Chapter 6
Practical Experience
It’s time to put what you’ve learned so far into action. In this chapter, you’ll build a child’s table lamp. The lamp project uses poly and NURBS modeling techniques to give you some practical experience with a larger project in the Autodesk® Maya® software.
- Use bevels and extrusions efficiently
- Manipulate curves to create poly meshes with Revolve ⇒ Surface
- Create a shape with a path extrusion
- See the differences between the Maya and Modeling Toolkit workflows
- Use reference images to shape your models
- See how to set up views with grid lines to align reference images for modeling
- See how images are lined up to make reference images for modeling
- Work in the Hypershade to assign image maps to objects in the scene
- Use a Boolean operation to cut holes in a mesh
- Use Maya referencing to easily share files between stages of workflow
Evaluating the Table Lamp
Download the entire TableLamp project folder structure from the book’s companion web page (www.sybex.com/go/introducingmaya2014) to your computer’s hard drive and set your project to that location.
Figure 6-1 shows the lamp you’ll be modeling first in this chapter. There’s certainly enough detail in this object to make it a good exercise, but it won’t be difficult to complete. You can always return to this exercise to add more of your own detail or even redesign it for more challenge, which is something I highly recommend.
Figure 6-1: The table lamp is cute!
Study the photo carefully to get an understanding of the components that make up this object. You will model the parts individually instead of attacking the entire shape as a single object. This way of thinking helps complex objects become easier to understand and model. The lamp consists of the base, stem, lampshade, and toy airplane. In Chapter 3’s decorative box exercise, you used reference planes to give you an accurate guide to build the box. With the lamp, since it’s a relatively simple shape, you can use the profile photos in Figure 6-2 and Figure 6-3 as visual guides. You will not be importing them as reference planes into Maya since there’s enough perspective in the photos that it will not allow for a clean side or front profile (like you had for the decorative box in Chapter 3). But that’s OK for the lamp itself. When you set out to model the toy airplane later in this chapter, you’ll use proper reference images.
Figure 6-2: The side photo of the lamp
Figure 6-3: The front photo of the lamp
Modeling the Base
You’ll start by modeling the base. As you can see in Figure 6-4, the base is a simple cylinder with a rounded bevel at the top and a sharper bevel at the bottom. Create a TableLamp project on your hard drive, or set your project to the one copied from the companion website.
Figure 6-4: The base
For this exercise, you’ll enable Modeling Toolkit, except where noted. Make sure to set your project to the TableLamp project you downloaded from the website. You’ll begin the model in the following steps:
Figure 6-5: Scale the cylinder to the proportions of the base.
Figure 6-6: Select the top loop of edges.
Figure 6-7: The beveled base
The scene file lampModel_v01.mb contains the finished base.
Creating the Lamp Stem
That’s it; the base is completed. Continue with your own file to create the stem next, or load the file lampModel_v01.mb in the Scenes folder of the TableLamp project from the companion website.
In Figure 6-8, you can see the stem disassembled. It’s a simple cylinder with a slight extrusion at the base and another one-third of the way up to the top, where the hooks for the lampshade and light bulb socket are. And since you don’t see the light bulb behind the lampshade, you’ll skip creating the bulb entirely.
Figure 6-8: The stem of the lamp without the toy airplane
The Stem
To begin the stem, follow along here:
Figure 6-9: Place the cylinder on the base.
Figure 6-10: Insert an edge loop at the bottom of the stem.
Figure 6-11: Create an extrusion at the bottom of the stem.
Figure 6-12: The extrusion is beveled.
Figure 6-13: Insert two edge loops.
Figure 6-14: Creating the stem’s middle extrusion
The Lampshade Bracket
Now that the stem is in place, on top of the lamp sits the light socket and the bracket that holds the lampshade (Figure 6-15 on the left), which you’ll tackle here.
Figure 6-15: The lampshade bracket is shown on the left. Connecting the file node to the shader’s Color attribute is shown on the right.
Figure 6-16: Placing the reference plane for the stem top
Figure 6-17: Trace the right side of the socket.
. Set Axis Preset to Y and Output Geometry to Polygons. Then set Type to Quads and Tessellation Method to Standard Fit, as shown in Figure 6-18. Click Revolve.Figure 6-18: Revolve the socket shape.
) to snap the curve’s pivot point to the top CV as shown.Figure 6-19: Trace the right half of the bell-shaped clasp.
again. Keep Axis Preset set to Y and Output Geometry to Polygons. Leave Type set to Quads and Tessellation Method to Standard Fit as well. Click Revolve, and you will see the bell-shaped clasp. Center the pivot point (Modify ⇒ Center Pivot), and then duplicate the bell shape (Ctrl+D) and move the copy to the other bell-shaped clasp, as shown in Figure 6-20.Figure 6-20: The bell-shaped clasps in place
The Bracket’s Tube
To create the tubing for the top part of the bracket, follow these steps:
Figure 6-21: Trace a new CV curve.
), snap the circle to the right-side end of the bracket’s path curve you created in step 1, as shown in Figure 6-22. This circle is the profile curve for the extrusion you will create in the next step.Figure 6-22: Snap the circle to the path’s end CV.
. In the options, set Result Position to At Path and Output Geometry to Polygons, leaving Type set to Quads and Tessellation Method set to Standard Fit, as shown in Figure 6-23. Click Extrude, and a tube will be created for the lampshade bracket. Name the tube bracketTop, and delete the circle and path curve.Figure 6-23: Create the tube for the bracket.
Figure 6-24: Select and show the hidden clasp object.
The Bracket’s Bottom Part
Now for the rest of the bracket.
Figure 6-25: Place a cube.
Figure 6-26: Extrude both end faces.
Figure 6-27: Create a slight downward curve.
Figure 6-28: Adjust the extruded cube to fit the bracket shape.
Figure 6-29: Extrude up the bracket.
Figure 6-30: Place the ends of the brackets inside the clasps.
Figure 6-31: Create an edge loop.
Figure 6-32: Create a ridge.
Figure 6-33: Shape the bracket to match.
, set Division Levels to 1, and click Add Divisions. This will tessellate the mesh a little better. Preview again by pressing 3, and you should get a much nicer smoothing result. Press 1 to exit smooth preview. . Set Add Divisions to Exponentially and Division Levels to 1. Name the mesh bracketBottom. Click Smooth, and check your result against Figure 6-34. Do the same to the base of the lamp to smooth that as well.Figure 6-34: Smoothing the bottom bracket
Ah, Nuts!
Now you’ll add the nuts that hold the bracket to the stem.
Figure 6-35: Create and place the first nut.
Figure 6-36: Place and orient the nuts to hold the bracket to the stem.
Lampshade Mount
Finally, for the lampshade bracket, you need the lampshade mount (Figure 6-37) at the top of the tubing you created.
Figure 6-37: The lampshade mount
Figure 6-38: Place a cube to begin the mount’s model.
Figure 6-39: Place edge loops on both sides.
Figure 6-40: Extrude down the flanges.
to bevel it using traditional Maya Beveling with a Width of 0.7 and Segments of 2, as shown in Figure 6-41. Name the mesh mount.Figure 6-41: Bevel the mount to finish it off.
Figure 6-42 shows the lamp so far. Save your work.
Figure 6-42: The table lamp is ready for its lampshade.
Modeling the Lampshade
The lampshade will be fairly easy to create. You can continue with your own scene or load lampModel_v02.mb from the Scenes folder of the TableLamp project from the companion website. You will use another reference to create the lampshade here:
Figure 6-43: Place the new reference for the lampshade.
Figure 6-44: Create the curve for the profile of the lampshade.
Figure 6-45: The profile curve (left) is closed (middle) and then adjusted to fit better (right).
. Keep the Axis preset at Y, Output Geometry at Polygons, and Tessellation Method as Standard Fit as before. This time, set 3D Delta to 0.04 for a cleaner resulting mesh. Click Revolve, and your lampshade is created. It seems to be offset, however, as you can see in Figure 6-46.Figure 6-46: The lampshade looks offset.
Figure 6-47: Cheating the size of the lampshade
Figure 6-48: Place a circle for a profile curve for the blue trim.
Figure 6-49: Move the circle’s pivot to the center point of the lamp.
Figure 6-50: Place a copy of the oval at the bottom of the lampshade.
. Keeping the same settings as before in step 7, click Revolve, and compare your results to Figure 6-51.Figure 6-51: The trim is in place.
As you can see in Figure 6-52, the lampshade has three metal tubes connecting it to the bracket with a metal ball over the screw. You’ll create those in the following steps:
Figure 6-52: The lampshade is connected to the bracket by three metal tubes.
Figure 6-53: Place a beveled disc on the mount.
Figure 6-54: Place the first tube.
Figure 6-55: Place the duplicated bracing tubes as shown.
Voila! You’re finished with the lamp itself and can move on to the toy airplane on its stem. Figure 6-56 shows the lamp so far and the Outliner view of its objects. You can check your work against the lampModel_v03.mb scene file in the Scenes folder of the TableLamp project from the companion website.
Figure 6-56: The main part of the lamp is complete.
Making the Toy Airplane
Now all you need to add is the cute airplane to the middle of the lamp stem to complete this model. In this section, you will create the toy airplane in a new scene file, and then you’ll learn how to reference the airplane model into the master lamp scene. Referencing in Maya is similar to importing a file into an open scene. However, with a referenced scene, any changes made to the original referenced scene will automatically be reflected into the object(s) referenced into the master scene. This is great for when you are continuously making adjustments to a model used in an animation or lighting scene. The model is updated as you make the changes. It also allows for an easier workflow when more than one person is working on a project. I’ll explain referencing scenes in detail later in this chapter.
Since the toy airplane is a more complex shape than the lamp itself, you will use three image reference planes similar to those you used to create the decorative box in Chapter 3.
Reference Images
Reference images aren’t just for fun! As you’ve seen, you can import images into Maya to work directly on the reference. For a model like this airplane, it’s best to create three different image views of the model (front, side, and top) to give you the most information as you build the model. The first step, of course, is to take pictures of your intended model from these three angles. Figure 6-57, Figure 6-58, and Figure 6-59 show photos taken of the front, side, and top views of the toy airplane.
Figure 6-57: The airplane’s front view
Figure 6-58: The airplane’s side view
Figure 6-59: The airplane’s top view
The trick here is to bring the photos into an image-editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop, and scale and edit the images to line them up as shown in Figure 6-60. The images have been copied and pasted into a larger frame, and grid lines are used to line up the major portions of the airplane, such as its wings and wheels.
Figure 6-60: The views of the airplane roughly lined up in Photoshop
Keep in mind that when you take a photo, in most cases there will be perspective shift, or parallax, in the image. Because of that shift, the different views of the same object will never exactly line up. As you can see in Figure 6-60, the bottom of the airplane wheels don’t exactly line up between the front view and the side view, even though all the other major elements of the plane are in alignment. This is because of perspective differences in the photos.
Complete accuracy isn’t what you’re after in this situation. You just want to have a reasonable reference, and this will be more than adequate. Now, you’ll import the images and create the model reference planes on which to work.
Creating Reference Planes for the Images
The reference views of the toy airplane have already been created for you. You can find them in the Sourceimages folder of the TableLamp project from the companion website. They’re shown in Table 6-1.
Table 6-1: Reference views and sizes
Why is the image resolution important? Well, it’s not so much the resolution of the photos but rather the aspect ratio of each image. To properly map these images onto the planes you’ll use in Maya, each plane has to be the same ratio in scale as its image. For example, an image that is 100×50 pixels has an aspect ratio of 2:1 and is, therefore, a wide horizontal rectangle. For it to map properly, the plane on which it’s mapped in Maya must have a scale ratio of 2:1 as well so that it’s also a wide horizontal rectangle. Otherwise, the image may distort. The more accurate your model needs to be, the more accurate your photos and their reference planes need to be.
You’ll need to create three planes for each of the three views. First make sure Interactive Creation is turned off, and then follow these steps:
. This plane is for the front image, so in the option box set Axis to Z, Width to 1, and Height to 0.740. Set Width Divisions and Height Divisions both to 1. Make sure the check box for Preserve Aspect Ratio is deselected, as shown in Figure 6-61. Setting Axis to Z will place the plane properly in the front view.Figure 6-61: Creating a plane for the top view
Figure 6-62: The three view planes are ready.
Now that all three image planes have been created with the proper aspect ratios, you’re ready to map the photos to them to create the reference for the model. You’ve already done this earlier in the chapter, but let’s take a closer look at the process now.
Mapping the Reference Planes
The pesky wire has been painted out of these reference photos. To map the photos of the airplane to the reference planes, follow these steps:
Figure 6-63: Importing the photos into the Hypershade window
Figure 6-64: Create three new Lambert shaders.
Figure 6-65: Naming the Lambert shaders
Figure 6-66: The side-view photo is mapped to the side view plane.
Figure 6-67: All three reference planes are mapped.
Figure 6-68: Scale and move the top reference airplane to match the side reference airplane.
Figure 6-69: Line up the image reference planes.
Figure 6-70: Group and then scale the planes up.
Figure 6-71: Move the front reference plane back.
).Figure 6-72: Name the new layer.
Figure 6-73: The new layer in Layer Editor
Save your work, and “version up” so you don’t write over your previous scene files. You can download the scene file airplaneModel_v01.ma from the Scenes folder of the TableLamp project from the companion website to check your work or skip to this point. Just be sure to set your project to the TableLamp project on your hard drive after downloading the entire project from the website.
Creating the Fuselage
The main part of this airplane is its body, or fuselage. This will start with a cube in the following steps:
Figure 6-74: Set the reference Planes layer to Reference.
Figure 6-75: Shape a cube over the body of the plane.
Figure 6-76: Shape the fuselage in the side view.
Figure 6-77: Insert two edge loops.
Figure 6-78: Further refine the outline shape of the fuselage using the top and side views.
. In the option box, set Snap Magnets to 0, and place a new edge split along the bottom of the tail wing, as shown in Figure 6-79. Do not click the right mouse button or hit Enter to commit the split yet.Figure 6-79: Starting the edges for the tail wings
Figure 6-80: Taking the split around the back
Figure 6-81: Creating the tail wing shape
Figure 6-82: Create an edge loop for the vertical stabilizer wing.
Figure 6-83: Insert a new edge split.
Figure 6-84: Create a split for the other side of the vertical stabilizer wing.
Figure 6-85: Extrude the vertical stabilizer wing shape.
Figure 6-86: Shape the vertical and horizontal tail wings to fit.
Figure 6-87: Create the block in the front of the airplane.
Figure 6-88: Fit the block.
Save your work, and compare it to the scene file airplaneModel_v02.ma from the Scenes folder of the TableLamp project from the companion website to check your work, or skip to the next set of steps.
Using Booleans to Finish the Fuselage
Before you’re finished with the fuselage, you need to create the hole for the lamp’s stem and the cockpit area using Booleans.
Booleans are very impressive operations that allow you to, among other things, cut holes in a mesh fairly easily. Basically, a Boolean is a geometric operation that creates a shape from the addition of two shapes together (Union), the subtraction of one shape from another (Difference), or the common intersection of two shapes (Intersection).
Be forewarned, however, that Boolean operations can be problematic. Sometimes you get a result that is wrong—or, even worse, the entire mesh disappears and you have to undo. Use Booleans sparingly and only on a mesh that is clean and prepared. You’ve cleaned and prepped your fuselage mesh, so there should be no problems.
To begin, let’s create the hole for the lamp’s stem. The plane (as shown earlier in Figures 6-2 and 6-3) sits on the stem at an angle. The hole in the fuselage needs to go between the biplane wings and the rear stabilizer wings and run from the left-top corner to the right-bottom corner. For a Boolean, you need two meshes. The fuselage is the first mesh to be affected, and the second mesh will be a polygonal cylinder to cut the hole into that fuselage.
Figure 6-89: Place a cylinder that you’ll use to cut the hole.
Figure 6-90: The Boolean made a hole!
Figure 6-91: Place another cylinder to cut the shape of the cockpit.
Figure 6-92: Creating the cockpit shape
Cleaning Up the Fuselage
Now that you have the shape down for the fuselage, you’ll clean it up and give the outer edges some bevels. Use your model scene or airplaneModel_v03.ma to follow along here:
for the traditional Maya Bevel tool. Set Offset Space to World (Ignore Scaling On Objects), Segments to 2, and Width to 1.25, as shown in Figure 6-94; then click Bevel.Figure 6-93: Select the outer edges of the fuselage.
Figure 6-94: Set your bevel options.
Figure 6-95: Select this edge and bevel with the previous settings.
Figure 6-96: Select the edge close to the hole on the bottom of the plane.
Figure 6-97: Move the vertices at the new bevel to make it wider.
Figure 6-98: Select this vertex on the hole.
Figure 6-99: Snap the vertex down to close the hole.
Figure 6-100: The hole is fixed.
Now that you’ve finished the base shape of the fuselage, it’s time to clean it up to get rid of Ngons. If you recall, Ngons are polygons that have more than four sides. This may sometimes cause problems and inefficiencies with most renderers, like mental ray, so it’s always a good idea to make sure your geometry is clean. For example, if you try beveling a mesh or some edges and you get a failed result, you can try cleaning up the mesh, as you’re about to do next.
Select the fuselage mesh, and choose Mesh ⇒ Cleanup. In the window that opens, select Faces With More Than 4 Sides and Edges With Zero Length, leaving the Length tolerance at the default, as shown in Figure 6-101. Click Cleanup, and the mesh should change ever so slightly. You will notice that some of the faces around the areas where you used a Boolean have been subdivided a bit in Figure 6-102. That is because those faces had more than four sides. Save your work and compare it to airplaneModel_v04.ma.
Figure 6-101: Set the Cleanup Options as shown for the fuselage mesh.
Figure 6-102: Cleaning up the Ngons
Creating the Propeller and Nose
Now that you’ve finished the main fuselage of the plane, you can move on to the other parts: wings, propeller, and wheels. Let’s begin with the propeller, using your work so far or the file airplaneModel_v04.ma.
Figure 6-103: Start with a cylinder in place.
Figure 6-104: Select this edge loop (left), and scale the edges out (right).
Figure 6-105: Create a divot by moving back the edge loops.
. In the option box, choose Edit ⇒ Reset Settings, and click Smooth. The propCap looks great in Figure 6-106 with the reference planes turned off. Reenable Drawing Overrides for the propCap to turn it into a wireframe.Figure 6-106: The propeller cap is done.
Figure 6-107: Starting the propeller mesh
Figure 6-108: Select these three faces.
Figure 6-109: Extrude the propeller blades out.
Figure 6-110: Flare out the ends of the blades individually.
Figure 6-111: Insert these edge loops.
Figure 6-112: Place a cylinder for the prop’s button in front so you can see it clearly.
Figure 6-113: Make a point and place two edge loops close to each other.
Figure 6-114: Scale up the faces of the pointed cap.
Figure 6-115: Smooth the mesh and place it into the prop. Scale it to fit.
Name the mesh propButton, and name the fuselage mesh fuselage. You can turn off Drawing Overrides for everything now. Group the airplane parts together, and call the group biplane. Save your work and compare it to airplaneModel_v05.mb.
Using Maya File References
The toy airplane is not finished yet, but you’re going to place it onto the lamp now using the Maya Reference function. References work by importing (called referencing) a Maya file into another Maya scene. When the referenced file is updated, it is automatically also updated within the scene where it was referenced. You can also very easily swap out versions of the reference file and not lose any position or animation information in the main scene. Let’s bring the airplane into the lamp now.
Figure 6-116: The airplane model and its reference planes are referenced into the scene.
Figure 6-117: Turn off the reference plane layer.
Figure 6-118: Group the lamp properly.
Figure 6-119: The plane is placed and scaled correctly.
Now your toy airplane is in position on the lamp (Figure 6-119), but it doesn’t have any wings or wheels. Next, you’ll go back into the airplane model file and finish the model properly. Version up and save your work. You can check against the file lampScene_v03.mb in the Scenes folder.
Finishing the Toy Airplane
You can continue with your own airplane model file or open the scene file airplaneModel_v05.ma to begin modeling the wings. Keep in mind that anytime you bevel in the rest of this exercise, you are using the Maya Bevel and not the Modeling Toolkit’s Bevel tool. You may choose to use Modeling Toolkit’s Bevel, in which case you should use the value given for Width in Maya Bevel for use as the Offset value in Modeling Toolkit’s Bevel.
Figure 6-120: Place and shape the top wing cube.
Figure 6-121: Bevel the wing.
. Make sure Add Divisions is set to Exponentially and Division Levels is at 1. Click Smooth and compare the wing to the one shown later in Figure 6-122. The wing should have a much closer shape to the reference shape. Figure 6-122: Creating the bi-wings and grouping them properly
Making the Wheels
Now for the wheel assembly below the bottom wing.
Figure 6-123: Place and shape the wheel assembly.
Figure 6-124: Select these edges and bevel them.
Figure 6-125: Shape a curve for the profile of the wheel.
) to snap the pivot point to the first CV of the profile curve.. Set the attributes as shown in Figure 6-126, and click Revolve to make the wheel; name the mesh wheel. Center its pivot (Modify ⇒ Center Pivot).Figure 6-126: The first wheel
Figure 6-127: The biplane is finished.
Save your work, and compare it to the scene file airplaneModel_v06.ma.
Updating the File Reference
Now that the biplane is finished, you need to go back into the scene file and update the biplane in that file. Open the scene file lampScene_v03.ma or open your own latest lamp scene file. Choose File ⇒ Reference Editor (Figure 6-128). In the Reference Editor window, click the airplaneModel_v04RN airplaneModel_v05.mb entry, and choose Reference ⇒ Replace Reference. Select the airplaneModel_v06.mb file, and click Reference. Save your new scene, and compare it to lampScene_v04.mb.
Figure 6-128: The Reference Editor
The biplane model will immediately update to reflect all the changes you made to add the wings and wheels. In addition, the reference planes and their display layer are gone from the scene since you deleted them from the original model file. Figure 6-129 shows the completed lamp scene.
Figure 6-129: The lamp is updated and ready to go.
References are a powerful way for collaboration where two people or more can work in tandem on different parts of a scene. References are also great for easily updating parts of a larger scene and in better managing these parts (a.k.a. assets). Be aware, however, that the more complicated models and hierarchies become, the more careful you have to be in keeping your scenes clean to avoid trouble with references.
Summary
In this chapter, you flexed your knowledge from the previous chapters and concentrated on creating a model of a child’s table lamp. You used many of the tools discussed in the previous chapters, from extruding to adding edge loops to using bevels and even to sculpting by moving vertices and welding them together. You also used Booleans to create the notches and holes you needed in the airplane’s fuselage, and then you fixed the problems that sometimes arise in modeling. And throughout, you used Maya references to easily update parts of a larger scene file.
Creating a model can be a lot of hard and sometimes tedious work, but when you start seeing it take shape, the excitement begins to build. From the basic shaping of the lamp’s parts to the detail of adding the airplane, you rolled up your sleeves and worked hard in this chapter to create the table lamp.
In the following chapter, you’ll tackle some simple texturing and see how to work with UVs. You’ll then add detail to the decorative box from earlier in the book by creating maps for displacement as well as color. Later in the book, you’ll light and render the table lamp and decorative box to make them look as photo-real as possible.
This doesn’t mean your modeling experience is over! There’s still plenty of detailing you can add to the table lamp and its toy airplane. For example, you can create a light bulb for behind the lampshade and even a power cord that comes out of the base.
You can also take the procedures you used in this chapter to build your own lamp or decorative box design. The important lesson to take away from this chapter is how in-depth you can get with a model and how a lengthy modeling process takes shape. Along the way, don’t forget to name your pieces and group everything in a sensible fashion.