June 9th, 2009 Tuesday - Class #2 - Maya introduction

 810:088:12 Visual Effects, Animation, and Motion Graphics

 1.  Know Tumble, Track and Dolly.

     Tumble is LMB.  Alt key held down and Left Mouse Button.

     Track is MMB.  Alt + MMB = Alt key held down + Middle Mouse Button.

     Dolly is the RMB + Alt key.  Right Mouse Button = RMB.

     Track is also known as Pan or panning the camera.

 2.  We created several objects.

     Create menu > NURBS Primitives > Sphere

     Create menu > Polygon Primitives > Cube

     Create menu > Polygon Primitives > Sphere

     Create menu > Polygon Primitives > Cylinder

 3.  We looked at and used four of the QWERTY tools.

     Q is the selection tool.  We used it to draw a bounding box
                               around all of the objects and then
                               delete them, so we could start
                               with a new blank scene.

     W is the shortcut for the Move tool.  Note W is an upside down M, 
                                                              as in Move.
                                                                    W

     E is the shortcut for the Rotate tool.  rotatE.

     R is the shortcut for the Resize or the Scale tool.

 4.  When you have an object selected with either the 

                    Move tool, 
             or the Rotate tool,
             or the Resize (Scale) tool
                     
                         active, you will see the manipulator handles.

     The manipulator handles are Red and Green and Blue.

     Assume the Move tool is the chosen tool.

     Red manipulator handle will Move in X, as in TranslateX,

     Green manipulator handle will Move in Y, as in TranslateY,

     Blue manipulator handle will Move in Z, as in TranslateZ.

     R G B as in X Y Z
                               Scale
        MOVE       Rotate      Resize
     ----------   -------      ------    
     TranslateX   RotateX      ScaleX       R     Red
     TranslateY   RotateY      ScaleY       G     Green 
     TranslateZ   RotateZ      ScaleZ       B     Blue
     ----------   -------      ------
          W          E            R

        Q WER TY tools on the tools bar.  W E R  QWERTY
                                                  ---
 5.  Maya is a Y-up 3D graphics system.

     The X is for left and right stage or scene.

     The X is for up and down, above the stage and below the stage.

     The Z is for front stage and back stage.

 6.  We used the Animation menu set and created an animation of a 
     moving sphere.

     At 1 on the timeline and 100 on the timeline and 200 on the timeline
     we did the 
                Animate menu > Set Key command     

     The sphere went from -12 TranslateX to 12 TranslateX.

     The final animation just before class finished was as follows:

               Frame 1      Frame 100       Frame 200

TranslateX       -12            12             12

ScaleX            1              1              4
ScaleY            1              1              4
ScaleZ            1              1              4

     The sphere went across the stage and back.
     As the spehere went back from frame 100 to frame 200 it got larger.
     It actually got 4 times its orginal size.

 7.  The channel box was used to set attribute values exactly to -12
     and to 12 and to 4.

     The channel box can be shown or hidden by clicking on the very last
     icon or button on the Status Line.

 8.  We also switched to the Dynamics menu set briefly.

     Particles menu > Create Emitter command was used.

     When we ran the animation by clicking the Play Forward playback 
     control, we saw particles being emitter from where the emitter had
     been placed.

     The default emitter type in Maya is Omni.  Omni means that the 
     emitter emits particles in all directions.  

     Omnivores eat all kinds of food, unlike herbivores and carnivores.
     ----

     Directional emitters emit particles in only one chosen direction.

 9.  Shading menu > Wireframe           4 is the shortcut
     Shading menu > Smooth Shade All    5 is the shortcut

10.  We did NOT talk about this today, but there are a total of 5 
     different menu sets:

          Animation   <------- We used this for Animate > Set Key
          Polygons
          Surfaces
          Dynamics    <------- We used this for Particles > Create Emitter
          Rendering

          A P S D R  Animation Polygons Surfaces Dynamics Rendering
                     A         P        S        D        R

11.   Press the spacebar to switch from one parel view to four panel view.

      The four panel view shows by default:  

          TOP                 PERSP

         FRONT                SIDE

      Press the spacebar in four panel layout view, and wherever your
      mouse pointer is, that view will become the one panel view.

      TOP and FRONT and SIDE views are ORTHOGRAPHIC views.

      PERSP is short for PERSPECTIVE view, and gives you the 3D 
                                               perspective.

12.   Study the following URL materials in conjunction with this
      text based review.  Videos, graphics, screen snapshots, tutorials,
      and class review from class 1 and class 2 in January.

      http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/ae/wk1/wk1.html

      http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/TumbleTrackDolly.jpg

      http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/classDay1.html

      http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/m/class2.html

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      Tuesday evening - 9:32 p.m. this review was posted to web site.
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