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

In this final lesson from Learning Maya 7, 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.

Sculpting the Orb
You will now use the Artisan Sculpt Tool to create a crashed looking orb. You will first group and duplicate the orb in order to have two copies to use later for the blend shape deformer. Feel free to use your previously saved orb or continue with 10-texturedOrb.ma.

1. Before starting the orb set up
It is recommended to establish a good scaling for the orb and freeze its transformations before establishing a final set up. Since the modeling and texturing construction history is no longer required, make sure to also delete all the history.
• Select all the orb geometry.

• Press Ctrl+g to group it together.

• Rename the group orbGroup.

• Scale the orbGroup to 0.4 in all directions.

• Still with the orbGroup selected, select Modify > Freeze Transformations.

When freezing transformations, all the translation, rotation and scaling attributes for the selected nodes and their children are frozen and set to their default values.

• Select Edit > Delete All by Type > History.

2. Duplicate the orb
Later in this lesson, you will be using the blend shape deformer, which will require one untouched orb and another one to deform.
• Select the group orbGroup.

• Press Ctrl+d to Duplicate the orb.

• Move the second orbGroup next to the original one.

• Rename the new orbGroup to orbCrashGroup.