Maya Professional Tips and Techniques, w. CD-ROM

Chapter 1. Customization. Resetting to Factory / Swapping Pref Files. Creating Custom Shelf Icons. Building a Simple MEL Window. Building a Complex MEL Window. Creating an Autosave Script. Launching External Programs. Creating Your Own Paint Effects Brush. Creating Notes for Your Fellow Animators. Industry Tip 1. Industry Tip 2. Chapter 2. Modeling. Breaking Up Complex NURBS Surfaces. Cleaning Up NURBS Surfaces With Attach / Detach. Closing Holes in NURBS Objects. Building a NURBS Gear. Using the Stitch Tool to Improve Patch Seams. Cleaning Up Imported Polygons. Building a Polygon Eye. Building a Polygon Ear. Industry Tip 1.Industry Tip 2. Chapter 3. Animation. Deleting Select History in the Hypergraph. Massaging Curves in the Graph Editor. Tracking a Background Plate by Eye.Automating Vehicle Wheels. Animating Paint Effects Growth. Applying Basic 2D Techniques to 3D. Creating Realistic Eye Movement. Animating Realistic Camera Moves. Industry Tip 1. Industry Tip 2. Chapter 4. Dynamics 20 pages Generating Swarms of Insects. Getting Variation from the Instancer Tool. Filling up a Water Glass with Particles. Curling Particles for Cigarette Smoke. Animating Gelatin with a Soft Body. Fluttering a Flag with Cloth. Floating a Power Boat on the Ocean System. Creating an Explosion with Fluid Dynamics. Industry Tip 1. Industry Tip 2. Chapter 5. Character Rigging. Resetting Joints with dag Pose. Creating Poor Man's Foot Controllers. Setting Up an Easy Spine Controller. Grafting Deformers onto a Character. Picking Up a Glass With a Constraint. Employing Wire Deformers for Facial Animation. Weighting a Head with the Component Editor. Solving Cluster Woes. Industry Tip 1. Industry Tip 2. Chapter 6. Texturing. Building a Texture Library. Stacking Generic Bitmaps in Maya. Combining Simple Ramps for Complex Results. Texturing Particles Individually. Texturing Paint Effects Strokes. Giving Color to Size and Direction. Squeezing the Maximum Variation Out of a Switch. Determining the

Lee Lanier is a professional animator and teacher who has created digital special effects for such films as The Santa Clause and Mortal Kombat. He was a senior animator for modeling and lighting on Antz and Shrek and has produced and directed the short films Millennium Bug, Mirror, Day Off The Dead, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and 13 Ways to Die at Home. He has taught advanced Maya classes at several schools, including the Art Institute of Las Vegas. His work can be seen at beezlebugbit.com. Lee is the author of Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting (Sybex).