Productivity-focused training with proven time-saving tips, "Introduction to
Paint Effects" provides enjoyable, hands-on projects that go beyond the
traditional default effects. Popular topics covered in "Introduction to Paint
Effects" include: a thorough understanding and overview of the Paint Effects
system, toon rendering with Paint Effects brushes, modifying existing textures
using Paint Effects, connecting brush strokes to surfaces, efficiently using
Paint Effects animation utilities, optimizing scenes and using the Mesh Brush to
create 3D objects, creating a potted plants entirely from Paint Effects,
building trees from scratch, developing light based and control curve based
effects with secondary animations, and several additional topics designed to
boost your creativity and understanding of Maya Paint Effects.
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Introduction to the UI for Paint Effects
In this lesson we will cover how to use the Paint Effects shelf and the
Visor. |
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Introduction to the Paint Effects Panel
This lesson will show you how to paint on the canvas and the scene,
while you see the rendered strokes in real time. |
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Paint
Effects Tool
This lesson is a quick introduction to the Paint Effects tool and the
Brush Resize and Brush Offset shortcuts. |
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Paint
Effects Tool and Pressure Mapping
Learn how to maximize the use of your drawing tablet and Paint Effects
by using Pressure Mapping settings. |
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Adjusting the Stroke Node
The attributes in the Stroke Node give you access to the settings you
used in the Paint Effects Tool, and adjustments to these settings are
live in your Maya scene. |
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Make
Paintable and Get Brush Preset
Learn how to paint on surfaces in your scene using brushes that are
available with the default install of Maya. This lesson will also cover
how to paint across multiple surfaces. |
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Template Brush Settings
The Template Brush settings give you access to every brush attribute
allowing you to save off the brushes or make adjustments prior to
painting with the brush in your scene. |
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Flipping Tube Directions
Learn how to adjust the direction of the tubes from using the normal of
the surface or curve to the direction of the stroke. This allows you to
paint either a top down view or a view from the side of the stroke. |
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Painting on View Plane
A little known tip that will allow you to paint on the view plane. This
would be useful for creating starfields or a default image used as a
background for your render, and it is also connected to all cameras in
your scene. |
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Transferring Settings to Existing Strokes
You will learn how to create custom settings using your attribute editor
and then load them into the template brush settings for further
modifications. This lesson will also cover how to transfer settings from
one stroke to another. |
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Share
One Brush
You will learn how to simplify your scenes by sharing brush nodes. This
will allow you to modify one node in the attribute editor and have those
edits transfer to all strokes that are being shared. This lesson will
also teach you how to select different strokes or brushes by name. |
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Create
Modifier
Those using Maya 7 and higher will be able to use this powerful modifier
to create localized effects including color changes, opacity changes,
flower and leaf adjustments. |
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Creating Cycling Animations
You will learn how to loop the brush animation so you can cycle your
animation. The cycled animation will make it a perfect loop to be used
in a low-res render, where the rendered file is used as a texture on a
plane in the scene. |
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Paint
Effects Brush Springs
You will learn how to create softbody type behavior for the Paint
Effects strokes. You will also learn how to adjust the spring stiffness,
dampening and how much the strokes can travel. |
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Modifying the Stroke Path Curve
You will learn to simplify the curves to reduce the overall number of
control vertices without altering the shape of the curve. This lesson
will also teach you how to make modifications to the Paint Effects
stroke curve. |
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Stroke
Control Curves
You will learn how to comb Paint Effects tubes using existing curves by
creating control curves, as well as how to force Paint Effects tubes to
assume the shape of the control curves. This lesson will also cover
Curve Follow, Curve Attract and max distance for the control curves. |
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Using
Existing Curves as Stroke Curves
You will learn to apply brush strokes to existing curves. This lesson
will also cover bringing curves from Illustrator and applying Paint
Effects to create a neon sign. |
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Creating Pressure Curves
You will learn how to create an interactive curve that represents your
pressure settings. This visual representation of the pressure settings
can be deformed using any of the normal deformers, which in turn will
drive the attributes set in the pressure mapping settings. |
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Auto-Painting Surfaces
You will learn how to adjust all of the attributes in the
auto paint grid settings. These attributes include Strokes per Span,
Point per Curve, Grid Smear and Density. |
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Random
Auto Paint
By using the random feature of the Auto Paint Random, we can let Maya
help us randomize the paint location of the strokes painted
automatically on the surfaces. |
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Paint
Effects Globals
You will learn how to set the Paint Effects globals, which will allow
you to set overrides regardless of what the individual brush is set to,
including things like canvas light, depth and real lights. |
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Paint
Effects Mesh Quality
This lesson will teach you how to adjust your mesh quality
settings interactively. The lesson will also teach you how to load the
attributes needed to make modifications. |
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Converting Paint Effect to Polygons
You will learn how to render Paint Effects strokes and tubes in mental
ray by converting to polygons. This lesson will also cover how to modify
the shaders created for the tubes. |
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Blending Brushes
You will learn how to blend one brush into different brushes. This
lesson will also teach you how to blend shades from different brushes,
as well as cover how to blend the brush shapes to create completely new
brushes. |
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Using
the Visor for Blending
This lesson will teach you how to blend brushes using the Visor.
This method is a quick and fast way of creating new brushes without
using the drop down menu. |
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Saving
Custom Brushes
This lesson will show you how to store the brushes in your visor
or shelf. We will set up the appropriate files and create a new tab in
the visor. |
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Using
the Paint Effects Panel
You will learn how to use the tool bar in the Paint Effects Panel
when painting on the canvas or scene. |
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Paint
Effects Panel > Canvas Menu
You will learn how to create new images, save images and set up
your canvas background colors. This lesson will also cover how to undo
in your canvas paint mode and roll your canvas to check for seams. |
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Brushes and Resolution
You will learn how to modify the brush to act like a paint brush,
eraser, smear tool or blur tool for custom effects. This lesson will
also cover optimization techniques used to increase the responsiveness
of Maya when painting on the scene. |
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Modifying Object Shading
You will learn how to preview your Paint Effects prior to
rendering the scene. This lesson will also cover how to speed up your
render times by localizing the interactive render based on the selected
strokes. |
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Using
Paint Effects Panel as a Paint Tool
This lesson will teach you how to use existing textures in your
scene, make modifications to the textures, and have them displayed
directly on your surfaces. You will also learn how to set up the
options, so you can make edits to your texture file interactively. |
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Advanced Stroke Node
You will learn how to control the randomization created in your node
with settings in the stroke node. This lesson will also discuss Draw
Order and how to use it to control the order in which the paint effects
are painted. |
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Min /
Max Clipping
You will learn how to animate the stroke appearing using the min
/ max clipping options in the end bounds tab. |
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Pressure Scale Ramp
This lesson will teach you how to use a ramp to set your pressure
map settings. |
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Changing Brush Types
This lesson will teach you how to take existing strokes in your
scene and change the brush type. Paint, Erase, Blur, Smear, Thin Line
and Mesh brushes will be discussed in this lesson. |
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Controlling Channels
You will learn to adjust which attributes are rendered on a per
stroke basis. This feature will allow you to control the ability to
quickly create alpha channels or color maps. |
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Adjusting the Brush Profile
You will learn how to adjust the width of a brush and the density
of a Paint Effects brush. This lesson will also cover the settings used
to create ribbons and control the quality of the final render of a paint
brush. |
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Mastering Twist
Learn not only how to twist each of the tubes, but also how to
work with the forward twist to have the broad side of the Paint Effects
tube always point to the camera. |
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Mesh
Settings and Mesh Environments
You will learn how to set attributes to control the quality of
the mesh brushes and the color information used when creating reflection
maps for the mesh brushes. |
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Thorns
on Mesh Brushes
You will learn how to set thorn density, elevation, length and
color information for thorns added to your mesh brushes. |
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Shading Attributes
You will learn to control the color, incandescence and
transparency for the tubes on your brush. This lesson will also cover
how to add randomization onto each of the tubes. |
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Texture Settings
You will learn how to texture strokes and tubes using different
mapping settings. This lesson will also cover opacity and displacement
settings, as well as the settings used to create very believable bump
mapping. |
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Illuminating Paint Effects
You will learn how to control the Paint Effects using light
information and working with Light Based Width. This lesson will also
give you tips on how to speed up your workflow using Paint Effects
lights. |
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Shadowing Paint Effects
You will learn how to create fake 2D shadows for the Paint
Effects strokes. This lesson will also explore how to set up depth map
shadows using depth map shadows on the lights. |
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Working with Glows
You will learn how to create your own neon brush using the Glow
attributes. This lesson will also cover how to use Shader Glow for more
realistic glows. |
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Overview of Tubes
You will learn how to control the main tube of your brush using
the settings in the creation tab. The attributes covered in this lesson
are key to all future tube-based brushes. |
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Mastering Branching
You will learn how to control and modify branching in the growth
tab. This lesson will also cover how to modify the branching and
splitting of your tubes. |
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Working with Twigs
You will learn how to build a pine tree type of brush using the
twig attributes. We will cover all of the attributes including Twig
Start, Twist and Clusters. |
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Paint
Effects Leaves
You will learn how to control the way leaves are generated on
each of the tubes. This set of attributes will give you a strong
foundation of what each leaf can do and how to control it. |
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Paint
Effects Flowers
In this lesson we will cover how to build your own custom flower
using the flower settings, leaves, and how to texture the flower. This
lesson will also focus on how to save your brush for later use. |
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Displacements on Tubes
Adding noise, wiggle and curl will alter the shape of the main
tube created from the stroke. These attributes can help control breaking
up the brush, so they are not straight tubes. |
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Forces
on Tubes
This lesson will teach you how to add gravity, control deflection
and add randomization to your brush to automatically create many unique
brushes. |
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Working with Turbulence
This lesson will teach you how to create different turbulence
types including Grass Wind and Tree Wind. We will also cover how to use
turbulence frequency and speed to modify final results. |
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Spiral
and Bend Attributes
These attributes control the tube and allow you to spiral the
tube around the normal of the tube. Both of these attributes can be
useful when randomizing the tubes. |
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Length
Mapping and MEL Scripts
Length mapping will allow you to control attributes based on the
tallest brush. We will also cover how to enter a MEL procedure to
control the brush after it has been drawn. |
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Working with Gaps
This lesson will teach you how to create gaps in your stokes or
tubes. By setting up gaps you can easily create a marquee style brush or
complex brushes like rain or snow. |
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Animating Strokes using Flow
You will learn to create animated rain from simple strokes with
gaps. This lesson will also cover how to use Stroke Time and Time Clip
to grow and kill your tubes or strokes. |
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Working with Render Globals
You will learn to create very smooth-edged renders using the
Oversample and Post filter to anti-alias the edges. This lesson will
also show you where to enter your own depth map and to control which
strokes are being rendered. |
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Building a Potted Plant
This lesson will teach you how to create a custom brush which
will end up looking like a potted flower plant. We will cover many
advanced techniques. |
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Adding
Paint Effects to Toon Lines
You will learn how to add Paint Effects strokes to toon lines.
This can open up a large number of creative possibilities when working
with advanced renderings. |
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Building an Oak Tree
We will start with a default brush and continue on to build our
own oak tree. This lesson will also cover how to texture and displace
the tree. |
