Chapter 4 - Basics of Key frame Animation in MAYA | FREE tutorial , lesson & video training | Beginner | Advanced page 1
Chapter 4 - Basics of Key frame Animation in MAYA (Beginner tutorials & video lessons)
Author - Saju Asokan
Last Updated: July 25 2009
Note: Please don't save this page for offline viewing. These lessons will be available online 24x7 free of cost. Your visit to each page on this site gives a small revenue through advertisements, that helps to keep this site online and meet the associated expenses.
In this chapter, we will start to set things into motion in Maya. Yes, we will start animating the objects in our scene. Here I will introduce you to a very simple animation technique in Maya called key frame animation. We will first understand the basic animation concepts and then proceed to make things moving. Let's begin.
Animation concepts in Maya:
Animation is nothing but a sequence of frames, in which each frame differs from the previous one slightly. When the sequence of frames are played rapidly in front of our eyes, due to the human eye's property called persistence of vision, we sense the inter frame differences as smooth flowing animation. This is the basic principle of animation adopted universally.
It means that if we want to animate a ball bouncing in Maya, we need to create 30 frames (varies depends on video standards) for a each second, and each frame showing the position of the ball at that time instant (1/30th of second) in Maya. Oh don't worry about the frame mathematics. in Maya, things are much simpler. If you want to bounce a ball, lets say we need the animation to be visualized in 100 frames. We define the initial position of the ball at the 1st frame using a key frame (that's what we call it in Maya). Now at around the 50th frame, we move the ball down to the floor where it bounces and we set another key frame there. Again at the 100th frame, we set a key frame with the ball up in the air (bounced). So we created just 3 key frames defining the ball's key positions during the entire animation. Maya interpolates all the remaining frames to make it a 100 frame long animation. Simple. Huh?
We are going to do exactly the same thing here in this lesson. Animate a ball bouncing. Shall we?
Setting up the scene for animation in Maya
Open the scene chap-03-table-vase-scene-textured in Maya (You can download it here) and Save it as chap-04-keyframe-animation-ball. Ok.. now we need to create a ball to animate. Click on Create > Polygon Primitives > Sphere from the menu bar in Maya and click-drag inside the persp panel to create a sphere object. Change the Radius value of the sphere using the Channel Box to 0.8 (You can locate it under the item polySphere1 (click to unfold it) below the INPUTS in the channel box). Also rename the sphere object as 'Ball' using the Channel box.
Move the sphere up so that it rests a little above the table surface.
Assigning a bumpy material to the ball in Maya
With the ball selected, assign a Blinn Material to it, and change the Color to white in Maya. Now click on the checkered button next to the 'Bump Mapping' and from the dialog box that appears, choose Bulge. Change the 'Bump Depth' to -0.050 (The negative value will give concave bulging).
Note: If you are not able to see the tab that has the Bump Depth value in it in Maya, click on the Go to Output Connection button . This will take you one step towards the root of the material hierarchy in Maya. On the other hand You can press the Go to Input Connection button to move deeper into the hierarchy in Maya. You can zoom into the ball in the persp panel and do a render to see how it looks now.
Now click on the Go to Input Connection button and click on the tab having the text starting with 'place2dTexture', and change both of the Repeat UV values to 20 in Maya. This will make the bulge texture repeat more often in Maya so that it appears suitable for the size of the ball. Now try a render in Maya and see the difference (Make sure that you zoom into the ball before doing the render, or you won't be able to make out the bulge bump mapping on the ball).
Let's dig more into the key frame animation, by learning about Animation controls in the next page
Warning: include(/home/saju/public_html/include-pages/ads/right-pane-mid-ad.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/saju/public_html/Pages/Learners-corner/Maya/basics/chap-04/chap-4-keyframe-animation-basics-page1.php on line 479
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/saju/public_html/include-pages/ads/right-pane-mid-ad.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/saju/public_html/Pages/Learners-corner/Maya/basics/chap-04/chap-4-keyframe-animation-basics-page1.php on line 479
next to the 'Bump Mapping' and from the dialog box that appears, choose Bulge. Change the 'Bump Depth' to -0.050 (The negative value will give concave bulging).
. This will take you one step towards the root of the material hierarchy in Maya. On the other hand You can press the Go to Input Connection button 
to move deeper into the hierarchy in Maya. You can zoom into the ball in the persp panel and do a render to see how it looks now.
