3D ANIMATION
Module 6
Introduction to
Character Animation
Before you animate the characters and objects in your
scene, set up the scene by rigging all your characters and by
applying the appropriate constraints and deformers to all the
objects you want to animate.
Rigging a character, also known as character setup, involves
creating skeletons and IK handles for your characters,
binding skins to the skeletons, and setting up deformers and
constraints. You can also create deformers for your
character and animate them to produce effects; for example,
the jiggling belly (jiggle deformer), furrowing brow (wire
deformer), and flexing biceps (lattice deformer) of a sumo
wrestler model.
Non-character objects are also very important to bringing
your scene to life. You can limit and control the
transformations of objects by constraining them to
characters or other models in your scene. You can also
create deformers for objects to create complex deformation
effects. For example, you can apply a squash deformer to the
model of a ball and then parent constrain the ball to the
hands of a character. With this setup, you can key the
weights of the character’s hands and the squash deformer’s
attributes to create an animation of the character bouncing
the ball from hand to hand while the ball squashes on the
ground and stretches as it rises back into the air.
In addition to setting up characters and objects for
animation, you can set up Maya® Dynamics™ for animation.
You can constrain dynamic objects such as particle emitters,
fields, and fluids to objects or characters in your scene.
When creating animations, especially complex character
animations, you may have a lot of motion happening across many
different channels. The character will be moving up and down,
side to side, rotating in different axes, and different parts of the
body will be moving in different ways and at different times. With
all of this going on, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint and
deal with issues. By isolating specific channels, you can
temporarily mute any motion not directly related to the motion
you’re trying to troubleshoot.
When creating animations, especially complex character
animations, you may have a lot of motion happening across many
different channels. The character will be moving up and down,
side to side, rotating in different axes, and different parts of the
body will be moving in different ways and at different times. With
all of this going on, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint and
deal with issues. By isolating specific channels, you can
temporarily mute any motion not directly related to the motion
you’re trying to troubleshoot.
For instance, let’s say we want to isolate this character’s side-to-
side motion in his run cycle. We can select the control we want to
view and open the Graph Editor. The motion we want to isolate in
this case is the X translation. So we can select all of the other
channels and choose Curves>Mute Channel. With those
channels muted, you will only see the character’s side-to-side
motion, the X translation, allowing you to tweak the curve and
timing as needed. Once you’re done, simply select the muted
channels and choose Curves>Unmute Channels and you’re back
to viewing your entire animation. This can be a great way to drill
into problem areas without affecting any of your other animation
curves.
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-
explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2020/ENU/Maya-
CharacterAnimation/files/GUID-0D0DCBE5-01BA-4AA2-
BC4D-85C3285933AD-htm.html
