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
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