maya basic create custom attributes for your rigs

maya basic create custom attributes for your rigs

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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Export Model Levels to maya 3DS MAX

I'm pretty sure FPSC still needs the object to be dynamic to have multiple textures. I also use DDS or TGA images, but PNG might also work. Do you know how to make a model FPSC ready? if not check out my tutorial on making models with sketchup. I know you said MAX but once the model is an X model the process is the same. Tutorial is here about halfway down:

It is very important to make sure the object is dynamic and the texture line in the created fpe file is empty and all textures are in the same folder as the model!

If I could make 2 suggestions:

1. Do not make the floors in MAX, use FPSC segments. How I do this is if I have 2 buildings I make them 100" apart in my modeling software. That way a standard FPSC floor segment fits right between them. FPSC enemy characters have trouble with collision detection on entities.

2. Plan your scale, plan your scale, plan your scale! A little graph paper goes a long way. I use a free drafting program called DRAFTSIGHT to lay mine out with the snap settings set at 100" x 100", but pen and paper still works fine (I would use 1/4" graph paper and draw at 1 square = 100" This way is coordinates with FPSC's full scale.

Keep posting here if it gives you trouble and we'll get you rolling.

 

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maya HumanIK solver expects a character's nodes

maya  HumanIK solver expects a character's nodes

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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creating displacement maps and rendering them in Maya

creating displacement maps and rendering them in Maya

If a 3D image doesn't have texture, it can come across as flat and ruin an animated clip. Use Autodesk Maya creative software to add texture to your 3D animation and renderings. According to Autodesk, DreamWorks Studios used Maya to create dimension in their movie, "Monsters vs. Aliens." Importing texture to Maya will enable you to give dimension and depth to your work.To make animated backgrounds or textures could become very frustrating if you don't know what formats of the image sequence Maya is supporting. It is not just in Maya where you can find this kind of problem with image sequences. For example Adobe Premiere has very similar difficulties when the names and numbering of images are not properly done. So make sure your image sequence name is prepared properly before it is used in Maya or Premiere.

In order to use a sequence of image files to create an animation, the file name must be expressed in one of the following three formats:

name.#.ext
name.ext.#
name.#
where name is the base name of the file; # is the frame number (with or without leading 0s), ext is the file extension of the file.

To use a C to create an animated file texture, the file extensions must be separated from the basename and, or the extension by periods.

For example, the following works:
test.1.iff
test.0001.iff
test.1
test.0001
test.iff.1
test.iff.0001

But the following would not work:

The frame padding means how many zeros you will have in the name numbering of the picture when rendered and saved on your hard disk. If you set the value of the frame padding on 3, your name will have 3 zero points and look like this:

note: TGA format is the most popular to use in the film industry.

Once you have got your sequence of image files ready, you can start to animate the texture.

Step 1:

Create the polygon cube. Set the Scale values to 5; 3.5; 5

Step 2:

Open the Multilister Window>Rendering editors>Multilister and select Edit>Create new material. In the new tab select Lambert. Double click on the new material you have just made (should already be labelled lambert2) and the attributes for that material should appear.

Click on the checker attribute button next to color.

Step 3:

Click on the File button.

A texture file note should now be created.

Step 4:

Click on the file browser button and find the first image of your sequence and hit ok. Then tick the box Use Image Sequence. If the format and names of your images are right, Maya should create an expression connection for you and the box Image Number should turn violet in color.

Step 5:

Now you can simply drag and drop material onto your modified cube using the middle mouse button. Hit the play button and your sequence of image files should play onto your object.

You can use this method, for example, to achieve a TV effect or animate backgrounds in your scene. This is also a very smart way to make a water flow effect without the use of dynamics particles.

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tips Hair and Fur in Maya

tips Hair and Fur in Maya

In this tutorial we will create some hair styles with Maya fur plug-in. Im assuming that you have a basic knowledge in Maya and its core concepts and procedures, which will help to keep this tutorial as short as possible. A video version of this tutorial can be found at 
First well create a new UV set which will be linked to the fur description node later.
1. Select the head and go the side view. And press F11 to go the face selection mode and select the faces which make up the scalp area. You can start with a basic selection and also try using the paint selection tool (edit > paint selection tool).

2. After the faces have been selected we need to create a UV projection node.
On the Create UVs menu select Cylindrical Mapping. This will create a new mapping node.

3. Now locate the polyCylProj1 node and set the rotate x to -90. This will rotate the projection node so it should look like this.

4. Now we will save this set of UVs to a new UV set. Select > convert selection > to faces will convert the selection to UVs.

5. Open window > UV texture editor to view the UVs. You can use the UV texture editor to scale or move the UVs if needed.
6. Select a UV from the UV texture editor that belongs to the UV set we want to save. Select, select shell from the select menu. This will select all the UVs that belong to the UV shell.

7. Select polygons> copy UVs to UV set > copy in to new UV set > options.png to open the copy in to new UV set options box. Enter fur_hair as the new UVset name. Click, apply and close.

Now we are ready to add the fur description node.

8. Press F8 to return to object mode. Select the head and select, fur > attach fur description > new. This will attach a new fur description node to the head mesh.

9. We need to edit the fur description nodes attributes to the desired values to make the hair style.

10. You can start with a preset from the fur description node to make hair styles. It is the easiest way to start. However I have added some methods of creating different hair styles.

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