Introduction to Maya Muscle
Throughout this course, we will create realistic muscle and skin motion and become productive with the flexible Maya Muscle tools and workflow, all while learning creative techniques for enhancing character performances. Software required: Maya 2008 Extension 1, or cMuscle System Plugin.
What you'll learn
Throughout this course, we will create realistic muscle and skin motion and become productive with the flexible Maya Muscle tools and workflow, all while learning creative techniques for enhancing character performances. This course contains over three hours of project-based training. It's perfect for artists learning Maya Muscle. Popular highlights include a Maya Muscle overview; capsules, bones, and muscles; Muscle Builder user interface; modeling muscle definition; custom muscle shapes, muscle spline deformer; muscle stretch deformer; muscle skin deformers; sliding and shrinkwrap; painting muscle weights; Jiggle, Cycle and Rest attributes; Relax and Smooth attributes; muscle caching; Surface Attach; and muscle setup for symmetrical characters. Software required: Maya 2008 Extension 1, or cMuscle System Plugin.
Table of contents
- Components of Maya Muscle 5m
- Adding Capsules 6m
- Building Capsule Chains 7m
- Creating Spline-based Muscles 6m
- Creating Stretch-based Muscles 6m
- Capsule and Muscle Setup (And Pitfalls) 8m
- Connecting Muscle Objects and Muscle Skins 7m
- Assigning Weights to Muscle Skins 7m
- Using the Muscle Builder - Muscle Placement 7m
- Using the Muscle Builder - Muscle Definition 7m
- Understanding Maximum Bind Distance 6m
- Changing Muscle Parameters 9m
- Fixing Twisting and Distortions 6m
- Custom Muscle Shapes 9m
- Using Muscles with Maya Skin Clusters 7m
- Activating Sliding Effects 6m
- Sliding with Shrinkwrap Enabled 5m
- Jiggle; Cycle and Rest Weights 7m
- Wrinkles and Folds with Relax Weights 7m
- Smoothing Deformations 4m
- Indirect Smoothing 6m
- Mirroring Muscles for Symmetric Characters 6m
- Adding More Symmetric Muscles 8m
- Mirroring Weights on Symmetric Muscles 8m
- Controlling Muscles with a Master Control 5m
- Using the Transfer Weights Tool 7m
- Node/external Caching of Skin Deformation 6m
- Muscle Spline Rigging Tool 4m
- Application of Surface Attach 7m
- Understanding Muscle Direction 6m
- Bonus: Using Muscle Multi-collide 2m
- Bonus: Using the Muscle Creator 7m
About the author
Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, Sunder has made great headway in both the interactive game design and 3D animation worlds. Throughout his career, Sunder has earned degrees in computer information science, multimedia & game design, as well as 3D character animation. He's fully devoted to providing breathtaking and out-of-the-norm experiences to as many people as possible. With a powerful skillset in Houdini and years of educational clout, Sunder aims to give understandable solutions to complex to... more