Lab 1: Introduction to Maya
IDS252: 3D Animation, Spring 2016

Goals

1. Familiarize yourself with the Maya interface.
2. Understand how files and projects are named and organized.
3. Understand how to turn in assignments on the shared network drive called cs-render
4. Learn basic modeling tools in order to make a model of a temple, glass, and saltshaker.
5. Deliverables: Three images (temple, glass, and saltshaker) placed in designated folder on cs-render. Details described below.

Summary of Important Links

This is a summary of the links in the sections below.

• PC keyboard on a Mac
• Digital Tutors
• Digital Tutors: Introduction to Maya 2016.
• Maya Tutorials: Has links to to the following:
  • the Autodesk recommended DT tutorials along with the associated scene files
  • 2015 Autodesk Getting Started Tutorials and Lesson Files.
• Online Help: Maya Interface

Mac vs PC

The computers in Ford 202 are dual boot. If you hold down the "options" key as the computer boots up, it will give you the option of booting in Windows. If you do nothing, it will boot up as a Mac.
It is highly recommended that you use the PC side. To see the mappings of a PC keyboard on a Mac, go here.

Getting Familiar with the Maya Interface: Digital Tutors and Maya Online Help

The purpose of this section of the lab is to get familiar with the Maya interface by looking at a few Digital Tutor videos and exploring the Online Maya Help. There is nothing to turn in for this section of the lab.

Digital Tutors

People learn differently. Some prefer to watch a video and others prefer to work through a written tutorial. We will be doing some of both using the Digital Tutors (DT) videos and the written online tutorials which came with Maya (before 2016). DT provides many excellent videos for you to watch but can be fast paced. Until you are comfortable with the Maya interface, you may find it difficult to follow details. The introductory DT videos, however, are worth watching because they help you become familiar with the terminology and to develop an overall understanding of the Maya workflow. DT also provides hundreds of videos on advanced topics that are not covered in the online help and which will be invaluable as you become more skilled.

Please sign up for the 30 day free trial of Digital Tutors (see the "Start for Free" link). After the 30 days are up, you should purchase the monthly subscription for 2 or 3 months. If you want to have access to many of the Maya files used in the videos, you can select the "Plus" level at $49 per month. Otherwise, select the basic level at $29 per month. A few of the tutorial files are provided for free. You don't need any of these files for his lab, however, for future reference, the files can be downloaded from Maya Tutorials. Follow the link "Exploring Maya tutorial scene files".

Much of the content covered over the course of the semester, is discussed in the DT tutorial: Introduction to Maya 2016. You are not expected to watch all of them. In fact, a lot the material we will not cover in class. For this lab, just take a look at the General Interface lessons and a few of the Modeling lessons in order to get a feel of how Maya works.

Summary of the topics covered in the Digital Tutors Introduction to Maya 2016

• In this lab:
  • General Interface: Lessons 1 - 11. (look at some of these.)
  • Modeling: Lessons 12 - 32. (look at the first couple of these. )
• For later labs:
  • Shading, Texturing, and Materials: Lessons 33 - 41.
  • Rigging: Lessons 42 - 53. We will not be covering rigging.
  • Animation, the Graph Editor, and Dynamics: Lessons 54 - 64.
  • Advanced topics - Dynamics and Fluids: Lessons 65 - 75. We will not be covering these.
  • Rendering and Lighting: Lessons 76 - 88.

Maya Online Help and Tutorials

An alternative way to learn about Maya is through Maya's Online Help. Please become familiar with it. Below are instructions on how to access it.

1. Open up Maya 2016

2. Learning the Interface: A quick reference of the interface may be found Online Help: Maya Interface. You want to become familiar with the terms used to refer to the different parts of the interface, e.g. Menu sets, Status line, etc.

3. Getting Help: In Maya, go to Help → Autodesk Maya Help (F1). You will see a list of topics:

   • Select Basics and read through the some of the topics e.g. 3D coordinates, interface overview, selecting, etc.
   • Select the 1-minute Startup Movies and watch the movies "Zoom, pan, and roll" through "Discover secret menus". As you watch, try things out in Maya. Poke around the other sections to explore what else is available.
   • Select Managing Scenes, Files, and Projects.
   • Search on topics. To see the search box, you may need to click the following icon on the far left of the Help page:
     

4. Online Tutorials : In previous years, Autodesk provided a number of good, hands-on written tutorials in their Online Help. This year, they seem to have stopped supporting them. In this lab, we will do several the 2015 Online Tutorials (explained more below) although you should note that the interface might be slightly different. Please ask the instructor or lab assistant if you get confused. These tutorials can be found through the Maya menu Help → Maya Help (F1) and selecting Tutorials, or by going directly to Help → Tutorials. Under the Maya Tutorials, look for the heading Maya Getting Started and click on the Getting Started with Maya 2015 link. For some of these tutorials you will also need the lesson files which can be downloaded under Maya 2015. You don't need any of them for this lab.

Maya Projects and the Maya File Structure

In this part of the lab, you will be actually working with Maya and modeling several objects: A temple, glass, and saltshaker. Before starting the modeling, you need to properly set up Maya. Most importantly, you need to create a Maya project.

• Maya Projects: When you make a new Maya Project from within Maya, Maya will create a main folder containing a set of subfolders. All files used for a project should be stored in these folders.

  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 and/or set a project, all of these files will be saved into the project folder, otherwise it is anyone's guess where many of these files will end up. Note, DT Lesson 4 discusses Maya Projects.

  In this lab, it is recommended that you create one Maya Project to store your separate scene files for the temple, glass, and saltshaker. A scene file is the file which contains all of the Maya information for your particular object(s). Your scene files should be stored in the "scenes" folder of your Maya Project. Directions will given in the tutorials explaining how to create your project.

  Note, everytime you open up Maya you need to make sure that you are in the correct project.
  If you aren't sure, just set the project using File → Set Project ....

• Keep Multiple Versions: You should save versions of your scene as you work (e.g. temple1.mb, temple2.mb, etc) so that, if you make a mistake that can't be undone, or if Maya crashes (a common occurrance!), then you don't have to start back at the very beginning again. You can save versions by saving and manually renaming your files or by going to the menu File → Increment & Save

• Location, location, location:

  • cs-render network drive: You will be storing your files on a Willamette shared network drive called cs-render. (Note, if you joined the class late, you may not yet have access to cs-render. If so, please work on your H drive and copy your project to cs-render once you have access.) You need to work on cs-render because 1) your files may take up too much disk space, 2) you may need to share your work with others, or 3) you may need to use the render farm, and 4) the instructor will want access to your projects for grading purposes. To access cs-render, you need to follow the directions under "Shared Network Drive: cs-render" on this page
  • Organization: Organizing and keeping track of files on your computer is critical! All files that are associated with a project need to be kept in the project folder, otherwise, you risk losing these files.
  • Project location: For this lab, store your Maya projects on cs-render in the folder \IDS252Sp16\Lab1\MayaProjects\your_name
  • Image submission location: To submit your completed work, you must copy your rendered images (jpg or png) from your project into the folder \IDS252Sp16\Lab1\FinalImages\your_name before the beginning of class on the due date.

Part 1: The Temple

Basic Temple	Bad! Pay attention to camera location.

Tutorial Instuctions: Open Maya. Go to Help → Tutorials→ Maya Tutorials, scroll down and click on the link Getting Started with Maya 2015 and then go to Getting Started with Maya → Maya Basics → Introduction . Follow the directions for making the temple (lessons 1-4). In the end, you should have a model of a simple temple. Notes:

• Since this tutorial is for Maya 2015 (we are using Maya 2016), there may be minor differences in the interface. Please ask questions if you get confused.
• You do not need to download the "Getting Started 2015 Lesson Files".
• Save your new project into the folder: \IDS252Sp16\Lab1\MayaProjects\your_name
• Save your scene and call it something like your_last_name_temple.mb
• Don't forget to save multiple versions as you work in case Maya crashes or something else goes wrong. To save versions after you have saved the initial scene file, go to the menu File → Increment & Save

Render the Temple: Rendering means taking the scene you have created, choosing a camera (e.g. persp) and camera location, and generating an image file (png or jpg). It should look something like the Basic Temple image shown above. Directions are described here:

• Add a polygon plane to represent the ground so your temple doesn't look as though it is floating.
• If desired, add a simple solid color to the temple (ask if you need help). Please do not do anything more complicated.
• 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 (like the above image on left, not the one on the right!).
• Go to the menu Window → RenderingEditors → Render Settings... and do the following:
  • Set the "Render Using" option to "Mental Ray". If this is not a listed option, you need to add the Mental Ray plug-in. To do this, go to the Maya's main menu: Window → Settings/Preferences → Plug-in Manager . In the Plug-in Manager window, scroll down towards the bottom to where you see Mayatomr.mll listed. Check the "Loaded" and "Auto load" boxes to the right. Exit the window by selecting the "Close" button at the very bottom. Return to the "Render Settings" window. Mental ray should now be an option. (If Mayatomr.mll is not listed, then for the moment, just use the Maya Softare renderer instead of Mental Ray)
  • Choose  the Image Format to be PNG (png) or JPEG (jpeg).
  • Set the "Image Size; Presets" to HD 540. This should give you an image that has a pixel resolution of 960 (width) x 540 (height).
  • Close the Render Settings window.
  • To actually render the image, you must click the "render current frame" button on the toolbar in Maya (ask if you can't find it). Alternatively, go to the menu Render → Render Current Frame
  • When you render the image, Maya will automatically save your image in the "images" folder within the project folder (you may actually need to look in the "images/tmp" folder). Note, if it isn't there then the project was probably not set correctly.
  • Change the filename of the image to something like your_last_name_temple.png and copy it over to the cs-render folder \IDS252Sp15\Lab1\FinalImages\your_name.

Part 2: NURBS Modeling

• Work in the same Maya project that was used for the temple.
• In Maya, go to Help → Tutorials. Click on the link Getting Started with Maya 2015 and then go to Getting Started with Maya → NURBS Modeling .
  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)

• Render HD 540 jpg or png images of your glass and saltshaker. Name the image files named appropriately, (e.g. your_last_name_glass.png, your_last_name_saltshaker.png). Copy it over to the cs-render folder \IDS252Sp16\Lab1\FinalImages\your_name.

Deliverables and Evaluation

Before the beginning of class on due date listed at the top of this lab, you should have a single Maya project containing your scene files (among other things): temple.mb, glass.mb, and saltshaker.mb. This project should be located on cs-render in the folder \IDS252Sp16\Lab1\MayaProjects\your_name.

Your three rendered images (the temple, glass, saltshaker) should be in the folder \IDS252Sp16\Lab1\FinalImages\your_name

The main goal of this lab is to familiarize yourself with the Maya interface and basic modeling tools. A link to the evaluation sheet is given at the top, under the due-date. We will complete this sheet during class on the day the assignment is due.

There is a lot to get used to in this first lab. If you have ANY questions, it is important that you ask.

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