Beer glass scene creation
This course contains a little bit of everything with modeling, UVing, texturing and dynamics in Maya, as well as compositing multilayered EXR's in Photoshop.
# 1 22-07-2003 , 11:07 AM
TCH2003's Avatar
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 2

Lights and Constraint Aim

Forgive a noob with a noob question plz..... Im following an old book that seems to have been made for Maya 2 ( lol i know) Anyway I dont know Maya well at all but have been able to follow the first two chapters pretty well even tho it was for 2 except for one thing that doesnt seem to want to work.
In the exercise I am doing now, we make a rocket, and we will be animating it to blast off and come crashing back down and bouncing around. Well Ive gotten all the to work except earlier on we (yep gotta mouse in my pocket lol) had to set 3 spotlights. 1 that is just aimed at the launch pad, and 2 that are set to follow the rocket wherever it goes. The book says to select the rocket, then select the first light and then go to Constrain and select Aim. I have done this but the light will not follow the rocket. As a matter of fact it doesnt even point at the rocket when its still sitting on the ground. Seems the only light lighting my scene besides the ambient light is the spotlight that is aimed permanently at the launchpad.
How should I set the two spot lights to aim at the rocket and then follow the rocket wherever it goes?
Im using Maya 4.5 complete by the way.

Thanks TCH

# 2 22-07-2003 , 12:22 PM
BabyDuck's Avatar
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: USA
Posts: 1,170
you select your rocket then the spot light and add a aim constraint. only be careful to set the aim vector to (0,0,-1) otherwise the spotlight will face exactly away from the rocket, never lighting it.

hope that helps

# 3 22-07-2003 , 01:25 PM
TCH2003's Avatar
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Join Date: Jul 2003
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Thank you that helped a lot! user added image So nice that the book I have never mentioned or illustrated settings when they told me to aim the light user added image hehe

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