Maya 2018 2 – Professional 3d Modeling And Animation Tool

• Maya 2018 2 – Professional 3d Modeling And Animation Tools
• Maya 2018 2 – Professional 3d Modeling And Animation Toolkit

Autodesk Maya is a 3D modeling and animation program that can be used for 3D printing, and animated graphics. Whether you plan to model or modify objects Maya offers all the tools needed to produce professional and quality results for even a beginner. This tutorial will take you through some of the basic uses of Autodesk Maya. Whether you plan to model or modify objects Maya offers all the tools needed to produce professional and quality results for even a beginner. This tutorial will take you through some of the basic uses of Autodesk Maya. In this tutorial, you will learn the following: 1. Getting Started Pg. Creating a Maya.

Maya is a versatile 3D platform which offers numerous cutting-edge tools to pull off the desired model effects. If you are a beginner in Maya, you will surely be wondering - how to use Maya for beginners? Your basic instinct would be to gain expertise of all the tools available. Trying to do so initially would not be a wise decision. In order to improve your efficiency, you need to gradually work your way through simpler tools that can speed up your productivity significantly.

Among the plethora of tools available on Maya's dashboard, usage of 5 selected tools can help you master various Maya modeling techniques. The tools are being dwelt upon below.

• Lattice Tool

  Maya streamlines the process of lattice modeling with feature-packed lattice tool which can come in handy for beginners. If you are working with a high-resolution mesh, you often have to grapple with the challenge of tweaking scores of vertices and edges to get the perfect outcome. This is strenuous and time-consuming. Steer clear of the drudgery with lattice tool which allows you to tweak the overall shape efficiently in a collective manner.

  The lattice tool is clustered with animation tools. You will not find it on polygon tool panel. Just try your hand on the tool for minor modeling requirements and you would be amazed to find that particular shapes can be modeled quickly with perfection. You may, however, run into bugs and abnormal behavior rarely. To overcome this, the creation of a new save point is recommended prior to tool usage. Once you are done with the lattice tool, delete the history.

• Soft Select Tool

  If you are a novice to Maya's organic modeling, you might have experienced the monotony associated with individual movement of each vertex. You can surmount this with the Soft Select function which facilitates modification of the shape of created mesh in a fast and efficient manner. The function imparts a controllable fall off radius to each edge, face selection or vertex. As soon as the soft selection is activated, selection of a single vertex becomes possible. As the vertex would be translated in space, the adjacent vertices would also respond to your action to a limited extent because they would be pushed some distance far from the selected vertex. You can browse through YouTube videos on this subject to get practical insights into the functioning of the tool.

  The transitions accomplished through Soft Selection function are smoother compared to other methods. Hence, they are perfect for organic character modeling particularly for the seamless building of shapes that require more subtlety such as facial expressions, muscles, etc.

• Duplicate Special Command

  You can easily replicate shapes, as many as you wish, and individually translate, rotate, scale or execute other function on the instanced copies using ‘Duplicate Special' command. The problem that you come across while modeling regularly spaced elements, fence or circular patterns, can be alleviated with this command.

  Suppose you are trying to model an architectural masterpiece that would feature a number of columns equidistantly placed in a circular pattern. You need to just set the pivot of the first column at the origin and then invoke the duplicate special command for creation of the required number of duplicates in a single stroke. Each column would be spontaneously rotated by 10o pivoted along the origin. You can browse YouTube videos to get practical insights into the efficacy of the command. The command can help in pacing up your modeling in Maya by painting attributes on a large number of duplicates set along a patterned shape.

• The Relax Brush

  The models created by novices in the field of organic modeling often turn out to be blobby i.e. lumps are evident in shape after being smoothed. Dedicated tool panel for sculpting is not available in Maya 3D modeling software. However, this deficiency is made by sculpting brushes among which ‘Relax Brush' is highly useful.

  With the application of this brush, the surface of an object can be normalized through averaging of the spacing parameters amidst the vertices. The model's silhouette would remain intact. Just stroking once with a relax brush, the lumpiness and irregular shaping of the organic model would be eliminated.

  In order to access the relax tool, you need to select the polygonal shape in object mode. Keep the right mouse button pressed till a menu pops up. From the ‘Paint' option, choose ‘Sculpt' and then navigate to the ‘Sculpt Parameters' tab for selecting the relax brush. The radius of the brush size and opacity or strength of the brush can be changed from brush tab. For normalizing the mesh, you need to move the brush atop the surface of the chosen model. In a Wacom graphics tablet, this is accomplished fairly easily and swiftly. But, on other devices too, the stellar effect can be achieved.

• Quick Select Sets Tool

  Often, you have come across a peculiar situation with custom 3d modeling in Maya. After a complex set of faces has been selected with much effort for carrying out some mesh related functions, you have moved on to concentrate on the subsequent task. Suddenly, the realization strikes you that a minute tweaking needs to be done on the previous work. As the selection set is no longer available, you have to carry out the tedious process all over again. Screaming frog seo spider 12 60. You can avoid this by saving your selection sets so that adjustments on them can be done rapidly in easy manner at a later period.

  Saving the selection set is really easy. After selecting the edges, vertices or faces that you have to work on, navigate to the Create menu for choosing ‘Quick Select Sets'. Name the set and click OK. You can also use ‘add to shelf' if you choose to access the set by clicking shelf icon. In order to select the set later, you have to navigate to Edit menu and then select ‘Quick Select Sets'. From the list, choose the desired set. The process would save your time and cut tediousness out of repetitive work.

• Walk Tool

  With the help of ‘Walk Tool' in Maya, you can exercise control over the perspective camera. This would be similar to the settings in games wherein first-person camera can be intuitively controlled.

  You can press the hotkey Alt + X to arrive at the Walk Tool. Alternately, you can navigate to the tool by clicking on View menu and selecting Camera Tools from the dropdown within which Walk Tool is available in panel menu. You would notice that the shape of the cursor has changed into a multi-directional arrow when Maya is switched to walk mode. Also, a heads-up display message would show up at the lower part of the viewport.

  It is important to note that after you have activated the walk mode, the speed of movement would be controlled by the mouse wherein the camera movement's direction would be controlled by the keyboard. For walking through the scene, you have to use the keyboard and mouse at the same time in tandem. Middle click with W key would allow you in moving forward at a slow pace.

After mastering the tools, you will be able to effectively leverage various 3d common modeling techniques. You can utilize these techniques to increase your productivity while creating models. Gradually, you will get efficient enough to make the perfect models according to the client's requirements.

This category describes software used by artists for game development.

• 23D Tools
  • 2.6Re-Topology Software
• 32D Tools
• 43D Tool Information
  • 4.23ds Max
• 52D Tool Information

Popularity

There are no accurate publicly-available data sources about which art software packages are the most popular for game development. There is only a loose consensus about which tools are used the most often (see Maya = Modeling? or Chances of working with 3DS Max vs Maya in the industry? on the Polycount forum). The choice of art software is usually very subjective, or is forced upon the artist by the studio pipeline. Professionals agree on one thing though.. the best way to find out which is best is to give everything a try.

Expense is usually not a concern for employed artists, due to the ratio of saved time and effort vs. cost. For hobbyists and students however, low-cost alternatives can be found in the forum thread Free or low cost 3D and 2D apps.

3D Tools

Main 3D Software Packages

Maya 2018 2 – Professional 3d Modeling And Animation Tools

These are 'complete' 3D packages with a wide variety of art tools. However external packages are often used in conjunction with the main package, since some of the included tools are often not quite as efficient or strong as external specialized packages. Please also note that the prices below may be different, if upgrading from already own package.

3D Modeling Software

Most modeling is done in the Main 3D Software Packages. Sometimes artists will use specific modeling tools, to speed up their workflow. These packages are used mostly for 3D modeling, but they often have additional features as well.

3D Animation Software

Most animation is done in the Main 3D Software Packages, though here are some tools that specialize just in animation.

3D Sculpting Software

These tools are used to create a high-resolution 3D model with a series of painting strokes, using a pressure-sensitive tablet or screen. Usually the details from these models are baked into textures for a lower-resolution in-game model. Often these tools include 3D painting as well.

Decimation Software

To decimate means to reduce the triangle count of a highly-detailed model. They may be created via DigitalSculpting or Subdivision Surface Modeling. Decimation makes a detailed model easier to load, manipulate, and render in other applications. Decimation tools should preserve the model's essential form without degrading texture coordinates or material boundaries. Decimation is also used for creating LevelOfDetail (LOD) models.

Re-Topology Software

Re-topology means creating a new mesh surface from scratch, that conforms to an existing 'messy' mesh, often created via digital sculpting. Messy meaning that it either has too much detail or has a topology that's not the best for texturing, shading, or animation. The details from the 'messy' mesh are transferred to the new re-topologized mesh by baking a DisplacementMap or NormalMap. The new mesh can either be used directly in-game, or it can be used as the control cage for a subdivision surface. For opinions/reviews of re-topo software, see retopo tools for Max? on the Polycount forum.

Conform Software

These tools are for conforming an existing mesh to another mesh. Two finished models can be shrink-wrapped to one another, for example to fit a new mesh layout to the size/shape of an existing model. If the models have a different vertex count and order, a conform-style tool must be used instead of a morph tool.

3D Paint Software

Many of the main packages include bare-bones 3D paint tools, and most sculpting software also has 3D paint. The Blender site has a list of 3D paint programs here. The following tools are dedicated to 3D paint:

See also PaintingAcrossSeams.

3D Normal Map Software

These packages are used specifically for creating normal maps from 3D meshes. See also 2D Normal Map Software.

• PolyBump2 by Crytek
• Renderbump by id Software
• SHTools by Epic Games
• Turtle by Illuminate Labs
• Kaldera by Mankua is a commercial baking plugin for 3ds Max, but it hasn't been updated since 2005.
• Melody by NVIDIA is a free baking application, but it hasn't been updated since 2005.
• NormalMapper by ATI/AMD is a free baking application, but it hasn't been updated since 2004.
• ORB (Open Render Bump) by Martin Fredriksson and C. Seger is a free baking application, but it hasn't been updated since 2003.

Also, the Main 3D Software Packages and the dedicated 3D Sculpting Software each usually have their own integrated normal map creation tools.

3D Texture Coordinate Software

These packages are specifically for creating UV texture coordinates for a 3D mesh.

Special Effects Software

• Indie Tools & Utilities – 2010 Update An extensive, ever growing list of free, cheap or simply 'so good they need a mention' tools & utilities for typical development jobs.

2D Tools

Main 2D Software

These are 'complete' 2D packages with a wide variety of art tools for photo manipulation, texturing, concepting, etc.

Texturing workflow - software Polycount Forum thread has discussion about the texturing tools game artists are using.

Wikipedia has a nice table comparing the features of multiple 2D editing packages.

Concepting Software

These packages are most often used for painting concepts and illustrations.

2D Normal Map Software

These packages are used specifically for creating normal maps from 2D images. See also 3D Normal Map Software.

• Photoshop nDo Normal Creation Toolkit is a plugin that costs $99. Windows only.
• Photoshop NVIDIA Normal Map Filter is a free plugin.
  • Convert a grayscale image into a NormalMap or DuDvMap, many options available. Windows 32bit only.
• Photoshop NVIDIA DDS texture compression plugin is free.
  • Same as the NVIDIA normal map filter, but lets you create the best-quality Mip Maps for a normal map, by filtering each mip independently from the original source image, rather than simply scaling down the normal map. Windows 32bit only.
• Photoshop Xnormal filters is a free plugin by Santiago 'jogshy' Orgaz.
  • Five filters for Photoshop: Dilation (see EdgePadding), !Height2Normals (see NormalMap), !Height2Occlusion (see AmbientOcclusionMap), Normalize normal map, !Normals2Cavity.
• GIMP normalmap plugin is a free plugin by Shawn Kirst.
• NSpace is a free converter from Diogo Teixeira that can convert Object Space normal maps into Tangent Space normal maps. The tool is discussed in this thread and Osman 'osman' Tsjardiwal has created GUI for it as well.
• Normal Map Actions for Photoshop by Will 'sinistergfx' Fuller
  • Overlay: Levels blue channel of current layer to 128 and sets the blend mode to overlay. Used for overlaying additional normal map detail.
  • Normalize: Just does a nVidia normal map filter normalize on the current layer.
  • Normalize (flatten): Flattens the image and does a nVidia normal map filter normalize.
  • Rotate 90 CW: Rotates current normal map layer 90 degrees clockwise and fixes your red and green channels so that it doesn't break your normal map.
  • Rotate 90 CW (inverted Y): Rotates current normal map layer 90 degrees clockwise and fixes your red and green channels so that it doesn't break your normal map. For normal maps that use the inverted Y convention.
  • Rotate 90 CCW: Rotates current normal map layer 90 degrees counter-clockwise and fixes your red and green channels so that it doesn't break your normal map.
  • Rotate 90 CCW (inverted Y): Rotates current normal map layer 90 degrees counter-clockwise and fixes your red and green channels so that it doesn't break your normal map. For normal maps that use the inverted Y convention.
  • Rotate 180: Rotates current normal map layer 180 degrees and fixes your red and green channels so that it doesn't break your normal map.

Vector Software

These packages are used for creating vector graphics, commonly used for user interfaces or print media.

Image Overlay Software

These tools are helpful for overlaying reference images, drawing quick review comments on artwork, remote collaboration, marking animation reference points, etc.

Image Browsing Software

These packages are used for browsing image collections and for displaying reference imagery while an artist is working.

Tiled Texture Tools

• Filter Forge ($) procedural tiled-texture editor.
• PixPlant ($) texture tiling tool.
• Seamless Texture Generator ($) texture tiling tool.
• Seamless Workshop free Photoshop filter that fixes tiling errors by blending edges.
• sdvTile free Photoshop script that expands the canvas 3x and repeats your texture across it.
• Texture Frank free 3d tile previewer. Great for viewing tiled textures while painting. EXE shows textures on meshes, drag-n-drop, auto refresh, diffuse/normal/specular/displacement maps, multi-layer PSDs, etc. Many options!
• Wood Workshop free procedural-wood tiled-texture editor.

Screen Recording Software

Record your screen to a video file.

• CamStudio (free)
• Camtasia ($)
• Fraps ($)
• Gadwin ScreenRecorder ($)
• Game DVR (free, Windows 10 required)
• Open Broadcaster Software (free)
• Overwolf (free)
• ShadowPlay (free, Nvidia card required)

Sprite Tools

• TexturePacker by CodeAndWeb - Sprite sheet packer supporting many game and web frameworks
• ShoeBox by Hendrik-Jan 'renderhjs' Schoenmaker tools for working with transparencies and sprites.
• SpriteSheet Preview free tool for viewing multi-frame sprite sheets.

Tablet Utilities

These are tools that help with using a tablet or Cintiq.

3D Tool Information

3D-Coat

Best known for: Voxel sculpting for topology-less sculpting, texture painting and advanced retopology capabilities including auto-retopology which can generate all-quad meshes using nothing more then a few basic guide splines drawn by the user. It also has polygonal sculpting with dynamic tessellation, PBR Shading/Material painting, advanced curves based painting/sculpting tools and a unique UV unwrapping algorithm called 'Globally Uniform' that unwraps even some complex meshes with near perfect uniform polygons across the UV map.

• PBR Materials in 3D-Coat - by Javis Jones
• Construct a PBR Material in 3D-Coat - by Javis Jones

3ds Max

Best known for: the power of its modifier stack for modeling. Features powerful viewport shaders such as Xoliul's Shader and the 3Point Shader. Category:Shaders lists some popular shaders and has articles about how to make new ones.

• 3dsmax Basics - Solving the Preferences - by Sascha Henrichs
• Max and Maya: Similarities and Differences - by Paul Neale
• MAXScript for MEL users - by Borislav Petrov
• 3DS clean - 3ds Max 2009 customized for speed
• <3 3ds Max 2009 - more tips for customizing 3ds Max.

Plugins and Scripts

• ScriptSpot Your community resource for 3ds MAXScript or SketchUp Rubyscript.
• MAX Plugins.de The database for freeware and commercial 3ds Max plugins.
• Creative Crash List of 3ds Max plugins & scripts.
• Autodesk AREA Plugins List of 3ds Max plugins.
• Autodesk AREA Scripts List of 3ds Max scripts.

• Quad Chamfer Modifier {$} - better chamfer for SubdivisionSurfaceModeling.
• PolyUnwrapper - many maxscripts for UVW Unwrap.
• Advanced UV Normalizer - use custom Texel Density to normalize the UV Shells across different models.
• TexTools - many maxscripts for UVW Unwrap.
• IllusionCatalyst - Scripts - maxscripts for edgeloop modeling.
• select every other edge on collapsed subdivided mesh - 3dsmax - maxscript to revert subdivided meshes
• EdgeSmooth - Free, open source smoothing plugin - maxscript for defining hard edges like Maya does, instead of assigning Smoothing Groups manually.
• Grabviewport 2.5 - capture high-resolution screenshots with passes (alpha, wire, ssao, etc.).
• Max plugins archive Polycount thread

Blender

Best known for: being a free alternative to more expensive packages, and as a very inclusive package with it's own compositor, sequencer, sculpting system, and game engine.

• Blender 2.5 Crash Course (Not For Retards) Polycount forum thread
• How to set 3ds max default viewport controls in Blender Polycount forum thread

Mari

Best known for: being used in the production of Avatar film, and can handle multiple 32k resolution textures. https://enfastygu1979.mystrikingly.com/blog/file-cabinet-pro-6-2.

Mari is a 3D painting app best known for it's high res texture painting capabilities. It uses the hard drive heavily as a swap disk, and thus requires a significant amount of free space (250gb free recommended).

• Mari - does anyone actually use it? thread on Polycount (the answer is, yes!)
• Mari release thread on Polycount: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75224
• Mari video: http://media.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-ep078.mov

Maya 2018 2 – Professional 3d Modeling And Animation Toolkit

Maya

Best known for: the speed of its marking menus while modeling, and ease of animation due to the versatility of attributes.

• Guides for Transitioning to Maya - by Autodesk. Four guides to transitioning to Maya from: 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, or Softimage XSI.
• How to switch UI styles in Maya 2011: Autodesk Maya 2011 Qt style switch
• How to Inset faces like in 3DS Max: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1168816&postcount=14
• How to Push like the 3DS Max modifier: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74491
• How to fix corrupted files: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66262

Sculptris

Best known for: adding geometry to a mesh dynamically, avoiding worries about topology while sculpting. Sculptris is a powerful, easy to use, and lightweight sculpting app. Because you don't have to worry about geometry or using a base mesh, it is quickly becoming popular for roughing out and concepting ideas. Afterwords artists will retopologize their concept sculpt and take it into ZBrush or Mudbox for refinement. There are also painting tools for color and bump, but as of v1.02 their is no way to preserve the paint if one decides to go back into sculpt mode.

As of July 23 2010 Sculptris has been purchased by Pixologic, and its Developer (Tomas Petersson) hired by them (whom now works for The Foundry). What this means for the future of Sculptris, its technology, and its 'free' status has yet to be determined.

For v1.01 :

• Unofficial Mac port: http://drpetter.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=sculptris&action=display&thread=661
• French translation: http://drpetter.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tech&action=display&thread=316

Softimage XSI

Best known for: the modeling toolset, and ICE (used for creating effects) is considered very powerful, plus tight Mental Ray integration. Even though Softimage XSI isn't as commonly used as in the games industry, there are big studios that use it as their primary 3D software. Some notable examples are Ubisoft (Assassins Creed), Lionhead (Fable series), Konami (Metal Gear Solid 4), Valve (Half life 2).

• 3ds Max to Softimage XSI Transition Tips - by Stefan Didak
• Max to XSI Jumpstart - by 'Vmpre'

World Machine

Best known for: Widely used in the game industry for creating terrains using natural erosion techniques. Great for creating height maps, textures, and texture masks.

• Category:EnvironmentTerrain has tutorials for World Machine.
• World machine, advanced coloring macro - by 'Buzzcore'

Zbrush

Best known for: being well a supported and innovative sculpting package. Zbrush's Ztool system allows for minimal use of a traditional 3D package, while its tools attempt to bring digital media as close to traditional, physical media as possible.

• ZBrush Custom UI Showcase Polycount forum thread, people sharing their UIs and tools.
• Custom Brushes using Zbrush and Max video tutorial by Michael 'Orb' Vicente
• Free Custom Zbrush Brushes by Michael Dunnam
• Nick's Tools - Zbrush Plugins by Nick 'nyx702' Miller
• ZBrushCentral user forums, galleries, etc.
• Pixologic ZClassroom video training

2D Tool Information

Alchemy

• Alchemy thread on Polycount

Illust Studio

Open Canvas

Best known for: The 'Network Canvas' feature that was present in its free pre-commercial version, which allowed multiple users to paint on a single canvas over the net or LAN (This feature was removed once Open Canvas became commercial software, but the free version despite its limitations and age remains popular to this day because of it).

• Download the free version here.

Photoshop

See PhotoshopTools.

/! Note: prices are accurate as of June 27, 2010