So right, moving on… what is Maya? No she's not that girl that lives next door that loves to dress as a hippie and who dyes her hair nearly every week.
Autodesk Maya is a 3D Computer Graphics Software that runs on Windows, OSX and Linux, originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation and it is now currently owned and developed by Autodesk, Ink. It is used to create interactive 3D applications, including video games, animations for films and TV series, or even just visual effects. And so as Maya is presently one of the industry's leading animation software, it is only right that we being familiarizing ourselves with it, so how about a little taste of what the pros can actually do with this software (Let's disregard the amount of money, time and cooperation amongst work mates, and of course other softwares used to polish it up further for the time being)?
And now for some notes (These notes are more for my reference but if they can help you out, well… then yay!):
When first creating a new project, Maya automatically creates a project folder for your work, and inside, this folder contains a whole bunch of other folders that helps organize different parts of your animation, such as scenes, sounds, source images, etc.
With existing models that you might download off from somewhere, you should then move the files in the scene folders of these model folders, and place them into the scene folder of the project folder you just created before actually beginning. And with that, open up the file option and click on "Set Project".
A mouse is most definitely needed when using this software (So go buy one if you are using a laptop like me, and you might probably have to get a logic tech one, just to be safe), interestingly the middle roller button is needed quite a lot (So make sure that middle button is configured for middle clicking), especially as it used for tracking camera movements, to do so, you must also hold down the ALT button while pressing the middle button down before dragging it to whatever way you desire. To orbit/rotate, just do the same thing with the left clicker. And for zooming in and out, use the right button (You'd think that would work better with the middle one… well, maybe you can change that in configuration, if you wanna bother about it).
There are two techniques for posing a skeleton, that being forward kinematics and inverse kinematics:
Forward Kinematics:
This technique is better for posing than animation as each joint has to be rotated individually. Intuitive for creating simple arc motions, it is however quite tedious when animating a more complicated skeleton. And so it wouldn't be the best choice for specifying goal-directed motions.
Inverse Kinematics:
With this technique, you can create an extra control structure, and IK handle for certain joint chains such as arms and legs, this handle lets you pose and animate an entire joint chain by moving a single manipulator, and so it is the better choice for goal directed motions as compared to forward kinematics.
It wouldn't be a very good software if there weren't any shortcuts that we could use to save ourselves some time when slaving over a project, so here are a few (Adding to those mouse button ones I wrote about earlier):
Q - Select
W- Translate
E - Rotate
R - Scale
T - Show Manipulator
Shift+Z - Redo
Control+Z -Undo
A - Fit to Screen
F - Fit selected Object to Screen
The channel box is incredibly helpful, especially when you are required to pose something more precisely, it also helps if you wish to make any part of your model invisible for the time being, or for the entirety of the project.
To set a keyframe, select the frame you desire and press S. The auto key option is just at the bottom right corner (That one button that happens to have a key on it, you can't miss it), it automatically creates a keyframe to the frame you happen to be on after you make any sort of changes to the model's pose.
Polygons are for modeling while animations are for… animating, yeah, that's it, I can't really add onto that note until I experiment more with Maya.
Select All>Create>Set>Create Quick Select>Add to Custom Set (No don't read this, this is for my own reference)
Being someone who has a god awful memory and an incredibly low attention span, it might take me a little longer to familiarize myself with the controls, to make matters worse, I am already struggling with the basic ones taught to us this week. Unless I use this software 24-7, I will surely forget quite a few important shortcuts or options unless I keep a darn manual for idiots by my side at all times.
But really, it's not all that hard, there are just a lot of things to take in, especially for this tiny little brain of mine.
Thankfully, as students, we are allowed to download a free 3 year copy of Autodesk Maya that we can use at home (So as long as we sign in with our school emails) should we ever need to. Unfortunately for me, at this point in time, my operating system is a little too outdated and does not meet Maya 2015's installation requirements, and so while I wait for my copy of OS X Mountain Lion to arrive (Secondary thought here… should I just get OS X Mavericks too…? Bleh), I will in the meantime make use of Maya 2014, and if my laptop is able to handle this software just fine, maybe I can just stick with it (Much like I did with Photoshop, Flash and After Effects last year).
So give me some time to mess around with it and… hopefully I might be able to post up a little example before the next week's session.
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