ACU Maya flashcards
ACU Maya · Build recall with a focused review session.
33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- DAG
- Directed acyclic graph: Maya's scene hierarchy of transforms and shapes. Each node has one parent and can have many children, and the graph has no cycles.
- Construction history
- The chain of upstream nodes that build a shape. Editing an upstream node rebuilds downstream geometry, so deleting history bakes the current result.
- Freeze Transformations
- A command that sets the object's current translate, rotate, and scale values to zero while keeping the object visually in place, by baking the offset into geometry.
- Pivot point
- The local origin around which an object rotates and scales. Moving the pivot changes rotation behavior without moving the object's geometry.
- Namespace
- A named container that prefixes object names, preventing collisions when many characters or referenced scenes share the same short object names.
- Referencing
- Loading another Maya scene into the current scene as a read-only linked file. Edits made to the source file update in every scene that references it.
- Channel Box
- A panel listing keyable, numeric attributes of the selected node, such as translate, rotate, and scale, with fields for direct value entry and keying.
- Quad topology
- A mesh built mostly of four-sided faces. Quads smooth and deform predictably, unlike triangles and n-gons, which can pinch under skinning and subdivision.
- Edge loop
- A continuous ring of edges that follows surface flow. Edge loops around joints and the mouth provide geometry that bends cleanly when rigged.
- Non-manifold geometry
- Geometry that cannot exist as a closed surface, such as an edge shared by three or more faces, a hole, or an isolated vertex. It breaks booleans and some exporters.
- Combine vs Merge
- Combine joins selected meshes into one mesh node while keeping separate shells. Merge collapses selected vertices into a single point, welding shells together.
- Smooth Mesh Preview
- A viewport display that shows a smoothed approximation of the polygon cage without changing the base mesh. Hotkey 2 shows it, 1 returns to the cage.
- Boolean operation
- A modeling operation that combines two meshes by union, difference, or intersection. The result often needs cleanup because it can create n-gons and non-manifold edges.
- Bevel
- A polygon tool that replaces a selected edge or vertex with a rounded or chamfered strip of new faces, controlling edge highlight in renders.
- UV mapping
- The process of assigning 2D texture coordinates to 3D surface points, so image textures can be placed and painted accurately on the model.
- Automatic Mapping
- A projection method that unwraps a mesh from several planes at once, producing multiple UV shells. It suits organic shapes that are hard to map with one projection.
- Metalness
- A shader input where 0 makes a surface dielectric (plastic, wood) and 1 makes it metal. Metals tint reflections with base color and have no diffuse component.
- Normal map
- An image that encodes surface direction per pixel in tangent space, adding fine detail to lighting without extra geometry. Green channel convention differs by renderer.
- Bump map
- A grayscale height image that perturbs surface normals to simulate small detail. It is cheaper than a normal map but cannot change the silhouette.
- place2dTexture
- A utility node connected to a file texture that controls 2D placement: repeat UV, offset, rotation, and wrap mode for tiling patterns.
- UV shell overlap
- Two or more UV islands occupying the same texture space. This is fine for tiling color but corrupts baked normal and ambient occlusion maps.
- Texture reference object
- A static duplicate of a mesh used to hold UVs while the original deforms, allowing texture painting or baking on a moving character.
- Inverse kinematics
- A rigging method where the position of an end-effector goal drives the rotation of joints up the chain, instead of rotating each joint manually.
- Pole vector
- A control that defines the bending plane of a rotate-plane IK chain. Moving it twists the chain so the elbow or knee points in the intended direction.
- Smooth skinning
- A binding method where each vertex blends weights across several joints, producing smooth deformation at joints instead of rigid, faceted bends.
- Set Driven Key
- A Maya tool that links one attribute to another. You set a driver value, set the driven value, and key both to record the relationship.
- Stepped tangent
- A Graph Editor tangent type that holds a key's value constant until the next key, producing sudden changes with no interpolation. Useful for mechanical or snappy motion.
- Bake Simulation
- A command that samples animated constraints, IK, and expressions into per-frame keyframes on the selected objects, so the motion survives without the original rig.
- Arnold camera samples
- The Arnold sampling setting (AA samples) that controls how many rays are cast per pixel. Higher values reduce overall noise at the cost of render time.
- Ray depth
- A render limit on how many times a ray can bounce. Too low a value darkens or blackens reflections and refractions that need more bounces.
- Area light
- A light emitted from a surface shape rather than a point. Its size and shape determine shadow softness and the look of specular highlights.
- AOV
- An arbitrary output variable: a render pass such as diffuse, specular, shadow, or depth, saved separately so a compositor can adjust each contribution.
- Playblast
- A quick viewport capture to a movie or image sequence, used to review animation timing and motion without waiting for a final-quality render.