As you recall, we instanced one original object to create our organism. Pros and cons are associated with instancing, but instancing suits our purposes famously. Here are a few rules to remember about geometry copies and instances:
• Copies are just that—identical copies of the geometry. Instances rely on the data that composes the original geometry. An instance is a displayed representation of that origi-nal geometry.
• Using instances takes much less memory, renders faster, and reduces the size of a scene file.
• You cannot alter instances directly. Any change in geometry placed on the original is reflected immediately in the instances.
• Instances cannot be assigned alternate shaders. Changes to the shading network of the original object are reflected in the instances as well.
• You can duplicate and instance lights, but instanced lights will have no effect in the scene (so I'm not really sure why you would want to do that).
The animation S q u i r m 3 2 0 Q T s o r e n 3 . m o v on the CD-ROM expresses a great range of organix movement. We derived something quite complex from simplicity. As you begin to add other elements to the animation equation, you will certainly deal with more variety. Let's take animation a few degrees further by adding some tricks. On paper it will not look like much, but the results will show otherwise.
Abusing the Cone
A cone is a basic geometric primitive in any 3D package. Make that geometry a NURBS cone, and you have the makings of some wild animation. This is another simple example of organix that shows that less can be more depending how you look at it. To see just how much torture a NURBS cone can endure, follow these steps:
1. Load c o n e l . m b from the CD.
Figure 3.18 shows the parameters for the cone at this point. Nothing differs from the default NURBS cone other than that we want to set
the Number of Spans to 5 and cap the bottom of the cone.
Now that the cone is a bit longer and thinner, let's move its pivot point. Actually the default position of the pivot point for the i n s t a n c e d _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l object (cone) is fine; we are primarily interested in the Parent.
3. Select s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l . Again, I like the Outliner to do this, but it's your workflow. Go with it!
Figure 3.18: The NURBS Cone Options dialog box
Figure 3.19: A cone with its pivot point offset from its original location within the cone now is markedly distant from its geometry.
4. Press the Insert key (the Home key on a Mac system) so that you can move the pivot from its original position. Translate the pivot over eight units in the X direction. If your cone moves, you didn't press Insert properly or at all.
5. After you establish the new pivot position for the cone, press Insert again to disable the abil-ity to translate the pivot and return you to the normal possible translations of the group.
6. Now that the s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l pivot is offset, move the group until its pivot is at 0,0,0. Figure 3.19 shows the results.
By offsetting the pivot point of an object or group, the Duplicate tool becomes much more interesting, especially for working with organix forms. This offset tech-nique is a primary tool for achieving interesting and varied results.
The Duplicate Options dialog box displays the values from its previous use. This fea-ture can be great for helping you to remember your last set of parameters if you want to use them again. It also comes in handy for slight variations of those original parameters, lf your new parameters are completely different, it's best to start from scratch (with the default settings). In the Duplicate Options dialog box, choose Edit
Reset Settings to reset the parameters to the default. I find that resetting also gives you a better mental image of what you are doing and that you are less likely to make input mistakes.
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Figure 3.20: The results and the settings
Now let's run this baby around the proverbial horn by duplicating it.
7. Change to the front view if you are not there already. Select s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l to make it active, and then choose Edit Duplicate to open the Duplicate Options dia-log box.
8. Choose Edit Reset Settings to flush out the old parameters.
9. We want to create 39 more instances of this group for a total of 40, so set Number of Copies to 39, and select Instance as the Geometry Type. The only other parameter we will change is to adjust the rotation of each instance by 9 degrees on the Z-axis.
Remember that because our parent group has an offset pivot point, the result will be dramatically less crowded than our previous example.
10. Click Duplicate to see your result. Figure 3.20 shows what you should have, and the inset shows the parameters used to achieve it.
The file c o n e s 3 . m b is the example up to this point, with the addition of shaded cones. I simply dragged a simple blinn shader with a color ramp onto the cones, and I placed a few lights in the scene. The only other difference is that the object has been scaled down to 0.33 of its original size.
12. When you open the outliner, you will notice our group hierarchy m a s s _ c o n t r o l s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l # # i n s t a n c e d _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l # # . We are primarily interested
in s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l i n s t a n c e d _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l .
13. Select s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l i n s t a n c e d _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l , and play around with it a bit. Scale, rotate, and translate the i n s t a n c e d _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l . Again you'll see an amazing amount of interesting instanced control over all the cones. The replicated cone points will often look like barbs, thorns, teeth, or claws, and the layered cone bases will often resemble scales. If you get hopelessly lost, load the Maya scene file again.
Figure 3.21 shows some of my variations.
Again you see the power of the instanced object and using this technique to create some interesting images quickly and with little fuss. As I mentioned, you can add other things to the mix.
14. In the Outliner or Hypergraph, select the 39 numbered instances of s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l # # . In the Channels box, and find the Visibility parameter. We want to turn off the visibility of those 39 instances temporarily, so change Visibility to Off, or enter 0 in the parameter box. All 39 cones should disappear, leaving the original unnum-bered s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o 1 , as shown in Figure 3.22. This gives us room to focus on our original cone without clutter.
The reason for creating the original cone with so many spans is so that we can really
"abuse the cone." The more rambunctious we get with our node transformations, the more we test the patience of the NURBS cone to behave smoothly. That said, let's create some clus-ters on our cone.
15. Select s i n g l e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o l , and press F8 on your keyboard to turn on SelectToggle-Mode. Now you can select CVs to group into clusters.
16. Select the point CVs of the cone; we will make that our first cluster. Under Animation, choose Deform Create ClusterCone. Maya creates a cluster out of this top group of CVs, names it c l u s t e r l h a n d l e , and places a C in the interface representing it. You'll see this in any orthogonal or camera view. Rename the c l u s t e r l h a n d l e to t h o r n _ p o i n t .
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Figure 3.21: Variations on a theme
We want to create a cluster for every planar level of CVs on the cone, using the method just outlined for the point. Out of the bottom two levels we will create a single cluster and call it t h o r n _ b a s e . Figure 3.23 shows the clusters and their naming conventions from the point to the base.
There is not a specific end goal here. What I'm presenting is more a theory-based concept. These techniques are guidelines for creating the abstract, which can serve a useful purpose for attaining a certain look or effect. Beyond the concepts, there is no right or wrong here, and experimentation and imagination are the key to creating something interesting. You'll never see a tutorial for kaleidoscope operation stating "Shake your kaleidoscope this way to create this pattern."
Figure 3.22: The original unnumbered s i n g 1 e _ t h o r n _ c o n t r o 1
If you got lost, c o n e s 3 b . m b on the CD will get you to this point in the process. The file c o n e s 3 c . m b is the same as c o n e s 3 b . m b except that the cone is already animated in c o n e s 3 c . m b . Animating a cluster is fairly routine. Since we are not doing a walk cycle or something that requires a significant set of ordered rules, we don't need to spend a great deal of time animat-ing the cone. With eight sections and five spans, the cone is certainly pliable. Let's animate a single cluster.
17. Load c o n e s 3 b . m b from the CD. Go to the front view; we
will animate from this view. Figure 3.23: The clusters and their naming conventions