Creating Visual Effects in Maya

Required Software

Creating Visual Effects in Maya: Fire, Water, Debris, and Destruction was written with Autodesk Maya 2013 and tested with Autodesk Maya 2014. Any significant differences between 2013 and 2014 are noted in the text. Tutorial files as saved in the Maya 2013 .ma format, except where nHair examples are included, in which case the files are saved in the Maya 2014 .ma format. Motion tracking examples are saved as MatchMover .mmf files. Compositing examples are saved as Autodesk Composite 2013 .txcomposition files, Adobe After Effects CS6 .aep files, and The Foundry Nuke 7 .nk files.

System Requirements

Maya, After Effects, and Nuke will run poorly unless your computer's hardware and operating system software meets minimum criteria. The criteria is carefully spelled out at the following webs pages:

Maya: www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-maya/system-requirements

 

After Effects: helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/system-requirements-effects.html

 

Nuke: www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/system-requirements/

Downloads

Example tutorial files include five gigabytes of Maya scene files, OBJ and SketchUp model files, MatchMover project files, Composite project files, After Effects project files, Nuke project files, texture bitmaps, MEL scripts, Python scripts, PyMEL scripts, rendered image sequences, image sequences converted from video footage, and various Maya-created data, such as fur files. The files are organized in the following directory structure for download:

Click to download Zip files

• misc
• Project 1
• Project 2
• Project 3
• Project 4

Different Systems

If you are running Maya and Nuke on a Windows system, I recommend copying the project files onto your own C: drive before opening any script files. If you are running Maya and Nuke on a Mac or Linux system, I recommend copying the contents onto your root drive.

Before opening a Maya scene file, set the project to the current project folder. For example, before opening Project1.1.ma, choose File > Set Project and select the /ProjectFiles/Project1/ directory folder. With this step, Maya will open the various texture bitmaps in a correct manner.

If you open a Maya file and the texture bitmaps are missing (as indicated by black texture node thumbnails), you can manually reload them. To do so, use the Image Name browse button to locate the bitmap through the texture’s Attribute Editor tab.

If you open an After Effects file and the image sequences are missing, RMB-click over the sequence name in the Project panel and choose Replace Footage.

If you open a Nuke file and the image sequences are missing, you can reload them by double-clicking the appropriate Read node and locating the sequence with the File browse button.

Note that the book's screen captures are taken from Maya 2013 running on 64-bit Windows 7 and 8 systems.