<< Home
1. Creating a Character Rig using Maya 2008 software.
2. Binding the Character Rig to the game character’s mesh.
3. Creating an animated walk Cycle
4. Creating textures for the game model
5. Creating an environment, baking shadows & illumination to a texture map.
6. Exporting game characters to a file format for a game engine
7. Importing characters into a 3-D game engine.
8. Controlling characters using data from input device.
9. Adding environment to the game.
|
Let's begin by loading the character into a newly created scene. Even though it's possible to use any character model that you wish, we suggest that you download and use the game character that we have provided to make it easier to follow this tutorial. You can download the game character model located here.
After launching the Maya application, do the following:
1. Click on “file” located in the top menu's left-hand corner. A drop-down menu will appear. On this menu, click on “Import..” to open the file browser.
2. Locate the character model on your hard-drive. Select it and click the “Import” button. In this case we are loading the file named ”gamechar01.mb”.
Note: The file extension “.mb” stands for Maya Binary Format
3. After the character is loaded, switch to a four panel viewport display, by clicking on the “Four View” icon  located on the left-hand toolbar. This insures that we have access to all viewport displays.
4. Take a look at the viewport labeled “front” Notice how the character is standing up with it's arms parallel to the floor. This pose is called a “T-Pose” And although it's not the only pose used in the rigging process, it is one of the most common and easiest poses to rig.
Now you're ready to create joints for left leg. Part 2 >> |
