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Autodesk Maya Tutorials - Autodesk Maya modeling & Mental Ray rendering tutorials, tips & tricks,
sites, resources, plug-ins, models, meshes, cartoon and photo realistic textureing
& UV mapping, animation, Paint Effects - hair, compositing, education,
lessons & special effects training.
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Shader Glow |
It is important to remember that specularity is a reflection of a lightsource.
Therefore, if a light is bright enough to create an optical effect, a
specular highlight from that light should also create an optical effect.
Maya allows for this via the use of Shader Glow. |
Shaders - Using Animation Curves in Shading-Networks |
In this tutorial you will learn how to use animation curves as a general
functioncurve allowing you to set up relationships between nodes and modify
them in the graph-editor. I will show an example where the animationcurve
is used in a shading network to create the "curves-function"
from photoshop, but it is a workflow that you can use in a lot of different
set-ups. |
Shading Alien Skin |
This tutorial shows how to use a mix20layer material to render passes
with mental ray. There are a few advantages of rendering passes instead
of the whole image. One of them, is the ability to make changes to specific
parts of the image (and save time). Only a few shading components require
raytracing. |
Shading Human Skin |
By Steven Stahlberg. This could be the single biggest hurdle in realistic
cg since Gouraud shading... :)
...as for me, I've been wrestling with this since -95. Like many others,
I've been extremely frustrated by it, mainly cause until about -00 very
few knew much about it, and no one could answer my questions. So -99 I
found my own home-made method, a pragmatic approach that sidesteps simulation.
(When we have the software and the power to do nice simulating, of course
we should, but until then this kind of 'kludgy' approach might serve ok.)
My terminology is astronomy-based, because it's clearer and more concise:
Dayside = Where light hits. Nightside = Where light doesn't reach. Terminator
= The transitional zone between night and day. |
Shading Switch in Hypershade |
Using Shading Switch in Hypershade. by Daniel Harjanto a.k.a misterdi.
One of the most useful things when dealing with a lot of variation in
surface color is using a switch node. Maya comes with 3 kind (4 kind in
Maya 5.0) switch node, all are located as utility node in Create Bar.It has: * single shading switch * double shading switch * triple shading
switch * quad shading switch (in Maya 5.0 only)What makes the different is the output of the node. With single shading
switch, the output will be a scalar, while other will be a compound value
of 2, 3, and 4 respectively. |
Shelf Customizing for Polygonal Modeling |
SubD-modeling is the same as polygon-modeling in Maya, workflow-wise.
But polygon-modeling in Maya is trickier than in some other packages,
here are a few tips that may make it easier. We want to create a special
shelf for the tools we use the most, we want to keep it fairly clean and
not over-crowd it, so we can find the items quickly, and have a small
learning curve. |
Skeleton Basics |
In this tutorial Kevin shows you the set up a a simple dog skeleton.
You will cover: * Joint Tool. * Remove Joint Tool. * Add Joint Tool. *
Edit Joints. * Set rotation Limits and more... Dog scene file included,
thx to Kurt for the model. |
Spotlight Decay |
All lights in Maya (area light excluded) emanate light from a finite
point in space. This is completely unnatural as all lights in nature have
a measurable size. The effect that light size has in nature is found in
the shadow and specular qualities present. Simulating this issue in a
render is for a separate discussion, as we are now going to focus on a
particular situation where the finite origin of a spotlight becomes problematic...
not in how objects receive light, but how one controls the origin of light. |
Subdivision Modeling a Human |
Subdivision modeling is a procedure for creating smooth mod- els while
keeping the total polygon count at a low level. Point counts are small
so that the sculpting process is less confusing. New software developments,
such as those in Maya and XSI, offer more robust subdivision modeling
tools, an improved interface, and the ability to render objects without
converting them to high polygon models. This makes a compelling argument
for implementing subdivision modeling.This tutorial will take you through the process of creating a human
model. The software that was used was Lightwave 3D but it should work
with any program that has subdivision modeling. |
Simulating - Subsurface Scattering |
Simulating Subsurface-Scattering with Maya/Mental Ray. First of all
I have to say that there are two ways (or maybe even more !) to simulate
Subsurface scattering. You could use a real material-volume-shader and
a few sampler/light-info nodes and a lot of time for tweaking and tuning!
Pros: maybe a better look. Cons: very slow, new calculation for each frame,
complex setup. So.... 'I did it my way!' and this one is pretty fast and
easy to setup! |
Subsurface Scattering |
Subsurface Scattering: Using the Misss_Fast_Simple_Maya shader. Subsurface
scattering is the term used in 3D graphics to describe the effect we see
when, in the real world, light enters a surface (at least to some degree),
bounces around a bit and is then either absorbed or reflected back out
again. The effect is usually associated with soft/organic surfaces like
skin or wax, and is a major factor in the look of those materials. How
can we demostrate this effect in an obvious way? Well, I'm sure most people
have seen that if you hold a torch up to the back of your hand, you can
see a red glow that spreads all the way through to your palm. Some of
the light has travelled through the inner (subsurface) layers of your
hand, picked up the reddish colour of your blood/tissue and made it all
the way out through the other side. |
Sword - Active Sword |
Simple Collisions - This tutorial/recipe is about how to make a sword
that causes multiple victims to "bleed" anytime it strikes them.
The logic is to make the sword have particles that can collide with the
victims and have a particle collision event cause the bleeding. P.S. There
are better ways of doing this -- particularly through MEL Scripts. But
this tutorial was written originally in mind for those not savvy with
MEL. |
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