Maya 2022 Beginner: Animation

Name: Maya 2022 Beginner: Animation
Author: Stephen Steinbach

Create a simple lamp jump animation in Maya 2022.

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 6 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

In these lessons we're gonna explore the animation tools in Maya 2022. So let's get started by going to workspace animation. So we have some new windows here. We have the graph editor, we also have the time editor. We're not gonna use that. So what we're gonna do is take the time editor tab and select it, and then hit the delete key. So now we just have the graph editor or function curves. And then we have our timeline down here. We have our timeline slider here and then we have our perspective view with the outliner over here with the channel box. The channel box is very important when you're animating so make sure that that's open. Before we start animating, wanna make sure that we have our settings correct. To do that, let's go to Windows, settings, preferences, preferences and under animation, wanna look at our tangents. We're gonna give it spline and out spline. Okay, it's saved. So one more thing I want to check. Go to settings, preferences and go to Time slider. It's gonna be 24 and playback speed, Not every frame, We're gonna do 24 flips times one and it's saved. Okay, currently there are 200 frames but we're only viewing 120 of them right here. And you can see that right here. So if I wanted to see all 200 frames I could just take this slider and slide this over to 200. Now we have one to 200. Might be kind of hard to see the keys that way, so I recommend probably just having about 50 and then moving it as needed here. Now let's think about how long 200 frames is. So if we take our calculator and we say 200 frames and we divide that by 24, 24 per second and that's gonna give us 8.3 seconds. Okay, so if we wanted to even number so if we wanted 10 seconds for instance or let's do something, yeah, let's do 10 seconds. So we'll do 24 times 10 equals 240 frames. So if we add this to 240 now we have 10 seconds of animation. So that might be a little bit long for us. So I'm gonna divide that to 120. So that's five seconds of animation. All right, let's create an object here. I'm just gonna create polySphere. And in the channel box is, if I move it in the channel box, you see that it's gonna be an X here. Now I can key in the channel itself. So if I'm on frame one right now and if I go to, let's just do negative let's keep this at whole numbers negative 10. And if I right click on this and go right click and go. key selected, it turns, You get a little red dot here and you see that here as well on the first frame. And let's just go to frame 20 for instance. Or let's do 24, that's one second of animation. And let's just move this across over here. And let's just do 10. You still see it red, but it's not a darker red. And if I click on here again and go key selected, now we have two keys and now it's animating between these two. And you can see this translate X right here is now keyed here, and you see it down here. Now you can set a key for everything if you want to. So let's say if I scale it a little bit bigger and I have a little bit of a rotation on it or something like this, and I hit S it's gonna key every single one of these. And that's okay because we can always clean this up a little bit later. So clicking on the S with the keyboard will set a key frame for everything. So if I come down here to this one here, and now if I rotate it like here and make it a little bit smaller and hit S, then all of that's gonna be keyed. If I do one in between and move it around over here and hit S, then it's going to go around. And we're gonna get into the function curve a little bit later. But you can look down here the timeline that I have these three curves and if I wanna delete that, I can just click on here and right click and go to delete and deleted that key. So it goes back to where it was. In the next lesson, I'm gonna show you how to manipulate the key frames on the timeline. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Stephen Steinbach 6 Lessons · 36m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

In these lessons, you will create a simple lamp jump animation in Maya 2022. You will learn how to set and modify key frames in the timeline, make adjustments in the curve editor, and create a Maya playblast of your animation sequence. You will also explore creating a final render for animation.

In animation preferences, you will learn how to set up your timeline settings for animation playback in Maya’s timeline. You will learn how to create keys in the viewport and in the channel box. In both the timeline and the curve editor, you will discover how to modify and move keys. After animating the jump, you will learn how to modify the timing of the animation using function curves in the curve editor. Once completed, you will learn how to save your playblast animation to a file. By the end of these lessons, you will have demonstrated the basic animation pipeline for and setting and adjusting keys in Maya 2022.

What You'll Learn

Manipulate timeline preferences for animation playback in Maya 2022
Set and modify keyframes in the timeline and the channel box
Adjust and move keys using the curve editor and function curves
Animate a simple lamp jump sequence from start to finish
Create a Maya playblast and save it to a file
Produce a final render of an animation sequence

Key Takeaways

The course walks through creating a simple lamp jump animation in Maya 2022.
Learners set and modify keyframes in the timeline and make adjustments in the curve editor.
Animation timing is refined using function curves in the curve editor.
The lessons cover creating a Maya playblast and saving it to a file, as well as creating a final render.
By the end, learners will have demonstrated the basic animation pipeline for setting and adjusting keys in Maya 2022.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I create in this course?

You will create a simple lamp jump animation in Maya 2022, including setting and modifying keyframes, adjusting curves, creating a playblast, and exploring a final render.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons cover setting keyframes in the timeline, manipulating keyframes, the curve editor, animating the lamp jump, jump animation clean up, and rendering the jump animation sequence.

What skills will I gain from this course?

The course relates to skills including 2D animation, Adobe Animate, animations, Autodesk Maya, computer animation, and object animation.

How are keyframes created and modified in this course?

You learn to create keys in the viewport and in the channel box, and to modify and move keys in both the timeline and the curve editor, including modifying animation timing using function curves.

Is this course suitable for beginners?

Yes. It is a Maya 2022 beginner course that demonstrates the basic animation pipeline for setting and adjusting keys in Maya 2022.