Workshop 2: Lighting and Nurbs

PART I: LIGHTING

  1.  SIMPLE THREE POINT LIGHTING

Create a simple Nurbs sphere from the “Surfaces” shelf tool.

Add spot light

Go into lighting mode by hitting #7 key

With the spot light selected, to the top of the screen menu item “Modify/Transformation Tools/Show Manipulator Tool”

Move the source of the spot light above and to the right of the sphere, and move the target of the spot light to an area just below the sphere.

With the spot light selected, open the attributes editor (third icon from upper right-hand corner of Maya window) and resize the “cone angle” until it visibly impacts sphere

Within the attributes editor, turn on ray-trace shadows for the spot light.

Add two point source lights without shadows for fill and back-fill light

Use Show manipulator tool to reposition the point lights (target and source)

PART II: NURBS SURFACES

1. SURFACE OF REVOLUTION

Goto Front View

Create/CP Curve tool

Goto Perspective View

Surfaces/Revolve  – select control box, pick “Y” axis, and # degrees.

CV Curve-Tool (control vertex NURBS curve) – perhaps more replicable due to less idiosyncratic control points. (higher degree is smoother — largest exponent in polynomial equation used to represent the curve)

EP Curve Tool (free-hand pencil NURBS curve – 1 degree creates polygon straight lines)

2. LOFTING A SURFACE

Go to elevation view

Create two CV Curves in elelvation

Goto Perspective view

Move one curve along Y axis.

            Pre-select both curves

            Surfaces/loft – select control box – increase section spans to 5 – apply to curves

            De-select geometry

            Select curve

            Move curve (transforms surface associated with it)

            Right-click on curve and select control vertex

            Isolate control vertex with selection tool [note gravitational pull on curves]

            Move curve vertex with mouse and surface automatically updates.

3. MODIFYING A PLANAR SURFACE

Create/Nurbs Primitives/Plane

Stretch the plane.

Change the number of divisions in the channels box (30 x 30)

Right-click on plan and select control-vertex

Use selection tool to select a control-vertex or several of them.

Use the move tool to move them thereby reshaping surface

[Optional: Key frame Control Vertices directly in two locations at two frame numbers for animation]

4. PROJECTING CURVE ON A SURFACE

Create a surface of revolution (or use one from part 1 above)

Goto Front View Create a straight edge (EP Curve from two points)

Edit Nurbs/Project Curve on Surface (- select control box, use View direction –

Edit Nurbs/Trim Tool  – select surface, select part to delete

5. SCULPTING A FLAT SURFACE [SKIPPED THIS EXAMPLE IN WORKSHOP]

Create/NURBS PRIMITIVES/Plane

Select Edit NURBS Sculpt tools with box.

Hit “reset” button to set all parameters to standard default values.

Draw on Surface

Hold “b” key to reset size

Change maximum displacement option

6. SETUP FOR SCULPTING A NURBS SPHERE

Create/NURBS PRIMITIVES/Sphere

Select #3 to increase density of mesh

INCREASE DENSITY OF SURFACE

Technique 1.

Select channels box for sphere.

Increase “sections” and “spans” to increase number of CVs (under MakeNurbSphere1)

Technique 2

Select Edit NURBS – Rebuild Surfaces []

            Set number of spans u – 30

            Set number of spans v – 30

Click rebuild

From left side of application window, open hypershade/perspective view of model (creates two view windows side by side).

Select blinn1 shader, change color to pink

Apply pink color to sphere

Set eccentricity to 0 to create strong highlight

Space-bar on perspective window to revert back to single perspective view.

7. BEGIN SCULPTING NURBS SPHERE

Select Edit NURBS Sculpt tools with box.

Hit “reset” button.

Under stamp profile: Set Radius(U) to 0.3

Under Sculpt variables: Set  Max Displacement to 0.8

Mouse over surface, arrow indicates magnitude of displacement

Click and drag mouse on surface to begin sculpting it.

CHANGE DISPLAY TO SHADER (#5 KEY)

Do a second sculpting stroke and note simplicity of seeing result.

SCULPTING TOOLS

 Select pull tool: pull on other side of ball

Select smooth tool; chance Radius (U) to 0.6 : smooth areas of ball

Select erase tool; erase some areas on ball

Hit flood button: erases all changes

Under stamp profile: Set Radius(U) to 0.5

Under Sculpt variables: Set  Max Displacement to 0.5

Make two strokes over one another: each enhances effect until Maximum displacement is reached.

PART III: MOVIE EXPORT OPTIONS

Go to Setup in Render Globals

In Common Tab

Establish file type and extension (name#.jpg)

Determine numerical frame sequence to render

Image Size (default is 640 x 480 pixels).

In Maya Software Tab

Control Quality.

Turn on Raytracing

Edit project folder and note name of Image Folder (render)

Go to Quicktime Pro, load individual frames at 30 fps and save to mov format (similar to workshop 1). (May not do this in workshop, depending upon time available.).

PART IV: PROCESSING OPEN SOURCE COMPILATION 

Download a copy of the open source processing software from processing.org for Mac or Windows OS. It is already installed on computers in the School of Architecture and Environment.

Within Processing, go to the menu item Tools/Movie Maker to open a “QuickTime Movie Maker” window. The next few steps are as follows:

  1. Choose the folder with the image files.
  2. Select on the check-box to use the “Same size as originals”
  3. Select the option to “Create movie”, select the folder where it is to be place and name the file.

You can ignore the other options as they are better handled with additional editing software (e.g., iMovieHD).

PART V: QUICKTIME EDITING, FILE FORMATS, CODECS

These notes are superseded by Part IV above. They rely upon QuickTime Pro, a roughly $29 purchase from Apple. It is not available on Windows.

Quicktime Editing and Compiling. Workshop is based upon the following password protected * quicktime docs:

1. Import Image Sequence (p. 28)

2. Exporting Movie (p. 43 – 45)

3. Exporting to Mpeg 4 (p. 48)

* You can access these documents from any location on grounds or through VPN access through off grounds.