Animation

• Maya Time Slider Settings
• Maya Add Renderable Camera
• Maya Render Image Sequence
• Maya Multiple Renderable Cameras

Animation Rigs

• Maya Sphere Ball Rig
• Maya Quadball Rig
• Custom Rig Controllers
• Selection Child Highlighting

Animation

• Maya Simple Ball Bounce

• Maya Ball Bounce Animation Physics

• Render Paint Effects in Arnold

• Animate Paint Effect Flowers

Objectives

Draft a Story Spine that follows a basic narrative arc. This will give you guidelines and a plan to make your animation. Use the story spine to draw storyboards of the scenes and different camera angles that you want to use.

Create a 3D environment or “animation set” of 3D modeled objects. This Environment should be real world scale and be interesting enough to use as a setting for your bouncing ball animation. You can model different items for your scene and combine the meshes and group them together. You can save the items all in one Maya scene or save each item as a different scene and import them into your main scene.

Use the UV mapping editor in Maya to map the UVs of your objects and export UV snapshots for importing into Photoshop. Paint textures onto the UV snapshots and export the new textures to your “sourceimages” folder in your Maya project. Apply the Textures and edit as needed. You can also use Adobe’s Substance Painter to add detailed textures. Smooth your object and then save it as an .obj file to import into Substance Painter. Then you can use all of the materials in Substance Painter.

Add lights to the scene. Make sure to only add “Arnold Lights.” Do not use any of the older Maya lights or you will not be able to use the CIA Render Farm. Remember that you will have to increase the exposure of the lights to make your render show up in the Arnold Renderer.

Add multiple cameras to the scene. Animate a bouncing ball that travels through the scene in an interesting way. Use the animation principles of squash, stretch, exaggeration, anticipation and follow through. Use a minimum of 3 different camera angles and shot types. to apply textures to your objects. Export the different camera angles as separate sequence renders.

2. Set Your Maya Project

Before you begin making any objects in your Maya scene, make sure you set your project. We did this in class but you should go to File > Set Project and then choose your project folder everytime you start working in Maya. This makes sure you are working with the right files and folders. Always move a texture or external file into your project folder before importing into Maya.

4. Add Materials and Textures

After you finish modeling your objects, combine all the mesh parts with Mesh > Combine. Then delete the history and freeze the transformation. This video shows how to delete history and freeze transformations. You will do tis multiple times on different objects as you model and make changes. Begin to add materials and textures to the objects in your scene. You can right click on your different objects while in Object Mode. Then select “Assign New Material”. Click on Arnold in the menu and then select aiStandardSurface. In the Attribute Editor change the name of the aiStandardSurface to the name of your object. You can add “Shader” to the end of the name. Then select a color or a preset.

You can also add textures by 3D Painting in Maya. First unwrap your object’s UVs and then assign a new Blinn material. The Maya 3D paint tools do not work on aiStandardSurface. This video shows how to 3D paint in Maya

Don’t forget about using photo-based materials / textures. You can easily create seamless textures in Photoshop and then add them to your shader by clicking on the icon by color in the attribute editor of your shader. This video shows how to create seamless textures in Photoshop.

You can also UV unwrap your model and export it as an OBJ file to texture in Substance Painter. This video shows how to quickly UV unwrap your object and export a OBJ file. Substance Painter is installed on the lab computers but you will need to download it from the Adobe Creative Cloud if using your laptop. Create a new file in Substance Painter, select the top default template and then select your exported OBJ file. Paint the textures you want and then export your textures to your “sourceimages” folder in you Maya Project. You can use the Substance plugin in Maya to assign your textures to a new material and then assign that material to your object. This video shows how to make and export textures with Substance Painter.

5. Add Lights

If you try to render your animation scene with the Arnold Render view, everything will be black because there are no lights in the scene. You need to add lights from the Arnold lights menu. Only add Arnold lights. Do not add any Maya lights. If you select lights from the Arnold menu then you will only add Arnold Lights.

For a quick view of your set you can add a simple skydome light. This will light the whole scene evenly but is not the most interesting lighting. Instead of a skydome light or artificial sky light, add multiple Arnold Area Lights. These are flat squares like LED light panels. Press “r” on your keyboard to scale the lights up and press “e” to rotate them towards your objects, then press “w” to move them into position. In the attribute editor the default exposure value for Area lights is 0.00. You need to increase this to somewhere between 8.00 and 16.00 (You scene may be different and may need more or less exposure). Each time you increase the exposure value it is like 1 F-stop on a camera and it doubles the amount of light.

Place as many lights as you need in different places in your scene. Vary the intensity and color of the lights. It is a good idea to label the lights with descriptive names in your Outliner on the left hand side of the screen so you don’t get confused.

6. Add a Renderable Camera

After you add lights, then you should add a new Render Camera. This video shows how to add a renderable camera to your Maya scene. You can look through this camera and position it for your scene. Then you can lock the camera so it does not move. Then you can switch back to the default perspective camera to continue modeling and editing your scene. Label the new camera that you created and then make sure to select it in the Arnold Renderview Window.

Add multiple cameras for the different shots and animations you want to create. You may want to make duplicate scenes for different actions. This video shows how to add multiple renderable cameras to your scene.

7. Make a Minimum of 1 Render of Your Animation Set(s)

After your lights and camera are set up, make and save a high resolution, high quality render of your scene. The default render settings are too low for presentation but are good for quick renders. To export your high quality render you need to change the render settings before rendering.

Change the render size to a minimum of HD_1080 1920x1080 and increase the Arnold - Camera (AA) samples to at least 5. Remember to changes this back to the default HD_540 and 3 samples so your test renders go quickly while modeling.

8. Make an Archive ZIP of Your Scene

After you create your scene. Archive the Maya scene with the Maya scene archiver. If you do not archive the scene, then texture files will not be attached and you will only have the model data. To archive your scene, with your scene open, go to File > Archive Scene. This will create a zip of your scene and any needed texture files. It will create a zip file in your Project’s scenes folder. This video shows how to archve a Maya scene.

Label this zip file as YYYYMMDD Lastname Firstname Archived Set Scene.zip Turn in to the class Google Drive Folder.

Animate

Create Character(s)

You are required to make a simple ball character. This could be a simple sphere polygon with a texture applied. It could be a tennis ball, volley ball, soccer ball or golf ball or a teddy bear from the tutorial videos. It could be a sphere that you have sculpted spikes or fur onto. As long as it is generally round and can be animated with squash and stretch. It does not have to roll but it can. It could bounce or “jump” everywhere. Attach a squash and stretch animation rig to this ball character.

Apply textures to the ball that you 3D Paint in Maya, create in Photoshop or Substance Painter. This video shows how to make and export textures with Substance Painter.

After you create your ball character you can make any other characters or objects to animate. Make additional stuff to be in your scenes to make it more visually interesting.

Animate Your Characters