Create storyboards to short animated films with Autodesk Maya

VIVEKA DEVADAS: Hello, everyone. Welcome to my presentation on how to create storyboards to short animated films with Autodesk Maya. This is Viveka Devadas, designated specialist at Autodesk. And I support easy products and virtual reality solutions for our enterprise customers. I also help in minimizing downtime by troubleshooting specific technical issues.

So let's take a look at today's objectives. What am I going to talk about? I've listed four main objectives, from generating animations from simple 2D drawings. We'll also take a peek at some advanced tools and high-end plugins in Maya. We'll also look at how we can create simple characters to enhance short animated films. We'll look at custom workflows to enhance your short films with music and special effects.

So let's get started. So before we move on with the objectives I've spoken to you about, let's see. What should every designer's toolset contain? So first and foremost, I would recommend you to create a list based on the kind of project you're working on, whether it's a simple 2D visual, or 3D model, or an animation project. So you could start with collecting sketch tools, custom templates designed for your project, modeling tools- which are both 2D models and 3D modeling tools- and additionally, acquire all the textures and also compile a list of rendering tools you need. And also have special effect tools, music files, voiceover files, and a bunch of hardware like 3D printers, scanners, cameras, and drones.

So depending on the complexity of your project, it would limit the toolset into what is needed at the moment. And later you could expand it to advanced hardware and software when you plan to use it. Use advanced visualization tools like VR and AR tools.

So now that we have a list, or our toolset, ready, let's take a look at Maya. Now as you all know, Maya is a software where you can build beautiful 3D models. And what's more is you can navigate scenes beforehand in wireframe before you try texturing, lighting, animation, rendering, and more. You could model, you could animate, you could render, create simulations, and create complex character creations and also do advanced modeling with some of the features in Maya.

So you might be wondering, what 23 signifies in that image right above me. So Maya has an industry standard lifespan for about 23 years. And it's used by professionals in the media and entertainment industry to create high quality visual effects and motion graphics. So now Maya is famous for some of its tools, like polygons, knobs, sculpture modeling tools, and it has a wide array of animation tools, along with rigging tools to give your modeling an edge.

So some of the movies that have used Autodesk Maya- and some of these are award-winning movies- so as you can see in the image here, I've listed a couple of movies right from 1997. So one of the first and foremost movies was Dinosaur where they used a lot of computer graphics to create an overlay effect. In Spiderman another famous-- we have the sequence in Spiderman and you can imagine some of the background effects and some of the gimmicks that Spiderman does. Maya has been used in the background. Again one of the favorites is Star Wars and some of the characters created were-- they used Maya to create these characters.

And not limited just to special effects, but also, Maya has become a winner in creating children's movies, like Ice Age and Finding Nemo. And also mystic movies, like Lord of the Rings. So as you can see in the image right here, and see that special character was used with green screen and computer graphics, and Maya was used to develop that the most famous character in the Lord of the Rings movie.

So before we begin, I just want to give an overview of the interface. So as you can see here, the interface is-- I've marked a couple of important elements in the interface. And I want to show you, and I want to explain a little more in detail, and help you in understanding the interface a little bit. So as you can see here, you can see the menus and the menu sets, which is one and two. So here the menu sets define the kind of menus available- modeling menus, rigging, animation, FX, and rendering.

And then you have a status line. The status line contains icons for some commonly used commands, such as File Save, et cetera. And then number 4 is your user account, which is going to list your user account ID. And it is going to help you manage some of the licenses or how you're going to purchase other products. And if you're using a trial version, the user account is also going to give you information on how many days are left.

And then you have something called the shelf. The shelf is an icon, which illustrates common tasks, organized based on category. So these are all kind of shortcuts. And then you have, on number seven, you have sidebar icons which have the attribute editors. We'll talk a little more in detail about the attribute editors and tool settings, channel boxes, et cetera. So the channel box, number 8, allows you to-- it has a lot of features when you select objects. So you can actually manipulate and transform these objects with a click of the channel box.

And number nine, you have the layer editor. So if you've used Photoshop, it's something similar to Photoshop, where you have multiple layers. And you can organize these layers just like pages from a book. And you can use these layers to display how you want them. And then you also have animation layers where you can bend, or you can even mute, multiple levels of animation if you're working on a complex project.

And then moving on to the others, like ten, you have the view panel, which signifies the view, or different ways of viewing an object, whether it's a top view or a perspective view or a front view or a different kind of view. So this is just going to give you several view panels, where you can customize again by just having two of these panels or one of these panels. So by default, you have the perspective view.

And then on 13, you have the time slider, which is going to give you the playback information, or the playback status. And then you also have other menus, like you have help lines. The help line is going to give you a small description of the tools and menus. And I'm also going to share a bunch of resources towards the end of the presentation, where you can look at all these commands in detail.

So let's move on and let's look at how we can customize some of the interface. Now again, going back to the toolset and going back to your project, I think it's very important for us to customize our interface on how our project is. So if your project is simple, just customize it with the basic tools you need. Just simplify it. Simplify is the key. So you could customize your interface based on colors or the background color. You could customize time sliders, even your working units. And a bunch of other things you could customize is even the hot keys and the shelves. And basically, you can tweak Maya to work for you. You can customize how this entire application works for you.

So another thing I wanted to talk about is the panel toolbar. Now this is a panel menu which is going to be found in all of your viewports. So if I go back to the previous slide, you could see the panel menu in each of the viewports. So what I've done is, here I've expanded the panel toolbar. And as you can see, it's all related to the viewport. So you could select a camera, you could lock the camera. You could pan it, you could zoom it. You could mask, aggregate mask. You could work with the resolution, either a depth of field you could transform-- a bunch of tweaks in the panel toolbar. And I think it's essential for us to know what some of these mean, at least. So it's easy for you to toggle and work with different sections of your project, especially when you're modeling complex creations.

One more important thing before we proceed is, with Maya, it's a slightly different when you are navigating the viewport, unlike other 3D software. So I would recommend definitely getting familiar with how you're going to navigate these viewports. So for example, if you hit alt, the middle mouse button, and drag, it helps you to pan the viewport. And if you hit alt, the right mouse button, and drag, it helps you to dolly or zoom in and zoom out of the viewport. Then alternatively, if you want a full viewport view, you just have to hit control and spacebar.

And a couple of other hot keys, which I'm going to show you in the next slide. I think it's very important for us to get familiar with this because it helps to work on your project a little faster. And one of the nice things I love about Maya is the hot keys. So in the hot keys, you can find the hot key editor in the About setting from Windows. And what's more is, you could also search for a specific hot key. For example, you could access all these menu items in the hot key box. So the hot box or whatever, the hot keys, you can navigate the hot box. It helps you to access all the menus in a specific viewport.

And so now you can see that you have the option to work from within the hot box and then the hot box, as you can see, is highlighted into five different zones, like north, central, east, west, and south. So I would definitely recommend getting familiar with the hot box, because it's a great feature in Maya, and allows you to work faster and be more productive in your job.

So let's keep moving and let's see how we can generate animations from very simple 2D visual drawings. So I have a very well-known example of Mario. So the first recommendation I have for you is, when you're starting to work on any 3D animation, the first thing is, do it manually on a piece of paper. So if you can do a sketch, a simple storyboard on how your characters bend and look like, that goes a long way in actually creating that model in Maya.

So I'm going to share these 3D assets in a separate media file. And so you will have access to working on these files and how you can actually create the model. So what I have here is-- you can take a look at how a simple, 2D image can be translated into a 3D animation, as you can see on the next slide. And then how a different kind of textures are applied to this particular 3D object. So as you can see in the image, right from the clothes to the color of the eyes, to the skin, everything has a texture map. And some of the textures even have what you call bump mapping, or maybe a particular shine, or you'll have to use a specific renderer. Or you even have to use a different kind of texture, just to bring that feel, or to bring that real-life appearance to your character.

So let's also take a look at a couple of plugins So I just listed a couple of some of my favorite plugins. And again, plugins are not limited to just modeling plugins, but we do have a cloud simulation plugins, we have dynamics, we have fluids. We have plugins which make import and export easier into different formats. We have modeling plugins and rendering plugins. So on the figure here on screen, you can see one of my favorite plugins, called the BHGhost. So the BHGhost-- it's a plugin which allows you to make something like an onion skin. So say if you have an outline, or if you have a 3D model, you can actually make a skeleton or an outline or a 3D outline in the Maya viewport. So it makes it easy for you to actually see this relation between your poses, and helps you refine your animation a little more.

A couple of other plug-ins, which I've listed-- like I told you, there are a lot of plugins which go back to simulating crowds, modeling, rendering, et cetera. But I'm just going to talk to you about another couple of plugins, which I feel should be in a designer's toolbox.

One of my favorite plugins is Animbot. So Animbot-- so it just allows us to tweak one controller, and then it helps us adjust the entire shot. For example, if you want to adjust a particular character's foot or a particular character's hand, you can just tweak one controller, but what happens is the entire shot gets modified. And again, what's nice about this, is that it works-- you can adjust everything instead of having to tweak one individual controller. And there are a lot of other useful tools, also. So I'm going to share the link with you again and you can explore this plugin a little more. But if you're a character artist, or an animator who's making special characters, I would definitely recommend this tool, because it also works to streamline your animation.

Another one of the plugins which I've listed here is called Massive for Maya, which is like a crowd simulation plugin. And again, you have a lot of crowd simulation plugins available in the market today. But Massive, again, is a well-known plugin. So if you've watched Lord of the Rings, and you've watched movies where you've seen herds of-- you've seen huge crowds or huge gatherings, I can definitely say that in some of the movies, they've used plugins like Massive.

One of the good things about Massive, it's completely Integrated within Maya and has an intuitive workflow. So you can either decrease or increase the amount of people in that particular gathering, or you can, instead of cloning the same person again and again, it also has a variety. So for example, in Zombieland, it was used to create a huge bunch of zombies. And even in The Planet of the Apes, or in movies where things are repetitive, I think plugins like this would come in handy. And not only limited to people, but it's also limited to making trees and bridges and buildings with realistic effects.

So moving on, let's take a look at making general, simple characters to enhance your films. So what I have on screen here is a very simple robotic character. And as you can see on the screen, inside a Maya interface, you have the ability to edit a mesh, create polygon. And these polygons again, there's no restriction to particular shapes. You can come up with-- you can create shapes of all kinds. You can tweak the shape. You can keep editing the mesh. You can add or delete a polygon. So using all this, you can create the basic figure of what your character is. And then once you've completed that, you could add controls.

So as you can see in the images, in this slide, you can see even for the fingers, you can add fingers and finger controls. You could scale this entire character to a global scale and you could also scale it uniformly or nonuniformly. Then you can add things like head rotation, foot controls, et cetera. So again, I'll be sharing this in a separate asset file, which you can find in the additional files in the AU resources.

And another thing I wanted to talk to you about is that, when you create characters like this, you have separate pieces. So as you can see in the figure on the left, there's so many pieces, or so many polygons. You'll need this as a separate meshes, because say, for example, if there are different colors or different textures associated with each part, or maybe the finger needs a different color, or the helmet needs a different color, you can map different textures to suit your character. Now in this case, everything seems white, so there's not much of a texture difference. But I would definitely recommend you to map this mesh map out and map your textures or the way you can do UV mapping to match your particular character. And it's always nice to have a list of images, or good resolution images, so the texture map looks natural on your completed character.

And I'm going to leave you with one last objective where you have a lot of additional tools and special effects within Maya. And again, I'm going to add 3D assets and working files for you to dive deeper into these tools. And what I wanted to mention here is, within the Maya interface, you do have a lot of effects that are readily available. Especially with Maya 3D 22 where you can create effects like smoke, like fire. And you also have a bunch of other options for fine tuning this. Say you want the fire in a different-- the flame in a different color where it's dramatic, like it's green, or it's fluorescent neon green, or it's pale blue. You could change that basic effect by using the attribute editor, or you could bring in your own assets or preset assets within the available toolbars within Maya. And you can have fun with it. So Maya has so many additional tools which allows you to customize the look and feel of your scene.

So moving on, I'm going to also give you a little peek into the future. So Maya is again integrated with Omniverse, NVIDIA Omniverse, so that's the route to virtual reality solutions. So, as you can see here in the image, NVIDIA Omniverse allows for a Maya connector plugin. So I can say this is a great toolkit for Maya users, where you can actually make a character, make a 3D scene. And you can send and live sync your model data into a nice portal like the Omniverse Nucleus, which has a great renderer, which also has the ability to open, edit, and live sync. So every time you make a change to the Maya model, this is going to get live synced into an NVIDIA Omniverse interface, and you can also view it in virtual reality. And then again within an Omniverse setup, you have the chance to choose-- or you have the opportunity to choose-- workflows and pipelines and what's more is you can also import or export it into other different formats. And again, this combination is a great combination because it allows you to develop a gaming pipeline or a movie pipeline and also take you into futuristic, or advanced, visualization solutions.

So moving on, I'm also going to leave you with a couple of my favorite tips and tricks within a Maya interface. So what I've listed here are just a couple of the ones I keep using again and again, because again, like I mentioned earlier, the hot keys-- the hot box, sorry-- and the hot key editor and getting familiar with the menu. All of these are kind of speeding up your project and increase your productivity and efficiency. So one favorite tip and trick which I have is you can always clear some boxes you don't need. And definitely Maya is a great 3D software. It will close when you clear some check boxes which you don't need. Best to speeding up your performance and it's going to decrease the boot time. Maya will load a little more faster for you. Then if you have a bunch of polygons, you could select a specific object when you hit Control-D and W to activate the Move tool. And also Shift-D to copy this object the same distance.

So it comes with practice when you work with multiple polygons in your particular model. And then you can also increase and decrease the size of your gyro with a + and - key. And these keys are also displayed on choosing the transform tools like Move, Rotate, and Scale. And one interesting-- because we are in this creative industry and we like to work with colors. So if you want to change the background color of your viewport, you just have to hold down the Alt key and press B. And again if you want to smoothen a poly model or low poly model, you could try to do this by just increasing your subdivision levels to three of them.

So those are a couple of tips and tricks that I'm going to leave you with. And then, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to share all the resources for all the four learning objectives and some working models for you to practice, from basic 2D models to your advanced visualizations or your special effects.

And a couple of resources I'm going to leave you with is, you can always lean on the Autodesk knowledge network which has the Maya Support and Learning. Then you have Maya documentation. And I would recommend you to bookmark this page because it's going to have this wealthy resource of what's new, what's happening within Maya, what's coming up, what are the new product updates, the installation guides, a couple of bonus tools, plugins, and also a peek into virtual reality, especially with Maya Omniverse.

So before I leave you, I hope it's been a short and sweet session. And again, I'll share all the 3D assets with you that I've used in this presentation. I believe you would like demos for each. I just wanted to thank everyone for your time. I hope the session was helpful. And again, if you need me to expand on any tool or any objective, I'll be very happy to connect with you. So feel free to reach out to me and leave a comment in the comment section for me. And also your email, so I can get back to you for any questions.

I want to thank our internal product team and our professor from Purdue University. Then we do have a Media and Entertainment cohort group, where we exchange ideas between the AEC and the M&A world. And finally, I want to thank our families, colleagues, and attendees of the session. So please feel free to connect with me and reach out to me for any questions. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed the session. Thank you. Bye bye.