IntroductionWelcome | 00:04 | Hi! I'm George Maestri and welcome to
Maya Essentials 5: Animation Tools.
| | 00:09 | In this course, we're first going
to start out understanding the basic
| | 00:13 | animation interface in Maya and then
we're going to create and adjust keys.
| | 00:19 | After that, we're going to play
back animations using Playblast,
| | 00:23 | and then we're also going to look at
things like motion paths, motion trails.
| | 00:28 | After that, we're going to edit some
animation using the Graph Editor and
| | 00:32 | finally, we're going to go over some
of the basics of creating a skeleton
| | 00:36 | to deform a character and
then animate that character.
| | 00:40 | With that, let's go ahead and get started
with Maya Essentials 5: Animation Tools.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a lynda.com premium subscriber,
you'll get the Exercise Files for download.
| | 00:06 | If you want to follow along with the
Exercise Files, go ahead and take the
| | 00:11 | Exercise Files folder and
place it on your Desktop.
| | 00:15 | Now, each Exercise File folder
has an individual Maya project.
| | 00:21 | So at the beginning of each chapter,
| | 00:23 | go ahead and set your project
to the appropriate chapter.
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|
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1. Animating in MayaUnderstanding the animation interface| 00:00 | Before we get started, let's go
ahead and take a look at the
| | 00:02 | animation interface for Maya, as
well as set up some preferences,
| | 00:07 | so that way we're all on the same
page when we start animating.
| | 00:10 | Now, most of the animation tools for Maya
are located along the bottom of the screen.
| | 00:17 | We have a Timeline here, and we can just
left-click and drag to scrub through that.
| | 00:23 | Below it, we have what are
called the range sliders.
| | 00:28 | Now, this allows you to see more
or less of the animation timeline.
| | 00:33 | So in this case, we have a
start frame for the animation,
| | 00:36 | a start frame for the playback range,
which is indicated by this slider,
| | 00:42 | as well as an end frame for the playback range,
and an end frame for the entire animation.
| | 00:49 | So in this case, we're actually only
seeing from frame 1 to 24 out of a total
| | 00:54 | of 48 frames for this animation.
| | 00:57 | Now if I want to see a different window
in this, I can just left-click and drag
| | 01:02 | this bar and notice how these numbers change.
| | 01:05 | I can also left-click on one of these
tabs here and just expand or contract it,
| | 01:12 | and notice how the numbers here are changing.
| | 01:14 | So if I wanted to see my entire timeline,
I can just make this as big as I can,
| | 01:20 | which will be 48 frames.
| | 01:22 | And once I do that, I can scrub
through the entire animation.
| | 01:26 | Now this is very handy for if you have
long scenes and you need to zoom in
| | 01:32 | just to work on a little part of it.
| | 01:34 | And so get used to using this
Time Slider; it will help a lot.
| | 01:38 | Now over here to the right, we have our
Playback controls, but before we take
| | 01:42 | a look at those, let's go ahead
and set up some animation settings.
| | 01:46 | So if I click here on this little icon,
we have our Preferences,
| | 01:50 | which brings up our
general Preferences window.
| | 01:55 | Now I can get to this
same window by going into
| | 01:57 | Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences,
but hitting this button actually brings
| | 02:02 | this into the window and puts us on
the Time Slider Settings entry,
| | 02:08 | and this puts us right into the
Animation settings we need to affect.
| | 02:12 | So we've got a Playback start/
end here, which is the same as this.
| | 02:17 | We have an Animation start/end, which
again is our total animation range.
| | 02:22 | We have a Height of the Time Slider;
| | 02:25 | do you want to make it twice
as big or four times as big?
| | 02:28 | Typically, I keep it at 1.
| | 02:30 | We also have what are called Key ticks.
| | 02:32 | Now every time you set a keyframe in Maya,
it will show a key tick on the timeline.
| | 02:39 | So for example, if I just click on this
submarine here, you'll see I have a
| | 02:43 | key tick here at frame 1 and at frame 48.
| | 02:48 | And then we can adjust the size of
this key tick here by just adjusting it
| | 02:53 | up to either 1 through 5.
| | 02:55 | Now in order to make this a little bit
more visible for you on the small screen,
| | 03:00 | I'm actually going to dial this up to 4.
| | 03:03 | Now we also have Options for the Time
Slider; do we want to look at Timecode,
| | 03:08 | or not, and do we want to
snap to individual frames?
| | 03:13 | So if you're working with specific
timecode, you can't turn that on.
| | 03:16 | Now the other important group of
settings is the Playback settings.
| | 03:21 | So how do we want to update our view?
| | 03:24 | Do we want to update just
the Active view or All views?
| | 03:27 | So this actually works in a multi-viewport mode.
| | 03:31 | So I'm actually going to pull this off
to side of the screen, so we can see it,
| | 03:36 | and then I'm just going to hit my Spacebar.
| | 03:38 | And as you can see, I've got
this in several different views.
| | 03:41 | Now if I have it set to Active, it will only
animate that viewport which I have active.
| | 03:47 | So if I click my Perspective
window, I'll see that.
| | 03:50 | If I click in my Top
viewport, I'll see that.
| | 03:54 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and
pull my Preferences over here.
| | 03:58 | If I want, I can
update it in All views,
| | 04:01 | which then just allows you to
see everything in any view.
| | 04:05 | Now the reason that you probably wouldn't want
to check this is if you have a complex scene.
| | 04:12 | So sometimes it takes a while to update
the viewports, you may want to keep it
| | 04:17 | to Active just to reduce the amount of
effort Maya needs to update this scene.
| | 04:23 | Then do you want to loop at
Once, do you want to Oscillate,
| | 04:25 | or do you want to
keep it Continuous?
| | 04:28 | And the last one is Playback speed;
so do we want to Play every frame,
| | 04:32 | do we want to do it at Real-time,
Half, Twice or the Other?
| | 04:35 | So if I play it at every frame, it
may actually be a little bit too fast,
| | 04:40 | if you have a simple scene.
| | 04:41 | So in this case, it's actually
going faster than 24 frames a second.
| | 04:45 | So if I keep it to Real-time, then
it will play at 24 frames a second.
| | 04:52 | And again, I'm just hitting
the Playback button here.
| | 04:56 | So let's go through the
Playback options as well.
| | 04:59 | So we do have a Play forwards
button, which I've been hitting.
| | 05:02 | In fact, let's go ahead and bring
up our Perspective window here.
| | 05:06 | We can also play backwards, which
again just reverses the scene.
| | 05:10 | We can step forward one keyframe. Okay, so I have
to have an object selected in order to do that.
| | 05:22 | So, this will not work if
there's nothing selected.
| | 05:25 | So what it does is it takes the object,
looks to see if there's a keyframe
| | 05:30 | and sets that keyframe.
| | 05:31 | So if I were to select say the little
periscope up here, you can see I have
| | 05:35 | a couple of keyframes set for this.
| | 05:38 | So if I step forward one key, it will
just jump to each one of those keys.
| | 05:43 | This here steps forward
just one frame at a time.
| | 05:45 | So again you're just scrubbing
through one frame at a time.
| | 05:48 | This goes to the beginning, this goes to the
end, and of course these actually go backwards.
| | 05:55 | And then there's one more little
button here called the Auto key button.
| | 05:59 | So what this does is it will
automatically set keyframes
| | 06:03 | if you already have
animation on an object.
| | 06:07 | So this is very handy for just
doing fine-tuning and adjusting;
| | 06:11 | it will automatically set
the keyframe for the object.
| | 06:14 | Now the last thing I wanted to show you is
how to set the frame rate of the animation.
| | 06:20 | So let's go back into Animation
Preferences and under Settings,
| | 06:26 | we have a timeline here, so we can actually
set our timeline to whatever we want,
| | 06:32 | but I'm actually going to go
ahead and just keep it at Film.
| | 06:36 | Now there's one more setting
that I'd like to show you,
| | 06:39 | and that's under Settings > Animation.
| | 06:41 | This is how Maya auto keys.
| | 06:44 | If I turn on or off Auto key here, you
can see it actually shows on this settings.
| | 06:51 | But the most important thing is
do we want to key all attributes,
| | 06:57 | or only modified attributes?
| | 06:59 | In other words, if you move the object only
in X, it will only set a keyframe in X,
| | 07:06 | but if you key all attributes,
then it will key everything.
| | 07:10 | So typically, I like to keep at a Key
all, but if you want to be more specific,
| | 07:16 | you can put it on Key modified.
| | 07:18 | So I'm going to put this at Key all,
and then there we should be ready to go.
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| Animating objects | 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and
start animating objects in Maya.
| | 00:03 | We're just going to set some basic
keyframes to show you how this works.
| | 00:08 | We're going to start off with a simple object.
| | 00:10 | I'm just going to create a cylinder.
| | 00:12 | So I'm going to go under the Polygons
shelf, click on the Cylinder and then
| | 00:17 | just drag up a very simple cylinder.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to go ahead and
shade that, so we can see it.
| | 00:24 | Go ahead and move this
in X over to about here,
| | 00:25 | because this is where I
want my animation to start.
| | 00:29 | So when we animate, we have to first set
a keyframe, all animation is based on keys
| | 00:36 |
and keys are basically just a recording
of where the object is at a specific frame.
| | 00:43 | So in order to set a key, we need to
go into our Animation menu set and
| | 00:48 | under Animate, we have Set Key.
| | 00:50 | Now notice the hot key for this is the
letter S and you'll be using that a lot.
| | 00:55 | Let's go ahead into the Options here.
| | 00:57 | I'm going to click on this little square here,
and let's go through our Set Key Options.
| | 01:02 | So what do we want to set keys on?
| | 01:04 | Do we want to set keys on
everything, which is the top one,
| | 01:07 | just the keyable attributes, all manipulator
handles, in other words all of these,
| | 01:12 | so if I'm doing move, it'll key all the move
handles, or just the Current manipulator handle,
| | 01:18 |
in other words, if I'm just adjusting
X, then it will only keyframe X.
| | 01:22 | Do you want to set keys at the Current
time or do you want it to prompt you for
| | 01:27 | a specific time? And then do we want to
set IK/FK keys, which actually gets into
| | 01:32 | character animation, these are
Inverse and Forward Kinematics keys.
| | 01:35 | But typically, I'm just going
to leave this at the default
| | 01:38 | and let's just go ahead
and do a Set Key.
| | 01:41 | Now I could have just as easily
hit the S key on the keyboard.
| | 01:45 | Now, when I set that key, notice
how we get a key tick here at frame 1.
| | 01:51 | But we don't get animation,
because we don't have multiple keys.
| | 01:55 | I need to move it someplace
else and set another key.
| | 01:59 | I'm going to go ahead and move the
timeline forward to frame 24,
| | 02:04 | and then just go ahead
and move this over.
| | 02:06 | Then I'm going to hit the S key on the
keyboard and notice how I get another key tick.
| | 02:13 | So now I have animation.
| | 02:19 | Now if I want to, I can go in
and add in another keyframe.
| | 02:23 | So if I were to move this here, I'm
not going to get animation until
| | 02:30 | I actually set a keyframe.
| | 02:31 | So if I were to move this here, I
would have to hit the S key to keyframe.
| | 02:38 | Now probably the easier way to do
this is to actually click on this Auto
| | 02:43 | keyframe toggle and once I do that, it
will go ahead and start setting keys
| | 02:50 | as soon as I start moving the object.
| | 02:52 | So if I move this object here, it sets a key.
| | 02:57 | So now it goes here and then here.
| | 03:02 | Now if I want, I don't have to just do move
keys, I can do keyframes to really anything.
| | 03:07 | So if I, for example, were to rotate this,
I could certainly rotate this on the side,
| | 03:12 | in fact if I want to, I
can type in a value here.
| | 03:16 | And because I have Auto keyframes
set up, the rotation will be keyed.
| | 03:20 | Now also notice that when my object is
keyed, all of these channels show up in red.
| | 03:30 | So if I were to create another object here,
let's go ahead and just create a sphere,
| | 03:34 | you'll notice here that none of these are
keyed and because they're all just gray,
| | 03:40 |
but as soon as I hit S to set a
keyframe, then that shows up in red,
| | 03:46 | and that tells you that the object is animating.
| | 03:50 | So those are some of the
basics of how to animate objects.
| | 03:54 | Now just remember, in order to set a
keyframe, you need to hit the S key,
| | 03:59 | and once you've set the first
keyframe, then you can auto keyframe
| | 04:04 | all of the subsequent keys.
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| Animating attributes| 00:00 | We can use animation to move
objects through the scene,
| | 00:03 | but we can also animate
attributes within Maya.
| | 00:07 | So we can take almost any
parameter in Maya and animate it.
| | 00:11 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to go into my Polygons menu here
and we're going to create a simple cube.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to go ahead and shade it.
| | 00:25 | If we want, we can animate it.
| | 00:26 | We could just go ahead and set a keyframe
here for Translation, Rotation or Scale.
| | 00:31 | But what I really want to do is actually
change another attribute of the object.
| | 00:37 | So if I go down here to INPUTS and click
on polyCube1, you'll see I have a number
| | 00:43 | of options here for Width, Height
and Depth and these are basically
| | 00:47 | just attributes that we've applied
to the object by creating it.
| | 00:52 | Now we can animate any one of these
attributes and we can do that by
| | 00:57 | right-clicking over this
and doing Key Selected.
| | 01:00 | Now when I do that, you'll
see a keyframe comes up here.
| | 01:06 | Now if want, I could actually
use that same technique here
| | 01:09 | on Translation, Rotation and Scale.
| | 01:11 | You can always right-click over
anything and do that Key Selected.
| | 01:14 | I'm not going to do that for this.
| | 01:16 | But also notice how when I've
keyed that, it comes up as red,
| | 01:21 | which tells me that it's animated.
| | 01:23 | Now if move my Time Slider over and
make sure that Auto key is turned on,
| | 01:29 | I can change my width to any value I want.
| | 01:34 | And now what's happened is, once
I've set that first keyframe,
| | 01:37 | changing the width actually
animates all of that.
| | 01:40 | Now I don't have to just
change things like width,
| | 01:44 | I could actually change
all sorts of stuff.
| | 01:46 | So if I want, I could for example,
set a keyframe for the number of
| | 01:50 | subdivisions in the object.
| | 01:52 | Let's say I want it to have more
subdivisions going this way,
| | 01:56 | and then as it squishes
down, it gets fewer.
| | 01:58 | So I can go ahead and right
click over this, Key Selected.
| | 02:03 | And then as this squishes down,
I can put in another number,
| | 02:07 | say 2 or something like
that, and key those as well.
| | 02:12 | So now what's happening is not only
is the box decreasing in width,
| | 02:17 | but it's also decreasing
the number of subdivisions.
| | 02:21 | I'm sure you can see the
flexibility of this sort of animation.
| | 02:24 | You really do get a lot of control
over how your objects animate.
| | 02:29 | Now we don't just have to
animate single parameters,
| | 02:31 | we can animate other
things such as color.
| | 02:35 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 02:37 | I'm going to go into my Rendering
tab, keep my box selected,
| | 02:41 | and let's just go ahead
and apply a Blinn shader.
| | 02:45 | And let's go ahead and just left-
click on this and pick a color;
| | 02:49 | so we're going to make a green box.
| | 02:51 | Now if I want, I can set
a key for this color.
| | 02:56 | Now if I right-click over the color
itself, it still picks that Color Picker.
| | 03:00 | I need to right-click over the word
Color and then it gives me Set Key.
| | 03:07 | Once I do that, then I can set
another key to change the color again.
| | 03:13 | So all I have to do is select a
new color, right-click over Set Key.
| | 03:24 | So now you can see how
it's changing color.
| | 03:28 | Now when you change color in a material, you
will see this little node that pops up here,
| | 03:36 |
and if we click on this, this gives us all
the information for how the color changes.
| | 03:43 | Now these are just a couple of examples
of how to animate attributes in Maya.
| | 03:48 | But as you can see this is a very,
very powerful tool and I'm sure you'll
| | 03:52 | be using it as you get deeper into Maya.
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| Copying and adjusting keys | 00:00 | There are many times when we animate
when we'll need to adjust the animation.
| | 00:04 | A lot of times this is just as simple as
moving keyframes back or forth on the Timeline.
| | 00:10 | So let's take a look at how to do that.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to go ahead and
start off with a simple cube;
| | 00:15 | so I'm just going to go onto my
Polygon shelf, select the Cube and drag out a
| | 00:20 | basic cube, and I'm going to
position this off to one side here.
| | 00:26 | Let's go ahead and set some keyframes.
| | 00:27 | I'm going hit my S key to set a
keyframe here, move to frame 24 and then I'm
| | 00:34 | going to go ahead and move my box
over there, hit S again, and then let's
| | 00:38 | put one in the middle.
| | 00:39 | So I'm going to go to frame 12 and
again hit S. If I want to I could turn on
| | 00:44 | auto keyframe, but I decided
just to use the Set Key command.
| | 00:48 | Okay I'm going to hit 5 to shade this.
| | 00:51 | So as you can see we've got a
little bit of animation going on.
| | 00:54 | Now let's say we don't want
this to be exactly this timing;
| | 01:00 | let's say we want this middle
frame to be in a different place.
| | 01:03 | Well, it can be very easy to change this;
| | 01:06 | we can just copy and paste
keyframes from the Timeline.
| | 01:10 | All you have to do is get your cursor
over the frame, so in this case frame 12,
| | 01:16 | right-click and we have Cut,
Copy and Paste and Delete.
| | 01:21 | So I'm going to go ahead and cut
this frame, so as you can see it's gone.
| | 01:27 | And let's move to another place on the Timeline.
| | 01:30 | We're going to move to frame
8, right-click Paste, Paste.
| | 01:36 | So now it goes to frame 8
sooner and then goes to frame 24.
| | 01:42 | Well if we want, we can paste
this key again, if we want to.
| | 01:48 | It's already still in the buffer, so if
we want we can right-click and go Paste,
| | 01:52 | Paste and now it will actually
hold this there and then move it.
| | 01:57 | Now if we want to delete a
keyframe, we can also just hit Delete.
| | 02:01 | Now there is also a Copy command;
| | 02:04 | it's very similar to Cut
except it leaves it in place.
| | 02:07 | So if I wanted to I could right-click
over this at frame 8, hit Copy, and just
| | 02:12 | put 1 at frame 10 again, right
-clicking and hitting Paste.
| | 02:16 | So again we've got a little bit
of pause in there if we want to.
| | 02:22 | If we want to we don't have to just right-
click and Copy/Paste on individual frames;
| | 02:28 | we can do this on ranges of frames.
| | 02:31 | So if I select this object, hold down
the Shift key, left-click and drag, you
| | 02:36 | can see how I can draw
this red area on the Timeline.
| | 02:39 | And what this does is it allows me to
select keys, so if I want to I can select
| | 02:46 | these keys and say Cut them, and
if I wanted to I could Paste them.
| | 02:50 | But more importantly it allows
me to interact with multiple keys.
| | 02:56 | So I can hold down the Shift key, select
these and you'll see I've got arrows on
| | 03:02 | either side of this, plus one in the middle.
| | 03:05 | So if I drag the one in the middle,
you can see how I can actually just
| | 03:10 | reposition these interactively.
| | 03:12 | So if I want it to be
here then I can put it there.
| | 03:16 | I can do this for individual frames,
so if I hold down the Shift key and just
| | 03:20 | left-click on 14, it selects only that
key and then I can click in the middle
| | 03:25 | here, and just again readjust it however I want.
| | 03:30 | Now I can also compress or expand
keys, so if I hold down the Shift key,
| | 03:36 | left-click and drag, so I got 14
through 16, I can compress it or expand it, so
| | 03:44 | I can actually make this bigger or smaller.
| | 03:47 | Now one of the things you need to be
aware of is that sometimes it will put
| | 03:52 | frames in the middle.
| | 03:54 | In other words this frame
is not exactly at 14 or 15;
| | 03:59 | it's in the middle.
| | 04:00 | And so sometimes you're going to get
none integer keyframes and that can
| | 04:05 | sometimes be problematic.
| | 04:08 | But again as you can see
we can Cut, Copy, Paste.
| | 04:12 | And if we Shift+Select multiple frames
we can move those around or expand or
| | 04:17 | compress them to retime our animation.
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| Creating breakdown keys | 00:00 | Another way to adjust keys is to
use what's called a breakdown key.
| | 00:05 | Now this is a key that exists
between two other keys
| | 00:09 | and basically it's an
automatic in between.
| | 00:12 | So let's take a look at
this very, very quickly.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to create just a simple sphere.
| | 00:17 | And let's go ahead and just
do a quick animation here.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to hit the S key
to set a keyframe at frame 1.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to move forward to frame 6, hit
another keyframe at the exact same spot,
| | 00:31 | and then let's move forward to say
frame 16 and move this over and hit S
| | 00:38 | again to set another keyframe.
| | 00:41 | Now if I want I can create a key in the
middle of this, let's say at frame 11,
| | 00:47 | let's go up here and set a key.
| | 00:50 | But in this case I'm not going to set
a regular key. I'm going to set what's
| | 00:54 | called a Breakdown key; in fact let's
take a look at some of the options here.
| | 00:59 | They're very similar to
what we have for a Set key.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to go ahead
and just Set a Breakdown key.
| | 01:05 | Now notice how this key
is green as opposed to red.
| | 01:10 | Now what this key does is it actually
sits in between these two main keys.
| | 01:18 | So if I were to Shift+Left-click on
frame 16 and adjust the position of that,
| | 01:25 | notice how this middle
frame adjusts as well.
| | 01:30 | So now instead of going from 6 to 16,
it goes from 6 to 14, or say 6 to 12.
| | 01:38 | And what it does is it always maintains
that same distance between the two keys.
| | 01:43 | Now this doesn't have to
happen for a middle key.
| | 01:46 | Let's go ahead and say
drag this out to 18.
| | 01:49 | I can select my Breakdown key and bias
it, let's say I move it say here to 10,
| | 01:55 | it will now again keep that same ratio,
so it'll be always closer to the one
| | 02:02 | at frame 6 rather than to the end frame.
| | 02:05 | So Breakdown keys are very, very handy.
| | 02:08 | They automatically allow you to
have keyframes in between other keys
| | 02:13 | that adjust accordingly.
| | 02:15 | And it makes it much easier to do
sophisticated animation, because
| | 02:20 | you really don't have to keep
track of every single key.
| | 02:23 | Some of the keys will automatically
adjust as you retime your animation.
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| Animation playback using Playblast | 00:00 | There are many times when your
animation will not play in real time
| | 00:04 | in your viewport; that's if
you have a complex scene.
| | 00:07 | There are also times when you'll need
a separate file of your animation
| | 00:12 | to send off to a client
for tests or whatever.
| | 00:15 | Playblast is the tool
to use for both of these.
| | 00:19 | It allows you to render what you see
in the viewport and put it out to
| | 00:24 | a movie file that you can use later.
| | 00:26 | So let's take a look at this simple scene;
we've got this simple submarine scene.
| | 00:30 | Now I want to see the whole scene here,
so I'm actually going to go ahead and
| | 00:34 | click here on my slider and
just move it out to frame 48.
| | 00:38 | And let's go ahead and do a Playblast; we
can get to it by doing Window > Playblast,
| | 00:44 |
and let's go through the Options so that
we know what we're working with here.
| | 00:48 | So the first one is what Time range
do we want? Do we want to use this Time
| | 00:52 | Slider here, or do we want to specify a
Start and End frame, which we do here?
| | 00:58 | I'm going to leave this at Time Slider.
| | 01:00 | Do we want to show the ornaments on
the screen? So in other words if we have
| | 01:05 | helper objects that sort of
thing, do we want to show them?
| | 01:09 | And then what Format do we want to use?
| | 01:12 | Do we want to use avi, qt (QuickTime),
or an iff sequence?
| | 01:17 | I'm going to leave this at avi
since I'm on a Windows machine.
| | 01:21 | And what Encoding do you want to use
for that avi file, or qt (QuickTime) file?
| | 01:27 | And then of course the Quality
settings. And next we have Display size.
| | 01:32 | Do we want it From window, which is
basically the size of our viewport?
| | 01:38 | Or do we want to have it From the
Render Settings? So in other words,
| | 01:43 | if I have my Render Settings here, under
Output, you'll see that I have 640x480.
| | 01:49 | Do I want to make this in that ratio?
| | 01:52 | I'm going to actually keep it in window.
| | 01:55 | And then we also have a Custom setting
here and you can actually specify any size.
| | 01:59 | I'm going to put this back to From window.
| | 02:02 | And then we also have a Scale option,
do you want it be the entire size of
| | 02:07 | this window or a fraction of it?
| | 02:09 | I'm going keep this at 0.50, which
is basically just a quarter size view.
| | 02:14 | And then if you're using iff files,
what sort of Frame padding do you want?
| | 02:18 | Now down here we can also
save to a specific file.
| | 02:23 | So if you have a scene name and just
want to save that out, you can do that.
| | 02:28 | And that way you can take that movie and
send it off to your director or client,
| | 02:33 | so that they can see your animation test
and also do a temp cut of the animation.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to go ahead and click this
off and let's just do a quick Playblast.
| | 02:42 | And what this will do is it will run
through the scene and save it to a file.
| | 02:47 | So this will probably happen
fairly quickly. So there it goes.
| | 02:50 | As you can see, it basically just ran
through that as fast as it could and then
| | 02:55 | saved it out to an avi, and then it
brought up the avi in Media Player.
| | 03:00 | Now if you're using a QuickTime, it
will bring it up in QuickTime player and
| | 03:05 | if you're using iff files, it will bring it
up in a Maya application called FCheck.
| | 03:11 | But now that I have it, I can play it.
| | 03:13 | And now that I have it as a movie file I
can use this movie file however I want.
| | 03:19 | So those are some of the basics of
using Playblast, and I find this very,
| | 03:24 | very handy for not only giving out samples
of your animation, but also for getting
| | 03:31 | a real-time view of an animation
that's too complex to play in a viewport.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating objects along paths | 00:00 | Another way to animate objects is
to attach them to a motion path and
| | 00:05 | that way you can use a curve to
precisely control how an object moves.
| | 00:09 | I have a simple scene here with
our submarine and a NURBS Curve.
| | 00:14 | So what we want to do is attach
this submarine to the curve
| | 00:19 | and use the curve as the motion path.
| | 00:22 | So we do this by first selecting
the object we want to attach
| | 00:26 | and then selecting
the motion path second.
| | 00:29 | So I'm selecting
this NURBS Curve last,
| | 00:32 | then under Animate we have
a Motion Paths option.
| | 00:35 | And the first thing we want
to do is Attach to Motion Path
| | 00:39 | and let's take a look at
some of the options for that.
| | 00:42 | So under Motion Path we have what Time
range; in other words how long will
| | 00:47 | it take for the object
to complete that path?
| | 00:50 | Do we want to use the Time Slider;
in other words from frame 1 to 24?
| | 00:55 | Do we want to indicate a new Start
position, or do we want to indicate a
| | 00:59 | Start and an End positions?
| | 01:01 | So in other words, I can
type in whatever values I want.
| | 01:04 | Then down here we have controls to
orient the object along the path.
| | 01:10 | Quite honestly I don't know how much
object is oriented, so I can't type these in.
| | 01:16 | But we can always change them later
just by going into the Attribute Editor.
| | 01:20 | So once I have this all set up,
all I have to do now is hit Attach.
| | 01:25 | And this attaches the
object to the Motion Path.
| | 01:28 | Obviously it's not faced the same way,
but let's go ahead and do a quick slide.
| | 01:32 | You can see how the object moves along
the motion path from frame 1 to frame 24.
| | 01:40 | But obviously it's not
facing the right direction.
| | 01:43 | So what we can do is select our
submarine and go into the Attribute Editor.
| | 01:48 | And here you should find a tab that
says motionPath, and then all we have to do
| | 01:54 | is go through this and as you can see
it's basically those same parameters,
| | 01:59 | and adjust the Front and the Up
Axis so that the object is aligned.
| | 02:04 | So if I change my Front Axis to Y no, to Z, okay,
so Front Axis at Z, Up Axis at Y should do it.
| | 02:13 | Now if I do a different Up Axis, you
can see how each one of these changes.
| | 02:17 | I really want this to be Z and Y.
And then we have other options here,
| | 02:22 | if we want we can bank the object
or do whatever else we want.
| | 02:25 | But this is really all
I need at this point.
| | 02:29 | So let's go ahead and just slide
this along and you see how now
| | 02:33 | the submarine follows that path.
| | 02:35 | Now one thing I also want to point out is that
what is animating in this case is the U Value.
| | 02:42 | Notice how this is highlighted in red
that means there are keyframes applied.
| | 02:47 | This is basically a number
that goes from zero to one.
| | 02:50 | One is the end of the path;
| | 02:52 | zero is the beginning of the path.
| | 02:54 | Now if I want, I can go back
and select my path and edit it.
| | 03:00 | So if I right-click over the path and
select Control Vertex, I could box select
| | 03:05 | these vertices, hit my Move Tool,
and adjust the shape of the path.
| | 03:10 | So now the object is moving
on a different path.
| | 03:15 | If we want, we can also
add intermediate keys.
| | 03:18 | In other words tell it where the sub needs
to be at any specific point on that path.
| | 03:23 | So I'm going to go back into Object
mode, select my object and let's go
| | 03:29 | ahead into the middle of this path.
| | 03:31 | Let's go to frame 12 and under Animate,
I'm going to select Motion Paths,
| | 03:36 | Set Motion Path Key.
| | 03:38 | Now when I do that, notice
how the number 12 comes up.
| | 03:42 | We have a keyframe at 1, 12, and
24; these are at frame numbers.
| | 03:48 | Now if I want, I can highlight
any one of these and middle-click
| | 03:54 | and drag to reposition that.
| | 03:56 | So if I want it to go slower at the
beginning, say from 1 to 12,
| | 04:02 | and let's take a look from 12 to
24, I can push the 12 closer to 24.
| | 04:07 | Or I can do it the opposite direction and
again I'm just middle-clicking and dragging.
| | 04:12 | So now it goes faster to frame
12 and then slows out to frame 24.
| | 04:16 | Or if I do it the opposite, it's a
little bit slower and then it speeds up.
| | 04:24 | So those are some of the basics of
how to attach objects to Motion Paths.
| | 04:29 | Now this can be a very, very helpful
tool, particularly when you want
| | 04:34 | to precisely control how an
object moves through a scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating motion trails| 00:00 | Another way to create a motion path
is just actually work in reverse,
| | 00:04 | so set an animation and then create
an editable path from that animation.
| | 00:10 | So I have my submarine here, in fact
I'm going to go ahead and expand
| | 00:15 | my Timeline to a full 48 frames
here and select my submarine.
| | 00:19 | And you'll see I have a keyframe
here at frame one and at frame 48.
| | 00:23 | So let's go ahead and
place one more key in here.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to select my Move Tool, move
by submarine say a little bit back in X
| | 00:32 | and hit S to set a keyframe.
| | 00:35 | So now you can see my submarine
is actually moving in two directions.
| | 00:41 | Okay, it's not quite facing this, so
let's go ahead and rotate this just a bit,
| | 00:46 | so now it's kind of rotating along my path.
| | 00:49 | Now if I wanted to adjust this and make it
smooth, I could just alter each keyframe,
| | 00:56 | but another way to do this is to
create what's called a Motion Trail.
| | 01:00 | So I'll keep my object selected and under
Animate go Create Editable Motion Trail.
| | 01:09 | And when I do that what it does
is it actually draws out a path
| | 01:14 | and creates keyframes on that path.
| | 01:16 | So what I've got now is I've got a path that
I can edit to change how the object animates.
| | 01:22 | So if I want to I can box select this middle
one here, adjust it, I can select this end one
| | 01:28 |
here, adjust it and again the
object will move along that path.
| | 01:34 | So if I select this middle one and
move it up, you see how the object
| | 01:40 | just moves along that path.
| | 01:42 | Now if I want I can select these keyframes
and move them and as you can see
| | 01:51 | the path is changing
according to where that is.
| | 01:54 | So if it's closer to the beginning,
it's going to be more of a straight line
| | 01:58 | to the beginning, if it's closer to the end
it will be more of a straight line to the end.
| | 02:03 | So now it's going to take 36 frames
to get to the beginning and then it's
| | 02:07 | going to zoom over to the end.
| | 02:09 | Okay, so this is a great way to
visualize how your animation is moving,
| | 02:14 | and to create a trail that you can animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ghosting objects| 00:00 | Many times we'll need to see multiple
frames at a time in our animation sequence
| | 00:06 | and this is called ghosting.
| | 00:07 | It allows you to actually see how
an object progresses through time.
| | 00:13 | So let's take a look at how to do this.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to select my object here and
under Animate, I have three options here;
| | 00:20 | Ghost Selected, Unghost Selected
and Unghost All.
| | 00:24 | Let's take Ghost Selected, which is the
start of the whole process and take
| | 00:28 | a look at the Options for this.
| | 00:31 | So for Type of ghosting, it's
going to go to Global preferences.
| | 00:36 | If we don't want that, go to Custom frames,
which allows us to specify a number of frames.
| | 00:41 |
Custom frame steps, do we want to
do 3, in 3 frame steps or do we want
| | 00:47 | to do 5, however many steps, so you
can actually do incremental ghosting,
| | 00:52 | on Custom key steps or only on
those Keyframes that are set.
| | 00:58 | I'm going to keep this at Global
preferences and just so that you know
| | 01:02 | where this is at, go under Settings/Preferences >
Preferences and under Animation display,
| | 01:09 |
we have our Ghost settings, which are
basically the same settings that we have.
| | 01:15 | So if you want, you can set
a global step for ghosting.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to leave this
at the default, hit Save.
| | 01:21 | So let's go ahead and ghost this.
| | 01:24 | So as I scrub through my timeline,
you can see how the ghosting works.
| | 01:29 | So what it does is it basically just
gives you a copy of each frame for
| | 01:35 | a specified number of frames and this
allows you to see how the object is moving.
| | 01:41 | You can probably see this the best
on the propeller of the submarine.
| | 01:46 | If your object is changing shape
such as in character animation,
| | 01:49 | this may be a little bit more easy to see.
| | 01:52 | Now, if you want to turn off ghosting, you
can go into Animate > Unghost Selected,
| | 02:00 |
which means it will only unghost
that object I have selected,
| | 02:05 | which may not be everything.
| | 02:06 | So typically what I like to
do is to just do Unghost All,
| | 02:10 | and that will unghost everything.
| | 02:13 | So those are some of the basics of ghosting
and you can use this very effectively
| | 02:19 |
in character animation to see how your
character is moving through a scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Editing AnimationModifying keys in the Graph Editor | 00:00 | If you need to have fine
control over your animation,
| | 00:04 | you may want to use the
Graph Editor and this is
| | 00:06 | a very sophisticated way of really
controlling your animation curves.
| | 00:12 | So, let's go ahead and set up a very
simple animation, I'm going to create
| | 00:16 | a simple sphere here, and
let's just do some motion.
| | 00:19 | So I'm going to go ahead and hit S to set a
keyframe at frame 1, move this somewhere here,
| | 00:28 |
and hit S again at frame 12 and then
move it down over here at frame 24.
| | 00:35 | So, I should have this
simple, simple animation.
| | 00:43 | Now if want we can affect the animation
simply by selecting the keyframes
| | 00:49 | and moving them around as we've seen before,
but if we want finer control over these
| | 00:55 | in-betweens, we can go into the Graph Editor.
| | 00:58 | So this is a separate window
in Maya. We can find it under
| | 01:02 | Window > Animation Editors > Graph
Editor, and this brings up the graph.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to go ahead and move this sphere over,
so we can see it against the Graph Editor.
| | 01:13 | And as you can see we have curves
that represent the animation in Maya.
| | 01:20 | So some of these curves
are flat some aren't.
| | 01:23 | On the left side of here we have our
object and then we have individual curves
| | 01:29 | for each part of that object.
| | 01:32 | So if you notice, I've got translation in
X, Y and Z, rotation, scale in X, Y and Z.
| | 01:43 | Now if I want to, I can select any one of
these curves or Shift+Select multiple curves.
| | 01:49 | And you can see that as I scrub through here
as the curve changes, the object also changes.
| | 01:58 | Now keys on this curve are indicated
with a little black dot, so right there
| | 02:05 | is a key, you can see it here in the Graph Editor.
| | 02:08 | So if I want I can use all of my standard
Move tools, so I can select these,
| | 02:14 | hit W and I could actually
move these keyframes.
| | 02:17 | So again, I'm just using the Standard Move
Tool here, so I have a Select Tool
| | 02:24 | and I have a Move Tool.
| | 02:25 | So if I want I can move these forward or back
in Time, or I can move them up or down in Value.
| | 02:33 | Now each one of these curves is a Bezier
curve which means it has a handle on it.
| | 02:39 | Now I can navigate this Graph Editor
window the same way that I navigate an
| | 02:44 | orthographic view in Maya, so if I hold
down the Alt key I can right-click to zoom
| | 02:51 | and middle-click to drag.
| | 02:54 | Now I don't have Tumble, so I'm not
going to be able to use left-click.
| | 02:58 | I can also roll my mouse wheel to zoom.
| | 03:00 | Now if I want I can left-click and
drag and select one of these handles.
| | 03:05 | In this case I've got Translate Y selected
and you can see the little dot there,
| | 03:10 | and this represents how high or low
that ball goes as it moves up.
| | 03:16 | So if I want it to move it really
high, I can move the curve high.
| | 03:19 | If I don't want it to move so
high, I can drop the curve down.
| | 03:23 | Now another thing we can do is we
can change the character of the curve.
| | 03:29 | So as you can see this
has Bezier handles on it.
| | 03:32 | So if I just left-click and drag the
handle, I can middle-click and drag
| | 03:40 | to change the character of the curve.
| | 03:42 | So now it goes up and it
overshoots and then it comes down.
| | 03:47 | If I want I can again left-click
and drag to select the handle and
| | 03:52 | then middle-click to adjust it.
| | 03:55 | Now in addition to this we have some standard
curve types that we can use as well.
| | 04:04 |
So if I select a series of keyframes here,
I can create what are called Auto tangents.
| | 04:10 | Now Auto tangents automatically flatten
the tangent of the curve out at the top.
| | 04:17 | So again it just flattens out the curve,
this is great for things where you
| | 04:21 | kind of need things to move smoothly.
| | 04:22 | And again, if I were to left-click and
adjust this curve, as soon as I reselect
| | 04:29 | the entire key, if I hit Auto
tangents again it'll flatten it out.
| | 04:32 | Then we can also have what
are called Spline tangents.
| | 04:37 | We can have what are called Clamped
tangents, which like keys to be flat,
| | 04:41 | so that way you don't get
bumps in your animation.
| | 04:44 | We can also have what are
called Linear tangents,
| | 04:46 | which basically there's
no ease in and ease out;
| | 04:49 | it just goes from one
direction to the other.
| | 04:54 | We can have again Flat tangents.
| | 04:56 | We have another one
called Step tangents.
| | 04:58 | What a Step tangent does is once it
hits a value, it stays that value until
| | 05:04 | it hits another value; this is great for
things that need to be turned on and off.
| | 05:08 | I typically like to use these on light values
where you need it to be either on or off.
| | 05:15 |
Visibility is another one where
you'd be using Step tangents a lot.
| | 05:19 | So those are some of the basics. There
is certainly a lot more to this window,
| | 05:23 | but if you know basically about
basic curve types and how to select
| | 05:28 | and manipulate individual keys within the
Graph Editor, you should be pretty good to go.
| | 05:35 | Now remember the Graph Editor allows
you to select individual keys and
| | 05:40 | adjust animation curves in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying keys in the Dope Sheet | 00:00 | Another way to edit your
animation is to use the Dope Sheet.
| | 00:03 | Now this is more of a spreadsheet-like
interface that allows you to just see keyframes.
| | 00:09 | But it also allows you to see the
hierarchy of your object and individual keys.
| | 00:14 | So here I have this submarine and if I
select it you'll see that, well I've got
| | 00:20 | keyframes for the sub at 1, 24 and 48.
| | 00:26 | But there are a number of
parts to the sub as well.
| | 00:29 | So I've got this little periscope
at the top; it's called Scope.
| | 00:33 | And I've got keyframes
here at different places.
| | 00:36 | And then in the back of the sub
I've got this rotating propeller.
| | 00:40 | If I select the hub of that propeller, you'll
see I have a key here and a key at the end.
| | 00:45 | So if we want to see all of this at once,
I really can't use this time slider here;
| | 00:51 | I need to go a little
bit more detailed.
| | 00:53 | So I can do that in the Dope Sheet.
| | 00:56 | So let's go into Window >
Animation Editors > Dope Sheet.
| | 00:59 | And let's go ahead and I'm going to
scroll back here, so I can see my sub,
| | 01:04 | and select the entire sub.
| | 01:05 | Now when you select the sub you'll
we have a master note called Body,
| | 01:10 | and that's the body of the submarine.
| | 01:12 | And I've got two plus signs (++) here.
| | 01:15 | If I'll select the leftmost plus
sign, you'll see this is the entire
| | 01:20 | hierarchy of the submarine, and
it's very similar to the outliner,
| | 01:24 | in that I have each object here and you
can see the hierarchy of the submarine.
| | 01:31 | So I have the Hub which is the
propeller, I have the Scope and I have all
| | 01:36 | the other parts of submarine
which aren't animating.
| | 01:39 | Now the cool thing about this is that
we can see all of the keyframes at once.
| | 01:43 | So if select the Body, you could see
I have keyframes here for the body,
| | 01:48 | for the propeller at the
hub, and for the periscope.
| | 01:51 | Now really all you can do in
this editor is just retime things.
| | 01:57 | So I have a submarine here at the
top that shows all the keyframes,
| | 02:01 | and then I can go down object by
object and go through each individual one.
| | 02:07 | Now if I want to retime things, all I
have to do is select the move tools,
| | 02:12 | so I could select it here or
just hit W on the keyboard,
| | 02:15 | and then middle-click and drag and
I can drag any one of these keys.
| | 02:20 | So if I middle-click of this
middle key here, I can change how fast
| | 02:27 | this particular point is reached.
| | 02:29 | So as I move it, you can see how
the object's animation is changing.
| | 02:35 | Now if I open this up a little bit more
you can see that well not only do
| | 02:40 | I have master keys for this, I can
actually go down and scroll through
| | 02:46 | and go and see my
Translate X, Y and Z keys.
| | 02:51 | I can also see rotation keys here.
| | 02:53 | So if I want to retime the rotation
but not the translation I can just
| | 02:58 | left-click and select all the rotation keys
and again just middle-click to move them.
| | 03:03 | So all I'm doing now is affecting
rotation but not translation.
| | 03:09 | And also notices how I get an
additional key here on the timeline
| | 03:13 | to reflect those changes.
| | 03:15 | So the Dope Sheet can be a very, very
handy tool for retiming individual parts
| | 03:20 | of your animation.
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| Creating animation cycles | 00:01 | Another way to edit your
animation is to create cycles.
| | 00:04 | Now Maya has a number of different
ways that we can create animation cycles
| | 00:10 | and let's go through those.
| | 00:11 | Before we do that though I want
create a very simple animation.
| | 00:15 | So let's just create a simple
translation animation here.
| | 00:19 | So I'm going to take my basic
sphere and set a keyframe at frame1.
| | 00:25 | And let's go forward to about frame 18
or so, and just go ahead and move that up
| | 00:31 | and set a keyframe here.
| | 00:33 | So really all I have is
just two keys: this and that.
| | 00:37 | Now if I were to play this animation, you
could see it just jumps from one to the other.
| | 00:44 | So as soon the animation starts it jumps back.
| | 00:47 | Now if I want to I can create a
cycle and I do that in the graph editor.
| | 00:53 | So we go into Window >
Animation Editors > Graph Editor.
| | 00:57 | And you can see we've got all of
our different animation curves.
| | 01:01 | Now since we only did translation, I can Shift+
Select, just Translate here and see these keys.
| | 01:09 | So if we want, we can left-click and drag
and highlight the last keys of this animation.
| | 01:15 | And so as you can see, when it ends it ends; it
doesn't go any further, but we can cycle that.
| | 01:22 | So if we select curves
we have Pre/Post-Infinity.
| | 01:25 | Pre-Infinity is before the first key,
Post-Infinity is after the last key.
| | 01:34 | And let's go ahead and use Post-Infinity
because we've got space after that.
| | 01:39 | So we've got a couple of different
options; we have Cycle, Cycle with Offset,
| | 01:44 | Oscillate, Linear, and Constant.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to go ahead and select Cycle first.
| | 01:49 | Now what this does is it basically
just goes back to that first frame.
| | 01:59 | So when I'm at frame 18 I'm at the very end.
| | 02:02 | When I go to frame 19 it just
starts over; it picks up these keys.
| | 02:06 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead and
expand this out to Frame 48 here,
| | 02:13 | and let's take a look at this.
| | 02:15 | So basically what it does is it, so
it automatically jumps back whenever
| | 02:19 | it hits that last key.
| | 02:22 | Now if I want I can change those again, just
make sure I have Translate X, Y and Z selected.
| | 02:27 | So instead of Post Infinity
I can do Cycle with Offset.
| | 02:31 | Now what this will do is it will cycle,
but it'll add to whatever was there before.
| | 02:38 | So in other words it'll keep
it going in that same direction.
| | 02:41 | So if I hit Cycle with Offset, I'll
go ahead and make this smaller here.
| | 02:45 | When we play, you'll see that
what it does is it just keeps going.
| | 02:53 | So another one we can do is called
Oscillate and what that will do is that
| | 02:57 | will go from the beginning to the
end and then back to the beginning.
| | 03:01 | So this will oscillate back and forth.
| | 03:04 | I'm getting a little bit of a jump here
because when we hit this we get a cycle.
| | 03:11 | And then we can also do Linear which means
at the very end it will just keep going in
| | 03:17 | that direction, which means at the very
end it'll just hold whatever is there.
| | 03:24 | And that's very similar to
what we have with nothing.
| | 03:27 | And then we could also have Constant which
means it will assume a constant direction.
| | 03:32 | And again that gives us not much of anything.
| | 03:35 | So those are some of the basic
ways to cycle animation.
| | 03:39 | Now we can cycle animation either
before or after the end of keyframes
| | 03:44 | and that's called Pre/Post-Infinity.
| | 03:45 | With that we have a number of
different ways to cycle animation.
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| Hiding, locking, and limiting channels| 00:00 | There are many situations where you'll want to
restrict what an animator can do with an object.
| | 00:07 | Let's take this submarine for example.
| | 00:09 | I have this propeller on
the back of a submarine.
| | 00:12 | And typically all I really want to do
with animation is to rotate the propeller.
| | 00:18 | So really the only attribute that I'll
ever be animating on this is rotate in Z.
| | 00:25 | I'm not going to rotate it around X.
I'm not going to translate it or scale it.
| | 00:32 | So if I want, I can restrict how this
object is used by locking parameters.
| | 00:37 | So if I select Translate X for example.
| | 00:40 | I can right-click over it and
you'll see I have Lock Selected.
| | 00:45 | Now what this does is it
grays out my Translate,
| | 00:49 | so when I go to translate
that in X, I can't, okay.
| | 00:54 | I could still do Y and Z
because, those are unlocked.
| | 00:57 | But if I want, I can
lock as many as I want.
| | 01:00 | So let's lock Translate Y and Z, as well
as Rotate X and Y, and if I right-click
| | 01:08 | over that and lock it, now I
have all of these are locked.
| | 01:14 | So when I go to rotate this,
I can't rotate it around X.
| | 01:18 | I can't rotate it around Y. I can only
rotate it around Z and that forces you
| | 01:24 | to animate it in the way
that it was intended.
| | 01:27 | Now if I want to, I can
also clean up my interface.
| | 01:32 | So I can actually hide those
parameters that I don't want to use.
| | 01:35 | So if I wanted to I could left-click
and drag and select all of these,
| | 01:41 | right-click over them
and go Hide Selected.
| | 01:45 | I could do the same for Scale X,
Y and Z, as well as Visibility.
| | 01:50 | I can hide those as well.
| | 01:53 | So now when I select this propeller
all I see is rotate in Z,
| | 01:58 | and that's really all I can do.
| | 02:00 | But, if you can recall one of the things
I did not do was lock my Scale X, Y, and Z.
| | 02:05 |
So that means I can still scale this
propeller up and down even though it's hidden.
| | 02:11 | So let me show you how
to unhide things as well.
| | 02:14 | So we've got a Window here, and under
General Editors, we have something
| | 02:18 | here called Channel Control.
| | 02:20 | Now what this does is it allows me
to either hide or unhide channels.
| | 02:24 | So if I scroll down here, you'll see I've
got Translate, I've got Scale X, Y, and Z,
| | 02:31 |
and all I have to do is just move them
to the left and now they show back up.
| | 02:37 | If I want, now I can select these, lock them
and if I want to I can also hide them here.
| | 02:44 | So I could go ahead and move them as well.
| | 02:48 | Now if I click here, you also will
see the parameters that I have locked.
| | 02:53 | Again, it's the same function that's
just another way of looking at it.
| | 02:57 | So in this case I've got Rotate X, Y, and Z
Locked, if I want. I can move them to
| | 03:02 | Non Locked, select Keyable, again move
them over and as you can see, we can do that.
| | 03:10 | Now another thing that you might want to
do is actually just limit the channels.
| | 03:14 | You may not want to lock them completely,
but you may want to lock them just to
| | 03:19 | a specific range of motion.
| | 03:21 | So let's take a look at the periscope
on the conning tower of this submarine.
| | 03:25 | Let's say, I only wanted it to rotate
here and here, but I don't want it to
| | 03:30 | be able to look backwards.
| | 03:32 | So I've got a Rotate Y parameter
here, but let's say I don't want
| | 03:37 | it to completely rotate around.
| | 03:38 | Let's say I want to just
restrict it to looking forward.
| | 03:42 | We can fix this in the Attribute Editor.
| | 03:45 | So I'm going to click on my
Attribute Editor and if you notice,
| | 03:48 | we've got a number of different tabs here.
| | 03:50 | I need to go to the first tab
which includes my limit information.
| | 03:55 | So I have Transform Attributes here,
which is exactly how I'm rotating it.
| | 03:59 | It's where my Pivots are but
what I really want to look for
| | 04:05 | is Limit Information here under Rotate.
| | 04:08 | And what we can do is we can
actually limit how it rotates.
| | 04:11 | So let's say, I want to limit my rotation Y,
so all I have to do is click this and this,
| | 04:17 |
and now it will limit
from -45 to +45.
| | 04:22 | So if I rotate it, you'll see that I
can't rotate it beyond that number.
| | 04:27 | Of course I can change these.
| | 04:29 | So let's say, I want to do it from -90 to
+90, and again I can limit this.
| | 04:36 | So if I only want to rotate it along
that, then I'm completely limited
| | 04:42 | and I can't rotate it beyond that.
| | 04:44 | It's great for keeping things in check.
| | 04:47 | So if this is really all I want to
rotate then what I can do is I can select
| | 04:52 | all of the ones above it, lock them, all
of the ones below it, lock those as well.
| | 04:58 | And so now, all I have to
do is just animate this one,
| | 05:02 | and if I wanted to I
could hide these as well.
| | 05:04 | So those are some techniques for limiting
and locking your animation channels
| | 05:10 | so they don't get accidentally animated.
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|
|
3. Basic Deformations and RiggingExploring the basics of joints and skinning| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at some
Deformation tools that will allow us to
| | 00:04 | use skeletons to deform a character.
| | 00:07 | Now I have a simple example here and
this is what we'll be doing in the next
| | 00:10 | few lessons, and this is just a simple fish.
| | 00:13 | Now what I can do is if I turn on Shading
and turn on what's called X-Ray joints,
| | 00:18 | you'll see that this fish has a skeleton
in it, and this is just a series of
| | 00:25 | objects that allow me a
structure with which to deform the fish.
| | 00:30 | So if I were to select, let's take for
example this joint here towards the back,
| | 00:35 | I could rotate that and actually deform this mesh.
| | 00:40 | Now before we actually get this
complicated I'm just going to go through
| | 00:44 | some of the basics of how this works.
| | 00:46 | So I'm going to go File > New Scene and
let's just draw a simple Polygonal Cylinder.
| | 00:56 | And let's go into our Channel box and
under Poly Cylinder, I want to go ahead
| | 01:02 | and make my height subdivisions, let's
just make it about 6; I just want to give
| | 01:07 | enough division so we
can actually deform this.
| | 01:09 | And maybe I'm going to dial down
my Radius just a little bit here.
| | 01:13 | Now what we can do is we can create
what are called joints and use those
| | 01:18 | joints to deform this mesh.
| | 01:20 | Now it's easiest to draw joints in an
orthographic view, so I'm going to go
| | 01:26 | into my Front view for this particular
scene, and what we can do is we can
| | 01:30 | draw what are called skeletons.
| | 01:31 | We have what's called a Joint Tool
and this just another Drawing Tool.
| | 01:36 | So if I select this, you'll how my
cursor changes, and then if I left-click
| | 01:41 | you can see I'm just laying
down what are called bones.
| | 01:46 | And these bones are really
just objects in a scene.
| | 01:51 | If I go into my Window > Outliner, you'll
see that I have my Cylinder, but I also
| | 01:57 | have a joint and each
joint is actually a hierarchy.
| | 02:02 | So I've got joint 1,
joint 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on.
| | 02:08 | And this creates a hierarchy of joints
that I can use as a skeleton to deform
| | 02:14 | either character or really any other object.
| | 02:17 | These joints can be manipulated by rotating them,
so this gives me kind of a classic bone action.
| | 02:25 | But if I want, I can move them as
well to reposition them if I need too.
| | 02:30 | So let's go ahead and setup as
simple bone structure for this cylinder.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to select all of those
joints and delete them, and then I'm going
| | 02:40 | to go into Skeleton > Joint Tool and I'm
just going to draw one, two, three, four
| | 02:48 | points here and then just hit Enter,
and you can see I've got four joints.
| | 02:53 | Now I'm going to go hop out into my
Perspective window and you can see that,
| | 02:58 | well it's not exactly in the center here.
| | 03:00 | So I just want to adjust this
so this is fairly well centered.
| | 03:03 | Well once I do that I can now use us
this as something to deform this cylinder.
| | 03:09 | So I do that by selecting my joint chain,
so I select the bottom of that chain,
| | 03:14 | which selects everything else,
and then Shift+Select my Cylinder.
| | 03:19 | In other words, the Geometry is
selected last, and that should be green.
| | 03:23 | And then under Skin we have Bind Skin.
| | 03:25 | Now there are three separate options here.
| | 03:27 | For the purposes of this course, let's
just do what's called Smooth Bind,
| | 03:32 | and I'm just going to go ahead and use
the defaults and just bind that.
| | 03:35 | Now notice how that turns red, that means it's
actually being controlled by something else.
| | 03:39 | And now once I have this I can select
each one of these joints and rotate them.
| | 03:44 | And as you can see the joints now
control the deformation of the cylinder.
| | 03:51 | So if I want I can also put
Shading > X-Ray Joints on,
| | 03:56 | so I can see the
joints through the mesh.
| | 03:58 | And so now by rotating any one of
these, I can affect the cylinder.
| | 04:05 | So now we're going to use just this
basic concept in a more complex way to
| | 04:09 | actually deform an entire
character in the next few lessons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fitting skeletons to a mesh| 00:00 | Now that we understand some of the basics
of skeletons, let's go ahead and start
| | 00:04 | building a skeleton for this character.
| | 00:06 | Now I have this little fish model
here and let's start drawing a skeleton.
| | 00:11 | So, I'm wanting to do this in the Orthographic
view, so that way we get this pretty square.
| | 00:17 | So, I'm going to hit my Spacebar and
jump out here and I want to be in this
| | 00:21 | view here, my side view.
| | 00:22 | So I'm going to hit my Spacebar
again and let's go ahead and center this.
| | 00:26 | So, let's go ahead and start
creating a skeleton for this.
| | 00:30 | Now we can do this under Skeleton
using the Joint Tool, or we can press
| | 00:35 | this button on the Animation shelf,
which is again the Joint Tool.
| | 00:39 | So I'm going to use this because
it's a little bit more interactive.
| | 00:42 | So I'm going to go ahead and select my Joint
Tool and now I want to place my first joint.
| | 00:47 | Now I'm probably going to place this
in the area that's not going to deform,
| | 00:51 | because this is going to be kind
of my center point of the fish.
| | 00:54 | So, I think I'm going to
place it right under this eye.
| | 00:58 | So that's my first joint.
| | 01:00 | Then, I need to draw
basically his spine.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to go ahead and
click here at this edge loop,
| | 01:08 | one more time at this edge loop, once
more towards the center of the tail,
| | 01:14 | and then one more time towards
the center of the tail fin.
| | 01:19 | So now that I have this in place, I
can continue to build, or if I want,
| | 01:25 | I can select these and move them to get
them exactly the way that I want them.
| | 01:30 | If they're not exactly straight or
if they're not exactly aligned,
| | 01:35 | I can put them exactly where I want.
| | 01:37 | Now this certainly isn't going to
be the skeleton for the entire fish.
| | 01:40 | We've got a lot of geometry on the top and
bottom of this that still needs to be covered.
| | 01:47 | So let's go ahead and start with the tail.
| | 01:49 | I do want to make sure I have
control over the tips of this tail.
| | 01:53 | So I can draw some simple
joints to help me with that.
| | 01:57 | So, I'm going to go ahead and deselect
this and then select my Joint Tool again
| | 02:03 | and then I'm just going to hover this
Joint Tool over this last joint in the fin
| | 02:09 | and then click, and notice how this
highlights, because what we're doing now
| | 02:13 | is we're going to extend this joint.
| | 02:15 | So I'm going to go ahead and click one
more time towards the tip of the tail.
| | 02:20 | Now we want to do this on the other side,
but if I click again, you'll see that,
| | 02:24 | well, it's just going to extend
this joint and that's not what I want.
| | 02:27 | So I'm going to undo that and let's
just go ahead and deselect this and then
| | 02:31 | reselect the Joint Tool,
do this one more time.
| | 02:37 | So that's kind of the workflow; you
deselect and then you reselect the Joint Tool.
| | 02:42 | So now let's go ahead and
start working our way back here.
| | 02:45 | So I don't need anything here, but I would
like to have something to control this top fin.
| | 02:51 | So again I'm just going to click here and
then click once at the base of the fin
| | 02:56 | and then once at the top and this should give
us enough control over the back part of this fin.
| | 03:01 | But I also want to control this
fin as well. So we can do that.
| | 03:06 | I can go ahead and just again select
my Joint Tool, click here, here and here,
| | 03:14 | and again I'm just really
just following this edge loop.
| | 03:17 | So now that I have this, I should have
pretty good control over that top fin.
| | 03:21 | But we still have the front of the
fish, as well as the flippers to deal with.
| | 03:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and just click
here at the very base of this and then
| | 03:33 | go ahead and click once to get a bone here
to control the front part of the head,
| | 03:40 | Do the same thing here and we've
got one more, I would like to get one
| | 03:48 | for the belly; so again I'm just going to go
ahead and create a bone here for the belly.
| | 03:53 | Now the one thing we haven't
gotten to yet is this flipper.
| | 03:56 | Now what we want to do is
actually take a look at this in 3D.
| | 04:00 | So you can see all the bones I've
created are actually in line with the fish.
| | 04:09 | Now, I've just turned on X-Ray here, so
that we can see it, but what I really want
| | 04:13 | to do is I want to take this and create
a bone that actually goes outwards and
| | 04:18 | goes through the center of this flipper.
| | 04:22 | So, we probably need to
do this in multiple views.
| | 04:25 | So I'm going to go ahead back into my
Fore-view and we're actually going to
| | 04:29 | do this on the Top and the Side view.
| | 04:33 | So in the Side view I'm going to go
ahead and select my Joint Tool and
| | 04:38 | just click on this end one here that's
right around his chin and again I just
| | 04:43 | want to make sure that highlights and then
I want to click once at the base of the fin
| | 04:48 | and once again at the end of the fin.
| | 04:52 | Now let's see what we've got.
| | 04:53 | I've got a joint chain that goes
through the flipper and so now if
| | 04:58 | I animate this joint, it should
move the flipper, and we need to do
| | 05:02 | the same thing on the other side.
| | 05:04 | But our fish is symmetrical, so what
we can do is we can actually mirror
| | 05:08 | this joint to the other side.
| | 05:09 | So all we have to do is choose Skeleton >
Mirror Joint, let's go into the Options
| | 05:14 | and we want to take a look at the
plane here, in fact we can probably
| | 05:19 | see it better in the Front view and you can
see that the vertical plane here around
| | 05:23 | which we want to mirror it, is the YZ
plane, so I want to make sure this is on
| | 05:29 | YZ and go ahead and hit Mirror.
| | 05:33 | And now that we have that, we've got a
complete skeleton for this little fish.
| | 05:40 | So go ahead and adjust your joints
if you need to, but this is the basic
| | 05:45 | skeleton that we need to animate this fish.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Deforming a mesh using the Skin tool| 00:00 | Now that we have the skeleton set up,
we can use it to actually deform the fish
| | 00:05 | and start to animate it.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead and
actually skin this character.
| | 00:11 | So I need to actually select the
skeleton of the character first.
| | 00:15 | So I need to find out what
the root joint of that is,
| | 00:18 | and it's actually this
joint under the eye.
| | 00:21 | So I need to select that first and
then Shift+Select the body of the fish
| | 00:27 | and once we have that done,
we can now skin the character.
| | 00:30 | So I'm going to go into Skin > Bind Skin
and each one of these has a different option.
| | 00:37 | But for this one, I'm not going
to use Rigid or Interactive;
| | 00:41 | I'm actually going to use Smooth Bind.
| | 00:44 | And I'm going to go into my Options here.
| | 00:46 | Now under this, we can bind to Joint
hierarchy or just the Selected joints,
| | 00:51 | and we're going to do Joint hierarchy.
| | 00:53 | Bind method: Closest distance; we can also
do what's called Heat Map which sometimes
| | 00:59 | works better, but let's just do Closest distance.
| | 01:01 | We could also do Classic Skinning
methods; I'm just going to do Classic Linear.
| | 01:06 | And then also what we can do is we can
dial in the number of Maximum influences.
| | 01:11 | So how many bones can
affect one part of the mesh?
| | 01:15 | Well, this is actually a
pretty simple skeleton.
| | 01:17 | So I'm actually going to dial this down to about
3, which may eliminate some unwanted effects.
| | 01:23 | And then we can also
institute a Dropoff rate,
| | 01:27 | how far away does it need to
be not to affect the mesh.
| | 01:31 | And again because this is a fairly small
character, I'm going to dial this down
| | 01:35 | just a bit, now this is an absolute distance,
so I'm going to dial this down to about 2.
| | 01:40 | And then let's go ahead and hit Bind Skin.
| | 01:43 | Now when I do that, hopefully
we'll get some good results.
| | 01:47 | Now before I start testing this, I
want to go ahead and select the mesh
| | 01:51 | and let's go ahead make sure we
actually don't have to select the mesh,
| | 01:55 | so I'm going actually in my Geometry
layer, I'm going to turn this button to R,
| | 01:59 | so that way I don't accidentally select the
mesh and all I am selecting now is the skeleton.
| | 02:03 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 02:05 | So I'm going to go ahead and move my tail.
| | 02:08 | That looks pretty good.
| | 02:09 | Let's go ahead and move this top fin
here, not bad, but you can see how
| | 02:14 | it's affecting the top of that tail.
| | 02:17 | Let's go ahead and grab this
flipper and see what happens.
| | 02:19 | Well, as you can see, it's also affecting
the body and we need to address that.
| | 02:24 | So what we need to do is actually start
going through and refining this to
| | 02:30 | make sure that there
are no deformation errors.
| | 02:32 | Now one of the things I like to
do is to create a test animation,
| | 02:36 | so that way I have a number of different
poses I can use to test my deformation.
| | 02:42 | So what I'm going to do is I'm just going
to go ahead and select some bones here,
| | 02:47 | and I'm going to just
set a keyframe for those.
| | 02:50 | So I'm just going to set a key here at
frame1 and then I'm just going to move this.
| | 02:55 | So we can see how it affects the deformation
and then I'm going to basically copy
| | 03:01 | and paste this key back, so that
way we have another zero-point.
| | 03:06 | So basically, I just want to move this
out and back and that way when I start
| | 03:11 | fixing this part of the
character, I know what to fix.
| | 03:15 | And again, we can do the same thing here.
| | 03:17 | So I'm actually going to go to frame 10
here, set a key for this and then again,
| | 03:23 | over the course of a couple frames, just move
that and as you can see this is being affected.
| | 03:28 | And then again just copy and paste this
key a little bit further down the road,
| | 03:34 | so that way we again go back to zero.
| | 03:36 | So now we're moving this, moving this.
| | 03:43 | As you can see, this is actually
affecting this joint here.
| | 03:47 | So I'm going to go to frame 20 here,
set a keyframe for this, move this over,
| | 03:54 | and again just copy and paste that first key.
| | 03:57 | So now I've got the fin moving,
the tail moving, and the body moving.
| | 04:05 | We can see how each one of those is
affecting areas that it probably shouldn't affect.
| | 04:09 | Now once I have this little test
animation, I can use it to fine-tune and tweak
| | 04:14 | the deformation which
I'll do in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting skin weights| 00:00 | At this point, we have some simple
deformations on the fish and we also have
| | 00:05 | some test animations, just so that
we can see how that deformation works.
| | 00:11 | So let's go ahead and play this.
| | 00:15 | And you can see that when the fin moves, we get
the belly of the character kind of moving out.
| | 00:20 | When the top fin moves, you get this little
deformation here on the top edge of that tail,
| | 00:26 |
and then we also get when the body moves,
it's affecting this part of the fin as well.
| | 00:34 | So we can actually get rid of these
by using a number of different tools.
| | 00:38 | We have a bunch of them under Edit Smooth
Skin, but the one we're going to take
| | 00:43 | a look at is called Paint Skin Weights.
| | 00:45 | In order to do this, I
need to select by mesh.
| | 00:48 | So I have to go to my Geometry
layer and make sure I make it available.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to turn off R, make that
blank, and that way I can select my mesh.
| | 00:58 | Now, I'm going to go into Skin
and under Paint Skin Weights,
| | 01:02 | I'm going to select my options here.
| | 01:04 | Now this may show up in its own little
window here; I've got it set up to float.
| | 01:10 | Now when we do this, you'll see
it's a standard paint interface.
| | 01:15 | Now you may have used this in
Sculpt Surfaces or to do 3D Paint.
| | 01:21 | But it's basically just a brush-type interface.
| | 01:23 | You can see I've got this brush
that moves along my object here,
| | 01:27 | and if I hit the B key for Brush, I
can make that brush bigger or smaller
| | 01:32 | and I can paint weights
for specific joints.
| | 01:37 | So if I scroll down here, you can
see which joint I'm selecting and
| | 01:42 | if you scroll down a little bit further,
you'll get your Paint options.
| | 01:46 | So do I want to paint this, select
it or do what's called Paint Select?
| | 01:51 | I want to paint it.
| | 01:52 | And do I want to paint it by replacing the operation?
Or do I want to add or do I want to smooth?
| | 01:59 | And then when I paint this, I'm
going to give it a Value and an Opacity.
| | 02:05 | So the first thing I need to do is
understand which joint is affecting
| | 02:08 | which part of the mesh.
| | 02:10 | So let's start with
this flipper here.
| | 02:12 | And I know it's going
to be in this joint.
| | 02:16 | Now I wasn't smart enough to name my joints
so I kind of have to just poke around
| | 02:20 | until I find the joint that I want,
and I believe this one here is
| | 02:27 | called, I believe it's joint15 and 16.
| | 02:32 | So I'm going to select joint15.
| | 02:35 | As you can see here we've got a falloff.
| | 02:38 | So when this joint is selected
here, its influent shows up in gray.
| | 02:44 | So white is more influence, black is
no influence, so we can see that this
| | 02:50 | is kind of leaking over to the belly and
that's probably why that belly is deforming.
| | 02:55 | So, what I need to do is make sure I
have this joint selected, joint15, and then
| | 03:01 | I want to paint a zero value on this
part of the mesh that's being affected.
| | 03:07 | So then all I have to do is make sure
my brush size is about right by
| | 03:11 | holding down the B key and then just
left-clicking and dragging and I can
| | 03:15 | actually repaint this mesh
to be affected by that joint.
| | 03:23 | So now you can see it's
still affected though.
| | 03:26 | Well I've got joint16 and you can
see how joint16 also has an effect.
| | 03:31 | So I can go ahead and paint that out
and now well, that's pretty close.
| | 03:37 | Well, I still can probably paint out
this, and then select joint15 and you
| | 03:43 | can see well, yeah, I've
got that from joint15.
| | 03:47 | So now, as you can see I'm just kind of
knocking these down just by making sure
| | 03:55 | I have the joints selected and then just going
over that part of the mesh with a zero value.
| | 04:01 | So you can see here I've got
a pretty good control here.
| | 04:06 | So again, I'm just going to
go through here, and so yeah.
| | 04:14 | Okay, so now we've got a
pretty nice selection there.
| | 04:19 | Now one thing you may also want to
do is go into pure Wireframe mode.
| | 04:25 | Now I've been kind of painting in
subdivision surface mode,
| | 04:29 | but as you can see now we've got no
effect on that part of the mesh.
| | 04:33 | But you can see also I've got a
little bit of effect around the eye.
| | 04:37 | So I want to make sure I don't have any
effect from this joint or from this joint.
| | 04:43 | So I want to make sure that that joint under
the eye is not affected. Okay, there we go.
| | 04:50 | Okay, so let's go over to the top fin
and as you can see when this moves,
| | 04:56 | it's affecting this
whole top part here.
| | 04:59 | So I need to again, figure
out which joint this is.
| | 05:03 | Okay, so it's joint8 and joint9. So
you can see here, joint8 has a pretty
| | 05:09 | significant effect on this part of the mesh,
but it also has a little bit of an effect here.
| | 05:15 | So let's go ahead and just paint this
out and again I've got this on zero,
| | 05:20 | making sure I have this joint selected and I'm
just blasting these with zero values here.
| | 05:26 | Okay, that's pretty good.
| | 05:32 | So now we've got one more.
| | 05:34 | So we've got this one affecting these
fins and you can see how that's affecting
| | 05:40 | kind of the tips of this fin.
| | 05:42 | So I just want to go ahead and make
sure I understand which joint that is.
| | 05:49 | So is that joint3? I believe that is.
| | 05:51 | So it's joint3 that's affecting it.
| | 05:54 | So I want to make sure I just paint
this part of the fin black, okay.
| | 05:59 | So I'm just painting it black.
| | 06:05 | Okay, so now I should have this.
| | 06:14 | So once I have that, yeah, okay well,
I've still got some effect there,
| | 06:18 | I just want to make sure I get those out,
there we go. That's pretty close, okay.
| | 06:24 | There, I could probably touch this up a
little bit more, but let's go ahead for
| | 06:30 | the sake of time, just say that this works.
| | 06:33 | So now once I have everything painted
out, I've only got this done for one side,
| | 06:40 | which is the left side.
| | 06:41 | So if I went over to this right side
here, you can see as I move this,
| | 06:46 | I'm still getting that same effect.
| | 06:48 | But we don't have to duplicate our effort,
we can just mirror our Skin Weights.
| | 06:52 | So I'm going to go into Skin >
Edit Smooth Skin > Mirror Skin Weights.
| | 06:58 | I'm going to go ahead and select my
Options here and I want to mirror across
| | 07:03 | the YZ plane and hit Mirror.
| | 07:09 | When I do that, you can see how
now this doesn't get affected.
| | 07:15 | So now I have a pretty good little fish.
| | 07:20 | So now all I have to do is go through and
select all of my little animation here,
| | 07:24 | and just go ahead and delete them.
| | 07:28 | So I'm going to go ahead and delete
all my keyframes for all of these
| | 07:32 | different parts of the fish.
| | 07:36 | So now I have a fish
that's ready to go.
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| Animating skeletons| 00:00 | Now that we have our deformations in
place, let's go ahead and animate our fish.
| | 00:05 | Now before we do this, again I'm
going to restrict selection of geometry.
| | 00:11 | So I'm going to go ahead over to the
Geometry layer and we're just going to
| | 00:15 | go ahead and turn it to R, so that way
I don't accidentally select anything.
| | 00:19 | And probably the easiest way to
do this is to x-ray my joints.
| | 00:23 | So, I'm going to go into Shading and do
X-Ray Joints, which allows me to see both
| | 00:29 | the mesh and the joints within that mesh.
| | 00:32 | Now in order to animate this, we need
to start with the root node, which is
| | 00:38 | this little bone here
under the character's eye.
| | 00:41 | So if I want, I can take
that and use that to animate.
| | 00:47 | Let's just go ahead and make
him just swim a little bit.
| | 00:50 | So I'm going to go ahead and bring
him back to frame 1 and at frame 1,
| | 00:56 | I'm going to set a
keyframe for the fish.
| | 01:01 | And then I'm going to move over to frame
48 and just kind of move him forward.
| | 01:06 | So now, he's kind of just doing this.
| | 01:13 | But we need to get him swimming.
| | 01:15 | So typically he's going
to already be swimming.
| | 01:19 | So I'm going to rotate him just a
little bit this way and then just
| | 01:25 | rotate the tail in the opposite way.
| | 01:28 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate this.
| | 01:31 | Hit S to set a key, select this bone,
rotate it, hit S to set a key and let's
| | 01:40 | go ahead and select the flippers, set
a keyframe for this one and this one.
| | 01:50 | So now that we have keys for all of these,
we can start doing a bit of animation.
| | 01:56 | So I'm just going to go halfway
through and I'm going to basically just
| | 02:02 | undo this and make it the opposite.
| | 02:04 | So now I've got this rotated here,
frame 24, it's rotated at -26.
| | 02:08 | I'm just going to take
that negative sign away.
| | 02:11 | I'm going to make it +26.197.
| | 02:14 | And I'm actually going to
do the same for this one.
| | 02:18 | This is 28, well let's make it -28 and
let's make this one 13, let's make this -13.
| | 02:27 | So basically, I'm just
making this the opposite.
| | 02:30 | So now you can see how it's kind of going
from there to there and we can do the same here.
| | 02:36 | I can actually Shift+Select each of
these joints. I can copy and paste these
| | 02:50 | and then let's go ahead and select this
top joint here which already has some
| | 02:54 | keyframes and let's just go
ahead and make that negative again.
| | 02:57 | So now you can see how the
fish is kind of just moving.
| | 03:05 | So if we animate this, that's, I
think that's pretty good, but obviously
| | 03:11 | we can probably do a little bit more.
| | 03:13 | But let's go ahead and just play
with the flippers for a little bit.
| | 03:16 | So let's go ahead and just
make his flipper come out here.
| | 03:23 | Then as he swims forward, it kind of comes
in to there and then we can also make it
| | 03:31 | go like this and then come back down.
| | 03:36 | And we can do the same
for the other side here.
| | 03:39 | We'll open it up and again flip.
| | 03:43 | So basically what I'm doing here is I'm
just animating the bones directly and
| | 03:48 | by doing that, I can in turn
deform the mesh of the fish.
| | 03:55 | Now we can go through this and really
go to town with this, but this is just
| | 04:00 | a simple demo of how this would work.
| | 04:04 | And so as you can see we can
get now deformation of the fish.
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Conclusion Goodbye| 00:00 | So that's just about it for Maya
Essentials 5: Animation Tools.
| | 00:05 | So hopefully, you've learned a little
bit about animation in this class and
| | 00:09 | can use it for your future projects.
| | 00:12 | So with that, I'll say goodbye for lynda.com.
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