OUAN406 - Maya Animation Skills

Turntable

The turntable was an incredible easy process to do on Maya. There are two main ways I'm aware of that make a turnaround animation for a modelled object. The first, is to create a circular curve around the object and create a camera. Then you join the two and create a motion path for the camera to follow, giving a 360 degree view of the object. Depending on the amount of frames used also determines the speed the camera moves around the object. I found around 200 frames is a good amount of time for the camera to move around the object. The second way is using the turntable object which is under the animate tab. All you need to do is go animate>turntable and it create the turn around animation for you. Overall this was a straight forward task but incredibly useful when showing off 3D objects from all angles.

Pendulum

The pendulum was the first animation we created using Maya, and it was easier to create the movement than I thought. Again, it used the principles of keyframes which at this point I was quite familiar with because having used them quite a lot. The main purpose of this task was to apply the principles of animation to the pendulum through the software. Furthermore, this task also taught me how to use motion graphs in order to modify the movement within the swing of the pendulum.

Overlapping Action

The method used to demonstrate overlapping action was to animate a segmented pendulum. Using what we learnt making the normal pendulum, this time after the basic motion of the pendulum was made you could go and modify the smaller aspects to create the overlapping action. The graph editor came in very useful when changing the movement of various sections of the segmented pendulum.

Bouncy Balls

The last task was quite free and experimental in contrast to the other tasks we had attempted. It involved creating the movement for balls bouncing up and down. It was important to make use of the keyframes and the axis to move the balls along it. The final detail we added was a squash effect for one of the bouncy balls to give it a sense of realism and applying the principles of animation.

Anticipation

The anticipation task was another really easy process. It involved creating an objects and then creating a curved path. When you link the object to the curve under the option 'create motion path' the object follows the shape of the curve. It's important here to make sure the curve is an elegant shape so the movement is smooth and consistent.