Maya Tutorials

Next-Gen Materials Cobblestone Written by Alex Schwartz - gtproductions.net WPI Game Development Club Foreword: Much nicer looking PDF located here: http://gtproductions.net/files/cobblestone_tutorial.pdf Introduction: This tutorial will guide you through the creation of a 3d mesh in Maya that ...

Batch Tool Tutorial I. What is the Batch Tool? The Batch Tool is a tool kit to do Maya rendering and batch processing for large amount of files. It serves as a bridge between Maya, operating system and local area network. The Batch Tool allows you to: *)Do Maya network r...

Maya Optics DI He Introduction The term of optics can be largely related to many scientific fields, related the physical concept in Maya software are not very different, therefore lighting and shading processing in Maya is often hard and confusing. Especially for the users wh...

Often time I noticed guys creating a tree but the leaf doesnt look natural. So I thought of writing a tutorial, which will help you to make a realistic tree. Here is a picture I've downloaded from the net, If you see it carefully, you will notice that the tip of the leaves are not ...

Simple lighting effects that really look cool this is just a simple object with shadows and fog that just tend to look sweet. first, we will create the object that we will light and make look cool. 1) Create a cylinder with 0 caps, 50 sub axis, and 25 sub height. Make it have a radius o...

Depth of Field is one of those things that is more often than not, over used. However it does form an important role in generating realistic imagery in 3 dimensional environments. This tutorial does not discuss the correct use of DOF, but instead will show a simple but effective way to set-up a c...

This video tutorial runs you through the workflow of Maya and Mudbox.

A Designer's Tutorial in using Image Based Illumination and High Dynamic Range Imagery Brock J. Stearn Department of Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design The Ohio State University Introduction This tutorial follows a pipeline using Image Based Illumination and High Dynamic...

Tutorial: Using Maya's 'Pick Walk' Functionality It sometimes surprises people that Maya uses the left/right keys to change the current selection instead of stepping back and forth in time. With the default key mappings 1, the up/down/left/right arrow keys are used to change the selection w...

1. Turn on Raytracing (go to the Render Global window either from the Render View portal or under Window-> render globals) 1a. If you have objects in your scene that you'd like to be reflective you must set the Ray Tracing Reflections option to at least "2) 2. Create a scene to v...

Here's a common problem... you add fog to a spotlight, render an image and... no fog. The problem is simple and is inherit to how Maya calculates lightfog. Above we see a simple scene with a single spotlight. No fog added yet. The thing to notice is how once fog has been added to the ...

THE PROBLEM: You need your animation rendered by the morning. You have 3 scenes to render each scene is saved in a different maya file and one of the scenes you have two cameras, you need both of them rendered and you are a tired artist not a programmer. THE SOLUTION: Open notepad type "render ...

Generating and using normal maps in Maya (some sample shaders and scenes) Faster, bigger, better! If you're familiar with normal maps check directly here for a faster application of the method described down here using my rayDisplace plugin : displacement_maps January 10, 2005 ...

Sky Dome

Motion Path Camera

In this tutorial you will learn how to create the image seen below using displacement in Mental Ray for Maya. Mt. Rainier To follow along with this tutorial you will need the following software installed on your machine: Maya with the Mental Ray plug-in loaded Adobe Photoshop C...

Light Linking using three point lighting: Light linking is the art of using multiple lights to create the illusion of one. I normally start with a three point lighting scheme (which I will cover later) and then add lights were needed. Linking a light to an object or objects will allow you ...

Step 1: First of all, the composition will need an alpha channel or a key. Since Hank was done in 3D, the raw untouched render and the alpha channel are easily separated by rendering with an alpha (RGBA). This could have been footage from a camera as well with the alpha obtained by keying out th...

Grab the melscript hereExpMulOBJ.zip A little introduction With more and more powerful processors becoming available to the average user at affordable prices, radiosity solutions are becoming increasingly popular. Maya, however, does not have a radiosity engine. This tutorial shows how to use ...

1. Create a normal projection texture. This will give you the texture and a 3D placement node feeding into a projection node. 2. Delete the 3D placement node. 3. Hook up the World Inverse Matrix attribute (from Camera or Spotlight) to the Placement Matrix attribute (of the Projection Node). If...

An approach of simulating color transport in Maya in few steps without any extra light source... Well, to begin I'd say that this tutorial is a global method to fake 'easily' and quickly radiosity in Maya. I know there's many different ways to achieve the same effect. You may want to see...

Good for gamers..!! Well, here is a little tutorial on how to bake shadows at the same time you convert your shaders into solid texture files. This can be pretty useful for gamers (low poly modeling and thirsty of quick texture mapping including... shadows) I made a little scene to explai...

An approach of simulating color transport in Maya in few steps without any extra light source... Well, to begin I'd say that this tutorial is a global method to fake 'easily' and quickly radiosity in Maya. I know there's many different ways to achieve the same effect. You may want t...

By Eric Keller Scientific animation is a great source of work, and also a great opportunity to flex your creative muscle. It's often a challenge to create something that is simultaneously instructive, visually engaging, and scientifically accurate. However, accuracy in scientific animations is ...