + Alt/Cmd + RMB you can lock the zoom command to one axis or another, depending on the direction your mouse is moving when you first click. This takes some practice but is very helpful. Alternatively, you can press the f key while you have the graph editor highlighted and have Maya intelligently frame all your keys to the size of the window.

Now, your next goal will be to adjust the tangent types for some of your keyframes. When you play back your animation you'll notice that the ball doesn't bounce so much as it does wave up and down. To fix that we'll be selecting the keyframes at the bottom of our ball's bouncing motion and altering their tangent types from Plateau to Linear. Select a keyframe on the Translate Y channel in the Graph Editor at the bottom (or "impact") pose of your ball bounce and notice the tangents are flat and even. By default they are set to the Plateau type, which will give an even in and out to the keyframe; deceleration and acceleration, in other words. Click the upsidedown "V" shaped icon from among the tangent types at the top of the Graph Editor to change this keyframe's tangents to a Linear type. Do this to the other down/impact keys in your ball bounce. Now the graph itself should actually look a lot like the trajectory of a bouncing ball.

The next layer of your animation will be to create the squash & stretch the ball experiences on impact and acceleration. Go to frame 1, where your animation begins at the apex of the first drop. Select scale_ctrl and then select the three Scale channels from the channel box. Right click and Key Selected. In your Graph Editor you should have three new dots representing those scale channels. Move to one frame before your first impact pose and stretch scale_ctrl out until the ball is elongated, then squash scale_ctrl to an inverse degree. You don't want your ball to change volume, so every time you stretch it out to be longer, you need to squash it in to make it skinnier; if you just stretch it out the ball will feel as though it is gaining volume and if you just flatten it out without stretching it thin like a pancake it will feel as though it is losing volume. Remember to maintain volume in any shape being squashed & stretched! Anyway, when you have a nicely elongated ball on the frame before your impact, key the scale channels.

Now move to the frame of the first impact and flatten the ball out somewhat, stretching it out on the other two axes to maintain volume. Again, key the scale channels. Repeat the stretching pose on the frame following the impact. Finally, go to the apex of the next bounce and reset your scale channels to 1 so that your ball is again completely spherical. Do this to each impact and apex frame in your animation, with the amount of squash and stretch decreasing with every bounce.

You may find it necessary to adjust the height of your bounces and impacts when you see them with a component of scale animation. To do so, select translate_ctrl again and just move your keyframes up and down in the graph editor using the Middle Mouse Button. To lock your movement to either up/down or left/right hold down the Shift key while clicking and dragging with the MMB.

With the scale layer of your animation complete you can now add horizontal movement to your bounce. Select translate_ctrl and set a key at the first frame on the Translate Z channel. Now go to several frames after the end of your bounce and translate translate_ctrl to somewhere new on the Z axis. Key it there. In your graph editor you should see a new blue line formed between two keyframes representing your ball's new side to side movement. Play back the animation and you'll notice a problem: the ball accelerates into this movement, then decelerates back to a stop. We only want it accelerating, so we're going to use that same Linear Tangents tool from the first up/down layer of our animation to change the tangents on our first keyframe from Plateau, with the soft out tangent, to Linear. Your ball will now move properly from side to side!

The next thing we can see wrong with our animation is that the squash & stretch we added earlier now looks kind of funky. We want to fix this by angling our ball during the stretched poses to match the direction they are moving in. Select your translate_ctrl at frame 1 and key the Rotate X channel with a value of 0. Now, advance to the frame right before your first impact, when your ball is most elongated. Rotate translate_ctrl so that the ball is tilted in the direction of its motion. On the frame of impact, rotate translate_ctrl back to 0, and then in the opposite direction as it leaves the impact on the frame following that. At the apex of the next bounce, again key Rotate X with a value of 0. Repeat this process for each bounce, using progressively smaller rotation values. When you play back the animation you should see the ball angling in the proper direction of its elongation. We're almost there!

The final thing to do for your animation is to give the ball an overall rotation. If you haven't guessed it yet, select rotate_ctrl and give the Rotate X channel a key at the first frame and the final frame. The amount of rotation you'll need depends on how far the ball travels, but give it a solid few hundred degrees to start out with. Just like with your side-to-side movement on the Translate Z channel of translate_ctrl you'll have to select the first key of your rotation and set it to Linear Tangents. To check your ball's rotation, slap a checkerboard material onto it and use the Shading menu --> Hardware Shading mode (6 key) to preview the texture. If it's not rolling enough, move that final keyframe to a higher / lower number with your MMB and the Shift key. Rolling too much? Move it in the opposite direction up / down.

When you want to see your glorious new animation play back in real time, press the Play button at the lower right side of the screen. If it's playing back frantically that means the playback mode may be set incorrectly. To fix this, just right click on the Time Slider and choose Playback Speed --> Real Time.

That should just about do it. Send me your finished animation as a Maya scene file with the name "yourName_HW07.ma" before class on Monday, and email me with any questions about the assignment. Also remember to check out the file I sent to everyone if you get lost in this process -- it includes the finished version of the ball bounce we did in class for you to inspect / reverse engineer. Just don't try to resubmit that file to me -- I'll be hiding a node in there to mark it.

Assignment 6: Basic Rigging

So, now that you've got a handle on basic interaction, modeling, and texturing, it's time to start off in a new direction... again. For your first rigging assignment I want you to create 2 "arm rigs" capable of deforming a very basic polygon mesh. One of these rigs will be based on the concept of Forward Kinematics (FK) and the other on Inverse Kinematics (IK). While building these two rigs I want you to concentrate first and foremost on a clean and well organized workflow. Name all your objects clearly. Use groups to separate parts of your rig and hide or lock objects/channels you don't need. You'll thank me for making you do this later. I promise.

First, open up "armGeo.ma," the file I sent to you all containing a basic arm geometry. Next, build yourself a Joint chain for the FK arm: change your menu set to Animation using the pull-down option menu in the upper left hand corner of the Maya interface and from the new menus which appear select the Skeleton menu --> Joint tool and click 4 times with Grid Snapping turned on to create 4 joints at the locations you saw in class. Name them like this:


Next, build yourself a controller using the Create --> NURBS Primitives menu --> Circle tool. Make sure that Interactive Creation is turned off under the Create --> NURBS Primitives menu before you do this. You should have a brand spanking new NURBS circle in your scene now; delete its history (from the Edit --> Delete by Type menu). With the circle selected use the Edit menu --> Group command to create a buffer on the control. Name the NURBS cirlce "FK_root_ctrl" and the buffer "FK_root_ctrl_buffer," then, Duplicate (Edit menu) the new buffer three times to make 4 pairs of controls and buffers. Position them (by translating the BUFFERS, not the controllers!) at the root, shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints and name them (and their buffers) accordingly:


Open your Outliner by going to Window --> Saved Layouts --> Persp/Outliner (alternatively it's the third view preset button on the left hand side of the screen) and expand your view of the various controllers/buffers you've made so far. Using the Middle Mouse Button to drag a child onto a parent or by selecting first the child then the parent and pressing P, parent your FK_wrist_ctrl_buffer under your FK_elbow_ctrl, and your FK_elbow_ctrl_buffer under your FK_shoulder_ctrl, and your FK_shoulder_ctrl_buffer under your FK_root_ctrl. The finished result should look exactly like this:


Now we've got joints and controllers done. Let's make them talk to one another. Select your FK_wrist_ctrl, then select your FK_wrist_joint, and use the Constrain menu --> Orient Constraint (Options) to open up the Orient Constraint dialog box. Make sure Maintain Offset is checked, as well as All axes and press Add. Repeat this process for the elbow and shoulder. Remember to select the controller first, then the joint -- the relationship between them is "driver" and "driven," in that order. The action of the driver determines the results for the driven, so when creating constraints always select the "driver" first, then the "driven."

For the root we want to make a Parent Constraint, so this time select first the FK_root_ctrl then the FK_root_joint and select Constrain menu --> Parent Constraint (Options) to open the dialog box. Again check that Maintain Offset is active and that you are constraining to all axes and press Add. Your controllers should now be able to change the position of your joints! Try rotating and translating them to your heart's content.

Notice that translating the elbow and wrist controllers is not useful -- so let's go ahead and disable that ability. In your Channel Box, select the 3 translate channels (their names, not the numbers next to them) of your wrist controller and right click on them. In the ensuing pop-up menu, choose Lock Selected.

Your channels will now be grayed out and you won't be able to translate this controller anymore. Do the same to the scale channels, then repeat this process on the elbow control. On the root control, lock only the scale channels -- we want to be able to translate it at will.

So, now you're basically done with your rig. Clean things up a little bit by grouping your joints and controls and renaming the new parent node FK_rig.

As one final step, let's skin your arm geometry to your joints. First Delete History (Edit --> Delete by Type menu) on the arm geometry, just to get us working with a clean slate. Select the arm mesh, then select your shoulder joint and use the Skin --> Bind Skin --> Smooth Bind command to connect the skin to the bones. Enjoy!

When you're finished playing with your FK arm, hide it by selecting the FK_rig group (which should contain all the nodes pertinent to your FK rig) and enter a value of 0 in the Visibility channel. Now, for the IK arm rig, we're going to repeat a lot of steps. So go ahead and create 4 new joints in the same place and with the same names as last time (exchanging the "FK" prefix for "IK"). Create three controllers the same way you did for the FK arm (again, using "IK" as your prefix) and position the wrist and shoulder controls in the same way as with the FK rig.

Your elbow control & buffer, however, should be renamed to IK_poleVector_ctrl & IK_poleVector_ctrl_buffer, respectively. Position them like so by translating and rotating the BUFFER, not the controller:


The next thing you'll need to do is tell Maya which direction you want the elbow joint to bend when you create an IK solver chain across it. This is pretty counter intuitive, so just trust me on it for now. Select your elbow joint and rotate it so that the bend in the elbow points toward the poleVector controller. It doesn't matter how far you rotate it. Next, use the Set Preferred Angle command from the Skeleton menu. Now, manually reset the elbow joint's rotation by entering a value of 0 in which ever channel you rotated it.

We can finally create our IK chain now by selecting the Skeleton --> IK Handle Tool (Options). In the tool options palette that appears, set your Current solver to ikRPsolver. Now, click on your shoulder joint, then click on your wrist joint. Ta-da! A new IK chain is created. You should see a new node in your outliner called ikHandle1. Parent it under your IK_wrist_ctrl and rename it IK_wrist_handle. Next, select your IK_poleVector_ctrl as the driver and IK_wrist_handle as the driven objects, then create a Pole Vector constraint from the Constrain menu.

You're almost finished with the basics of your IK rig. To complete it we need to make the wrist control do something to affect the rotation of the hand -- at the moment it just follows rigidly along the axis determined by the rotation of the elbow. To fix this deficiency select your IK_wrist_ctrl, then your IK_wrist_joint, and create an Orient Constraint from the Constrain menu. Remember to check that Maintain Offset is turned on under the constraint options. We should also tell the root controller how to affect the root and shoulder joints. Select the IK_root_ctrl, then the IK_root_joint, and create a Parent Constraint (Constrain menu) with Maintain Offset checked in the options dialog.

Finally, let's clean things up a little. Select the IK_poleVector_ctrl_buffer, IK_wrist_ctrl_buffer, IK_root_ctrl_buffer, and IK_root_joint and group them (from the Edit menu). Rename the resulting parent as IK_rig. Go ahead and lock off some channels you wont need on various ctrls: scale on the wrist and root controllers, and scale+rotate on the poleVector controller. If you haven't done so, skin a duplicate of your old FK armGeo to your joints in the same manner you did with the FK rig (remember that if you are duplicating after skinning you will need to unlock channels on the arm geometry and unparent it from the FK_rig group!).

Done. Play with your rig and find out if it all works. Try painting weights from the Skin --> Edit Smooth Skin --> Paint Skin Weights (Options) to adjust the way deformations propagate across joints. Try to break the rigs. When you're satisfied, turn in a single Maya scene file with the name yourName_HW06.ma before the next class for full credit.

See you on Monday!

Assignment 5: UV Texturing

Ah, UV layout. The drywall sanding of computer animation: not hard, just a pain in the ass.

With your models finalized (and hopefully with their history deleted), it's time to begin setting yourselves up to paint a texture. To do this we're going to want to adjust the model's UV Layout. By default Maya will have aligned your UVs in... a terrible fashion. So let's get on fixing that.

Using faces mode, select portions of your model which are relatively flat or simple when viewed from one angle (such as the entire front half of a character's body, the side of a vehicle, or the wall of a building). From the Create UVs menu choose Planar Mapping. Maya will pop up a new manipulator type with a large rectangular shape and controls at each corner. Use this manipulator to size & place your new projection, the position / angle from which Maya will attempt to apply texture data to this portion of your model. Note the lower image of this pair in which you can see the manipulator, as well as a distinct orange line which demarcates the UV Texture Border which was once the boundary around your selection. This is the line at which Maya split two adjoining sections of UVs.

In the UV Texture Editor (found under the Windows menu) you will see a 2D representation of your formerly selected components. Using the standard Translate tool, move your new grouping of UV points off the center area of your grid for safe keeping (a 2D version of the typical translate manipulator should appear in the UV Texture Editor window if you have the tool active). If you can't select the UVs to move them, right click in the UV Texture Editor and choose "UV" as the selection method and then click-drag a selection box around the UV components you are moving.

If any part of this process fails on you, I highly recommend you simply undo your way back to the starting selection (previous to executing the Planar Mapping command) and try again. Also, if you find yourself unsatisfied with the results of your projection, you can simply perform the same steps again -- creating new UV maps is non-destructive, meaning that if you get it wrong once, doing it 5 more times even without undoing won't harm your model.

Repeat this procedure with the remaining parts of your model, creating additional planar projections for other flat or semi-flat areas and Cylindrical Mappings for tube-shaped components, such as legs or the neck of an instrument. I recommend that you do not use any mapping types other than Planar and Cylindrical, especially not Automatic. Feel free to experiment, but they likely won't be of as much use in practice.

Once you have made a selection of and projected a new UV map onto every part of your model, you should have a UV Texture Editor window which looks something like this (well, if you were starting with a half-built cow model...), with parts of your model strewn about:

Translate/Scale them all down into the positive (0,0) to (1,1) area of the grid (upper right quadrant) and arrange them as you see fit. If portions of your layout are overlapping still, you may wish to go in and manually move some UVs to prevent overlapping. This is tricky to explain, but try to imagine a skinned animal being "pelted" and turned into a throw rug. All the outer facing surfaces of the animal's skin would be flattened out against a floor and none of them would overlap. This is the effect you want to go for with your UV layout.

When you are satisfied with your layout, use the UV Snapshot... tool from the Polygons menu in the UV Texture Editor window to export an image of your polygon layout (Above is my UV Snapshot from in class on Wednesday which I then painted over in Photoshop to create my "What up?" cow texture). Remember the image format -- you can use anything other than "Maya IFF," but I personally recommend PNG, JPEG, TIFF, or Targa formats. Open up your UV snapshot image in Photoshop, create a new layer, and paint away. Put down whatever you like at this stage, just so long as we'll be able to see it in Maya to check your UVs when the texture is applied.

Speaking of application, go ahead and save that new painted texture of yours as a JPEG, TIFF, PNG, or Targa and open Maya up again. In the Windows menu, select Rendering Editors --> Hypershade. Create a new Lambert material from the Create bin to the left of the window. "Lambert2" or some such should appear in the topmost pane of your Hypershade window. If you can't see that pane try clicking on this button:



That will bring up both the upper and lower work panes on the right side of the window. Select your new Lambert material and in the Attribute Editor click on the little black and white checkerboard icon to the right of the Color slider. The Create Render Node window should appear. Click on the File texture icon near the top right of the list. In the Attribute Editor (third button from the top right of the main Maya window if it isn't open already), click on the folder icon next to the Image Name field in your File texture node and navigate with the file browser to your image texture file recently made in Photoshop.

Now, to finish the application, either click and drag (with the middle mouse button!) your Lambert material from the Hypershade window onto your model or select your model then right click on your Lambert material and choose Apply to Selection from the right click menu. If nothing seems to have happened, keep in mind that you might be in the wrong display mode. From the Shading menu of your Maya view panel select Hardwre Texturing from near the bottom of the list. You should now see your applied texture on your model. Ta-da!

Remember that this week is really just week 1 of texturing, so don't sweat it if not everything went smoothly. Just try all these steps and identify what doesn't make sense to you. Most important this week is for you to work on finishing your models and making sure that they are exceptionally clean without any unmerged vertexes or extra faces hiding inside them. You should email me your model file before class on Monday saved as the same thing you named it last week. Technically this is still a continuation of Assignment 4 from last week, so that name will likely be "firstName_HW04.ma". There will be another post with your Assignment 5 homework notes and more details on the UV layout process next week.

Temporary UV Layout Guide!

Hey all, many apologies but I haven't had time yet to write up the full guide for creating your UV layouts. To tide you over until I can get it posted tomorrow afternoon, here is that image from class on Wednesday outlining the basics of the process:


Again, very sorry for this delay! Also, remember that Maya has a very robust help system / documentation included with the software. Just press F1 to activate it and search for any terms you think you remember! There are even tutorials for most of the tools you need.

Assignment 4: Additive Modeling

So, a new week, a new model. This week's assignment will focus mostly on additive modeling, which is to say modeling by the process of combining shapes instead of extruding them. To that end you'll rough out a model with primitive shapes and then attach them with the Combine and Merge commands. A few reminders and tool shortcuts:

1.) Work Slowly and Deliberately
Remember that it's important to go back and double check your work once in a while to make sure you're not getting double extrusions, unmerged vertexes, or any number of other bizarre happenings which can occur while you are modeling. The easiest way to check your own work is to go to Component Mode, change to Vertex selection with the right-click menu, and then select some single vertexes to pull around in space. If they seem properly attached to their respective edges and faces, then all is good. It's easier to fix mistakes as they happen than to wait until a model is complete and clean the whole thing up.

2.) Try to Make 4-Sided Polygons
While Maya will compute a polygon of any number of sides, 4-sided layouts are best (and as a corollary, 4-edge intersections at each vertex are preferable as well). You will certainly run into situations where this is impossible though, such as when transitioning from a level of high polygon detail to one of low detail. In these cases, some 3 and possibly 5 sided polygons will become necessary, but use them sparingly.

3.) Attaching Shapes
When attaching shapes, you will almost always run into the above mentioned polygon layout issues. Try to plan ahead for these connections as much as possible by creating primitive shapes with matching numbers of sides (ex: an 8-sided cylinder and a 16-sided sphere are well matched). To change the numbers of sides on your primitives, go to the Create --> Polygon Primitives --> (shape name) Options Box. There you will find sliders and numerical inputs to alter the detail level of your primitives.

Once you have created shapes, you should begin adding detail to them with the Cut Faces and Split Polygon tools, both in the Edit Mesh menu. In this case I am attaching an 8-sided cylinder to a divided cube, so I must use the Split Polygon tool to double the number of attachment points at their intersection. Click and drag with the Split Polygon tool to position a point on an edge, release to save that position. Remember to slide points all the way to the end of an edge to lock them onto an existing vertex. You will find yourself making two triangles facing away from the high detail area of every intersection and one triangle facing toward it. You could do this with fewer triangles, but because it is a symmetrical intersection the extra triangles are preferable:

Once you have added sufficient detail to the lower detail area of your mesh, add some extra rows of edges to the other side of the connection to contain the area of transition between detail levels like so:
Now activate Point Snapping and move the vertexes of one object to match those of the other at the point of connection. Point snapping can be activated with this button (and don't forget to turn it off when you're done!):
Finally, with the Mesh --> Combine function, join these two objects. You will then be able to Merge the connecting vertexes (from the Edit Mesh menu) and make a complete, continuous mesh. If the Merge function is not making successful merges, check its Threshold value and try adjusting it upwards (or downwards, if it is merging too many points). Your finished connection should look something like this:
As a last step, go to Edit --> Delete by Type --> History. This will erase the process of creation from your new object's history, which can help prevent errors from cropping up in the future. I encourage you to do this regularly.

4.) Normals
If you notice your model is developing some... blotchiness, it is likely due to a conflict in the alignment of face normals. Normals determine the direction Maya believes a polygon to be facing, so if they disagree from face to face, the rendering engine will quickly become confused and draw something like this:
Credit goes to Yueh for this fascinating piece of layout mishap -- it's an impressive bit of modeling for a first assignment, too! To "fix" this problem, simply go to the Normals --> Conform command. Of course, it won't have really fixed the problem, because the true problem is caused by having multiple faces overlapping in the same area (lamina faces), and the only solution we've seen in class so far is to go in by hand and delete one of every face. But at least it'll look nicer for now!

5.) Plan Ahead
Don't forget to do some planning. Get out a sheet of paper and either draw or write down how many "parts" your model really has. Then make each part separately, either by extruding it from a central cube or by making them from separate primitives then combining them. Planning here is everything here, and the more of it you do the fewer your headaches will be.


Other than those tips, all I can say is good luck! When you're finished, email me the Maya scene file (remember, ".ma" format) before Tuesday (no class on Monday!) with the naming format "firstName_HW03.ma."