Near the top of the dialog box, click the plus sign to the right of Application.

Click Mudbox and then click OK. Notice that Mudbox is added to your application list and has a highlight around it, indicating that it is selected.

Figure 1.3. tablet control panel

Make sure you are on the Pen tab. Click the drop-down menu that is mapped to the back button and choose Clicks → Right Click.

Click the drop-down menu for the front button on the stylus and choose Clicks → Middle Click.

Close the Wacom control panel.

Load Mudbox.

Close the Welcome screen by clicking the Close button.

Choose File → Import.

Open the bertie_low.obj file in the Chapter 1Bertie folder on your DVD.

Press and hold down Alt and tap and drag your stylus tip on the tablet to tumble or spin the model; with a mouse, hold Alt while left-clicking and dragging.

To pan, press and hold down the Alt key and the forward button on your stylus, and hover the stylus over the tablet without touching it. The equivalent movement with a mouse is holding Alt while middle-clicking and dragging.

To zoom in and out of your model, press and hold down the Alt key and the back button on the stylus, and hover the stylus over the tablet without touching it. The equivalent movement with a mouse is holding Alt while right-clicking and dragging.

Press W to show or hide the wireframe on the model.

To focus on a specific area, point to it with the cursor and press the F key on your keyboard. Now tumble around as you did in step 1, as you can see the center of your rotation is now your focus point. This is a handy way to set the focus on your work area.

To see all of your model, press the A key.

From the Window menu, choose Object List (see Figure 1.4). The Object List shows you all the cameras, lights, objects, and materials in your scene.

Figure 1.4. Object List

Notice that you have four default cameras already available to you. If you use other 3D applications, you are usually looking at your object in four views (Figure 1.5). In Mudbox, you work in only one viewport. You can switch from one camera to another by right-clicking the appropriate camera with your mouse, or by pressing the back button on your stylus, and selecting Look Through from the drop-down menu. Look through all four cameras.

Notice that as you select a camera, the properties of that camera are displayed below the Object List in the Properties tray (Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.5. Four viewports as seen in Maya

Figure 1.6. Camera properties

Look through the Front camera. Use the navigation methods I explained earlier to move around your model. Now look through the Top camera. Look through the Front camera again. You will notice that you are not looking at the model in the front view, but the view you actually left your model in. To get the camera to snap back to the front view, in the Transform properties of the camera, select the Roll, Rotate, Track, and Dolly check boxes and click the Reset button (Figure 1.7). This reverts your model to the original front view.

Note that there are three lock options in the Transform properties of your camera: Lock Pan, Lock Rotate, and Lock Zoom. When you want to restrict any of the three transform capabilities of the camera either for convenience or because you have attained a desirable camera view state, you can lock the change in the camera position, orientation, and magnification by choosing one, two, or three of these options. Note that the Front, Side, and Top cameras have the Orthographic option selected by default, which means they do not show your objects with any perspective depth. Experiment by navigating around your model with these options to get an idea of how they work.

Figure 1.7. Resetting the camera view

Blocking in shape: Chapter1-part1.mov

Subdivide and sculpt: Chapter1-part2.mov

Paint and render: Chapter1-part3.mov

Export and render in Maya: Chapter1-part4.mov

Start Mudbox and click the Close button in the bottom-right corner of the Welcome screen.

Choose Create → Mesh → Sphere.

Press W to show the wireframe, if it's not showing. Tumble around the sphere and observe the polygons that compose the sphere. Notice that there are at most four edges coming out of each vertex, except for eight vertices that have only three edges. Also, notice that all of the polygons composing the sphere are four-sided quadrilaterals (or quads). Chapter 3 covers why this type of geometry layout is ideal.

Click the UV View tab on the top left of your screen to see the UVs of the sphere. Notice that the sphere is unwrapped perfectly into quads with no overlapping lines. Also note that the UVs fit perfectly into the first quadrant square (Figure 1.8). When you are finished looking at the UV view, click the 3D View tab.

The two sections on the right and bottom of the screen that contain tools and trays are referred to as the East and South Frame trays, respectively, even though they are not labeled as such. Click the Object List tab at the top of the East Frame tray. Notice that there are four cameras created for you already: Perspective, Top, Side, and Front. You also have a default Directional Light, a default Material, and the Sphere mesh geometry. Right-click the Sphere object in the list, choose Rename Object, and type egg.

Click the plus sign next to the mesh you just renamed to see the first-level mesh. Move your mouse between the Name and Information columns in the Object List, and resize the Name column by dragging the divider bar to the left so you see more information on the mesh. Notice that the Sphere primitive has two subdivision levels labeled level 0 and level 1. Notice that the first subdivision level, level 0, has 384 polygons, and level 1 has 1,536. As you add layers, they will be listed under the mesh name. The Information column beside the Name column also gives you more details on the different objects in the scene.

Figure 1.8. The Sphere primitive's UV view

Right-click the Front camera and select Look Through. Notice that the Properties tray under the Object List has the properties of the camera. Make sure the Lock Rotate check box is selected. This prevents you from accidentally rotating the camera. If you accidentally change the camera view, select the Roll, Rotate, Track, and Dolly check boxes and click the Reset button to reset the camera to its original view.

Click the plus sign next to the Front camera and click ImagePlane. Notice that the ImagePlane properties replace the camera properties in the Properties tray underneath the Object List. Click the drop-down arrows next to Advanced and Transformation properties to open them. Click Import and navigate to the Chapter 1egg eference and image plane files folder and load the egg_side.jpg image. It will load in front of your ball and might take up most of the 3D view.

In the Advanced section of the ImagePlane Properties tray, change the Depth to 100. Now you will see the sphere in front of the egg.

If you do not see the top and bottom of the egg in the 3D viewport, click in the Scale text box in the Transformation section of the ImagePlane Properties tray, and type 1 or 0.8 or 0.6 (80 percent or 60 percent resizing of the image) until you can see both the top and bottom of the egg in the 3D viewport. Notice that you can also rotate and translate the image plane, but for our example, this is good enough.

Now use Alt + middle mouse button, or Alt + forward button on the stylus, to position your egg so the leftmost and rightmost edges of the sphere line up with the leftmost and rightmost edges of the egg in the picture (Figure 1.9). Also line up the center as best as you can.

In the Object List, right-click the Side camera and select Look Through. You will no longer see the image plane, just the sphere. This is because you are now viewing the sphere through the Side camera that does not have an image plane yet.

Click the Image Browser tab at the top left of your Mudbox window.

Figure 1.9. Sphere and egg lined up

Navigate to the Chapter 1egg eference and image plane files folder on the DVD.

Click the egg - high frequency detail.jpg thumbnail in the left Image Thumbnail tray and press Alt while clicking and dragging on the image to see the finer detail of the egg's surface. As you can see, it is not smooth. Note the roughness that shows up, especially in the white, shiny specular region. Also note the variation of oranges in the diffuse color and the reddish blemishes on the surface. Observing reference material is critical to the creation of art. Whether you are imitating, exaggerating, or distorting what you see, you really need to look at it and understand its nuances first. Click the egg_top.jpg thumbnail and notice that from the top, an egg looks circular. Finally, click the egg_side.jpg thumbnail.

Click the 3D View tab in the top-left corner. Notice that the egg is set as the image plane and is in front of your sphere. Click the plus sign next to the Side camera and click ImagePlane. In the ImagePlane properties, click the drop-down arrows next to Advanced and Transformation properties to open them. Change the Depth to 100. Now you will see the sphere in front of the egg.

Click Scale and choose the same scale that you used for the front image plane, either 1, or 0.8, or 0.6.

Switch back to the Front camera by right-clicking it in the Object List and choosing Look Through, and select Lock Zoom in the camera's properties.

Click and drag the red square (x-axis) on the horizontal scale manipulator to widen the sphere so the edges line up with those of the egg. Align the sphere by pressing Alt + middle mouse button, or Alt + forward button on the stylus, to pan the camera and position your egg so the leftmost and rightmost edges of the sphere line up with the leftmost and rightmost edges of the egg in the picture (Figure 1.10).

Now click and drag the green square (y-axis) on the vertical scale manipulator to change the height of the sphere so the top and bottom edges of the sphere line up with those of the egg in the image plane. If needed, align the sphere by pressing Alt + middle mouse button, or Alt + forward button on the stylus, to position your egg so the top and bottom edges of the sphere line up with the top and bottom edges of the egg in the picture (Figure 1.11).

Figure 1.10. Scale horizontally

Figure 1.11. Scale vertically

Switch to the Side camera by right-clicking it in the Object List and selecting Look Through.

Align the top and bottom of the sphere with the image plane by pressing Alt + middle mouse button, or Alt + forward button on the stylus. Click and drag the blue square (z-axis) on the horizontal scale manipulator to widen the sphere so the edges line up with those of the egg. Align the sphere by pressing Alt + middle mouse button, or Alt + forward button on the stylus, to position your egg so the leftmost and rightmost edges of the sphere line up with the leftmost and rightmost edges of the egg in the picture.

Right-click the Perspective camera in the Object List and select Look Through. Tumble the camera around your egg and examine your work. Next press the L key and click and drag your mouse, or tap and drag your stylus, to change the direction of your light.

Click the Material Presets tab in the South Frame tray and select the material (Gesso). You can identify a material's name by hovering your mouse over it; Gesso is one of the white materials. This changes your egg color to white. To see the name of a material, hover your cursor on top of it in the Material Presets tray and wait for a pop-up that gives you a larger thumbnail and the name of the material.

Save your work by choosing File → Save Scene As egg_step_01.mud. You can see me going through the stages in this section in the Chapter1-part1.mov video in the Chapter 1Videos folder.

Either continue from the previous lesson or load the egg_step_02.mud file from the Chapter 1eggegg_projectMudbox folder from the DVD.

In the Layers tray, click the Paint button to activate the Paint Layers tray (Figure 1.21). Please note that Figure 1.21 is a reference to explain paint layers and is not what you will see in the current project.

Click the Layers window drop-down menu and choose New Layer (Figure 1.22).

Figure 1.21. Paint Layers tray

Figure 1.22. Layers window menu → New Layer

This brings up the Create New Paint Layer dialog box (Figure 1.23). Type base coat as the name for your layer, choose 2048 as the size, and TIFF [8 Bit, RGBA] as the image format. The 8 bits give us 16.8 million colors, which will work for this scenario. This will be one of three diffuse layers. Diffuse is the base color we see, without highlights or shininess, just the base paint color.

Add a total of three diffuse layers: base coat (which you already created in the previous step), red spots, and projection.

Add another layer, call it highlights, and choose Specular from the Channel drop-down menu. In this color image, the lighter colors will show up with specular highlights, and the darker areas will not shine at all. A specular map is a way to indicate the areas on your model you want to highlight because they are part of surfaces that have a more shiny, reflective property (for example, oily areas of the forehead).

Figure 1.23. Create New Paint Layer dialog box

Finally, add a layer, call it glossiness, and pick Gloss from the Channel menu. Like the specular image, this one's lighter colors represent areas that will appear glossy, and the darker areas will not. Areas that have high gloss values look wet, while areas with high specular values look shiny.

Bring up the Object List and look through the Side camera. The image plane of the egg should still be in the background. Move the egg to the side by clicking the Translate tool in the Select/Move Tools tray, and clicking and dragging the red or green arrow on the move manipulator that appears in the 3D View. From the paint tools in the South Frame, click the Eyedropper tool and move the eyedropper icon onto the image of the egg to choose the base color of the egg. Do your best to pick the general color that does not have any highlights or shadows or pigmentation, somewhere in the middle of the egg.

Click the Airbrush tool and notice that in its properties, the color is the orange of your egg. In the Object List, look through the Perspective camera. Click the Airbrush tool again, and in its properties, turn Mirror on to Local X, and choose a brush Size of 60 and a Strength of 30. Click the Layers tab and make sure the base coat layer is selected.

Figure 1.24. Color Chooser

Paint your egg with the base orange color; make sure you color the entire egg evenly. You can check this by pressing Pg Dn to get to the lowest subdivision level of your model and looking at the UV view to see whether you missed any spots. If you see missing color in any areas of the unwrapped UV shell, you have missed those areas. Remember to press Pg Up to get back to the highest subdivision level before you continue.

Click on the color in the Airbrush tool properties tray to open the Color Chooser. Choose a color that is a slightly lighter version of your current color by either using the color wheel, or expanding the Numeric Input section and choosing a color with slightly less Value by dragging the slider to the right (Figure 1.24).

In the Paint Layers tray, make sure the base coat layer is still selected. Choose the bw_dots stamp from the Stamps tray if it's not the selected stamp for the Airbrush tool. Make sure Use Stamp Image and Randomize are selected. Also make sure that Horizontal Flips and Vertical Flips are selected. Move the five Randomize sliders to about the middle. This will ensure that you paint a very random pattern. To find out what each of these sliders does, check Chapter 2, "The Mudbox User Interface." Click Off from the Mirror drop-down list.

Paint on the surface of the egg so you have an even pattern of dots all around, and you have some room to see the color you painted before, underneath or between the dots of your current paint work. Painting a surface with various subtle variations of the base color makes it look more realistic.

Click and select the red spots layer in the Paint Layers tray. Click the Airbrush tool again and click on its color property. Choose a dark reddish-brown. Of course, you can sample the exact color of spots off the egg image by using the Color Chooser technique you used previously.

Type 150 in the Size text box of the Airbrush properties. Notice that if you drag the slider to the end, it caps out at 100, but you can type greater values in the text box. Paint random large red spots on the surface of the egg. Turn off the base coat layer to see your work. If you notice that you have too many red spots, use the Paint Erase tool in the Paint Tools tray to erase them. When you are satisfied with your random smattering of red dots, turn on the base coat layer and examine your work (Figure 1.25).

Figure 1.25. red spots layer

Depending on the color distribution and your painting ability, you have probably ended up with a good rendition of the egg's surface color. To add an extra level of realism, you will use the actual egg image to project paint on the surface of the egg. To do this, I have taken the image of the egg shot from the side into Adobe Photoshop and used the Patch tool to remove some of the specular highlights in the photo.

Click the Image Browser tab and navigate to the Chapter 1egg eference and image plane files folder on the DVD and look at the egg_no_specular.jpg image. Ideally, you would not want to use .jpg images in production to save textures or to paint textures from because .jpg is a lossy format. Lossy file formats use algorithms to average the color of pixels in order to compress an image so it's smaller in size when you save and load it. These images are called lossy because they lose some of the original color information in favor of reducing file size. Although lossy images might look OK at first glance, they often produce anomalies that create undesirable, blocky results in the picture when you zoom in or process them. In our example, it will not be an issue, but be aware of lossy compression for your projects and if at all possible use nonlossy, uncompressed image formats for textures. Click the Set Stencil button.

Click the 3D View tab and choose the Projection tool from the Paint Tools tray. Notice that there is a transparent image of your stencil overlaying your egg model (Figure 1.26). Also notice that there is some help in the bottom-left corner of the 3D view for manipulating the stencil. During this session, randomly press the S key and click and drag your stylus to rotate your stencil, and occasionally press the Q key to show and hide your stencil. You will not need to scale or move the stencil in this case, but note that you can scale and move the stencil with the S key and right and middle buttons of the mouse (or back and front buttons of your stylus).

Figure 1.26. A stencil overlay on the model for projection painting

Use your camera to roughly align the egg to the stencil image.

Tap and drag the cursor on the surface of the egg. You will project the image of the stencil onto the surface of the egg. You might want to choose Orient to Surface from the Advanced drop-down list in the Projection tool's properties.

Rotate the egg and project-paint the egg's surface. Notice that though this image looks pretty even in color, some areas are lighter than others because of the light illuminating the surface. Rotate your egg so you paint uniform color while also generating a random pattern of the surface. You can press the Q key to toggle the stencil image on and off to look at your work and erase areas that do not work for you. Remember that the stylus has sensitivity levels, so if you gently stroke on the tablet, the color variations will be more subtle on the surface.

Click on the Stencils tray in the South Frame and click Off to turn off the stencil.

When you are finished, examine your work. Look for color variations that are too strong, any edges of the projected egg's image that bleed onto your egg model, and repeating patterns that distort the believability of the texture. Watch the video Chapter1-part3.mov of this lesson in the Chapter 1videos folder of the DVD to see how I paint my model. When you are finished, compare your newly projection-painted layer with the previous three to see how quick and effective projecting from a picture is versus painting the image yourself. The good news here is that you can composite the two layers that you painted with the base coat and the red spots with the one that you projection-painted from the real picture of an egg—and play around with the opacity of the three paint layers you created—to get an even more perfect texture. To do this in the Layers tray, click on the opacity number and move the sliders up and down to see the results in real time in the 3D viewport. In my example, an opacity of 70, 40, and 60 worked best for the three diffuse paint layers of projection, red spots, and base coat (Figure 1.27).

Click the highlights layer in the Layers tray to select your specular layer. Choose the Airbrush tool, make sure that the bw_dots is selected, and that Use Stamp Image, Randomize, Horizontal Flips, and Vertical Flips are also selected. Choose white or a light gray for your color. Turn off all other layers and paint a nice random pattern on the surface of your egg with a brush size that's about a quarter the size of the egg. Start with a weaker strength and dial it up until you get a nice specular pattern similar to that in the close-up reference picture egg-high frequency detail.jpg in the Chapter 1egg eference and image plane files folder of the DVD. These are the areas you want to show up when a light is shining on the surface.

Specular layers enable you to specify parts of your texture that are shinier than others and reflect more light, creating specular highlights. If you have some matte paint chipped off a metal surface, for example, you might want to paint the metal surfaces with a specular map so that when light shines on that surface, the metal parts show up shiny while the matte paint does not.

Choose the Paint Brush tool from the Paint Tools tray, and click on the glossiness layer in your Paint Layers tray. Make sure all your paint layers are visible by clicking the circles so they are filled in the Visibility column. Paint on your egg to make some areas look a bit glossier. On these areas, the egg might have a little bit of "sweat" from being taken out of a cold refrigerator, or have some egg white dripped on it from a hand that has cracked another egg. Again you can dial in the glossiness with the opacity slider of the glossiness paint layer.

You are now done with your egg model (Figure 1.28). You have the eggshell texture sculpted onto the surface of the model, and have painted on a texture that looks like the reference image.

Figure 1.27. Adjusting the opacity layer of the paint layers to get the perfect composited look

Figure 1.28. Finished egg model (see color insert)

Turn on the visibility of all the sculpt and paint layers, and work with their opacity to get as close to the look of the egg in the picture as possible.

Save your work as egg_step_03.mud. When you save your work, Mudbox automatically creates a folder and saves all of your paint layers as individual files in that folder. You can see me going through the stages in this section in the Chapter1-part3.mov video in the Chapter 1Videos folder.

In the Image Browser, navigate to the folder where you saved your file and click the egg_step_03-files folder. You will see all of your paint layers. These are separate images that can be manipulated individually or composited in Adobe Photoshop or your favorite image-editing application.

Click the Viewport Filters tab in the East Frame (Figure 1.29). Turn on the visibility of the Depth of Field layer, and click on the layer name so the Depth of Field properties come up.

Make sure the grid is on by clicking the Display menu item and selecting the Grid check box. Move the Blur Amount slider until you get a slight blur around the edge of the egg. If you get too intense of a blur, move the slider slightly and then double-click the slider handle; this limits the range of the slider. A value of about 0.001 should be good. Move the Focus Distance slider and notice how the focus shifts on the egg and the grid. Move the slider until the front or top-front part of the egg is in focus.

Now move the Depth of Field slider to get a nice soft edge on the egg. You can find detailed descriptions of these three sliders and what they do in the UI tour in Chapter 2. You might want to experiment with some of the other viewport filters to get an idea of what they do. Don't worry if you mess things up; you can always turn off the filters by clicking the eye icon to the left of the filter. By using a combination of viewport filters, I got the results shown in Figure 1.30.

Figure 1.29. Viewport Filters tab

In earlier versions of Mudbox, you would have had to take a snapshot of the screen to export your image by using Print Screen or a third-party utility such as TechSmith Snagit, but since Mudbox 2010, this deficiency is not only addressed but addressed with an extremely powerful feature. Not only can you now save the screen by choosing Render → Save Screen Image, but you can also save it in whatever image size you like. This is really useful if you want to save your image in sizes for posters or billboards. Save your image using your screen size by clicking the Use Screen Size button, or type in any size you would like in either the Width or Height text boxes. When you are finished, turn off the Depth of Field by clicking the eye icon next to it in the Viewport Filters tray. I have saved a copy of the screen for you in .psd format called Mudbox Render.psd in the Chapter 1egg folder of the DVD. When you are finished, turn off all the viewport filters.

Figure 1.30. Mudbox render of egg

Copy Chapter 1eggegg_project and all of its subfolders to your hard disk and remember the location.

Start Maya 2011 and choose File → Project → Set.

Navigate to the egg_project file on your hard disk and click OK.

A Maya project is a folder structure that Maya creates to organize all of your files for the project you are working on. Our exported .obj files are in the egg_projectdata folder. Our texture, normal, and displacement maps are in the egg_projectsourceimages folder. The Maya.ma scenes of what we are working on are in the egg_projectscenes folder. We also have a Mudbox folder that I manually created to store all of our Mudbox files.

Choose File → Import.

If you are not automatically in the egg_projectdata folder, navigate to it and click egg_model_level_0.obj. Then click the Import button to load it.

Make sure you are in the perspective view by choosing Panels → Perspective → Persp in the Panel menu (Figure 1.34). Make sure this panel is the only one open by pressing the spacebar.

Select the egg model by clicking it. Press 6 to activate hardware rendering, and then press 3 to activate Maya's Smooth Mesh Preview mode. Notice that the jagged edges of our model are now nice and smooth. Even at 384 faces, we have a nice-looking model. This model will render smooth in mental ray without our having to subdivide it, or use the smooth operator on it to generate a smoother version of the model.

Choose Window → Settings/Preferences → Plug-in Manager.

Make sure that the Loaded and Auto Load check boxes are selected next to Mayatomr and OpenEXRLoader.mll.

In the Render Using drop-down list, select mental ray.

Figure 1.34. Imported egg_model_level_0.obj file

Click the Quality tab. In the Quality Presets drop-down list, click Production: Fine Trace. This automatically sets the output quality to the best setting while compromising render time. Because we are rendering only one image, a longer render time is tolerable. Close the Render Settings dialog box by clicking the Close button at the bottom.

Choose Window → Rendering Editors → Hypershade.

Click Blinn to create a new Blinn shader.

Make sure that the egg is selected by clicking it. Right-click the Blinn node and, from the marking menu that comes up, select Assign Material to Selection.

Double-click the Blinn shader to open its attributes in the Attribute Editor (Figure 1.5).

This opens the file node attributes.

Click the folder icon next to Image Name and click the egg_texture_comp_8_2K.tif file. This is a composite of the three texture files we created in Mudbox (Figure 1.36).

I have loaded the three individual paint layers in Photoshop, composited them into a flattened image, and saved it as an 8-bit .tif file. To see what this looks like, open the file Chapter 1eggegg_projectsourceimagesegg_texture_comp_8_2K.psd in Photoshop. And look at the layers and their opacity.

You should now see our texture applied to the egg (Figure 1.37).

Figure 1.35. Blinn shader attributes

Figure 1.36. File node attributes

Figure 1.37. Texture preview using the hardware shader capabilities of Maya

I have set up a scene with three-point lighting that you can load and render. Choose File → Open Scene and click the egg_texture.ma file in the Chapter 1eggegg_projectscenes folder on the DVD and click the Render button. Some things I have done in this setup besides adding and positioning three spotlights and a camera are adjusting the specular highlight of the Blinn shader, and modifying the Background color of the camera to a dark gray. Experiment by looking at the egg from different angles with different specular settings.

Select the egg and choose Window → UV Texture Editor. Notice that the texture is applied to the UVs of the egg just as it was in Mudbox.

Close the UV Texture Editor and choose Window → Rendering Editors → Hypershade.

Figure 1.38. Shader network

In Hypershade, right-click the Blinn shader you created and choose Graph Network from the marking menu. You will now add the displacement map.

Double-click the displacement shader to open its attributes in the Maya window.

This opens up the file node attributes (Figure 1.39).

Figure 1.39. File node attributes

Click the folder icon next to Image Name and click the egg_displacement_32_2K.exr file that we created in Mudbox. Your shader network should look like Figure 1.40.

Render your image and notice that the displacement map applied to your image is the high-frequency detail sculpting we did in Mudbox. See Figure 1.41.

Figure 1.40. Shader network

Figure 1.41. Egg render with displacement map

Next, you will create a shader for the normal map. In Hypershade, create a new Blinn node.

Make sure that the egg is selected by clicking it in the Maya Perspective viewport, and right-click on the Blinn node. From the marking menu that comes up, select Assign Material to Selection. That should make the egg look gray.

Double-click on the Bump2d shader to open its attributes in the Maya window.

This opens the file node attributes.

Click the folder icon next to Image Name and click egg_normal_32_2K.exr file (Figure 1.42). This is the normal map we created in Mudbox.

Figure 1.42. File node attributes

Your shader network should look like Figure 1.43.

Render your image and notice that the relief of your high-frequency detail on the surface of the egg is greatly exaggerated (Figure 1.44). That's because you need to change one more setting to let Maya know that this is in fact a normal map and not a bump map.

Figure 1.43. Normal map shading network

Figure 1.44. Exaggerated relief due to using a normal map as a bump map

Figure 1.45. Bump2d attributes used as tangent space normals

In Hypershade, double-click the Bump2d node. This brings up the attributes for the node. In the Use As drop-down, select Tangent Space Normals and render your image (Figure 1.45).

Render your image and notice that you have the normal map applied to your model.

The true value of normal maps and their importance to the production pipelines can be demonstrated when we use Maya's ability to render normal maps to give you a real-time preview of the high-frequency detail that you sculpted in Mudbox that resulted in over 1.5 million polygons to display in real time on our 384-polygon model in Maya.

In the Perspective panel, choose Shading → Wireframe on Shaded and note that we still have our simple 384-poly egg model. Choose Shading → Hardware Texturing. This will not do anything to the display until the next step.

Choose Renderer → High Quality Rendering. You will now see the high-frequency detail appear on the surface of the egg. You can tumble around the egg to see all the details in real time. There is an anomaly that appears at the edges of the UVs on the egg that you can easily fix in the next step (Figure 1.46).

In Hypershade, double-click the file node. This brings up the attributes for the file node.

In the file node attributes, expand the High Dynamic Range Image Preview Options section. In the Float to Fixed Point attribute, click Clamp. This fixes the UV edge issue, and now you are previewing the relief on the surface of your egg in real time using the normal map (Figure 1.47). You can see me going through the stages in this section in the Chapter1-part4.mov video in the Chapter 1Videos folder.