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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T his tutorial will explain how to export static textured models (meaning no animation yet) from Maya into Crysis. I’ll update this tutorial as I learn more about the process and more tools become available. Big thanks to Psychojohno and Spiderdan for their tutorials which taught me a lot!
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hen creating animations, you should be very careful what you do with the FloorRef. When walking or running, the character should stay at a constant height from the FloorRef object. When jumping, the Character should increase it’s distance from the FloorRef object to give the appearance of translation away from the floor. Characters should ALSO have a “stationary root” that only moves relative to the floor reference (e.g. for walking, jumping etc.) but that does not move constantly (i.e. in an idle animation the root should not move). This is very important if you wish to use your Characters with the Virtools Mulituser Pack, or the dead reckoning algorithm used for predicting distributed objects will not work correctly.
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This short tutorial implies that you know the basics of Maya. Please refer to the many available Maya Tutorials on the net on how to work with materials (textures) and how to apply them to objects. Just one quick tip: Many drag-and-drop operations in Maya are done with the middle mouse button. You can apply textures/materials to objects this way as well as moving materials from the upper window in the Hypershade Editor to the lower window in order to edit the material (right mouse button -> Graph).
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13 Jul
Posted by jj as Design & Graphics
This is a step by step tutorial how to export models from Maya to Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare. After installing the Maya Export Tools, that are included in the Mod Tools 1.0 released by Infinity Ward, you are able to add custom models to your custom maps. How to install the exporter to Maya, please read the iWiki from Infinity Ward. The Exporter tools are available for Maya 7 to 8.5.
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This tutorial outlines the process of preparing a 2D digital file for tool-pathing with FlowPATH for use with the school’s abrasive water-jet cutter. The water-jet is only capable of 2D cutting operations, and has extremely limited control of the depth of the cut so work should be designed with 2D lines and with the intention that the lines will be cut completely through the material – not etched. Depending on the hardness of the material it is possible to etch or score a cut instead of cutting all the way through, but this should only be done with ductile materials as it will cause shattering or breaking in more brittle materials.
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This tutorial serves as a rapid overview of Autodesk’s Maya software. The 3D production pipeline can be broken down into several distinct activities and skill sets - we will cover all of these to give you a sense for building an entire scene from start to finish. The biological topic will be to create a visual depiction of how calcium chelation can affect cadherin flexibility. The tutorial is divided into 5 sections, each of which focus on an aspect of the 3D pipeline:
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Importing & animating a receptor
1) Importing molecular data into Maya
2) Using constraints and dynamic motion paths to animate the binding event
Membrane with scattered proteins
1) Creating a softbody membrane
2) Using constraints to attach molecules to the dynamic membrane surface
3) Using MEL to scatter proteins automatically
Extracellular Matrix
1) Using particles and MEL to create a dense mesh for the ECM
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