Constraint Tutorials 3:00 PM

How can you animate a character holding something? Picking up a cup? Pointing a gun? Drawing with a pencil?

Good question. Here are some videos that explains proper constraining in Maya. I am actually surprised this is out there for free considering how great these are. This is a much watch.


Constraint Demo 1: The Basics from David Latour on Vimeo.


Constraint Demo 2: Prop to Hand from David Latour on Vimeo.


Constraint Demo 3: Hand to Prop from David Latour on Vimeo.


Constraint Demo 4: Two Hands to Prop from David Latour on Vimeo.


Constraint Demo 5: Two Hand Hybrid from David Latour on Vimeo.


Constraint Demo 6: Tumbles and Swings from David Latour on Vimeo.

Pose Exercises 4:27 PM

A great exercise for animators is to regularily create single poses. Not animated, just a single frame. Some people make daily pose blogs where they post their warm up poses. This is a great idea and if you want to post your own daily pose blog in the comments, feel free. I made the following pose today.

I used the version 3 of the free MooM rig and turned off the face. I wasn't sure how to make a simple, clean render so I watched the following tutorial. I recommend it!


Character Pose Lighting/Rendering Tutorial in Maya from Joel Finney on Vimeo.

Selection Shelf for Joe 12:47 PM

I am using the great Joe Rig to do some simple exercise animations. I decided to make a shelf of scripts and icons to facilitate animating. Especially for selecting Joe's kind-o'-hidden finger controllers. I am posting the shelf and icons here for download.

Download Joe's Shelf

To install, just put the shelf file in your prefs>shelves folder and the icons in the prefs>icons folder. I also included the .psd I was using to make the icons. Feel free to edit or make more. If you make more, it would be great if you could post the changes here.

Enjoy!

Helpful Hints 2:19 PM

Make sure you read the helpful hints over at the 11 second club. Seriously, I was reading the article "Why we block" and thinking, "Wow, this is really helpful." Some tutorials out there about animation really aren't that helpful. Most are too abstract. But these helpful hints are grounded with nice little video clips to illustrate the point.

AnimationMentor's YouTube Channel 11:59 AM

You should subscribe to AnimationMentor's Youtube Channel. Here is a great video from them. Watch and learn.



No go punch someone in the face. Vicariously, obviously.

Quick Tip: Find Menu 11:01 AM

Don't you hate it when you can't find a menu set? This happens to me all the time. I can remember the name of the menu but can't find it for nothing. Just the other day I couldn't find the option to delete the history on an object.

When working on OSX, you can easily search the menu sets of Maya with OSX's built-in menu search. However, while working on a PC I really missed that feature. At least until I found the "find menu" menu. Some silence please for the victorious trumpets and the choir's "hallelujah."

...hallelujah...

I honestly had never heard of or seen this glorious menu set. Now I pass this knowledge onto you. Just remember, "with great power come great responsibility."

quick eyes tutorial 4:26 PM

i found this little gem on the animade site. i hope they make more of these.


Animade Lernz - EYES from Animade on Vimeo.