Animating a Fight Scene in Maya
In this Maya tutorial, we will use animation and dynamics techniques to create a combat scene. Software required: Maya 2012.
What you'll learn
In this Maya tutorial, we will use animation and dynamics techniques to create a combat scene. Throughout the lessons we will take a straight-ahead approach to animating a fight scene between three characters, using some basic techniques for establishing timing and camera angles before getting to work. Along the way, we will utilize the spontaneity the straight-ahead method allows in order to experiment with different narrative and choreographical choices for our scene. Because combat scenes often involve the participants being damaged, we will explore different methods for simulating damage on our character rigs, using deformers like blend shapes as well as dynamic elements like particles and lightning effects. By the end of this training, you'll be able to approach any scene requiring character interaction with the confidence to give yourself the freedom to explore different creative options while remaining true to the needs of the story. Software required: Maya 2012.
Table of contents
- Establishing the Scene 8m
- Blocking Out the Hero's Entrance 12m
- Completing the Hero's Battle Pose 13m
- Starting the Attack Jump 12m
- Continuing on the Attack Jump 8m
- Creating the Attack Pose 21m
- Blocking Out the Hero's Front Flip 18m
- Refining the Front Flip 11m
- Finishing the Front Flip 5m
- Creating the Robot Arm Rig 12m
- Beginning the Hero's Second Attack 1m
- Continuing the Hero's Second Attack 9m
- Adding the Hero's Spin Poses 8m
- Finishing up the Spin Attack 11m
- Adding Follow-through to the Hero's Attack 11m
- Beginning Work on the Final Hero Pose 20m
- Finishing up the Hero's Animation 16m
- Creating Blend Shapes to Simulate Battle Damage 17m
- Beginning Animation on the First Robot Guard 15m
- Creating the Damaged Robot Guard Components 13m
- Starting to Pose the Second Robot Guard 14m
- Modifying the Second Robot Guard's Blend Shapes 10m
- Finishing the Animation on the Second Robot Guard 11m
- Refining in-between Keys of the Hero's Animation 9m
- Animating the Robots' Laser Blasts 16m
- Creating the Muzzle Flashes for the Robots' Guns 15m
- Using Dynamics to Create Sparks 9m
- Using the Particle Collision Event Editor 7m
- Utilizing the Particle Instancer to Create Debris 13m
- Using Sprites to Create Smoke 13m
- Using Fields to Simulate Interaction on Particles 7m
- Implementing the Lightning Effect 11m
- Reviewing the Project 6m
