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
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In this page, we will learn about the Playback controls and general animation preferences in Maya.
Playback Controls in Maya
What is shown in the image is the Animation Play back control in Maya. The button with the mouse pointer over it in the image, is the Play button. When you click on that, the animation in the scene will be played in the forward direction.
The button to the left of the Playback button is the 'Reverse Playback button'. It plays the scene animation in the opposite direction.. i.e.: backwards. The 'Step Back One Key' button in Maya makes the animation jump backwards to the previous key frame. Similarly the 'Step Forward One Key' button causes the scene to jump to the next key frame in the animation in Maya.
The 'Step back one frame' button and 'Step forward one frame' button makes the animation move backwards and forward by a single frame respectively. Note that it doesn't jump by key frames (two adjacent key frames may be several frames apart), but purely by frames. It helps you incrementally step through each frame forward or backward in Maya.
The buttons at the extreme left and right are the 'Go to Start of Playback range' and 'Go to End of Playback range' buttons. They will help you to jump to the beginning and end of the animation playback ranges respectively in Maya.
I hope that you didn't doze. Hmm.. Try using all these playback controls on your own and see how it works. Trust me.. this is one set of controls which you find yourself using a lot in Maya.
Setting the Animation Range and Preferences
The default scene in Maya would have 48 frames in the scene as we have discussed earlier. But we need 100 frames in our scene for the ball animation. How to get those extra ones? Its very simple. First lets change the total animation length to 100 frames. Enter the value of 100 in the 'End Time' text box located to the right of the Time line and press Enter.
You will notice that though the total length of the animation has increased to 100, the time line shows only the default 24 frames. In order to display all the 100 frames in the Time line, increase the 'Play back End Time' to 100. This will show all the 100 frames in the Maya Time Line.
Note: Instead of first increasing the End Time and then the 'Play back End Time', you can increase the 'Play back End Time' first, the 'End Time' gets automatically increased to the 'Play back End Time' value.
Just try playing the frames by clicking on the 'Play forwards' button in Maya. Don't be surprised that nothing much happens in the panel. Well.. its because we haven't done the animation yet. Hold on for a few more minutes.. and we will do the real animation stuff. Before that we need to set the animation play back speed in Maya. Click on the 'Animation Preferences' button located at the bottom-right corner of the Maya window.
This will open the dialog box as shown in the image. Click on the 'Timeline' item from the left vertical set of categories. Now change the Playback speed to 'Real-time (24 fps) and click 'Save'.
Note: You can change the animation length in Maya using this dialog box also, by editing the values under the 'Timeline' section. (see the image)
Let me explain the difference between 'Play every frame' and 'Real-time' setting in the Timeline preferences in Maya. If you have the 'Play every frame' option selected in the Playback speed, and your scene is very complex, then while you play the animation in the Maya panels, Maya will make sure that all the frames in the animation are displayed to you irrespective of the animation speed, even though the animation speed gets really sluggish. This helps you analyze the animation in detail, but you cannot perceive how fast the animation will play in real-time. But suppose if your scene is a very simple one, and you play it in 'Play every frame' mode, then your animation will run faster than real time. The reason is that Maya just showed all the frames in front of you, but did it in the fastest way it can, not in real-time speed.
On the other hand, if you choose 'Real-time', then Maya ensures that you will be presented the animation with rigid time constraints. Maya will run a fixed no: of frames in a second (for e.g.: 24) and hence you will get the real sense of the animation speed. If the scene is complex and Maya cannot afford to process all the fixed no: of frames targeted for that second, it will skip intermittent frames so that it can stick with real time.
We are almost there... setting key frames in Maya. Just flip to the next page
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in Maya makes the animation jump backwards to the previous key frame. Similarly the 'Step Forward One Key' button 
causes the scene to jump to the next key frame in the animation in Maya. 
and 'Step forward one frame' button 
makes the animation move backwards and forward by a single frame respectively. Note that it doesn't jump by key frames (two adjacent key frames may be several frames apart), but purely by frames. It helps you incrementally step through each frame forward or backward in Maya. 
located at the bottom-right corner of the Maya window. 
