Maya 4.5 Fundamentals

Not everyone with a passion for 3D animation has spent hundreds of hours directing films , painting or drawing portraits, coordinating interior decoration colors and patterns, and lighting and shooting photographs. Nor have they necessarily built a computer, set up a network, installed an operating system, or written a software program ”but it would help! Seriously, computer graphics combines so many disciplines that practically everyone has at least a little relevant experience. So many combined skills are needed to master 3D animation, however, that it's helpful to review a list of them.

The end result of 3D animation is nearly always a 2D image ”a still image or a movie (although the 3D models themselves are in some cases distributed, for example, to examine a modeled stereo system on an e-commerce Web site for audio equipment). In most respects, Maya-created art isn't different from any other traditional media. The same principles of design apply: those learned from thousands of years of painting and at least 100 years of still and moving photography. Many aspiring animators have had only brief exposure to these design concepts, so this chapter provides a concise overview. At the end, you'll find a bibliography that points the way to more information.

A final section covers the basics of computer graphics. The ABCs of computer graphics include terms like pixels, resolution, color depth, and bitmap. If these words are foreign to you, read this section carefully as a starting point for the rest of this book.