Pretty much every efficient type of modern vehicle features some sort of suspension to cushion its landings and smooth its ride. This means that modeling a suspension accurately is an important part of creating 3D models of vehicles. This four-part video will teach you how to ...more
In this tutorial you will learn how to setup a basic rig in Maya. Animation rigs are the bone and muscle structures used to animate and move characters and objects made in Maya. If you plan to make anything you model in Maya come to life, you will need to learn the basics of r ...more
Here we build a skeleton for the character and bind the skeleton to the geometry in Maya. This is also known as rigging a character.
Character rigging is important. Advanced Rigging makes it easier to animate your character. View joints and nerves so that you may easily select parts of the character. Check out this Maya animation tutorial video from Sessions Online School of Game Art's "Character Animation ...more
This tutorial shows you how to take your Zbrush character into Maya, pose it, and import the pose back into Zbrush. NOTE: This link is to a Flash version of the first 5 minutes of this hour long tutorial. A download link is provided on the page for the full WMP tutorial.
You will need around twenty feet of thick, sturdy rope (something smooth like jute or nylon will also prevent the harness from digging into your skin). Tie as demonstrated in this video, and you'll have an instant messenger bag for carrying boxy things around!
Creating good UVs with Maya can be tough, and get tougher depending on what type of object you are trying to unwrap. This short video tutorial covers how to create accurate UVs for long objects like rope or, in this case, shoelaces. This is a simple technique, but one that sho ...more
Riding your bicycle at night is dangerous on busy streets, especially if you've got no bike lights. In most states, it's illegal to ride your bike at night without any lights because drivers on the road won't be able to see you until it's too late. Plus, how is anybody going t ...more
If you want to be a character animator, you should probably learn Maya, and definitely learn rigging. This tutorial shows you how to create muscle movement simulations (or muscle rigging) for any creature or character with bones.
In this tutorial, we learn how to rig a counter weight trap. This is great as a fishing trap but can be rigged to be used as a tree trap. First, you will need to take a rock and wrap around it to create a counter weight. After this, bring the rope high over a branch, then down ...more
If you are working on characters or rigs, you are definitely working with joints. This video shows you how to insert a join in a joint chain if you need more or happened to miss one.
This tutorial shows you how to create a working piston in Maya. The key is to use constraints so that as one piece moves, the others move accordingly. Even if you don't want to make pistons, this is a good constraint example(something essential to creating skeletons and riggin ...more
One rope + a little yankee ingenuity, and you've got yourself THE lazy man's lawn mower. Korey99's self-propelled mower runs on autopilot: "It's cutting most of the back yard (a large circle) by wrapping a rope around a couple of stakes. The video is played at 4x speed. Yes, ...more
This video describes and shows you how to tie a loop in the end of a rope with a bowline knot. A bowline knot is used in rigging by the ground rigger to create a point for the up rigger to have a point to pull up. This is how you create a bowline knot. First you must create a ...more
Start with a Polygon Plane Start by creating a Polygon Plane with 4 width and 5 height sections. Create the rough leaf shape Turn on "Reflection" in the Move Tool settings, hit 3 on the keyboard to smooth the plane and shape it into a rough leaf shape. The highlighted vert ...more