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Movable Pivot Control in Maya

This control is meant to be under the root control of a character, making it easy to adjust the center of gravity in which a character can flip or spin. This method creates one very simple to set up control that can rotate the character around any center rather then creating a hierarchy of nodes to rotate at different centers of gravity.

Rated: with 2144 hits  Added on: Feb 09, 2007

Page Turn Animation

This Tutorial would teach you, how to turn a page in Maya, using Maya's skeleton setup.

Rated: with 4966 hits  Added on: Oct 16, 2006

Easy Object Pickup, How to have characters easily grab objects and keep them in their hand

I real life, you don't have to worry about fingers passing through objects in order to pick them up. The density of your hand is sufficiently large enough to cause friction when you hand collides with other pieces of solid matter, thereby allowing you to grab hold of something and not letting it slip through the proverbial fingers. But with CGI characters, they could walk through Fort Knox without tripping over all the pesky guards that would usually get in the way of you or me. But unlike you or me, they would have a problem when they tried to grab the gold, for their grubby little mitts wouldn't be able to hold a tea cup without an animator's assistance, let alone a solid gold brick. So, as an animator, how are you going to have your character grab that bar so you can pay off your loan shark? This tutorial offers a solution, which I hope is easy to grasp..

Rated: with 2810 hits  Added on: Oct 16, 2006

Creating A Missile Animation in Maya Using Instancers

In this tutorial we will animate a group of missiles being shot towards the sky using the 'Instancers' features in Maya.

Rated: with 2439 hits  Added on: Aug 17, 2006

Follow Through and Overlapping Animation

Follow through and overlapping movement are the foundation of good animation. When characters or objects are moving parts of their body or surfaces need to continue moving after the motion has stopped or the objects will look too robotic. By adding a little bit of follow through the action of the shot becomes part of the character and not something added as an after thought. This lesson will cover how to Modify curves in the graph editor Adjust the timing of the animation so it is fit to cycle Create pre / post infinity cycles from the existing keyframes View infinity cycles of your animation Add overlapping animation to your scene

Rated: with 2793 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Adding Anticipation to your Animations

Adding anticipation to animation adds a depth of believability and grounds the action of the scene. By adding anticipation to the shot, the animation gains a lot of depth by showing the audience what is about to happen. Below are the three things that you can add to your animations to create anticipation and believability for your shots: Telling the audienece what is about to happen. Showing the audience what happened Telling the audience what just happened This lesson will also show you how to adjust graph curves and set keyframes.

Rated: with 1747 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Understanding Squash and Stretch

One of the key principles of animation is the use of Squash and Stretch to show weight and volume. This lesson will walk you through the process of using this technique to breathe life into our simple animation. Working with the timeline Using Autokey Working with squash attributes Using stretch to show movement

Rated: with 2931 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Secondary foot controls for the Character Setup Kit

This lesson will teach you how to add attributes to the foot control of the character rigged in the Character Setup kit. Using the Connection Editor Adding custom attributes

Rated: with 1153 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Recording Camera Movements

You can animate your camera based on your mouse movements during playback. This lesson will show us how to set this up. The principle behind this lesson is that changes to values of any attribute connected to a record node are stored as keyframes when the playback’s recording system is switched on. Using this idea with cameras, we can record camera motions. We’ll learn how to: Connect record nodes to our camera with recordAttr commands Playback the scene to record attribute changes

Rated: with 1913 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Animated Sweep Ribbon

This lesson will teach us how to use an Animated Sweep to make ribbon-wrapping effect. We will learn how to: Make a surface from an animated curve Animate the surface expanding with MEL Note: Using the animated sweep technique in this lesson has an added advantage in that the ribbon’s shape can be altered based on the curves made from the sweep.

Rated: with 2333 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Animation Snapshot Trail

In this lesson we will learn how to use Animation Snapshots to create an object trail. This lesson will go over: Using the Animation Snapshot Writing expressions to cause the trailing effect

Rated: with 1250 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

3December Presentation: Full Body IK

In this lesson we will learn how to setup a Full Body IK character inside of Maya. This lesson will guide you through a brief introduction to using FBIK. You will learn how to: Label your joints for characterization Add Full Body IK to the skeleton Pin and unpin controls and lay FBIK keyframes

Rated: with 2856 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

3December Presentation: Substitute Geometry

This lesson will teach you how to use the Substitute Geometry feature to replace animated models with other ones. We will learn about: Substituting bound geometry with non-bound ones Importance of correct scale

Rated: with 876 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Creating Custom Controls with Set Driven Keys

Learn how to use set driven keys to create controls to open and close a door. In this video you will learn: How to link the motion of one object to another with Set Driven Keys About drivers and driven objects How Set Driven Keys can speed up animation

Rated: with 1247 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Rigging the Eyes of Neex

Learn how to use aim constraints and set driven keys to create controls for Neek's head. A lot of expression can be conveyed with good eye animation. Something as subtle as blinking (or lack there of) can make all the difference in your animation. This video explains how to create an interesting eye rig. In this video you will learn: The fundamentals of Set Driven Keys How to have an eyeball always look in the direction of an animation control Creating custom attributes To combine eyeball rotation and blinking for interesting eye motions

Rated: with 2025 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Setting Deformation Order

We cover how to fix deformation ordering problems when binding your characters to their joints. This is a perfect video for those who need help reordering the deformers. In this video we will take a look at: How improper deformation order can mess up our rigs Disabling certain history operations Changing orders in our history stack

Rated: with 1103 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Rigging a Fishing Pole with Arms (part 2)

We cover how to rig the arms and pole. In this lesson we also cover how to animate the weights of a point constraint and making icons to select your objects. In this video you will learn: To rig a fishing pole with a pair of arms To use point constrains and weights

Rated: with 1240 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Maya 5: Animation Tools

With the help of muting and ghosting Maya 5 has a whole new set of tools to help you get your job done. In this video you will learn how to: Mute animation Ghost objects and alter ghosting preferences To set expressions, break connections and more! Tip: Ghosting is a great visual aid for character animation

Rated: with 1196 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Influence objects

In this lesson we will take the muscles created in the previous lesson and add them to the deformations. These muscles will help deform the smooth bound surface. This lesson will cover: How to get back to bind pose when you get an error saying, “Bind Pose Not Achieved” How to add an influences to an object

Rated: with 1137 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006

Making Clusters

Learn how to create clusters of cv's. Clusters can be real time savers when working with the same cv's over and over. Clusters are very useful in rigging. Delicate and subtle motions such as eye twitches and blinks can be achieved quite easily with clusters and set driven keys. In this video you will learn: The basics of clusters How to make clusters out of components How clusters can be used for modeling and animation

Rated: with 1279 hits  Added on: Jul 06, 2006