Sharing custom attributes in Maya

Sharing custom attributes in Maya

The goal of a functional character rig is to provide the animator with the maximum control from the simplest interface.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create custom object attributes. We will also be writing some simple expressions to connect those attributes to the node we want to control.

Let's say we want to create a control that will allow the animator to lean this pumpkin character from side to side.
When the pumpkin leans to the left, we want him to pivot from the contact point on the left side. And when he leans to the right, he should pivot from the contact point on the right. If he always rotates from the same pivot point in the middle, we have intersection with the ground plane.

Of course, the animator could always just rotate and translate the pumpkin by hand. But aside from being a lot of work, it's bound to look "floaty" in the end. Our task is to make the animator's job easier.

Ok, so how do we achieve multiple pivot points?

The best way is to parent the pumpkin under a couple of null nodes. Select your object and group it twice. Select the inner group and rename it "LeanLeft." Select the outer group and rename it "LeanRight." Now select the pivot points and move them where we want them. (On a PC, hit the "insert" button to toggle the pivot mode.
Now, we can select the LeanLeft node and rotate to make the pumpkin lean to the left. Select the LeanRight node to make the pumpkin lean to the right.

Excellent! We have the desired effect in place using the group nodes with different pivot points. The pumpkin is able to lean from side to side. But it's still not easy to animate. We don't want the animator to have to be selecting different groups to lean each way. It would be great if we could control the lean with one attribute.

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How to Convert a character from 3ds Max to Maya

The best method now a days (depends on the version of the software you are using) would be to use .fbx. This is the industry standard now for exporting and importing between 3d software.Go to file. Export. Select SDK or FKS (cant remeber which one it is off the top of my head) export the file and then import it from maya practically using the same method. I will alert you maya is allot more unstable than max. I would use max unless maya is suppose to be the animation exporter.

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Human IK and stereo Cameras in maya

 Human IK and stereo Cameras in  maya

Animating a character flipping or spinning around can be a hurdle in 3d. A character will forward flip over a different center of gravity then if it were to spin around 180 degrees on its right heel. Typically the solution is to set up a hierarchy of groups with pivots at different locations in which the animator can choose to rotate individually as needed. The problem with this solution, besides the redundancy of having so many group nodes to dig through, is that it takes a heavy amount of preplanning to pull it off cleanly. The idea here is to make one control that will easily move around the character's center of gravity in order to rotate the character as a whole around that center.

Let it be clear that this is a MOVABLE pivot not an ANIMATABLE pivot. What that means is that it is generally a one time deal per shot. Once the control starts rotating, translating it can cause some very funky results. If you have a character that is walking and then you use the movable pivot to make it turn left 90 degrees on its heel, trying afterwards to move the pivot over to the right heel will cause the character to translate oddly. However, if the character does a forward flip 360 degrees (essentially rotating the control back to its initial orientation), then the control can be moved and used again.

1. Create a locator (create > locator), name it "objectLocator"
this will represent the character rig or object to be rotated at different centers

2. Group objectLocator to itself and name the group "locatorBuffer"
this is where the movable pivot will do its work leaving the objectLocator free to be transformed as needed underneath

3. Create a nurbs circle (create > nurbs primitives > circle), name it "movable pivot"
this will represent the movable pivot control that is simply translated into place and then rotated4. Open the connection editor (window > general editors > connection editor), select the movablePivot control and click Reload Left in the connection editor then select the locatorBuffer group and click Reload Right in the connection editor

5. Find and click the translate attribute on the left side to select it and then find and click rotate pivot on the right side to make the connection. This will lock the Rotate Pivot of the buffer node to the translate values of the movable pivot. Next we need to connect the rotation of the movable pivot to that of the buffer node so find and click rotate on the left side to select it and then find and click rotate on the right side to make the connection | save my driven keys?

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applying fur to a character in maya

applying fur to a character in maya

I've been working on a project involving the use of maya fur. It's the first time I have rendered fur using the mentalray renderer, so there was much to learn. One of the difficulties I encountered was dealing with the illumination of near-white colored fur (like a polar bear). In the past, using maya's native software renderer, I would have added fur shadowing attributes to my lights to allow me to control and balance the amount of illumination on the fur, but these attributes are not supported by mentalray so I had to find another way.

In this post I show an approach to rendering near-white colored maya fur with mentalray.

I'll start by creating a torus to which I have attached a fur description with the polar-bear preset. I have two spotlights for illumination. Here's a top-view snapshot of the setup.I want my fur to be almost white, so the underlying surface needs to be faily pale. I'm using a simple cream colored lambert with some ambient color to brighten it up.

I want to achieve a soft look without any shine so I started with the polar-bear preset but changed the Light Model to Ambient + Diffuse (so no specular component). And I set clumping = 0.

If I render it without changing anything else I get this.

 

This is using the standard scanline/raytrace render method, not the rasterizer, and it took 1 min 30 secs (I'll use this time for comparison).

Tip #1: Change Fur Shader from Hair Primitive (default) to Volume in the mentalray section of the Fur Render Settings. Here's what it renders like.

And this only took 16 secs (thats six times faster!).

I want the fur to be even whiter than this so I added base and tip ambience to brighten it up.

 

Which renders like this

 

This is closer to the color I want, but now the fur looks too bright and its luminance is clipped harshly at the top end of the luminance range. Lowering the intensity of my lights would prevent the clipping, but then everything else would be too dark and my fur would look dirty.

Tip #2: Use a tone mapper. I used mia_exposure_photographic as a lens shader attached to my camera. Here is a snapshot showing the exposure attributes.

 

The Cm 2 Factor setting makes all the other attributes work in the desired exposure range. I reduced gamma to 0.5 to give me a bit more contrast between the whites and the near-whites. And it now renders like this

 

Tip #3: Play with the Shadow Density Scale in the furDEscription's Volume Fur tab. By increasing this from the default 0.125 to 0.5 I get nicer fur shadowing.

Tip #4: For the underlying surface use incandescense instead of ambience. This will eliminate the darkness of the shadows that the fur makes on the underlying surface. So my lambert looks like this

 

Well I'm pretty happy with the color now, but the over-all look is a bit dull. Some tasteful burn out will give it the appearance of a bit more dynamic range so I increase the exposure Burn Highlights from 0 to 0.03 and here is the result

 

Have fun with fur. There is so much to experiment with.

 

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 It is not a OEM or tryout version.

 We offer worldwide shippment .

 You can pay by paypal.

tiaozhuan

full version autodesk maya 2013 pc mac $64 

applying fur to a character in maya

applying fur to a character in maya

I've been working on a project involving the use of maya fur. It's the first time I have rendered fur using the mentalray renderer, so there was much to learn. One of the difficulties I encountered was dealing with the illumination of near-white colored fur (like a polar bear). In the past, using maya's native software renderer, I would have added fur shadowing attributes to my lights to allow me to control and balance the amount of illumination on the fur, but these attributes are not supported by mentalray so I had to find another way.

In this post I show an approach to rendering near-white colored maya fur with mentalray.

I'll start by creating a torus to which I have attached a fur description with the polar-bear preset. I have two spotlights for illumination. Here's a top-view snapshot of the setup.I want my fur to be almost white, so the underlying surface needs to be faily pale. I'm using a simple cream colored lambert with some ambient color to brighten it up.

I want to achieve a soft look without any shine so I started with the polar-bear preset but changed the Light Model to Ambient + Diffuse (so no specular component). And I set clumping = 0.

If I render it without changing anything else I get this.

 

This is using the standard scanline/raytrace render method, not the rasterizer, and it took 1 min 30 secs (I'll use this time for comparison).

Tip #1: Change Fur Shader from Hair Primitive (default) to Volume in the mentalray section of the Fur Render Settings. Here's what it renders like.

And this only took 16 secs (thats six times faster!).

I want the fur to be even whiter than this so I added base and tip ambience to brighten it up.

 

Which renders like this

 

This is closer to the color I want, but now the fur looks too bright and its luminance is clipped harshly at the top end of the luminance range. Lowering the intensity of my lights would prevent the clipping, but then everything else would be too dark and my fur would look dirty.

Tip #2: Use a tone mapper. I used mia_exposure_photographic as a lens shader attached to my camera. Here is a snapshot showing the exposure attributes.

 

The Cm 2 Factor setting makes all the other attributes work in the desired exposure range. I reduced gamma to 0.5 to give me a bit more contrast between the whites and the near-whites. And it now renders like this

 

Tip #3: Play with the Shadow Density Scale in the furDEscription's Volume Fur tab. By increasing this from the default 0.125 to 0.5 I get nicer fur shadowing.

Tip #4: For the underlying surface use incandescense instead of ambience. This will eliminate the darkness of the shadows that the fur makes on the underlying surface. So my lambert looks like this

 

Well I'm pretty happy with the color now, but the over-all look is a bit dull. Some tasteful burn out will give it the appearance of a bit more dynamic range so I increase the exposure Burn Highlights from 0 to 0.03 and here is the result

 

Have fun with fur. There is so much to experiment with.

 

buy cheap autodesk maya 2013 pc mac

 It is not a OEM or tryout version.

 We offer worldwide shippment .

 You can pay by paypal.

tiaozhuan

full version autodesk maya 2013 pc mac $64