Maya Homework - Animation Tutorials

This homework covers a continuation of our lesson work using the animation tools within maya, this time to rig and animate a mesh created in there.

Note to self; make sure the menu's are using the animation set up as this makes this really hard to do without >.>

firstly we are starting with the teaching material given fish (similar to the one i had to do weeks ago)

the tutorials cover that there are basic shapes used to influence the motion of the fish when moved by binding them to the more detailed mesh that is visible.

Here we are introduced to another tool; the joint tool, another drawing tool which allows you to draw a series of hierarchy or objects called joints. the can then be rotated or moved both individually or as groups.

Which of course we are then going to apply to the cylinder we have created.

by selecting the originator of the chain and then the object and binding them using the smooth chain tool, we can now use these joints to have a degree of transformation control over the cylinder.

Now for the actual skeleton of the fish we introduced at the start;

Through repeated use of the joint tool we create the skeleton for the fish, covering all the areas we might need to have control over, this included making use of multiple orthographic views at once to make sure the fins were properly covered.

The next part is pretty nice, by setting up animations (key-frames and whatnot to record the difference in position) of these various components moving you can see where its deforming elements it shouldn't be, in this regard its like having an automated "spot what shouldn't be happening"

The tool we're using to adjust these deformation is the paint skin weights tool, located under skin. the tool allows you when looking at each of the joints created for an object, to see its influence on the whole object through use patches of colour where it has effect.

Using it like a negative paint brush you can remove it influence in each joint. Then through mirroring these effects we can apply it to both sides of the fish meaning our fin (both left and right) now only influences so much;

(note at this point i realised maya had decided to destroy most of my joints so ill be using the exercise file example for the actual animations)

Finally through use manually manipulating and then keyframing the movement from specific joints you can produce an animation of (in this case) a fish swimming.

This bit of homework was actually really nice to do, the tutorials weren't long but gave some really easy to understand instructions and the animation itself is also fun to do as it is basic but requires labor and tinkering to produce high quality animations, I wish i hadn't accidentally lost some of my progress, but at least i still have the lesson to take to heart.