Coming up on today’s epsiode:

We take a look at how to animate extruding text in Maya. Animating extruded text is a nice effect to get the attention of your audience and it always makes for good screen candy.

If you use a custom font you can import an Illustrator file. For this example we will create the text inside Maya. We go to the create menu > create > text > option box. Enter in some text. Set output for curves. You can create a curve, or use an arc tool. Go under create > arc tools to make arc. Go into the side view and click to create a small arc.

Reset the pivot point the center by clicking the home key to bring up the editor. Then go to modify pivot > center pivot. I like to rebuild the curve to make sure it has an even number of  CV points. With the curve still selected go under the surfaces menu then

Rebuild surfaces > option box

Use the settings

• uniform
• 0 to 1
• keep ends
• for this example, I’ll use spans to 4
• degree to cubic

Position the curve close to the text. Back in the Surface menu we’ll go to the Extrudes option box

Use the settings to

• Tube for style
• At path for result position
• Component for pivot
• Profile for the orientation
• Complete the curve

and output to NURBS

Now we can select the letters curves first, then shift select the curve. If your letters have holes, Shift select letter’s outer curve first then shift select the inner curve. Center the pivot for each letter. then go ahead and Extrude each letter.

Select the outline and under Surface fill each letter with a Planer. Ok, so now that we have all the letters extruded, we can start to animate the letter’s extrude.

First lets increase the extrude quality, by going into the attributes for each surface. Under the Tessellation > enable Display > Primary Tessellation Attributes. Here you can set the uv’s to “Best Guess Based on Screen Size”. You can control the text through the curve we’ve create for the extrude. Just keyframe the point position to animate. To animate along the curve we’ll go into our options for the extrude node.

In the Channel box select the input for the sub curve of each letter. Here you can keyframe the Min and Max values
to animate for text!

To add a tapper, we’ll go into the extrude node and adjust the scale properties. Adjust your animation curves, camera and check your render!

Alright, and that is how to animate text extrusions inside Maya.

I’m Pedro for Pixil.info. See you guys next time!

Giveaway: 3D Satellite Model for Photoshop

Today, we’re giving away another free 3D Object. You can import it into Photoshop Extended and start designing your app mockups. Features fully editable textures and layers.

Coming up on today’s epsiode:

Optimize your iPhone games performance by Baking Texture Light Maps using Maya 2010. Today will be using Maya Baked Lightmaps to speed up game performance. The trick is getting fewer texture draw calls by baking your shadows into the texture.

First will start by creating a texture sheet. A texture sheet holds all of the textures that are used to make up characters and other models in the game. So by combining textures into one file, you can get a faster performance by using less cycles for each texture. For this tutorial we’ll be combining all the textures that make up this cell room.

For this example we’ll use a size of 1024×786. After all the textures are combined, make sure even plain color shaders are also in the Texture sheet.

Link all your texture UVs to the sheet.

Now we’ll Adjust the lighting in the scene, check the render to see the were the shadow are casting.

Now Select all polygons and in the polygons menu under

Mesh < Combine

Create a automatic poly projection for all the ploys in the polygons menu under

Create < UVs < Automatic Mapping Option Box

Using the default settings, under UV Set make sure the UV set name is: lightmap hit apply

Go into your UV Texture Editor and select the new UV set under: UV Sets < and then the lightmap uv set You can switch to original uv coordinates if you need to here

While still having the ploys selected go to the Render Menu Under:

Lighting/Shading < Batch Bake (metal ray) Option Box

The under Settings options check Back Shadows, the rest should be ok

under

Texture Bake Set Override Color mode < only light

Under prefix: use the name of the room to easily spot them out

For the iPhone will use the X and Y resolution of 256×256. Didn’t get any higher quality with a higher number so, We can leave the Number of samples to 4.

Fill Texture seams at: 3.0

Make sure Override mesh UV set assignments is checked with the UV set name to: lightmap

Click on convert to bake the map, This shouldn’t take too long

Ok, now if we look in our project file under

renderData/mentalray/lightmap/.

You can see the room0_lightmap.tif Maya created. Open it up to check it out, Pretty good

Ok we now have both of the UV sets in the scene and the baked lightmap.

Now we have to go to each object in the visible scene and create a Layered Texture shader for each. Then we have to attach the textures and UVs to the baked shadow’s UV set.

We can do this by right clicking on an object Assign new Texture < layeredTexture

Object goes green, The first layer will hold the lightmap file. Add another file node and link it to the lightmap. For the Blend mode use: multiply.

now we can go to the second layer and select a file node. We’ll link that to the color texture sheet. The blend mode should be at: none.

Now we can link the UV sets together for this object and it’s texture.

To set up the UV relationship we’ll go Under

Window < Relationship Editors < UV Linking < UV-centric

Scroll down to find the texture for this object. By default both are linked to the color texture. Select the lightmap and link it to the lightmap UVs

Map1 should deselect the light map UVs from the color UVs.

Now let’s test link by going into the UV Texture Editor and switching between the sets.

Now lets do a test render of the scene with the light off. If linked properly the shadows from any objects should still be in the render!

Now we just have to attach each object and texture to the lighmap UVs, thats how to bake light maps in maya. Hope this helps in optimizing your next iPhone/iPad game.

Coming up on today’s epsiode:

How to create a 3D Box and animate it using the new 3D Tools and Features in Flash CS4.

Step 1: Create a square shape

Start by drawing out simple square. Hold down the shift key to constrain the proportions. Now lets change the solid fill to a gradient by going the color palette, and lets change the type to a Linear gradient. Next lets remove the stroke, just goto the stroke color picker and choose the None option.

Now lets make sure our square is in the center of the stage, we can do that by going to the align panel and click on the horizontal and vertical align buttons.

Step 2: Position & Convert into a Movie Clip

Okay next lets convert this shape into a movie clip, just right click and select Convert to Symbol… alright now lets nest this symbol inside another movie clip, and lets name this one 3D Box. So inside the 3D box movie clip is where we’ll be setting up the 3D layers.

Step 3: Duplicate Layers for Each Box Side

Alright so now we can just copy and paste a few of these squares on some new layers. And lets name each copy after a side of the 3D Box such as top, bottom, left and right.

Step 4: Rotate Each Side 90º & Position in Place

Now lets convert all the frames into motion tweens by selecting them, right clicking and Create Motion Tween. Now lets start with the top layer and rotate the X axis 90 degrees. You can hold down the shift key to constrained your rotation. Next we can go inside the motion editor to ensure our rotation was a either a positive value, or a negative one. Just to make sure everything is set the name.

Now we’ll want to move this top layer up about half of the way. So just calculate half the height of the square and move it up so it sets on top. I like to use the 3D Position and View Panel to do this because you can easily change the values there.

Now lets repeat this process for the bottom layer. But this time we’ll want move the half way down, so again just change the value in the 3D Position and View Panel. Alright so next lets start on the left and right squares. Starting with left, lets rotate the Y axis 90 degrees and shift it over to the left about half of the width of the square. Again we can go inside the motion edition to check our values. Alright now we can repeat the same process for the right square, but don’t forget to move it to the right side instead of the left!

Step 5: Test 3D Box Rotation

So once we finish all rotating and positioning, we should be left with a picture frame looking set of rectangles. So lets jump out of the movie clip and goto scene 1. Now lets select our 3D rotation tool and watch as I rotate the box on its Y axis. Pretty sweet huh?

Step 6: Add Drop Shadow

Lets select our bottom layer, and lets goto the filters section in the properties panel and licks pick drop shadow. Lets change the blur X and Y values to something big like 100 pixels, change the quality to high, and distance to 0.

Step 7: Animate 3D Box Rotating

So now lets jump out to our main timeline and lets add a few move frames. Now Ill be using the motion editor to animate the 3D Box and have spin on it Y axis. So lets convert it the frames into a motion tween by right clicking on the frame bar and selecting convert to motion tween. Now we can scrub over to the last frame and then goto the motion editor. So if we want to just rotate the box spinning from left to right, we can simply change the Rotation Y value to 360 degrees.

Test out the animation by pressing cmd+renturn (cntrl+return on PC).

Coming up on today’s epsiode:

We’re going to take a look at Photoshop’s new 3D features.

Adobe added features but deleted some compatibility available in CS3. Being able to import Product models for print, video and web makes a very efficient workflow.

Although new camera control abilities were added in CS4, an incredibly useful ability is no longer there.

Features add and deleted

3D mesh animation support no longer works in CS4. This mean 3D models with animated parts no longer playback inside photoshop. The new 3D UI has deleted the timeline scrubber for the mesh. Making layer styles out of one object with different product stages would be a great workflow. You can still use CS3 for this, but wont be playback in CS4. Hopefully Adobe is able to bring this feature back. Being able to save all collateral as one psd file would save a lot of headaches. So to use playback, I import my Maya model into 3D Max and export it as a .3DS file.

CS3 Mesh Animation Workflow

You can just open it photoshop cs3. Then just set each layer at the need keyframe. Now set a layer comp for each state.