And another here. (Basic cameras.)

And some more advanced ones here and here. These are using two node cameras, with the aim too.

- Graph Editor; select a camera or keyframed object while Graph Editor is open to show x, y, z points as bezier-curved graph. Moving points on the graph moves kerframes. Adjusting their control points changes the way objects move, scale, and rotate between keyed frames. You can also select keyframes and move them to specific points on the timeline.

- Panels>Saved Layouts>Persp/Graph/Outliner for example to view Graph Editor with other windows. You can also make your own layouts.

Here’s a tutorial on animating camera along a path (curve) 

- You can import animations in either compressed .mov format or as an image sequence. Importing as image sequence allows you more control as you can animate/keyframe the position or frame number.

- To accurately texture objects/geometries in the round, try using UV mapping; Create UV>Automatic mapping, which generates four surfaces from which textures are projected on to geometry. UV Texture Editor will breakdown or cross-section your object, unwrapping it as it were, so that you can customize a texture file to fit exactly your geometry from every angle.

- When texturing; right click and select projection option when creating File node under 2D Texture in Hypershade window.

- To make keyframe for selected camera at selected point/location in timeline, highlightTranslate X, Y, & Z, in camera channel box, then right click and select Key Selected.

- When rendering an animation (batch rendering), select something other than single frame under frame/animation ext. in your render settings. Try using name#.ext form for now.

- Lights and cameras can have handles, which you can manipulate in addition to the object itself for more flexibility. Aim & Up cameras have two manipulators or handles. You can also fix your point of interest at a specific point so that your camera will be looking toward one point no matter where the camera is.

- When batch rendering, track your progress through the Script Editor.

- Frame-rate: Windows>Settings>Preferences>General Application Preferences>Time: set to 30fps

- If you can’t see your timeline, Display>UI Elements>Time Slider.

And another here. (Basic cameras.)

And some more advanced ones here and here. These are using two node cameras, with the aim too.

http://www.applematters.com/article/renaming-files-and-folders-the-automator-way/ 

- Sculpt Geometry tool, found in Mesh menu in Polygon shelf. This tool allows you to paint over geometry to displace its surface. You can push/pull and squeeze on geometry with this tool.

Revisiting extrusions and smoothing;

- Select Polygons mode, then select Extrude shortcut or find under Edit Mesh menu. Extrusions can be manipulated by position, scale, rotate.

- Edges can also be extruded to “fill holes” over deleted sections/components/faces. To close “holes” or bridge gaps to create seamless forms/objects, select Merge under Edit Mesh.

- Use Paint Select tool, found on lefthand side of Maya window right above Translate tool, to select faces only on surfaces in direct contact with the brush icon/selector. Paint Select tool does not highlight faces out of view or through/behind geometry.

- If your Mental Ray is not available under render presets, go to Plug-in Manager underWindow menu and make sure mayatomr bundle is set to load properly. Then set rendering algorithm to Mental Ray under Render Settings.

- To illuminate a space evenly, make an area light, then go to it’s attribute editor, scroll down to Mental Ray tab, select Sphere under Use Light Shape. The light will now illuminate outward in all directions.

- Final Gather in Render Settings>Indirect Lighting makes light bounce off of geometries so that they act as secondary light sources. This will also increase amount of ambient light and shadows. Increase Accuracy for smoother geometry/lighting.

- After applying Final Gather, you can use the background of the scene to help in lighting your geometry. To do this, go to your camera’s attribute editor, set Background color under Environment tab to a color of your choice. Brighter colors and tones of higher temperature will cast more light on objects/geometries and vice versa.

Texturing

- To make a bump map, go to Window/Rendering Editors/Hypershade; select a Shader and then go to its Attribute Editor. Under the Common Material Attributes, select the icon next to Bump Mapping to create a node. You can now attach a preset pattern, texture, or select an image/movie file to import as a bump map.

- Once you have done this, you can also experiment with displacement maps. In your Hypershade window, find the node assigned to the file/texture you’ve assigned to your shader as a bump map. In the Work Area of your Hypershade, this node should be upstream from the bump2d1 node and downstream from the place2dTexture node. Middle-mouse select this node and drag-drop on top of your shader. Maya will prompt you with attachment options. Select displacement map.

- To more efficiently create displacement maps; go to Window/Rendering Editors/mental ray/Approximation Editor. Under the Displace Tesselation tab, click Create.

To get a more accurate view of the animation – Window > PlayBlast > Set to Default (quality set to 70%, Scale at 50% to make it quicker to render – makes Quicktime) (must be in a Project to save the animation) So make a project if you want to save it. When creating a Playblast – make sure to check the box to “Send to File” – then you can fine the QT Playblast file in your Maya project directory image folder.

Assignment

- Make a 2 minute animation suggesting a city or garden moving from sunrise to sunset, based on; nature/technology, dark/light, rough/smooth, high/low.

- Press 8 key to enter paint effects viewport. Change settings and press 8 again to return view to persp/camera/etc.

- If you want a piece of geometry to step or translate across x/y/z in discreet incremental sections, double click on your tool to bring up its settings window and change the step size input.

- Freeze Transformation under Edit menu to set current transformation handles, pivots, and their positions in x/y/z to 0,0,0.

- Review animation notes from previous post.

- To center object pivot point, Modify>Center Pivot.

- To move pivot, select object and press ‘home’ key. You can now move/translate the pivot across x,y,z.

- Raytracing simulates reflects/refractions/shadows.

- Image plane icon found amongst the menus and shortcuts associated with a particular camera allows you bring in an image/movie file into maya and attach it to a camera.

- Soft modification tool can be used after selecting or ‘painting’ a group of vertices.

- Disable default light in Render Settings if you want to see your scene with only the lights that you’ve made.

- If Maya is behaving abnormally, delete preferences under Maya>Preferences>Edit>Restore Default Settings. If the abnormalities persist, quit Maya and delete the prefs folder in the following directory; Macintosh_HD>Users>username>Library>Preferences>Autodesk>maya>2012-x64>

Animating

- To make keyframe for selected camera at selected point/location in timeline, highlight Translate X, Y, & Z, in camera channel box, then right click and select Key Selected.

- Any input node can be animated/keyframed, including extrusions and softmods. Any way you change geometry can be animated. Lights and cameras can be animated. Once keyframes are set, objects/lights/geometries/cameras will translate/scale/rotate et al from one keyframe to the next depending on the proximity of keyframes and variance of input parameters. Areas between keyframes are generated by Maya unless user-defined and will by default always translate/scale/rotate evenly, averaging between keyframes, unless otherwise defined by the user.

- Once you are ready to render your animation, select the Batch Render Tool under Render menu in your Rendering shelf. This will generate an algorithm which will render in numerical order all the frames that you have defined for rendering.

- When rendering an animation (batch rendering), select something other than single frame under frame/animation ext. in your render settings. Try using name#.ext form for now.

- Frame padding denotes the number of digits in your filenames generated by the batch render tool.

- Lights and cameras can have handles, which you can manipulate in addition to the object itself for more flexibility. Aim & Up cameras have two manipulators or handles. You can also fix your point of interest at a specific point so that your camera will be looking toward one point no matter where the camera is.

- When batch rendering, track your progress through the Script Editor.

- Frame-rate: Windows>Settings>Preferences>General Application Preferences>Time: set to 30fps

- If you can’t see your timeline, Display>UI Elements>Time Slider.

Assignment

- Make a 2 minute animation suggesting a city or garden moving from sunrise to sunset, based on; nature/technology, dark/light, rough/smooth, high/low.

www.gerhard-mantz.de

- Show manipulator tool (located on the left-hand side of your Maya window amongst Move, Scale, and Rotate tools) allows additional control of lights/cameras by adding a ‘manipulator’ so that you can control both where the light/camera is located as well as the location/direction it is looking at/pointing toward.

- Reflection/shadow/refraction controls are found in shader attributes, light attributes, and render settings. All three should be taken in to consideration. Note particularly Raytrace settings in your shader as well as under the Quality tab in your Render Settings, where you will also find your Sample levels for your render. Higher sample rate = smoother.

- Google is your friend.

Depth of Field

- Hierarchy, object, & component modes.

- Window menu to access Outliner. Select camera and change relationships between discreet objects.

- Camera’s attribute editor/channel box allows you to change focal length,  focus distance, focal length, and depth of field.

- Press y to return to last tool.

- Press x to snap to grid

Maya interface 3

- Object mode, component mode, & hierarchy mode shortcuts.

- To delete one side of a cube; make a cube, select component mode, select faces mode shortcut, select a face, and press delete. Alternatively, once in component mode, right-click over object and select faces mode.

- Adjust overscan under camera attribute editor if you can not see your entire film gate.

- Make note of shelves.

- Bookmark shortcut. Return to bookmarks under view menu in viewpoint.

- Render Settings to adjust image size, resolution, aspect ratio, render directories, which camera to render, file names, rendering algorithms, motion blur, render formats, etc.

Extruding and smoothing

- Select Polygons mode, then select Extrude shortcut or find under Edit Mesh menu. Extrusions can be manipulated by position, scale, rotate.

- Edges can also be extruded to “fill holes” over deleted sections/components/faces. To close “holes” or bridge gaps to create seamless forms/objects, select Merge under Edit Mesh.

- To smooth, select polygons mode, then select smoothing shortcut to multiply number of divisions, resulting in more organic forms.

- Items/functions/tools have option boxes, where properties/attributes/parameters can be edited/specified.

Lights

- Shortcuts for lights under Rendering shelf. Select a light, then select show manipulator shortcut/icon from tools on the left-hand side. Manipulator does not render and can be moved around and used to show where light is pointing to.

- Attribute editor of any given light controls its color, cone angle, shadow, shadow color, drop off, etc. Different lights have varying attributes.

- A camera’s attribute editor also allows you to change environment/background color.

Hypershade

- Hypershade is under Window menu, Rendering Editors sub-menu. This is where you can create/edit textures. A texture’s attribute editor allows you to change it’s color, brightness, transparency, etc. After making a texture, you can drag and drop it on top of objects to apply it, or you can select the object, and then right-click over the texture and select Assign material to selection.

Homework

More renderings, now using your own lighting.