Open up Maya 8.5
Learning the Interface: To do this part, you will need headphones. If a window labeled learning movies does not appear automatically, click on the menu Help;Learning movies. Take a look at movies 1 through 5 (i.e. "Zoom, pan, and roll" through "Discover secret menus"). As you watch, try things out in Maya itself.
Location, location, location: Organizing and keeping track of files on your computer is critical! For the moment, you will use your H-drive to store your Maya projects. Your completed images will go in another location:
Maya Project: In Windows, create a folder on your H drive called ids252. Within this folder, you will keep subfolders containing your Maya projects. Projects are described below. You should have one project for each lab.
Completed Images: Once you complete the lab and have generated your images, you will need to place the images in a central location accessible by the entire class. To get to this place, do the following: Go to the Windows desktop and right-click on the icon My Computer. Choose "Map Network Drive ...". Next to where it says "Drive", pick any letter that is blank (doesn't matter which letter your choose). Next to where it says "Folder", type in
\\home\enfuzion and click finish. A window should open up to show the location "enfuzion on 'home'". You should see a folder there called IDS252Fa07. Inside of this folder will be subfolders called Lab1, Lab2, etc. Click on the Lab1 folder to open it up. You should see a folder with your name. This is where you should place your completed images.
Note: Make sure the image file name describes what is in the file and who created it. For example, if you create a jpg image of a temple, you should name the file
temple_abc.jpg where "abc" should be replaced by your initials. Note it is best to not include blank spaces in the name; you may use an underscore instead.
Making a Project in your working folder: A Maya project is
simply a folder or set of nested folders where all the files
are stored. Projects are important to create because
when you save or render maya scenes,
a number of different files are generated and saved. If you have
created a
project, all of these files will be saved into the project folder. If
you don't set the project each time you open Maya, then it is anyone's guess where many of these
files will end up. To make sure that you don't misplace these files, it
is good practice to always create a Maya project and to save your Maya
scene into the project. When you need to work on your project at a later
time, open up Maya, set the project, open up your scene, and begin to work.
For this lab, you should create a single project (e.g. called
Lab1Project) and save the scenes for this lab into this project. To
create the project, open
Maya and go to File;Project;New .... Enter
the
name and location of your project. The location should be your folder H:\ids252.
For now, leave all other fields blank.
Note, everytime you open up Maya you will need to reset the Project: File;Project;Set ....
Create a Temple: Open Maya, create (or set) the project,
and click on the menu Help; Maya Help. In the index on the left, click on Learning Resources to open up that tab. Then, click
on Getting Started with Maya and then choose
Maya Basics. You are to work through
this entire section, including lessons 1-4. In the end, you should have a model of a simple temple.
- Choose the perspective camera by clicking on the perspective window. Maneuver the camera in this window so that you are looking at a nice view of the temple.
- Go to the menu Window;RenderingEditors;Render
Settings... and do the following:
- Choose the Image Format to be JPEG (jpeg).
- Set the "Image Size; Presets" to 640X480.
- If you want a higher quality (but slower render time) then click on the Maya Software tab. Set the Quality to Production Quality. Close the Render Settings window.
- To actually do the render and generate the image, you must click the
render button
on the toolbar in Maya (ask if you can't find it)
- When you render the image, Maya will save the image in the project folder. Note, if it isn't there then the project was probably not set correctly.
- You should copy (through Windows, not Maya) your final, rendered image over to the IDS252Fa07\Lab1\your_name folder on \\home\enfuzion. Remember to name the file based on the type of object (e.g. temple) followed by an underscore and your initials (e.g. temple_abc.jpg).
Helmet: The next thing you are to do is to learn how to create
a helmet using polygon
modeling.
As before, click on the menu Help; Maya Help. In the index on the left, click on Learning Resources to open up that tab. Then, click on Getting Started with Maya and then choose Polygon Modeling.
To do the tutorial, you will need two files, HelmetFront.jpg and HelmetSide.jpg, that are located in the folder
Before beginning the tutorial, you should copy these two files into your project on your H drive. You may use the same project you used for the temple but you will need to create a new scene as is described in the instructions.
When you are done the tutorial, place a 640x480 jpeg render of your helmet (named appropriately, e.g. helmet_abc.jpg) in the folder along with your temple.