Setting up image planes                                             Tutorial By: Srijesh

In this tutorial you will learn the first step of any Maya modeling process i.e. setting up image planes. You can also set up image planes using traditional image plane method but in this tutorial you will learn more flexible and appropriate method than that. In this method you will be able to hide or unhide the image planes in just a single click and also you can set up transparency level which could be greatly helpful in modeling.
                                                To set up image planes first thing you need to do is to collect blueprints. You can create it by you own or just download from web. When downloading blueprints it is suggested that choose blueprint which is more detail and contains most of the views i.e. front, side, top & back (also bottom if necessary). In modeling every single detail in image planes could be greatly helpful.
                For this purpose I’ve downloaded Ferrari F40 blueprint from www.the-blueprints.com. You can download hundreds of character, vehicle and other types of blueprints from this website.  In this tutorial you gonna need both maya and photoshop. So let’s start the process.

1. First open a blueprint file in Adobe Photoshop.

2. First select the top view part of the blueprint using rectangular marquee tool as shown in figure below and copy it (Cltr+c).

Fig 1

3. Then open new image page (Ctrl+n). After copying the selected area the new image page will be the exact size of the dimension of the selection. Then paste it (Ctrl+v).

Fig 2

Then you can save it or prefer to do little more things i.e. making unwanted part transparent.

4. To do this first select unwanted part of the image by magic wand tool as shown in figure below.

Fig 3

5. Then inverse selection by pressing Ctrl + Shift + i. Then in channels window (window>channels, if hidden) click on ‘Save selection as channel’ button as below. Then new alpha channel will be created with necessary part as white and unwanted part as black.

Fig 4

6. Then press Ctrl + s to save the picture. In save dialog box set file name f40_top or any name you want. Then set Targa (.tga) as file format and press save. In targa option dialog box set resolution to 32 bits/pixel. Leave compress (RLE) option check off. Then press ok. It is important to save the picture in targa file format and set targa resolution to 32 bits/pixel. Other file format and lesser resolution of targa file don’t have ability to save image with alpha channel. So keep in mind those two things.

7. In the same way save all other three view images in 32 bits/pixel targa format.

Fig 5

8. Now open maya. Don’t close photoshop yet. First we create an image plane for top view.

9. To create top view image plane create polygon or nurbs plane. For this go to create>polygon primitive (or nurbs primitive)> plane >option box. Then polygon plane option dialog box will appear.

Fig 6

10. In photoshop open top view image which we had saved before. Then check out the image size of the image (image>image size).

11. Then copy paste or type the exact size of that image from photoshop to the plane size in maya.

Fig 7

Image size in photoshop.

Fig 8

Polygon plane size in maya.

Fig 9

12. Now if create a polygon plane with this size the plane become extremely large. So place point before two numbers from last. Since we’re creating top view image plane set axis as Y. Then hit create.

Fig 10

13. Then open hypershade in maya(window>rendering editors>hypershade…). In hypershade create lambert (or any other) material by clicking lambert button in create maya nodes side bar as below. Then rename that lambert material to f40_topView by holding control key and double clicking the lambert material.

Fig 11

14. Double click the lambert material to open its attribute editor. In attribute editor click checkered button beside color slider. Then create render node window will be displayed. Since we are using file image as texture rather that maya’s predefined texture click on file button in create render node window. 

Fig 12

15. Then attribute editor of that file texture node will be displayed. Click browse button beside image name text field. In open dialog box navigate to the image where you had saved before.  Then hit open.

Fig 13

16. To apply this top view lambert material to the polygon plane select that polygon and in hypershade right click the top view lambert material. In popup menu select ‘Assign Material to Selection’ or simply holding down middle click then drag and drop the lambert material to polygon plane.

17. Now press 5 button in your keyboard to switch into shaded view. You will see that the area where we make alpha channel black in photoshop will be completely transparent and other part will be completely opaque.

In modeling it is desirable that the opaque part also be little bit transparent so that you will be able to view the part of the model which is behind that image plane.

18. For that double click the top view lambert material to open its attribute editor. Click input button beside color slider. This will open attribute editor of file texture rendered node which we had opened to connect top view lambert material to the top view targa image. Then slide down little bit and expand color balance attribute.

19. In color balance attribute the value of alpha gain is set to 1 by default. As you decrease that value the image plane become more transparent. You can adjust this value as your need.

In the same create all other three image planes in different view i.e. front and back in z axis or xy plane, side in x axis or yz plane.

20. Then switch to each of the view to adjust the position of the planes. Try to match them as much as possible. Small mismatch can cause great headache in modeling. So be careful in this. First go to top view (hit space bar in keyboard, select top view from four view panel then again hit space). Then rotate all three image plane other than top view image plane one by one. Move them little bit if necessary. Then try to align them perfectly as shown in figure.

Fig 14

21. In the same way switch to all other view and align all the image planes perfectly.

22. Then open channel box / layer editor. In layer editor click layer > create empty layer to create one empty layer. Then select all three image planes other than back view and then right click on that created layer and select ‘add selected objects’. I prefer to add back view in other layer so that it will not come between front view image plane and model. So create one more layer and add back view image plane in it.

Fig 15

23. You can rename a layer name by double clicking it.

There are three boxes or columns beside layer name in layer editor. The left hand side box defines visibility state of objects in layer. ‘V’ in that box defines objects in that particular layer is visible in view port and black defines hidden. So you can hide or unhide objects in the layer by clicking visibility column in layer editor. The middle column defines display type of objects. Blank box defines normal state. ‘R’ in the box defines reference state. In reference state you won’t be able to select objects of that layer directly from view port. So in case of image plane layers always leave a display type in ‘R’ i.e. reference state so that while modeling image planes won’t be selected accidently. Whereas ‘T’ defines template state of objects of the layer. The rightmost box defines color of wireframe.

Fig 16

That’s all for now. Hope this tutorial will be helpful to you guys. See you all in next 3D-AM tutorials. Keep visiting 3D-AM.com.