Animating with Extreme Inbetweens and Smears in Maya
In this Maya tutorial, we discover the process of creating smears using traditional concepts on a CG animation. Software required: Maya 2012.
What you'll learn
In this Maya tutorial, we discover the process of creating smears using traditional concepts on a CG animation. We will start the project with a blocked animation. Then, we will begin talking about dynamic poses, line of action and silhouette, but also leading edge and how we build smear frames. Throughout the training we will spline the animation, cover hot keys to speed up your workflow, and talk a bit about the graph editor. We then leap into creating duplicate frames and smear frames similar to those created by 2D animators. By the end, not only will you know about smear frames and be able to apply some of the concepts that make 2D animation great, but you will also be able to spline your animation faster with better key poses. Software required: Maya 2012.
Table of contents
- Dynamic Poses: Thinking in Shapes 10m
- Concepts of Inbetween Keys 8m
- Graph Editor Hot Keys 6m
- Adjusting the Animation Curves 12m
- Continuing to Adjust the Animation Curves 10m
- Finishing Adjustments on the Animation Curves 10m
- Dealing with Bad Arcs 11m
- Animation Curves of the Feet and Chest 11m
- Foot Spacing and Stretching 8m
- Finalizing the Feet 10m
- Working on the Head Arcs 11m
- Finishing the Head Arcs 11m
- Adding Squash and Stretch to the Head 12m
- Finishing out the Head Animation 11m
- Moving on to the Arms 12m
- Preparing for Blur Frames 10m
- Continuing the Arms and Spacing on the Arms 11m
- Finishing the Arms and Spacing of the Arms 10m
- Creating Duplicate Geometry and Smear Frames 10m
- Continuing to Duplicate Geometry and Add Smear Frames 13m
- Finishing the Geometry and Smear Frames 14m
- Adding the Final Touches to Our Smear Frames 10m
About the author
Andrew Conroy is the Lead Animation Faculty for the Art Institute of Salt Lake City. He has spent time in the games, animation, and VFX industry. Andrew’s career started at Disney Interactive where he cut his teeth learning the ins and outs of game animation. From there he moved to New York to work for Blue Sky Studios where he worked on Ice Age 3. After Ice Age wrapped Andrew headed west. A direction he has always been more comfortable going. He landed at Rhythm and Hues to work on a number of ... more