Maya 2022 Advanced: Body Mechanics

Name: Maya 2022 Advanced: Body Mechanics
Author: Stephen Steinbach

Create a character walk cycle in Maya 2022.

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 6 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Steven Steinbach, and in these lessons we're going to create a simple walk cycle. So before you begin, you really wanna plan ahead on your animation. So just looking at a few tutorials here, you can see that this is a very common illustration here where you have the contact, recoil, passing, high point, second contact. And I would say just to study this, as well. Now, what I did actually was I went into another program and I just did a quick sketch of this. So these are just little thumbnail sketches. They don't have to be fancy or anything like that, but they're just a simple little walk to illustrate how I wanna work. So all I did here was I just exported this out as a image sequence. So it saved it as a sequence here. And you don't have to do this, as well, but it is nice to either just bring in an image that will give you reference, and you wanna put those as an image plane. Now, one thing I noticed that I did was I drew mine going in the other direction here. So I'm gonna go here and go to my left view. So I drew my reference going in the other direction. Use the hot box and go to Maya left view. All right, let's go to view image plane, import image. And I'm just gonna navigate to those images and press open. All right, now it won't play yet, and what I need to do here is select the image plane and go into the attribute editor, and let's go to use image sequence, and let's try that now. So now we have a good reference here. Just wanna move this over so it's out of the way. And so a few things I wanna do here is first I wanna get the image plane a little bit closer here. So let's just move this in the perspective view to about here. All right, that looks pretty good. And by the way, with my settings right here, I'm in x-ray joints and x-rays off here, smooth shade all and x-ray joints. That way you can see your joints here. All right, and let's do this, too. Let's create a ground plane and let's scale that up. And I wanna make sure that I cannot select the mesh or the ground plane. So select the ground plane and go to mesh and right click add selected objects and turn that to R, deselect, and now we cannot select that. All right, the next thing we wanna do is try to lock things down that could break the rig. For instance, if I were to move this, that would break the rig. If I was to move this, that can break the rig because the main controller is here. Just wanna make sure that you don't accidentally move something that you're not supposed to. So we'll start with this one here. And scale's not a problem because we're not gonna be ever scaling. It's more of a problem with rotation or translation. So this one does not wanna be translated. So we wanna definitely lock these. Select translate XYZ, Shift key, and right click and lock selected, and now they're grayed out. So now if I try to move that, you can't move 'em. Same with this one here. Want to limit the translate. Lock selected, and we'll do that for these two, as well. Lock selected. Okay, that's better. Okay, so what I wanna do, as well, is I wanna set key frames for these controllers. We have nine in total and we're gonna do this on the timeline hidden. So to do that, let's go to negative five and negative five here. And I'm just gonna move back to negative five. And here we will... One second, delete that. So you'll select here and go to negative five and then hit S. And on the hip controls, everything should turn red like this, okay? And do that for all controllers on negative five. So there, there, S, S, S, S, S, and S. So double check to make sure that they're all done. And that's very important because we have to have keys enabled to do auto keying. Okay, so let's go back to frame one on your timeline and go to one and one. All right, a few more things we wanna do. First we wanna turn auto key on. So we want to go to step mode. And to do that, let's go to Windows, Settings Preferences, Preferences, and under Animation, we will switch the default in tangents to clamped and then the default out tangents, which is most important, to stepped. Save. In the next lesson, we'll begin to block out the walk cycle animation. Thanks for watching.

Advanced Provider : Stephen Steinbach 6 Lessons · 40m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

These lessons start by demonstrating how to set up the timeline and controls for Maya’s Curve Editor. In step mode, we will begin creating the keyframes for the walk cycle. Once the keyframes are created, you will learn how to add the breakdown or passing poses for the walk cycle. After the keys and breakdown drawings are created, you will also see how to create the squash and stretch drawings.

These lessons will show you how to use a control rig to animate a simple walk cycle. Once the walk cycle is blocked out, we will convert the curves from Step Mode to Spline Mode. In the curve editor we will adjust each function curve ensuring that the timing and position of the walk cycle is accurate. Paying special attention to the hips, we will ensure that the animation is balanced and even for both footsteps. In the Curve Editor, you will learn how to evaluate the position of the feet ensuring that they are sliding back consistently and evenly spaced. Once the animation is completed, we will create a Playblast to review the final animation.

What You'll Learn

Set up the timeline and controls for Maya's Curve Editor
Create key and breakdown drawings for a walk cycle
Add passing poses and squash-and-stretch drawings
Animate a simple walk cycle using a control rig
Convert curves from Step Mode to Spline Mode and refine timing in the Curve Editor
Render a Playblast to review the final animation

Key Takeaways

The lessons begin by setting up the timeline and controls for Maya's Curve Editor before keyframing in step mode.
Walk cycle animation is built up through keyframes, breakdown or passing poses, and squash and stretch drawings.
A control rig is used to animate the simple walk cycle, which is first blocked out before curves are refined.
In the Curve Editor, function curves are adjusted so the timing and position of the walk cycle are accurate, with special attention to balancing the hips and evenly spacing the feet.
Once the animation is complete, a Playblast is created to review the final result.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn to create in this course?

You will learn to create key and breakdown drawings, animate a walk cycle, and render a Playblast.

What software does this course use?

It uses Maya 2022, working with its timeline, control rig, and Curve Editor.

What animation techniques are covered for the walk cycle?

It covers planning, blocking with keyframes in step mode, adding breakdown or passing poses, creating squash and stretch drawings, and converting curves from Step Mode to Spline Mode for refinement.

How is the final animation reviewed?

Once the animation is completed, you create a Playblast to review the final animation.

What lessons are included?

Lessons include Walk Cycle: Planning; Walk Cycle: Blocking (Parts 1 and 2); Walk Cycle: Curves (Parts 1 and 2); and Alien Head: Blend Shapes.