Lab 2: Modeling & Storytelling
IDS252: 3D Animation, Spring 2015

Goals

• Become familiar with modeling NURBS.
• Learn how to import objects and combine objects into a single scene.
• Experiment with composition and story through the use of framing and other visual elements.
• Deliverables: Four images (cup, saltshaker, etruded object, composition) placed in designated folder on cs-render. See Evaluation Sheet (pdf).

Resources

• Please continue to watch the Introduction to Maya 2015 Digital Tutor videos from the last lab, especially:
  • Lesson 34 and 46 for cleaning up.
  • Lesson 22 for "extruding along a curve".
• Camera angles and shot types are explained in Chp 3 found on cs-render in the folder: \IDS252Sp15\IDS252Resources\booksExcerpts\StoryBoarding More information can also be found in the Yale Film Analysis Guide - See 3. Cinematography; Framing.
• General Design Components (pdf)
• Using the Camera to tell a story
• Color Scheme Designer.

Part 1: Modeling Objects

1. Making a Project: Create a single project (e.g. called Lab2Project) on cs-render in the folder IDS252Sp15/Lab2/MayaProjects/your_name Remember, once the project is created, you must set the project every time you re-open Maya to insure that Maya will save files to the right place.

2. NURBS Modeling: In Maya, go to Help → Tutorials. Click on the link Getting Started with Maya 2015 and then go to Getting Started with Maya. Do the following lessons:
   

   	NURBS Modeling, Lesson 1: Revolving a curve to create a surface (glass)
   	NURBS Modeling, Lesson 3: Lofting Curves to create a surface (saltshaker)

3. Extruding along a curve: Watch the following video:

   Lesson 22: Adding Tubes using curves of the Digital Tutors tutorial Introduction to Maya 2015

   After watching the video, practice on your own by creating a CV curve and extruding, e.g. a circle or square along it.
   Note, the extrude command you want to use requires setting the Menu Set to "Surfaces" and then selecting the menu Surfaces→Extrude. You can also read about it by going to the Maya Help and searching on "Sweep a profile curve along a path curve".

   Once you get the hang of it and have explored the extrude options, use it to model a simple object of your choice. You could create a snake, candy cane, pretzel, or coiled rope, or a winding chord attached to a mouse/computer (you can use simple primitives with small modifications to create the mouse and computer). Keep it simple and make it a solid color.

   When you are happy with your extruded shape, be sure to do a clean-up: delete history, set the pivot, delete the cv curve, freeze transforms, if there is more then 1 part, group everything and name the object. Cleaning up is explained more below. Many of the actions are described in Digital Tutors tutorial: Lessons 34 and 46.

4. Rendered Image: For each object (glass, saltshaker, extruded object), render an HD540 jpeg image that clearly displays the object, and copy these images over to the folder on cs-render called IDS252Sp15/Lab2/FinalImages/your_name Name the image files as you did in lab 1, e.g. your_last_name__glass.jpg.

Part 2: Importing and Composing a Scene

1. Preparing Your Objects: At this point, you have created several Maya scene files (i.e. .mb files) from labs 1 and 2. Each scene file should contain a single object such as a temple, character, glass, saltshaker, extruded object. Copy the scene files from lab 1 (temple and character) over into the scenes subfolder of your current project folder (Lab2Project), so that all of the scene files are in one place. Before you continue, prepare the objects in each scene file as described below. If you don't do this, your composition scene file will be an utter mess thus making it difficult to transform and duplicate objects.

2. Colors: In lecture, we will discuss how to give your shapes different colors using "materials". We keep it very basic here. In a later lab, we will focus on creating more complex surface textures.

   Select the object you want to give a color. Right click on the object and select "Assign New Material". Select either a Blinn or Lambert material. In the Attribute editor, click on the the gray square next to the word Color and, in the color selector window which opens, select a color. For now, ignore all the other parameters.

   As mentioned below in the "Clean-up" list, it is important that you not use the default lambert1 material otherwise you will have conflicts when you import multiple objects.

   A consistent color scheme can help give a sense of unity to your final image. For this exercise, all your objects should be solid shades from a palette of only 2 colors, plus white and black. The two colors should either be two complements or two analogous colors, e.g. see the color scheme designer. You should choose a color palette ahead of time so that you can set the colors of your different objects to fit in with the color scheme.

3. Cleaning Things Up:

   • Open Maya and set the project (e.g. Lab2Project).
   • Open up one of the scene files in that project, e.g. temple.mb.
   • Make a backup copy before continuing.
   • Go to the Outliner and make sure that the only objects and groups that are there are the ones you want to be there. Delete everything else.
   • Select all objects. If there are multiple subparts, make sure everything is selected.
   • Delete constuction history by going to the menu Edit→Delete by Type→History.
   • If there are multiple parts, group all of the parts together by selecting everything and going to the menu Edit→Group.
   • Rename the object (or the group if you grouped items) so that the name reflects what the object is. For example, the temple object should be called "temple".
   • You might want to scale the object so it isn't tiny or huge. Make sure the object is sitting at the origin.
   • With the temple group selected, set the pivot point in an appropriate place on the object. Holding down the d key will give you access to the pivot (Alternatively, on Windows, you press the "Insert" key to move the pivot point. On a Mac, you press "fn" key an "Enter" key). Position it so that the pivot is at the origin. When done, select the menu "Modify→Freeze Transformation" to zero out the transformation node values.
   • If you are using the default lambert1 material, you must replace it a different material that you create.
   • Delete any other items that you created unless you specifically want them (leave the default lights and cameras).
   • Save the scene file.
   • Repeat for the next scene file in the project.

4. Importing Objects: Once the objects in the individual scenes are cleaned up, you can now combine these objects into one scene as follows.

   • Create a new scene and save it into project folder (e.g. call it composition.mb)
   • Go to the main menu in Maya and choose File; Import....
   • Select one of your previous scenes to import. The object should appear in this new scene.
   • Repeat to import several more objects. You will need to translate the different objects so they aren't on top of one another.

5. OPTIONAL: If you want to include a posed human-like character in your scene, then download Bloke and ask for help understanding how to pose him. His face can be very expressive!

6. Composition: In the scene you just created, arrange/duplicate/scale/etc the different objects in a way that tells a story or makes the viewer curious. Remember that we use the term "story" very broadly. Be careful to think about things such as framing, negative space, symmetry. Note, in the class critique we will discuss the questions in the Evaluation Sheet (pdf)

7. Images to turn in: Copy the image of your composition to same folder containing your other images (IDS252Sp15/Lab2/FinalImages/your_name) which should now contain 4 images: the glass, the saltshaker, the extruded object, the composition. Please name them accordingly. It is important that we know which is which, especially which is your intended composition.

8. Project Folder Organization: Your project folder, Lab2Project, should be on cs-render in the folder IDS252Sp15/Lab2/MayaProjects/your_name. Please clean-up your Lab2Project folder as follows:

   • If you don't already have a backup of this folder, make one now!
   • Make sure that your final scene files are appropriately named (e.g. temple.mb, hand.mb, saltshaker.mb, composition.mb).
   • Delete all other scene files, i.e. the ones that are no longer used.
   • Delete all images files except for your final .jpg (or png) images. Most importantly, remove any files with an *.iff extension since these are really big files!

Evaluation

This lab is due at the date given at the top of this lab. It will be graded based on the criteria sheet (see link at top). There will be a peer evaluation in class on the day it is due. It is important that you are present for the critique regardless of whether you managed to finish the assignment or not.

---