Maya Shortcut Keys

List of shortcut keys
Shortcut Command How useful(?)
Snapping Operations
Autodesk Maya
c Snap to curves + –
x Snap to grids + –
v Snap to points + –
j Move, Rotate, Scale Tool snapping + –
Shft+J Move, Rotate, Scale Tool relative snapping + –
Painting Operations
Autodesk Maya
Alt+f Flood with the current value + –
Alt+a Turn Show Wireframe on/off + –
Alt+c Turn Color Feedback on/off + –
Alt+r Toggle Reflection on/off + –
u+LMB Artisan Paint Operation marking menu + –
b Modify upper brush radius + –
Shft+B Modify lower brush radius + –
Ctrl+b Edit Paint Effects template brush settings + –
i Modify Artisan brush Stamp Depth + –
m Modify Max Displacement (Of Sculpt Surfaces and Sculpt Polygons Tool) + –
n Modify Value + –
/ Switch to pick colour mode + –
' Select cluster mode (Of Paint Weights Tool ) + –
8 Open Paint Effects panel + –
o+LMB Poly Brush Tool marking menu + –
o+MMB Poly UV Tool marking menu + –
Tumble, Track or Dolly
Autodesk Maya
Alt+LMB Tumble Tool + –
Alt+MMB Track Tool + –
Alt+RMB Dolly Tool + –
Display
Autodesk Maya
4 Shading > Wireframe + –
5 Shaded display + –
6 Shaded and Textured display + –
7 Lighting > Use All Lights + –
d+LMB Display Quality marking menu + –
1 Low Quality Display setting + –
2 Medium Quality Display setting + –
3 High Quality Display setting + –
Displaying Objects (show, hide)
Autodesk Maya
Ctrl+h Display > Hide > Hide Selection + –
Ctrl+Shft+H Display > Show > Show Last Hidden + –
Alt+h Display > Hide > Hide Unselected Objects + –
Shft+I Show > Isolate Select > View Selected + –
Tool Operations
Autodesk Maya
Return Complete current tool + –
~ Abort current tool + –
Insert Enter tool Edit mode + –
Shft menu+Q Select Tool + –
Shft menu+Q+LMB Component marking + –
Alt+q Select tool + –
Alt+q+LMB Polygon marking menu + –
q+LMB Mask marking menu + –
w Move tool + –
w+LMB Move tool marking menu + –
e Rotate tool + –
e+LMB Rotate tool marking menu + –
r Scale tool + –
r+LMB Scale tool marking menu + –
t Show manipulator tool + –
y Select last used tool (Excluding Select, Move, Rotate and Scale) + –
j Snap Move, Rotate, Scale tool + –
= or + Increase manipulator size + –
- Decrease manipulator size + –
Animation Operations
Autodesk Maya
s Animate > Set key + –
i Insert Keys tool (for graph editor) + –
Shft+S+LMB Keyframe marking menu + –
Shft+S+MMB Tangent marking menu + –
Shft+E Set key for Rotate + –
Shft+R Ser key for Scale + –
Shft+W Set key for Translate + –
Alt+s Cycle handle stiky state (for IK handles) + –
Playback Control
Autodesk Maya
Alt+. Move forward one frame + –
Alt+, Move backward one frame + –
. Go to Next key + –
, Go to previous key + –
Alt+v Turn Playback on/off + –
Alt+Shft+v Go to Min Frame + –
Hotbox Display
Autodesk Maya
Space Hotbox + –
Alt+m Default Hotbox Style + –
Window and View Operations
Autodesk Maya
Crtl+a Toogle Attribute Editor and Channel Box + –
a Frame all in active panel + –
a+LMB History Operations marking menu + –
Shft+A Frame All in all views + –
f Frame selected in active panel + –
Shft+F Frame selected in all views + –
] Redo view change + –
[ Undo view change + –
` Set keyboard focus to command line + –
Alt+` Set keyboard focus to numeric input line + –
F1 Help > Contents and Search + –
Moving Selected Objects
Autodesk Maya
Alt+Up arrow Move up one pixel + –
Alt+Down arrow Move down one pixel + –
Alt+Left arrow Move left one pixel + –
Alt+Right arrow Move right one pixel + –
Traversing the Hierarchy
Autodesk Maya
Up arrow Walk up the current hierarchy + –
Down arrow Walk down current hierarchy + –
Left arrow Walk left current hierarchy + –
Right arrow Walk right current hierarchy + –
Modeling Operations
Autodesk Maya
Crtl+Up arrow Display coarser Sub-d level + –
Crtl+Down arrow Select/refine Sub-d component + –
Crtl+F9 Convert poly selection to Vertices + –
Crtl+F10 Convert poly selction to Edges + –
Crtl+F11 Covert poly selection to Faces + –
Crtl+F12 Convert poly selction to UVs + –
File Operations
Autodesk Maya
Ctrl+n File > New Scene + –
Ctrl+o File > Open Scene + –
Ctrl+s File > Save Scene + –
Ctrl+q File > Exit + –
Selecting Menus
Autodesk Maya
Ctrl+m Show/Hide main menu bar + –
Shft+m Show/Hide panel menu bar + –
h+LMB Menu Set marking menu + –
F2 Show Animationmenu set + –
F3 Show Modeling menu set + –
F4 Show Dynamics menu set + –
F5 Show Rendering menu set + –
Edit Operations
Autodesk Maya
z or Ctrl+z Edit > Undo + –
Shft+z Edit > Redo + –
g Edit > Repeat + –
Shft+G Repeat command at mouse position + –
Ctrl+d Edit > Duplicate + –
Shft+D Edit > Duplicate with Transform + –
Crtl+g Edit > Group + –
p Edit > Parent + –
Shft+P Edit > Unparent + –
Crtl+x Edit > Cut + –
Crtl+c Edit > Copy + –
Ctrl+v Edit > Paste + –
Selecting Objects and Components
Autodesk Maya
F8 Switching between Objevt and Component Editing + –
F9 Select Polygon and Subdivision Surface Vertices + –
F10 Select Polygon and Subdivision Surface Edges + –
F11 Select Polygon and Subdivision Surface Faces + –
F12 Select Polygon and Subdivision Surface UVs + –
Ctrl+i Select next intermediate onject + –
Alt+F9 Select Polygon Vertex/Faces + –
Grow polygon selection region + –

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MAYA Interface 3

The Lighting menu has an option for using existing lights in the scene (hotkey: 7) with this panel's Shaded mode. Normally, Shaded mode is automatically illuminated (with "default lights") in a crude way that serves to get some light in the scene for viewing or rendering a new model.
Use the Show menu to selectively hide all entities of a certain type. For example, you often use it to hide cameras and lights, just to clean up the view so that you can focus on objects. At the bottom of this menu is an option to hide the grid, which is useful when you want to simplify the view.
Under the Panels menu, use the top three options to select what the panel is seeing in a 3D view.
The next three options let you change the entire layout of the panels. The Panel item displays options for switching the selected panel to some other window, such as a rendered view or the Graph Editor. Next is Layouts, which determines how the view area is split into windows. Below it is Saved Layouts, which is similar to the Quick Layout buttons below the toolbox.
Hotkeys
Hotkeys are also known as keyboard shortcuts. There are several default hotkeys. You can change these hotkeys and assign new ones using the Hotkey editor by

• Selecting Window>Settings/Preferences>Hotkeys.
• Select the category and command,
• In the assign new Hotkey area, specify the key combination .You can see a list of which keys are unmapped by clicking List All.

Fig1-9 Hotkey Editor
Viewing hotkey lists
Click List All to view a list of mapped and unmapped keys.

Fig1-10 Hotkeys reference

The Hotbox

Maya's Hotbox is a utility to get quickly to the menus that are available in the menu bar. It pops up when you press and hold spacebar. Once you customize the Hotbox, it provides quick access to the menus you use, hiding menus that are irrelevant to your work. It has five zones with special options. Five zones are North, South, East, West and center.
To see the entire Hotbox, click in the Hotbox Controls section on the right-hand side of the window, and drag your cursor over the Show All option. You might want to come back to this same Hotbox option and disable the Cloth and Live menus if you won't be using them.

Fig1-11 Hotbox
In order to disable the Hotbox, Select window>Settings/Preferences > Hotkeys. The Hotkey Editor window opens. From the editor window select Hotbox in the list of Categories. Select Show Hotbox from the list of commands, Select space from current Hotkeys, and then click on the Remove button. This turns off the hotkey functionality. Click the Save button and then the close button.

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MAYA Interface 2

Shelf
Shelf contains different tools and commands. The shelf can be customized for one's specific needs. It is used to organize commonly used functions and tools into groups. You can create different shelves for different functions like modeling, animation, texturing etc with the required tools for each function.

Fig1-4 Shelf
Tool Box
Maya Tool Box contains common tools as well as Layout buttons for changing views and layouts. The first one is the select tool. As the name explains itself, while this option is selected, you can use the mouse pointer to click over a particular object to select it. You can also click and drag over a number of objects to select them all together. The lasso tool is also used for selection in a way that you can draw a free hand border around the objects to be selected.
The move, rotate and scale tools are used for transforming objects in Maya. The soft modification tool is used to select the sub-object elements and modify them by moving, rotating or scaling in a way that the neighboring sub-objects also get affected by this deformation with the effect being an inverse of distance from the primary selected sub-objects.

Fig1-5 Toolbox
The last selected tool section shows the last used tool for easy access.
The single perspective view button lets you view the workspace as a single large view from a single perspective. The Four views can be used to view the workspace in four sections with each section containing the three orthographic views top, side and front and a perspective view respectively.
The other combination options below these tools are used to divide the workspace into different section in such a way that one section contains the view of the scene and other contains an animation or rendering editor so that you can edit the attributes and watch the results simultaneously.
Workspace
The Workspace displays by default in a perspective window or panel. The purpose of using workspace is to view your scene. You can display various editors and arrange the workspace panels in different layouts. The workspace can be divided into sections to accommodate the orthographic and perspective views of the scenes as well as the different editors for animation, texturing and rendering etc.
Time Slider and Range Slider
The Two Sliders are for controlling the frames in your animation. The Time Slider includes the playback buttons and the current time indicator. The Range slider includes start and end times and allows animators to focus on a specific part of the animation.

Fig1-6 Time slider and Range slider
Command Line
The command Line lets you enter the MEL (Maya embedded Language) commands to perform various functions. The MEL is a powerful feature of Maya that provides us with a vast flexibility and a scope to exploit the Maya tools beyond the user interface.
The left side is where you can type MEL commands and the right half displays system responses, error messages, and warnings. For a longer series of commands, use the Script Editor. The right side can also show echoes of all commands if you turn on Script> Echo All Commands from the Script Editor.

Fig1-7 Maya Command Line

Help Line

Like several other applications, you can look at the help line for descriptions, instructions, and other useful information. While a tool is selected, the helpline gives out a brief description for "how to" and "what for".
Panel Menus
Every view panel you work in has a common set of menus at the top. The panel menu that appears in a 3d scene, shown here with lighting menu selected. If the panel menus do not appear, you can enable them in Window> Settings/Preferences> Preferences, and then click the Interface entry under the Categories list on the left side of the dialog box.
Under the View menu, you'll see options for Look at Selected, Frame Selected, and Frame All. These options are helpful for finding an item and focusing on it.
Under the Shading menu, the first two entries are Wireframe (hotkey: 4) and Smooth Shade All (hotkey: 5).An important option to note is the NURBS detail mode. When you're working with NURBS, you can display them in three detail levels: low (hotkey: 1), medium (hotkey: 2), or high (hotkey: 3). These hotkeys work only with NURBS.

Fig1-8 Panel Menu

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MAYA Interface 1

Maya user interface looks very complex at first. However, this large number of functions and the scope to add more functions to the user interface provides the real flexibility to the program. Other than the functions common for all the various aspects of a 3d graphics software application, there are set of functions dedicated to a more specific task like modeling, texturing, animation, rendering etc. The default Maya user interface can be divided into the following sections.

• Main Menu Bar
• Status Line
• Shelf
• Tool Box
• Workspace
• Panel Menus
• Time Slider
• Range Slider
• Command Line
• Help Line
• Channel box
• Layer editor

Fig 1-1  Maya User Interface

The  Menu Bar

There are different menu sets in Maya that correspond to the more specific aspects of the application like Animation, Modeling, Dynamics, Rendering, cloth and Maya Live. The cloth and Maya Live are available with Maya unlimited version. These Menu sets can also be accessed using the hot keys F2, F3, F4 etc.
The menus in the menu sets behave similarly as a normal window menu. Other than the menu sets, there are common menus like File, Edit etc.
Any Menu item that has double lines over it can be dragged of the menu bar to create a min-toolbox so that the commonly used tools can float on the desktop.
You can hide or display different UI elements from the Menu item Display-> UI Elements.

Fig1-2 Menu Bar
The Status Line
The commands available on the status line are mostly use for the purpose of modeling. On the extreme left we have mode selector that helps us to change modes between modeling, animation, rendering or dynamics etc.
A collapser is a clickable switch for hiding a section of the Status Line. Collapsers can be used to hide or display sections of the status line and adjust the number of available functions at an instance.

Fig1-3 Status Line
Selection Mask lets us select the masking preset so that certain types of objects can be ignored while making selections in a 3d panel. The icons to the right of the list box show the masking selections that have been made. The selection mask list box acts as a preset for the buttons in the Select by Type area farther to the right. These buttons correspond to Hierarchy, Object and Component mode. These functions can be used to select entire objects and mask the selection to pick only particular type of objects such as surfaces, lines, cameras etc.
Component Selection mode enables you to adjust subcomponents of an object, such as letting you select a certain portion of an object such as a box or a sphere and deform it. The hierarchy selection mode is used to select only the parent or only the children objects, this comes in handy when setting up object hierarchies.
A selection can be locked by pressing the Lock Selection button. This helps in avoiding accidentally de-selection of an object. Next is Highlight Selection Mode button, a toggle to highlight the selected object in the display.
We use snap tools to ease modeling and modifying objects by making it seem as though an object or part of an object is drawn toward another.
You use the Operations List buttons to view upstream and downstream connections and enable or disable them. Next is Construction History toggle and Maya uses this  to record construction. History is not related to the Undo operation. Having Construction History enabled can make files large and slow to load, however, so you might opt to turn it off sometimes.
Next we have the Quick Render, Interactive Photorealistic Renderer(IPR) and Render Globals button. Quick Render and Interactive Photorealistic Renderer is used to render a scene at full quality. IPR rendering is slower, but when finished, it can update the rendering in nearly real time. Next is the Render Globals button, which controls the size of the rendering and many other parameters.
The last we have Numeric Input tool. It can operate in different types of modes. It is used to type in a prefix or common letters and select all the objects you want quickly, rename the currently selected object, and enter an exact value for the current highlighted transform.

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Creating a Robot

In this chapter, we are going to summarize the knowledge learnt from the previous chapters. We shall be taking up an exercise to model a Robot in Maya. The process is simple and is designed to help a beginner to understand the concepts of modeling in Maya.
Our Robot shall be based on a set of primitives. We shall go through the usage of transform tools and few other modeling techniques.
To start, open a new scene in Maya using File>New Scene.
Select Modeling Menu set from the status line or press F3 as the keyboard shortcut.
We shall start the modeling by creating a polygon cylinder primitive by accessing Create>Polygon Primitives>Cylinder.

Fig 10-1
Now we need to switch to the component mode in order to make changes to the primitive cylinder that we just made.
Press F8 to go to the component mode and select the point option.

Fig 10-2 Component Mode options
Select the top vertices as shown yellow in the given figure. Use the Scale transform tool and using the middle yellow cube, click and drag the mouse to increase the scale.

Fig 10-3 Editing the primitive in component mode
Let us call this object that we modeled, “limb unit”. We shall be using this object by making copies of it and resizing them and then fixing at the required locations. This unit will form the limbs of our Robot. You can use the Move Transform tool, and Rotate Transform tool to position the object in the scene.
If you are already in component mode, press F8 to come out of it. First of all start by creating a copy of the existing object by pressing keyboard shortcut Ctrl D. Use the Move transform tool to move the new created object to a side.
Use the Scale tool to downsize the newly created limb unit and then use the Move tool and rotate tool to get both of the objects in the shape, orientation and position as shown in the given figure.

Fig 10_4
Use the Copy, move, scale and rotate tools to make 4 more limb units out of the original one and resize, position and orient them to form the 3 fingers and 1 thumb of the Robot.
Using the similar techniques explained above, this time create a polygon sphere primitive and use its copies to form the joints of the limbs as shown in the given figure.

Fig 10-5
Next, we need to make another similar limb structure as shown in Fig10-5 in order to form the other arm. You can rotate both the arms to be a bit inclined outwards from the elbows. Match the orientation and position of the two arms with the one shown in the following figure.

Fig 10-6
Now, that we have both the arms of the Robot ready, we are not far from developing the complete humanoid. We can continue developing the legs of the robot in exactly the similar manner that we have used till now. After completing the legs, the robot will somewhat look like in the figure 10-7. However, at this point of time you may want to use your own creativity and try different looks for the Robot.

Fig 10-7
In the next step we shall use few more spheres and a cylinder to make the torso of the robot as shown in the next figure.

Fig 10-8
The process had been pretty simple so far. We have been using just two basic polygon primitives i.e., cylinder and a sphere. Now, lets make use of another primitive i.e., Torus. Create a Torus from the create Menu. Resize and position it to form the elements of the Neck. You can go a step ahead by using the cylinder primitives to form the camera like structure that are substitute for the eyes in our Robot. A real small radius cylinders can be used to form something that can act as an antenna receptor. The final modeled structure of the Robot is shown in this rendered image.

Fig 10-9 The complete model
Now, we shall texture this Robot. Lets start by opening the Hypershade , Windows>Rendering Editors>Hypershade. Select the Blinn material and name it to Robotexture.
Create a Blinn Material - Create (on the Hypershade menu)...>Materials...>...Blinn, or use the side bar. Double-click the new material to open the attribute editor. Change the material name to Robo_Blinn or so. Click the box next to the color slider, a new option window opens. Choose Normal and click File to assign a bitmap as the material color.

Fig 10-11
You can select any metal texture image for the purpose. I have included one that we are going to use now with the accompanying source file for this tutorial.
Repeat the procedure to assign the same file to the specular color. Now, on the perspective view shading menu choose smooth shade all and turn on Hardware texturing.
Select the robot, shift select the Material in the Hypershade, right-click-it and "assign material to selection". Your robot is now textured.
Now, before we render out our robot, we need to setup a simple light rig for the purpose.
Create a point light Create>Lights>Point Light, open the attribute editor (control-a), expand the shadows options and turn depth map shadows on. Press 7 to view the lighting in the view port, duplicate the light 2 or 3 times and move them around the robot until you get the desired look.
Open the render globals window from Window>Rendering Editors>Render Globals. Select the anti aliasing quality to production. Ready to go, Render out the scene.

Fig 10-12 The Robot

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Rendering

The process of creating an image or sequence of images from a scene. During rendering, Maya generates a two-dimensional image, or series of images, from a specific view of a three-dimensional scene, and saves it as an image file.
You can control the properties of rendered image files according to your post-production or presentation requirements.

Maya software Renderer

Maya's software renderer is an advanced, multi-threaded renderer. It is based on a rendering technology that is built directly into Maya's dependency graph architecture, which means its feature nodes can be intimately connected with any other feature in Maya. It is a hybrid renderer, offering true raytracing plus the speed advantages of a scan-line renderer.
The Maya software renderer supports all of the various entity types found within Maya including particles, various geometry and paint effects  and fluid effects. It also has a robust API for the addition of customer-programmed effects.
Rendering an Animation
When you're ready to render a finished animation, open the Render Globals button on the Status Line, just to the right of the IPR Render button. You can also activate it with Hotbox >Window > Rendering Editors > Render Globals.
Render Global Settings

Fig 9-1 Render Globals
You can select the Maya Software (or standard) renderer, the Maya Hardware renderer, Mental Ray, or the new Maya Vector renderer from Render Global Settings window. In all renderers, however, the information in the Common tab remains nearly the same. The settings for Start Frame, End Frame, and By Frame are activated if you choose a movie file output format or a filename numbering extension for your saved files. A Frame Padding setting of 3 or 4 works for almost all situations. This setting determines how many digits are added to the end of the filename, so setting Frame Padding to 4, for example, results in files being numbered as filename.0001.TGA, filename.0002.TGA, and so forth.
The default animation render length is set to frames 1 through 10—a short animation.
The Resolution section is where you set the image size; you can use the Presets list box to choose from a range of resolutions. Most of your tests will be at a lower resolution, typically 320x240 or 640x480.
The second tab changes its name depending on what renderer you've selected. If the only renderer options you see are Maya's software and hardware renderers. The Anti-aliasing Quality setting has a big impact on rendering speed and image quality. Images that are poorly antialiased have a jagged appearance, particularly visible where different-colored objects overlap or in areas of high contrast.For tests, you'd select the Preview Quality setting in the Presets list box; for final rendering, use the Production Quality setting, and select the Gaussian or Quadratic B Spline Filter in the Multi-pixel Filtering section for smoother-looking images.

Render the scene using raytracing

The Raytracing section is where you configure raytraced reflections, refractions, or shadows to appear in the rendering; it's disabled by default, so you need to expand that section to enable the options. Raytracing can also slow your rendering time dramatically. The numbers for the Reflections, Refractions, and Shadows attributes refer to the depth of raytracing—the number of bounces allowed for a ray. As the ray strikes reflective or refractive objects, it ricochets through the scene. If the number of bounces reaches the limit set here, no further raytracing is done, and the pixel is colored based on the contribution of the previous bounces added to black.

Rendering a Still

When you want to render a test frame, you simply activate the panel of the view you want, and click Hotbox > Render > Render Current Frame. The settings in the Render Global Settings window determine the resolution, ant aliasing, and raytracing, but only one frame renders, and it's saved as a temporary .iff (or whatever image format you've chosen as the default) file in the Images directory of your project. When the rendering is finished, you can save the rendered image to a permanent file by right-clicking on the Render View window and choosing File | Save Image in the Save dialog box that opens.
For images you have rendered and saved, you can view them with Maya's FCheck utility.
To cancel the render
Press Esc.
Rendering Engines in Maya
Maya 5 has added new rendering engines called Mental Ray and the Vector renderer. You can access these new renderers plus the Maya software and hardware renderers in the Render Global Settings window. With these new rendering options, Maya can quickly produce cartoon or web-like media with the Vector renderer and photorealistic renders using Global Illumination or HDRI in Mental Ray.

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Dynamics and Special Effects 1

Dynamics

Dynamics in Maya can be applied to objects using rigid-body or soft-body settings. With simple dynamics, also known as rigid-body dynamics. You can use NURBS or polygonal objects in dynamics simulations, but you must consider the objects' surface directions.Objects that interact can be active or passive. Passive objects, although they can be keyframe-animated, remain stationary; they can cause collisions , but aren't affected by them. Objects that are going to react to collisions must be set to active. You can switch an active object to passive and vice versa by setting the Active attribute in the Channel Box to on or off. You can also use Maya's Dynamics mode to simulate reality in how objects behave—for example, animating the way bowling pins react when struck with a bowling ball.
Soft Body Dynamics
Soft-body dynamics are handled in Maya by creating a set of particles that surround the object and influence it. When these particles collide with something or are moved by fields, the connected geometry moves with them. This is ideal for creating effects that mimic cloth and organic flexible materials. To get a realistic response, you must add goals or springs. Goals give the object a target shape to move toward, like a rubber squeeze toy that un-squeezes back to its original shape. Alternatively, springs add a lattice of tensioned springs throughout the geometry, like adding a box spring of rigidity to the object.

Creating a Soft-Body System

Any polygonal or NURBS object can be made into a soft body .You usually make an object soft with Bodies > Create Soft Body> option box, and then determine whether the object simply becomes soft or is duplicated to keep the original object as a goal. Normally, you choose the latter method so that the soft body tries to configure itself back to the shape of the original object. In either case, the object is then soft, but doesn't collide with other objects in the same manner as with rigid-body dynamics.
Soft /Rigid Bodies > Create Soft Body >
Sets the options when creating a soft body.
Make Soft

Converts the object to a soft body.

Adding Springs

When the object must be more resilient than a soft cloth, you can add the Springs attribute to give the object a kind of support structure. This attribute creates a virtual spring object between each particle. Wire Walk Length setting.  parameter connects springs not only between a particle and its neighbor, but also the neighbor's neighbor, and so forth. The default setting is 2.
Active and Passive Bodies
Objects that interact can be active or passive. Passive objects, although they can be keyframe-animated, remain stationary; they can cause collisions but aren't affected by them. Objects that are going to react to collisions must be set to active. You can switch an active object to passive and vice versa by setting the Active attribute in the Channel Box to on or off.
You can set values for Initial Velocity and Initial Spin for active objects .

Fig8-1 Dynamics settings for active rigid bodies
Fields
Fields are localized or global forces that act on objects. You can simulate the motion of natural forces with dynamics fields.Fields have their own icons in a scene, so it's easier to select them if you want to animate a field or change its attributes. These fields are included with Maya.
Stand-alone fields influence objects from a stationary or moving position in the workspace. It's not owned by geometry.
Object Field are owned by an object and exert influence from the object. You can add fields to polygons, Nurbs  curves or surfaces, particle objects, lattices or curves on the surface.
Volume Fields You can select a volume to define the region in space in which particles are affected.
The following  fields are included with Maya:

• Air   An air field simulates the effects of moving air. The objects you connect to the air field accelerate or decelerate so their velocities match that of the air as the animation plays. A "push" type of field, it comes with presets for Wind, Wake, and Fan.
• Drag a field that slows the momentum over time of objects within its reach. A drag field exerts a friction or braking force on an object that's animated with dynamic motion.
• Gravity  The most commonly used field, it causes objects to move and accelerate in a given direction. You can limit its reach to create localized gravity fields. It simulates the Earth's gravitational force.
• Newton   Similar to gravity, but operates in a spherical manner. A newton field pulls object towards it. Objects are attracted to Newton fields more strongly depending on their mass and their distance from the Newton field.
• Radial   A radial field pushes objects away or pulls them toward itself, like a magnet. Like the Newton field, but it doesn't take mass into account. It can be set to diminish with distance, as with the Gravity and Air fields, and it can be set to push or pull.
• Turbulence  Makes the object's motion or deformations more random. Turbulence is usually applied to soft bodies or particles to create the impression of wind or waves.
• Uniform  A field that pushes objects in a specified direction. Like the Gravity field, but without the progressive acceleration that Gravity includes.
• Vortex    A kind of rotating gravity, the Vortex field pulls objects in a spiraling motion that's centered on the field's icon. Often used to create galaxies, whirlpools, or tornados with particle systems.
• Volume Axis   A complex field that lets you specify a volume shape (cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, or torus) and then create effects that work within the shape. You can use the Volume axis field to create effects such as particles flowing around obstacles ,solar flares, mushroom clouds, explosions, tornadoes, and rocket exhaust.

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Basics of Animation 2

Keyframe Animation
Keyframe animation is the standard animation method. In this method, you set keys for an object's extreme positions and let the computer fill in the in-between motion. A key is an anchor point for a particular attribute at a designated time. When the animation reaches that specified time, the object's attribute will be at the value you set. As you set keys, you specify the time at which those changes in the attribute's value take place.
To set keys with the auto keyframe method, you click the Auto Keyframe button in the Range Slider (it turns red to indicate that it's enabled). With auto keyframing, you can animate quickly by simply dragging the Time Slider to a given frame and then changing an attribute.

Nonlinear Animation

Nonlinear animation  is a more advanced method of animation. Unlike keyframing, nonlinear animation is completely independent of time. You blend and layer animation sequences—called clips—to set up the motion for objects. You can also use this method to explore variations in parts of the animation without losing your previous work or affecting other parts of the animation. For example-you can make the walking part of the animation a clip and then adjust the leg motion without affecting the way the rest of the character moves.
Graph Editor
The Graph Editor is a helpful tool for tweaking values for keys you have set. It gives you a visual representation—a curved line—of the attributes that are animated. The animation time goes from left to right, and any keyed variable appears as a line that ramps up or down to indicate its value over time. It can help you visualize how things are changing and how fast. You can pan and zoom this panel like any other.

Fig7-5 Graph Editor
To use it as a free-floating window, simply open it from the Hotbox (Window >Animation Editors> Graph Editor).
Graph  Editor's Components

Menu bar

The Graph Editor menu bar contains tools and operations for manipulating animation curves and keys with in the graph view of the Graph editor. The Edit menu is similar to the one in text editors or word processors, except that you're working with keys instead of text.

Fig 7-6 Menu Bar

The Edit Menu

The menu items appear under Edit menu behave in a similar fashion to the main Edit menu in the modeling view.

The View Menu

This menu controls which components are visible, and therefore editable, in the graph view of the Graph Editor.

The Select Menu

These options control which component of an animation curve are available for selection and editing.

The Curves Menu

The Curves menu gives you control over how the curves are set up with the keys in your scene.

The Keys menu

This menu includes Tangents which causes the manipulation of an in or out tangent handle.

The Tangents Menu

This describes the entry and exit of curve segments from a key.

The List Menu

This menu Loads the objects.

Read more »

Basics of Animation 1

In animation, there's more to animate than simple movement. Animation requires thinking about motion, timing, and smoothness of action. Almost anything in Maya with a number attached to it can be animated. Maya simplifies your work in creating the essence of animation---timing and motion. With maya , you can animate virtually anything you can imagine, no matter  how surreal.
Animation Control and Interface
With Maya's animation controls, you choose how to key and play an animation. Two components of Maya's user interface are specific to animation: the Range Slider and the Time Slider. You can also quickly access and edit animation preferences from the animation controls area.

Fig 7-1 Animation controls
Between the Range slider and the Animation Preferences button are the current character control features and the Auto Key button.
Time Slider
The Time Slider is a vital part of the animation interface in Maya. The Time Slider Controls the Playback range, keys and  breakdowns with in the playback range.

Fig7-2 Time slider
Click in the Time Slider area and drag left and right to "scrub" the animation back and forward in time.

Key Ticks

Key Ticks are red marks in the Time Slider where you set a key for the selected object. Breakdowns are a special type of key .The visibility of Key Ticks can be turned off or on in the Preference window. The current Time indicator is a gray block on the Time Slider. You can drag it to move forward and backward in your animation.

Current Time Field

A black  line indicates the current time field. When keys have been set for the currently selected object, thin vertical red lines appear in the Time Slider area to indicate the times for those keys.

Range Slider

The Range Slider controls the playback range reflected in the Time Slider. The Range Slider sets the total length of the animation in frames. You can also use the Range Slider to temporarily limit the range of playback and set the playback start and end frames.

Fig 7-3 Range slider
You can toggle whether the Range Slider is Displayed or hidden by selecting Display>UI elements>Range Slider.
Animation Start Time  sets the start time of the animation.
Animation End Time  sets the end  time of the animation.
Playback Start Time   This shows the current start  time for the playback range. You can change it by entering a new start time.
Playback End Time    This shows the current end time for the playback range. You can change it by entering a new end frame.
Range Slider Bar     This lets you control the playback range of your animation up to the limits of the Animation start/end settings.
you use the Preferences dialog box to change values for the animation timeline and playback. You can also set the total time for your animation, the size of the timeline , and other related features.

Fig7-4 Preferences dialog box

Terms in Animation

Frame Rate

Frame rate is the first aspect of animation. By default, Maya sets your animation to Film, which plays at 24fps.You use 30fps in the United States and 25fps in other countries.

Range

The range of an animation determines the total length in frames. Then, multiply the animation's length in seconds by the frame rate .For e.g in this case you are using 24fps and animation length is of 2seconds.
24fps  X   2secs =48 Frames

Setting Keys

You can set a Key by selecting Animate >Set Key. The attributes set by this menu item depend on the set Key option settings.

Animation Types

There are following  types to animate your scene.

Path Animation

In this method, you create a NURBS-based curve and then attach an object to it in your scene. The object then follows the curved path to simulate motion. You can choose at which time the object is positioned at any point along the path, so the object can reverse itself, pause, or oscillate, if you want. The object automatically rotates from side to side as the curve changes directions. If the object is geometry, it can also be automatically deformed to follow the contours of the curve.
Select Animate>Motion paths>Attach to Motion path
To Animate an object along a surface
Choose create >Nurbs Primitives > Plane to create a Nurbs plane.
Select Modify>Transformation Tools>Proportional Modification Tool to introduce contours on the plane.
Select Modify  > Make Live ,then draw a curve on the plane.
Create an object to animate along the path , and shift -click on the curve on surface to select it.
Select Animate>Motion Paths >Attach to Motion Path option window. Ensure that  follow is on ,and set the up direction to normal so that the object will stay normal to the surface.
Click play to see your animation.
Flow Path Object Function
The Flow Path Object function creates a lattice around an object .
Select Animate>Motion paths>Flow Path Object
Keyframe Animation
Keyframe animation is the standard animation method. In this method, you set keys for an object's extreme positions and let the computer fill in the in-between motion. A key is an anchor point for a particular attribute at a designated time. When the animation reaches that specified time, the object's attribute will be at the value you set. As you set keys, you specify the time at which those changes in the attribute's value take place.
To set keys with the auto keyframe method, you click the Auto Keyframe button in the Range Slider (it turns red to indicate that it's enabled). With auto keyframing, you can animate quickly by simply dragging the Time Slider to a given frame and then changing an attribute.

Nonlinear Animation

Nonlinear animation  is a more advanced method of animation. Unlike keyframing, nonlinear animation is completely independent of time. You blend and layer animation sequences—called clips—to set up the motion for objects. You can also use this method to explore variations in parts of the animation without losing your previous work or affecting other parts of the animation. For example-you can make the walking part of the animation a clip and then adjust the leg motion without affecting the way the rest of the character moves.
Graph Editor
The Graph Editor is a helpful tool for tweaking values for keys you have set. It gives you a visual representation—a curved line—of the attributes that are animated. The animation time goes from left to right, and any keyed variable appears as a line that ramps up or down to indicate its value over time. It can help you visualize how things are changing and how fast. You can pan and zoom this panel like any other.

Fig7-5 Graph Editor
To use it as a free-floating window, simply open it from the Hotbox (Window >Animation Editors> Graph Editor).
Graph  Editor's Components

Menu bar

The Graph Editor menu bar contains tools and operations for manipulating animation curves and keys with in the graph view of the Graph editor. The Edit menu is similar to the one in text editors or word processors, except that you're working with keys instead of text.

Fig 7-6 Menu Bar

The Edit Menu

The menu items appear under Edit menu behave in a similar fashion to the main Edit menu in the modeling view.

The View Menu

This menu controls which components are visible, and therefore editable, in the graph view of the Graph Editor.

The Select Menu

These options control which component of an animation curve are available for selection and editing.

The Curves Menu

The Curves menu gives you control over how the curves are set up with the keys in your scene.

The Keys menu

This menu includes Tangents which causes the manipulation of an in or out tangent handle.

The Tangents Menu

This describes the entry and exit of curve segments from a key.

The List Menu

This menu Loads the objects.
Toolbar
The toolbar  gives you quick access to functions for modifying animation curves and keys.

Fig 7-7 Toolbar
Buffer curves Use Buffer Curve snapshot and swap Buffer curves to compare changes to the current animation curve with its previous shape.
Break Tangents Allows manipulation of the in and out tangent handles individually so you can edit the curve segment entering the key without affecting its opposite handle.
Unify Tangents  causes the manipulation of an in or out tangent handle to affect its opposite handle equally. It retains the relative position of the tangent handles even after tangents are individually adjusted.
Lock Tangent Weight specifies that when you move a tangent ,only its angle can be changed.
Free Tangent Weight specifies that when you move a tangent ,only its angle can be changed. This allows the weight of a tangent to be adjusted as well as the angle.
Clamped  tangent creates an animation curve that has the characteristics of linear and spline curves. The key's tangents will be spline unless the value of two adjacent keys are very close.
Step tangent creates an animation curve whose out tangent is a flat curve.
Flat Sets the in and out tangents of the key to be horizontal.

The Dope Sheet

The Dope Sheet is another animation editor in Maya that is similar to the Graph  Editor.  Instead of displaying curves, the Dope Sheet displays key times as colored rectangles and lets you edit event timing in blocks of keyframes and synchronize motion to a sound file.

To open the Dope Sheet

Select Window > Animation Editors > Dope Sheet

Fig7-8 Dope sheet editor

To Place the Dope Sheet in a View

Select the view.
Select Panels > Panel > Dope Sheet.

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Cameras and Lighting 3

Light Attributes
Intensity
A light's Intensity attribute controls the brightness of the source. You can set it to any value, positive or negative. If the intensity is raised, more light is emitted from the source . Usually, you set the value between 0 and 1 for a medium-intensity fill light. For sunlight effects, you might go as high as 1.5 or so. With Decay Rate added , the light's Intensity value might need to be set much higher because the strength can fall off rapidly with distance. All Maya's default lights have no decay rate  and illuminate objects at full intensity, regardless of distance.You can also use negative values for the Intensity attribute. By setting a negative value, the light actually "absorbs" other light. If you have an area of the scene that you want to be pitch-black but have light illuminating it, you can use a light with a negative Intensity setting to help eliminate the problem.

Illuminates by Default

By default, lights automatically illuminate all objects in the scene. When you disable the Illuminates by Default check box, the light is removed from the default Light Set and affects only objects it's linked to. Light linking is handled in the Relationship Editor for lights (Window > Relationship Editors > Light Linking). In this dialog box, you can select a light and then choose which objects it illuminates .

Fig 6_6 Relationship Editor

Emit Diffuse and Emit Specular

The Emit Diffuse and Emit Specular attributes are not available with Ambient lights. Emit Diffuse is particularly useful for creating soft fill lights to simulate light reflection; you need to disable the Emit Specular attribute so that no highlights are generated. Emit Specular can also be useful for lighting metal objects (such as chrome logos) when you want to add specular highlights to the metal without brightening other areas.

Color

Each light can have its own color assigned, and modifying the color of a light follows the same procedure and uses the same Color Chooser dialog box you see when modifying color for a material. You can also map textures to a light's color, causing the light to project the texture like a slide projector. Or if you animate the texture variables or use a movie as the source, the light acts as a movie projector.

Decay Rate

Specific to Spot, Area, and Point lights, this attribute determines the rate at which the light intensity fades (decreases) at a distance. Several types of decay are available in the Attribute Editor's Decay Rate list box.
No Decay  The light does not diminish with distance; it reaches all objects in the scene.
Linear The intensity of emitted light decreases at a constant (linear) rate as distance from the light source increases. Linear decay is the most frequently used type because it's easier to control; you don't need to raise the light's Intensity attribute to enormously high values to compensate.
Quadratic A physically accurate mode of decay, also known as inverse square. Quadratic decay is determined by proportionally decreasing the light intensity along the square of the distance. Light intensity generally must be raised substantially with this mode.
Cubic  Decreases the intensity of light faster than the rate seen in reality. Cubic Decay is evaluated by a decrease in intensity that's relatively proportional to the cube of the distance. The lit area falls off almost instantly with Cubic Decay. This type of decay can be used to create a lit area that seems as though it's burning within surrounding darkness.
IPR rendering is a helpful tool for interactively adjusting light decay; it's hard to visualize otherwise.

Shadows

Shadows in Maya can be turned on or off. The default setting for lights is to have the shadow set to off. Surfaces illuminated by the non-shadow–casting light are still shaded by it, but won't cast shadows onto other surfaces. That means the part of an object that's exposed to light is illuminated, and the object's opposite side fades to a darker tone. An object's shadow can identify its size, position, and orientation in space, so by adding shadows to your scene, you can more clearly define the spatial relationships between objects. Without shadows in a scene, the render looks flat and lacks depth. Shadows add depth and realism to the scene, especially indoor scenes.
Shadows tend to wash each other out as you add more shadow-casting lights that illuminate the same area. With Maya, you have a lot of control over the way shadows are cast in a scene, which can help you reduce render times, add contrast to your renderings, and create a better-looking overall result. There are two types of shadows in Maya: depth map and ray traced shadows.
Depth Map Shadows
Depth map shadows are produced through an image map. The depth map is calculated immediately before the actual render takes place. Using calculations for the distance of light to a specific point on an object, depth information is stored in the map and then passed on to the rendering engine to produce a "simulated" shadow effect. The depth map tells the rendering engine which areas of the scene are illuminated by light
Depth map shadows usually give good results without having to worry about a huge increase in render time. They are usually slightly softer, too, which is more natural than harsh-edged ray traced shadows. If you want, you can achieve almost the same level of sharpness as ray traced shadows. Depth map shadows work in a unique way for Point, Ambient, and Area lights: Because a square bitmap is required to create the shadow, and these light types cast light in all directions, they must create multiple maps to cover the area. Maya uses cubic shadow maps for these light types—that is, six depth maps are cast for the six sides of a cube. This process requires six times the RAM, which could be a concern for large map sizes.
The main drawback to depth map shadows is that they don't take materials' transparency into account.

Depth Map Attributes

Shadow Color Applicable to both types of shadows in Maya. Changing the Shadow Color attribute changes the shadow's color seen in the render. It's often a good idea to bring shadow colors a little brighter than pure black, to add to the simulation of diffuse light reflection. You can also map an image file or a texture to the Shadow Color, just as you would map an image to a material.
Dmap Resolution Specifies the resolution (accuracy) of a depth map shadow. The maps are square, so if you set this attribute to 1024, the shadow map is produced as a 1024x1024 pixel image. When setting Dmap Resolutions, try to use values that are powers of 4, such as 128, 256, 512, and 1024. These numbers are easier for Maya to calculate with and can result in faster render times. At very large sizes (4096+), RAM consumption can become a problem. Increasing the resolution also reduces the jagged effect, but creates a sharper shadow edge.
Dmap Filter Size Directly affects the edges of a depth map shadow by making them softer. This attribute, combined with the Dmap Resolution, can smoothly and gradually soften a shadow's edge. Be aware that increasing this value increases render times. Use values between 1 and 3, unless you truly need to go higher.
Dmap Bias When depth map shadow–casting lights are casting long shadows, they can sometimes separate from the objects. This setting allows you to adjust the placement of the shadows, and you usually need to adjust it only for very low light angles (such as a setting sun).

Raytraced Shadows

Raytraced shadows are generally slower to compute, but offer the advantage of lower RAM requirements, soft shadows, and properly cast shadows for objects that have transparency, such as windows. To make raytraced shadows appear in your renderings, you must go to the Render Global Settings window and enable raytracing. Like the Area light, the Spot, Directional, Ambient, and Point lights can cast area shadows. In this case, the soft shadows are created by having the light cast from a circular source. Non–Point light sources create soft shadows (known as penumbral shadows) because a variable amount of the non–Point light source is blocked as an object passes in front of the light.
Transparent objects can affect shadows if the shadows are raytraced. However, the color values do not affect shadow color. To cast colored raytraced shadows, you must set or map the transparency color for the material.

Raytraced Shadow Attributes

Light Radius  Sets the imaginary size of the circular Area light effect.
Shadow Rays Controls the sampling of soft shadows. If you use a low number, the shadows look speckled, but render faster. This is similar to the way that Dmap Filter Size works with depth map shadows, in that increasing the Shadow Rays setting reduces the shadow's graininess.
Ray Depth Limit This setting enables you to limit the number of times a light bounces from reflective and refractive materials. You can raise this value if you want to allow raytraced light rays to bounce around the scene before eventually creating a shadow.

Area Light Shadows

If you set Area lights to cast raytraced shadows, the shadows are calculated from the rectangular Area light icon, based on its size. The results are similar to circular Area lights. As with circular Area lights, more Shadow Rays soften the shadow, but result in substantially longer render times.

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Cameras and Lighting 2

Lighting
Lighting design in Maya is similar, but not completely identical, to how it's done in the real world. You have several types of lights to choose from in Maya; each one has unique attributes and benefits, and you'll learn what each type is best used for. When you know how to work with lights, scenes that once rendered dull can take on a new radiance. Most of the time you're trying to get a realistic effect with your lights, and Maya's virtual lights do not work in a realistic way—in particular, beams of light within Maya do not reflect off surfaces. In the real world, even a single light source can fully illuminate a room because its beams reflect from surfaces to reach areas under desks and shelves .In Maya, however, those areas are completely dark, so one solution is to simulate diffuse reflection by adding many low-level lights.
Creatively, lighting defines the scene's mood. If you're trying to create a chilling, spooky effect, you'll probably want dim lighting in the scene. For a feeling of suspense, you might decide to have flickering lights. Lighting in a scene creates the shadows, influences colors, and directly affects the appearance of materials. The results of a well-lit scene are worth the effort and time. Skillful lighting creates contrast between objects, enhances the colors in your scene, and gives you more control over the scene's shading.
Light Types
Several different lights are available in Maya 5, each with its own properties and uses: Ambient, Directional, Point, Spot, Area, and Volume lights.

Fig 6-3 Types of Lights

Ambient Light

The Ambient light type creates light on all surfaces. It is in no way comparable to the real-world ambient light that creates the diffuse reflection of surfaces. Instead, it's a kind of auto-self-illumination that brightens all parts of your scene equally. For this reason, this light type should be used sparingly or for special cases only, or it can give your scene a washed-out or flat appearance. Maya's Ambient lights can also cast shadows. In essence, these features allow you to use Ambient lights as though they were Point lights, with a variable "shine everywhere" setting. This setting is called Ambient Shade, and the light behaves more like a Point light as this value approaches 1.
Directional Light
The Directional light is the default light used when you create a new scene. This light is good for emulating rays of light coming from the sun and does a fine job of lighting the entire scene instead of just targeted areas.
Point Light
Unlike the Directional light, which has light rays that are parallel to each other, a Point light casts rays of light evenly in every direction from a point. Point lights are sometimes used for simulating omni directional light sources, such as light bulbs.
Spot Light
The Spot light's area of illumination is defined by a cone, and within the cone's specified range, light is cast evenly. Starting from an infinitely small point in space, a Spot light spreads as it moves farther from the origin. Spot lights are useful when you're trying to create beams of light from, for example, a prison watch tower, a lighthouse, and so forth.

Fig 6-4 Attribute Editor

Area Light

With Area lights, you can have a source of light that doesn't just come from an infinitely small point in space. The Area light emits rays from a rectangular area in space and can be scaled larger or smaller. This makes an Area light a great choice when you're looking for realistic lighting, but be forewarned that it takes longer to render. By using an Area light, you'll get shadows that soften as they're cast farther from the shadow-casting object. Maya uses only two-dimensional flat Area lights that are rectangular.
Volume Light
Volume lights have a visible range of influence that allows you to see exactly where the light dies out. By default, the light intensity falls off linearly from the light's center point to the visible outer boundary. This type of light is ideal for interior lighting, because you usually want lights to fade with distance if they're primary sources of light.

Fig 6-5 Light Attributes

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Cameras and Lighting 1

mWhen Maya starts, you have four cameras by default: front, side, top and perspective. Three of them are orthographic—flat, non-perspective views—and have visible icons you can use to translate or rotate the camera. The icon for the perspective camera is, by default, invisible. These four cameras are utility views that assist you in modeling and laying out your scene. When you're ready to pick the final rendered viewpoint of your scene, you should create a scene camera. If you're shooting a series of stills, you can create many cameras, one for each shot.
The camera placement determines exactly what will be seen and is used to frame specific portions of the scene, in the same way illustrators or photographers use composition to frame certain elements in their paintings and drawings. Other key variables for cameras are focal length, rotation (orientation), and angle of view. Focal length is directly linked to angle of view; if one goes up, the other goes down. With angle of view, as the angle of the lens widens, you must move the camera closer to the subject to keep it at the same relative size in the frame. The wider the angle, the higher the value for the Angle of View setting.
Creating Cameras
Create > Cameras > Camera
There are three types of perspective cameras in Maya. As with Maya's lights, you can change a camera to any other camera type in the Attribute Editor.
Camera
With this camera type, you see only the camera icon. In general, because this camera freely rotates and loses track of its "up" vector, you should use it only when you're linking the camera to another object for movement and animation, or when you're placing a camera in one fixed spot.

Camera and Aim

This camera includes a camera target and an aim handle for adjusting the camera target. In addition, this camera automatically stays level in relation to the horizon, so it's the one you'll use most often. You can make this camera roll if you want, but by default, it stays level except at extreme straight-up or straight-down orientations.

Camera, Aim and Up

This camera type includes two handles: the aim handle, described for Camera and Aim, and an up handle for banking (leveling) the camera. This camera type is useful when you want to bank the camera during your animation.

Fig6-1 Camera types
Camera Settings
These are the key settings for cameras under the Camera Attributes section:

Fig 6_2  Camera Attributes
Controls In this drop-down list, you can quickly select the camera type you want.
Angle of View and Focal Length Controls the amount of perspective exaggeration. Raising the Angle of View attribute lowers the Focal Length attribute.
Camera Scale You can change the camera size in relation to your scene, which affects scene objects when you render. Camera Scale is like a multiplier for the Angle of View setting. For example, decreasing Camera Scale to .5 halves the camera's view area, but makes objects in the scene look twice as large.
Clip Planes Only objects located within the values specified for the camera's clip planes appear in the scene. If distant objects are not showing up in your scene, raise the Far Clip Plane value. If nearby objects seem to be appearing in cross-section or not appearing at all, lower the Near Clip Plane value.
Depth of Field Enable distance blur with this attribute. It can be a render-intensive effect, but yields a nice cinematic result because objects close to and far away from the focus point are progressively blurred.
Background Color The background fill color for images rendered from this camera; you can also use this section of the Attribute Editor to add an image or shader as the background.
Orthographic Views Switches the camera to an orthographic view. You can create perspective cameras, rotate them into position, and then set them to orthographic to get a "flat" view for projecting textures onto an object.
Animating the Camera
When you first begin animating the camera, it helps to follow the rules of videography, such as avoiding jarring camera motions—rapid pans, zooms, or rotations of the camera. In addition, you should usually give the camera the impression of having mass. The virtual camera, by default, starts and stops moving instantly, which looks unrealistic and abrupt to viewers. To avoid this problem, adjust the tangents for the camera position's start and stop keys in the Graph Editor so that motion begins and ends gradually . Do the same for the camera's aim point keys and any other animated camera attributes

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Texturing and Shading 3

Shading Map Attributes
Represents a color map you apply to surfaces after they are rendered.The shading map material is useful for creating non-photorealistic effects(cartoon shading)or to highlight threshold values in a rendered image.

Shading Map Color

Defines the color of the material. The default is gray.

Shader

You can map any material to the shading Map material.
Surfaces Shader Attributes
A wrapper node, meaning you can connect any keyable attribute to this shading group and then connect the shading group to an object.

Out color

The color of the material .The default is black.

Out Transparency

The transparency of the material. The default is black.

Out Glow Color

The glow color of the material. The default is black, without glow.
Use Background
You use it to set the object's Matte channel to 1 or 0, or create a matte for shadows and reflections on the surface. This material applies the same color as the objects in the background image to stand -in-surfaces.

Attributes

Adjust the Use Background material's to the light ,shadows, reflections and the geometry placement in the scene.
Texture Mapping
Normally, a texture refers to applying a 2D image around a 3D surface, rather like wallpapering a curvy surface. Because a 2D image can be stretched, wrapped, and projected onto a surface in many different ways.

Mapping Coordinates

Mapping coordinates, also known as UV coordinates. For NURBS, parametric mapping is inherent to the surface and this is typically what's used. Parametric mapping is the 0 to 1 coordinate system that NURBS uses to map textures across its surfaces. It makes sure that the textures stay mapped to the surface like a decal, even if the geometry is deformed.
For polygon surfaces, mapping is normally applied by projecting 2D maps across the 3D surface in one of several ways: planar, cylindrical, spherical, and a special method called automatic mapping.

Fig 5-4 Mapping projection
Procedural Maps
In addition to applying an image or movie to a surface, Maya has other texture types called procedural textures. Many patterns, such as bricks, tiles, and gradients, are so repetitive that they can easily be represented by an equation. By using special forms of seemingly random values, many natural effects can be simulated mathematically: Marble, leather, water, granite, and many other complex and random textures are included with Maya as procedurals.
Maya's procedural textures come in two varieties: 2D and 3D. You can think of the 2D procedurals as a calculated form of a bitmap.When 3D procedurals are applied, however, they exist throughout 3D space, and object surfaces define where you see the texture. It's like carving the object from a block of the material.Procedural textures have several benefits. Because they are formula based, their parameters can be adjusted to instantly synthesize all kinds of different effects.

2D Procedurals

Maya's 2D procedurals can be divided into two categories: regular patterns and noise patterns. The regular patterns include Grid, Checker, Bulge, Cloth, and Ramp. With these patterns, you can create tiles, bricks, and many other man-made repeating effects. Noise patterns include Fractal, Mountain, Noise, and Water. These psuedorandom textures are excellent for creating the complex "dirty" surfaces common in nature.

3D Procedurals

All the 3D procedurals but snow are random types. Some, such as wood and marble, clearly imitate nature. However, all are excellent for synthesizing random effects.
Assigning material to surfaces
The following lists a few quick ways to assign a material to a surface.

• In the view,select the surface to which you want to assign the material.
• From Hypershade, MMB-drag the material swatch over the selected surfaces.

or

• In the view ,shift-select the object to which you want to assign the material and in hypershade,click the material swatch.
• While the cursor is over the material swatch in hypershade,RMB -click-drag to select assign material to selection from the pop-up menu.

or

• MMB-drag and drop a Hypershade swatch onto an object in the IPR Render view.

To apply a material to several surfaces from with Hypershade

• Select the surfaces in a view.
• In Hypershade,RMB-click over the material swatch and select Assign material to selection from the pop-up menu.

To apply a material to a group of faces on a polygonal surface

• Select the surface.
• Press the RMB while over the surface,select face from the marking menu,then choose the select by component type icon.
• Select the face you want to map.
• While the faces are highlighted in the view, in hypershade,LMB-shift-click over the material swatch you want and press theRMB and select  Assign material to selection from the pop-up menu.

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Texturing and Shading 2

Color
The default material color.

Transparency

If the transparency value is 0(black),the surface is totally opaque; if the transparency value is 1(white),the surface is totally transparent. If you change transparency from the default black ,the background of the material's hypershade swatch becomes a checked pattern .This is not a visual aid and is not rendered.

Ambient Color

Uses Black by default. As the ambient color becomes lighter, it affect's the material's color by lightening it and blending the two colors.

Incandescence

The color and the brightness of light that a material appears to be emitting. The default color value is 0.

Bump Mapping

Makes the surface appear more rough or bumpy by altering surface normals according to the intensity of the pixels in the bump map texture. A bump map does not actually alter the surface.

Diffuse

Gives the material ability to reflect light in all directions. The diffuse value acts like a scaling factor applied to the color setting-the higher the diffuse value, the closer the actual surface is to the color setting.

Translucence

Gives the material the ability to transmit and diffuse light.  Light falling on a translucent surface is first absorbed beneath the surface and then diffused in all directions. The slider range is 0 to 1.
Surface Material Attributes

Specular color

The color of shiny highlights on the surface. A black specular color produces no surface highlights. The default color value is 0.5.

Reflectivity

Gives the surface the ability to reflect its surroundings or the reflected color. The default color value is 0.5.

Reflected color

Represents the color of light reflected from the material. This can be used to tint a reflection.

Surface Material

Fig 5-3 Surface Materials

Anisotropic

Represents surfaces with grooves, such as cd or feathers etc. Anisotropic material (such as Phong or Blinn)reflects specular light  identically in all directions.If you spin an isotropic sphere, its specular   highlight remains still.

Roughness

Determines the overall roughness of the surface. The range is 0.01 to 1.0.The default is 0.7.Smaller values correspond to smoother surfaces and the specular highlights are more concentrated.

Fresnel Index

A fresnel is a flat lens consisting of a number of concentric rings that reduces spherical abnormalities. The Fresnel index for water is 1.33.Value range from 1.0 to 20.0.

Anisotropic Reflectivity

If on, Maya automatically calculates Reflectivity as a fraction of roughness. Reflectivity is on by default.
Blinn Attributes
Color The base color of the surface.
Transparency Adjusts the surface opacity. You can use colors to create a tinted glass effect.
Ambient Color Adds to and blends with the color value.
Incandescence A simulation of emitted light. At low values, it tints and self-illuminates the material, and at high values, it overtakes the material's color and becomes self-illuminated.
Diffuse By default, it's set to 0.8, which dulls down the color value you've set.
Translucence A special effect in which light is absorbed and scattered as it passes through an object, useful for simulating materials such as frosted glass.
Translucence Focus Controls how light scatters from the surface.
Eccentricity The width of the highlight, simulating how polished or rough the surface appears.
Specular Roll Off The brightness/intensity of the highlight.
Specular Color The color of the highlight; usually set to white or a gray value.
Reflectivity The strength of reflections on the object. Reflections can be raytraced or use texture maps.
Reflected Color For Blinn, the color swatch and slider have no effect. However, when a texture map is applied, it appears to be reflected by the material.
Lambert
Represents matte surface(such as chalk,matte paint,unpolished surfaces) with no specular highlights. The initial shading group uses a lambert material.
Layered Shader Attributes
Represents a single surface material composed of several  different surface materials layered on top of one another.
Transparency
By default the material is semi-transparent.

Compositing Flag

Composites the layers using a layered shader or layered texture mode.

Hardware color

Helps you distinguish the objects assigned to a layered shader in the views.
Phong Attributes
Represents glassy or glossy surfaces with a hard specular highlight.

Cosine power

This feature is available to the phong material. Controls the size of shiny highlights on the surface. The default value is 20.
Phong E Attributes
A simpler version of the phong material. The specular highlights on the Phong E surfaces are softer than those on Phong Surfaces and Phong E surfaces render faster than Phong surfaces.

Roughness

Controls the specularity focus.

Highlight Size

Controls the amount of specular highlight.

Whiteness

Controls the specular highlight color. The default value is white. You can also map a texture to this value.

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Texturing and Shading 1

Materials are a critical part of creating attractive images and animation in a 3D program. Materials interact with lights, so lighting drives some material choices; for example, if your overall lighting is bright, you might need to make your scene materials somewhat more matte and light absorbing so that they don't blow out when hit by bright lights.
What do we mean by "materials"? It's a catch-all term to describe all aspects of what a surface looks like. At first glance, beginners usually notice the surface color—red, wood brown, metallic silver. To an artist, however, there are many other factors: An object isn't just metallic silver, for example—it's a mirrored smooth finish that relies on the reflected surroundings for its appearance. In addition to factors of color, shine, and reflection, Maya also considers transparency, incandescence, translucency, refraction, bumpiness, and many other user-controlled parameters. Attention to these details gives your rendered results more subtlety and complexity.
Hypershade
Maya's Hypershade is one of the first and most important areas you should take the time to explore. It provides a quick and easy way to create,edit, and connect rendering nodes, such as textures, materials, lights, rendering utilities and special effects.
Hypershade uses a free-form approach to material design. Swatches connect to one another to create effects; for example, a brick image might connect to the Bump attribute of a material to create bumps in the pattern of bricks. Hypershade also doubles as a kind of browser so that you can view and select existing scene lights, cameras, materials, and other elements.
To open Hypershade, choose Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade (hotkey: Alt+h).

Fig 5-1 Hypershade
Hypershade displays each node as an icon, sometimes called a swatch, that represents the characteristics of the node. When you edit a node's attributes or assign textures or special effects, that swatch updates in hypershade.

Create Bar

At the left is the Create Bar, which displays all the material types you can create for a selected category. Simply click on a type to create that item in the Work Area. To select a category, click the down arrow on the Create Bar; the options are Materials, Textures, Lights, Utilities, and All Nodes.

Tab Panels

The top tab shows existing materials, and the bottom tab is used to create and edit materials. After you become familiar with Hypershade, you can customize the tabs to your liking and even add Work Area tabs to simultaneously edit several materials.

Top Tab

This  area displays all the elements that are already part of the current scene file in these tabs: Materials, Textures, Utilities, Lights, Cameras, and Projects. In this tab, you can duplicate, edit, select objects assigned to shading groups, link lights, import and export materials, and a number of other functions

Bottom Tab

This  area is usually used as the Work Area—the assembly point for new materials.

Basic Material Types

Lambert

Lambert is a flat material type that yields a smooth look without specular highlights. It calculates without taking into account surface or reflectivity, which gives a matte, chalk-like appearance. Lambert material is ideal for surfaces that don't have highlights: pottery, chalk, matte paint, and so forth. By default, any newly created object is assigned the Lambert shader.

Phong

The Phong material takes into account specular reflectivity to create highlights across an object surface. The algorithm can be customized for surfaces such as plastic, porcelain, and glazed ceramic.

PhongE

PhongE is a faster rendering version of Phong that yields somewhat softer highlights than Phong.

Blinn

The Blinn material calculates highlights on surfaces similarly to Phong; however, Blinn can achieve a more accurate representation of the soft tinted highlights you see on metallic surfaces. Because Blinn is a versatile material type and doesn't cause flickering with bump maps.

Anisotropic

The Anisotropic material type stretches highlights and rotates them based on the viewer's position. Anisotropic materials are ideal for materials such as hair, feathers, brushed metal, and satin.

Ramp Shader

The Ramp Shader material consists of built-in ramp graphs to offer more advanced control and simplify the shader network.

Ocean Shader

The Ocean Shader material has several items in the shader's attributes that control how the material behaves over time, and it has graphs to add detail to the base shader. Attributes include Wave Speed, Wave Height, Wave Turbulence, and Wave Peaking.

Layered Shader

The Layered Shader lets you combine several materials to create a more complex material.

Shading Map

The Shading Map material is primarily designed to let you get a "cel" look in 3D, like typical animated cartoons.

Surface Shader

The Surface Shader is used when you want to control a material's color, transparency, and glow with something else in Maya.

Use Background

The Use Background shader cuts a "hole" in the image's alpha channel where objects with the material appear. This material is useful for combining separately rendered images in a compositing program to create the final results.
Material Settings
To edit material settings, double-click on any material in Hypershade's top or bottom tabs. Usually, you create a Blinn material in the Work Area of the bottom tab panel, and then double-click it to edit it in the Attribute Editor.

Fig 5_2 Material settings in the attribute editor
Notice the material name at the top of the Attribute Editor, which Maya sets to blinn1 for a default starting name. Maya increments the number if you create more Blinn materials. Next is the Common Material Attributes section, followed by the Specular Shading section. These two sections, displayed by default, are used the most in material editing.

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Polygonal Modeling 2

Polygonal Text Settings
When you create polygonal text, Maya provides option that you can set to display and create your text for subsequent polygonal-type editing.

Triangles

Three sided polygons are created. This is the default.

Tessellation Methods

Standard fit

This is the default tessellation method. It is adaptive tessellation, meaning that following option is used to determine when to stop the tessellation. The tessellation stops at the fractional tolerance value you set. If there is an edge shorter than the Minimal Edge Length, the tessellation stops on that edge. If the surface is flat enough with in the edge, the tessellation stops here.

General

Set the tessellation method to General to display the following options. Unless Use chord height or use chord height ratio is turned on, a uniform tessellation is performed. Each span is split into a number of polygons depending on the number U and V values you set.

Count

Set the tessellation method to Count to display the Following slider. Count slider is used to determine how many polygons the surface can be tessellated into.

Control points

This tessellation method converts the Nurbs model to polygons while matching the CVs of the original Nurbs surface. There are no other options for this operation.
Extruding
You can pull faces and edges out from polygonal objects using the Extrude Face and Extrude Edge commands.

Extruding Faces

You can extrude faces either interactively or directly through the option window. Select Edit Polygons > Extrude Face ,set whatever option you need and click the Extrude Face button.

• If you want to extrude all the faces of an object, marquee-select the whole object to highlight the faces.
• If you want to extrude certain areas  of an object, shift-or Ctrl-click to select those face only.
• If you want to extrude ,duplicate or extract multiple faces together, turn on polygons > Tool options >Keep Faces Together.

you are not happy with results, select Undo from the Edit menu, change the  Extrusions settings in the channel Box or Attribute Editor and press Enter.

Extruding Edges

You can extrude edges either interactively or directly through the option window. If you prefer to set the options first and then extrude the edges, Select Edit Polygons > Extrude Face.
Duplicating Faces
You can duplicate and transform faces interactively or directly through the option window.  Select the faces of the object you want to duplicate. Press the right mouse button and select Face or press F11.

• If you want to duplicate all the faces of an object, marquee-select the whole object to highlight the faces.
• If you want to duplicate certain areas  of an object, click to select those face only.

You can also Duplicate Faces through Edit Polygons > Duplicate Face.
Extracting Faces
While Extracting ,Maya disconnects the selected Faces from the original shape, by duplicating the appropriate edges and vertices. The extracted faces become their own shell with in the object. This is the another way to make holes in the object while retaining their original faces.
Seperating the extracted faces creates distinct polygons out of the faces and the original object.
To extract Faces

• Select the face of the object you want to extract. Press the right mouse button and select Face from the marking menu or press F11,then shift or Ctrl-Click to select the faces.
• Select edit Polygons > Extract. The selected Faces are extracted.

Fig4-4 Extracting faces
Smoothing Polygons
There are three ways to smooth polygons.

• Using Polygons > smooth.
• Using Polygons >Average vertices.
• Using the smooth operation of the sculpt polygons Tool to average the values of painted vertices to produce a smoother surface.

Polygon Selection
With Edit Polygons > Selection menu, you can constrain the selection of components to a specified area of a polygonal model and perform operations on those components in that specified area only without disturbing the rest of the model.
Select Edit Polygon > Selection >Grow Selection Region to increase the number of components you initially selected.

Selecting Boundaries

You use Edit Polygons >Selection >Select Selection Boundary to define the boundary of the current selection region. It is a quick way to select the boundaries of whatever is currently selected.

Selection a band of edges

Use Edit Polygons > Selection > Select Contiguous Edges to select a contiguous band of edges around model. With this you can select one edge, choose select Contiguous Edges, and it will select the rest of the edges  in the center automatically.

Max 2d Angle ,Max 3d Angle

These settings determine how far the selection continues based on the angles between edges. The 2d angle refers to angle made by the surface topology, regardless of the surface's shape. The 3d angle refers to angles made by the surface's shape, as measured in world or local space.

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