Maya building tools

MEL Procedural City Generator This one looks absolutely amazing , check out the page, there are lots of videos demonstrations of not only city generation but of destruction as well. Davveys generation scripts Not really in the vain of building or city generation, however related to generating doors , generating windows , and generating stairs.

Ed Whetstone. February 12, February 15, May 10, June 29, Rocky Nongkhlaw. To use it, first choose an object you need to move. Upon selecting it, you will see a controller appeared with four handles.

They are used to move the object along each axis and one to move along the planes. Also, the colour changes to indicate that it is active when you select a handle. By default, the colour will be yellow. The rotate tool is used to rotate objects in all three axes. Select the rotate tool available in the toolbox and select the object you need to rotate.

Now you will notice four rings colour coordinated to XYZ axes. A virtual sphere is also displayed along with the rings. You will know the selected ring by the change in colour. To perform constrained rotations, use X, Y, Z rings. In order to rotate according to the view, use the outer ring.

If you need to rotate it in fixed increments, you can use the snap option. Utilize the scale tool to alter the dimension of the items by scaling uniformly in each of the three measurements.

You can likewise scale unevenly in one dimension at any given moment. Snap the scale tool symbol in the tool compartment and choose the item you need to scale. Maya shows a scale controller comprising of four handles. The insert edge loop tool is one of the most important tools available in Maya for modelling. Using it, you can create a continuous subdivision edge loop in your mesh, thereby increasing its resolution.

The crease tool is used to harden or smoothen the polygonal mesh by modifying it. It works by creasing the edges and vertices of a polygon mesh. However, it does not have an effect on the resolution. You can go to the option from the mesh tools. As the name suggests, the sculpting tool allows you to sculpt digital surfaces in 3D, similar to clay sculpting.

But, if you're starting small, take advantage of the non-commercial licence, which is free. You can also take advantage of completely free demo scenes, presets, samples and tutorials, to get you up and running fast. Every animator out there will know how time-consuming keyframe animation can be. Originally created by 3D character animator Justin Barrett but now in the hands of Alex Widener, the purpose of Maya plug-in TweenMachine is to greatly simplify the process of creating breakdown poses between key poses.

TweenMachine significantly reduces the amount of steps it takes to create poses for your character with stepped keys. Since working on various feature animated films such as Happy Feet and The Legend of the Guardians, technical director Oyvind Nostdal developed Advanced Skeleton to make character creation a much more efficient process. A collection of Maya tools for doing character setup, this useful plugin creates a complex motion system from a simple joint chain.

This is a brilliant, time-saving tool, and will have your characters up and running in no time. If you're a 2D artist making the move into 3D, you should check out this sketchpad for Maya, Blue Pencil, which provides 2D drawing to Maya's 3D viewport. The useful plugin features a grease pencil tool that allows artists to plan, annotate and illustrate shots.

Like most painting tools, Blue Pencil 2 benefits from drawing tools that include the pencil, brush, eraser and eye dropper.

It also has built-in pressure-sensitive controls of line thickness and opacity. But don't expect the quality of other 2D imaging software such as Photoshop, Blue Pencil is simply a multi-purpose tool designed for roughing out ideas.

Parts of this article were originally published in 3D World , the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Subscribe to 3D World here.