Learn To Animate A Quadruped Run Cycle In Maya For Games

Understand how to effectively setup and animate a 4-legged animal!

What you'll learn
Setup references for your animation
Blockin and frame poses
Edit animation curves
Build and polish animations
Understand animation timing
Requirements
Autodesk's Maya
Description
In  this course, we will be animating a quadruped run cycle for a video game from  scratch. We will start by setting up  the reference plane for the in-game speed, followed by blocking all the main  poses with appealing shapes that can be read from any angle of view. From there, we will start to work with the  timing to make those poses fit on the correct frames, and progressive. We  will then add in-betweens as we continue to adjust the timing. It is going to be a progressive refining  process, and we will be moving around a lot between the animation controllers  as we refine the motion. We will also  work with some variation in speed, dynamic arcs, follow through, and how to  correct address the feeling of weight for the character. During this final polish stages, we will  begin working on the core of the body, and edit that as we begin to edit and  tweak the motion of the secondary elements. To wrap things up, we will be covering a quick trick to make the animation look  more organic by using animation layers on certain parts of the character.(Students - please look under Section 1 / Lecture 1 downloads for the source files associated with the lesson.)More about the Instructor:Thiago is a freelance character artist an animator currently located in Paris,  France. He graduated from the  University of Sao Paulo with a degree in Architect and Urban Planning, and  also attended Animation Mentor. He has  worked on various projects in recent years including some with Brain Corps  Entertainment, Ossian studios, Swordtales, and the Dota2 Workshop.

Overview

Section 1: Animating a Quadruped Run Cycle in Maya

Lecture 1 Download Course Files Here!

Lecture 2 Introduction

Lecture 3 Scene Setup

Lecture 4 Creating Key Poses

Lecture 5 Creating Breakdown Poses

Lecture 6 Timing

Lecture 7 Adding Overlap

Lecture 8 Refining the Legs

Lecture 9 Secondary Tail Motion

Lecture 10 Secondary Ear Motion

Lecture 11 Secondary Motion Extras

Lecture 12 Polish Pass

Lecture 13 Animation Layers and Course Wrapup

Lecture 14 Bonus Lecture: Further Learning with 3dmotive

Those looking to understand the realm of animal and non-bipedal animation