Makeup class

As we decided last week (very democratically, I think!) the makeup class will be on Friday, Dec. 19th at 7pm. There's still a Monday class that week, this is the "bonus" class.

Updated Curriculum

I updated the first three weeks in the curriculum post down below to more accurately reflect reality. See you tomorrow night.

Class 2 tonight

I'm back in town and will see everyone for class tonight. Nothing else to report.

Week 2 with Pascal

I'll be out for week 2 (we'll do a makeup lecture/bonus class at some point in the future) so Pascal will be there to take you through some review of the basic

• camera,
  
• move,
• rotate,
  
• scale and
  
• keyframe

skills we covered in week 1. Also, please have him show you the basics of opening and saving files, in case there are any questions about getting the project file's from the book lessons to work.

October 2008 Intro Curriculum

Week One
Workspace

• Introduction to the Maya Interface
• Cartesian Coordinates and 3D space
• Project Management
• Layers
• Outliner
• Hotkeys - Q,W,E,R,4,5
• Camera navigation
  
• homework – Transformation Tools p.13

Modeling

• Geometric primitives as building blocks
• homework – Barn p. 26

Animation

• Setting keyframes
• Ball bounce
• homework – Create Project p. 57
• optional – Build and Animate Ball Rolling p. 51

Week Two
Shading

• Shader basics
  
• homework – Shading Donuts p. 37

Lighting

• Point lights - intensity, color, shadow
• homework – Lighting Donuts p. 41

Rendering

• Render globals
• homework – Rendering Donuts p. 46

Week Three


Modeling

• Geometry types
• Component mode
• homework – NURBS Components p. 63

Animation

• Pivot points
• homework – Pivot Points p. 73

Shading

• Material types
• homework – Material types p. 77

Lighting

• Spotlights
• homework – Spotlight p.80

Rendering

• Camera basics
• homework – Two-node Camera p.84

Week Four
Workspace

• Hypergraph

Modeling

• Curve creation and editing
• Revolves
• Construction History
• Extruded surfaces
• Lofting
• homework – Revolve & Extrude p.97
• homework – Lofting Fish p. 103

Animation

• Graph editor
• homework – Tangent Plane p. 114

Shading

• Texture maps
• Mapping coordinates
• homework – Barn Textures p. 120

Lighting

• Soft shadows
• Depth maps
• Gobos
• homework – Soft Shadows p. 130
• homework – Gobos p. 133

Week Five
Workspace

• Shelves

Modeling

• Polygon modeling techniques – box modeling
• Extrude face
• Split polygon
• Smooth proxy
• homework – Saddle p. 146

Week Six

Animation

• Hierarchies and groups
• homework – Wagon Groups p. 163
• homework – Toon Tire p. 167

Shading

• Bump maps
• Transparency
• homework – Butterfly p. 172

Lighting

• Area lights
• Raytraced soft shadows
• homework – Cornell Box Area Light p. 177
• homework – Raytraced Shadows p. 180

Rendering

• Depth of Field
• homework – Depth of Field p. 136

Week Seven
Workspace

• Artisan select and sculpt
• Docking the tool settings
• homework – Artisan p. 191

Animation

• Motion paths
• Driven keys
• homework – Motion Path Plane p. 197
• homework – Driven Keys p. 203

Shading

• Displacement maps
• homework – Displacement Wing p. 227

Lighting

• Three-point lighting
• homework – Three-point Lighting p. 252

Rendering

• OptiFX
• homework – Optical FX p. 184

Week Eight
Modeling

• Text and Bevel Plus
• homework – Chicken Model p. 154

Animation

• Skeleton basics
• Added attributes
• homework – Skeleton p. 211

Shading

• TBA

Lighting

• TBA

Rendering

• Batch rendering animation
• homework – Camera Cuts p. 256

Week Nine
Workspace

• Show by type in view
• Snapping

Modeling

• Cluster deformers
• Lattices
• homework – Clusters p. 269

Animation

• Constraints
• Inverse kinematics
• homework – Constraints p. 276
• homework – IK Rigging p. 279

Shading

• 3d painting
• homework – 3D Painting p. 291

Lighting

• TBD

Rendering

• Motion Blur
• homework – Motion Blur p. 299

Week Ten

• Touch of MEL

Modeling

• Advanced poly modeling tools

Animation

• Skinning

Shading

• Reflection mapping

Lighting

• TBD

Rendering

• Rendering in layers

Odds and ends

Here are some questions I got from Bart. I'll go over them on Thursday night.

1) How can Subdivision Surfaces be added to the polygon building workflow? I understand that one can just convert the model to SubD,s and continue working, making creases and getting all the SubD details, and then convert it back to Poly’s. But won’t all those details be compromised or lost when converted back?

2) Please demonstrate how to create a Z-depth pass.

3) Not to take up class time with this, but last week you demonstrated how to create a fully reflective ray-traced object ( two toruses actually ). I recall that moved some material sliders to zero and that you assigned a file you created called “toyroom_refl.tif” into the Reflective Color node. In any case I’ve been unable to recreate the image you came up with, which was: a totally reflective surface with an environmental map as well. ( I may be confused on one or two parts of this recall of events )

Move a CV to absolute coordinates

Here's the question I got from Bart:

John:
>
> I've got a "move CVs" question. Is there something that can be entered in the Command Line that will force a CV to a certain value? For instance, I want to move some CVs to a Z value of "0". I know you showed us one technique for this. Can it be done in the command line as well?
>
> Thanks,
> Bart

Yes, you can click on the word CVs (click to show) in the channel box to see their relative coordinates. The problem is, all of them start life at relative 0,0,0 until you tweak them.

The MEL command to do an absolute move will work as expected, however.
Just pick a CV and then type:
move 0 0 0;

That'll send it to the origin.

To do an absolute translation on a single axis:
move -z 0;

That'll leave x and y alone.

For full info, type:
help move
into your script editor.

-JP