Because of the nature of CG and how scenes must be built, a specific workflow works best. Modeling almost always begins the process, which then can lead into texturing, and then to animation (or animation and then texturing). Lighting should follow, with rendering pulling up the rear as it must. (Of course, the process isn’t completely linear; you’ll often go back and forth adjusting models, lights, and textures throughout the process.) Chapters 4 through 11 follow this overall sequence, presenting the major Maya operations in the same order you’ll use in real-world CG projects.
Modeling
Modeling, the topic of Chapters 4 through 6, is usually the first step in creating CG. It’s the topic that garners a lot of coverage in publications and captures the interest of most budding CG artists. You most often start a CG scene by creating the objects you need to occupy your space. It can end up taking the majority of the time in your process. This is why downloading or purchasing models from the Internet can often cut down the amount of time you spend on your project. This, of course, assumes you’re not a fan of modeling and prefer to spend your time animating or working on texturing and lighting.
There are many modeling techniques, and each could be the subject of its own series of books. The choice of which technique to use usually depends on the modeler’s taste and preferred workflow. The choices are among polygonal modeling (Chapter 4, “Beginning Polygonal Modeling”), NURBS modeling, and subdivision surface (SubD) modeling (Chapter 5, “Modeling with NURBS, Subdivisions, and Deformers”). Knowing how an object is used in a scene gives you its criteria for modeling. You never want to spend more time on a model than is needed. Creating a highly detailed model for a faraway shot will waste your time and expand rendering times needlessly. If you need to see a park bench in a wide shot from far away, the model doesn’t need abundant detail or complicated surfacing. You can usually create any required details for it by just adding textures. However, if that park bench is featured prominently in a close-up, it needs as much detail as possible because viewers will see more of the bench. You’ll learn more about this aspect of modeling in Chapter 4.
The more you use models in scenes, the better you’ll develop your eye for exactly how much detail to provide. When you’re starting out, however, it’s a good idea to lavish as much attention on detail as you can; this can teach you perhaps 70 percent of what you can learn about modeling, which in turn will benefit your overall speed and technique. As you gain more experience, you’ll be able to discern exactly how much detail to add to a scene and not go overboard.
Character Modeling
Character modeling usually involves organic forms, such as animals, humans, aliens, and such. Practically anything that is animated and portrays a character in a scene can be referred to as a character model. You need to create these with animation techniques in mind, as well as accuracy of form.
Some organic characters (for example, critters and people, as opposed to robots with mechanical parts and hard edges) are built with patches of surfaces stitched together or as single objects that are stretched and pulled into shape. Character models need to look seamless because most character animation requires the model to deform in some way—to bend and warp at certain areas such as the joints.
A character modeler needs to keep the future of the character in mind to allow for particular character animation methods that will be used. Quite frequently, you’ll create several models for a character to account for different uses of that character and to keep the scene efficient and workable. You may create one character with fine facial detail for close-up speaking scenes and another with hardly any details for walk cycles in distant shots. Listen to your mother: don’t get in over your head; do as much as you know you can finish properly.
Architectural and Environment Modeling
Architectural and environmental modeling includes architectural previsualization for the design of buildings as well as the generation of backgrounds for sets and environments. Typically, it involves modeling buildings or interiors as well as mountains or anything that is required for the scenery, such as benches, chairs, lampposts, and so on.
You shouldn’t create incredibly detailed environments, especially ones that use a lot of geometry (that is, the objects in your scene), if they aren’t closely featured in a shot. The greater the amount of geometry, the slower your computer will run and the longer rendering will take. If you reach a critical mass of too much geometry in your scene, it may not even render. You can create much of an environment by using clever textures and matte paintings on simple geometry. Matte paintings, which are detailed maps on bare surfaces, are used frequently for game environments. The rule of thumb for all kinds of CG is “use whatever works.”
Because your computer stores everything in the scene as vector math, the term geometry refers to all the surfaces and models in a scene.
Props Modeling
Props modeling covers almost everything else needed in the scene. In theater and film terms, a prop is an object used by a character in the action; anything relegated to the scenery or background is a scenic. For example, a prop can be a purse a character is carrying, a leash on an animated dog, or a car a character is driving. If the car or purse were just sitting in the background, it would be considered a scenic.
Texturing
When the models are complete, it’s a good idea to begin texturing and shading, the process of applying colors and textures to an object to make it renderable. When you create an object in Maya, for example, a simple gray default shader is automatically assigned to it that will let you see the object when you light and render the scene.
Because the textures may look different after animating and lighting the scene, it’s wise to leave the final adjustments for later. Just as a painter will pencil in a sketch before adding details, you don’t need to make all the shading adjustments right away; you can return to any part of your scene in Maya and adjust it to fine-tune the picture.
You’ll learn more about texturing and shading in Chapter 7, “Maya Shading and Texturing.”
Animation
You can make or break your scene with animation. We all have an innate sense of how things are supposed to move on a visceral level, if not an academic one. We understand how physics applies to objects and how people and animals move around. Because of this, viewers tend to be critical of CG’s motion if it’s not lifelike. Put bluntly, you know when something doesn’t look right, and so will the people watching your animation.
To animate something properly, you may need to do quite a lot of setup beyond just modeling. Depending on the kind of animating you’ll be doing, you may need to set up the models for however you’ve decided to animate them. For example, for character animation, you’ll need to create and attach an armature, or skeleton, to manipulate the character and to make it move like a puppet in order to do your bidding.
Taking the models you’ve spent hours detailing and reworking and giving them life is thrilling and can make any detailed modeling and setup routine well worth the effort.
Chapter 8, “Introduction to Animation,” and Chapter 9, “More Animation!” cover animation techniques in Maya.
Lighting
CG is fundamentally all about light. Manipulating how light is created and reflected is what you’re doing with CG. Without light, we wouldn’t see anything, so it makes sense that simulating light is the most influential step in CG. Lighting can drastically alter the look of your scene; it greatly affects the believability of your models and textures and creates and heightens mood.
During the lighting step, you set up virtual lights in your scene to illuminate your objects and action. Although you can set up some initial lights during the texturing of the scene, the serious lighting should be the last thing you do, aside from changes and tweaks.
The type and number of lights you use in a scene greatly affect not just the look of your scene, but also the amount of time the scene takes to render. Lighting becomes a careful dance between pragmatics and results. It’s perhaps the subtlest part of CG to master.
When you gain more experience with lighting, you’ll notice that it affects every part of your CG creation. Before long, you’ll start modeling differently—that is, modeling with the final lighting of the scene in mind. Texturing will change when you keep lighting techniques in mind. Even your animation and staging will change a bit to take better advantage of efficient, powerful lighting.
As you’ll learn in Chapter 10, “Maya Lighting,” virtual lights in Maya are similar to lights used in the real world, from a single point of light, such as a bulb, to directed beams, such as spotlights.
Rendering
At this stage, your computer takes your scene and makes all the computations it needs to create raster (bitmapped) images for your movie. Rendering time depends on how much geometry is used in the scene as well as on the number of lights, the size of your textures, and the quality and size of your output: the more efficient your scene, the shorter the rendering times.
A lot of people ask how long they should expect their renders to take or how long is too long for a frame to render. It’s a subjective question with no real answer. Your frames will take as long as they have to for them to look the way you want. Of course, if you have tight time or budgetary constraints, you need simple scenes to keep the render resources and times to a minimum. In production, you’re always short on time, so having the most efficient pipeline possible will be your savior. If you don’t work efficiently, your producer or supervisor eventually will tire of hearing, “But I’m still rendering.”
That being said, it’s important to understand how a scene is put together before you learn to put a scene together efficiently. While you’re learning, use as many lights and as much geometry as you think you need for your scenes. The more experience you gain, the more efficient your eye will become.