Cinematography: Maya

Learn how to expertly control and animate cameras in your Maya projects and give viewers a window into your 3D world.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files

1. Viewport Camera Basics

• Working with the perspective viewport camera
• Undoing camera movements
• Using the Zoom tool
• Using the Fly Tool
• Displaying and moving orthographic cameras
• Setting clipping plane attributes
• Hiding the ViewCube
• Using bookmarks for alternative orthographic views
• Creating new preset orthographic views

2. Renderable Camera Basics

• The importance of renderable cameras
• Creating a Camera and Aim
• Increasing Locator Scale
• Moving the Camera and Aim
• Enabling the Resolution Gate
• Setting display options
• Creating node presets in the Attribute Editor
• Framing shots
• Adjusting focal length and the field of view
• Locking attributes
• Setting drawing overrides and hiding connectors
• Using a manipulator to set clipping planes

3. PreVIZ Editing with the Camera Sequencer

• Understanding the Camera Sequencer
• Creating shots
• Adding image planes
• Moving and trimming shots
• Ripple editing and stretching time
• Creating an ubercam
• Playblasting a sequence

4. Simple Camera Movement

• Choosing the right camera for the job
• Avoiding common pitfalls in camera animation
• Rotating in Gimbal mode
• Setting rotation order in the transform node
• Animating a pan and a truck
• Keying a truck in only one axis
• Animating a tilt and a pedestal
• Animating a dolly and a zoom

5. Compound Camera Movement

• Animating a truck-pan move
• Animating a pedestal-tilt move
• Animating a zolly, or zoom-dolly, move
• Animating a crane shot
• Animating a handheld camera shot
• Animating an aerial shot with an editable motion trail
• Using the default Turntable camera

6. Special Effects

• Rendering an isometric view
• Projecting a texture from a camera
• Understanding the Film Back
• Emulating a view camera for tilt-shift effects
• Adding distance blur with Depth of Field
• Measuring with the Distance Tool
• Animating a rack-focus effect

Conclusion

• Goodbye