- ALIGNED IMAGE PLANES
- ALPHA ONION SKINS
- MAYA CARD TRICKS
- MAPPING VERSUS MODELING
- INSERT HERE WHILE DRAWING CURVES
- EXPLICIT, R-RATED NURB TESSELLATION
- TESSELLATION VERSUS CVs
- LINEAR VERSUS CUBIC HEROICS
- CONSTRAIN THOSE UNRULY CURVES
- THE REVOLUTIONS WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
- BI-RAILING THE MISSING GLASS SLIPPER
- SLIPPER REBUILDING
- SHADY, UNDESIRABLE ELEMENTS IN MAYA
- RANDOMIZE THOSE CVs
- JUNKYARD DUMPING SIMULATION
- USE OF PHOTOSHOP AS A MODELING TOOL
- AUTOTRACING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
- PHOTOSHOP PATHS TO MAYA CURVES
- WRESTLING WITH DISPLACEMENT
- ANIMATE YOUR MODELING
- SET SUBTLETIES
- TRANSFORM TOOLS SHORTCUT
- INTERROGATING POINTS AS TO WHERE THEY LIVE
- FACE PROPOGATION VIA SHELL IN POLY SELECTION CONSTRAINTS
MAYA CARD TRICKS
An excellent strategy for efficient rendering is to augment scenes with scanned images or animated texture maps onto flat surfaces, known commonly as cards or billboards. This is used to optimize an otherwise unmanageable scene or simply to add more detail cheaply. As an electronic version of paper dolls, there are limitations, because the elements must remain roughly perpendicular to the camera and in the background. Cameras cannot roam around them. A good application, though, would be crowd scenes, trees, cityscapes, or otherwise overly heavy background elements. Note that you must match the lighting in your card image to the scene in which they are being placed, possibly resetting some light direction in Photoshop using the Render Lighting filter. You must also mask out the object, making sure that the area outside the object's alpha is black. Now use this map in an Incandescent channel in a Lambert shader and turn the Color channel down to black. Map a file copy of the Alpha channel to the Transparency channel, which acts as a stencil and creates the look of complex geometry with the expense of a single polygon. Animated maps can be used as well, which are useful for tree leaf rustling or pedestrians walking. This very simple trick is used much more than you might think in many well-known film effects scenes. Just goes to show that the best tricks are often the simplest!