Assignment #9



Relevant Hotkeys/Tools ← Click!

Menu Navigation

Spacebar - Holding down this hotkey will bring up the "hotbox". The hotbox is all of Maya's menus in one place relative to the center of your mouse. This allows you to bypass having to switch menu sets every time you want to access certain functionality.

Camera/Viewport

  • Alt + Left-click and drag - Rotate the camera.
  • Alt + Right-click and drag / Scroll Wheel - Zoom the camera in and out.
  • Alt + Middle-click and drag - Pan the camera.
  • f - Focus camera on the selected object. The camera will now rotate around that object.
  • 4 - Display objects as wireframe.
  • 5 - Display objects as solid.
  • In four panel view: Hover mouse over viewport and press Spacebar to jump in and out.

Object/Component Selection

  • q - Select Tool. Also useful for "canceling" out of another tool.
  • F8 - Object selection mode.

Object Manipulation

  • Red tool handles correspond to the x-axis, green to the y-axis, and blue to the z-axis. Remember this color scheme, as it is used consistently throughout Maya for easy axis identification.
  • w - Move Tool
  • e - Rotate Tool
  • r - Scale Tool
  • + (the plus key) - Makes the tool size larger (affects all manipulation tools). Bigger tool handle sizes make small adjustments easier.
  • - (the minus key) - Makes the tool size smaller.

The Most Important Hotkeys You Will Ever Learn ...Ever!

  • z - Undo. Undoes the last thing you did. Applies to selections and deselections as well. Does not apply to camera movement by default. Maya's undo queue is initially set to only allow 50 undos in a row, so go to Window → Settings/Preferences → Preferences, select Undo from the list, and set the Queue Size to something like 500. You can set it to Infinite, but that may increase the likelihood of Maya crashing. Note for later in the year: importing resets the undo queue, so be careful.
  • Z (Shift + z) - Redo. Undone things are reverted. Be careful not to select or deselect anything if you are doing of bunch of redos, as that will reset the redo queue.
  • g - Repeat last action. If you need to perform a single action multiple times (such as extruding) but do not want to repeatedly dig through Maya's menus, just hit the g key.

For this assignment, we will continue to work on cardinal expressions, specifically joy. You will pose the face in an open mouth broad smile, a laugh, an eager smile, sly smile, bittersweet smile, and a fake smile. You will be using the Valencia rig for this assignment. Keep in mind that even the slightest details can change how the face is read, so make sure the movements you make show the correct expression you want it to be read as. Use the mirrors in the lab and yourself as reference.

First make a new folder in your student folder and label it “assignment_9”

You can get the maya file for the assignment 9 template on the course website.

Once you’ve opened the assignment in Maya, you’ll notice that a neutral expression has been keyed and labeled for all the poses.

    000 – Broad Smile - Open Mouth

    040 – Laugh

    080 – Eager Smile

    100 – Sly Smile

    140 – Bittersweet Smile

    180 – Fake Smile

You can also feel free to try as many more variations of the smile as you would like and submit those as well.

There's nothing new to learn for these ones.

Make sure as you go through the assignment that you are keying your poses every time you change something and to save often!

Use the “front_face_cam” to see in the view in which you’ll be turning your assignment in. It is highly recommended that you also use perspective and side view as you work on this assignment.

On some of these poses, you might want to turn on the secondary anims.

Remember, when the lips need to look stretched and thinned, use the push and curl attributes in the channel box.

Before you start screenshotting, make sure to click 7 so that the correct lighting is on.

MAKE SURE YOUR ANIMS AREN’T VISIBLE!

AND MAKE SURE YOU'RE IN FRONT_FACE_CAM VIEW!

Screenshot each pose. Name your screenshots:

    broad_smile_open_mouth.png

    laugh.png

    eager_smile.png

    sly_smile.png

    bittersweet_smile.png

    fake_smile.png

Assignment due at 11:59PM on Monday 7/22 For turn in, make sure the following poses are in your assignment_9 folder within your student folder: