ABSTRACT
Autodesk Maya is arguably the most popular Three-dimension (3D) modeling, animation, and rendering application. Its interface is extremely large and complex, but only a small subset of it is needed to create complete 3D single-frame renderings and videos. The models are stored and manipulated internally as 3D vector data structures, but they must be displayed, that is, rendered, on 2D pixel-based displays. Video is a series of pixel-based images. Video is created using some number of images per second; this is known as the “frame rate.” Sound is also encoded in “formats,” such as MP3, WAV, and AIFF. A series of images, along with sound, are bound together into a video “container” or “container format.” A video editor must be used to turn the images, along with a sound file, into video. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
