Maya Tutorial 1

This Craft Tutorial is designed to give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the basic
features of Craft Director Tools.

Recording
1. Create a cone with the following values:
Translate X: 0
Translate Y: 1
Translate Z: -10
Scale X:
X: 1
Scale Y: 1
Scale Z: 1

2. Now create two copies of the first cone

by using Duplicate-
Duplicate-window. In the
Duplicate-
Duplicate-window you will type in the
number of copies and indicate the
distance between these cones. The
distance should be -20 on the Z-axis.
(See the picture to the right).

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3. Click on the Director Tools tab, and then
on the Craft Animations icon to open the
Craft Director Tools window.
4. Click on the Craft Director Tools button in
order to choose which Craft Director Tool
you want to use (See picture on the right).
5. Find Craft Car and click on the button
(see picture below).
6. Configure the controls for Craft Car. The
controls we need are Gas Pedal
(Forw/Backw) and Steering Wheel
(Right/Left).

In order to configure the controls click on

the Configure Craft Director

button in

Tools
Tools and the Configure window will

open up. Click on Main,

Main, Input
and then

settings to open the control config

window. Configure the controls for Gas

Pedal (Forw/Backw) andSteering Wheel
(Right/Left) by clicking onChange,
Change, and

then clickAuto
Autodetect
utodetect . When you have

done this, move the control on your input

device that you wish to use for the

parameter (e.g. move the steering wheel

to the right).

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We have now placed a Craft Car
Car in our
scene along with three cones lined up in a
row. As you can see, we are going to
maneuver Craft Car through an obstacle
course.

7. Now switch to the CCar_01_FollowCam

camera view so that you see Craft Car
from behind. This way you will have an
easier time maneuvering. To change
views, click on Panels in the viewport
menu, and then Perspective.
Perspective. Finally
choose Transform1|CCar_01_FollowCam.

8. Now press Record in Craft Director Tools

to start the recording and steer Craft Car
through the obstacle course as shown by
the arrow in the picture above. When you
are finished press Stop to end the
recording.

Re-recording
The next step in this guide will demonstrate how easy it is to change your animation, as well as
showing how small adjustments in the custom settings can make maneuvers much simpler.

1. Select pCone2
pCone2 and change its Translate
X value to 2.
Duplicate
2. Duplicate the cone and change the new
cone’s Translate X value to -2.

As you can see, we have created a

“gate”, between the two cones, for
Craft Car to drive through. We are still
going to use part of the first recording,
but we are going to make some minor

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 adjustments so that it follows the new
obstacle course. We can do this by
picking up the recording at any point and
re-recording from there. This way you
don’t have to start over from the
beginning. If you play the recording that
you made the first time, you will see that
the car either hits one of the cones in the
gate, or drives around the outside of the
gate entirely. But we are now going to
drive the car in between the two cones
and through the gate, and we won’t have
to start over from the beginning.
3. Drag the time line back to the place
where the car passes the first cone.
4. Click Record to start the recording, and
drive the car though the gate. As you
probably notice it is a bit difficult to steer
the car through the gate without hitting
either cone. We are now going to test
Craft Director Tools’ Slow-motion
function.
5. Drag the time line back to the place
where the car passes the first cone.
6. Change the Slow-
Slow-motion factor to 3 in
Craft Director Tools. (see picture on the
right)
7. Click Record and drive through the gate.
You will notice that it is much easier to
steer now.

If you play the recording you will also

notice that the car’s movements are also
much better when you use slow-motion.

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