| R |
Rendering in Passes |
Rendering in Passes and Layers by Alex Alvarez. An issue which is often
overlooked or avoided by individuals new to 3D is the necessity of fine-tuning
projects in conjunction with a compositing package. Yet the level of interactive
flexibility available within just about any 2D application can save precious
time. While it is possible when working on full CG projects to render
the final image directly from the 3D rendering engine, this methodology
is rarely utilized in production environments. |
RenderMan - MAYA to RenderMan |
Here we're going to load the MAYA to RenderMan (MTOR) plug-in for MAYA
and render out a quick scene. Load up MAYA and let's get going! Keep in
mind - RENDERMAN HAS ITS OWN SHADER SYSTEM! Don't think your pretty MAYA
scene with all of its fancy shader trees and nifty texture maps is going
to port over to RM and look even better... it won't. More than likely
it will look like a beat up Ford from North Pole - Primer Grey and full
of Bond-O. RenderMan has a shader system that, while similar to MAYA and
often able to interpret MAYA shaders, does not directly translate. |
Rigging - Creating Character Sets After Setting Animation Curves |
This tutorial will show us how to create character sets to skeletons
with animation already in place. As a standard operating procedure (SOP),
usually we create these character sets before we set keys for animation
but for those who forgot this workflow this is what we can do. |
Rigging - Curve on Poly |
Curves with History on Polygons. The trick I use is to attach models
to a path curve derived by extracting curves with construction history
from deforming nurb models. Very simple and useful expecially if you forget
to bind obj detail, like some buttons, to a deforming character, or if
you want to avoid some tedious cv weighting for small added elements,
while in a deadline crunch. |
Rigging - Indirect Rigid Binding Using Animated Lattices |
Animating the waist can be a taunting task when one considers all the
nasty folds of the legs and buttocks. Here is a simple tutorial for a
better binding method for those love handles. |
Rigging - Inverse Foot Setup |
The purpose of this tutorial is to achieve a better functioning Inverse
Foot setup. The Inverse Foot structure is built to give your character
a better tool to avoid the foot from slipping on a ground plane and also
to improve the basic controls of your foot's joints rotations. We will
achieve this by upgrading the basic foot chain to support a more functional
toe control and by changing some of the default constrain types. The basic
idea is to switch the required orient constraints with aim constraints,
then add an extra controller to the aiming of the original foot's ball
joint |
Rigging - Tricycle Pedal Setup |
In one of my first projects i Maya i wanted to take a chick for a ride
on a tricycle. Thats a noble idea if you ever had any doubts about it!
It was simple to make the feet follow the the rotation of the wheel just
using ikhandles parented to the pedals. What caused me the greatest deal
of trouble was to make the pedals follow the feet. That is: they are constrained
to follow the weels as the frontwheel rotates in two axis, but they are
also constrained by the foot that rests on them. I guess you can say that
it all boils down to making a "hinge-aim-constraint". |
Rigging a Vehicle |
I recently spent a lot of time rigging various vehicles for animation
and came up with a few tricks. One of the main differences with vehicles
instead of characters is that you don’t have to worry about binding
a mesh to a skeleton. You still, however, have to make a control system
that is easy to use and flexible to cover most situations. One of the
cool things about Maya is the ability to add attributes to objects. One
trick is to use a curve as a control object and then add custom attributes
to that curve. If you want to get fancy, you can make a curve in Illustrator
and import it into Maya. |
