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Lecture 4 –  Maya

• Maya is one high-end 3D design programout of many commercially available.

• It is available at Stony Brook in three CSlabs and in the Art SINC site.

• It has a great many capabilities, of whichwe will explore only a few.

• This week: we make geometric forms.

• Future week: organic and human forms.

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Some Comparable Programs

• Maya• Blender

• Autocad

• Turbocad

• Rhinoceros• 3D Max

• Solidworks

• Form-Z

• Inventor• SketchUp

• Geomagic Studio

• Materialize

Various Features:

•Art vs. Engineering Design

•Animation•Primitive Objects

•Operators

•File Formats

•Rendering

•Cost

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Learning Maya

• Long learning time if you want to master allfeatures, but we will focus on just a few.

• Representations include:

 – Polygonal Meshes —  Our focus this week – ―NURBS‖ 

 – Subdivision Surfaces

• Excellent built-in tutorials and help files.• You can download the free ―Personal

Learning Edition‖ to learn from. (It doesn’t

save files in any standard format.)

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Getting Started

• Make sure you have the Modeling  menusselected in the drop-down box at top left

• Make sure you have the Polygons ―shelf‖

tab selected.• Buttons on ―shelf‖ create a cube, sphere, … 

• ALT + left, middle, or right mouse button

move your point of view (the camera).• Blue buttons on left put you in mode to

move, rotate, or scale a selected object.

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Getting Started

• Use the black buttons on left selectSingle Perspective View or Four View.

• Shift+click to select multiple objects.

• ―4‖ key = Wireframe; ―5‖ key =Shaded • When working with polyhedra, to see the

facets clearly, do this: In the Shading  

menu of the view window, select ―Flatshade all‖ and in ―Shade Options‖ check

―Wireframe on Shaded‖ 

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Exercise 1 —  Play

1. Get familiar with primitive 3D objects:

Sphere, cube, cylinder, cone, torus

2. Get familiar with simple operations:

Move, rotate, scale, chamfer, bevel, poke;

 boolean union, intersection, and difference.3. Handy Keyboard shortcuts:

 –  Undo = ctrl-Z

 –  Duplicate = ctrl-D

 –  Delete = Del key4. For menu items, brings up an options panel.

5. The ―channel box‖ at right lets you type in properties.

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Exercise 2 —  Compound of 3 Cubes

The object on the left toweris a compound of three

concentric cubes.

To make it, create three

cubes, and rotate one 45degrees on the X-axis,

rotate the second 45 degrees

on the Y-axis, and rotate the

third 45 degrees on the Z-

axis.

To get just the outer surface,

take their Boolean union.

M.C. Escher, Waterfall

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Exercise 3 —  Octahedron

 Method: Start with a 4-row, 4-wedgesphere, and keep only the six points on the axes:

1. Create 4,4, sphere

2. Right-click to change fromselecting objects to selectingvertices, edges, or faces.

3. Delete the edges you don’t need. 

4. Delete the vertices you don’t

need.5. Save your octahedron for later.

(We will make it again by anothertechnique in Exercise 5 below.)

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Exercise 4 —  Octahedron Variations

Compound with cube

requires proper scaling.―Stella Octangula‖ can

 be made by ―poking‖

an octahedron

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Octahedron Variations, Continued

Chamfer 50% to get

―cuboctahedron‖ 

―Truncated octahedron‖ has

regular hexagons. (How

much chamfer?)

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Exercise 5 —  Tetrahedron & Variations

1. Triangulate cube

2. Flip edges as necessary so the six

diagonals of the squares are

tetrahedron edges.

3. Delete 4 vertices not on tetrahedronwith Edit Polygons | Delete vertex

(Save file for later)

• Duplicate, 90 degrees rotated, to

make ―Stella Octangula‖ a new

way.

• Intersect two tetrahedra to make

octahedron a new way.

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1. Poke cube to height whichmakes adjacent triangles

merge into rhombi.

2. Delete the twelve edges of

the original cube.

• Poke it to make a ―stellated

rhombic dodecahedron‖,which is the object on the

right-side tower in Escher’s

Waterfall .

Exercise 6 —  Rhombic Dodecahedron

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Exercise 7 —  Framework of Cube

• Subtract from a cube

three scaled cubes, to

leave just the edges of

the original cube.

Below is the first step:

You can subtract out

a fourth cube so the

interior of the corners

looks like this:

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Exercise 8 —  Dodecahedron

Intersection of 6 slabs. (―slab‖ =

―cube‖ which is short along one

axis.) Each slab is given a 31.7

degree rotation about some axis:

• 2 X-axis slabs, rotated +/-31.7

deg along Y

• 2 Y-axis slabs, rotated +/-31.7

deg along Z

• 2 Z-axis slabs, rotated +/- 31.7

deg along X

Then save, chamfer, bevel, and poke it:

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Exercise 8 1/2 —  Warm-up

Here is another way to make the octahedron, startingfrom a cube. It is good practice of a technique youwill use in the next exercise to make anicosahedron from the dodecahedron:

1. Poke cube to create a vertex in center of each face.

2. Edit Polygons / Texture / Merge UVs, (which

allows flips in the next step).3. Flip edges of original cube to become octahedron

edges. This makes the stella octangula again.

4. Delete original cube vertices.

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Exercise 9 —  Icosahedron

• Poke dodecahedron to createvertex in center of each face.

• Edit Polygons / Texture /Merge UVs

• Flip edges of originaldodecahedron to becomeicosahedron edges

• Delete original

dodecahedron vertices.

Then save, chamfer, bevel, poke:

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Exercise 10 —  Edge Models

1. Duplicate the form

2. Scale one to be 10% smaller.

3. Use Extrude Face tool to build

out a prism on all faces of the

smaller one.

4. Take their Boolean difference.

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Exercise 10 —  Some Ideas to Try

M.C. Escher,

Stars

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More ChallengesTry some of Wentzel Jamnitzer’s constructions: 

http://www.mathe.tu-freiberg.de/~hebisch/cafe/jamnitzer/galerie7c.html