Maya 2016 Extension 1: Improved Vector Graphics Workflow

Enhanced SVG support in Maya 2016 extension 1 provides the ability to import or copy/paste SVG files into Maya, enabling interoperability with vector-based 2D design applications. Artists working in 2D design applications such as Adobe Illustrator can bring their vector graphics into Maya through new SVG file support and utilize a new workflow, similar to 3D Type, which includes the ability to extrude, bevel, animate, and extend vector graphics. autode.sk/Maya2016

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Closed Caption:

in this presentation we're going to be
looking at the new scalable vector
graphics work flow inside of Maya 2016
extension one we're going to use SVG
node to add in some graphical elements
that are designed in Adobe Illustrator
SVG is going to come in as a vector file
and mine is going to automatically
generate some 3d geometry for us right
here at the end of this animation so
let's go ahead and jump over to the
create menu and add that SVG note into
our scene and you'll see that we have a
placeholder we can add the SVG file onto
that in two ways we can use a standard
file import to go to our disc and browse
for RS GV files or we can go ahead and
use a copy-paste workflow which gives me
a nice non-destructive way of working
with illustrator i can continue to
refine my work in Illustrator and repace
the results back into Maya and I won't
lose any of the underlying work that
I've done on that original SVG object
and that's exactly what we want to see
in this example let's go ahead and grab
all the specter information will copy
that into our clipboard with ctrl c will
jump back into maya and we'll just go
ahead and hit that pace command so you
can see my goes through and it really
quickly builds us this nice extruded
piece of 3d geometry from that vector
information also notice that Maya
generated shaders force based on the
colors that were in that original
illustrator file and we want to further
refine this so we'll jump over to our
perspective view and you'll see that we
have a curve resolution this is going to
define how many polygons are being used
to try to capture that vector
information so its resolution
independent we have individual controls
for both the extrusion and the bevel so
for this example we're going to go ahead
and dial in this extrusion a little bit
so let's go and give it a slightly less
extrusion depth will give it some more
edges to work with may be increased
extrusion offset to a higher value and
we'll just start clicking through a few
of these presets here so another thing
that's kind of interesting about this
and you can see it's got that nice
little little kind of bloating happening
right there
you can also take the distances in the
offset values in both the extrusion and
the bevels and inverse them and put them
to- ranges and you're going to get the
opposite effect of what you've drawn in
your little profile shape window so it's
very powerful tool lets go ahead and
just get this guy kind of back down i
don't need a fancy extrusion but i do
want to have a really nice bevel on this
and we can do both outer bevels
intervals know obviously if we did an
outer barrel in this is going to puff
everything up and it would make all
these little blocks kind of bleed
together so that really wouldn't work
well for this example
so what we're going to do is we're going
to do an interval so we'll turn that
into Babylon will scroll down here and
notice that we have individual controls
for both the front and the back bevel so
we'll turn this some kind of get down
the side a little bit so you can see
what this happens when we turn this this
front Babylon so kind of puffs that guy
out i'm going to drop that down to a
value of something like . one and maybe
over dry this to a value of 1.5 get that
nice little rounded edge on that guy so
now if we select it and move across the
face here you can see all that little
specularity happening from that little
round that we just added on there so the
next thing we want to do is we want to
start animating this and I want to
actually do some animation that's going
to be bending into forming it so that's
one of the things that we wanted to make
sure the tools able to handle is
deforming meshes and we've got a really
nice test later and that's exactly what
we need to do right now is turn on this
deformable mass tessellation so soon as
we turn that guy on you can see my go
through it starts to break this up into
more faces so that we could start this
really push and pull on it and we have a
lot of control on how these polygons are
going to get added so if we wanted to
drop something like the max edge i'm
going to get more polygons sort of
coming down these edges here but it's
not really going to add too many to the
faces it's not going to subdivide on the
face of the type which is going to
subdivide the edges right so let's go
ahead and check that out
put that to a value to you can see that
now the edges are obviously on you know
more so divided but we really didn't get
any face divisions happening here so if
we take that refined threshold they put
that down to a value . 5
well we've added more polygons into the
faces of that of those fonts or of the
of that vector file so that's cool i can
go back to the default for what i'm
going to do i'm not going to be pushing
on this too crazy but I just wanted to
kind of draw your attention to the fact
that we do have that flexibility so the
next thing I'm going to do really
quickly so i just want to scale some of
these objects down i'm going to make
some polygons tweaks to this guy and I'm
just going to go ahead and grab my shell
for this guy so would you say to shell
and we're going to scale this all this
stuff down here so i want to scale that
NCAA down and I want to scale that line
down something like that looks pretty
good
and now that I've done that the next
thing that we're going to do is we're
going to go ahead we're going to add on
to this
the former and i'm going to use a
nonlinear former the non-linear
performers are really really good at
doing kind of broadcast type of facts or
super fast work with and they have a
very a very nice style to them so we'll
go ahead and grab this nonlinear been a
farmer will give a little bit of
curvature on that guy obviously objects
can pass through these nonlinear and
these nonlinear can be positioned and
rotated so what we're going to do is
hold on RJ kind of spend that guy around
something like that so I gotta get one
more snap on that guy and then we're
going to spin it around so that it's
kind of going down the length of that
line and i can use this nonlinear to
former to really you know do some fun
stuff with this so if we wanted to maybe
have the animation of the camera
spinning around this guy you know you
could do something like that
obviously you can take the nonlinear and
sort of tweak it out and do some really
cool cool effects with it now the idea
that I had for this was I wanted it to
still have this camera move kind of wipe
in but i just wanted to have a little
bit of arc on that actually one of the
ark to go the other way so we're just
going to invert that guy you know sort
of sort of to arrange sort of something
like that so is this kind of comes in
that NCAA just kind of drops down nicely
and it comes to a nice rest with that
little bit of Bend inside of it there
and I think that looks that looks pretty
sweet so everything that we've done now
you know is it's been pretty good but I
see some problems with the with the
illustrator file like I want the NCAA
not to be left justified here i want to
come over here on the right and you'll
see that these little . this kind of
underscore they're not really lined up
hurt or aligned properly so we need to
go back to that illustrator file and
make some changes so let's go ahead and
grab this stuff right here and just will
pull that guy over there so it's kind of
justified to that way and we'll grab
this stuff and we'll sort of push it you
know sort of their so now we've made
changes to that file let's go ahead and
grab that all that information again hit
ctrl-c to copy that to our buffer our
copy buffer and we'll jump over to our
text here and we can go ahead and just
jump to the SVG node and hit paste so as
soon as we do that what's going to
happen is my is going to go through its
going to move that object and move the
NCAA over and notice all that scaling
work that we did the nonlinear former
work we did all that work was preserved
so it's a very non destructive workflow
and that is really what uh what this is
all about
so if we go back to our our render
camera here just kinda scrub through
this animation so you've got your
basketball players kinda coming off and
then they kind of here we can make this
a little bigger here than they kind of
come off screen and NCAA just sort of
comes in there rest and drops and that's
really what it's all about so those are
a couple of things that you can do with
the scalable vector graphics work flow
inside of Maya 2016 extension one thanks
for taking the time to check it out