Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Project Overview: The Solar System
This project focuses on familiarizing you with the fundamentals of navigating Maya,
object creation, hierarchy, and pivots, all of which are important concepts for scene
manipulation and animation within Maya. In this exercise, you'll create and animate a
simple simulation of our working Solar System. (You may have done this in school using
coat hanger wire and Styrofoam balls.) This time-tested tutorial is great practice for get-
ting used to object creation, hierarchies, scene manipulation, UI navigation, and working
with objects and selections. It will show you how to set up hierarchies and give you expe-
rience in working with the proper nodes within a group to create hierarchically layered
animation.
The Preproduction Process: Planning
Every smooth operation begins with a good plan. The more research and focused infor-
mation you gather, the better off you'll be in your work. For this exercise, you need to
find out where each of the planets is in relation to the Sun and to the other planets and
also how many moons it has.
Starting with the Sun in the center, the planets in order are Mercury, Venus, Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. (We'll label Pluto a planet for old
time's sake, even though it was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” by the scientific commu-
nity in 2006.) All these planets actually orbit the Sun in ellipses, but we'll give them cir-
cular orbits for this exercise. Most planets have a number of moons that orbit them, and
one, Saturn, has large rings that circle around it.
Earth
1 moon
Mars
2 small moons
Jupiter
16+ moons
Saturn
3 large rings and 18+ moons
Uranus
18 moons
Neptune
8 moons
Pluto
1 moon
Creating and animating all those objects may seem overwhelming, but it's a great
way to become comfortable with Maya and animation. Because the goal of the project is
achievable without making every moon, you'll cut most of them out of your scene and
make a maximum of two moons per planet.
You can redo this exercise in more detail when you feel more comfortable with Maya.
For instance, if, after you've worked through the exercises in this topic, you feel like cre-
ating a much more accurate Solar System with beautifully textured planets and a perfect
starry backdrop, go for it! It will still be a good idea to set up and animate the scene care-
fully, just as you did (or should have done) the first time you worked on this exercise.
The more you run this exercise, the clearer Maya's scene manipulation and hierarchy
structure will become to you. Art is a marriage of inspiration, hard work, and practice.
