CGS 3220 Lecture 2 Introduction to Computer Aided Modeling Instructor: Brent Rossen Graham Clark

Lesson 1 – Create a Garage Overview  Setting a new Maya Project  Creating primitive objects  Moving objects in 3d space  Duplicating objects  Changing the shape of objects  Using the Maya View tools  Naming objects  Saving and incremental saves

Setting a new Maya Project Launch Maya Set the project  File > Project > Set  Name your project “Garage”  Click, “Use Defaults”  File > New Scene  Save, this will automatically put it in the “scenes” directory

Creating primitive objects Creating the Garage  For this scene, we will be building a garage with several boxes and wires  The room itself will be a primitive polygonal cube  Primitives: the basic shapes used in 3d modeling Found on the Create top menu

Creating Primitive 3d Objects Cont… Create the Cube  Create > Polygon Primitives > Cube  This cube will be used as a large surrounding room. A cube is placed at the origin

The Procedural Model This cube is what’s known as a Procedural Model, that title has quite a few implications, here are the important parts for you. Procedural models can be broken down into nodes Node: a generic object type containing specific attributes that allow it to accomplish a specific task.

Procedural Model Cont… In the case of our cube, it currently has 3 nodes  Transform Positioning information of objects, when you move, rotate, and scale your objects, numbers are changed in the transform node  Shape Contains all the component information that contains the base shape of the object  Input Contains the options that drive the creation of the object, such as radius, or length, width, height

Procedural Model Cont… The input node can be edited in the Channel Box Channel Box is found at the right of the screen and allows you to make changes to attributes as well as later animating attributes The channel box is opened by clicking this button found in the upper right

Changing the shape of objects In the channel box  Click polycube1 under Inputs if it is not open  Change the width to 25, hit enter after each  Change the height to 10  Change the Depth to 25 The cube is now shaped more like a room  You could have also used the scale manipulator to do this  You may need to zoom out to view it all

Using the Maya View tools Four view Panels  To start, you will only see the perspective window  Click the space bar to bring up all four views, another way to do this is click Panels > Saved Layouts > Four View  This shows the cube using the perspective and 3 orthographic views

The Views View panels are used to see into the 3d world  Perspective: shows the view as though you were looking through your own eyes  Orthographic: shows the view looking down a particular axis you’ll notice things don’t get smaller into the distance, it’s as though everything was just squished up against the view plane

The Views Continued… You’ll often need to use several of these views to help determine an exact location

Naming objects In the channel box, click “pCube1” and type in the name “Garage”, press enter Naming objects is often overlooked, but it becomes very important As your scenes grow they can become overwhelming, be sure to name and/or group all of your objects

Moving the Garage We’ll now use our first manipulator, the Move tool Select the Move Tool in the tool box interface on the left or by pressing w

Working in 3d Each dimension is defined by the cardinal axes: x, y, and z  x – length – red  y – height – green  z – depth – blue When you select an object, and turn on the translation manipulator, it will point in the positive direction for each axis The center of the world is called the origin and has [x, y, z] = [0, 0, 0]

Moving the Garage Cont… Click+drag the green manipulator to move the cube along the positive Y axis until the floor is flush with the grid The yellow axis is the active axis on a manipulator

More about the Views and 3d Space Moving in the perspective view can be thought of in two ways:  Either you are moving a camera around an object  Or, you are spinning an object in front of the camera Generally option 1 is the accepted thought, but option 2 can be a very useful view when programming in 3d.

Edit the Views Perspective  Alt+LMB: tumble  Alt+MMB: track  Alt+RMB to dolly Orthographic  Alt + MMB: track  Alt + RMB: dolly  You can’t tumble in orthographic views Both  MMB Wheel to incrementally dolly  Ctrl+Alt+LMB to box dolly – left to right zooms in – right to left zooms out  Undo-redo for views: [ ]  F – frame selected  A – frame all

Moving inside the Garage In the perspective view click Shading > Smooth Shade All To feel like you’re inside the garage, move the perspective view until it is inside the cube geometry But everything disappears! That’s because of the Normals and Backface culling, let’s fix that

Menu Sets and creating Change to the Modeling Menu Set  In Maya 8 the Modeling Menu Set has been divided into the Polygons and Surfaces menu sets

Normals and Backface Culling Backface Culling: a polygon with its normal facing away from the camera will not be displayed with this on.  Backface culling is generally a good thing (saves system resources) so we’ll leave it on and change the normals  A Normal: a vector representing the direction a polygon (or sometimes vertex) is facing Reverse the Normals  Select the cube, (Modeling Menu Set) Edit Polygons > Normals > Reverse  Turns the cube inside out

Making Crates Now it’s time to put some stuff in our room Do the same as for creating the room, but let’s use the hotbox this time,  Hold SpaceBar > Create > Polygon Primitives > Cube  Rename the box “Crate1” so it’s easy to find later

Transforming the cube This time, let’s use the move (W), rotate (E), and scale (R) manipulators to put the box at an odd angle in the corner of the room Also, use the side and front view to make sure it is flush with the floor

Duplicating objects Instead of starting from scratch each time we want to make another crate, let’s use the duplicate command  Edit > Duplicate or Ctrl-d  Notice the boxes are automatically numbered after the number we started from Let’s make a few more boxes

Saving and incremental saves Now is a good time to save, File > Save or ctrl-s Name your scene GarageStart .mb (Maya Binary) will be automatically appended .ma (Maya Ascii) is useful when moving between versions Incremental saves  Incremental saves will save a new copy of your scene each time you hit ctrl-s

Starting Incremental Saves Why use it?  Sometimes Maya crashes, and every once in a while that will corrupt your file. File > Save Scene > Options Box  Check Incremental Save  Check Limit Incremental Saves  Set the Limit to at least 5 depending on your system’s resources

Every Garage Needs Some Shelves Create a cube, reshape it like a shelf, and place it against the wall, near the bottom  Rename the cube “Shelf1” Edit > Duplicate > Options  Edit > Reset Settings  Translate Y: 1.5  Number Copies: 4

Undo-Redo If they don’t look exactly right, ctrl-z or edit > undo and you can try again Shift-z will redo the action

Make the Lamp Create > Polygon Primitives > Cone (w) move the cone up near to the ceiling Rename the cone Lamp Go to the cones Inputs  Radius: 2  Height: 1  Subdivisions Axis: 10  Subdivisions Cap: 1

Adjust the Vertices RMB on the Lamp and select Vertex This mode allows you to edit each vertex into any shape you choose Let’s move our vertices to create an inside to the lamp Hotkey 4 will give you wireframe, hotkey 5 goes back to smooth

Electrical Wire for the Lamp To create the wire, let’s use a nurbs cylinder Create > NURBS Primitives > Cylinder  Radius:.1  Spans: 6  Height Ratio: 50

About NURBS We’re using a NURBS cylinder because surfaces are good for creating smooth geometry NURBS Curves  Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline – you lay down control points and smooth lines are created NURBS Geometry  Surfaces defined using NURBS Curves

Adjusting the Wire Move the wire to the ceiling so that the bottom edge touches the top of the lamp Select the component mode button (F8), and be sure the vertices button is enabled You can now see the control vertices of the wire

Adjusting the Wire Cont… Adjust the Control Vertices (CVs) until they look like a wire Rename the cylinder, Wire Adjust the smoothness (1 – rough, 2 – medium, 3 – fine) Click the component button or F8 again to get out of component mode Save your scene!

Conclusion That’s our first lesson in using Maya, and we’ve already made a room with real-ish objects. Go ahead and try this at home or in the lab. Play around with creating, duplicating, and transforming objects. Make a room of your own. Try a real room, that gives you plenty of details to work from. Next time, a bit more in depth about modeling objects and adding details.