Tutorials Maya : Animation Tutorials
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Arm Set-Up in Maya
When setting up a character's arm in Alias|Wavefront Maya (www.aliaswavefront.com),
people often overlook how things actually work below the elbow, which
can result in incorrect movement and rotations at the wrist. If you take
a look at your own wrist and rotate your hand, you may think you're seeing
a ball joint but you're not. A wrist can only rotate around two axes,
which we'll call Y and Z. When you rotate your hand around the X axis—which
goes from the elbow to the wrist—you'll see this rotation originates
not at the wrist but within the forearm. There are two bones in the forearm,
the ulna and radius, and these bones' movements create rotation for the
X axis.
Bone Setup for a Dragon
How to setup bone for the dragon in the ready to animate way. I've completed
a shot animated sequence of the dragon. A lot of mistake I've made during
the setup, bind skin and IK. Most of the mistake that I've made only will
show up during the animation process. So, we got to learn from the mistake.
Although this tutorial is not perfectly done, but I will try my best to
share this with you.
BUILDING LEG SKELETONS IN MAYA USING THE DETACHED FOOT METHOD
Several different techniques exist for creating a controlled leg skeleton
in Maya, and all of the best ones address the issue of animating the foot
using two different pivot point locations - one at the heel, and one at
the ball of the foot. However, all of the tutorials I have read on this
subject tend to approach the basic construction of the leg in the same
way; that is, the leg and foot are built as an entire chain, and IK handles
and/or expressions are then added to provide appropriate control over
the foot position and rotation. In my experience as a character animator,
however, I have noticed that these approaches ignore a very critical feature
of a good Leg Skeleton design; namely, the ability to lock the position
of a foot and ensure that it won't move or float during the course of
an animation. While other techniques do allow the artist to set keyframes
for the location of IK handles which control the leg and foot, if these
IK handles are positioned out of reach of the fully extended skeleton,
slipping will certainly occur.
Character Rigging
54 Page PDF on Character Rigging scripts
Cigarette Smokin’ Babies
Koosh begins creating an emitter by going to the Dynamics module of
Maya, and then selecting Particles>Create Emitter. By using a directional
emitter, he’ll be able to control the direction of the particles
and their cone of emission. He sets the direction to 0,1,0 so the particles
will be emitted up, in the Y direction...
dreamLipSync SCRIPT TUTORIAL
dreamLipSync is a trade mark of dreamslab.com, but it is also a lipsync
software, as you maybe already understood. So don’t loose time in
unusefull words and get in the software.
Dreams Lab MAYA 2.0 tutorial:walk with an expression
This database derives from a personal experiment using expressions.
I was looking for a cycling mathematical equation that could allow me
to develop almost any cycling actions in human characters and four legs
animals.
Elastic Foot using Expressions
Cartoon animation looks great with some squash and stretch. To be able
to 'stretch' bones you need a set-up that can handle 'elasticity'.
Elastic Foot using Nodes
Cartoon animation looks great with some squash and stretch. To be able
to 'stretch' bones you need a set-up that can handle 'elasticity'.
Expressing Emotion
Direction of the Muscular Pull
Blending Expressions
Flying Balloon
This tutorial was written as a response to an email asking how one could
go about animating a balloon flying in the air - complete with attached
string. I believe the quickest way to create a realistic motion would
be to use soft body dynamics, which is the method described here. As usual,
there are many other methods. Suggestions and corrections are welcome.
HUMAN INDIRECT SKINNING WITH FREE-FORM DEFORMERS IN MAYA 2.5
Every animator/ studio is going to have their own “personal”
way of doing things, the object of this “paper” is not to
preach one way or another, but to bring other ideas to the table so that
they can be incorporated into the artists already existing workflow. What
I’ve done here, is taken techniques that I’ve learned from
the multitude of studios, teachers, peers, and any other own personal
experiences that I’ve had the pleasure to “deal” with,
and lumped them all together into one setup procedure. So as you skim
through this, look for ideas that you could make your own, for your own
personal style….
IK/FK Switching
IK/FK switching set-up is mainly used for the arms. But it can be implemented
in other parts of the body, like the feet...
MAKING AN ADVANCED LAG SKELETON
In this tutorial I tried to explain my solution to make an easy to animate
leg skeleton approach. What I did is simply to create two simple leg skeletons
to drive the main skeleton which will later be used while skinning. By
the help of these two skeletons, namely control skeleton and reverse skeleton,
I will also avoid main skeleton`s penetration when it touches the ground
plane. It may look as a bit long and complex but, it just takes about
5-10mins to complete
Maya Expressions
Once you figure out the basics of expressions in Maya, you'll find yourself
using them all the time, avoiding manual keyframing as much as possible.
Expressions are, in my opinion, Maya's strongest feature. In order to
explain the basic idea of using them, this tutorial will show how to create
a very simple animation: a bug flapping its wings with a controllable
speed attribute.
Non-Linear Animation in Production
Non-Linear Animation (NLA) is quickly becoming, if it is not already,
the latest animation industry buzzword. While the concept, and many implementations
of various complexity, have been around for a number of years, only recently
have vendors and animators been focusing on NLA as a serious production
tool.
Reverse Foot Lock
The Reverse Foot Lock setup is an external set of bones that drive the
foot of a character. It's called a reverse foot lock because it is constructed
going backwards from the heel and up the foot to the ankle.
Skiing cycle
Hi, welcome into the walk cycle tutorial, load the database in your
MAYA workspace, and open the expression editor and the script editor.
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