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Now in the outliner, select the animated Groggy’s rig group node, “Groggy:root_group”. Go to File>Export Selected. In the Export dialog, change the type to“animExport” and leave everything default except change
“Hierarchy” to “Below”. Name the file groggy_Anim.
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When you press the “Copy Keys” button, the script editor returns “// Result: 281” in the Command Line. That means 281 curves were copied to the clipboard. Now select the static groggy’s rig group “groggy1:root_Group”.4
Now we’ll import that animation onto the static Groggy rig. Select his main rig group “groggy1:root_Group”.Go to File>Import. Make sure the file type is set to
“animImport”, and copy the rest of the settings circled above.
The animation copies perfectly.
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Go to Edit>Keys>Paste KeysƑ
. Copy my settings above and hit Paste Keys. Beautiful. The curves in the clipboard are pasted onto Groggy and he moves as expected. This is extremely useful if Replace Reference does not work and you need to copy animation onto a new rig!HOT TIP
just writes a file and the other1
Open moom_Dynamics_Start.ma. I’ve done a lot of the work for you, by setting up the earring and ponytail geometry and starting the process of creating the dynamics objects.4
Select the curve and go to nHair>Make Selected Curves Dynamic. In the Attribute Editor under the Dynamics tab of HairSystemShape1, change Bend Resistance to 10. Select FollicleShape1 in the Outliner in the hairSystem1Follicles group, and change the Point Lock attribute to “Base”.O
NE OF THE BEST WAYS to cheat in animation is to take advantage of the fact that Maya interpolates motion for you. For example, in 2D animation done for TV, it is still typical for the animation to be done on “2’s” – every other frame is held for two frames, giving you effectively 12 frames per second instead of the normal 24. Well, this looks choppy to the well trained eye. In 3D, unless we are using stepped mode, there will ALWAYS be motion on every frame. When people say “on 2’s”in Maya, what they mean is they have set key poses every two frames – but there is still motion on every frame.
The way we can cheat using this property of 3D is to
“spruce up” a rig with some dynamic objects. We can get away with using far fewer poses and less movement, because the dynamic objects will be constantly moving. It will take away the choppy feeling and make it look like the “world” in which the character is living is smooth and continuous, even with staccato movement in the character itself.
We’re going to take a scene that has VERY crude animation on Moom, and add a ponytail and earrings using two very different dynamic methods. You will then see when we play back the animation, that the scene has taken on a more dynamic quality. The mere addition of these dynamic objects and the secondary motion they create helps us cheat the animation.
When you are on extremely tight deadlines and can only afford the time to set a few key poses in a shot, this cheat will save you.
Sprucing It Up
d t H i M k S l t d
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Let’s first create the ponytail dynamics. We’re going to use a simple hair curve and wrap the geo to it. Switch to the side view and draw a Nurbs curve through the ponytail like so using the EP curve tool.5
On f01, select the ponytail mesh. In the Outliner, find the newly created hairSystem1OutputCurves group.Curve2 inside is the result of the dynamics applied to curve1 that you created. L+click curve2.
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Now select Moom’s head control, and shift select the new curve you created. Hit F2 to bring up the Animation menu set, and choose Constrain>Parent. Hit F5 to switch to the Dynamics menu set for the next step.6
Hit F2 to bring up the Animation menu set again and go to Create Deformers>Wrap. Press play and see the ponytail whipping back and forth. See how the scene has a sense of fluidity even though the animation is really rough?You cheater, you.
Sprucing It Up (cont’d)
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Now let’s make the two other spheres rigid bodies.Select both of them, and hit F5 to switch to dynamics.
Go to Soft/Rigid Bodies>Create Active Rigid Body. With both of them still selected, click on Fields>Gravity.
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Hair curves are a quick solution but are not ideal for meshes that shouldn’t deform. We’re going to use rigid bodies to make the earrings dynamic . On f01 select the head control, S+select the top of the earring, and go to Constrain>Parent.6
Next, scroll down in the Attribute Editor to find the“Performance Attributes” section. Turn off collisions.
Select the middle sphere, navigate to the rigidBody2 tab and repeat the last two steps.
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There’s a few settings we need to change to make the earrings move correctly. First in the rigidBody1 tab with the bottom sphere selected, find the “Rigid Body Attributes”section and change “Damping” to 5.
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We need to set up these spheres to move in correlation with each other. The Nail Constraint is perfect for this. Select the bottom sphere and go to Soft/Rigid Bodies>Create Nail Constraint.7
Select gravityField1 in the outliner and change the Magnitude attribute to 7.4
Move the new Nail Constraint to the bottom of the middle sphere, S+select the middle sphere and hit p to parent it. Now repeat the last two steps for the middle sphere, creating a Nail Constraint and then parenting it to the top sphere.8
Now hit the play button! Watch how the ponytail flops around with the head movement, and how the earrings swing nicely from Moom’s ears. As crude as the motion is in the scene, there’s something soothing to the eye to see nice smooth dynamic movement.1
Open prop_Start.ma. There is a lollipop sitting lonely in our scene. Start by selecting all of the geometry and hitting Ctrl+g to group it. Name this new group “lolli_GEO_GRP”.
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We want the circle to control the geometry, but we are going to constrain the group. Press F2 to change to the Animation menu set. Select the circle, L S “lolli_GEO_GRP” in the Outliner, and click on Constrain>Parent.
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O MATTER WHAT TYPE OF ANIMATION YOU DO, chances are your character will interact with props quite often. To make sure that you are not animating the wrong object, most props should be rigged. There’s a little bit of an art and a science to rigging props, but I’ve simplified it down to this simple cheat to get you back to animating as soon as possible.Since we are also using a referencing pipeline, rigging props allows you to turn the prop file into a format that can be standardized across multiple scenes. Instead of bare geometry floating around in your shot, using this cheat you will be able to create an asset that all the animators working with you can utilize.
We start by creating a group that will hold all of the geometry for the prop. This is done so that no matter what is added to the prop, the rig will still function in all of the scenes that it has been referenced into. Next we create a simple controller that will move the prop around. Last, we group all of the controls, geometry, and other nodes into a single group and name it our rig.
In a production, animators should know how to rig their own props so that if there is a need to do so, you are not taking valuable time away from the character riggers. Any time you can troubleshoot your own scenes, take care of problems, and put out fires yourself, you are proving how valuable an asset you are to your company. Cheating is job security!