Maya Workshops

Classes 1-4

Maya – 3D Modelling Course

15/01/2013

Jassim Happa

Overview of the Day

• Session 1: 10:00-11:25

– 3D Modelling and Maya’s Interface

• Session 2: 11:35-13:00

– Data structures

• Session 3: 14:00-15:25:

• Modelling your first project

• Session 4: 15:35:-17:00

– Common modelling conventions

– Advanced Maya topics

What you’ll learn?

• Purpose: Hands on experience in Maya

1. 3D Modelling and Maya’s Interface

– Learning what Maya can do

2. Data structures

– How to do various forms of modelling

3. Modelling your first project

– Focus on creating a house

4. Common modelling conventions

– Tips for proficient modelling

– Some advanced Maya topics

What we will not cover today?

• Scripting in Maya (MEL or Python)

• Animation

• Texturing

• Lighting

• Rendering

Wednesday Thursday Friday

Rendering I (KD) Animations I (CH) (9:00 to 14:00)

Animations II (CH/KD)

Rendering II (KD) Image-based Lighting (KD)

Texture Mapping in Maya (ES)

Stereoscopy (ES/KD)

Rendering in Maya/Mental Ray (KD)

HDR (KD) (start: 15:00)

Assignment/Revision/Closing (KD)

Rendering III (KD/TBR)

Multi sensory Environments/ Real Virtuality (AC) (16:30 to 18:00)

Before we begin…

• Cheat sheet for Maya

– Handed out as a summary keys

• Tasks hand out

– Each session holds a set of tasks for you to complete

• Open Maya

– Go to: Window -> Settings/Preferences

-> Settings -> World Coordinate System: Up Axis Y

Before we begin…

Before we begin…

• Two types of tasks:

– Tasks during lecture, Tasks after lecture

• Red in slides signifies a lecture task

– A task to do during lecture.

• At the end of each slideshow we begin tasks

– Found in task hand out

• BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!!

– Every 10-15 min create a new save file!!

– Maya is not novice friendly and can crash!!!

Maya Workshops

Class 1* 10:00-11:30

Introduction to Maya

Jassim Happa

* Much thanks to Elmedin slides.

Overview

• Session 1 10:00-11:30: 3D Modelling intro

• 3D modelling introduction: – Introduction: modelling in general

– What’s available • Maya, blender, Max, zbrush, softimage, autocad

• Maya interface: – User Interface

– Navigation

– Perspective vs. Orthographic camera

– Camera settings

– Creating basic geometric primitives

Introduction to 3D Modelling

Recap:

• 3D modelling tools are capable of:

– Creating 3D shapes

– Texture (paint) 3D shapes

– “Design” lighting in scene

– Animate objects

– Simulate objects using physics

– Render 2D images

Introduction to 3D Modelling

• Common 3D modelling tools:

– 3DS Max – Game and architectural modelling

– AutoCAD – 2d/3d Architectural drawing

– Blender – open source modelling

– Maya – Game, animation and architecture

– Poser - Characters

– Softimage XSI - Characters

– Zbrush – Characters

• Uses poxels (not covered in lectures)

Introduction to 3D Modelling

Examples

Maya User Interface

Menu bar:

• Drop down menus

– Specific functions beneath them

• Context sensitive

– Animation, Polygons, Surfaces, Dynamic, Rendering, nDynamics

Maya User Interface

Status line:

• How to change selection options

– Not necessary for basic selections

Shelf:

• Where all objects you can create reside

Maya Interface

• Workspace

– Where the scene is

• Channel box

– Contains properties of an object

• Time and Range Slider

– For keyframed animations

• Not this course

• Layout Editor

– Similar to photoshop layers

Maya User Interface

• Quick layout buttons

• Toolbox

• Help Line

– Prints status/error messages

• Command Line

– For scripting

Maya User Interface

Toolbox: Quick Layout buttons:

Navigation

Demonstration:

• Typical Cartesian coordinate system

– X, Y, Z axes

• Zoom, panning and rolling

• Create and view objects

• Move, rotate, scale objects

• Component selection – Faces, Edges and Vertices

Navigation

QWERTY (tools)

• Q: select , W: move

• E: rotate , R: scale

• G: last tool used

Moving the Camera

• ALT + LMB: tumble/rotate camera

• ALT + MMB: track/move camera

• ALT + RMB: dolly/zoom camera

Navigation

• A: Zoom all

• F: Zoom selected object

Panels

– SPACE: panel layout (1 view / 4 views exchange)

Display

– 1, 2, 3: low / medium / high quality

– 4: wireframe, 5: shaded

– 6: shaded and textured, 7: use all lights

Navigation

Perspective cube:

• Quick access to main perspective views

– Click to obtain new perspective

Gizmo (yes that is it’s real name!):

• Indicates what manipulation you are currently performing:

X is red

Y is green

Z is blue

Perspective vs. Orthographic

• Perspective:

– Closest to what we see every day

• Orthographic projection:

– Consider: a camera infinitely far away, with an infinite zoom.

– Not correct, but gives a look that is easier to model with

• Swap between 1 viewport and 4 viewports

• Other camera models exist:

– Isometric, Oblique, Parallel… etc.

Camera Settings

Camera settings:

• Each camera have their own parameters

– Only valid for the camera selected (or used)

• Bookmarks

– Save all your parameters

• Field (Angle) of View

– Change camera’s viewing properties

• … (more to come later today..)

Basic Geometric Primitives

Creating Geometric Primitives:

• Make sure you’re in polygon mode

– We’ll cover what this means in the next class

• Click the type of geometric primitive you want to create:

• Spheres, cuboids, cylinders, cones, planes, torus, pyramid, pipe

Navigation

Component Selection Mode Menu

Right mouse button (RMB)

• Select:

– Object mode

– Faces mode

– Edges mode

– Vertex mode

Mouse scroll wheel button:

• Move object according to axis held down

Lecture Task

• Create a Human-like character

– Only using primitive objects

• Create a house using only primitives

• Add detail using the tools we’ve shown

• Remember to save your projects!

Lecture Task

Lecture Task

Maya Workshops

Class 2 11:30-13:00

Data Structures in Maya

Jassim Happa

Overview

Session 2: 11:35-13:00 - Data structures

• Geometric primitives using:

– Polygons

– Subdivs

– NURBS

– Curves

• Boolean operations

• Editing Polygons

Polygons

Polygons

• Used the most today because of their simplicity

– Conceptually simpler to understand

– Computationally faster to draw

• Games, Films, Animations

• Point make up extreme points of a surface

– Many surfaces put together make up an object

• Good polygons are planar surfaces (flat)!

Polygons

Good! Bad!

Split up the polygons!

Polygons

Polygons

Convex: any line drawn through the polygon (not tangent to an edge or corner) meets its boundary exactly twice.

– Equivalently, all its interior angles are less than 180°.

Non-convex: a line may be found which meets its boundary more than twice.

– In other words, it contains at least one interior angle with a measure larger than 180°.

Polygons

Simple:

• The boundary of the polygon does not cross itself. All convex polygons are simple.

Concave:

• Non-convex and simple.

Self-intersecting:

• The boundary of the polygon crosses itself.

Polygons

Polygons

Convex Concave

4 intersections! Avoid! 2 intersections, good!

Polygons

Polygons

Typically triangles or quads are used

• Triangles: mathematically simpler

• Quads: easier to model with

Polygons

Polygons

• Vertices, edges, faces

• Polygonal surfaces can be described with the smallest amount of data of all the 3D surface types

NURBs (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines)

• Development in 1950s by Pierre Bézier

– As b-splines

• Need to represent freeform surfaces:

– Ship hulls, aerospace exterior surfaces and car bodies.

– Prior to this, one physical model was created by a designer – similar concept to book printing.

• NURBs are a generalisation of B-splines

NURBs (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines)

NURBs (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines)

• Control points influence directions the surfaces takes. Outmost points defines the X/Y/Z extents of any surface.

• Today: often used to represent organic material

• Often converted later to a polygon mesh

NURBs (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines)

NURBs (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines)

• See: Surfaces

Subdivision surfaces

• Possesses characteristics of both NURBs and polygonal surfaces

• Capable of producing smooth organic forms (NURBs)

• Extrude specific areas and create additional detail in your surfaces (polygons)

• Switching between different levels of detail

Subdivision surfaces

• Can select:

– Vertex, edges or surfaces

Curves

• Create points and modify splines

• Move end points close to each other

– Surfaces: Edit Curves -> Open/Close Curves

• Can be converted to polygons

– Modify -> Convert -> NURBS to Polygon

Boolean Operations

Set theory – “carve out entire sections”

• Polygon -> Menu Bar -> Mesh -> Booleans

• Note: Order of object selection matters!

Boolean Operations

• Can be very useful!

– E.g. Water inside a bath tub

• Booleans = memory intensive operation!!

– Normally used as last resort

Boolean Operations

If Boolean operations don’t work as expected: • Avoid meshes that are non-manifold in nature.

– An edge does not connect to more than two faces.

• The normals on the meshes must consistently point outwards on the volumes. – View the normals on a mesh using Display > Polygons

> Face Normals. You reverse face normals using Normals > Reverse.

• The region of intersection should not contain border edges. – Display border edges by selecting Display > Polygons >

Border Edges.

Boolean Operations

If Boolean operations don’t work as expected: • Object must be enclosed.

– Fill any openings in the original objects (for example, use Mesh > Fill Hole), and then use the Merge feature (Edit Mesh > Merge) with a suitably small Threshold tolerance to merge vertices that are effectively coincident.

• Booleans operations do not work on meshes that have zero area (or very small) faces or zero length (or very short) edges. – Ensure the meshes involved do not have very small

faces and edges.

Editing Polygons

Component Selection Mode Menu

• Extrusion: Polygons: Mesh Edit -> Extrusion

• Smoothing: Polygons: Mesh -> Smoothing

• Averaging: Polygons: Mesh -> Average

• Cutting: Polygons: Mesh Edit -> Cut Faces Tool

– NOTE: Viewpoint dependent!

• Fill holes: Polygons: Mesh -> Fill Holes

– Append to polygon tool also possible!

Exercises

• Create a bridge from using primitive objects and boolean operations only. – Make the bridges as pretty as you can after that!

• Create a more complicated NURB object, then convert it to a polygon w/modifier box: Modify -> convert []

• Create a tunnel using vertex and face editing from mesh editing

• Create a landscape that has the tunnel and bridge in it

• Experiment with extrusion of faces, edges and vertices on a sphere object

Exercises

Maya Workshops

Class 3 14:00-15:30

Modelling your first project

Jassim Happa

Overview

Session 3: Modelling your first object

• What makes “good” geometry?

• Mirroring Objects

• Image planes

• Modelling a building from scratch

– Model a building

What makes “good” geometry?

What makes good geometry?

• Clean, easy to follow structure

– Every/most lines are needed

• Named meshes

• Structured history

• Non-manifold geometry

• Non zero length geometry

• Enclosed geometry

– No holes anywhere

• Correct Normals facing outwards

Mirroring Objects

Many objects are symmetric (or close to)

• Possible to copy along an axis

• Make sure extreme points are aligned

• Use “Snap to Grid” on vertices

• Polygons: Mesh -> Mirror Geometry

Image Planes

Image planes:

• Model 3D objects from 2D images

• Go to Orthographics viewport

• View -> Image Plane

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24230520/wine.jpg

Image Planes

Surfaces: Surfaces -> Revolve

Use curves and revolving

Image Planes

• Why would revolving not work for both?

Modelling a House

Where to start? Some ideas:

• 2D top down plans – Find online, use curves to create

• Primitive objects – Create boxes, edit faces, extrude etc.

• Image planes

• Boolean objects

Remember:

• Not all sections need to be the same mesh!

Lecture Task

Using all skills taught today:

• Model a house

Maya Workshops

Class 4: 15:30-17:00

Common Modelling Conventions

Jassim Happa

Overview

Session 4: Common modelling conventions

• Mesh/object naming conventions

• X ray visualisation

• Model cleanup and optimising

• LOD reduction

• Grouping vs combining

• Exporting

Mesh/object naming conventions

????

Mesh/object naming conventions

Quick layout Buttons -> Outliner

• A list of mesh names

– Lets you organise your scene!

• Not only you may work on the model!

– Organise its structure!

– Name your objects sensibly!

– Give descriptive names!

X ray visualisation

See more of the scene.

Clean up

• Sometimes models get messy

– And it’s not your fault!

Cleanup of models:

• Mesh -> Cleanup

Means: Fix by triangulation

Optimisation

Minimise the resources you use to create your model.

Removes unused:

• Geometry

• Rendering nodes

• Textures

File -> Optimize Scene Size

Level of Detail Reduction

Useful when memory becomes an issue.

Reducing model level of detail:

• Mesh -> Reduce

Grouping vs. Combining

• Group = Put lots of objects in bag – Useful for mental structuring of objects

• Combine = Two separate meshes become one – Last thing you do to two meshes.

– No turning back!

• Always ungroup and combine objects before starting a render: – Otherwise slows down rendering times

substantially!

Exporting

• Polygons are normally the data structure exported

• File -> Export All or Export Selection – Allows you to chose aspects of scene to export

• Format to export – depends on need • OBJ, FBX and DWG are popular • Always (before exporting):

– Clean mesh – Optimise – Triangulate – Check your normals!

Lecture Task

Continue on your house and populate it with:

• Furniture

• Ornaments

• Windows

• Doors

Lunch time videos

Jafar – timelapse • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdwMNNrVod8

Fable 2 style house – timelapse (3DS Max) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LeRjTvwIi4

Ipad – timelapse • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQwNfbtQc_g

Old Building - timelapse • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAmFMWz-zzE

Robot - timelapse • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTJ0tzZQaVs