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Wiley Mastering Maya 7

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1. Incandescence Bump Magina OOO Difiuse 0 600 i Translucence 0 000 Translucence Focus foso v Specular Shading Cosine Power 20 000 I Specular Color u a Cloud Reflectivity 0 500 Reflected Color o gt T J mi F Ciater Fluid Texture 30 _ gt Special Effects E Granite Bee Leather 5 5 ss 8 5 se ta Me te Me 2 z 3 3 asy m x lt u fiz Chose Figure 1 33 Figure 1 34 A Phong shader The Create Render Node window 42 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 35 The Graph Editor The Graph Editor Maya s Graph Editor choose Window gt Animation Editors gt Graph Editor is a truly powerful editing tool for the animator see Figure 1 35 Since 3D data is stored digitally as vector information every movement that is set in Maya generates a graph of value vs time The Graph Editor provides direct access to the curves generated by your animation to let you fine tune and edit even create your anima tion in this window The left panel of the Graph Editor is much like the Outliner and displays the selected objects and their hierarchy along with a listing of their animated channels or attributes By default all of an object s keyframed channels display as colored curves in the display to the right of the list with red green and blue for the X Y and Z axes respectivel
2. Selection allows you to specify the order of preferred selection Maya has a selec tion queue that marks some objects as more selectable than others If you mar quee select a bunch of objects of different types in the scene Maya will select the more important object types instead of the others This is where you set your preference of what is selected over another object CUSTOMIZING THE INTERFACE 47 Modules specifies which modules are loaded by default whenever you start Maya By default both Dynamics and Paint Effects are loaded This is not the same as loading plugins such as fur and mental ray which are accessed through the Plugin Manager see the next section Applications lets you set the path of applications that are commonly used in conjunction sy with Maya This is new to Maya 7 and makes work flow much faster allowing you to New launch an application such as Photoshop to edit a texture map from within Maya itself Colors You can change just about any of the UI and object display colors in Maya by choosing Window gt Settings Preferences gt Colors to open the Colors window as shown in Figure 1 40 You can click the color swatch to change the colors or use the slider to toggle through common preset colors For example to change the background color of the 3D view panels click the 3D View heading and select your color The Active and Inactive tabs give you access to colors of objects that are currently selected or a
3. Move Rotate Scale easily since they rest on the left side of the keyboard You can of course change these key layouts as you see fit We ll discuss how to customize the interface at the end of this chapter Each of the manipulators has a handle for a particular axis desig nated by its color Red is for the X axis green is for the Y axis and blue is for the Z axis A cyan colored axis allows for free movement in both axes of the active panel view When you select a particular handle it turns yellow You can then only transform move scale or rotate the object in that axis As shown in the first panel of Figure 1 19 the Move tool a k a the translate tool displays arrows for the axis of movement You can grab any one of the handles axis arrow lines to move the selected object in just that axis The Rotate tool shown in the second panel displays cir cles around the object s pivot point that act as axis handles You drag on one of the circles to rotate the selected object in just that axis The Scale tool shown in the third panel displays handles with colored cubes which when dragged scale the object in that axis Figure 1 19 Manipulators let you control your object s position rotation and scale with ease 24 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE x ily The Universal Manipulator new to Maya 7 is shown in the fourth panel of Figure 1 19 New and acts in place of all three tools You can select the arrows to move the ob
4. addition to menu selections the hotbox has marking menus in each of the five zones Using marking menus is yet another way to quickly access the commands you use the most The marking menus are classified as follows ZONE MARKING MENU North Zone Selects the display layout similar to the display layout buttons in the Tool Box Figure 1 21 East Zone Toggles the visibility of UI elements such as the Help line or Status line You can The Menu Sets quickly toggle the display of several UI elements to maximize your screen space drop down menu South Zone Changes the current view panel to an information panel window such as the Outliner or Hypershade windows West Zone Activates Selection Masks as if using the Selection Mask icons in the Status line discussed earlier in the chapter You can use a marking menu like this to quickly set your selection to vertices without needing to access the Status line for example Center Zone Sets the view panel to any of the modeling or perspective windows in your scene As you become more familiar with Maya your use of the hotbox and the marking menus will greatly increase your productivity If you are just starting out it s advisable to begin with accessing the menus and commands such as selection sets through the Status line and main menu bar until you are familiar with where everything is It is easy when you re a beginner to get lost in all the options you have when selecting some tools and work flo
5. channel of an object with the text box shown in orange clicking Rotate X in the Channel Box and right clicking and choosing Break Connections from the shortcut menu deletes the keyframes and returns the text box to white You will see more of this usage later in this book and as you learn how to animate in Maya Below the channel values in Figure 1 10 shown in the previous section you can see the headings SHAPES and INPUTS These correspond to the connections the selected polygon sphere already has In this case under SHAPES we see pSphereShapel and the selected pShpere1_scaleConstraint1 nodes These nodes have inputs to the selected sphere and help define the object in Maya In short nodes in Maya are groups of attributes that define an object its location shape and so on There is animation and an expression on this sphere as well shown under the INPUTS heading Clicking the node names here gives you access to their own attributes so that you can quickly make adjustments to the selected object and its connected nodes Changing the Channel Box Layer Editor View Although it s typical to display the Channel Box and the Layer Editor all the time you can replace this panel with one of two other windows the Attribute Editor or the Tool Settings by clicking one of the three icons in the upper right corner as shown in Fig ure 1 10 earlier in this chapter This gives you quick access to the three windows you may find most useful to have
6. il Hypergraph Connecting attributes in the Hypergraph Edit View Bookmarks Graph Rendering Options Show Hep a BEER Et O nurbsConel Comiect Input of nurbsSphere1 Default Ctrl Drop rotate scale TanMnusRotatervot translate i Other Shift Drop 34 CHAPTER 1 THE Maya INTERFACE Select Other from the menu to open a new window called the Connection Editor shown here and explained later in this chapter In the Connection Editor scroll down and select Rotate on both sides of the window amp Connection Editor OE Options LeftDisplay Right Display Hep A ne Raoul Riga Outputs mto Inputs a Draw Overide alje ba Lod Visibilty Render Into Render Into c Render Layer Info Render Layer Info Ghosting Control c Ghost Custom Steps c Ghost Custom Steps Ghost Frames Ghost Range Start Ghost Range End Ghost Driver Ghost Driver a Translate Translate e Atala e Atata Rotate Order Scale Scale a Shee o Shex Rotate Pivot c Rotate Pivot Rotate Pivot Translate Rotate Pivot Translate Scale Pivot Scale Pivot a Scale Pivot Translate 8 Scale Pivot Translate Lo Rotate Axis Rotate Axis 2 Trans Minus Rotate Pivot form Mates mi a Select Hande he nurbsConel Ki gt InurbsS phere Clear All Remove Close This action connects the rotations of the sphere to the cone Select the cone and rotate it in the perspective view You will see the sphere rot
7. in the Multilister panes To assign a shader for example select your object in Maya click your desired shader to select it and then RM click and choose Edit gt Assign from the shortcut menu You can customize the look of the Multilister by clicking the option display icons of the thumbnail size icons running down the left side of the window as shown in Figure 1 30 Each thumbnail has a small arrow in the lower right corner Clicking this arrow expands on that shader s network of connection nodes if you have textures or images attached The Multilister is good for fast shader management and assignment but lacks the brawn of the Hypershade to get into serious shader network management if you are con necting and editing attribute connections even more so than the Hypergraph The Hypershade The Hypershade is accessed through Window gt Rendering Editors gt Hypershade see Figure 1 31 and displays the shaders and textures in your scene in a graphical flowchart layout similar to the Hypergraph window You connect and disconnect render node attributes through the Hypershade to create shader networks from the simple to the intricately complex The Hypershade window has three main areas the Create Bins panel the render node display and the work area The three icons in the upper right let you switch views The Create Bins Panel The Create Bins panel on the left is divided into two tabs Create and Bins Selecting the Create tab displa
8. influence of another object the parent to control the objects together THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 31 With a parent child hierarchy the child can move independently under the parents as well as inherit the movements of the parent The child node inherits the transforms movements of all the parents above it and moves or rotates or scales however the parents move but can move on its own as well Imagine if you will a ball bouncing on a cart The cart rolls along while the ball bounces on top The ball is a child of the cart and moves along with the cart as it rolls along but the ball has its own movement on the cart itself as it bounces up and down Creating good hierarchies is the backbone of animation in Maya and is covered throughout this book Both windows display the objects in your scene and allow you to make hierarchy or grouping decisions as well as more intricate connections between attributes The Outliner displays your scene objects as an outline and the Hypergraph uses a flowchart layout that gives you more finite control You access the Outliner by choosing Window gt Outliner The Outliner see Figure 1 23 displays all the objects in your scene as an outline You can select any object in a scene by simply clicking its name You can reorganize objects listed in the Outliner by MMB dragging an object to a new location in the window By default objects are listed in order of creation in the scene You have easy control over o
9. most common way to access functions and tools is through the menu In addition to menus you can access functions through icons in the shelf through hot keys through marking menus and through the hotbox This is one of the charms of Maya and helps make it one of the most powerful CG creation tools on the market Its adaptability to individual work flows makes it an essential tool for artists This can be a double edged sword for beginners though since they often find themselves overwhelmed as to where to go or how to pro ceed You will see all these options throughout the book and a rundown of them in this chapter We recommend you familiarize yourself with the menus first and then get into the productivity enhancing shortcuts If you are already experienced with other CG software and find it easy to get around in Maya you can just use this chapter as a reference to come back to when you re already steeped in your scene Artists who used other packages say that Maya s work flow and interface are important to learn because they can offer a faster more efficient way of working If you re new to Maya and have not had a chance to set any defaults for yourself reset the interface to the default settings to make sure everything lines up between your work and the exercises in this book Choose Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences In the Preferences window choose Edit gt Restore Default Settings This should restore set tings to
10. open the Preferences dialog box and in the Settings section make your adjustments Getting Around What s the use of all these views and UI elements if you can t get around Just like every other program on a computer you will be using the keyboard and mouse to interact with Maya although perhaps more in tandem with each other than with other software Maya relies on the Alt key a great deal for the navigation in its work windows Also Maya requires the use of a three button mouse even with a Macintosh system On a Macintosh the Option key doubles as the Alt key You use one of the mouse buttons in conjunction with the Alt key to move in your scene The Mouse Controls The left mouse button LM is the primary selection key in Maya and is the most often used obviously But as far as getting around in a scene when used with the Alt key the LM button tumbles or orbits around your scene in perspective camera panels The right button RM activates shortcut menus as it does in many software programs and also Maya s system of marking menus which are similar to shortcut menus For more on marking menus stayed tuned to this chapter The RM button also allows you to dolly into or out of your scene Dollying moves the camera closer to or farther from your sub ject in the scene It is not accurate to call this type of move a zoom though it often is because a zoom changes the focal length of the lens of the camera as opposed to physica
11. orange as shown here d Attribute Editor nurbsSphere1 JOE List Sdected Focus Attributes Hep rnubsSpheret rusbsSphereShape maketlubSpbere iriiiShadrgarou al Focus makellubSphere make ub5oheet maea v Sphere History Stat Sweep a000 H End Sweep 500 m Redue o e Degree Cube v 7 Use Tolerance Tokar a00 e a Figure 1 22 The Attribute Editor and Channel Box display the values for the selected sphere 30 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE What s more you can animate almost any of the attributes in any of these nodes Attribute Editor tabs All you need to do is RM click the attribute in the Attribute Editor and choose Set Key from the shortcut menu This sets a keyframe for that attribute at that value at the current frame just like RM clicking in the Channel Box If your sphere does not have a makeNurbsSphere1 tab in the Attribute Editor check to make sure the Construction History button in the Status line is toggled on Without it the sphere is created without history so its creation node is deleted right after the sphere is made Notes At the bottom of the Attribute Editor is a Notes area where you can type and record com ments that stay with the object s Attribute Editor window Simply drag the separator bar as shown to create more or less space in the Notes section this area is handy for remem bering how certain things are set up or to pass nbe Edi
12. the camera horizontally or vertically in the scene effectively panning the view Dolly view means to scale commonly called a zoom any camera hold down the Alt key and the right you can also hold down both the LM and MM mouse button and then drag in any scene window to zoom or scale the view in or out This setup allows a straightforward Alt key plus mouse button mapping of left rotate middle pan and right zoom CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Click here and drag to tear off menu Edit Gives you access to the commands you use to edit characteristics of the scene for example deleting and duplicating objects or undoing and redoing actions Modify Lets you edit the characteristics of objects in the scene such as moving or scaling them or changing their pivot points Create Lets you make new objects such as primitive geometries curves cameras and so on Display Contains commands for adjusting elements of the GUI graphical user interface in Maya as well as objects in the scene allowing you to toggle or switch on or off the dis play of certain elements as well as components of objects such as vertices hulls pivots and so on Window Gives you access to the many windows you will come to rely on such as the Attribute Editor Outliner Graph Editor and Hypergraph broken down into submenus according to function such as rendering editors and animation editors Help Gives you access to the extensive Maya he
13. vey exact dimensions and size relationships better than perspective views as shown in Figure 1 4 Figure 1 3 Even though the cubes in this scene are all the same size the perspective view You can change displays the cubes farther away as being smaller than those closer to you Orthographic your panel view views display proper proportions so you can see the four cubes identical in size and shape eae as well as their position in the scene panel views You can use any of the six presets in the Tool Box on the left side of the screen to adjust the panel layouts of your screen You can also go through the main a a menu to make adjustments by choosing Window gt Saved Layouts Furthermore Sook Through Selected you can change any panel s view by choosing another panel name from that Panel Panel menu list shown in Figure 1 4 You can choose any modeling view orthographic Sinai or perspective or another window to best suit your work flow Last you can Tear Off Tear Off Copy change the size of any of the panels by clicking and dragging the separating bor a ders between the panels 6 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE The panels display a grid that you can use to align objects and for a general sense of placement and position You can adjust the size and availability of the grids by choosing Display gt GridO The grid is made of actual units of measure that you can adjust Choose Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences to
14. you prefer a vertical layout similar to the Outliner shown in Figure 1 28 in the Hyper graph menu choose Options gt Orientation gt Vertical The nodes in the Hypergraph are lined up by default If you would like a free form dis play so that you can move your nodes however you wish instead of horizontally or verti cally click the Toggle Freeform Automatic Layout Modes icon shown in Figure 1 24 You can also import an image as the Hypergraph background in free form mode to place nodes on parts of an image Just toggle Options gt Display gt Background Image to and select your image by selecting View gt Load Background Image This is handy for making character rigs when you want to place the appropriate character nodes on the character s parts for making selections and reference faster Bookmarks One other convenience in the Hypergraph is the use of bookmarks When you frame a certain selection of nodes in the window you can bookmark the view to return to it later easily To bookmark a Hypergraph view choose Bookmarks gt Create Bookmark or click the Create Bookmark icon called out in Figure 1 24 earlier in this chapter You can then just select the view from the Bookmark menu at a later time The Connection Editor You can use the Connection Editor choose Window gt General Editors gt Connection Editor see Figure 1 29 to connect attributes between almost any two objects as you have just seen in the discussion on the Hyp
15. 7 To create a new layer click the Create New Layer icon g To add items to a layer choose Layers gt Membership You can also select the objects for your layer and then choose Options gt Add New Objects To Selected Layers to automati MEdit Layer LICE Hame SpsceShp_E cally place those objects in the current layer You can also use the layers to Dsp yom Nana w select groups of objects by choosing Layers gt Select Objects In Selected Layer s F mo mmm me a Sas Conal To change the name and color of a layer simply double click the layer to open the Edit Layer dialog box Render Layers Like display layers render layers control what objects are on which layers so that you can separate your renders into different layers or passes Rendering in layers is powerful for later editing in a compositing package such as After Effects or Shake because it gives you ultimate control over the objects in your scene and how best to color correct or even place them To see the render layers in your scene click the Render Radial button to toggle away from the display layers Creating and adjusting Render Layers is the same as Display Lay ers We will cover rendering in layers in detail in Chapter 13 The Time Slider Range Slider Horizontally across the bottom of the screen are the Time Slider and the Range Slider shown in Figure 1 13 The Time Slider displays the range of frames currently in your ani mati
16. All animates the camera or orthogonal views in or out to see all the objects in a scene Frame Selection animates the camera view to focus on the selected object or the center of selected objects Look At Selection snaps the selected object into the middle of your view without moving in close to it If you find yourself wondering why pressing a hot key isn t working Caps Lock may be enabled Some hot keys have multiple meanings for the lower and uppercase of the same letter so check the Caps Lock key WORKING IN VIEW PANELS 23 The Manipulators Manipulators are on screen handles that you use to manipulate the selected object in true form Figure 1 19 shows the four distinct and most common manipulators for all objects in Maya Move Rotate Scale and Universal Manipulator You use the handles on the manipulators to adjust your objects in real time in any of the axes as we discuss later in this section Some tools or objects have special manipulators that allow you to interactively adjust certain attributes particular to that object such as the cone angle of a spotlight You can access the manipulators using either the icons from the Tool Box or the following hot keys KEY FUNCTION WwW Activates the Move tool E Activates the Rotate tool R Activates the Scale tool Q Deselects any translation tool to hide its manipulator and reverts to the Select tool The default hot keys let you easily select your transformation tools
17. CHAPTER 1 The Maya Interface The M aya interface can be a bit intimidating and it s not fair to expect yourself to pick it right up and remember where everything is As you will see throughout this book the best way to learn Maya is to put it to task and you can use this chapter as a ref erence to the interface and the many windows and functions you will find yourself using in your work Try not to rush it and don t be overly concerned with customizing the keys using shelves or the hotbox for now just access your commands and functions through the menus Of course there are a few exceptions to this as we ll see in Chapter 2 Quick Start Creating an Animation in Maya but for the most part it is highly recommended you familiarize yourself with where everything roughly should be through the menu system This chapter is a look at how to access functions and a fairly complete rundown of the often used windows in Maya to get you familiar with their workings Without further ado let s get to the interface that makes Maya what it is The interface Getting around Scene windows i Window layouts The hotbox Menus and shelves The Outliner and the Hypergraph The Channel Box and the Attribute Editor 1 The Timeline The Command line the Feedback line and the Script Editor Customizing the interface 2 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE The Interface You can perform almost every task in Maya in more than one way The
18. Mancering Perv tects Cioh wal Fa Cosson vere Sexi ghey Stee Panes vew S Lepr iy Farris yew Shii bynag show Fari Help line Workspace Layer Editor Command line Channel Box Range Slider Time Slider The Nickel Tour Let s take a look at the interface and identify the parts of the UI Running across the top of the screen see Figure 1 1 are the main menu bar the Status line and the shelf These provide access to the many functions in Maya Running vertically to the left of the screen is the Tool Box giving you fast access to common tools to manipu late your objects Across the screen is the Channel Box Layer Editor and sometimes the Attribute Editor The Attribute Editor is not displayed in Figure 1 1 This part of the screen gives you access to information on the objects in your scene and allows you to manipulate and organize them as well 4 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 2 The full perspective view Running horizontally at the bottom of the screen are the Time Slider and the Range Slider These give you access to various functions and feedback from Maya itself In the middle of all these elements is the workspace which hosts your view panels or scene windows and their own scene menus These panels are also known as views or view ports in some other 3D packages The scene menus for each panel give you access to chang ing options for the panel in question from changing i
19. amed thumbnail icons Double clicking any of the names under the thumbnails lets you change the name of the shader or render node Clicking the thumbnails themselves selects the shader for use and double clicking the thumbnail and not the name opens its Attribute Editor The Multilister is in two panels Both panels let you select what type of shading render node is displayed By default the top panel displays all the shaders in the scene in the General tab with materials lights and camera nodes under their respective tabs The bottom panel is typically used to display texture nodes that are in use or are already con nected to shaders Shader thumbnails eX The Multilister Multilister Fle dit_Select_Cisplay Window fiter Help Tabs General Materials Lights Cameras Shading Group tool __ amp Select tool k Pin Unpin Appearance PS e of New Nodes Display options _ Textures Thumbnail size 4 38 CHAPTER 1 THE Maya INTERFACE You can add or edit tabs to filter just the nodes you need to work on For example if you would like to only view just the type s of nodes you want pay a visit to the Display gt Tabs menu There you can create new tabs with special filters using the Create Filtered command from that menu Many of the commands accessible through the menu system are also available through shortcut menus when you RM click the shaders
20. an stick around and get your feet wet on the most commonly used Maya windows in the next section The Main Maya Windows Maya has a few important windows in which you will be working frequently This section introduces the location and function of each window tells you when you will come across them and describes how to use them The Attribute Editor Window As you ve already seen to some extent every object is defined by a series of attributes all placed in nodes You can edit some of these attributes in the Channel Box as you have seen but to see all the attributes available for a selected object you will need the Attribute Editor which is possibly the most important window in Maya Through this window you can change an object s attributes set keyframes connect to other attributes attach expres sions or simply view their values Create an object in Maya Choose Create gt NURBS Primitives gt Sphere to put a NURBS sphere in your scene With the sphere still selected open the Attribute Editor by choosing Window gt Attribute Editor or by pressing the default hot key Ctrl A You will see that the Channel Box displays the commonly used attributes for the sphere but that the Attribute Editor shows an entire collection of attributes Figure 1 22 shows the sphere and its attributes The attributes in the Channel Box and Attribute Editor are the same If you move or otherwise transform the sphere the values are consistent in both dis
21. ating as well In the Hypergraph move your mouse over any of the connecting lines to display s the attributes that are connected as shown here The connecting lines are also color coded A green line as in our example represents a vector connection A vector R connection is a connection of three attributes or channels z such as RotateX RotateY and RotateZ A single channel connection is made with a blue line Notice now that you can no longer rotate the sphere directly if you select the sphere and try to rotate it in your scene The sphere s rotations are locked to the cone until you sever the connections either through the Channel Box RM click the attribute in the Channel Box and choose Break Connection or through the Hypergraph To disconnect in the Hypergraph click the green connecting line and press Delete To see additional connections between nodes such as expressions and deformers choose Options gt Display and select the type of connection you want to see To return to the regular node view at any time when you are editing connections in the Hypergraph simply click the Scene Hierarchy icon THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 35 Changing Layout Using the icons across the top of the window called out in Figure 1 24 earlier in this chap ter you can change your view quickly For example if you select an object in the perspec tive panel but can t find it in the Hypergraph view just click the Frame Selected icon If
22. bjects or parts of a group A a Object Mode Lets you select objects such as geometry cameras lights and so on H Component Mode Lets you select an object s components such as vertices faces or the control vertices CVs of NURBS surfaces To toggle between object and component modes press the F8 key the default hot key For example if you have grouped several objects together being in hierarchy mode and clicking any of the member objects selects the entire group of objects Being in object mode selects just the object you click Individual Selection Masks The next set of icons between the section breaks deals with individual selection masks which give you control over which objects or components you want to select Exactly which icons are displayed here depends on the selection mode you re currently in If you have many objects in your scene and you are having difficulty selecting a certain type of object with your cursor you can use these filters to single out the object s ICON NAME DESCRIPTION x Set Object Selection Mask Turns on or off all selection icons Select By Handles Allows selection of object handles e Select By Joints Allows selection of joints Z Select By Curve Allows selection of curves amp Select By Surfaces Allows selection of surfaces 4 Select By Deformations Allows selection of lattices and other deformers y Select By Dynamics Allows selection of particles and dynamic objects Select By Rende
23. ctive or not selected inactive As you will see throughout exercises in this book organizing your scene elements using groups with different display colors is different from using the Colors window These changes affect all scenes and UI elements for the particular user in Maya and are used to customize the display for your convenience not for scene management or organization You will be using Display Layers and the like for organizing Shelves Under the Shelves command choose Window gt Settings Preferences gt Shelves lurks a window that manages your shelves see Figure 1 41 You can create or delete shelves or manage the items on the shelf with this function i Shelves SmX Window Particles FluideEffects Feds SoftRigdBodes Effects General Editors Awo AR ceionsialliep Rendering Edtors gt PairtEttects Coth Fhids F Shelves Shelf Contents Ear Commands F Animation Editors Drectiond Light Relationship Edtors eyi Preferences Attrbute Edtor Tod Settings MoveUp MoveDown Delete Item Outiner Ctl g Performance Settings fivnarerach Label amp Tooltips Ambert Light ice Hotkeys loon Name Pant Effects Cobrs I Aepeatable UY Texture Editor Marking Menus shelves LE Change imeve Playblast Panels Haldis Plug n Manager Save Al Shelves Close Figure 1 40 Figure 1 41 Adjusting the colors of you
24. de Open the Hypershade and create a Phong shader by clicking the Phong icon in the Create Maya Nodes panel Double click the Phong s thumbnail to open the Attribute Editor As you see in Figure 1 33 if you click the color swatch next to the Color or other attribute of the shader you can change the color of the material To map a texture such as a proce dural texture that is a texture that is created entirely in Maya or an image file to a color or other attribute click the map icon the checkered button to the right of that attribute For this example click the map icon next to the Color attribute The Create Render Node window opens as seen in Figure 1 34 Click the Ramp icon to create a ramp node for the color of this Phong material If you open your Attribute Editor you ll notice a green line connecting a new ramp node to the Phong material As with the Hypergraph you can mouse over the connecting lines to see which attrib utes are connected You can also select the connection lines and press Delete to disconnect those connections amp Attribute Editor phong5 OEI Create Render N OFJ Ust Selected Focus Attributes Hep Options Help Motesials Textures Lights Utitties mental ray T fi i y 20 Textures Neemal C As projection C As stenci Ee H m _y Common Material Attributes Color PS Fhid Testure 20 Fractal Transparency LELLI Ambient Color BEE ois BM vorian G Movie S amp S Noise a
25. eful when you have a heavy scene and you need to select some objects and not others By selecting the type of objects you want to be able to select you can speed up your work flow in large scene files The menu selections here give you a few presets to optimize the selection modes for your convenience according to your current work flow for example select only deformers in a scene or select from just the dynamic objects such as particles Presets are fine and good but you might prefer to use the individual selection mask icons farther down the Status line to gain more control you can turn on and off whether you can select individual object types such as particles NURBS polygons and so on We will cover these in just a moment The next group of icons in the Status line lets you click into three distinct selection modes Maya is based on object hierarchy in which components make up objects that can make up larger objects and so on You will see this in action in the next chapter in the Quick Start exercise Selection modes let you choose different levels of an object s hierarchy CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE For example using a selection mode you can choose an entire group of objects only one of the objects in that group or just the points on the surface or the poly faces that make up that object The primary selection modes are object mode and component mode ICON NAME DESCRIPTION B Hierarchy Mode Lets you select groups of o
26. election Rotate e Rotates selection E Scale f Scales selection AN Universal Manipulator Allows for translation rotation and scale within one tool pa Soft Modification Allows you to modify an area with a grad ual drop off of its effect A Show Manipulator Displays an object s specific manipulators Current Tool Display t Shows the currently selected tool shown as blank THE INTERFACE CHER 4 Figure 1 9 The Tool Box 13 14 CHAPTER 1 THE Maya INTERFACE Trarshte x 0 Trarsiste Y 0 TrarelateZ 0 Rotate x 0 Rotate Y 0 RotateZ 0 SedeX 1 Sede 1 ScadeZ 1 Visibilly on SHAPES pSphereShapet pSpherel_scaleConstraintt Node State Normal OlizetX 1 Offzet Y 1 Dietz 1 cwo 1 INPUTS expression timet Display C Render Layers Options Figur The Chann and Layer e 1 10 el Box Editor below In addition to these common tools the Tool Box contains icons for several choices of screen layouts to let you change your interface quickly This is convenient because differ ent scenes and work flows can call for different view modes Experiment with the layouts by clicking any of the six presets in the Tool Box The Channel Box The area running vertically on the right side of the screen is usually for the Channel Box with the Layer Editor immediately below it The Channel Box is a key element in Maya It lists the commonly animated attributes of a selected object and lets you quickly adjust attribu
27. endShape dite racter i Particles ee ea Fluid Effects PreladRieferenceE dior Har NewProject Toon EdiProject Fields SetProject Soft and Rigd Bodies v Quit Name NewScene J Description New Scene Create a new scene di Category File Ulz performHevScene 0 CUSTOMIZING THE INTERFACE 49 Through this monolith of a window you can set virtually any key combination to be used as a shortcut to virtually any command in Maya Since so many tools already have hot keys assigned by default it is important to get to know them first before you decide to start changing things around to suit how you work If you are coming to Maya from another 3D package you can set up your hot keys to resemble your old work flow Every menu command is represented by menu categories on the left and the right side allows you to view the current hot key or to assign a new hot key to the selected command Ctrl and Alt key combinations can be used with any letter keys on the keyboard Keep in mind that Maya is case sensitive meaning it differentiates between upper and lowercase letters For example one of our personal hot keys is Ctrl h to hide a selected object from view and Ctrl shift H is to unhide it When you are ready to start setting your own hot keys query your intended hot key with the Query button to find out if it is assigned to a command that suits that hot key better The lower section of this window displays the MEL command that the
28. er detail in Chapter 4 are types of surfaces in Maya that can adjust detail level at any time to become more or less defined as needed As such the 1 2 and 3 toggles only work on NURBS objects When working in the 3D views you can view your 3D objects as wireframe models as in Figure 1 15 or as solid hardware rendered models called shaded mode see Figure 1 16 Wireframe gives you the best performance on your computer s graphics system when working in a large scene as well as the chance to see through the wireframe of one object to another object for position or comparison s sake When you increase the display feedback of your view panels such as using shaded mode or textured mode you increase the work your system and graphics card have to do This is not a concern until your scenes get larger and heavier but if you notice your computer is not responding as fast as you d like with a scene try decreasing the visual feedback of your scene to wireframe view or turning display layers on and off as needed Within shaded mode you have a few display options to help you in your work You can choose to display the wireframe mesh on top of a shade view to help you better model and manipulate the objects To turn on wireframe shaded view while in shaded view in the Scene menu choose Shading gt Wireframe On Shaded Figure 1 17 shows a sphere and cube with wireframe on shaded view enabled Also you can make your objects shaded but yet se
29. ergraph The connection we made there attached the rotations of a sphere to that of a cone Simple enough but we can make connections far more complex For example the height of a cube in the Y axis can con trol the amount of red in a sphere s rendered color You will see how to make complex animations and relationships later in this book in Chapter 8 when you begin to rig a scene for animation Creating and Editing Connections The Connection Editor is separated into two vertical panes Each pane represents one of two objects in the connection By selecting an object and clicking the Reload Left button you can load into the Connection Editor s left column all the attributes of the selected objects By selecting a second object and clicking Reload Right you can load the attributes of the sec ond object As you saw earlier clicking attributes in both columns creates a direct relation ship between the two objects attributes GHypereraph OE3 Edt View Bookmarks Graph Rend rel E Figure 1 28 The Hypergraph s vertical layout 36 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 29 The Connection Editor E Connection Editor Woe Options Left Display Right Display Help Reload Right Outputs mo Inputs c Render Into A Template Ghosting Control Ghosting Ghost Custom Steps Ghost Frames Use Object Color Ghost Range Start Object Color Ghost Range End c Ghos
30. f the scene you don t adjust any of the animation This just makes longer animations easier to read and deal with Adjusting actual animation timing and lengthening or shortening anima tions are accomplished differently which is covered in Chapters 8 and 10 To the right of the Range Slider are the Character Set Selection menu which deals with the automation of character animated objects the Auto Keyframe button which sets a keyframe automatically when an animated value is changed and the Animation Preferences button Clicking this button opens the Preferences window shown earlier in Figure 1 11 The Command Line Help Line Maya is based on Maya Embedded Language MEL and all its functions and commands invoke an appropriate MEL command MEL is a user accessible programming language and is mostly what allows Maya to be as resourceful and flexible as it is You can write your own commands or scripts in MEL entering them into either the Command line or a window called the Script Editor Use the Command line see Figure 1 14 to enter single MEL commands directly from the keyboard in the white text box portion of the bar The Command line also displays command feedback and messages from the program in the gray portion of the bar Try entering the following into this box sphere A new sphere should pop up in your Maya panels You ve created a basic sphere using the MEL command To delete it click it to select it and then press Delete C
31. g menu for the current zone amp Edit Marking Menu JOE mel mel mel Persp Relationsh Single PerspectivHypershade Rem Persp Graph Hypershade Pers Petsp Graph Owt Persp Outliner Hypershade Outli To create a menu tem drag commands from the Shelf or the Script Editce and dop over n icon above To edit a mens item chck the AMB over its icon MenuName ChangePanelLayout Click Here to Test Use LMB Figure 1 44 Editing the North Zone of our marking menus The Plugin Manager The Plugin Manager accessed by choosing Window gt Settings Preferences gt Plug in Manager lets you load and unload plug ins for Maya For example mental ray for Maya is a plug in that must be loaded to have mental ray rendering in your scenes You load a plug in by clicking the Loaded button To unload simply uncheck the box If you want the plug in to always load on Maya startup check the Auto Load box You can load third party plug ins by clicking the Browse button at the bottom of the window Most third party plug ins provide instructions for installing them properly Summary Once you have wrapped your head around how the challenging Maya interface works at its defaults you will applaud the ability to change it however you want to make it work best for you This chapter gave you an overview of all the major components of Maya s UI and major windows and will be useful as a reference whenever you need a quick bru
32. iply Show Hep w tee penp top front ane tesi datediLigniSet datediObectSet Figure 1 23 The Outliner 32 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 24 The Hypergraph dis plays your objects in a flowchart format Hypergraph is the same as navigating in any modeling panel using the familiar Alt key and mouse combinations for tracking and zooming You access the Hypergraph by choosing Window gt Hypergraph Connections and the Hypergraph You can edit connections of attributes between nodes graphically to set up some rather complex relationships though this is not immediately evident when you first open the window Create a NURBS sphere and cone in a scene place them side by side and open the Hypergraph window In Figure 1 25 you see the simple scene in the Hypergraph s main node view The Hypergraph shows nodes for the four panel views persp top front side as well as the NURBS sphere nurbsSphere1 and the NURBS cone nurbsCone1 Select them both in the Hypergraph and then click the Input And Output Selections icon see to Figure 1 24 for its location This connections view shows you all the nodes that interact with the selected node s In this case as shown in Figure 1 26 you see our object s DAG nodes nurbsSpherel and nurbsConel1 their shape nodes nurbsSphereShapel and nurbsCone Shapel and creation nodes makeNurbsSphere1l and makenurbsConel1 as well as the default gray shader they are a
33. isplay 5 Ramp Shader Shading Map Suttace Shader Work Ares Shader Library O Use Background Volumetric Displacement 2D Textures 3D Textures Env Textures Other Textures Lights General Utilities Color Utilities Switch Utilities Work area Particle Utilities Image Planes gt gt gt gt gt gt gt gt gt Ma LE Ra gt The Bins tab lets you store sets of shaders in bins to manage them better especially if you have a heavy scene to work in You use the icons at the top of the Bins tab to organize your shaders If you hover the mouse over the icons Maya will show you a pop up description for each The Render Node Display Area After you create render nodes they appear in the display area as thumbnail icons Clicking a render node s icon selects that node for use and double clicking it opens the Attribute Editor If you want to edit a shading network MM drag the thumbnail icon to the work 40 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 32 Seeing a render node s network gives you access to editing its connections area below Navigating in this area of the Hypershade as well as the work area is similar to navigating the Hypergraph and work windows in that you use the Alt key and mouse controls The Hypershade zooms in levels as opposed to the smooth zooms in a work panel though it still uses the Alt RM And although you ca
34. ject with the Universal Manipulator just like with the Move tool Select any of the curved arrows in the middle of the box edges of the manipulator to rotate the object in that axis Finally selecting and dragging the cyan boxes in the corners of the manipulator box lets you scale the sphere If you hold down the Ctrl key as you drag you can scale the sphere in just one axis It is much easier to use the default hot keys defined for these transformation tools rather than selecting them from the Tool Box If the keys aren t working make sure Caps Lock is off You must use the lowercase keys The Universal Manipulator interactively shows you the movement rotation or scale as you manipulate your object As you move an object the Universal Manipulator shows you the coordinates Likewise rotating with the Universal Manipulator displays the degree of change Last scale values in dark gray on the three outside edges of the manipulator box are displayed as you scale the sphere with the Universal Manipulator Now these four tools offer you two different ways to move rotate or scale your objects However the next tool down in the Tool Box is a bit different The Soft Modification tool allows you to select an area on your surface or model and adjust the surface The adjust ments gradually taper off away from the initial place of selection to soft modify an area of the model For instance create a NURBS plane by choosing Create gt NURBS P
35. licking the icon at the end of the Command line opens the Script Editor window in which you can enter more complicated MEL commands and scripts Below the Command line is the Help line When you hover your mouse over an icon the Help line tells you what it is This is a terrific way to learn the UI The Help line also prompts you for the next step in a particular function or the next required input for a task s completion It s a great way to understand how some tools work when you re not really sure about the next step in a command such as which object to select or which key to press to execute the command You ll be surprised at how much you ll learn about tool functions by reading the prompts displayed here Command feedback Script Editor button Help line WORKING IN VIEW PANELS 19 Working in View Panels Let s get a quick taste for working in the view panels Create a NURBS sphere by choos ing Create gt NURBS Primitives gt Sphere A sphere will appear in the middle of your panels and will be selected as shown in Figure 1 15 Notice its primary attributes in the Channel Box Now press 2 and you will see the wireframe mesh become denser as in the middle frame of Figure 1 15 Press 3 and the mesh becomes even denser bottom frame You can view all NURBS objects in three levels of display such as this sphere Pressing 1 2 or 3 toggles between detail levels for any selected NURBS object NURBS as you will see in fur th
36. lly moving it in relation to the subject Finally the middle mouse button MM used with the Alt key allows you to pan around the scene as well as acting as a virtual slider You will see an example of a virtual slider later when we discuss the Channel Box For those mice that have a clickable middle wheel the wheel itself can be used to dolly into or out of a Maya scene simply by rolling the wheel up or down This move is the same as an Alt RM move You may have to set up your mouse functions through the mouse driver itself for the mouse wheel to behave as a mouse s middle button when pressed View Compass New to Maya 7 is the View Compass as shown in Figure 1 5 The View Compass lets you switch your view in the active panel A panel of course is one of the working views in Maya the workspace is shown through the panels in Maya s UI By clicking one of the THE INTERFACE 7 compass s axis represented by the cyan red green or blue cones you can quickly change that view to an orthographic view Clicking the cyan cube at the heart of the View Com pass returns you to your perspective view zo me Ii The Main Menu Bar Figure 1 5 Starting with the menu bar shown in Figure 1 6 you ll find a few of the familiar menu The View Compass choices you ve come to expect in many applications such as File Edit and Help Figure 1 6 File Edit Modify Create Display Window Animate Deform Skeleton Skin Constrain Cha
37. lp documentation in HTML format You ll notice two different icons to the right of some menu items arrows and boxes called option boxes Clicking an arrow opens a submenu that contains more specific commands Clicking an option box O opens a dialog box in which you can set the options for that particular tool Tear Off Menus At the top of every menu is a double line Clicking the double line allows you to tear off the menu and place it as a toolbox anywhere on your screen or screens if you have dual Gets Display Window Edt Coves Surfaces eden displays enabled These tear off menus are also NURBS Primitives called floating menus Creating a tear off menu Polygon Primitives siden RNa makes accessing menu commands easier espe one Primitives NURBS Primitives cially when you need to use the same command rants Polygon Primitives gt Cameras OT ERA repeatedly Let s say for example that you need to CY Curve Tool Volume Primitives create multiple polygonal spheres You can tear EP Curve Tool Lights segs Pencil Curve Tool Aa Seas off the Create gt Polygonal Primitives menu and Arc Tool i EENE place it at the edge of your screen You can then leasure Tools EP Curve Tool click the Sphere command as many times as you Text Pencil Curve Tool dwiih f b eduali d a reat need without opening the dual layered menu Locator Measure Tools every time Annotation Empty Group Sets Constructi
38. menu command invokes It also allows you to type your own MEL commands name them as new com mands categorize them with the other commands and assign hot keys to them Marking Menus Customizing your marking menus can give a huge boost to your work flow You might want more modeling tools at your fingertips than general UI controls such as the defaults You can customize the marking menus by choosing Window gt Settings Preferences gt Marking Menus Figure 1 43 shows the Marking Menus window Figure 1 43 amp Marking Menus Jeg The Marking Menus window ChangePanelType Hotbox South Left Widdle Right Mouse Button ControlPaneVisibilicy Hotbox East Left Niddle Right Mouse Button ChangeSelectionNask Hotbox West Left Niddle Right Mouse Button CommonMode LingPanes Hotbox Center Left Niddle Right Mouse Button PA Style LNB PA_Style_MMB PA_Style_RMB Edit Marking Menu Create Marking Menu Delete Marking Menu Settings Use Marking Menu t Hotbox x Noth HetboxRecon C West Center C East C South Mouse Button s V Left Midde Y Right Apply Settings Undo Settings Restore Defaults Chse 50 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE The marking menu is divided into zones Select the zone you want to customize in the top panel and click Edit Marking Menu as shown in Figure 1 44 To change a marking menu entry drag its icon or menu item directly onto the location where you want it to appear in the markin
39. mitransparent in the panel so you can see through them but still get a sense of volume For X Ray view choose Shading gt X Ray Figure 1 18 shows X Ray as well as wireframe on shaded modes enabled You will see under the Shading menu that you can change your view to flat shaded which is faster than smooth shaded but still shaded bounding box which merely displays the extents of the objects in the view which is the fastest view or even points which show just the points of the objects in the panel 20 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 15 Figure 1 16 NURBS display smoothness Shaded NURBS display smoothness WORKING IN VIEW PANELS 21 Figure 1 17 Wireframe on shaded view gives you a good view to model on your shaded objects Figure 1 18 X Ray view allows you to see through an object while still seeing it shaded and in this case with wireframe on shaded as well 22 CHAPTER 1 THE Maya INTERFACE Shaded Textured and Lighted Modes You can select from varying degrees of shading detail going as far as seeing your objects with textures and lighting detail You can cycle through the levels of detail by pressing 4 5 6 and 7 Wireframe mode is 4 shaded mode is 5 texture shaded mode is 6 and lighted mode is 7 Lighted mode will only work if you are already in mode 5 or 6 While in mode 6 pressing 7 will give you a lighted and textured mode These modes give you a basic idea of lighting and or texture de
40. n Editor w Timeline Undo Devi Web Browser Acie Save Actions Mouse Scroll Wheel Y Enable Modules ant a Save You can switch between either the Channel Box or the Layer Editor by toggling one of the icons in the upper left corner See Figure 1 10 earlier in this chapter The following list shows the icons that switch the views in this area of the UI ICON NAME ZE Show The Channel Box a Show The Layer Editor Show The Channel Box And The Layer Editor You can resize this area by clicking either of the double arrow buttons at the bottom of the panel below the Layer Editor which we will look at next The Layer Editor Immediately under the Channel Box is the Layer Editor This layout with the Channel Box and Layer Editor together is opportune for most scenes since it gives you immediate access to the layering of a scene as well as the channels of a selected object or objects The Layer Editor especially with Maya 7 has a twofold purpose displaying and rendering layers Display Layers The first and immediately useful aspect of the Layer Editor is display layers You can create display layers and assign objects to them to organize your scene With objects on organ ized layers you can quickly turn selections on and off by just toggling the View icon in the Layer Editor next to the appropriate layer name Figure 1 12 shows just the Layer Editor with several layers already added to the scene THE INTERFACE 1
41. ndles to make them more noticeable or less obtrusive press the plus key to increase a manipulator s size or press the minus key to decrease it The Hotbox The hotbox see Figure 1 20 gives you convenient access to all menu commands in Maya It is a quick way to get to the menu selections without accessing the menu bar itself This is useful if you want to turn off the menu bar and other UI elements to give you the maxi mum screen space for your scene To open the hotbox simply hold down the spacebar in an active view panel You can then select menu options with the mouse Yew Shading Lighting Show Panels Deform Skeleton Skin Constrain Character oe Scene Track Solve LiveConstraints LivePanels All the menu commands that are available from the main menu bar are available through the hotbox You can display some or all of the menu headings to give you quick access to whatever commands and features you use most The hotbox is separated into five distinct zones delineated by short black diagonal lines North East West South and Center To adjust the hotbox to your liking press and hold the spacebar and click Hotbox Controls to the right of the Center zone From here you can select to display some or all of the menu headings Activating the hotbox and clicking a zone with the mouse displays a set of shortcut menu commands called marking menus discussed in the next section WORKING IN VIEW PANELS 27 Marking Menus In
42. nnot freely pan around this window you can use Alt MM to scroll up and down when you have enough shaders to fill the panel The bottom panel the work area however reacts much the same as a nor mal view panel with the panning and zooming moves The Work Area The work area is a free form workspace where you connect render node attributes to form shading networks for your scene This is by far the easiest place to create and edit complex shaders because it gives you a clear flowchart of the network much like the Hypergraph view of object nodes To work on a shading node from the node display panel just MM drag it down into the work area The most efficient way to work with shaders is to use marking menus in the Hyper shade window panels RM click a shading icon to display a marking menu This marking menu lets you assign the shader to the current selection of objects select objects that have that shader already assigned to them or to Graph Network Graphing the network of a shader gives you a display similar to the Hypergraph s connection display Figure 1 32 shows how you can edit the connections between shading nodes graphically As you saw with the Hypergraph earlier in this chapter the connections between nodes is handled with color coded lines and arrows In this example a Phong material has con nections coming in from a fractal node a ramp node and a bump map with a leather node THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 41 Using the Hypersha
43. nstruction history 12 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Render Controls The next three icons give you access to render controls ICON NAME DESCRIPTION amp Render Current View Renders the active viewport at the current frame fa IPR Render Current View Renders the active view at the current frame into Interactive Photorealistic Rendering IPR You can change certain shading and texturing settings and view real time updates in the IPR window 3 Render Settings Opens a window that gives you access to all the ren dering switches such as resolution file type frame range and so on The Name Selection Field Ey You use this input window to enter object names to make selections which is useful for large scenes and multiple selections You can enter exact names as well as wildcards such as cube which would select anything that started with cube such as cubehollow and cubelayer This feature is also useful for selecting objects that you do not readily see in the view panels The Channel Box Layer Editor ERE The last part of the Status line deals with the area defined as the Channel Box Layer Editor These icons toggle through three available views in the area on the right side of the screen Clicking the first button displays the Attribute Editor on the right part of the screen with which you can edit Maya s object attributes Clicking the second turns on a window called Tool Options in that column giving y
44. om in and out of the Graph Editor to see the appropriate curves You will get hands on experience with the Graph Editor in Chapter 7 of this book The Script Editor You access the Script Editor see Figure 1 38 by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen at the end of the Command line or by choosing Window gt General Editors gt Script Editor Since almost everything in Maya is built on MEL every command you initiate generates some sort of MEL script or MEL argument A history of these com ments is available in the Script Editor You can use this window when you need to reference a command that was issued or an argument or a comment that was displayed in the Help line but was too long to read on one line Of course this window is also useful in scripting or creating macros of MEL commands to execute compound actions When you want to create a custom procedure you can copy and paste MEL from this window to form macros As a matter of fact the Script Editor is great to use to learn how to script in the first place By reading the command feedback and the MEL commands issued whenever you execute a button or tool you will start to pick up on how MEL works amp Script Editor Joes Ale Edt Scipt Hep autoKeytrame Ji Pasulte 3 7 selectKey clear selectKey clear selectKey add k nurbsSpherel_rotateX nurbsSpherel_rotateY nurbsSpherel_rotatez scaleKey iub false ts 1 tp 6 fs 1 fp 6 vs 0 04 v
45. on The gray bar on the Time Slider is known as the Current Time Indicator which you can click and drag back and forth in a scrubbing motion to move through time in your sequence Clicking the Time Slider will also position the current time to that point allowing you to jump around in your timeline The text box to the right of the Time Slider displays the current frame You can also use it to enter the frame you want to access Immediately next to the current time readout is a set of VCR or DVD playback controls that you can use to play your animation Below the Time Slider is the Range Slider which you can use to adjust the range of ani mation playback shown in your Time Slider The text boxes on either side of this slider give you readouts for the start and end frames of the scene and of the range selected to display in the Time Slider You can adjust this range by either typing in the text boxes or length Figure 1 13 ening or shortening the slider with the handles on either end of the Range Slider bar The Time Slider and the Range Slider Scrub bar Current frame Playback controls SR rele Fo pe ee HE Range bar handles Range start frame Range end frame Animation Preferences Scene start frame Scene end frame Auto Keyframe Character Set Selection menu 18 CHAPTER 1 THE Maya INTERFACE Figure 1 14 The Command line and the Help line Command line When you change the range you change only the viewable frame range o
46. on Plane Locator Annotation Empty Group Sets THE INTERFACE 9 amor i n tid ee pREBM E h2O R er OS BRIBES SOLACE Sms Blea O O za Figure 1 7 i The Status li The Status Line e Status line The Status line see Figure 1 7 contains some important icons The first item in the Status line is the menu set drop down menu Selecting a particular menu set changes the menu headings in the main menu bar as we discussed earlier You will notice immediately after the menu set drop down menu and intermittently through out the Status line black vertical line breaks with either a box or an arrow in the middle Clicking a break opens or closes sections of the Status line Scene File Icons The first section of tool icons in the Status line deals with file operations ICON NAME DESCRIPTION New Scene Creates a new blank scene file Open Scene Displays a window in which you can find and open any scene file you ve saved E EG Save Scene Displays a window in which you can specify a filename and location to save a new scene or if the current scene has already been saved and named save it to that location Selection Modes The second section is the Selection Mode field This drop down menu lets you use presets for selection masks Selection masks give you the opportunity to choose one kind of object but not another You can therefore select all the particles in the scene and none of the polygon models This is us
47. on screen Some find it inconvenient to have the Attribute Editor and Tool Settings windows open in this area That s why it s wise to set Maya to open these windows in their own separate windows To do this choose Window gt Settings Preferences gt Preferences The Prefer ences window is opened as in Figure 1 11 Under the Interface category on the left side of the window set the settings Open Attribute Editor and Open Tool Settings both to In Separate Window 16 CHAPTER 1 THE Maya INTERFACE Figure 1 11 The Preferences window Figure 1 12 The Layer Editor shows off a space battle scene organ ized for a better work flow Display Render Layers Options Help SpaceShip_B Nebuls_2 Nebula_1 Phaser_Fre Stars Wormbole Planet G amp Preferences Pin x Edit Help Categories Interface General Interface Preferences ULEEments Interface as He MenaSet D Display leru Set Dynamics Kinematics Show Menubar In Main Window ka In Panels NURBS Show Title Bar In Main Window Polygorss I In Script Editor Subdive Windows V Remember Size and Position Settings Command Line Hold Focus lb Open Atribute Editor In Seperate Window Dynamics C InMan Maya Window Files Projects Open Tool Settings In Seperate Window Modeling C In Main Maya Window Rendering Open Layer Editor In Separate Window aie In Man Maya Wind Snapping In Man Maya Window Sound Expression Editor Expressio
48. other Green The value of this attribute is blended with the value attribute of another attribute Nonkeyable Light Gray This attribute cannot be animated Editing Attribute Values in the Channel Box When an object is selected its name appears at the top of the Channel Box You can click the name and type a new name to rename the selected object The channels keyable attributes for that object are listed vertically below with the attribute name to the left and THE INTERFACE 15 the attribute value to the right in text boxes You can click in the text box to change the value through the keyboard You can also use a virtual slider in Maya by clicking a chan nel s name in the Channel Box and using the MM in a view panel to drag left or right to decrease or increase the value of the selected channel If you RM click an attribute name in the Channel Box you will see a context menu that gives you access to several common commands such as keyframing or locking and unlocking the selected channel or channels You can animate any channel here by RM clicking the attribute name and choosing Key Selected from the shortcut menu RM click ing the value itself displays a shortcut menu from which you can cut and paste values Another useful shortcut menu command is Break Connections which removes any connections for the selected attributes and returns the value to a normal white color in the Channel Box For example if you have keyframes on the Rotate X
49. ou access to options for the currently active tool Click ing the last icon restores the Channel Box Layer Editor showing you the most commonly animated attributes of an active object as well as the display and render layers in your scene ICON NAME DESCRIPTION Show Hide Attribute Editor Displays the Attribute Editor in this area Show Hide Tool Settings Displays the current tool s settings ose Show Hide Channel Box Layer Editor Displays the Channel Box and Layer Editor The Shelf The shelf shown in Figure 1 8 is an area where you keep icons for tools The icons are sep arated into tabs that define the functions for the tool icons in the shelf Select the appro priate tab in the shelf for what you re doing to access an array of common tool icons for Figure 1 8 that work flow You can populate a Custom tab with the tools you find most useful for The shelf your own work flow Genet Curves Suleces Poles Subdive Defomalin Arimstin Dynamics Rendeing PareEtfects Cath Fluids Fur Custom a ous OALA TR AEECER To customize the shelf so that your favorite tools are immediately accessible click the Menu icon J to open a menu to edit the shelf To simply add a menu item to the shelf press Ctrl Alt Shift while selecting the command from any main menu for Mac users press CTRL Option Shift That tool s icon will then appear on the current shelf To get rid of a shelf item MMB drag the icon to the Trash icon
50. p 2 514563 animation keys selectKey clear currentTine 4 CUSTOMIZING THE INTERFACE 45 The window is in two halves The top half is the Script Editor s feedback history and the bottom half is its Command line where new MEL commands can be issued By high lighting text in the upper window you can copy and paste the command back into the Command line Once you have some commands that are working for you you can add them to the shelf by highlighting the text and choosing File gt Save Selected To Shelf Using the Script Editor is also a good way to check on error messages that are too long to fully view in the Command line s feedback box If you see an error message pop up and something goes wrong open the Script Editor to see what sort of error s have scrolled by Customizing the Interface You ve probably noticed that we ve run into the same tools more than once as we ve gone through the aspects of the user interface so far Simply put for everything you need to do in Maya there are not only a few ways to do so but at least a couple of ways to access the tools to do so Most of Maya s commands and tools can be found in at least two places This may be confusing at first but you ll discover that in the long run it is most advantageous It allows for the greatest flexibility in individual work flow and in part accounts for Maya s being easily customized Once you are confident with your Maya know how you ll de
51. parate Window Modules lAppicetions Modeling C InMan Maya Window Rendering Open Layer Editor C In Separate Window Selection Snepping InMan Maya Window Sound Expression Editor Expression Editor w Timeline Undo Web Browser Save Actions Devices Mouse Scroll Wheel Enable Cancel Settings lets you change the default values of several tools and their general operation An essential aspect of this category is the Working Units section under the Settings category itself These options set the working parameters of your scene including the frame rate It s important to set the time units and frame rate properly Some impor tant subsections are as follows Files Projects initially specifies where Maya looks for your projects and files Maya keeps things organized as projects This setting allows you to specify where Maya always goes first when you try setting a project or loading saving a scene Timeline sets your playback rate for the scene Keep in mind this is not the same as setting the scene s frame rate but merely adjusts how fast Maya will attempt to playback your animation in the view panels Undo sets the size of the undo queue It is a good idea to set this to Infinite which will give you the opportunity to undo almost all your actions in any work ing session in case something does not work out quite as planned This will not use up that much more memory so it s quite worth it
52. plays Connected Nodes Notice the tabs running across the top of the Attribute Editor These tabs correspond to the object s node structure Each tab displays the attributes of another tab that is in some way connected to the sphere that is currently selected You can easily adjust any of the settings for any node that is linked to the selected object by just selecting its tab in the Attribute Editor For example if you click the nurbsSphere1 tab you will see the DAG node attributes A DAG node is the placement or transforms node of the object This node tells the object where it is and what its rotation and scale is Click the nurbsSphereShapel tab to see the shape node of the sphere The shape node contains the attributes that define the shape of the object Click the makeNurbsSphere tab to access to the creation node of the sphere THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 29 ttribute Editor nurbsSph mX Lst Seeded Focus Atiisutes Hep natefcbein pabeSphexShepe racetluabSpiesel ridhia 4 gt verstom ruSpeesel a Pes w Transom Attributes Teese pon oan paa sae ead Joao sceo flac foc Shee o0 fxe foo Rotate Orde wa z Reasi on poo pa F Irharts Tiarstoin The creation node displays attributes for how the object was made For example try changing the value for the Start Sweep attribute This will change the sweep of the sphere effectively slicing a chunk out of it like a cut open hollow
53. r Ul elements The Shelves window windows and scene objects is easy 48 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 42 The Hotkey Editor You can easily add any menu item or Toolbox item to your shelf To add an item from the Toolbox simply MMB drag its icon from the Toolbox into the appropriate shelf To add an item from a menu to the shelf hold down Ctrl Shift Alt while selecting the item from the menu To add an item a MEL command from the Script Editor highlight the text of the MEL command in the Script Editor and MMB drag it onto the shelf A MEL icon will be created that will run the command when you click it To remove an item from a Shelf MMB drag its icon to the Trash icon at the end of the shelf or choose Window gt Settings Preferences gt Shelves Hot Keys Hotkeys are keyboard shortcuts that can access almost any Maya tool or command You have already encountered quite a few so far in our exploration of the interface You can create even more through the Hotkey Editor shown in Figure 1 42 G i Hotkey Editor ja X Categories Commands Current Hotkeys T a NewScene Cilen Edit NewSceneOptions Deform Modly Ceste Display window List AIL Restore Defauts Help Edit Curves urtaces Assign New Hotkey Edit NURBS Polygons Key z Edit Pokgons Subdiv Surfaces oe a T Cei mii Animale Direction Press C Rekase Graph Editor Addto Recent Command List Skeleton Skin Bl
54. racter Help The main menu bar In Maya your exact menu choices depend on your current menu set By switching menu sets you change your menu choices and the set s corresponding toolset It may seem strange at first but it makes the best sense to divide the menu headings into what kind of task you are involved in The menu sets in Maya Complete are Animation Modeling Dynamics and Rendering Maya Unlimited adds the Cloth and Maya Live menu sets to those four The menu sets are available through the Status line which is discussed in the next section The first six items in the main menu are constant no matter what menu set you are in File Edit Modify Create Display and Window The last menu Help is also constantly displayed Their functions are as follows File Contains file operations from saving and opening to optimizing scene size and export import CAMERA MOVEMENT TERMINOLOGY Every kind of camera move has a different name The following lists the type of camera moves you have and what each one means Rotate Tumble view means to rotate the perspective camera hold down the Alt key and the left mouse button and then drag in the perspective window to rotate the view This action physically moves the camera around the subject and can only be effective in a perspective view panel e Move view means to move any camera hold down the Alt key and the middle mouse button and then drag in any scene window This will move
55. rganization in your scene You can select objects in your scene by selecting them in the Outliner To rename a node double click its Outliner entry and type the new name To relocate an object s entry in the Outliner to another location in the Outliner MM drag the node s entry to place in between two other node entries To parent one object under another MM drag the node onto the new parent To pull an object out of a group MM drag the node to a different location in the Outliner You can separate the Outliner into two independent scrolling displays which is useful when you have a large scene with a long Outliner list of nodes This separator bar is located at the bottom of the Outliner window simply click it and drag it up and down for a second Outliner display area This is also useful when you need to parent one node at the bottom of the list onto another node toward the top of the list The Hypergraph Using a flowchart or graph view the Hypergraph see Figure 1 24 also displays all the objects in your scene The Hypergraph however is a more detailed view of your nodes and how they connect with each other You can easily parent objects to each other through this window by MM dragging the node to be parented onto the node you wish to be the par ent just as in the Outliner And since you can have several objects in your scene indeed hundreds or more you will need to move around in the Hypergraph Navigating the D
56. rimitives gt Plane O This opens the options dialog box for creating a plane Set both the U Patches and V Patches sliders to 10 and click Create to place a plane on the grid G NURBS Plane Options Bele Edit Help Pivot Object C User Defined Axis C X cy v C Free C Active View Width 1 0000 Length 1 0000 oe Surface Degree 1 Linear 2 3 Cubic 7 v U Patches 10 al meee V Patches 10 a Apply Close 79 Select the Scale tool and scale the plane up to about the size of the grid Then select the Soft Modification tool g amp from the Tool Box and click the plane somewhere just off the WORKING IN VIEW PANELS 25 middle This will create an S and a special manipulator to allow you to move rotate or scale this soft selection Grab the cone handle and drag it up to move the soft selection up Notice the plane lifts up in that area only gradually falling off as if you were picking up a napkin The cube handle on the Soft Modification tool scales the soft selection and dragging on the circle rotates it Simply select another transformation tool to exit the Soft Modification tool You can always go back and select the S on the surface to edit the selection or even keyframe it for animation You can place as many soft selections as you need on a surface 26 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 20 The hotbox and its zones To scale the manipulator ha
57. ring Allows selection of rendering nodes and objects such as lights and cameras ir Select By Miscellaneous Allows selection of miscellaneous objects such as locators and dimensions Lock Selection Keeps selected objects locked in as selected ie Highlight Selection Mode Turns off the automatic display of components when selecting in selection mode THE INTERFACE 11 You can get a quick preview of what each icon is called by rolling your mouse over and hovering on each icon to see a pop up tooltip that gives the icon name and describes its function As a matter of fact this is a great way to get to know Maya s UI in addition to reading every word of this chapter of course Snapping Functions or Snaps The magnet icons are called snaps Snaps let you snap or lock your cursor or object to specific points in the scene You can snap to other objects to CVs or vertices and to grid intersections and more by toggling these icons You can also enable some snaps by holding down their respective hot keys While the respective key is pressed your manipulator cursor will turn from a square to a circle ICON NAME HOT KEY DESCRIPTION Snap To Grids x Lets you snap objects to inter sections of the view s grid 2 Snap To Curves Lets you snap objects along a curve Snap to Points v Lets you snap objects to object points such as CVs or vertices S Snap To View Planes Lets you snap objects to view planes a Make The Selected Thi
58. s has nothing to do with snap Object Live ping It lets you create objects such as curves directly on a surface Input and Output Connections The two icons to the right of all the filters list the input and output connections of an object and the third icon toggles on off construction history Objects in Maya can connect with each other for any variety of purposes from animation to rendering When an object is influenced by any attributes of another object or node in Maya that object has an input connection When a node s own attribute s is influencing another object that node has an output con nection Now these icons aren t used that often in a typical work flow but it s good to know what they are nonetheless You will see much more work with input and output connections throughout this book especially when rigging scenes for animation or creating shaders This third icon is for toggling on and off construction history Construction history keeps track of the nodes and attributes that help make up an object making it easier to edit those objects that have history ICON NAME DESCRIPTION Input Connections Lets you select and edit all the input connections for the selected object That is you can select and edit any object that directly influences the selected object D Output Connections Lets you select and edit the output connections or any objects the selection affects ig Construction History Toggles on off the co
59. sh up on how something works or is loaded We explored the interface navigation scene windows and window layouts before looking at the hotbox menus and shelves You should also have a good idea of how to use the Outliner and Hypergraph as well as the Chan nel Box and Attribute Editor We also explored the Timeline Command line Feedback line and Script Editor before discussing the interface cus tomization options available
60. ssigned to upon creation initialShadingGroup For more on hierarchies see Chapter 2 The lines connecting the nodes represent connections with the arrows displaying which node is feeding the other Here the creation nodes feed the shape nodes The DAG nodes are displayed separately on the left In the example in Figure 1 26 the nurbsCone1 node is connected into the nurbsSphere1 node This line represents a connection made in this example to lock their rotations together You will get more practice on this in Chapter 8 However as an exercise in how the Hypergraph works you will make this connection yourself as well to match Figure 1 26 Frame Hierarchy Frame Branch Frame Selection Scene Hierarchy Frame All Input and Output Selections UY Hypergraph Object Nodes THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 33 In this connections display if you MM drag one node on top of another Maya presents an option to connect attributes between the nodes The node you drag will connect into the node you drag it to In this case MM drag nurbsSpherel onto nurbsConel A pop up menu appears as shown in Figure 1 27 i Figure 1 25 4 Hypergraph Blok Ascene in the Edit View Bookmarks Graph Rendering Options Show Heb Hypergraph Ee EBES lt E i i Figure 1 26 4 Hypergraph CIE Detailed connec tions are displayed Edit View Bookmarks A Beet c s J and edited in the Hypergraph display Figure 1 27
61. t Driver Lod Visibilty Translate Translate X Ghosting Control Fravwiste Y 3 j h 1 Translate Z ca Rolate Ghost Range Stat Rotate Order Ghost Range End 8 Scale Ghost Driver 8 Shea c Rotate Pivot Trandate Rotate Pivot Translate Translate Y a Scale Pivot Translate Z 2 Scale Pivot Translate Rotate Axis Rotate Order Trans Minus Rolate Pivot form Matrix Select Hande mie Pivot nubsSpherel lt gt nurbsConel Clear All Remove Close When you want to edit connections on attributes or channels already connected simply click the one object s attribute to show you to what channel it is connected on the other object Maya will highlight the other connected channel when you select the first object s attributes in one of the panes To disconnect a connection through the Connection Editor click the channel and simply click the other object s highlighted channel s Connections are the cornerstone of animation and a significant reason for animation being so open ended in Maya You can create any kind of relationship between almost any attributes of almost any object to create highly complex interconnected animations Filtering the Display of Connections Since there can be so many attributes and connections even between just two objects you can filter the view in the Connection Editor to show or hide attribute types entirely You can access view filters through the window s menu bar Choose Left Displa
62. tail Texture shaded mode 6 displays the actual image textures that have been applied to the object as long as Hardware Texturing is already enabled In the view panel choose Shading gt Hardware Texturing and make sure it is checked on Lighted mode 7 is a hardware preview of the object or objects as they are lit in the scene Its accuracy depends on your graphics hardware Here s a summary KEY FUNCTION 4 Toggles into wireframe mode 5 Toggles into shaded mode 6 Toggles into textured mode 7 Toggles into lighted mode It is handy to toggle between modes 4 and 5 to get a good feel for the weight and shape of your objects Furthermore lighted mode mode 7 is useful for spotting proper light ing direction and object highlights when you first begin lighting a scene It helps to see the direction of lights within your scene without rendering frames all the time The number of lights you see in the modeling window depends on your computer s graphics and overall capabilities You can display a higher textured view of your models by enabling High Quality Ren dering view In your view panel choose Shading gt High Quality Rendering This will give you a good idea of the texturing and lighting in your scene at the expense of speed Display Shortcuts In the view panel s View menu you will find two handy UI features Frame All hot key A and Frame Selection hot key F and a third slightly homely cousin Look At Selection Frame
63. tes and add animation and expressions without having to open the Attribute Editor which is the window that lists all the attributes of an object more on this later in this chapter In addition you can easily see input connections on an object s attributes through color coding This way you can tell if an object is animated constrained to another object has an expression controlling it is dynamic or so on Figure 1 10 shows the Channel Box with the Layer Editor just below it The selected object shown in the Channel Box here is a polygon sphere with several connection types displayed as different colors Attribute Display in the Channel Box The following list shows the colors and their connections for the attributes in the Chan nel Box INPUT CONNECTION COLOR DESCRIPTION Keyframed Orange A keyframe is set for the attribute at some point in the Timeline Connected to another Yellow This attribute shares the same value as another attribute or is dynamic attribute on another object or has dynamic forces affecting it Expression Control Purple A written expression controls the value of this attribute Constraint Blue The attribute s value is constrained to the value of an attribute of another object Locked Gray You cannot change the value without first unlock ing the attribute Muted Animation Brown There is animation on the attribute but it is currently muted so it will not play back until it is unmuted Blended with an
64. th vertical New values from 1 to 3 and a Rotate Y curve with values from 1 to 360 degrees seeing the detail of the curves in relation to each other is difficult since you would need to zoom out in the Graph Editor to see values as high as 360 Figure 1 36 shows an animation in which the curves values stretch up high In Figure 1 37 we have normalized the curve view so that the full range of values fits between 1 and 1 in the Curve Editor giving you the opportu nity to compare timings between curves with very different value ranges To normalize the view click the Normalize icon shown in Figure 1 35 To return to your regular view click Denormaalize Figure 1 36 amp D dito Different value Edt view Select Curves Keys Tangents Lst show Heb 0 ranges can make it See nif SASSO SANOFI o datea compare timings in animation curves Figure 1 37 amp Gra to Normalizing the a ot Se aes an Taat ee Ba SS we view makes it easier Cepsa zozas enne tecoma timings Transita A Translate y Frans Aatto Aatate Y Rotate 44 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 38 The Script Editor Keep in mind that normalizing does not change the animation in the scene It only allows you to see all the curves and their relative motions Normalizing your view is par ticularly helpful in busy scenes when you want to adjust both the smallest scale of values along side the largest scale of values without having to constantly zo
65. their original state Be careful not to reset someone else s settings though if you are on a multiuser computer Let s take a look at what elements make up the default Maya screen which is shown in Figure 1 1 The reason we specifically mentioned the default Maya screen is that Maya has a highly customizable interface that you can tailor to the way you like to work As you become experienced with Maya you will begin customizing the interface for yourself easily As an inexperienced user it s best to leave everything at the default to have a level playing field In addition for those systems that have multiple displays Maya 7 now fully supports using a secondary display Although previous versions of Maya had trouble displaying cer tain windows or context menus Maya 7 has full functionality on two displays as long as your video card is capable Keep in mind that both displays should be set to the same reso lution and refresh rate for best OpenGL performance Experienced users see the Customizing the Interface section later in this chapter THE INTERFACE 3 Figure 1 1 Tool Box The Maya 7 interface Shelves Status line Main menu bar Title bar Scene menu bar View Compass xl Edt Wocry Create Cspsy Window EdttCirves Sufaes SdothlRBS Poligons EdttPoljacns Poigonts Sba Surtsces Hep Mois gt m l Seer RRB 2 eRe SO akes Solace g wg wslprl ERE Gensel Curves Siriaas Popyre Cudier Cifoeneton Aninyios Jsnarics
66. to the right of the shelf You can create multiple shelves stack them on top of each other and access them by clicking the Shelf Tab icon E above the Menu icon to the left of the shelf As with the icons on the Status line moving your mouse pointer over the icons in the shelf displays a tooltip that gives you the name and a description of that icon It s a good rule of thumb to know where the tools in the shelf are found in the menu so if you are just starting out in Maya try using the menus first before getting used to the shelf It may be a bit more work but it will give you a better understanding of how Maya is laid out The Tool Box The Tool Box shown in Figure 1 9 displays the most commonly used tools Select Lasso Select Translate or Move Rotate Scale Universal Manipulator Soft Modification and Show Manipulator These tools are most often accessed with hot keys By default the lay out is simple The most used tools Select Move Rotate and Scale are mapped to the keys Q W E and R as shown in the following list Keep in mind that Maya s hot keys are case sensitive which means that all commands listed here in the book are lowercase though they may be printed as uppercase When an upper case hot key is needed it is listed as Shift key ICON NAME HOT KEY DESCRIPTION k Select q Lets you select objects A Lasso Select Allows for a free form selection using a lasso marquee KI Translate Move w Moves s
67. tor popheret LOA secret notes about your boss around the studio List Selected Focus Attributes Heb PSpheret pSphereShanel polySpherel infiatShacingGroup lambert Multiple Selections cee e l banstorm G Presets The Attribute Editor can display only one object Transfonm Attributes at a time If you have multiple objects selected es al you can toggle through them through the Sede Ta Attribute Editor s menu by choosing Selected Pees E E and then choosing the object from the menu Sea E a Pivots The Outliner The Outliner and Hypergraph covered next 2 ae use two approaches to the same end organiza Extra Attributes tion Maya is based on node structure meaning Moter pSpheret 7 every object in Maya is represented by a node A A ee node is a collection of attributes that define how the object looks to make a long story short Some nodes interconnect to form more complex objects or to give you the best control over their Sekt _Loat nutuer CopT cwe shape or behavior As you grow your scene you will create more and more nodes and you will need a way to organize your objects Furthermore you can group objects and place objects into hierarchies By creating groups you can control objects as a single unit in which all the members of the group move rotate and scale as one Additionally with parenting you place one object the child under the
68. ts view to how objects are displayed in the panels Essentially these panels are where you create and manipulate your 3D scenes Figure 1 1 shows the panels with a grid displayed This grid represents the ground axis of your 3D space and is useful for orienting yourself especially in the perspective views The Workspace When you first launch Maya you will be presented with a full screen perspective view as shown in Figure 1 2 This view is essentially the view from a camera and shows real world depth through the simulation of perspective You use this window to see your scene in three dimensions You can also move around a perspective view in real time to get a sense of proportion and depth a Seats Capes Winsow Limh Teng noor Ton PAMER Hur Heo 1h a i zo neeli e2eh re anl ses A ie fe pher ee EE El Pereiecs twin 1st tur uwin a eae i ai a a r i ha al arae a a a E THE INTERFACE 5 Figure 1 3 g Lightng Show Panel The four panel layout View Shadi Show Panels Press the spacebar while in the panel to switch from the full screen perspective to the four panel layout originally shown in Figure 1 1 The four panel layout shows the per spective view as well as three orthographic views top front and side each from a differ ent side Pressing the spacebar again returns your active view panel to full screen mode Orthographic views are usually used for modeling and scene layout because they con
69. velop your own ideas about how to use all the other user interface methods to customize your work flow You ll want to return to this section when you re ready to do some serious customization User Preferences To customize Maya you use the Preferences window choose Window gt Settings Prefer ences as shown in Figure 1 39 The Preferences window is separated into categories that define aspects of the program Interface options to change the main user interface UI Elements lets you change which parts of the UI are displayed You ve seen in this chapter how you can access these preferences through marking menus but you also have access here Help lets you specify whether you want tooltip pop up windows when you mouse over icons or buttons as well as how you view the HTML documentation that comes with Maya Display options to specify how objects are displayed in the workspace 46 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE Figure 1 39 The Preferences window amp Preferences mX Edt Help Categories Interface General Interface Preferences Ul Elements Interface pie MenuSet Dynamce w Kinematics Show Menubar F In Main Window rehab In Panels NURBS Show Title Bar In Main Window Polygorss 7 In Script Editor Subdivs Windows V Remember Size and Position Settings Command Line Hold Focus Aramaion Open Atinbute Editor In Separate Window Dynamics C InMan Maya Window Files Projects Open Tool Settings In Se
70. ws so it s best to start with the plain and simple and work your way up to the faster work flows such as marking menus Menu Sets As we discussed earlier menu sets are organized according to function These menu sets are Animation Modeling Dynamics and Rendering all of which are available in Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited However with Maya Unlimited you are given access to the Cloth and Maya Live menu sets as well Each menu set gives you access to the com mands associated with its broader function set The Modeling menu set for example dis plays in the main menu bar all the menu headers that correspond to modeling functions such as the Edit Polygons and Surfaces menus The menu sets drop down shown in Figure 1 21 is the first thing on the Status line Animation lz Changing between menu sets is simpler if you use the default hot keys shown here Animation Modeling KEY FUNCTION Dynamics 4 Rendering F2 Animation menu set Live F3 Modeling menu set F4 Dynamics menu set F5 Rendering menu set 28 CHAPTER 1 THE MAYA INTERFACE This wraps up the interactive parts of Maya s UI You will find all this information a bit much at first but as soon as you begin using Maya you will find it becomes second nature quickly You might want to skip ahead to the next chapter to begin working a simple scene in Maya to apply what you ve learned here and then come back for a description of the windows you will be using or you c
71. y Selecting an object or an object s channel in the list you isolate only those curves you want to see on the right The Graph Editor displays these animation curves as value vs time with value running vertically and time horizontally Keyframes are represented as points on the curves that can be freely moved to adjust timing and or value This is where most animators spend their time animating Move Nearest Picked Key tool nsert Keys tool Add Keys tool Lattice Deform Keys Tangent Types Tangent Behavior Time Snap Frame Playback Range Value Snap Frame All Normalize Value text box Keyframe R Denormalize Time text box Channels Attribute s value Time THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 43 To move a keyframe in the Graph Editor click to select or drag a marquee around the keys to select them and MM drag the keys as needed You can also select the entire curve or curves and move them with the MM as well Using the snap icons shown in Figure 1 35 you can snap your keyframes to whole numbers in time or value This is useful for snap ping keys to whole frames Navigation in the Graph Editor is the same as the Alt mouse combinations you are familiar with by now You can pan and zoom in this window with AlttMM and Alt RM respectively New to Maya 7 is the ability to adjust the Graph Editor s curve display with Normalize Vly or Denormalize functions For example when you have a translate X curve wi
72. y or Right Display menu headings to toggle the connections you want to display CHANNEL FILTERS DESCRIPTION Readable Displays all the attributes of an object regardless of whether they can be keyframed Outputs Only Shows attributes that can only be connected to other nodes Inputs Only Presents attributes that can only be connected into Non Keyable Displays attributes that you cannot create connections with or for Connected Only Hidden Shows attributes that already have connections Displays hidden attributes for that node THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 37 Multilister As the Outliner and Hypergraph list the objects in the scene the Multilister and Hyper shade see the next section windows list the render nodes of your scene textures lights cameras and so on In Maya terminology adding textures and such to objects is called shading called surfacing in Lightwave speak for example And as with the Outliner and Hypergraph these windows approach presenting the shaders of your scenes differently to accommodate the best of options in your work flow You will have a small taste of shading in the next chapter The Multilister accessed through Window gt Rendering Editors gt Multilister see Fig ure 1 30 lays out not just the shaders of your scene but also lights cameras and shaders and their textures in a table format All the shaders in the scene are displayed under their respective tabs in this window and are represented by n
73. ys the icons to create several render nodes from materials such as Lam bert and Blinn to procedural textures such as ramps and fractal noise To create a node simply click its icon in the Create panel and it will appear in the node display and work area for immediate editing The Create icons are separated into types of render nodes from surfaces to utility nodes You will have plenty of exposure to these nodes and how to best edit them in Chapter 12 The bar at the top of this pane lets you select the kind of node you want to create you can switch between Maya shading nodes and mental ray nodes Since mental ray is a fully integrated plugin you will need to make sure it is loaded before you see the mental ray option in this panel We ll discuss plugins later in this chapter in the Customizing Maya section THE MAIN MAYA WINDOWS 39 Show Bottom Tabs Only Show Top And Bottom Tabs Show Top Tabs Only Figure 1 31 i Hypershade OK The Hypershade Fle Edit view Create Tabs Graph Window Options Hep S e eclan laeclr stow a View As Icons Dana lons Materials Textures Utiities Lights Cameras Shading Groups Bake Sets Projects a View As List w Create Maya Nodes EE kd Surface Arisolropic Icon Size Qn e Hait Tube Shade g Ge Sort By Name rN l W Lambert a Sort By Type Sort By Time P Loperod Shader ol Sort In Reverse E ne lla Order Phong Render node d

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