Learning Maya 7: Set up and Animation — Part 1 | AWN

Learning Maya 7: Set up and Animation — Part 1

In the latest excerpt from Learning Maya 7 | Foundation,by Marc-André Guindon and Cathy McGinnis, we begin a two-part series on set-up and animation.

By Marc-André Guindon and Marc-André Guindon | Friday, July 7, 2006 at 12:00 am

Posted In | Magazines: VFXWorld

All images from Learning Maya 7 | Foundation by Marc-André Guindon and Cathy McGinnis. Reprinted with permission.

In this lesson, you will learn how to freeze transformations, sculpt surfaces by painting with Artisan, use different brush operations, create blend shapes, add custom attributes, create locators and use Set Driven Keys.

Start Sculpting the Surface
You will now test the Artisan Sculpt Tool. You will use the tool on a sphere to get a feel for it. Once you are more familiar with the tool, you will apply brush strokes to the orb geometry.

1. Make a test sphere

Create a polygonal primitive sphere.
Set its construction history for both Subdivisions Axis and Subdivisions Height to 60.
To better see the effect of your painting in the viewport, assign a new Phong material to the sphere by selecting Lighting/Shading > Assign New Material > Phong.

2. Open the Sculpt Polygons Tool

With the pSphere selected, select Edit Polygons > Sculpt Polygons Tool >

Tool Setting window.

This opens the

Tool Settings

window which includes every Artisan sculpting option.

Click on the Reset Tool button to make sure that you are starting with Artisan's default settings.
Set the following attributes:
Under Brush:
Radius (U) to 0.2.
Under Sculpt Parameters:
Max Displacement to 0.1.
Place the Tool Settings window to the right of the sphere.