Maya 2014 Essentials
Chapter 2: Creating Your
First Animation
Maya topics covered in this chapter
include the following:
• Using Good Scene-File
Management
• Creating and Animating a Bouncing
Ball
• Refining Movement in the Graph
Editor
• Using Animation Principles to
Improve Your Work
• Creating a Playblast of Your
Animation
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The Project Directory
•Project name
•Project Location
•Subdirectories
Choose File  New Scene.
3
Active Frame Range
•Set range to 24 frames
Set Playback Speed to Real-Time [24 frames]
Preferences Settings Time Slider
4
Setting Up The View
•Resolution Gate
•View Setup
View a Camera  Settings  Resolution Gate
A rectangle appears in the Front view. Anything within the
rectangle will appear in a final render. Anything in the gray
area outside the rectangle won’t show up.
5
Creating Your Ball
•Interactive Creation unchecked
•Create Sphere (option box)
Press 5 on keyboard to shade the sphere
6
Setting “Up” Keys
•Move tool selected
•Position ball
•Set keys (s) on 1, 24
Setting Key frames for various attributes on specific frames lets the
software know that on a particular frame, you want a particular
attribute to have a particular value. Then Maya interpolates between
the key frames to create the motion.
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Setting “Down” Key
•Move tool selected
•Position ball
•Set key (s) on 13
8
Refining Movement
•Break Tangents tool
•Adjust motion curve
Make things move the way you know they should
9
Adding Animation Principles
•Squash and Stretch
10
Create a Playblast
•Right-click on Timeline
•Save to File
•Play your animation!
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