We will start by discussing the foundational skills and vocabulary that will be essential as you begin your Maya learning. From there we will move directly into modeling, where we will begin building the vehicle that will be used for the duration of this course. Once the vehicle is built we will move into texturing, rigging, animation, dynamics, and we will finish up with the lighting and rendering of our final animation.

Throughout these lessons, we'll cover the workflow used to animate the robot while breaking down each stage of the performance from beginning to end. We'll also modify the robot's rig with add-ons for more control. By the end of the course, you'll have the understanding needed to animate your own transforming robot.

Throughout these lessons we will use a combination of Maya, After Effects and Photoshop to do everything from the modeling, animating, texturing, lighting and rendering of an animated title sequence. By the end of this tutorial you'll have an understanding of the knowledge required to create a robotic title sequence from start to finish.

Each video in this course is a self-contained lesson centering on one of the commands found in the Constrain menu in Maya. This means that these lessons can be viewed in any order you wish, allowing you to jump straight to the content that is most relevant to you. Over the course of these lessons, we'll take a detailed look at each of the Constrain commands and how each of them can be used to speed up our workflow.

We'll first explore the planning phase of this project, and then dive right in and built the performance from start to finish, learning skills that can be applied to any character. We'll also create very simple but useful mel scripts to select controls faster, discuss the benefit of choosing suitable rotation orders for control objects, and learn ways to overcome gimbal lock interpolations. By the end of this tutorial, you will have attained the set of skills needed to animate fun and believable character interactions.

We'll start by taking a look into our rigging process. We'll learn about bone and influence limits that we should adhere to. We'll learn techniques for creating rigs with a sufficient amount of control, despite our limitations. We'll cover repurposing and optimizing control rigs to work more efficiently. In the end, we will have given the animator a very flexible rig with more than enough control to successful create appealing performances in the characters they've been tasked with. In animation, we'll learn some neat animation tricks and techniques to bring your game assets to life in an fun away; techniques that consist of: reversing an animated sequence, avoiding weightlessness, and tricks for animating a crawling creature with several legs. By the end of this course, you'll have a greater understanding of tools and techniques you can use to create exciting game animations; animations that can then be then handed off to programmers to start polishing the game's functionality.

We'll start by learning how Maya's Trax Editor can be used to retarget animation. We'll then take another approach and utilize MEL to accomplish the same thing. Finally, we'll work with Maya's intuitive Human IK toolset to retarget from a performance-captured animation to a custom skeleton. We'll also cover techniques for optimizing and correcting animation after it has been remapped. By the end of this set of tutorials, you will be familiar with several tools you have at your disposal for re-purposing animation, to, ultimately, save production time.

This series takes an in-depth look into Maya's Animate menu set.

Throughout these lessons we'll delve into the animated growth of a tree branch as a time-lapse video. We'll learn everything from modeling, texturing and shading to the animation and final compositing. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a better understanding of how you can employ efficient and productive techniques for a time-lapse video that can be used when up against a tight deadline.

In this series of tutorials, our objectives include understanding a character's emotions and thoughts through their eye patterns. We'll cover techniques and workflows for animating believable eye jitters and eye darts. We'll dissect various eye animations and discuss WHY they move a certain way. Overall, we'll learn how to animate the eyes and brows to feel organic and life-like.

We'll start by learning how to clean up and optimize a motion captured-driven skeleton inside of Maya. We'll then learn how to Characterize the skeleton for retargeting within MotionBuilder. Afterwards, we'll explore the inter-operability between MotionBuilder and Maya and discuss how to work with their new Send To feature for transporting files back and forth between the two applications in a fraction of the time. We'll learn the retargeting process in MotionBuilder and also learn how to work with its Control Rig and Animation Layering systems to finesse performances. Finally, we'll send the animation back to Maya to finalize our scene. By the end of this tutorial, you'll learn how to use the tools in both Maya and MotionBuilder to polish, enhance, and retarget your character animations in half the time it would normally take.

In this series of lessons we will learn how to rig vehicles in Maya and learn proper vehicle animation techniques. Throughout this series we will learn how to create a seamless vehicle rig that will provide the animator with the control needed to create realistic animation. We will start with preparing our model for rigging with a proper naming convention and hierarchy. Step by step we will learn how to set up controls for steering and rotating the wheels as well as building a full custom suspension. We will learn how to clean up our rig to make it simpler to use and be seamlessly passed off to an animator. We will also go through the process of creating realistic animation including setting up a shot camera, blocking the animation, adjusting the animation curves and viewing a motion trail. We will also cover animating the suspension for our car to give the it a sense of weight.

Throughout the tutorial, we will cover everything from setting up your Preferences for Craft, to connecting your vehicles to the Craft control rig, how to constrain your vehicles to drive along a modeled surface. We will also explore tools and settings for achieving desirable performances from your vehicles, and even take a look at a few of the amazing camera rigs built into craft.

In this course, we will create an animation of a character swinging to a platform. Step by step, we will create this performance while covering various techniques that will help you improve your animation skill set. Techniques like: how to block in your extremes so that finalizing the animation becomes a faster process, improving arcs in the movement of your characters, animating between IK and FK modes, and overall we will learn how to animate with proficient workflows! By the end of this course, you will have the knowledge you need to create polished animations at a faster pace.

We will start off by learning how to navigate through the Maya interface, and moving the Maya virtual cameras. We will then explore many critical aspects of Maya, such as creating and manipulating primitive objects, understanding the various components of Maya geometry, animating objects in Maya, working with lights and shadows, adding materials and textures to our scenes, rendering out animated sequences, and many other concepts that will help you get a solid foundational understanding of Maya and it's capabilities.

What is Staging? How can it be used to improve the quality of your animations? We will answer these questions as we cover tips and techniques for using this principle to make sure your animations are presented in the clearest way. By the end of this course, you will have a deeper understanding of the principle of Staging, which will help add more entertainment to your work.

What is Solid Drawing? How can this 2D concept be implemented in 3D? Throughout this course, we will define Solid Drawing and work through a variety exercises to help explain it. By the end of this course, you will understand the meaning behind the principle of Solid Drawing, which will help you to polish your animations to attain believable movements throughout the actions of your character.

Introducing the Beginner's Guide to Animation in Maya. In this course, we will start off by covering some ways we can view animation in Maya. We will then take a look at how to create and edit keyframes on the Maya timeline. After that, you will learn about the powerful Maya animation editor, the Graph Editor. And to wrap up this project, we will go over how to create a quick renders of your animations with playblasts. By the end of the course, you will understand essential terms and definitions and build a solid foundation for animating in Maya.

In this course, we will animate a character for a game in Maya. We will explain workflow techniques that will help us to not only save time with our animations, but at the same time capture a fitting and entertaining personality through the gestures of our character that an audience will enjoy. By the end of this course, you will learn animation techniques that can be applied to any character you may animate in the future.

In this course, we will explore the animation principle of ease in and ease out in Maya. Why is ease in and ease out so important? Do our characters always need to cushion in and out of their movements, or are there special cases where doing so will just not work? We will answer these questions as we cover tips and techniques for using this principle to help enhance the sense of authenticity in characters. By the end of this course, you will have a deeper understanding of the principle of ease in and ease out, which will help your characters become more life-like to the viewer.

In this course, we will explore the animation principle of Follow-through and Overlapping in Maya. What should be considered when animating Follow-through and Overlap? Can Follow-through be automated to save time? We will answer these questions as we cover techniques for using this principle to help add more realism to our animations. By the end of this course, you will be more knowledgeable of Follow-through and Overlapping Action, which will help you create more natural-looking animations.

This course covers tools and techniques for animating props in Maya. We'll discuss methods that are animator-friendly for prop animation. We'll learn how to animate constrained objects, how to blend smoothly between our space-switches as we keyframe a constraint's weight, and we'll even explore at technique for switching between spaces with no offset. At the end of this course, you'll have the knowledge you need to overcome the challenges of prop animation.

This course will venture into the animation principle of secondary action in Maya. What is secondary action? Is it another way of describing follow-through and overlap, or is it much more? Throughout this course, we'll define secondary action and work through a variety exercises to help get the point across. By the end of this course, you'll understand what the principle of secondary action boils down to, which will help you enhance your animations by adding an extra level of realism to your characters.

This course will venture into the animation principle of arcs in Maya. What are arcs? Why is this subject so vital in animation? These are but a few questions we'll answer as we learn techniques that will assist us in checking for and fixing arcs in our animations. By the end of this course, you'll know how to improve your arcs, which will help you become a stronger animator, as you use this principle to add an extra level of realism to your character's movements.

This course will delve in the animation principle of anticipation in Maya. Without anticipation, a viewer can totally miss what we are trying to communicate through our characters. So in this course, we cover a few examples of when and how to add this essential component, and, by the end, you'll be more knowledgeable of anticipation, which will, in turn, improve your ability as an animator as you use this principle to make sure all actions are clearly conveyed.

This course will delve in the animation principle of pose to pose and straight ahead in Maya. The goal of this course is to not only learn the differences between both pose to pose and the straight ahead approach of animation, but is also for you to learn the advantages of bridging the two methods together. We'll even look a different technique for animating with Pose to Pose than we've used in the past. That way you can find which workflow is more suitable for you. By the end of this course, you'll have a firm understanding of pose to pose and straight ahead, so that your animation skill-set can be expanded as you use this principle to rough-in and refine your work.

This course will delve in the animation principle of timing and spacing in Maya. Throughout this course, we'll define timing and spacing and work through a variety exercises to help get the point across. We'll even discuss techniques we can use to make sure our animations are Timed accurately. By the end of this course, you'll have a deeper understanding of the principle of timing and spacing, which will help you become a better animator.

This course will delve in the animation principle of squash and stretch in Maya. The goal of this course is to provide you with a deeper understanding of what squash and stretch is all about. We'll cover everything from learning a technique for automating squash and stretch that computes fast to exploring ways it can be used to add more flexibility to characters.

This course will delve in the animation principle of exaggeration in Maya. The goal of this course is to give you a clearer understanding of what exaggeration is all about. We will explore various ways exaggeration can be implemented successfully. We'll also cover how and how not it should be used, which will, in turn, strength your ability as an animator as you use this principle to refine your work for a more entertaining end result.

This course will delve in the animation principle of appeal in Maya. The goal of this course is to give you a greater understanding of what appeal is. We will explore various ways appeal can be added successfully, which will, in turn, strength your ability as an animator as you use this principle to refine your work for more captivating results.

In this course we will build an animation of a character climbing over a wall from scratch, using techniques that can be implemented in any animation. Step by step, we'll create this climb while covering various techniques like: how to block in your extremes so that finalizing the animation becomes a faster process, strengthening poses to get a more entertaining outcome, and we'll also learn how to work smarter by utilizing Animation Layers to tweak pre-existing animation non-destructively, so that by the end of this course, you'll have the knowledgebase you need to create animations quickly and proficiently.

One step at a time, we'll break down the body mechanics of a walk. We'll learn the main positions that one goes through in a walk, we'll learn how to create seamless cycles and explore ways we can add convincing follow-through and weight. We'll even work with animation layers to produce a walk that is natural and has a little personality.

We'll animate the Infiltrator with a production focus, using storyboards and an animatic to assist us in making sure our animation adheres to specific instructions. We'll get into character development and learn how to go about creating performances that are convincing and, at the same time, entertaining. We'll even do a little rigging and learn how to work with Maya's robust and very efficient Referencing system to update the control rig and, in turn, automatically have those changes update in our animation file saving us plenty of time.

We'll cover everything from creating turntables, to techniques we can use to add more entertainment to our shots by camera animation alone. We'll learn various ways we can rig cameras and even discuss shot composition to make sure the audience knows who the significant players and objects of interest are in our scene. By the end of this Maya tutorial, you'll have the knowledge you need to animate the camera confidently, producing results that can captivate an audience.

Why does my character's motion look so unnatural and unappealing? How can my animations captivate an audience? What, in my character's movement, is missing that will enable it to be convincing and entertaining? These are a few questions that will be answered through this training, all with the help of these fundamental rules of animation.

This course will provide you with a sampling of tips and tricks collected by our animators. We will learn how to improve our animation using different tools such animation snapshot and motion trails. Then we will go over some simple ways of how to apply weight to character, use silhouettes to strengthen poses, and add offsets to make our animations look more natural and less rigid.

Popular highlights include: Interface Overview, NURBS Modeling, Polygon Modeling, Subdivision Surfaces, Texturing, Procedural Textures, Hypershade, UV Layout, Building Control Rigs, Custom Attributes, Writing Expressions, Setting Key Frames, Path Animation, Dynamics, Particle Shader, Lighting, Image Planes, Light Linking, Environments, Displacement Maps, Rendering.

Popular highlights include: Trax Editor; Animation Clips; Poses; Constraint Clips; Expression Clips; Clip Moving, Scaling, Trimming, Cycling, Blending, Splitting, Merging; Absolute / Relative Clips; Import / Export Clips; Non-destructive Animation; Mixing and Deriving Animation; Time Warp Curves; Character and Sub-character Sets; Character Mapper; Character Redirection; Character Retargeting with Neutral Poses and Joint Labeling; Bake Simulation.

Popular highlights include: Overview of Animation Layers; Animating on Layers; Practical Layering Workflows; Importing and Exporting Animation Layers; Working with Layer Modes; Merging Layers; Baking Layers; Using Expressions with Layers; Controlling a Layer's Weight; Filtering Layered Keyframes; Understanding Animation Layer Hierarchies; Examining the Animation Layer Node; Utilizing Animation Layers as Takes; Adjusting the Animation Layer Editor's Layout; Packaging Layers into Containers; Working with Layers and Trax Editor; Ghosting Animation Layers; Template F-curves of Layered Animation; Animation Layer States; Using Constraints with Layers; Parenting layers; Using the Animation Layer Toolbar and Pane; Copying Layers; Extracting Animation into New Layers; Adding and Removing Objects and Attributes in Layers.

Popular highlights include: Animating Hexapedal Creatures; Tips for Animating Insect Legs; Adding Energy for Appealing Movement; Using Pose to Pose and Straight Ahead to Block in Animation; Convincingly Animating Antennas ; Follow-through; Overlapping; Weight; Anticipation; Establishing Timing for an Attacking Creature; Fine-tuning Motion With the Graph Editor; Adding In-betweens to Control Spacing; Animating in Sections for a Faster Workflow; MEL Scripting for Animation.

Popular highlights include: Shaping Facial Features; Shaping with Move Brush; Utilizing 3D Layers; Creating Expression Libraries; Adding Normal Maps in Maya; Setting up Blendshapes in Maya; Key Framing Blendshapes; Creating In-betweens; Isolating Geometry with Masks; Manipulating Subtools with Polygroups; Exporting Geometry from ZBrush; Blending Shapes using Morph Targets; Sculpting Facial Expressions; Isolating Areas of Face; Moving the Teeth and Gums; Smoothing Geometry; Working with Subdivision Levels; Creating Phonemes; Creating Distinct Emotions.

Popular highlights include: XNA Development Overview; Interfacing with Keyboard and Gamepad; Building Controller Systems; Controller Vibration; Exporting and Loading Static Meshes from Maya; Exporting Animated Characters from Maya; Moving and Turning a Character; Object-oriented Programming with Bullets and Targets; Baking Textures in Maya; Deriving Bounding Boxes from Maya; Collision Detection with Bounding boxes; Collision Detection with Rays; Building a Custom Animation Player; Switching and Blending Between Animations; Chase Cameras; Camera Shakes; Drawing Text.

Popular highlights include: Staging; Anticipation; Follow-Through; Creating Appeal; Arcs; Timing and Spacing; Pose to Pose and Straight Ahead; Adding Personality; Exaggeration; Squash and Stretch; Secondary Action; Ease in and Ease Out; Animating Cameras; Motion Trails; Working with Storyboards; Key-frame Marking Menu; Adding In-betweens; Breakdown Keys; Muting Keys; Interacting with Props; Proxy Cage for Characters.

Popular highlights include: Rigging Techniques for Games; Scene Organization; Custom Shelves; Creating Control Objects with MEL; Constraints; Advanced Spline IK Twist control; Alias Attributes; Binding Techniques; Rotation Order; Follow-through; Exaggeration; Arcs; Timing and Spacing; Weight; Cycling Animation; Animated Transitions; Character Sets; Trax Editor. You may use Maya version 8.0 and up to follow along with the training. X-Ray Joints is the only feature that we discuss that is available in Maya version 2008 and up only.

Popular highlights include: Overview of Animation Tools; Manipulating Animation in Graph Editor; Ghosting Animation; Exploring Various Cycle Options; Editing Keys; Modifying Tangent Handles; Set Driven Keys; Creating Turn Tables; Outputting Animation for Preview; Copying and Pasting Key frames; Animation Curve Node; Dope Sheet; Motion Paths; Seamlessly Cycling Animation; Holding Current Keys; Insert Keys Tool; Breaking Tangents for Weight; Optimizing Key Frame Data; Animating with Constraints; Overview of Trax Editor; Fine-tuning Function Curves; Baking Animation Data; Simplifying Function Curves; Breakdown Keys; Buffer Function Curves.