Animate a professional looking jump in Autodesk Maya

Name: Animate a professional looking jump in Autodesk Maya
Rating: 4.7 (69 reviews)

Learn professional 3D animation workflows by animating and delivering a high quality human jump in Autodesk Maya

Created byAmedeo Beretta

Last updated 4/2021

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Animate a professional looking jump in Autodesk Maya
Work with video references for animation
Identify and design the key poses of a jump
Mirror poses quickly and effortlessly with Studio Library
Solid character posing
Understand weight shifts in locomotion
Learn to work with custom animation tools in Maya
Understand space switching
Splining and polishing workflows for professional animation

Course content

5 sections • 32 lectures • 4h 32m total length

Introduction1:40
Master convincing human jumps in Maya by learning locomotion basics, reference footage, key poses, weight shifts, and workflow techniques for polished, high-end professional animation.

Weight, Balance, and Line of Action for Animation12:52
Understanding Eyelines1:47
Creating Appealing Hand Poses3:29
Mirroring Poses with Studio Library4:58
Leverage Studio Library to create mirror setups and save poses and animations, then import and load mirror tables to mirror poses between left and right hands using select by name.
Designing Appealing Facial Expressions8:38
The Anticipation Pose11:33
Posing the Face in the Anticipation4:29
The Contact Pose12:31
The Kick-Off Pose8:00
Understanding Parent Space and Space Conversion10:38
The Up Pose6:18
The Follow-Through Pose8:30
Learn to create a believable follow-through jump pose in Maya by starting from the end pose and reverse-engineering the down pose with world space, locator workflow, bake from locator.
The Down Pose8:18
A Bit of Re-timing and Tweaks2:57
Floaty Splining? Add Breakdowns!18:37
Breakdowns Leading to and from the Anticipation10:38
The Left Contact12:08
Blocking the Follow-Through Motion11:58
Block the follow-through motion in Maya by adjusting finger contact, weight transfer, and delayed chest, head, and neck rotations across poses and pauses, using step tangents to preview the animation.

Tweaking Face and Fingers Animation5:19
Tweaking the Arcs and Preparing for Playblast3:47
Tighten the wrist arc in Maya by using world space, bake from locators, and remove rogue translation keys, then perform a playblast with proper format and render settings.
Embellishing the Playblast3:18
Enhance the playblast in Maya by adding a gradient background, a directional light, and depth map shadows with higher resolution and proper filter size for crisper shadows.

Requirements

Be able to navigate Maya's viewport
Be able to set keys on the timeline
Understand the basics of Maya's Graph Editor
To know that animation layers exist in Maya

Description

Jumps are one of the key blocks of human locomotion, and the foundation for advanced body mechanics. Mastering jumps in 3D animation gives you the confidence and skills to control your human characters in more articulated body mechanics scenes.

Learn professional 3D animation workflows while animating a high quality jump. You only need a trial copy of Maya!

At the end of this course you will be able to confidently animate human jumps, interpret reference footage for animation, and adopt the same techniques professionals employ to produce industry standard animations.

You will learn about:

Working with video references
Identifying and designing the key poses of a jump
Troubleshooting posing
Mirroring poses employing easy to use custom tools
Converting animation space
Understanding weight shifts in locomotion
Setting up priorities for splining
Animation splining and polishing workflows

The course will employ industry standard software Autodesk Maya, but the same workflows can be applied to any 3D package.

Check out the course preview!

Who this course is for:

3D animators of all levels who want to deliver professional looking animation
Beginner 3D animators who struggle to deliver convincing locomotion animations
Beginner 3D animators who want to learn efficient workflows to animate human characters
Anyone who wants to have some fun animating a nice character!

Animate a professional looking jump in Autodesk Maya

What you'll learn

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Course content

Introduction1 lecture • 2min

Planning Ahead5 lectures • 39min

Blocking18 lectures • 2hr 38min

Splining5 lectures • 1hr 1min

Polishing3 lectures • 12min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: