Saturday, June 7, 2008

Lesson 25 - Cycling animation in Maya for efficiency (Part 1)




Select the main control, you can even apply to individual attributes and increase the frames in the timeline for cycling.


Pre Infinity: Which allows to cycle before and
Post Infinity: which allows to cycle after

go to curves > Post Infinity > Cycle



Hit 'play', Notice the animation its repeating the action throughout an unlimited amount of time

If we have to see visually what happens in the Graph editor then..



Go to View > Infinity

Notice we are able to see our interpolation throughout an unlimited amount of time.



Go to Curves > Pre Infinity > Cycle.



Notice we are getting the cycle before '0'(zero), Its on our Negative value.



Go to Curves > Post Infinity > Cycle with Offset.



Notice the curves, they moves continuously through out times, When you play, the animation moves continuously.

What it does here is, It takes the Start key and places it right were our End key. and then it attaches to our curves so we can get nice motion throughout.

Ex: Walk cycle



Go to Curves > Post Infinity > Oscillate.



Notice it oscillate our cylinder through time, so its just essentially going forward and backward

Ex: Fan (oscillating).



When you are working with cycles, make sure all your start and end frames are in the same line. if it does'nt i'll go in a offset value.