Maya Global Support

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:46 am

This topic is for general Maya issues, intented toward beginners.

Not much to say right now, it's up to you. Oh, yes, as always search the doc before asking, F1 is your friend

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:55 am

My contribution: Maya functions and corresponding keyboard shortcuts
http://www.keyxl.com/aaab24a/249/Autode ... rtcuts.htm

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:20 am

I am finding a blinn glass mat impossible to get to look right in Indigo. Can anyone help?

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:45 am

look right how? is it totally wrong, or just not realistic enough?

As long as:
colour is near-white,
transparency is not black, and
Refractive Index is reasonable ~1.5 (under Raytrace options)

You should have a basic specular transparent indigo material.

Actually, using WytRaven's translated Schott glass material library is mind-numbingly easy with MtI. I'll post a (written, pobably) tutorial later.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:52 am

here's the Schott glass tutorial
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... highlight=

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:21 pm

thanx - I havnt tried that method yet, but I have gotten a pretty passable blinn glass mat here. Seems the problem was just the scaling - my sphere was HUGE. One grid grid square in Maya is equal to one meter in Indigo?

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:32 pm

One grid grid square in Maya is equal to one meter in Indigo?

Absolutely, whatever the units actually are for Maya. If you use cm, set mti_Global Scale Factor to 0.01.

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:15 am

UV-Mapping in Maya... I am having no luck trying to figure this one out... I am actually dreading this, as I remember how difficult it was to get the hang of in Blender. I am including a zip of my iPod model and textures if anyone has time to help me out on this...

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:44 am

UV mapping in Maya is easy*. Select the faces you want to map (face select mode), then choose (from the Polygons menu set) a mapping mode from the Create UVs menu.
You should be given a 3D widget to adjust the projection with.
To start with it may be easier to do simple planar or cylindrical projections.
It's also a good idea to have the UV texture editor (Window menu -> UV texture editor) open so that you can see your changes in real time.

In UV select mode, you can then move your UVs around in the UV texture editor, and there's all sorts of functions in there to help you lay them out (Grid is a good one

).

That's the commands you need to use, but to really get the hang of it, you just need practice really. I learned it by spending nearly an entire week solid on it at work with characters.

* with practice

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 10:26 am

dougal2
Sorry, try as I might, I don't get it. I went through the steps you say, but I dont see anywhere to even load a graphic file. I may have to just stick to Blender where I am a little seasoned.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:33 pm

Phr0stbyte:
UV mapping and assigning textures to objects are different things...

For simple texturing, without worrying about UVs, go into the shader attributes, click the little checker icon next to Colour, then choose file from the different texturing types, and then you'll get an opportunity to load a file into the colout channel of shader. If you copy the texture image to your maya project textures/ folder beforehand, MtI will find and use this file automatically for indigo texturing

To then control which part of the texture file corresponds to which part of the geometry, you need to do some UV "unwrapping" using a method I described above.

Apologies again for not necessarily starting at the start...

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:43 pm

dougal2
Whould you happen to know of a nice tut out there that describes this process well?

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:45 pm

which process?

assigning textures or UV mapping?

Actually, I don't know any tuts on either.

When I've got time I'd like to make one though, but that's not going to happen for maybe a week or so.

Phr0stByte · Post by **Phr0stByte** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:55 pm

dougal2
That sounds good, it would be much appreciated. I will do my usual Blending untill then...

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:43 pm

Let's see if I can help:

- First you want to assign a texture to a shader. To grab a shader, either open the Multilister or Hypershade.
- Double-click the shader, the Attribute Editor opens. There, in front of color there is a checker; that's a button for the slot; click it.
- There in 2d textures Click on File. This is the node wich will hold the texture. Load the texture

- then go back to view pane and press 6 to activate texturing on objects. If your object looks grayed then it has no UVs.

UVs are a matter on how to project an image onto a mesh.

- Select your object then in Create UVs menu try different kinds of projection. From there, even partially, your object should be textured.

- Then, as Dougal said, open UVTextureEditor, and select your mesh. The texture should appear in the background, and the arrangement of your object's UVs on top of that. From now, you'll be editig the UVs in that window while watching the result in viewpanes.

Report any difficult step !

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