Learning Maya

Lesson 11 - Delivering into the Graph Editor

Go to Windows > Animation Editors > Graph Editor



The Graph Editor

or



You can see it on the left hand side, below the tool bar. 'Perspective View' and 'Graph Editor'



You can see there is not much of stuff in the graph editor, but...



As soon as you selected the ship, you can notice a couple of addition to the graph editor.



Control Object: Whatever objects we have selected

Keyed Attributes:On the 'Graph Editor Outline' we can see all of these attributes animated, notice on the channel box.

The Keyed attributes display on the Graph Editor, you can see 'Scale X', 'Scale Y', 'Scale Z', those are not on the graph editor. Because we have'nt keyed those.



Hold 'Alt' and 'Right Click' and drag vertically to Zoom in and Zoom out.



Hold 'Alt' and 'Middle Click' and Drag in whichever direction you want to Pan.



Hold the 'Shift' and 'Alt' and 'Right Click' and drag up and down to stretch and squash vertically.



Hold the 'Shift' and 'Alt' and 'Right Click' and drag Side by Side to stretch and squash
Horizontally.



If you Select the 'Control Object' you can able to see the all 'keyed attribute' and as well as the 'Graph'.



Here whatever attribute you select on the 'Graph Editor Outline' (Left Window) it disply only that Attributes Graph. So its easy to modify only that particular movement.



The numbers on the left indicated the 'Value'.

The numbers at the bottom indicates the 'Frames'.

The Graph line is called 'F-curve' (function curve).

The Dots in the F-curve are 'Keys'.



Since we only have one attributes selected in our graph outline, we were able to adjust the key that make up our Translate X and we are able to move them around and offset them from other keys.



Those lines around the keys are called 'Tangent Handles'. what they allow us to do is to adjust the 'F curve' around the keys, and we can make a really fine tunes animation with this Tangent Handles.



After selection of the key (1) you can see the numbers in the box which is called 'Stats text field', and the first one represents the 'Time' or Frame numbers of the selected keys and the second one is called 'Value' of the selected keys.



If we select two keys at the same time, you can see the 'purple color' on the stats text field, and telling us that we have selected 'Multiple Keys'.



If we select two attributes in the graph outline, and select the two keys are on the same line, then you can see on the stats text field that only one window is purple.

so what it tells us is that we have selected Keys on the same 'frame' but the 'values' are different.



If we want to move Multiple keys, select the keys and 'click' on the 'Move tool'.



Hold the 'Middle mouse Button' and drag, and notice we are able to adjust not only the position and even the time as well.



Hold the 'Shift' + 'Middle mouse Button', then we are able to lock the keys and time if we drag left and right, or the value if we drag up and down.