 All right guys, welcome to the first ever edition of Ask Online Media Tutor So basically the reason I put this video together is over the last week I've had a couple of emails one from Gordon and the other from a chap called Peter. I hope I'm pronouncing that right Asking me to do particular things in Maya So I thought the best way to approach those was to put a video together so The first one that I want to look at is Gordon's project Now what Gordon wants to do is he's created an animation of a light bulb kind of hopping across and he wants to Duplicate that animation over so it can create kind of an army of light bulbs hopping across So I had a little conversation with him over email, but he's not yet been able to get this sorted So he sent me his scene and now we're gonna have a look at that To see how we can get that to work. So if we go into Maya now and Gordon's scene As you can see, this is his light bulb and if we play he just kind of hops along nice and happy Brilliant and what we want to do is be able to create Quite a few of these So the reason that it wasn't working for Gordon is that there's a little bit of work needs Don't needs doing to this light bulb to prepare it To be able to do that. So if we go through that first, that'll hopefully clear that up So the first thing I looked at when I opened this was the outliner. So if I go to a window Outliner This shows me everything going on in Gordon's scene and there's actually a lot more going on than needs to We've got lots of groups going on and this basically shows me that there's a lot of history On this ball that possibly doesn't need to be there So the first thing I did was set about getting rid of that So the first thing we need to do is go to edit and then we're going to choose delete or buy type History and if you watch what happens in the outliner as I do this Some things disappeared that represents history that didn't need to be there and is now gone Okay, we've also got this pasted polish surface and a group And I can see that there are some sort of bumpy lines here Which suggests to me that there's more than one bulb in the scene And of course when I move that out, I can see I've got this golden bulb happening as well So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get rid of that I don't know what it's there to do if it's important to go in the scene I'm sure you'll be able to sort that out But it turns out that the the only bulb that I want to work with and the one that's got the animation on Is this poly surface too? So what I'm also going to do is If we expand this you can see that this one item is still made up of lots of different items And before you animate something especially something like this light bulb What you need to do is to try and make sure that it's one object Or if it's not place it into a group and animate the group But that's not really the way that this one's working at the moment So the next thing I did to pull this scene Apart and get it working was to just create a duplicate of the bulb So let's just do that. I'm going to go edit Duplicate I'm going to move the copy over. So this is my copy and this is the one I'm going to keep And I'm then going to just go back into my Outliner and This is my poly surface temp What I'm going to do with this I'm going to go to mesh combine and This creates me a poly surface 11 and you can see this has changed It's now one piece of geometry, which is going to make it a lot easier to animate and I'm just going to call this bull To differentiate it from anything else in the scene. So I now know what I've got there is all I need Which is good. And what I'm also going to do now. I've created this you can see over here This is where the pivot is. It's not in the center of the ball, which is unhelpful So I'm next going to go to modify center pivot and now I'm fairly happy that that is ready to take the animation So what I need to do now is get Gordon's animation from poly surface to and put it onto the copy of the ball But I've created This is nice and easy. Thankfully what I need to I'm going to hold shift on a keyboard And I'm just going to click and drag across all the frames And the Gordon is animated and then I'm going to right click on that and choose copy and then I can click on my bulb here I'm going to go to frame one right click and now I'm going to go paste and then through to paste And we'll now see That this copy of the bulb has taken the animation successfully. No problems with that So that means that I've now got the same starting point that I had originally But I've got rid of all the mess which is going to make the next steps easier So with that in mind, I'm going to get rid of Gordon's original See a later bulb and I'm also going to have a look in my outliner If I can get that to pop up and I'm going to get rid of anything that I don't think needs to be in there when you're awful Apparently that does strange. I'm just going to do edit delete all by type history again Because it turns out I'd left a bit of history in there that was Needed okay, so this polished surface to should be able to go with that and that I Don't know what that's doing. So I'll get that and it just leaves me with the bulb lovely right Now we're going to get on to the actual duplicating of this Now I've tried this a few different ways I've been faffing with this for almost an hour because it turns out to be a little bit more complex And I would have liked it to be But the successful way that has worked for me is to put it into a group and then we're going to duplicate the group And that'll take the animation with it So the first thing I'm going to do is with the bulb selected I'm going to hit ctrl and G and that puts it into a group. I'm going to rename that group And now I know that this is ready to start doing the duplication with So I'm going to minimize my outline for the time being and I'm now going to go into edit Duplicate special and I'm going to click on the settings now These are the settings that I've just been messing with so I'm just going to go edit reset settings So these are kind of the default settings you would get And the two important ones are group under and duplicate input graph So if we write if we put the tick in the box for duplicate input graph What that does and is that tells my that when we'll duplicate it I want to bring any connections through with that so the animation being one of those which is brilliant But now what is important is choosing the right one of these and this is the reason I put it into a group So we're going to have each bulb in its own group and that is going to stop any New bulbs being connected through animation to the one so I could connect I could duplicate them across the first row and that worked really successfully But when I started moving them back the rotation was breaking so the one on the front row would jump But the one on the row behind it would just rotate on the spot and then the one on the row behind that would go through the ground So in order to do that the grouping method was the way to do it So once I've got My group before I do anything with it. I've got my group selected before I forget I just want to Center the pivot again modify center of it and Now I've got new group to duplicate input graph. So I'm going to click on apply I'm just going to move this over to start to create In fact, let's not move it over. Let's move it back So I'm moving it back to create a second row and if I scrub through the animation now You can see that I've got two of these guys They're gonna create the animation so I can then do this again apply Moving back and I've got three. So if I want a three rows, that'd be ideal now I can do is I can select each one of those again, but I need to select the groups I'm going to select bull group and then group two and group four. Really. I should rename those but I'm being a bit lazy And now I can duplicate again using exactly the same settings apply I'm gonna move that over and We should see that we're starting to build this little army of light bulbs And now I can do the same again apply move over and Do it again now because we're using this method you can't just tell it To do your loads and loads of copies because you can't move them across so I don't think you can anyway It might be worth experimenting with it didn't work for me But what I do is just each time I press apply I move across And I can create as many of these as I want now so Hopefully Gordon me old mate That is the solution to your problem that you're looking for if you've got any other questions getting contact I'll certainly have a look But I think that will do based on the picture you've sent me. I think that'll do what you're looking for I hope that helps All right So the next question that I had come through this week is from a chap called Peter Popov, which is a cracking name By the way, well done on that one Peter And it's to do with I think both things are to do with my introduction to Maya tutorials And he's got stuck on a couple of bits So we're gonna have a look at what they are and how you work around them So as you can see I've not actually got The room file with me because I've recently upgraded some stuff So I've just created an example and the problem that Pete is having is that when he renders he can't see anything And he's not sure why that is Fortunately, I know exactly why it is so I'm gonna explain so as you can see here I've got my room and this is the room where we've used back face culling So what it means is that we can't see any faces that get in the way But they are still there and that's kind of the root of the problem with this one So if I render this frame right now, you'll see nothing And it's actually a dead easy fix. The reason we can't see anything is because of where the camera is where we are in the Scene we're outside of the room. So to demonstrate that If I go into a different view that Chat there is the camera If we have a look at it in a different view cameras up there So that is why we can't see anything the cameras way outside the room So when we render we're seeing the outside of the walls and outside of the room. There's no light So we just can't see anything The easy fix there are two ways the first one is there you go I've zoomed in and I can now see from my top and front views that the camera is firmly inside the room So when I press render making sure that I choose the right view to render as well I'm just going to Click and I can see everything So that is probably what it was. There is one other option That it could have been and the reason I thought about this is as we when I was recording this video I made the very same cock-up myself and had a little think And why is it not working? So let's say that I've been working on this view and I've been rendering it and it's working fine I've been in my perspective view, but then I've changed something in my top view And if you just have a lot there's a little gray outline showing which is the active view So when I start going into the top view that gray outline moves and that's to show that that's now the active view So if I render with that being the active view It's gone black again. The reason being I'm now looking from the top view and that cameras outside the room as well So that is what the problem is There is also another potential fix for that if we just go create Lights, I'm going to put in a ambient light I'm just going to move it outside the room and up a little bit So now I'm looking through my perspective view and I'm clearly outside the room But if I render I can still see and I can see them outside the room The reason being is that now there's another light in the scene to light the outside. So Hopefully Peter that clears that up for you and you'll be able to avoid making that mistake in the future Okay, so that's the first thing that Peter emailed me about or actually I think you might have Put something in the comments on that one Okay, the other one is he's having problems with making animations loop using the graph editor So I've created again a bit of an analog for that So he's doing the solar system exercise I just created a cube that's going to spin so I can show you the method and where possibly he's going wrong So I've got this cube spinning around. It's taken a hundred frames But I would like this to go on for more than a hundred frames. I'd like it to go on forever But at the moment it just stops which is not looking for so What I need for this is my graph editor And this as always it will tell me exactly where the problem lies and we can see that The animation stops at 100 for a start. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go view And I'm going to go show results And what that will do is allow me to see What happens to the animation after my final keyframe so what I suspect Peter has done as He selects his curve And then he's gone curves post infinity and he's chosen linear and What that means is it will continue following the direction that's currently going in but because this curves plateauing It comes to a stop and then the line stays flat. So it is still Following that rule it is still doing what it's being told to do but there's nothing for it to do So what we need to do is get this curve Straight so that it keeps going straight up So I think there might be a discrepancy between versions now because what I would normally do is I would select this one here this Keyframe this point and I would go tangents linear But as you can see it's gone linear But after that it's still straight, which I don't think was the case in previous versions of Maya. So what I want to do Is change the tangent type until I get what I'm actually after so in this case? It turned out to be Spline so now we can see that goes up and beyond the curve and that's going to keep my cube spinning forever So if we preview the effects of that I'll press play it's going to keep spinning up to frame 100 But then beyond that it's going to keep spinning at a constant rate for ever and ever and ever wonderful Okay another point just to you Peter if you are watching this hopefully you are I will email you a link to this video I Have tried to reply to your comments on The YouTube video so when you comment below But I've not been able to reply to you directly and I think that's because of your privacy settings in Google plus I May well link to a video Explain how you can put that right so you can have a bit of a dialogue with people through YouTube comments Just so that you're aware of that Yeah, thanks for commenting, but I just can't reply. Okay, so I've covered a fair few things in this video They may or may not be things that you need to know But hopefully those of you that have watched that didn't necessarily ask What you've got from this is that if you do have any problems You can get in contact with me either through email or through YouTube comments and Provided I get time. I will put something together for you And I will upload it So that's my first edition of ask online media tutor done. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one