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 will learn the tools and techniques used in the setup process of both our robot and truck. The goal is to break this complex idea down into a simple, and manageable form. We'll cover the rigging process in its entirety, and along this journey, we'll be introduced to several tools that will help make this all come together efficiently. By the end of the course, you'll have the set of skills needed to rig your own transforming robot.

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.

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.

Throughout these lessons we will be learning some of the MEL commands needed to add HIK to a character rigging pipeline. Along the way we will look at some of the limitations with the HumanIK toolset and how we can work around them. By the end of the this tutorial, you will comfortable with HIK whether you are an animator with no rigging experience or a TD looking to add HIK to your rigging pipeline.

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.

Throughout the tutorial you will learn techniques for re-purposing rigs to save time in your character setup pipeline. We'll start by merging a completed rig into our character's scene. At that point, we will start modifying the rig to match the proportions of our character. Moving on from there, we will then add controls that are necessary to accommodate any new accessories that require controls. We'll also learn techniques for rigging hair and belts, and use Mel scripts, to help us to cut time on repetitive tasks. By the end of this tutorial, you'll learn how to reuse your own rigged assets, to, in the end, be more productive to your team.

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.

Over the series of tutorials, we will use Maya's very robust and intuitive muscle system improve the overall realism of an animated character. We will start with an animated rig that has some major deformation problems that will need to be addressed. From there, we will start to strategically build an efficient muscle rig that will preserve volume in critical areas that are prone to collapse, like the shoulders and forearms. We'll learn how to customize Maya muscle shapes and follow-through effects to create the illusion of weight and realism! We'll also cover integrating blend shapes with Maya Muscle and file referencing to work smarter, not harder. By the end of this tutorial, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to incorporate Maya Muscle into your own rigging pipeline.

In this Maya tutorial, Boston based artist Farley Chery will lead the viewer the unusual yet intuitive technique of multi-mesh skinning, a process created in his last production. The entire rigging process can be long and arduous, so great work flow is essential to speeding up the process. Multi-Mesh is an unorthodox method which allows the user to use the best possible initial settings throughout the body and blending them into a a seamless mesh. This eccentric approach allows for skinning most body parts in seconds and problem areas such as the clavicle and shoulder regions in minutes. The artist will show some of his best techniques in efficiency and troubleshooting into this amazing tutorial.

Throughout the tutorial we’ll focus on setting our creature up with creative and intuitive controls. We'll learn how to set up Mel scripts to cut down time on repetitive tasks. We'll learn how to create a proficient vertebrae rig. We'll create an automated overlapping tail system that can be blended into an FK control rig. We’ll also explore skinning techniques to reduce the time it takes to edit weights. By the end of this Maya tutorial, you’ll have the knowledge you need to create your own aquatic creature rigs, with techniques that can be used on a wide variety of creatures and characters.

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.

By the end of this tutorial, we will understand how they operate, as well as discuss practical uses for each of them.

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 tutorial, Farley Chery will lead the viewer through the rigors of creating a control rig for one of the great cats using Enhanced IK in Maya 2012. While the tutorial centers on a puma/panther these techniques work on all the great cats and any quadruped with similar anatomy. Much like his prior tutorial Motion Flow Rigging in Maya, and much like the first amazing techniques are unveiled. New ideas on internal automation principles will be explored and old ones expanded on. The artist will create a robust rig with a more straight forward workflow then the previous course, while still providing examples of problem solving techniques that arise when creating a complex rig. The tutorial focuses on presenting new or different techniques wherever possible for comparison with more established systems. Rigging one of the great cats with enhanced IK makes for a very flexible control rig. The base system of Enhanced IK though is versatile enough to use with many other methodologies in Maya. Enhanced IK greatly improves the functionality of Inverse Kinematics in Maya. By the end of this Maya tutorial you will be armed with techniques to make efficient and robust rigs for feline and canine quadrupeds, utilizing an enhanced control rig that is ready to be modified and finalized with your preferred hierarchies and dynamic parenting setups.

In this collection of lessons we will learn about the tools in Maya's Skeleton menu.

This tutorial will cover the process of animating a face in Maya. We will build the animation step by step, covering time-saving and proficient techniques like smart blocking, using a checklist, how to work with reference, checking for arcs. We will even cover what to do when we encounter issues where an expression that was not anticipated calls for the control rig to be revised. By the end of this tutorial, you we will be equipped with the knowledge you need to build your own facial animations that are convincing and entertaining.

In this course, Farley Chery will be introducing extraordinary new rigging concepts to help animators achieve natural fluidity in our body movement. He will cover different theories and methods used in combination to give natural articulation that occurs during body movement. The artist will explain the theory and reasoning through the rig development process. This leads into the creation of an innovative shoulder setup, based on the postion of the elbows mimicking the proper actions of human anatomy, which uses the concepts covered to make it intuitive to use in both FK and IK systems. This implementation of a remarkable no flip knee setup, which is used to create an automatic hip system, magically orients itself to the average position of the knees allowing for quick and natural poses for the character. This course is concluded by building a squash and stretch nSpine and an easy method for creating spine twists. These revolutionary methods come directly from the artist and can not be found anywhere else.

We will first cover some things to consider when constructing the control rig. From there, we will set up the wing, step by step, making sure the system we build will be sufficient to the needs of an animator. We will also build a few MEL scripts to work efficiently.

Throughout the tutorial we will focus on providing animators with the control they need to create natural expressions with a control rig that computes fast. We will also creatively explore several techniques and tools that can be used to create realistic deformations. Step by step, we will construct a facial control system that is robust and animator-friendly. We will learn everything from how to create a reverse-jaw rig, rigging with curves for flexibility, how to create sticky controls, fleshy eyes, and we will also cover how to set up preset expressions for fast animation.

Introducing the Beginner's Guide to Rigging in Maya. In this course, We will start off by covering the most basic form of rigging, parenting. We will then take a look at how to modify the pivot of an object and how to work with groups. After that, you will learn about joints, inverse kinematics, and control objects. And to wrap up this project, we will go over the Maya binding process for skin deformations. By the end of the course, you will understand essential terms and definitions and build a solid foundation for rigging in Maya.

In this course, we will rig a character for a game in Maya. We will cover techniques like setting up our joints to have a consistent orientation throughout the entire skeleton, we will build a twist rig to fix deformations that collapse in animation, we will learn how to create a foot rig with more banking control, and even cover creating a robust and flexible spine rig with advanced twisting. We will also discuss weight painting techniques that help to speed up that process, making it less intimidating and instead more of an enjoyable experience. By the end of this course you will learn rigging techniques that can be applied to any rig you build.

We'll construct the control rig with a production focus. In the end, we will not only have worked with the rigging tools in Maya, but we'll also have looked into ways we can use some of those tools creatively to get the job done right and at a faster pace.

We'll take the Facial Action Coding System approach of controls muscles to mold facial expressions. Step by step, we'll construct a facial control rig that is robust, sufficient, and animator-friendly. We'll learn everything from how to deform a mesh by a curve's shape, to creating controls for those curves that will provide the animator with the functionality they need to create entertaining facial animations. We'll also learn how utilize nodes and expressions to automate certain components of our control rig. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have the fundamental knowledge you need to create your own curve-based control rigs that produce natural and appealing facial expressions.

Step by step, we'll construct a control rig that is robust and animator-friendly. We'll learn everything from proper joint placement and techniques for correcting a joint's orientation to learning fun ways we can preserve volume as our mesh deforms and how to make our controls efficient and easy to comprehend. We'll also learn how to build some fun MEL tools that will help speed up our workflow, bringing that time back into constructing our control rigs with the best methods.

In this course, we'll be taking a step-by-step approach, constructing a control rig that is solid and animator-friendly. We'll learn everything from proper joint placement and working with constraints, to learning how to utilize Maya's innovative and robust enveloping tools to remove the fear of painting weights and, instead, make the process an enjoyable one. We'll cover how to make our controls efficient and easy to comprehend, and we'll also learn how to work with custom shelves to quickly access tools so we can speed up our workflow.

We'll start the tutorial by giving you the foundational skills and vocabulary you'll need in order to move around within Maya, and then we'll jump right into the Modeling section of the course. After completing the Modeling section, you'll get the chance try your hand at Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Dynamics, and finally, Lighting and Rendering your own animation. Our goal is not to weigh you down with technical information, but rather to help you form really good habits so you can have a successful future using Maya.

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: Building Skeletons from Anatomy; Painting Weights for Rigid Deformations; Spring IK Solver; No-Flip IK; Innovative Broken Hierarchies; MEL Scripting for Rigging and Animation; Visual Limiter Controls; Sculpt Deformer; Blend Shapes; Character Sets; Smooth Binding.

Popular highlights include: Maya Muscle Overview; Capsules, Bones and Muscles; Muscle Builder User Interface; Modeling Muscle Definition; Custom Muscle Shapes; Muscle Spline Deformer; Muscle Stretch Deformer; Muscle Skin Deformers; Sliding and Shrinkwrap; Painting Muscle Weights; Jiggle, Cycle and Rest Attributes; Relax and Smooth Attributes; Muscle Caching; Surface Attach; Muscle Setup for Symmetrical Characters.

Popular highlights include: Overview of Rigging Tools; Overview of Skinning Tools; Methods for Parenting Objects; Parent Constraints; Joint Display Settings; Joint Attributes; Adjusting Joint Orientation; Inserting Joints; Nondestructive Joint Removal; Changing Root Joints; Disconnecting Joints; Mirroring Joints; Using IK Solvers; Using Spring Solver; Spline IK Solver; Creating User-friendly Controls; Organizing Scenes with Groups; Adding Custom Attributes; Utilizing Maya's Hypergraph; Connection Editor; Point Constraint Tool; Orient Constraints; Aim Constraint Tool; Set Driven Key Relationships; Smooth Bind Tool; Modifying Smooth Skin Deformations; Avoiding Double Transformation; Mirroring Influence Data; Setting up Proxy Cages; Jiggle Deformers; Creating Flexors; Cluster Deformers; Copying and Pasting Flexors; Bind Pose Node; Wrap Deformer Tool.

Popular highlights include: Creating Customized Tools; Squash and Stretch Tools; Custom Tools for Pinning Objects; Maintaining Volume with Squash & Stretch; Creating MEL Scripts; Creating Illusion of Weight on Tires; Automating Follow-through in Antenna; Automating Revolving Lights; Intuitive Control for Steering Wheel; Rigging with Non-linear Deformers; Rigging Doors and Windows; Automating the Car Idle; Setting up Proxy Meshes; Adding a Smooth Node Switch; Creating Control Objects; Attaching Vehicles to Motion Paths; Binding to Lattices; Creating Exhaust Sputter.

Popular highlights include: Creating Squash and Stretch Spine; Creating Stretchy Legs with On/Off Feature; Globally Scaling a Squash and Stretch Rig; Animator-Friendly Facial Setup; Parent Scripts for Clean Controls; Animatable Squash/Stretch GUI; Multi-parent Control Objects; Elbow and Knee Preservation Techniques; Pinning Accessories to Bound Characters; Object Pivot Manipulation; Working with Expressions; User-Friendly and Efficient Body Controls; Rotation Order; Gimbal Lock Prevention Assistant; Enhanced Foot Bank Setup; Enhanced Shoulder Concept; Improved Finger Setup for Added Control.

Popular highlights include: Constructing Effective Hierarchies; Broken Hierarchy Systems; Building Rig from Reference Skeleton; Building an FK Spline System; Incorporating MEL for Speed; Custom Shelf for Tools; Characters Sets; Sub-Character Sets; Set Driven Keys; IK Solvers for Proper Limb Functionality; Constraints; Advanced Hip Control; Painting Weights; Connection Editor; Reverse Lock System; Muscle Deformation with Influence Objects; Corrective Shapes for Mesh Deformations.

Popular highlights include: Creating Intuitive 3D Graphic User Interface; Blend Shapes for Mouth Expressions (Phonemes, Smiles, Frowns, Sneers); Blend Shapes for Eyes (Blink, Brow Raise, Squint); Blend Shapes for Subtleties and Details; Advanced Tongue Set Up with Spline IK and Blend Shapes; Changing Deformation Stack; Sophisticated Jaw Controls; Tuning Weights with Component Editor; Connection Editor; Cluster Setup; Camera Setup for User-Friendly Animation; Constraints; Smooth Binding; Soft Modification / Sculpt Geometry Tool.

Popular highlights include: Intuitive Forearm Rig; Reverse Foot Rolls; Hip Sway Controls; Shoulder Controls; Body Controls; FK/IK Blending Techniques; Character Binding; Local Rotations; Pivot Adjustment; Multi-layer Control; Spline IK; Component Editor; Paint Weights Tools; Alternate Methods of Adjusting Weights.

Popular Highlights Include: Polygon Modeling; NURBS Modeling; Texturing; Lighting; Animation / Rigging; Rendering; UV Layout; Hypershade; Particle Simulations; Environments; Interface Overview.