Tutorials

Maya
Beginners: Intro to Maya
How to Make a Normal Map (2 Ways)

Photoshop
How to Make Brushes

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Brushes


Introduction to Maya

Interaction | Selection | Parenting

Hi, Welcome! This is Maya. Intimidating, I know. Don't worry about the whole wide variety of buttons, words and options that’s all around the window. You'll learn most of those in my site if you’re going to be following the other tutorials that I had made for you. For now just get familiar with moving around

To move around, you always have to hold [alt]. That's the move camera button. You're actually viewing the 'scene' through cg camera lenses. If you hold [alt] and press the left click button you're able to rotate the camera. To pan, you have to hold [alt] middle mouse button. This will allow you to pan across with the camera. Last but not least, if you hold the alt button and push the right click button, you are able to zoom in and out (*zooming in and out can also be achieved through scrolling the middle mouse button.

Get used to it because mastering this is essential. Here’s a list of the controls we just went over:
- hold [alt] + left click = rotate
- hold [alt] + middle click = pan
- hold [alt] + right click = zoom *(alternative: scroll the middle mouse button)

Practice, practice, practice!

Now we will go over the menus you need to know for our first lesson. Don't worry about the clutter you see. Just concentrate on the option box to the top left corner under the file option box. If you click on it you will get all of these different options. The options are:

Polygons are what everything is made out of in 3D. Now there are rules with these guys. You can't just sculpt a character or an environment just like that. There's a series of techniques and organization you have to go through. For now all you need to know is that all objects, humans, cars, trees, everything, is made out of this thing called a polygon.

Now if you click on one of them you will notice that the window options changes. Just when you think things can't get anymore hectic. I will explain what each menu is for. Click on the polygon option.

You will learn how to organize them. There are rules to these objects and as you go further with all my tutorials they will make alot more sense. For now try having some fun with polygon objects which can be found under the bar menu.

Click on Create, then choose the "polygon primitives" option. Pick any polygon object that Maya has to offer. Create--> Polygon Primitives --> (polygon of your choice)

Interaction

Before we do some hierarchy, there are some things you need to know. Pretty neat things. First of: I've already mentioned to you how everything in 3D is made out of a polygon, but that's not all the information needed to take in. What you actually need to know is that any piece of work, characters, environment, sets etc. start with a primitive object. That's right, believe it or not, your favourite video game character or that piece of garbage that you see in a CGI film was once one of those primitive polygon objects. Yes, Solid Snake and Mater Chief were once a primitive cube or a primitive cylinder or whatever. You'll see more and more what that truly means as we move on forward.

For now let's see how polygons behave. You can move, rotate, and scale these objects. If you click on an object and the edge of the object lights up green. This should indicate that the object is selected. Those edges are called wireframes. Make sure the CAPS lock key is not toggled or else this won't work.

Moving Polygons - To move the polygon object, simply left click on the object that you have created and press the [W] button. Three arrows (called the manipulator) will show up pointing in three different dimentions. To move the object at a certain place, simply drag the arrow what corresponds to the direction you want to move it to.

Rotating Polygons - To rotate the polygon object, press the [E] button while the object is selected and the manipulator with the form of an orbit will show up in the middle of the polygon object. Like moving the polygon, there are also orbits that represent each dimension in which you can orbit the object into the direction you want it to rotate.

Scaling Polygons - To scale the polygon object, just press the [R] button while the polygon primitive is selected. Just like the move tool and the rotate tool, a manipulator will show up giving you the ability to scale the object at certain angles and dimension depending on which you press. You can make polygons big and small with this tool!

Buttons learnt:

-[W] = Move Polygon/Components
-[E] = Rotate Polygons/Components
-[R] = Scale Polygons/Components

If this is the first time you've touched Maya, chances are you are in wireframe mode. You would know that you are in wireframe mode if the object seems hollow and unshded. To toggle between shaded mode and wireframe mode, press the number '5' in your keyboard to go to shaded mode and press the number '4' to toggle back to wireframe mode.

Selection

You can also select another polygon object while you have another one selected. To select more than one object all at once, hold [shift] and left click on the next object(s) you want to select as well. To deselect objects, hold [ctrl] and left click on the selected button you want to deselect.

You can also box select a group of objects. With the left mouse click, you can drag and draw a box around a group of object to select all of them. If you do the box select and hold [Shift] whatever is selected will deselect and whatever is deselected will select. If you hold [Ctrl] + [Shift] you will select all if the object in the box you drew even if they are selected already. Holding [Ctrl] and box selecting will deselect all of them. Here’s a list of the selection commands:

-[Shift]= Select Deselect toggle
-[Ctrl]= Deselect
-[Shift]+[Ctrl]= Adding Selection

Practice makes perfect. Have fun with those buttons!

Alright, you have the basic down. Now for the actual lesson, the hierarchy.

Everything is organized in the CG world. Just like anything else in the world, if it doesn’t have a sense of organization, things just wont work. The hierarchy is a window that helps you organize your objects in your 3D space.

Parenting

Think of the hierarchy as an apple tree. The apples are way up high because the branches are holding them up, and that branch is being held by a bigger branch and so on. With 3D, we do the same thing. If you where to snap the branch off with the apple in it and wave the branch around the apple will stay with the branch wherever the branch goes. The branch is our parent object and the apple is the child object. Think of this as the family tree of 3D. To open up the hierarchy (called Hypergraph in Maya): Windows > Hypergraph

The window that pops up will look darn complicated. That’s ok. If you had made a primitive object(s) earlier and you had opened up this window. The object that you have created will show up in this window in a form of a button/box. If you had created more than one object, then they should all show up in this window.

Just like you can zoom and pan in the workspace, you can also do this in the hypergraph. To pan in the hypergraph, hold ALT then hold the middle click button to pan around. To zoom in and out either use the middle mouse button to scroll in or out or hold ALT and hold the right click button. I will show you the importance of the hierarchy. What you need to know is that, just like a family tree, there will always be a parent and a child. It might be confusing for now, but it will make sense soon enough.

Just make three primitive objects. Make two cubes and make one cylinder. The two cubes will be our children and the cylinder will be the parent. Click on the children first (the two cubes). Then select the parent last. (*Note: Always pick the parent last) Now if you hit the button [P] it should have parented it to the cylinder. The two cube are now the children of the cylinder. Wherever the cylinder goes the cubes will follow very much like a child follows around his/her parents.

If you open up the hierarchy, you will see a change. The cube object will now fall under the cylinder, indicating that it is parented to the object.

To unparent object, just simply go to the hypergraph and with the middle mouse button, drag out the wanted child you want out of the parent. You can also unparent object by selecting the child object you want to unparent and hold [Shift] then press the [P] button.

Here are the comands to that:
From the work space:
-[P]= Parent objects
-[Shift]+[P]= Unparent objects

From the Hypergraph
-middle mouse button= drag children in and out of parent.

You can parent any polygon object to its own kind. So you can have a huge family tree in your Hiearchy showing which is a parent of which. Not the funnest thing in 3D per say, but it is extremely important and it will help you out in the end. Trust me.

For now, I cannot stress enough that you have to practice practice practice!

Well thats the end of the lesson. Welcome to the 3D world!

Assignment/Exercise

With the primitive polygons and what you have learned so far, construct a snowman. The snowman must consist of the following: a lower body, a upper body, a head (with eyes, nose, mouth), arms, hands, and at least two fingers. Theres no need to make it look pretty. Just be sure to make use of the scale, rotate, and move tool to tweak your polygons primitives.

After you are done, think of the object as if it's a real thing in real life. Where would the snowman's things be attached? Parent the object to where you think they are attached (ie. the two eyes, nose, and mouth to the head) and organize your hierarchy.

If you have any questions, please contact me via email.