The Jellyfish

This tutorial goes through the steps to model, texture, animate and add Paint Effects
tentacles.
The following topics are discussed:
■
Creating surfaces
■
Transforming objects and components
■
Basic texturing
■
Nonlinear deformers and keyframe animation
■
The Graph Editor for modifying animation curves
■
Adding tentacles with Paint Effectsto a jellyfish.
A Taste of Maya

Jellyfish
The Jellyfish Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

Note: This final image was created by compositing the single jellyfish a number of times to populate the scene.

Note: Before you start: This tutorial requires Maya scene files. If you haven’t installed the tutorial files go to the
“Try Maya” section of the “Taste of Maya” CDROM to install.

Starting Maya: You can start Maya by double-clicking the Maya 2.5 Evaluation icon on the desktop or from
Start → Programs → Maya 2.5 Evaluation → Maya.

In Maya: Once the tutorial files have been installed you will need to set the current project in order to access
the Maya scene files. To set the current project from within Maya select File → Project → Set... and
Navigate to the directory where you installed the Maya scene files. Select the directory: Maya_tutorial_data
and press OK.

MODEL THE JELLYFISH

1 Start a new scene with File → New Scene

2 In the front window, use Create → CV curve tool to draw a NURBS curve as shown
■
Press F3 to access the Model menu sets.
■
To draw a curve start clicking with the left mouse button to place CV’s.
A CV is a control vertice and is used to control the shape of the curve. You will need to place a
minimum of four CV’s before you will see the curve. You can use the x key to snap the CV’s to
the grid. You can also use the y key to undo any mistakes.

Start of curve CV’s

End of curve

Curve to be revolved into jellyfish body

2 A Taste of Maya  January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

Note: The first two CV’s and the last two CV’s of the curve should lie directly on the Y axis. If they do not, the
jellyfish will have a hole in the top and bottom when you revolve in the following step. If you snap the first
and last two CV’s to the grid like in the picture the CV’s will lie directly on the Y axis.

3 Select the curve and create a surface using the revolve tool
■
Press q to change into select mode or click on the Select Tool icon
■
Select Surfaces → Revolve

4 Create → NURBS Primitives → Torus

5 Move and Scale the torus to fit inside the Jellyfish body
■
The hotkeys for Move and Scale are w and e respectively.
If you press w you will see a manipulator at the centre of the torus that has arrows pointing along
the x, y and z axis. Use these manipulators to move the torus. If you press the e key the
manipulator changes from arrows to boxes. These boxes control the scale of the torus. If you click
on an arrow or box then the move or scale will be constrained to that axis. Notice that if you click
directly on an arrow or box that it turns yellow. If you click on the box at the center of the
manipulator then you can move or scale the object in all axis at once.
■
In the Channel Box, increase the sections to 16
In the Channel Box click on the name makeNurbTorus1 under INPUTS. You will see more
attributes that are available. Click on the number beside Sections and enter 16.
■
You may also lower the Height Ratio to get a better fit
Click on the number beside Height Ratio and change the value to adjust the thickness of the torus

6 In the top view press F8 to change to component mode and select the CVs as shown
F8 toggles between object and component mode. If you watch the Status Line when you press F8
you will see it change from object to component mode. Component mode is similar to an edit
mode which allows you to tweak the shape of your object at a CV (or other component) level.
■
Hold the shift key down and select the same CV’s as in the image below by clicking and holding
the LMB and dragging it over the CV’s.
If you accidentally select some of the wrong CV’s keep holding the shift key down and click drag
over them again. This will deselect them.

 January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
A Taste of Maya 3
The Jellyfish Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

Select these CVs to create the inner part of the jellyfish

7 Scale the CVs to give the torus a series of ridges

■
Press e and scale the selected CV’s down

Note: You may need to increase the Scale of the torus to fit the jellyfish body.

8 The jellyfish model should look as shown below

■
Click in the perspective view to make it the active view
■
Press 5 to go into shaded mode
■
Select both surfaces
■
Press the 3 key to increase the display smoothness of the surfaces
■
select Shading → Shade Options → X-Ray from the perspective panel in order to see through the
surfaces in shaded mode

4 A Taste of Maya  January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

Completed jellyfish body

Note: To see the jellyfish in shaded mode press 5. To increase the smoothing, with the model selected, press 3. To
see the model in X-Ray mode use Shading → Shade Options → X-Ray.

9 Press F8 to return to object mode and select the body and the torus and Edit → Group

10 Rename group1 to jellyfish in the Channel Box

■
In the Channel Box click on the name group1 and type in jellyfish

Tip: The curve you revolved may be deleted by selecting it and pressing the Delete key.

TEXTURE THE JELLYFISH

1 Open the file jelly1.ma or continue from the last step

2 To create a material open Window → Hypershade

3 Create a material for the jellyfish

■
MMB drag/drop a Blinn material from the Visor on the left to the Workspace on the right

 January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
A Taste of Maya 5
The Jellyfish Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

Note: The Blinn material can be located under Create → Materials in the visor.

■
Double click on the new Blinn material to open the Attribute Editor.
■
In the attribute editor Click on the Color swatch to the right of the word color to open the Color
Chooser.
■
Change the color to blue and click Accept to close the Color Chooser
■
Increase the Transparency slider to about the mid range point

Creating a material in the Hypershade window

4 Assign the material to the jellyfish

■
Select the jellyfish (the group node)
■
In Hypershade use the RMB on the Blinn shader (place the mouse pointer over the blinn shader
ball and press the RMB) and select Assign Material to Selection
If you are in shaded mode the surfaces should look similar to the blinn swatch.

ANIMATE THE JELLYFISH

1 Open the file jelly2.ma or continue from the last step

2 Press F2 to switch to the Animation menu set

3 With the jellyfish node selected, Deform → Create Nonlinear → Squash

Note: Drag selecting across the jellyfish body will not select the jellyfish node at the top of the hierarchy. With the
body selected, press the Up Arrow key. This will walk up one node in the hierarchy. You can confirm this
by checking that the Channel Box now displays the jellyfish node.

6 A Taste of Maya  January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

4 Parent the squash deformer to the jellyfish node

■
In Window → Hypergraph... MMB drag/drop the squash1Handle node onto the jellyfish node
If you don’t do this when you move the jellyfish node the squash deformer won’t follow it.

Note: If you do not see the nodes in the Hypergraph window, press a to frame all of the nodes in the window.

5 Select the jellyfish node and set keyframes

■
Drag the timeslider to 0 and keyframe the Y translate of the jellyfish by selecting Translate Y in
the Channel Box and RMB → Key Selected

Note: You may need to set the range slider minimum value to 0 so that frame 0 is included in the time range.

■
Drag the timeslider to 10 and RMB → Key Selected (with Translate Y selected in the Channel
Box)
■
Drag the timeslider to 30, Move the jellyfish up about 10 units and RMB → Key Selected
■
Drag the timeslider to 40 and RMB → Key Selected

6 Cycle the animation

■
In Window → Animation Editors → Graph Editor, select the Translate Y and Curves → Post Infinity
→ Cycle with Offset
To select the y translate curve you can select the green curve in the Graph Editor or click on the
Translate Y attribute name in the Graph Editor.
■
In the Graph Editor select View → Infinity in order to see the cycled curve. It will be represented by
a dotted line.

The jellyfish Y Translate curve cycling with offset in the Graph Editor

 January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
A Taste of Maya 7
The Jellyfish Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

7 Select the Nonlinear Squash deformer and animate it

■
select squash1Handle
■
Drag the timeslider to 0
■
set Factor to about -0.2
The Factor attribute is found in the Channel Box when you click on squash1 under the INPUTS
■
keyframe the Factor of the squash by selecting Factor in the Channel Box and RMB → Key
Selected.
■
Drag the timeslider to 20, set Factor to about 0.5 and RMB → Key Selected
■
Drag the timeslider to 40, set Factor to about -0.2 and RMB → Key Selected

8 In Window → Animation Editors → Graph Editor, select the Factor and Curves → Post Infinity →
Cycle

9 Press play to view the animation

ADD TENTACLES WITH PAINT EFFECTS

1 Open the file jelly3.ma or continue from the last step

2 Press F5 to change to the Rendering menu set

3 Select the body of the jellyfish

4 Activate Paint Effects with Panels → Panel → Paint Effects

5 Select Paint Effects → Make Paintable while the jellyfish is active

6 Reset the template brush with Paint Effects → Reset Template Brush

7 Paint Effects → Template Brush Settings... and set the following Brush options:
Global Scale: 5
■
Tubes
Tubes: On
Creation (sub menu of Tubes)
Tubes Per Step: 1
Length Min: 1.5
Length Max: 2
Tube Width 1: 0.02
Tube Width 2: 0.01
Segments: 100
Elevation Min: 1
Elevation Max: 1
Behaviour Forces Gravity: 0.1
Momentum: 0
Length Flex: 0.45

8 A Taste of Maya  January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

Behavior → Turbulence (sub menu of Tubes)

Turbulence: World Displacement
Turbulence Interpolation: Smooth over Time and Space
Turbulence: 0.34
Turbulence Frequency: 2.4
Turbulence Speed: 0.155
■
Shading
Color1: Blue
Incandesence1: Darker Blue
Transparency1: Medium
Tube Shading (sub menu of Shading)
Color2: Blue/Purple
Incandesence2: Darker Blue/Purple
Transparency2: Medium

Paint Effects Settings

 January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
A Taste of Maya 9
The Jellyfish Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

8 Paint a circular curve onto the bottom of the jellyfish

Paint a curve onto the jellyfish

10 A Taste of Maya  January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

9 Test the look of the jellyfish by pressing the Redraw Paint Effects View button that displays two
red arrows flowing in a circle.

The jellyfish in the Paint Effects view

CONCLUSION
You have now explored some simple modeling, textureing and animation using Maya. To recap, this
tutorial covered the following areas:
The following topics were discussed:
■
Creating surfaces
■
Transforming objects and components
■
Basic texturing
■
Nonlinear deformers
■
Keyframe animation
■
The Graph Editor for modifying animation curves
■
Adding tentacles with Paint Effects

 January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.
A Taste of Maya 11
The Jellyfish Questions? visit www.aliaswavefront.com/tasteofmaya

12 A Taste of Maya  January 2000, Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. All rights reserved. By using this tutorial, you have agreed
to the terms and conditions which can be found in the setup.exe file in the Install Tutorials folder of the Taste of Maya CD-ROM.