Notes 05

Animation in Maya

"S" key: create Keyframe
Animate -> Create Motion Trail: Maya will draw out the path of the animation, allowing us to see how it moves.

Hit "S" to create a key frame for that particular position.

Basic:

Just move the object (using one orthographic view is the best way) using the move tool. Then press the S key to create a key frame. If there are normal frames between two key frames (2-6), then Maya will move smoothly in a straight line from the position in the first keyframe to the position in the next keyframe.

However, sometimes not all object moves in such a straight line. In order to do our bouncing ball for example, we will have to create mutiple keyframes and manually position the object outselves in each frame. While easy to do and effective for simple objects, sometimes when it gets pretty complex, the amount of keyframes that we have can be so confusing and messy till it blows people's mind away. Therefore, we can use the advanced method instead.

Advanced:

Use graph editor to edit each individual attribute using a graph. The x-axis is the keyframe number while the y-axis is the value for the attribute. From here we can control the attributes individually with powerful features. We are no longer constrainted by a single straight line. We are able to use curves to smoothen and speed up/slow down at different parts of the time which makes the animation a whole lot better, and at the same time not needing so much keyframes to make the thing move.