Maya Animation Character Setup Effects Lighting Modeling Scripting, Textures and Materials, Tips and Techniques Using Tools and Scripts

Animation tutorials

Rotating Wheels on a Car  By alfredstate Rate It  | Review Rotating Wheels on a Car The purpose of this handout is to show you how to rotate the wheels on a car so they follow the pace of the car as it move. By doing it this way, you will get a more accurate result without setting numerous keyframes. To do this, we will use the distance tool, set driven key, and infinity cycles in the graph editor.    Hits:1841    Rate:  1.0(out of 5)    Vote:1   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Creating A Bullet Effect  By tomerep Rate It  | Review Creating A Bullet Effect This Tutrial will Teach you how to create The Bullet Effect Like In The Matrix in Maya, u will expirience The maya intenser, and some mel scripting.    Hits:1495    Rate:  4.0(out of 5)    Vote:6   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Using Blend Shape for Facial Expressions  By alfredstate Rate It  | Review Using Blend Shape for Facial Expressions In this file we will go over using blend shape for facial expressions. This is an extremely easy and effective way to enhance you animations. My name is Larry Neuberger and I am a professor at Alfred State College in Alfred NY. I created these handouts to use in my classes and most of my students found them to be helpful. I now decided to submit them to be published on the web hoping they can help others as well. In this file we will go over using blend shape for facial expressions. This is an extremely easy and effective way to enhance you animations. First we want to duplicate the mouse once for each expression or partial expression you want. (Fig. 1.) This depends on how much you want to control the face. You can have a head sculpted for individual expressions (I.E. happy, sad, angry, etc.), or you could have a duplicated head for individual body parts, which you can combine for more detailed expressions (I.E. raised eye brow, smile, from, grin, lowered brow, etc.). For this example I will simply sculpt a few individual body part expressions. Two for the eyes (open and squint) and two for the mouth (open and smile), which I can combine to get different facial expressions.    Hits:1334    Rate:  5.0(out of 5)    Vote:1   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Object to Surface Constraints in Maya  By comcast Rate It  | Review Object to Surface Constraints in Maya For this tutorial I'll be using a example of a button on a shirt, but this could be any object or group node like a belt buckle or a bug on the tip of a characters nose. Object too Surface Constraints in Maya For this tutorial I'll be using a example of a button on a shirt, but this could be any object or group node like a belt buckle or a bug on the tip of a characters nose. If you ever wanted too attach a button to a shirt on a character you've most likely found out there is no straight forward way to do this in Maya What you want is the button to follow alone with the surface as it deforms, this deformation can be any method in Maya, softBind, ridgedBind, softbodys,cloth etc....... I'll discuss different methods of doing this based on; The surface type ie...polys, nurbs and subD's: In Maya tools vs mel, plugs-ins and scripts: Pros and cons of each method:    Hits:1323    Rate:  5.0(out of 5)    Vote:5   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Muscle deformations and Facial Expressions  By alfredstate Rate It  | Review Muscle deformations and Facial Expressions Blend Shape and Set Driven Key are two excellent tools for deformations and facial expressions. In the following file we will go over in detail how to use these tools to the best of their advantages to create better animations and poses. My name is Larry Neuberger and I am a professor at Alfred State College in Alfred NY. I created these handouts to use in my classes and most of my students found them to be helpful. I now decided to submit them to be published on the web hoping they can help others as well. Blend Shape and Set Driven Key are two excellent tools for deformations and facial expressions. In the following file we will go over in detail how to use these tools to the best of their advantages to create better animations and poses. First we will go over using blend shape and set driven key for muscle deformations. Then we will go over using just blend shape for facial expressions. Blend Shape and Set Driven Key for Muscle deformations The best way to demonstrate the benefit of these tools is to show you how to control the flexing of a characters’ muscles without having to set keyframes for individual objects or doing any unnecessary extra work. NOTE: for best results using blend shape, do all work BEFORE binding the skeleton. If you use blend shape after binding the skeleton, your results will not be accurate and deformations will not update correctly.    Hits:1306    Rate:  3.0(out of 5)    Vote:1   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Maya Pivot Point Basics  By understandingmaya Rate It  | Review Maya Pivot Point Basics This will teach you all about pivot points and how they effect rotation and scale of animated objects. In .pdf format.    Hits:1175    Rate:  0.0(out of 5)    Vote:0   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Domino Effect  By cloud Rate It  | Review Domino Effect This tutorial will discuss on several issues, how to setup the geometry and how to apply passive to active key switch among them.    Hits:1174    Rate:  3.0(out of 5)    Vote:2   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Animating Piano Key  By cgpot Rate It  | Review Animating Piano Key Animating Piano Key in Maya with Rigid Body. As we already have a lot of headache animating the piano player, now there is another challenge, how we animate the piano keys following the player?. It is possible to do a key-frame for each single touch of the finger, but it is a pain in the arse when they ask to change the piano player animation. So, we need to find out a system that each key knows when they are pressed by the finger and relax back to the rest position when the finger is lifted. To make live easier, we could use a rigidbody rig to do the task. Here is the setup and work flow.    Hits:857    Rate:  5.0(out of 5)    Vote:2   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Animation of a Ball  By digitaldesignstudio Rate It  | Review Animation of a Ball In this tutorial we will animate one ball through using photogram keys and modifying the curves of animation from the Trax Editor.    Hits:735    Rate:  4.0(out of 5)    Vote:1   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review

Flipping Sosro Crown  By cloud Rate It  | Review Flipping Sosro Crown This tutorial will discuss on several issues, how to build the geometry for the crown, how to bake rigidBody simulation, and how to adjust the result.    Hits:626    Rate:  5.0(out of 5)    Vote:1   Submit Date :2006-03-18   Rate It   |  Error   |  Review