Maya Foundations

Jean-Marc Gauthier - All Rights Reserved Fall 2005

This tutorial shows you how to get around in Maya by creating a textured
box from a polygonal primitive, how to export the box to Virtools and how
to smooth the box into a sphere.

Part 1 - Creating and texturing the box in Maya

Part 2 - Maya to Virtools export
Part 3 -Turn the box into the sphere

Part 1 – Creating a box in Maya

Create polygonal cube. Select Create > Polygonal Primitives > Cube. Scale
the cube.
1- Extrude one face of the cube; single extrusion. In Component mode,
select the front face of the cube. Edit polygons > Extrude Face.
Double extrusion.
The following illustration shows how to create a second extrusion of the cube.
NOTE: If you have second thoughts about what you modeled, you can edit
the “extrude” history.
2- Assign texture. Go to Windows > Rendering Editor > Hypershade
panel. Press space bar, inside the toolbox turn on Shading > Smooth
Shade Selected and Shading > Hardware texturing. Now we create
Blinn materials for each face of the cube.

Step 4: In Hypershade, doubleclick on Blinn or Lambert.

Step 5: Bring the new shader in Hypershade > Work Area, Middle click +
drag on shader’s icon inside the Work area..
Step 6: Double click on the shader’s icn in order to edit the shader’s attributes
in the Attributes Editor.
Step 7: Double click on the color field to edit the shader’s color.
The following illustration shows how to Assign the new material to a face of
the cube of your choice.
Step 1 to 4: Select a face of the cube
Step 5: Right click on the shader’s icon. Choose Assign InitialShading Group
to selection in the popup menu.

3- Map the color attribute with a 2d texture file. Create the texture.
Although the following illustrations show how to text a cube with a double-
extrusion, the same texturing process takes place inside a single extrusion
cube.
Step 1 select “as Projection”
Step 2 LMB click on “File”
Step 3 Go to Work Area
MMB, Middle Mouse Button, click on Projection icon + drag on Shader 1 icon,
in the pull down menu delect “default”. A green link is created between the
icons projection and shader 1

Step 1 Double click on the projection icon. The projection 1 Attribute Editor
window shows up.
Step 2 Press Interactive Placement and Fit to Box icons
Step 3 The interactive placement manipulator shows up in the cube.
 Let’s add a texture;
Step 1 LMB click on the File 1 icon.
Step 2 The file 1 Attribute Editor window shows up. LMB on the file icon, load
the texture file created for example in Photoshop. .
Step 3 Go to Shading menu, check the following parameters;

smooth shading, hardware texturing and high quality rendering.

The texture shows up in the cube
Part 2 - Maya 2 Virtools export
1- Set up the data resource folder in Virtools

Open Virtools, go to Resources > Create New Data Resource

Save your-name-resource in your folder. Please note that the software

creates your-name-resource.rsc and your-name-resource folder

2- Export from Maya to Virtools

Save the Maya cube to Virtools, cube.mno inside
my-name-resource > 3D Entity folder.

Make sure that the texture, bark.jpg is saved inside

my-name-resource > texture folder
Save the Maya scene, cube.mb inside the current folder.

2- Import cube.mno in Virtools

 Go to Virtools > Resources > Import File > cube.mno
Or
Go to Virtools > Resources > Open data resource > my-name-resource.rsc

Part 3 – Smooth the cube to create a sphere

1- The following illustration shows how to apply a shader on each face of

the cube.
Step 1 and 2: You can Middle mouse click + drag the shader icon of your
choice from Materials to the Work Area. This will let you edit later other
components of a shader’s network such as texture, projection, texture
interactive placement.
Step 1, double click on the shader icon of your choice.
Step 2, the shader’s attribute window opens.
Step 3: select a texture file in jpg format.
 In the 3D window, go to Shading and check the settings in order to see the
texture in Maya. By default you don’t see the texture in Maya. You can use
also a shader to select one of the face of the cube, right mouse click on the
shader icon of your choice and go to “select object in Initial Shading Group” in
the pop up menu. In this example we select and extrude several times the
back face inside the cube in order to create the front façade of the cube.

Smoothing the cube

You can select either the object in Object mode, select the object (cube
turns with green edges. Select Polygons > smooth.
Please note that by default Maya turns backface culling off. In this case,
Maya lets you select only the faces ( also called polygons) of the object
located in front of the camera or the faces of object visible by the camera.

Sometimes you may want to select all faces of an object. In this case, go to
Display > Custom Polygon Display > and turn Backface Culling =
on

2- You can use UV maps in order to control how to project and how to size the
texture on the 3D model. Click on the object with RMB and select Face.
Select the faces of the object that you want to texture or the faces already
textured that you want to edit. Hold the shift key in order to add faces to the
selection
3- Create planar mapping Edit polygons > Texture > Planar Mapping.
Position the planar projection.
4- Select Window > UV Texture Editor. Drag the yellow and green arrows,
rotate the mesh and play with the positions of the texture. See the updated
texture in the 3D view window.
5- Save scene. Finish the model. Delete history Edit > Delete by type >
History.
6- File > Save Scene as