The Complete Reference for 3D Artist: T0722 - Digital Tutors - Body Mechanics and Animation in Maya Pulling Objects

Easily learn proper body mechanics for creating believable animations with over 5 hours of project-based training developed specifically for character animation and body mechanics. Perfect for intermediate artists.

Popular highlights include: Body Mechanics Overview of Pulling Objects; Driving Force Through Upper-body Animation; Compensating Body Motion for Mass of Objects; Animating Believable Weight and Tension; Utilizing Storyboards for Pre-vis; Backwards Locomotion; Adjusting Performance Through Timing & Spacing; Roughing-in Animation Through Blocking; Adding Follow-through, Arcs, and Overlapping; Exaggerating Poses for Dynamic Movement; Adjusting Keyframes in Graph Editor; Understanding Weighted Tangency & Free Tangent Weights; Optimizing Workflow with Character Sets;

Lesson Outline

Introduction and project overview
In this lesson we will go over the course objectives and highlight the tools and techniques we will be learning throughout this training

Getting the scene ready for animation
In this lesson we will learn how to go through initial settings and create MEL scripts to help us animate

Beginning the Light Pull animation
In this lesson we will look at the scene overview, storyboards and learn how to set the initial pose.

Blocking in the next pose
In this lesson we will learn how to block in the bend and grab pose

Completing the posing of the extremes
In this lesson we will learn how to block in the pull, step back and let go poses.

Beginning to finalize the Light Pull
In this lesson we will learn how to convert our keyframes to see the movement between keyframes

Fixing the flow of the animation
In this lesson we will learn how to edit keyframes and tangent handles to smooth out our animation

Adding follow-through to the upper body: center of gravity
In this lesson we will learn how to animate using one of the animation principles: follow-through

Adding follow-through to the upper body: the back
In this lesson we will animate the chest and the back control at the same time to add follow-through.

Adding follow-through to the head
In this lesson we will animate the head control to add follow-through

Fixing the arms and the hands
In this lesson we will learn how to tweak the hand animation to be more realistic

Animating the fingers
In this lesson we will learn how to animate the fingers letting go of the bar

Starting final touch ups for the upper body
In this lesson we will learn how to add small tweaks to enhance the animation

Finishing the upper body for the Light Pull
In this lesson we will learn how to add some arcing movement and fix some elbow popping issues

Beginning to finalize the legs
In this lesson we will block in the feet to animate the steps and finalize the legs.

Fine-tuning the steps
In this lesson we will learn how to animate the custom attributes of the feet to get better movement

Working on the second foot step
In this lesson we will learn how to raise the heel off the ground to show weight shift

Refining the next step of steps
In this lesson we will learn how to tweak the footstep animation

Finishing the last steps for the Light Pull
In this lesson we will learn how to add the final tweaks to our step animation

Adding shifts in the upper body according to the steps
In this lesson we will learn how to edit our uper body animation to reflect our lower body's movement

Adding the up and down translation to the upper body
In this lesson we will learn how to move our character's hips to add realism to our animation

Animating the hips
In this lesson we will learn how to animate the left and right shifting of our character's hips.

Finishing the Light Pull
In this lesson we will learn how to review our animation and make any final tweaks

Starting the conversion of the Light Pull into a Heavy Pull
In this lesson we will learn how to move large number of keyframes to change the timing of our animation

Adding a second attempt for pulling the object
In this lesson we will learn how to begin modifying our animation to add another pull

Creating tension between the character and the object
In this lesson we will learn how to edit the box's animation to add tension

Fixing the character's anticipation for his second attempt at the pull
In this lesson we will learn how to modify our second attempt to work with our edited box

Adjusting the character's backward translation to match with the object
In this lesson we will make sure the character is translating back correctly with the crate.

Initial detail pass for the upper body during the pull
In this lesson we will learn how to add details to our animation

Animating the character resting after the pull
In this lesson we will learn how to add a resting pose after the last pull

Going back to work on the character's rest
In this lesson we will learn how to add some follow-through to the rest pose and tweak the motion

Adding follow-through to the character during the pull
In this lesson we will learn how to add follow-through, one of the animation principles, to our pull.

Finishing the upper body for the Heavy Pull
In this lesson we will learn how to tweak tangent handles to create arcing motion

Moving back to the legs
In this lesson we will learn how to remove slipping of our feet

Refining the legs
In this lesson we will learn how to continue tweaking our feet

Finishing the foot steps
In this lesson we will learn how to finish the footsteps

Including shifts in the body to show more effort in pull
In this lesson we will learn how to emphacise weight shift by moving the body

Fixing the shoulders
In this lesson we will learn how to remove elbow popping and shift the shoulders

Animating the side to side motion of the upper body
In this lesson we will learn how to add side-to-side movement to move with the foot steps

Working on the up and down translation of the upper body
In this lesson we will learn how to create the illusion of effort by lowering the body of the character