Maya 2022 Intermediate: Animation

Name: Maya 2022 Intermediate: Animation
Author: Stephen Steinbach

Explore the Intermediate animation tools in Maya 2022.

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Steven Steinbach. In these lessons, we're going to animate a bouncing ball. So, we'll start with this. It's gonna come down and it'll have a little bit of a squash and stretch to it. It'll be rotating. We will first plan out the animation using Grease Pencil, then we'll block out the keyframes, and then we'll tweak the animation using the curve editor, and the curve editor is designed to tweak out the animation to exact precision, so if I wanted to go a little bit higher here, or a little bit lower, and for tweaking the animation. Okay, let's start with a new scene. Okay, with a new scene open, let's go to General and let's reset current workspace, and we'll create a plane. You can create it here or you can hold the shift key and right-click and you can go to your plane here. Here, I'm gonna go to Options and I'm gonna set this. I'm gonna switch this from 10 divisions down to one and hit Create, and let's just scale that up a little bit here. Okay, and then with this still selected, let's go to Layers, "Create layer from selected," and we're gonna call that "Ground," and hit Save. Then, let's make it unselectable by clicking the R, and then, once you unselect it, it's not selectable anymore. Okay, let's create a sphere as well, make it a little bit smaller, and just visually bring this up to about here. Let's look at this view. I think that looks pretty good. So, we're gonna have a bounce coming this way, and a little bit smaller. Okay, let's delete history and freeze transformations. Okay, so with that, let's go to the front view, and now, we're going to sketch out the path for the bouncing ball. To do that, we're gonna use Grease Pencil, and Grease Pencil can be found right here under this icon, and then with Grease Pencil selected, you hit the plus key to add a frame, and we're gonna switch over to the soft pencil tool, and then I will keep the color yellow by default, and when you start to draw on this, you can draw right on this panel, okay? So, it's gonna come down, something like this, and if this is the height of it here, so the next one won't be as high, it'll be maybe about here, and it's gonna kind of sketch this here. So, this is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, so about here is the halfway, and we just wanna mirror that side here, and then the next bounce here would be less than that, and then we'll do one more coming out to about here. So, each one of these gets lower and lower, and these get closer and closer as well. Okay, so, with the ball stretching, it's going to sort of get sort of an oval shape, like this, and it will follow the angle of this here. So, we'll tweak this out here, but we can kind of just get an idea of where the ball is gonna be here, and so it's gonna hit the ground about here, and each time, it won't be quite as stretched here, but we'll plan these out. So, these are sort of our main key poses. So, I'm gonna block out that one here, hitting here and here, and this gets sort of a guide of where it's gonna go, like this. Okay, so when we get the timing, we'll know that the ball is gonna be actually closer here at the top 'cause it's going slower, and then it starts to pick up speed as it goes down. So, the space gets further and further because the further you space this out, the faster it's gonna be. We're gonna tweak all this out in the curve editor in the future lesson. Okay, so let's assign a checker pattern to this. To do that, let's select the ball itself. Let's get into perspective view, and I'm gonna right-click and select "Assign new material," and we'll just do a lambert. Okay, so with the lambert and the attribute editor, we're gonna click on the checker pattern right here and we'll go to Checker. Now, you won't see anything yet because we have to go to Shading, Hardware Texturing. Okay, now, we can see that. Okay, so by default, that looks pretty good. Wanna make these a little bit more square and to do that in the attribute editor, click on the "Place 2D texture," and right now, the "Repeat UV," let's switch the U to five, and now, it's a little bit better. That looks closer, and then I wanna just change the color a little bit here. So, go back to the checker pattern, and I'm gonna just change this color to maybe a soft blue. Okay, and finally, just want to make this a little bit more organic by rotating a little bit this way so it's not quite so perfectly aligned, and we'll do that, and then we'll also come up here to Freeze Transformations. In the next lesson, we're going to start the animation by blocking out the key poses. Thanks for watching.

Intermediate Provider : Stephen Steinbach 3 Lessons · 26m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

Explore dynamic animation techniques with this module, following along as we use function curves to animate a bouncing ball sequence. You’ll be introduced to one of Maya 2022’s essential tools: Grease Pencil, which allows you to quickly draw directly onto any viewport. Learn how to plan your animation with Grease Pencil as we draw the arc and path of the bouncing ball. The next technique we’ll cover is using step curves, a great way to animate pose-to-pose without having to spend time on in-between drawings. We’ll block out the animation using step curves, planning the timing of each bounce and fall in the ball’s trajectory, before getting in-depth with the Curve Editor. You’ll learn how to use the Curve Editor to refine the movement sequence you’ve designed, adding adjustments by breaking and weighting tangent curves. Finally, discover how deformers can lend even more realism to your dynamic animations. We’ll illustrate this in our example by adding a squash deformer to the ball, giving the impression of motion blur as it falls through space.

What You'll Learn

Conceptualize and plan an animation sequence for a bouncing ball
Use the Grease Pencil tool to draw the arc and path of the ball directly onto a viewport
Block out animation with step curves to plan the timing of each bounce and fall
Convert and modify function curves to animate the bouncing ball sequence
Refine movement using the Curve Editor by breaking and weighting tangent curves
Constrain a squash deformer to the animation to add realism and the impression of motion blur

Key Takeaways

Function curves are used to animate a bouncing ball sequence in Maya 2022.
Grease Pencil lets you quickly draw directly onto any viewport to plan an animation's arc and path.
Step curves allow pose-to-pose animation without spending time on in-between drawings.
The Curve Editor refines a movement sequence by breaking and weighting tangent curves.
Adding a squash deformer to the ball gives the impression of motion blur as it falls through space.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this Maya 2022 intermediate module cover?

It covers dynamic animation techniques using a bouncing ball sequence, including function curves, the Grease Pencil tool, step curves for pose-to-pose blocking, the Curve Editor, and adding a squash deformer.

What is the Grease Pencil tool used for in this course?

Grease Pencil is an essential Maya 2022 tool that lets you quickly draw directly onto any viewport; in this module it is used to plan the animation by drawing the arc and path of the bouncing ball.

Why are step curves used in this module?

Step curves are a way to animate pose-to-pose without spending time on in-between drawings, and they are used to block out the animation and plan the timing of each bounce and fall in the ball's trajectory.

What lessons are included in this course?

The lessons are Bouncing Ball: Preparation and Planning; Bouncing Ball: Set Key Frames and Blocking; and Bouncing Ball: Curve Editor.

What skills does this course relate to?

It relates to 2D Animation, Adobe Animate, Animations, Autodesk Maya, Computer Animation, and Object Animation.