Free Maya Tutorials

Create Carpet in Maya Free Tutorial

Free Maya tutorial: Create carpet in Maya

Autodesk Maya has many powerful tools to create your own carpet. I find simple way to make a rug in Maya that is also compatible with any render engine. In this free Maya tutorial we will see a simple and effective tecnique to build your own realistic carpet in Maya and Mental Ray using polygon modeling, mental ray proxies and simple mel scripting. Enjoy the carpet creation in Maya!

TYPE: Free maya tutorial
CATEGORY: Modeling, Render Maya, render Mental Ray


INTRO

Are you tired of boring carpets made of fast textures and bump maps?
If so you are going to learn a fast and powerful way to create REAL carpets in Maya and Mental Ray.
Forget about heavy dispalcement maps and slow fur/hair computation... your going to build a very optimized and fasst renderable carpet!
Don't you believe me? Just follow my tutorial and enjoy your own personal carpet!


STEP 1: CREATE BASE FILAMENTS FOR CARPET

Create some basic meshes to create the base filaments of your carpet: this is crucial for the overall appeal of your carpet.
You can take inspirations from google to get your personal shape (curly, traight, furry, etc...). 


I create these basic shapes using a cylinder primitive then I bent and rotated them a little...just to make them less boring  


make carpet in maya tutorial: base shape




STEP 2: CREATE A CARPET BUNCH

Collect the filaments in a single bunch.

You can make bigger or smaller bunches, this will influence the level of detail of your carpet:
big bunches could make your carpet boring but very fast in render and manipulation,
small bunches will produce very high-detailed carpets but the manipulation and the render time could increase to much. 


make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet patch




STEP 2.1: COMBINE ALL AND CREATE A MENTAL RAY PROXY

I advise you to convert the created bunch to mental ray proxy (just take a look at my Maya Mental Ray proxy tutorial),
this will give you many benefits in therms of memory, cpu and system usage. 


make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet mental ray proxy

STEP 3: RENAME CARPET BUNCH

Open your destination scene and import the carpet bunch, be sure to rename the carpet bunch to "carpet" .
This step is essential to make the maya mel script work properly .


make carpet in maya tutorial: rename 01make carpet in maya tutorial: rename carpet




STEP 4: CREATE FIRST ROW OF CARPET BUNCHES

Select the bunch and create the first row using the duplicate special command.
Copy my settings but don't forget to adjust the "translate" and "number of copies" value to match the size of your carpet.


make carpet in maya tutorial: create first row

make carpet in maya tutorial: create carpet patch row


 

STEP 5: CREATE SECOND ROW OF CARPET BUNCHES

Now select the row you just created and repeat the duplicate special command,
just change the number of copies and the direction (translate value)


make carpet in maya tutorial: create second row




STEP 6: RANDOMIZE CARPET BUNCHES

Now the crucial step: randomize the carpet bunches.
This script will allow you to make a nice looking carpet removing the pattern repetition of the bunches.
 
1) Select any carpet bunch (it could take some maya thinking time)
2) Open the script editor (WINDOWS --> GENERAL EDITORS --> SCRIPT EDITOR).


make carpet in maya tutorial: open maya script editor

Copy my script in the text area and then COMMAND window --> EXECUTE

 

make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet mel script

This is the result:

 

make carpet in maya tutorial: random carpet patches

RANDOMIZED MAYA CARPET BUNCHES


STEP 7: ASSIGN A BASIC MENTAL RAY MATERIAL TO THE CARPET

Select the carpet bunches and assign a basic material: I'd go for a mia_material_passes with white diffuse channel, 0 reflections and a bit of transulcency (see the settings below)


make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet mental ray material




STEP 8: CREATE CARPET BORDER BUNCHES

Create a base bunch for the border of the carpet (using the same filaments you modelled at the beginning of the tutorial) and export them.


make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet border patches




STEP 9: PLACE CARPET BORDER BUNCHES

Place the carpet border bunhes manually and randomize their look (scale and rotation)


make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet border creation


You should get something like that:


make carpet in maya tutorial: carpet complete

  



STEP 10: FINAL TOUCHES

Once you finish to create the carpet, just add some objects in the environment to enhance the detail of the overall scene and le jeux sont fait!

Create carpet in maya tutorial, rug render tutorial
 

FINAL WORDS:

Creating carpets and rugs in Maya & Mental Ray can be very challenging. The natural way to make them is using maya fur system, but If you don't have a a life time to complete your renders you should consider making carpets with a clever use of polygons, instances and mental ray proxies (as we did in the tutorial above). If you want more detail go with more complicated bunches and filaments... you won't regret making capets with Maya fur! 



Happy rendering!
Antonio