Pay attention to animated films, TV program advertisements and program titles. Perhaps, you have already felt that the era of digital animation has quietly arrived. It is true that the visual effects displayed by the general media can no longer meet people's various requirements for moving, static, changing and enriching visual senses. In order to meet this demand, digital animation came into being, which presents the dynamic effect of human artistic creation with the help of science and technology. Maya, the newly bought 3D animation software in our station, is such a software. It was introduced by Alias/Wavefront company. Alias and Wavefront used to be two famous signboards in 3D animation of workstations. After several acquisitions and mergers, the two companies merged into one company, Alias/Wavefront, which belongs to Silicon Map Company. Maya from Alias/Wavefront can be said to be one of the focuses of the current computer animation industry. Let's take a look at this point. First, realistic character animation In the intuitive working environment provided by Maya, the characters are lifelike. Here, you can easily model and set smooth model animation. We can add various embedded behaviors or advanced controls for each digital creation; What animators have to worry about is creativity itself. With Maya, we can give subtle expressions to digital characters, as if we were directing a group of real actors. This can't be done in previous three-dimensional software. The so-called advanced three-dimensional character animation function includes the following points: various deformation tools that can be stored, animated and reordered. ? A complete set of inverse kinematics tools is used to precisely control character animation. ? Facial expression animation control based on various mixed shapes. ? A complete set of skin tools? Subtle expression control of any attribute of a character? Built-in transport and capture support? Integrated sound synchronization? Even in complex deformation animation, the stitched surfaces on the model will maintain continuity. Game lovers who have played the game FF8 of Final Fantasy 8 may still remember the vivid expressions of three-dimensional characters, their subtle psychological portrayal and their real and flexible actions. (The game has a PC version). The animation of this game is made by Maya software. It is said that the Japanese company that made the game at that time re-customized the entire Maya interface through MEL language. In Maya's teaching, we made an example of dolphins playing with balls. In real life, the exercise intensity of dolphins is different from neck to back (the range of neck movement is larger). By defining a Cluste cluster, the exercise intensity will be limited according to cluste, and the real situation will be simulated. At the back of this animation, the dolphin's ball rolls far away, and we can define its eye shape with a custom worry attribute to show its depressed eyes when it loses the ball. When you finish a dolphin animation with vivid expression, realistic action and certain plot, you will sincerely think Maya is too interesting. It provides you with many controllable tools, so that you can flexibly apply various methods to achieve different, subtle, realistic and vivid effects. 2. Powerful particle system and dynamic particle system have become an important part of today's animation software, and their richness has also become a concentrated expression of the functions of animation software. Maya has a very powerful particle system, which has many complete parameter settings. Now we can define the particle shape arbitrarily according to the modeled shape, which greatly enhances the flexibility and artistic expression of the particle system. This is impossible in the previous three-dimensional software. For example, the water flows slowly into the underwater vehicle ... the ball hits the brick wall and breaks ... and the galaxy collides ... Maya provides a wealth of tool libraries to achieve the above effects, so that animators can easily establish models or particle relationships to accurately simulate some forces (such as friction, gravity and wind) that exist in the real world, which used to take several hours to achieve through the key frame method. Now let's use dynamics to make an animation of bowling: first, establish a bowling scene (with bowling, bowling pins and the ground). Then define bowling and bowling pins as active rigid bodies and the ground as passive rigid bodies. At the same time, the collision between the bottle and the ground is defined, and then a pulling force is added to the bowling ball and a gravity is added to the whole scene. At this time, the bowling ball is hit by a pulling force. After these bottles are subjected to an external force, Maya will automatically calculate the result of their falling posture colliding with the ground (bowling pins lying on the ground in different shapes). And all this does not need keying, Maya can automatically calculate the results through dynamics. Just like the real world. In this animation, you can set the speed, angle and rotation of bowling collision to achieve a good result that all the bottles fall down in one dozen. Looking at this animation, the sense of accomplishment is no less than a full irrigation in a bowling alley. Third, the advanced module of Maya 1, Maya Artisan In Maya, I am very interested in a tool called Artisan, which allows us to carve NURBS surfaces at will, thus generating various complex images. If you have a digital input device, such as a digital pen, you can make complex models at will. Maya Artisan provides animators with creative control methods and modern creation methods, which are as intuitive as brushes and sculpture tools used in traditional art creation, and can modify models. Select control points or specify the weight of clustering, etc. Using Artisan, we can even "draw" different target weights for different parts of a soft body, or "draw" a particle generator on a NURBS surface. We can squeeze out a shape like plasticine. Let artists feel that computers are so friendly and convenient. 2. The smoke from Maya F/X lights gradually turned into monsters ... a series of footprints in the mud ... flames ... exhaust from jet engines ... Once upon a time, it was so difficult to produce these effects vividly. Now with Maya F/X, we can simply generate flexible soft objects and complex particle systems, which are consistent with the physical movement of the real world and coordinated with other models in the scene. 3. Maya power modeler Maya power modeler is a perfect complement to Maya role modeling tools. It provides necessary accuracy for animators when designing real-world mechanical devices. So that every exact value we require (such as the radius of an angle) is exactly the same. Fourth, the groundbreaking production tool 1, Maya Cloth Maya Cloth is a software tool for cloth simulation and simulation in Maya. Three-dimensional animators can use it to create realistic and vivid fabrics. For example, for the three-dimensional image in the animation, soft decorations made of various fabrics or other materials, such as tops, skirts, trousers, streamers, shawls, etc. Dynamic system can also be used to simulate and simulate the dynamic action of cloth objects, and can make the movement effect of cloth objects in the real world. In the past, we had to face the embarrassing reality that our beloved characters were all covered with "iron clothes and steel pants", but now Maya cloth can not only match soft and elegant fashion for our characters, but also make many other types of fabrics, including sheets, bedding, curtains, flags, leather and other types of fabrics. Of course, the most important thing is that it can make these virtual fabrics into charming software animation. 2.Fur Fur is a component of Maya2.0 and 2.5 unlimited editions. Hair can be used to create realistic hair and short hair with texture and shadow on multi-level NURBS curve model. Hair can not only set hair attributes, such as color, length, width, baldness, transparency, bump, curl and stretching direction, but also be drawn locally. At the same time, we can also use Maya Artisan to draw most hair attributes directly on the surface and comb the hair. The attractor system can be used to determine the movement of hair or the reaction of hair to a dynamic field. 3.Maya live Maya live is a tool that we like very much. Some non-linear editing and post-synthesis can be added in the process of 3D production to solve the problem of counterpoint synthesis of 3D virtual objects and video images. Maya live can automatically and quickly complete this time-consuming processing task that matches the movement. Matching motion is a computer-generated (CG) scene motion movie to match the motion of a camera or an object. In order to do this, it is necessary to reconstruct the replica of three-dimensional objects in the active scene, including the relative position between objects and the motion of cameras or objects in the scene. Due to the integration with Maya, the matching motion process is seamlessly matched with the animation we made. CG objects can be easily loaded into the scene for inspection and processing. It can also be converted into two kinds of processing: the motion of the camera around the static point; This point moves around a stationary camera (called object tracking). In the recently released new film "Emergency Landing", Maya live is used to seamlessly connect the lens from the appearance of three-dimensional plane to the moving picture of the pilot operating in the cabin. V. Maya's workflow Maya's user interface is intuitive and convenient, and at the same time it provides advanced users with the required flexibility and global control. Now we can work in full screen, no more crowded menus and icons. The user interface can simply be set to contain only some tools needed for the current work. At the same time, we can also write a simple MEL process to automatically perform repetitive tasks. Or design a specific environment for a specific project. You can undo or redo an operation at will, and use the most advanced 3D manipulation tools to directly adjust the components of the scene. Or use the drag-and-drop graphical user interface to change Maya's internal node-based architecture. This kind of user interface often attracts us to make different attempts. Sixth, Maya personalized operation may wish to imagine: you customize a control panel to control a character's head movements (some actions are extremely subtle, such as wrinkles on the skin, mouth shape when pronouncing, eyebrow movement, blinking, etc. ). Therefore, you can visually match the facial expression of the character with its dubbing. And that's just part of Mel's power. Mel allowed us to personalize Maya. With MEL, users can extend the functions of Maya to meet some special creative needs. For example, some special characters, advanced dynamic effects, stylized modeling or animation process. In addition, we can customize different user interfaces according to different creative habits and different creative needs. Maya's C++API design enables technical directors to add plug-ins customized for special creative tasks to the system. The external hardware of the animation department can also be plugged into Maya at any time without entering a specific mode. External controls can be easily repositioned with the help of buttons on the tool rack.