Maya as virtual Set Creating a basic 3d space Make sure you are in the polygons section of the program Press F3 or switch in the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner of the below image

make sure the shelf tab is visible

switch to the quad view

select the polygon tab

and select the poly plane icon

and work in the front or top view drawing the shape of your plane with the plane selected, it should be green switch to the render part of the program F6 and select lighting/shading> assign new materials> Lambert

navigate to the lambert tab in the attyribute editor. If the editor is not visible select window> attribute edotr in the main menu at the top of the screen

click the checkered flag in the material editor for the color parameter

in the render node window that pops up, make sure that the 2d texture type is normal

and select the file node,

now you need to load an image into the file node so in the attributes editor the file node should have popped up if it hasn’t you should be able to navigate to it if you have the plane object selected in the file node, in the file attributes click the folder icon that is next to image name and navigate to your image on your harddrive to load it.

remember that if the images have transpancies build into them meaning that you can see the checkerboard pattern in the transparent areas when working in photoshop that these images must be saved in a .png format for maya to be able to extract the transparency. Otherwise you will have to create a B&W mask for the image. If the image isn’t mapping to the plane correctly or is getting cropped you may need to change the settings on your polygon plane. D the following , reselect the plane in one of the four views. You may have to deselect it first. And navigate to the polypPlane tab and in the poly plane history set the create UCs drop down to “normalization off”

it is also useful to adjust the height and width of the image in order to match the aspect ratio of the original image. You can also adjust the subdivision width and height higher if you plan on sculpting the plane say to match or create a terrain on your plane. Or if you want to bend the plane or in some other way distort its shape Below the division have been increased on the plane

to sculpt planes go to the polygon section of the program F3 and select mess > sculpt geometry tool

double click the tool in the left ide of the interface to evoke the tool parameters it will replace your attribute editor on the left side of the screen remember that if you need to recall the attribute editor you can press “command a” twice if the plane is selected and the brush is active you can go back and forth between making changes to how the brush works and painting on the plane to change its shape to change the way the a texture is mapped to a surface it is useful to evoke the hypershade window. Window render editor hypershade. If say you have a grass texture mapping to a plane you may want to increase the number of times that it repeats so that they grass appears smaller. To do this locate the shader in the hypershade, in the below example the lambert2 shader has been selected

and click the double black triangle box this is called the input and output connections so that you can see all the node attached to the shader. The work area will then show all of the nodes associated with this shader

you want to select the “place2dTexture” node for your shader and order to adjust how the image is mapped to the surface. If the the attribute editor is active “command a” twice if it isn’t You should see the parameters for this node. Repeat UV will make the texture repeat on the surface in the x and y dimesions as many times as you tell it to. In the below image it repeates 10 times.

Note that if your images are not seamless textures you will see the edges as they repeate through out your surface, also if the repeat number is to high even If they are seamless you will begin to see the repetition.

to project an image on a dome we want our image to project as if it is projected from a slide projector, in this case the projector is going to be a new camera create a new camera create > camera > camera in the side view with the new camera selected press “t” so that you can see the aim point of the camera and tilt the camera up so that it is pointing upward slightly

select the polygon tab and the sphere icon click and draw a sphere in the top view that is large enough to fully enclose your world assign a new lambert shader click the checkered flag next to the color parameter in the create render node window that pops up make sure that the 2d texture mode is set to “As Projection” click the file node in maya 2011 you now have to RMB select the file node to get the projection option a “projection” tab node should appear in the attribute editor. Change the projection type to “perspective Under “camera projection attributes set “link to camera” to the one you just created on the file tab load the image that you want to project onto the dome zoom out in the perspective view so that you can see the whole sphere if you are in wire frame mode change to texture mode by pressing 6 on the numerical keypad. 4 will return you to wire frame we now need to change how this image is mapped to the surface in the hypershade select the lambert shader that you created to hold this projection, it is a good idea to start to name your shaders, this one could be appended with the words “projection” press the input and output connections button select the “place2dTexture” node and in the attribute editor uncheck wrap U and wrap V if you can no longer see the image on the sphere it maybe because it is being projected on the opposite side navigate around to the other side of the sphere to see the image. You can set your viewprt to high quality render mode to get a better representation of the image

you can now navigate inside of the sphere with the perspective camera to see how the image is projecting on the inside of the dome. If you need to make adjustments to its placement you can use the “place2dTexture” node Translate frame parameters to position the image on the dome Rotating the dome will not work because the camera projecting the image is doing the placement, So you could also move the camera, but this will require that you refresh the lambert shader before the adjustment will become visible. To do this select the shader in the hypershade and right click on it and select “refresh material” from the pop up menu that appears. To adjust the scale of the image you can make slight adjustments to the “coverage” parameters in the “place2dTexture” node, in this manner you can also adjust the aspect ratio of the image. A better bet is to select the “cameraShape” node and in the “film back” area of the node adjust the camera aperture being sure to maintain the original aspect ratio of your image Rendering with mental Ray In some case mental ray can produce higher quality images Enable final gather on the render globals to how the image will rendered with more accurate light bouning attributes. This will also brighten the image The following image has no lighting in the scene the image is illuminated by the sky image itself mapped to the incandescene parameter. But in order for this type of lighting to be recognized either final gather or global illumination must be used with the mental ray renderer. Final gather was used on the below

same settings but now with global illumination

the next image has the sky image mapped to ambient color of the lambert shader

and the next image has the sky image mapped to mental ray miirradiance, mi irradeanceColor, and ambient color, in the connections editor with final gather

below is the same again but now with global illumination

All of the images have a small amount of motion blurr enabled in the global renders. Also a fractal map has been added to the diffuse setting of the lambert grass shader Global Illumination

Use global illumination when you need light to inter-reflect and bounce multiple times over a large area in your scene. A sample application would be a long hallway with light entering from the doorway. The use of global illumination (out of the three options listed above) allows the greatest number of light reflections and allows light to bounce off the furthest. Global illumination also prevents the darkening of corners and adds softness to the final render. Use global illumination to avoid the hard-edged CG look that lacks the softness of natural light.

Final Gather

Final gather adds details to your scene by adding light. It is similar to global illumination, but is more limited because it does not handle multiple bounces of light as accurately or efficiently. It does, however, require the least rendering time out of the three techniques. Final gather is traditionally used with diffuse materials, for example paper, chalk, and so on. It also handles small details better than the other illumination option Caustics

Use caustics for specular reflection and refraction. If your scene consists of shiny surfaces that refract, reflect, and focus light, then you should use caustics. Caustics are generally not used for simple transparency. Some sample applications of caustics are

simulating the reflection of light off a disco ball or the distortion of light at the bottom of a swimming pool Using global illumination with final gather

Use final gather to add fine details to your scene. When global illumination is used, photons usually miss cracks and crevices in objects and therefore these areas may appear artificially dark. Final gather adds details by adding light to the scene; brightening and softening it and making the final render more realistic.

If details are washed out by global illumination because your scene is too bright, use ambient occlusion to add detail to your scene by subtracting light. Baking occlusion in mental ray for Maya

To bake occlusion in mental ray for Maya, select Lighting/Shading > Batch Bake. Select Occlusion under Color Mode in the Texture (or Vertices) Bake Set Override section.

For more information regarding the batch bake option, see Lighting/shading > Batch Bake (mental ray).

Create occlusion files for external compositing

You can run an occlusion pass which renders ambient occlusion only. This can be used as your contact shadow pass. See Work with layer presets of the Rendering guide for more information. Another way to approach projecting sky onto dome Map sky image with a normal “file” node to the color channel. Do not use projection mode. With the sphere selected and being in the polygon section of the program. Select create uv > spherical mapping Maya will then create a poly cylindrical attributes node Which will be visible and interactive in the view window You can also Adjust the settings on in attribute editor One you deselect the sphere the only way to go back to eting the node is to do it in the attribute editor. Or you can select the sphere,

display window > hypergraph Make sure that the sphere is still selected click the input output node. Select the “polyCylProj” node It should now be displayed interactively in the viewer and numerically in the attribute editor. Animate a camera along a path Go to the “surfaces” part of the program F4 Also select the “curves” tab

Select the “ep Curve tool”

select the default four view

with the mouse hovering over the top view press “5” on the numerical keypad to display in “smooth Shade” mode. This will make it easier to see the contours of the landscape. in the top view draw a curve ( which in this case is basically a straight line, all lines are called curves), that traces that path the you would like you camera to take along your terrain, as you draw make sure you create enough edit points on the line so that you can go back and adjust the height of the line in the vertical direction. After you have finished clicking line points press enter to complete the line. Now in a side or perspective view edit the height of the line points to follow the contour of your landscape. To do this display vertex point Press these two buttons

or pess F9 to enter the vertex selection mode. F8 will toggle back and forth between last selection mode and object selection mode select a vertex press “w” to enable the move tool and reposition the vertex also you may need to toggle back and forth between wire frame and texture or shade mode to see who the line is positioning 4,5 or 6 on the numerical keypad. After your path is complete create a new camera and name it animation cam To attach the camera to the path Switch to the “animation” section of the program F2 Select the camera and then the path ( the order of selection is important ) select Animate > motion path > attach to motion path

Make sure that you select the little box at the end of the work motion path, to activate the options For a first shot try setting the options as follows, you can make adjustments latter to the motion path node

now you will need to go back and adjust or delete points along your motion path to correct erratic movements. You will now notice that your line needs to smooth gradual curves. Note you can option click on a view to make the view active without deselecting the objects you are editng. Importing greenscreen sequences Althougth I said all alpha clips need to .png there is another option If working in after effects you can use the .tiff if you do the following Your keyed animation imagesneed to be exported from AE as 32bit tiff or iff sequence of stills with RGB + alpha, that is millions of colors +, premulitple matted also in the name field you will see “_[####]”change it to “.[###]” you need to change the underscore to a dot.

Once you have loaded a sequence onto you plane geometry you need to tell the “file” node that it is working with a sequence, there is a checkbox labled, “Use image sequence” Note that if your playback is slow you can disable this setting so that maya is not trying to update this file every frame.