Mastering Autodesk Maya 2016

Autodesk Official Press

Todd Palamar

• Publisher: Sybex
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781119059820
• eBook ISBN: 9781119059851
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Graphics
• Index: Computer Science

Go from 'beginner' to 'expert' with this professional, tutorial-based guide to Maya 2016

Mastering Autodesk Maya 2016 is your professional hands-on coverage to getting the most out of Maya. If you already know the basics of Maya, this book is your ticket to full coverage of all Maya 2016's latest features, and showcases the tools and methods used in real-world 3D animation and visual effects. From modeling, texturing, animation, and effects to high-level techniques for film, television, games, and more, this book expands your skill set, and helps you prepare for the Autodesk Maya certification exam. Filled with challenging tutorials and real-world scenarios this book provides valuable insight into the entire CG production timeline.

Take your Maya skills to the next level with step-by-step instruction and insight from the industry professionals.

• Learn professional techniques used in real-world visual effects
• Master Dynamics, Maya Muscle, Stereo Cameras, mental ray, and more
• Expand your skills with advanced techniques for cloth, fur, and fluids
• Understand everything you need to know for the Maya certification exam

Chapter 1
Working in Autodesk Maya

The Autodesk^® Maya^® working environment has evolved to accommodate the individual artist as well as a team of artists working in a production pipeline. The interface presents tools, controls, and data in an organized fashion to allow you to bring your fantastic creations to life easily.

Autodesk Maya 2016 introduces a new, flattened GUI. The 3D beveled look of the interface’s icons has been removed in favor of a simpler 2D look. Many of the colors have been modified as well. As a result, the GUI is now more modern and streamlined.

Understanding the way Maya organizes data about the objects, animations, textures, lights, dynamics, and all of the other elements contained within the 3D environment of a scene is essential to understanding how the interface is organized. Maya uses what’s known as the Dependency Graph to keep track of the various packets of data, called nodes, and how they affect each other. Any single element of a Maya scene consists of multiple nodes connected in a web, and each one of these nodes is dependent on another. The Maya interface consists of editing windows that allow you to connect these nodes in an intuitive way and edit the information contained within each node.

There is usually more than one way to accomplish a task in Maya. As you grow comfortable with the interface, you’ll discover which editing windows best suit your working style.

This chapter is a brief overview of what professionals need to understand when working in Maya. You’ll learn about the types of nodes with which you’ll be working and how they can be created and edited in Maya. You’ll also learn how to work with projects and scene data as well as the various windows, panels, and controls that make up the interface. This will help you, whether you are working alone or as part of a team of artists.

This chapter is about working with nodes, but it is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to each and every control in Maya. You will find that information in the Maya documentation. If you’ve never used Maya, I strongly encourage you to read the Maya documentation as well as Introducing Autodesk Maya 2016 by Dariush Derakhshani (Sybex, 2016).

In this chapter, you will learn to

• Work with Color Management
• Understand transform and shape nodes
• Create a project

Color Management

Autodesk Maya 2016 implements a new management system for controlling the way colors are displayed in the viewport and in Render View. The Color Management system is based on Autodesk Color Management, or SynColor, which is shared across several Autodesk applications. Color Management lets you switch between sRGB and linear color space. You can also switch to many other common color space environments. The Color Management system makes it easy to render your images to be color-corrected within your favorite compositing package.

The Color Management controls are visible in the Viewport 2.0 viewport, in the render view, and also within your preferences. Figure 1.1 shows the Color Management controls from the viewport. The viewport controls are the same controls that are located in the render view. Figure 1.2 shows the Color Management settings in the Preferences window.

Figure 1.1 The Color Management controls within the viewport

Figure 1.2 The Preferences for Color Management

Color Management affects all aspects of a production. In Maya 2016, you should establish your color space at the beginning of any project. To see more features and uses of Maya’s Color Management system, you can watch Color_Management.mov in the chapter1\movies folder at the book’s web page.

Creating and Editing Nodes

A Maya scene is a system of interconnected nodes that are packets of data. The data within a node tells the software what exists within the world of a Maya scene. The nodes are the building blocks that you, as the artist, put together to create the 3D scene and animation that will finally be rendered for the world to see. So if you can think of the objects in your scene, their motion, and their appearance as nodes, think of the Maya interface as the tools and controls that you use to connect those nodes. The relationship between these nodes is organized by the Dependency Graph (DG), which describes the hierarchical relationship between connected nodes. The interface provides many ways to view the graph, and these methods are described in this chapter.

Any given workflow in Maya is much like a route on a city map. You usually have many ways to get to your destination, and some of them make more sense than others, depending on where you’re going. In Maya, the best workflow depends on what you’re trying to achieve, and there is typically more than one possible ideal workflow.

Maya has many types of nodes that serve any number of different functions. All of the nodes in Maya are considered DG nodes. Let’s say that you have a simple cube and you subdivide it once, thus quadrupling the number of faces that make up the cube. The information concerning how the cube has been subdivided is contained within a DG node that is connected to the cube node.

A special type of DG node is the directed acyclic graph (DAG) node. These nodes are made up of two specific types of connected nodes: transform and shape. The arrangement of DAG nodes consists of a hierarchy in which the shape node is a ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Working in Autodesk Maya
• Chapter 2 Introduction to Animation
• Chapter 3 Hard-Surface Modeling
• Chapter 4 Organic Modeling
• Chapter 5 Rigging and Muscle Systems
• Chapter 6 Animation Techniques
• Chapter 7 Lighting with mental ray
• Chapter 8 mental ray Shading Techniques
• Chapter 9 Texture Mapping
• Chapter 10 Paint Effects
• Chapter 11 Rendering for Compositing
• Chapter 12 Introducing nParticles
• Chapter 13 Dynamic Effects
• Chapter 14 Hair and Clothing
• Chapter 15 Maya Fluids
• Chapter 16 Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking
• Appendix A The Bottom Line
• Appendix B Autodesk Maya 2016 Certification
• EULA