Introduction

The Autodesk® Maya® program is big. It is really, really huge. The book you hold in your hands, and all the exercises within it, represents a mere sliver of what can be created in Maya. Mastering Maya takes years of study and practice. I have been using Maya almost every day since 1999, and I'm still constantly facing new challenges and making new discoveries.

This book is meant to be a guide to help you not only understand Maya but also learn about Maya. The title Mastering Autodesk Maya 2016 implies an active engagement with the software. This book is packed with hands-on tutorials. If you're looking for a quick-reference guide that simply describes each and every button, control, and tool in the Maya interface, turn to the Maya documentation that comes with the software. This book is not a description of Maya; it is an explanation illustrated with practical examples.

The skills you acquire through the examples in this book should prepare you for using Maya in a professional environment. To that end, some features, such as lighting and rendering with mental ray®, nDynamics, Fluids, and Maya Muscle, have received more emphasis and attention than others. Features that have not changed significantly over the past few versions of the software, such as Maya Software rendering, standard Maya shaders, and older rigging techniques, receive less attention since they have been thoroughly covered elsewhere.

When you read this book and work through the exercises, do not hesitate to use the Maya help files. I won't be insulted! The Maya documentation has a very useful search function that allows you to find complete descriptions of each control in the software. To use the help files, click the Help menu in the Maya menu interface. The documentation consists of a large library of Maya resources, which will appear in your default web browser when you access the help files. Experienced Maya artists never hesitate to use the help files to find more information about the software; there is no shame in asking questions! In addition, hovering over a tool or setting will give you a brief description. Features new to Maya, highlighted in green throughout the interface, have links to larger descriptions as well as movies.

Who Should Buy This Book

This book is written for intermediate Maya users and users who are advanced in some aspects of Maya and want to learn more about other facets of the program. The book is intended for artists who are familiar with Maya and the Maya interface or those who have significant experience using similar 3D packages. If you have used older versions of Maya, this book will help you catch up on the features in Maya 2016.

If you have never used Maya or any other 3D software on a computer before, this book will be too challenging and you will quickly become frustrated. You are encouraged to read Introducing Autodesk Maya 2016 by Dariush Derakhshani (Sybex, 2015) or to read through the tutorials in the Maya documentation before diving into this book.

You should be familiar with the following before reading this book:

• The Maya interface.
• Computer image basics such as color channels, masking, resolution, and image compression.
• Computer animation basics, such as keyframes, squash and stretch, and 3D coordinate systems.
• Standard Maya shaders, such as the Blinn, Phong, Lambert, Layered, and Anisotropic materials, as well as standard textures, such as Fractal, Ramp, Noise, and Checker.
• Lighting and rendering with standard Maya lights and the Maya software renderer.
• The basics of working with NURBS curves, polygon surfaces, and NURBS surfaces.
• Your operating system. You need to be familiar with opening and saving files and the like. Basic computer networking skills are helpful as well.

What's Inside

The topics in this book move in a progressive order from introductory to complex. They also loosely follow a typical production pipeline for starting and completing assets. The following are brief explanations of the contents of each chapter.

There is also a companion website, which is home to all of the project files and samples referenced in the book. Go to www.sybex.com/go/masteringmaya2016, and click the Downloads tab to access the files.

• Chapter 1: Working in Autodesk Maya This chapter discusses how to work with the various nodes and the node structure that make up a scene. Using the Hypergraph, Outliner, Hypershade, Attribute Editor, and Connection Editor to build relationships between nodes is demonstrated through a series of exercises.
• Chapter 2: Introduction to Animation This chapter demonstrates basic rigging with inverse kinematics as well as animating with keyframes, expressions, and constraints. Animation layers are explained.
• Chapter 3: Hard-Surface Modeling This chapter introduces the various types of surfaces you can use to model. It walks you through numerous approaches for modeling parts of a bicycle.
• Chapter 4: Organic Modeling This chapter focuses on building a humanoid mesh, using polygon and subdivision surface techniques. Smooth mesh polygons, creasing, and soft selection are demonstrated on various parts of the model.
• Chapter 5: Rigging and Muscle Systems This chapter explains joints, expands on inverse kinematics, and covers smooth binding and proper rigging techniques. Maya Muscle is introduced and demonstrated on a character's leg.
• Chapter 6: Animation Techniques This chapter takes you through the numerous deformation tools available in Maya. Creating a facial-animation rig using blend shapes is demonstrated, along with texture deformers, nonlinear deformers, and the geometry cache. We also take a look at importing motion capture.
• Chapter 7: Lighting with mental ray This chapter demonstrates a variety of lighting tools and techniques that can be used when rendering scenes with mental ray. Indirect lighting using global illumination, Final Gathering, and the Physical Sun and Sky network are all demonstrated.
• Chapter 8: mental ray Shading Techniques This chapter describes commonly used mental ray shaders and how they can be employed to add material qualities that mimic real-world surfaces. Tips on how to use the shaders together as well as how to light and render them using mental ray are offered.
• Chapter 9: Texture Mapping This chapter demonstrates how to create UV texture coordinates for a giraffe. Applying textures painted in other software packages, such as Adobe Photoshop, is discussed, as are displacement and normal maps and subsurface scattering shaders.
• Chapter 10: Paint Effects This chapter provides a step-by-step demonstration of how to create a custom Paint Effects brush as well as how to animate and render with Paint Effects.
• Chapter 11: Rendering for Compositing This chapter introduces render layers and render passes, which can be used to split the various elements of a render into separate files that are then recombined in compositing software.
• Chapter 12: Introducing nParticles This chapter provides numerous examples of how to use nParticles. You'll use fluid behavior, particle meshes, internal force fields, and other techniques to create amazing effects.
• Chapter 13: Dynamic Effects This chapter demonstrates a variety of techniques that can be used with nCloth to create effects. Traditional rigid body dynamics are compared with nCloth, and combining nCloth and nParticles is illustrated.
• Chapter 14: Hair and Clothing This chapter discusses how to augment your Maya creatures and characters using XGen, Maya nHair, and nCloth. Using dynamic curves to create a rig for a dragon's tail is also demonstrated.
• Chapter 15: Maya Fluids This chapter explains how 2D and 3D fluids can be used to create smoke, cloud, and flame effects, and it provides a demonstration of how to render using the Ocean shader. Bifrost is introduced as a way of creating liquid simulation.
• Chapter 16: Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the Maya virtual camera and its attributes. A number of exercises provide examples of standard and custom camera rigs. Stereo 3D cameras are also introduced. References and the Asset Editor are also introduced. These features aid with large Maya projects that are divided between teams of artists.
• Appendix A: The Bottom Line This appendix contains all of the solutions from the Master It section at the end of each chapter.
• Appendix B: Autodesk Maya 2016 Certification This appendix contains the Autodesk Maya 2016 Certified Professional Objectives table that lists the topic, exam objective, and chapter where the information can be found.

Note Go to www.autodesk.com/certification to find information about the Maya 2016 Certified Professional exam covered in this book, as well as other Maya certification exams.

Conventions

Navigating in Maya is slightly different in the Windows and Mac operating systems. You can navigate the Hypergraph by using the same hot-key combination that you use in the viewport: Alt+MMB-drag/Option+MMB-drag pans through the Hypergraph workspace, and Alt+RMB-drag/Option+RMB-drag zooms in and out. (MMB refers to the middle mouse button, and RMB refers to the right mouse button.)

It is also important to note that Maya uses three digits for values listed within its tools and editors. The book may...