Character Interaction in Maya
In this Maya tutorial, we will learn how to animate a multi-character interaction with time-saving techniques. Software required: Maya 2012.
What you'll learn
In this Maya tutorial, we will learn how to animate a multi-character interaction with time-saving techniques. 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. Software required: Maya 2012.
Table of contents
- Planning the Animation 2m
- Getting Familiar with the Animation Rigging 8m
- Setting up the Scene and Starting the Blocking Pass 14m
- Roughing in the Villain's Initial Attack 11m
- Finalizing the Blocking-in of the Villain's Attack 10m
- Animating the Villain's Fall 8m
- Roughing in the Villain Flying Back After the Strike 9m
- Continuing the Villain's Fall 16m
- Wrapping up the Villain's Extremes 15m
- Double-checking the Villain's Timing and Adding a Breakdown Pose 9m
- Starting on the Heroine's Animation 8m
- Adding Anticipation to the Heroine's Counter Attack 11m
- Animating the Counter-attack 11m
- Following Through from the Counter-strike 12m
- Finalizing the Heroine's Blocking Pass 16m
- Starting on the Villain's Polish Pass 9m
- Finishing the Beginning of the Villain's Animation 6m
- Refining the Upper Body of the Villain as She Falls 5m
- Tweaking the Villain's Legs as She Falls 6m
- Polishing the Arms as the Villain Falls 6m
- Wrapping up the Villain's Upper Body 9m
- Finishing Our Work on the Villain's Head 5m
- Finalizing the Villain's Legs 15m
- Completing the Villain's Left Arm 9m
- Wrapping up the Villain 5m
- Smoothing out Heroine's Performance 2m
- Refining the First Section of the Heroine's Animation 9m
- Finishing the First Section of the Heroine 8m
- Polishing the Counter-attack 10m
- Finalizing the Last Section of the Heroine's Performance 8m
- Adding Follow-through to the Heroine's Torso 10m
- Animating Follow-through in the Heroine's Left Arm 8m
- Adding Follow-through to the Heroine's Right Arm 9m
- Finalizing the Heroine and Completing the Project 7m
About the author
Delano works avidly as an animation author at Pluralsight. Starting his career at animation studios like Shilo, Delano has developed a strong passion for his talents. His animation and rigging background help him teach and create some of the most-watched training on Pluralsight. A few of his favorite projects that he has contributed to include: Character Interaction in Maya and in Softimage, Rigging the Human Face in Maya, Rigging Sea Creatures in Maya, and Rigging and Animating Transforming... more