Modeler Interface
The objective is to learn some basics about using Maya for 3D modeling and
animation. There will be three Maya assignments. This one deals with learning
the basics of modeling and Maya. The second deals with more advanced modeling
and rendering. The third deals with animation.
A complete explanation of how to use Maya is not possible here. Further instructions
will be given in class, and the readers and tutors will provide it outside of
class. A good source of help are online tutorials, as well as help files inside
Maya. Remember that what you turn in should be your own unique work.
There is a free, slightly limited, trial version of Maya available from Alias/Wavefront. The full versions are installed on the CATS PCs in BE 109. Let us know which version you used in your README file that you turn in. The two versions use incompatible file formats, and if you create a scene in one, you cannot read it in the other. However, if you want to check your scene in Maya personal learning edition, it is found on be-pc21 in the be109 lab.
Hint: Save often and save copies.
For full credit on this assignment, fulfill the all of the following conditions:
Maya is installed on all of the PCs in BE 109. To start it, choose Start >
Other Applications > Maya Unlimited 4.0 > Maya.
After you've started Maya, you should see the Maya screen layout (a gray screen
with a grid, and tool bars along the top, bottom, and sides. Before you get
started, it is important to learn the basics of the Maya interface.
Modeler Interface
When you first enter Maya, you are greeted by a workspace with only one perspective view. To get to four screens, click in the window and then push the spacebar (space toggles between a single big view and the 4 view layout). You can zoom, and translate, and work in all four screens. You can only rotate the view in the perspective view. The top left-hand window is usually the Top View (YZ-plane). The bottom left-hand window is usually Front View (XY-plane). The bottom right-hand window is usually side View (XZ-plane). These are all orthographic views, with no perspective. These views are somewhat fixed, and can't be rotated, though they can be moved and zoomed. You can choose a different view by selecting the panel menu in each view. The upper right view is Perspective, and you can change this view by zoom, rotate, or move. Whenever you make a modeling change to your creation in one of the windows, the other three will automatically be updated.
Rotate: alt + left mouse button (only in Perspective view)
Translate: alt + middle mouse button
Zoom: alt + right mouse button
You can also change how the view is drawn by pressing 4 for wireframe or 6 for solid. These and other options are also available in the menus in the viewports. To zoom and center the currently selected object press f.
If you look around Maya, you'll notice that there are many different toolbars (also known as shelves). There is a text menu on the very top of the screen where you can access File (saving, new, etc.) functionality as well as editing, modeling, animation, and rendering. The drop down menu items will sometimes have a little cube next to them. Click the cube for more options instead of just selecting the menu item.
Option boxes
The next toolbar down starts with a drop down box. Choosing different items in the drop down menu will change the other toolbar and menu bar to tools specific to that context. Try it.
Context sensitive menu selector
The third toolbar on the top is the primitive toolbar. Clicking any of these items will cause a default one to be created in the view ports, or in the case of rendering, a 2D image to be produced. Along the top edge of the primitives menu are a number of tabs. These tabs switch between different sets of tools.
Maya primitives and tabs
The
toolbar on the left of the screen is for selecting and transforming (translate,
rotate scale) the models. A set of axes will be visible in the model, which
you can select to constrain your transform. There are also buttons to quickly
change the view layout.
Most of the transform (and some of the other toolbar) tools are state buttons (turning a state on is like selecting a check box or radio button in other programs). For tools, the cursor usually changes shape.
Some items have keyboard equivalents that will activate them (in the case of
tools, the keyboard can turn them on and off). These keyboard equivalents are
shown in black text on the right side of the menu item.
Note that if you have a tool selected (such as selection tool), changing the tab will not turn the tool off. You have to click the tool again, or use a keyboard equivalent. If you select a new tool, the other tool will be turned off.
Now let's create a simple object.
Cube creation, notice the editable cube properties on the
far right
Scale the box to the desired size, using the transform scale tool 
,
and clicking with the left mouse button while dragging along one of the axes
or the center of the object in one of the views.
Dragging the center scales uniformly, and dragging an axis scales non-uniformly.
The same technique works for the translate and rotate transform
tools.
The other objects, such as Sphere, Torus, Cylinder, etc. work the same way as the Cube tool.
Maya has a special window that gives you precise control over many of the tools. The window is part of the UI on the right of the screen. To access it, click on the gray highlighted name. The object must be selected to access its properties. (If you don't see a gray name, click on the icon at the far right of the second toolbar from the top.)
Object Properties Window
H3> Creating Text
To create a 3D text:
Text Tool options
You select objects by left clicking the object (it will turn green or white) with the select arrow tool, or any other active tool. You can select objects by clicking and dragging a selection box around them as well. To add objects to a selection, shift-click the object you want to add. To deselect an object, ctrl-click the object you no longer want selected. To deselect all objects, single click any gray space in the views away from any objects.
You can also select from the Outliner. Select, from the top toolbar, Windows-Outliner. This gives a list of all objects in the scene.
Holding down the Right mouse button cause a pop-up menu for the selected object to be displayed. Move the mouse around with the button down to access the different items in the menu. These are more advanced features, and will be covered later. For now just know that you can select parts of an object or the whole object. To select the whole object go to the select item in the pop-up menu.
Maya allows you to Undo (ctrl - z) and Redo (capital 'Z') your actions. If there is anything to Undo, or Redo, the buttons (located in the Edit Menu) will be in black text (the menu item will be black instead of shadowed text). Both Undo and Redo are sequential. This means that you can undo a number of commands, and redo them again. This is similar to Photoshop's History, except that Maya does not store all your actions; after some number of commands (probably around 50), you will not be able to undo any more. Remember that if you Undo some commands, and then perform another command, you will not be able to Redo things that you had Undone. Undo may become one of your best friends.
You can delete items in Maya by selecting the item and then hitting the delete or backspace keys. You can also delete items by selecting the objects and using the text menu's Edit > Delete.
To duplicate an object, select it, and use Edit > Duplicate or (ctrl-d). This will create another object immediately on top of the first object. The new object will become selected.
Materials will determine the surface characteristics of your objects. When you create something new, the surface material is set to "Default". If you don't change this value, all your objects will have identical surface appearances. To assign an object a new material, hold down the right mouse button to get the pop-up menu. Move the mouse over the Materials menu item and then over to get the Assign New Material or Assign Existing Material option. This will bring up another menu with different material types. The most common are Lambert or Blinn, but feel free to experiment. When you select Assign New Material as the material type, you should get a new menu that lets you choose the color and some other properties. You can also rename your material to a more suitable name.
Material Properties menu
Notice that you can assign different materials to different objects or parts of objects within the modeler. In fact, this is a must when you work with complex objects. There are a lot of options associated with materials, and we will probably not get to cover them all in this class. For this assignment, feel free to play with the material properties if you want, but all you need to be able to do is create materials with different colors. You can use existing materials that you have created by choosing pop-up > Materials > Assign Existing Material.
Save and save often. Click on the "File" menu and select "Save" or "Save as". You will be able to save them in C:\UserTemp, or on your zip disk in D:\. The program automatically assigns them an extension name '.mp' to the files. If this is the first time you saved this object, it will open a "Save As" window. From there, you can choose where to save the object.
To add a camera to the scene use Create > Cameras > Camera, this is the most basic setup that lets you adjust the camera position and lookat independently. Create > Cameras > Camera and Aim lets you create a camera that has a lookat position. This position will remain constant when you move the camera object, allowing you to rotate around an object. Create > Cameras > Camera, Aim, and Up does the same as the last, but also lets you choose how the camera is oriented (i.e. which way up is).
To "look through" the camera go to one of the menus in any view, and select Panels > Perspective > camera <num>. You can select this view when you want to render your output images.
The camera is the equivalent of an eye into this virtual world. You may have noticed a wire frame camera object in the views. If you click on it, it'll be outlined in green. The taper-shaped object represents the view of the camera. You can change the depth, viewing angle and the position of the camera. For now, we will just move and rotate the camera so that it's looking diagonally down at your objects.
Moving the camera is the same as moving any other object in the scene.
Finally, it's time to render the scene and see what it looks like. Before
you render you want to set up the render global attributes. Click the render
globals button 
in the top menu. This will bring up the globals menu, where you can set the
output format, resolution, filename, and directory. To change the output directory:
Edit > Change Project Image Directory. Change the Image Format to JPEG.
To render, just select the view or camera that you like and click on the render
button 
on the
main toolbar, or change the menu context to Rendering, and select from the text
menu Render > Render Current Frame. Make sure that you have set the globals
so that when you render more than one image it will not overwrite the other
image, unless that is what you intended. There are tons of options to play with
for rendering. Name your final renders assn2a.jpg and assn2b.jpg
If you don't see what you expected, go back and check whether the camera was looking at the right place (it could be staring at empty space, which will end up in a black image). You should look in the directory you chose to save the image in (probably either C:\UserTemp or your ZIP disk in D:\) to check whether your file has been saved. If all else fails and you still can't get it to work, bug the tutors about it.
Questions? Come to lab sections, E-mail Narayan
Brooks, and/or Jane
Wilhelms, or any of the Tutors. Enjoy.