Preparing for the lessons

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya Unlimited > Live >

In the following lessons, you will create a match move for live footage of a sweeping shot of a backyard and fence. In the second lesson, you will load a fence created in Maya to evaluate how well the Maya camera movement matches the live-action camera.

To ensure the lesson works as described, do these steps before beginning:

Make sure you understand the basic usage of the animation playback controls. See the chapter entitled “Animation” in Getting Started with Maya to learn about these controls.
Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences. Click the Timeline category under Settings and make sure the Playback Speed is set to Play every frame. Animation plays more accurately with this setting.
Locate the Live lesson data on the Maya DVD. It exists on the DVD in this location:
```
Extras/LiveLessonData
```
You can work from the DVD directly or copy the directory to the local disk of your choice. If you copy the directory, you’ll need about 300 Mb of disk space.
If Live doesn’t appear in the menu set selection menu, select Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager. In the Plug-in Manager, locate mayaLive.mll (Windows) and click the loaded checkbox. Wait about 20 seconds for the operation to finish, then close the Plug-in Manager.
Select the Live menu set. All instructions in this lesson assume you have the Live menu set selected.
Choose Scene > New MatchMove.
When you create a new matchmove scene, Live places the Setup control panel at the bottom of the standard Maya window. There are different control panels for each of the main tasks: Setup, Track, Solve, and Fine-Tune. The control panel is where you control most of the Live operations.

Also notice Live creates a camera and an image plane in your scene. This is the camera Live animates. The image plane serves as the background plate when you look through the camera. It is where the images for the live shot will appear once you’ve loaded them.