Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-37237-1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (800) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher.

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Autodesk and Maya are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. in the USA and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Max Henry

Acknowledgments

As this book goes into its sixth edition, I am thrilled that Introducing Maya 2009 is a favorite resource for students and teachers of Maya. I have always thought that education is the foundation for a happy life and, with that in mind; I’d like to thank the outstanding teachers from whom I have had the privilege to learn. You can remember what you’ve been taught or, more important, you can remember those who have taught you. Of course I also want to thank my students, who have taught me as much as they have learned themselves. Juan Gutierrez, Victor J. Garza, Robert Jauregui, and Peter Gend deserve special thanks for helping me complete the models and images for this book. • Thanks to the student artists who contributed to the color insert and, of course, thanks to my bosses, colleagues, and friends at work for showing me everything I’ve learned and making it interesting to be in the effects business. • Special thanks to Dell for their support and keeping me in the cutting edge of workstations. • Thanks kindly to my editors at Sybex and the folks at Autodesk for their support and help and for making this process fun. Thanks to the book team for bringing it all together: Mariann Barsolo, Gary Schwartz, Angela Smith, and Kathy Carlyle. My appreciation also goes to technical editors Keith Reicher and Tim Turner. Finally, special mad props go to my friends Bill, Mark, Frank, Terry, and Brett. • Thank you to my mom and brothers for your strength, wisdom, and love throughout. • And a special thank you to my lovely wife, Randi, and our son Max Henry, for putting up with the long nights at the keyboard; the grumpy, sleep-deprived mornings; and the blinking and buzzing of all my machines in our apartment. Family is where it’s at, man!

About the Author

Dariush Derakhshani is a Creative Director and Head of CG for Radium|ReelFX - Santa Monica, a creative and design studio with offices in Dallas, Texas; San Francisco; and Santa Monica, California. Dariush has been working in CG for over twelve years and teaching classes in CG and effects production for close to ten. He is the best-selling author of a handful of books, including the popular Introducing Maya series.

Dariush started using CAD software in his architecture days, then migrated to using 3D programs when his firm’s principal architects needed to show their clients design work on the computer. Starting with Alias PowerAnimator version 6, which he encountered when he enrolled in the University of Southern California Film School’s Animation program, Dariush has been using Alias animation software for the past twelve years.

He received an M.F.A. in Film, Video, and Computer Animation in 1997 from USC. Dariush also holds a B.A. in Architecture and Theatre from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and worked at a New Jersey architecture firm before moving to L.A. for film school. He has worked on feature films, music videos, and countless commercials as a 3D animator, CG lead, and sometimes compositor. He is bald and has flat feet.

Introduction

Welcome to Introducing Maya 2009 and the world of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Whether you are new to 3D graphics or venturing into Autodesk’s powerhouse animation software from another 3D application, you’ll find this book a perfect primer. It introduces you to Maya and shows how you can work with Maya to create your art, whether it is animated or static in design.

This book is part of the Maya Press series, a collaboration between Sybex and Autodesk to create books dedicated to teaching artists all over the world how to use Maya.

Written originally out of the author’s frustration from the lack of solid, comprehensive, and yet open-ended teaching material on Maya for his classes, this book exposes you to all the facets of Maya by introducing and explaining its tools and functions to help you understand how Maya operates. In addition, you’ll find hands-on examples and tutorials that give you firsthand experience with the toolsets. Working through these will help you develop skills as well as knowledge. These tutorials expose you to various ways of accomplishing tasks with this intricate and comprehensive artistic tool.

Finally, this book explains workflow—not only how specific tasks are accomplished but why—that is, how they fit into the larger process of producing 3D animation. By doing that, these chapters should give you the confidence to venture deeper into Maya’s feature set on your own or using any of Maya’s other learning tools and books as a guide.

It can be frustrating to learn a powerful tool such as Maya, so it’s important to remember to pace yourself. The number one complaint of readers of books like this is a sense that either the pace is too fast or the steps are too complicated or overwhelming. That’s a tough nut to crack, to be sure, and no two readers are the same. But this book offers the chance to run things at your own pace. The exercises and steps may seem challenging at times, but keep in mind that the more you try, even the more you fail at some attempts, the more you’ll learn about how to operate Maya. Experience is the key to learning workflows in any software program, and with experience come failure and aggravation. Nevertheless, try and try again, and you will see that further attempts will be easier and more fruitful.

Above all, this book aims to inspire you to use Maya as a creative tool to achieve and explore your own artistic vision.

What You Will Learn from This Book

Introducing Maya 2009 will show you how Maya works and introduce you to every part of the toolset to give you a glimpse of the possibilities available with Maya.

You’ll learn the basic concepts underlying animation and 3D and how to work with the Maya interface. You’ll then learn the basic methods of modeling—creating objects and characters that appear to exist in three-dimensional space and that can be animated. You’ll also explore shading and texturing—the techniques of applying surfaces to the objects you create—and you’ll learn how to create lights and shadows in a scene. Animation is an enormously rich topic, but the practice and theory provided here will give you a solid footing. Then you’ll learn how to control the process of rendering, turning your images into files that can be viewed. Perhaps Maya’s most dazzling capability is its dynamics engine, software that allows you to make objects behave as if controlled by the real-world laws of physics.

Once you’ve finished this book and its exercises, you will have some experience in almost everything Maya offers, giving you a solid foundation on which to base the rest of your Maya and CGI experience.

The goal of this book is to get you familiar enough with all the parts of Maya to get you working on your own and to start a long, healthy education in a powerful and flexible tool.

You will, however, learn the most from yourself.

Who Should Read This Book

Anyone who is curious about learning Maya or who is migrating from another 3D software package can learn something from this book. Even if you are highly experienced in other 3D packages such as Lightwave or XSI, you will find this book helpful in showing you how Maya operates, so you can migrate your existing skill set quickly and efficiently. By being exposed to everything Maya has to offer, you will better understand how you can use its toolset to create or improve on your art and work.

If you already have a cursory or even an intermediate experience with Maya, culled from time spent learning at home, you can fill many holes with the information in this book as well as expand your experience. Self-education is a powerful tool, and the more you expose yourself to different sources, opinions, and methods, the better educated you will be.

In addition, this book is invaluable for teachers in the CG field. This book was written to cater to those who want to pick up the fundamentals of Maya as well as for those who want to teach classes based around a solid body of course material. You will not find a better basis for a class when you combine this book with your own curriculum.

How to Use This Book

Introducing Maya 2009 approaches the subject in a linear fashion that tracks how most animation productions are undertaken. The book has numerous cross-references, however, to make sure the chapters make sense in any order you might want to tackle them. You may open this book to any chapter and work through the tutorials and examples laid out for the Maya task being covered. Feel free to browse the chapters and jump into anything that strikes your fancy. However, if you are completely new to CG, then perhaps taking the chapters in order is best.

Although you can learn a lot just by reading the explanations and studying the illustrations, it is best to read this book while you are using Maya 2009 (Complete or Unlimited) so that you can try the exercises for yourself as you read them. (You may want to use the free Maya Personal Learning Edition, which is available at www.autodesk.com/maya. However, this limited version is based on Maya 8.5 and doesn’t have all the functionality available in Maya 2009, and isn’t compatible with all the tutorials in this book.)

This book also includes a CD that contains all the example and support files you’ll need for the tutorials in the text, which is quite valuable as an educational aid. You can use the example files to check the progress of your own work, or you can use them as a starting point if you want to skip ahead within an exercise. The latter could save the more experienced reader tons of time. You’ll also find it valuable to examine these files in depth to see how scenes are set up and how some of the concepts introduced in the book are implemented. Because Maya is a complex, professional software application, the tutorials are both realistically ambitious and simple enough for new users to complete. Take them one step at a time and find your own pace, accepting aggravations and failures as part of the process. Take your time; you’re not working on deadline—yet.

How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1, “Introduction to Computer Graphics and 3D,” introduces you to the common computer graphics terms and concepts to give you a basic overview of how CG happens and how Maya relates to the overall process. This chapter explores the basics of CG creation and its core concepts. In addition, it describes the process of CG production and discusses how to establish a commonly used workflow.

Chapter 2, “Jumping in Headfirst, with Both Feet,” creates a simple animation to introduce you to Maya’s interface and workflow to give you a taste of how things work right off the bat. By animating the planets in our solar system, you will learn basic concepts of creating and animating in Maya and how to use its object structure.

Chapter 3, “The Maya 2009 Interface,” presents the entire Maya interface and shows you how it is used in production. Beginning with a roadmap of the screen, this chapter also explains how Maya defines and organizes objects in a scene.

Chapter 4, “Beginning Polygonal Modeling,” is an introduction to modeling concepts and workflows in general and shows you how to start modeling using polygonal geometry to create various objects, from a human hand to a complex locomotive engine.

Chapter 5, “Modeling with NURBS, Subdivisions, and Deformers,” will take your lesson in modeling a step further by showing you how to model using deformers and surfacing techniques using NURBS in creating a patch model detail for the locomotive you modeled in Chapter 4. You will also model using Subdivision Surfaces, a hybrid between polygons and NURBS in creating a starfish.

Chapter 6, “Building the Red Wagon,” will round out your modeling lessons with a comprehensive exercise showing you how to model a child’s toy wagon using polygons as well as NURBS surfacing.

Chapter 7, “Maya Shading and Texturing,” shows you how to assign textures and shaders to your models. Using the toy wagon you created in Chapter 6, you’ll learn how to texture it to look like the real toy wagon as well as lay out its UVs for proper texture placement. You’ll also learn how to take advantage of Maya 2009’s ability to work with layered Photoshop files.

Chapter 8, “Introduction to Animation,” covers the basics of how to animate a bouncing ball using keyframes and moves on to creating more complex animation—throwing an axe and firing a catapult. You will also learn how to import objects into an existing animation and transfer animation from one object to another, a common exercise in professional productions. In addition, you’ll learn how to use the Graph Editor to edit and finesse your animation as well as animate objects along paths.

Chapter 9, “More Animation!” expands on Chapter 8 to show you how to use Maya’s skeleton and kinematics system to create a simple walk cycle. Also covered is how to animate objects by using relationships between them. A thrilling exercise shows you how to rig your locomotive model from Chapter 4 for automated animation, one of Maya’s most productive uses.

Chapter 10, “Maya Lighting,” begins by showing you how to light a 3D scene as you learn how to light the wagon you modeled and textured earlier in the book. It also shows you how to use the tools to create and edit Maya lights for illumination, shadows, and special lighting effects. mental ray for Maya’s Physical Sun and Sky feature is explored in this chapter as an introduction to some sophisticated techniques for mental ray lighting.

Chapter 11, “Maya Rendering,” explains how to create image files from your Maya scene and how to achieve the best look for your animation using proper cameras and rendering settings. You’ll also learn about the Maya renderer, the Vector renderer, and Final Gather using HDRI and Image-Based Lighting through mental ray for Maya, as well as raytracing and motion blur. You will have a chance to render the wagon to round out your skills.

Chapter 12, “Maya Dynamics and Effects,” introduces you to Maya’s powerful dynamics animation system as well as the new nParticle technology. You will animate pool balls colliding with each other using rigid body dynamics and, using nParticle animation, you will create steam to add to your locomotive scene from Chapter 4. This chapter also shows how to use Paint Effects to create animated flowers and grass within minutes, as well as introducing you to Toon shading for a cartoon look to your renders..

A glossary offers key terms used throughout the book.

Hardware and Software Considerations

Because computer hardware is a quickly moving target, and Maya now runs on three distinct operating systems (Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Linux, and Mac OS X), specifying which hardware components will work with Maya is something of a challenge. Fortunately, Autodesk has a “qualified hardware” page on its website that describes the latest hardware to be qualified to work with Maya for each operating system. Go to the following site for the most up-to-date information on system requirements:

www.autodesk.com/maya

Although you can find specific hardware recommendations on these web pages, some general statements can be made about what constitutes a good platform on which to run Maya. First, be sure to get a fast processor; Maya eats through CPU cycles like crazy, so a fast processor is important. Second, you need lots of RAM (memory) to run Maya: at least 2GB, but 4GB is a good to have, especially if you are working with large scene files or are on a 64-bit system. Third, if you expect to interact well with your Maya scenes, a powerful video card is a must—although Maya will mosey along with a poor graphics card, screen redraws will be slow with complex scenes, which can quickly become frustrating. You might want to consider a “workstation graphics card” for the best compatibility (rather than a consumer-grade gaming video card). Several companies make entry-level through top-performing workstation cards to fit any budget. A large hard disk is also important—most computers these days come with huge drives anyway.

Fortunately, computer hardware is so fast these days that even laptop computers can now run Maya well. Additionally, even hardware that is not officially supported by Autodesk can often run Maya—just remember that you will not be able to get technical support if your system does not meet their qualifications.

The Next Step

By the time you finish Introducing Maya 2009, you’ll have some solid skills for using Maya. When you’re ready to move on to another level, be sure to check out other Maya titles from Sybex at www.sybex.com.