Before modeling anything, it is important to gather and study good reference material. It is also helpful to create templates for use in your modelling program. A good underlay will provide the modeler with exact dimensions and subtle detail that might be overlooked if modeling from memory.
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Not entirely unexpected, the fourth and last assignment for the 3D modelling course was to make an animation in Maya. When we first read the requirements, all kinds of wild ideas came up in our minds, most of which were unrealizable in the two weeks we had available. Two weeks we had to use to think of the subject of the animation, to learn how to make animations in Maya, to write this report and of course, to render the final result. Since both of us never made an animation in Maya before, we decided to work through a few tutorials first, trying the examples described and getting used to the animation interface. When we were able to find and use the most basic items for developing animations, we started to work on our final result.
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This Maya tutorial shows how to create a 3D envelop, skin and structural elements from hand drawn curves or data generated curves. The 3D shape is lofted and extruded from curves drawn in Photoshop or Illustrator.

In Photoshop, go to Layers > create separate layers, draw shapes that will be later connected together
Select the white area above the curve with the Magic Wand tool. Go to Paths > create a path.
Go to File Export > Path to Illustrator, save as an Illustrator file.
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It is easy to take computer graphics for granted nowadays. More and more are we seeing products of multimedia technology that includes 3D Animations. The creative and economical use of 3D animation can be evidenced in many of the released animated features like games or movies. Backgrounds, camera moves, crowd scenes, and machines of all descriptions have been modeled and animated digitally. 3D companies are striving to improve the entertainment value of their products. The images created with these tools will become more and more sophisticated with each passing year.
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Usually, when you’re modeling something in Maya, you have a rough idea of what it should be like. However, what if you have actual images of the object you are modeling and want to be as accurate as possible? This is usually the case when you create a model from scratch. This is a very basic and important modeling skill to have. In this tutorial, I will teach you how to set up a basic reference plane to model your, for lack of better words, model after.
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This document describes how to export shading networks and shaders from mental mill so that they can be used right away in the viewport rendering in Maya. A basic knowledge of how to work with mental mill or Maya is assumed. If you are not familiar with these tools,please take a look into the respective help documents of mental mill and Maya if you want to learn more about the applications themselves.
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Welcome to Maya, the world’s leading software application for 3D digital animation and visual effects. Maya provides a comprehensive suite of tools for your 3D content creation work ranging from modeling, animation, and dynamics through to painting and rendering to name but a few. With Maya, you can create and edit 3D models in a variety of modeling formats and animate your models using Maya’s suite of animation tools. You can create convincing visual simulations of rigid and soft body objects interacting in the physical world using the computational dynamics and particles tools. Maya also provides a range of tools to allow you to render your animated 3D scenes to achieve photo realistic imagery and animated visual effects
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Paint Effects is Maya’s flexible system for interactively painting brush strokes and particle effects on a 2D canvas or on 3D geometry. Preset brushes such as plants, hair, fire, feathers, and others can be used to get amazing effects quickly. This tutorial explains how to create a Maya logo out of growing grass. The focus is on setting and animating the Paint Effects brush and strokes.
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