Maya: Natural Environments

Course details

Representing the natural world in a 3D program can be a daunting task. Autodesk Maya comes to the rescue with an incredible array of tools for world-building. In this course, learn how to command the powers of Maya to model, sculpt, and shade scenes of nature. Terrains can be imported as heightmaps, generated with procedural texture patterns, sculpted by hand, or art directed with any combination of those methods. With tools such as XGen and Paint Effects, you can easily populate a scene with plants and other objects. The layout requirements for exteriors often include special visual effects such as image planes and camera constraints. Volumetric clouds and atmospheric perspective complete the illusion of reality for a photorealistic natural setting. This course even touches on real-time workflows, rendering a cubic environment map in Maya and loading it into Unity. Get ready to tame the wilderness and design realistic exterior settings in Maya.

Topics include:
Layout for 360 and camera-centric scenes
Applying appropriate scale, grid, and camera settings
Building backdrop spheres, planes, and cubic environments
Creating a landscape with a height map
Generating a terrain with procedural textures
Painting and sculpting polygon geometry
Generating entourage objects with Paint Effects
Instancing massive numbers of primitives with XGen
Scripting XGen attributes with the SeExpr language
Painting XGen attributes
Developing materials for Paint Effects and XGen
Rendering transparency and translucency
Generating clouds with a 3D Fluid
Rendering haze with Arnold Standard Volume

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Natural environments in Maya
02 - What you need to know
03 - Using the exercise files

1. Layout

04 - 360-degree scene layout
05 - Camera-centric scene layout
06 - Understanding scene scale
07 - Adjusting Grid settings
08 - Camera position and clip planes
09 - Modeling a spherical backdrop
10 - Setting up a camera for a cube map
11 - Rendering cube map images
12 - Modeling a skybox
13 - Mapping a skybox
14 - Shading a skybox
15 - Modeling a planar backdrop matte painting
16 - Shading a backdrop matte painting
17 - Constraining backdrops to the camera

2. Terrain

18 - Setting terrain level of detail
19 - Creating a polygon disc primitive
20 - Applying a 2D height map with Texture Deformer
21 - Applying a 3D procedural height map
22 - Creating a texture reference object
23 - Resolving incompatibilities using Layered Texture
24 - Combining height maps with Layered Texture
25 - Using the 3D Paint tool
26 - Adjusting height maps with 3D Paint
27 - Modeling with Mesh Sculpting tools
28 - Modeling with Sculpt Geometry tool
29 - Altering topology with Edit Mesh tools
30 - Optimizing UV layout

3. Entourage

31 - Procedural modeling with 3D Paint Effects
32 - Drawing Paint Effects strokes
33 - Customizing Paint Effects strokes
34 - Customizing a Paint Effects brush
35 - Converting Paint Effects to polygons
36 - Controlling Paint Effects level of detail
37 - Preparing a scene for XGen
38 - Binding an XGen preset description to polygons
39 - Managing XGen file assets
40 - Adjusting XGen primitive attributes
41 - Understanding XGen attribute expressions
42 - Using the XGen Expression Editor
43 - Introducing SeExpr syntax
44 - Editing a random expression in SeExpr
45 - Loading SeExpr scripts from disk
46 - Binding XGen to a camera-based polygon selection
47 - Painting XGen attribute maps with Ptex

4. Shading

48 - Preparing an XGen scene for shader development
49 - Shading XGen splines
50 - Developing the look of the hair physical shader
51 - Previewing XGen colors with a global expression
52 - Shading Paint Effects with standard surface
53 - Converting Paint Effects textures
54 - Correcting Paint Effects transparency
55 - Rendering translucency with subsurface scattering
56 - Shading terrain slope with Snow texture

5. Atmosphere

57 - Creating a 3D fluid container for clouds
58 - Texturing a 3D fluid container
59 - Rendering volumetric clouds in Arnold
60 - Rendering haze with Arnold Standard Volume

Conclusion

61 - Next steps