Maya Tutorial English 1

Maya Tutorial 1 This Craft Tutorial is designed to give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the basic features of Craft Director Tools.

Recording 1. Create a cone with the following values:

Translate X: 0 Translate Y: 1 Translate Z: -10 Scale X: X: 1 Scale Y: 1 Scale Z: 1

2. Now create two copies of the first cone by using DuplicateDuplicate-window. In the DuplicateDuplicate-window you will type in the number of copies and indicate the distance between these cones. The distance should be -20 on the Z-axis. (See the picture to the right).

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3. Click on the Director Tools tab, and then on the Craft Animations icon to open the Craft Director Tools window. 4.

Click on the Craft Director Tools button in order to choose which Craft Director Tool you want to use (See picture on the right).

5. Find Craft Car and click on the button (see picture below). 6. Configure the controls for Craft Car. The controls we need are Gas Pedal (Forw/Backw) and Steering Wheel (Right/Left). In order to configure the controls click on

Configure Craft Director Tools Configure window Tools Main, Input Main, settings Gas Pedal (Forw/Backw) Steering Wheel (Right/Left) Change, Change, Auto Autodetect utodetect

the

button in

and the

open up. Click on

will

and then

to open the control config

window. Configure the controls for and

by clicking on

then click

and

. When you have

done this, move the control on your input device that you wish to use for the parameter (e.g. move the steering wheel to the right).

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We have now placed a Craft Car Car in our scene along with three cones lined up in a row. As you can see, we are going to maneuver Craft Car through an obstacle course. 7. Now switch to the CCar_01_FollowCam camera view so that you see Craft Car from behind. This way you will have an easier time maneuvering. To change views, click on Panels in the viewport menu, and then Perspective. Perspective. Finally

choose Transform1|CCar_01_FollowCam.

8. Now press Record in Craft Director Tools to start the recording and steer Craft Car through the obstacle course as shown by the arrow in the picture above. When you are finished press Stop to end the recording.

Re-recording The next step in this guide will demonstrate how easy it is to change your animation, as well as showing how small adjustments in the custom settings can make maneuvers much simpler. 1. Select pCone2 pCone2 and change its Translate X value to 2. 2. Duplic Duplicate ate the cone and change the new cone’s Translate X value to -2. As you can see, we have created a “gate”, between the two cones, for Craft Car to drive through. We are still going to use part of the first recording, but we are going to make some minor

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adjustments so that it follows the new obstacle course. We can do this by picking up the recording at any point and re-recording from there. This way you don’t have to start over from the beginning. If you play the recording that you made the first time, you will see that the car either hits one of the cones in the gate, or drives around the outside of the gate entirely. But we are now going to drive the car in between the two cones and through the gate, and we won’t have to start over from the beginning. 3. Drag the time line back to the place where the car passes the first cone. 4. Click Record to start the recording, and drive the car though the gate. As you probably notice it is a bit difficult to steer the car through the gate without hitting either cone. We are now going to test Craft Director Tools’ Slow-motion function. 5. Drag the time line back to the place where the car passes the first cone. 6. Change the SlowSlow-motion factor to 3 in Craft Director Tools. (see picture on the right) 7. Click Record and drive through the gate. You will notice that it is much easier to steer now. If you play the recording you will also notice that the car’s movements are also much better when you use slow-motion.

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