In the current lesson, we looked at creating animation in Maya by utilizing the CV curve tool to create accurate curves. We also added an object to a motion path and adjusted the timing, which was the main new skill that we focused on. Otherwise, using curves is something that we have done before and even did a quick recap to remind ourselves of how they work in Maya. To create a curve, you can go to the curves/surfaces shelf which is next to the poly modeling shelf that we see all of the time. If not, you can enter the ‘create’ menu, where even the ones that aren’t on the shelf are available. We created a quick curve as an example in the top view.
This isn’t the one that I ended up using but it did serve as a reminder of how you can use the curve. It was done using the CV curve tool by clicking in small increments (the tool then made bends in-between). You can also edit the curve after it has been made by going into vert mode and moving the individual vertices any-which way. This is an example of a flat curve that lies on the grid, but making a vertical one is also very simple; just by going into side view and repeating the steps. We were also told about the pencil curve tool, which is one that I haven’t used before. It allows you to draw the curve in free-hand, which can be very handy when you have a tablet and pen.
After this recap, I deleted whatever I had on the grid and started anew, this time making a curve that I knew would be used for the lesson tasks ahead in top view. After that, I generated a poly sphere, which would be the object moving along the path. The process of doing so was far simpler than I had thought since all I had to do was select the sphere and curve and change the context menu to ‘animation’. Afterwards, in ‘constrain’ at the top, I went into ‘motion paths’ and clicked the tick box next to ‘attach motion paths’.
The option box had all of the settings you might want to edit when making the object move along the path but we focused on the top section. It was explained that the time slider option makes the animation the exact length of the timeline frames currently present, whereas start/end allows you to choose how long the animation would be. I didn’t quite catch the middle option as we were moving through the steps pretty quickly, but the one already selected was what we went with anyway, so I clicked ‘attach’ and closed the window. That was it! The basic steps were taken and already, I had a simple animation of a share moving along a unique path that I had made using a curve. I was surprised at how easy it was and how simple animations can be created in Maya pretty quickly.
Notice how the primitive not only follows the line but also turns and rotated with the bends. It also automatically eases in and out like most objects in motion. To change this or add to it in any way, I went to ‘windows’, ‘animation editors’ and then ‘graph editor’. A familiar sight popped up – one that was introduced to us way back at the start of the first year, in After Effects. The graph had a curve running along it that represents the movement of the sphere relative to time and position, a.k.a where the speed could be altered.
I moved the needle to around the middle and selected the curve. We were shown to then right-click and click the ‘insert keyframe’ option to do just that. I did so, noticing the point that appeared to show that my action was recorded and then moved the needle again, slightly forward. As I did, I could measure where exactly I wanted to go in the animation, since the sphere moved with the needle and I chose to make the segment quite small, inserting another keyframe shorty after. We could move either of the keyframes down past the line that indicates ‘0’, which would make the sphere move backwards, but we simply moved the Second dot slightly downwards to make a little indent in the curve. This slows down the object in the space between both keyframes and can be further adjusted with the bezier handles.
I decided to add a little bump in the curve where the sphere slows down, in order to make it more realistic. Objects slow when hitting a bump or going up a hill, or with any resistance in general. I simply selected the vert in the general area and pulled it up, making a tiny bulge that the sphere bounces along due to the rise. I could have made it bigger if I wanted to but I was curious to see how the poly sphere would react with just that minor change. Maya is admittedly a smart, industry-standard program, so of course, the sphere adjusted its movement right away and reacted realistically to the changes made.
Before moving on to the next task, we were shown a little 3D animation for inspiration. It’s called ‘Tango Tangleweed’ and shows two balloon dogs dancing through a metaphorical ‘minefield’ of cacti. Eventually, they get tangled up and have to merge into a bird in order to fly above the spiky plants and avoid being popped. We discussed where motion paths could be used and the main example was the end where they become a bird but really, there were a lot of possibilities throughout since smooth, arc-like movements reigned the animation, which is normal for dancing and soft, curvy characters.
Balloon Obstacle Course
We were also going to be working with a balloon object for this task. We were given a ready-made, working obstacle course and a balloon at the start as well, which made the task pretty clear. In order to animate the balloon passing safely through, we would have to animate it along a path and navigate it to the end of the course without hitting any of the obstacles. I was quite excited about this task since it was a great example of how the skills we learned could be put to use and make an interesting, fun animation.
As I panned around the model to take a look at each of the sections and objects, I thought about a good method to animate the balloon, aside from the obvious step. I decided to go about it like this: draw the curve from the top to simply dodge all of the things sticking up from the ground and travel roughly down the middle, as well as go around corners and bends and then focus on moving it up and down depending on the objects around it, using the verts. I feel that breaking it up like this and allowing myself to focus on one thing at a time would make the task more digestible and streamlined. So I began making a line using the CV curve tool, clicking often to try and give myself a decent amount of verts to work with later on.
At one point, I ran into a little hiccup, since I had to double-check something in perspective mode, which I couldn’t do without quitting the curve tool. Once I did this and stopped drawing, however, I couldn’t get back to the curve. I should have googled how to do this but I wasn’t fully satisfied with certain aspects anyway and took the opportunity to start again, not stopping until I had a complete path to the finish, even if I made a slight error, such as making the path curve too far to the right. These were very minor problems anyway and were easily fixed by moving the verts afterwards. This is what the full base looks like before I started tinkering with the height.
Here is where I missed a pretty important step. It didn’t cause any massive problems later down the line but I did have to backtrack at this point because of it. I forgot to lift the curve upwards so that it wasn’t lying flat on the course. Leaving it like that would mean that the balloon would travel halfway through the ground, which is not what we want, but despite this, I jumped to the next part which was editing the curve from the side. The first obstacle – a little wall with a hole in the middle for the balloon to pass through – was where I realised what needed to be done.
I tried editing the verts but because there were so few, I ended up creating two massive ridges and still, the balloon wouldn’t pass through. I saw that the curve wasn’t supposed to be flat on the ground and that I needed to add more verts somehow so I went about solving these two issues one at a time. First, Google.
Following the steps above, I moved the entire path upwards and then added a knot in the middle of the two tall hills to then allow me to make a smooth curve over and out of the ‘through’ area.
I didn’t need to add extra verts anywhere else but I was thankful to have the knowledge of how it can be done, in case I would need it for the future. Since the process is quite basic and it allows you to gain extra control over your curve, I guessed that I definitely would. Here is where I attached my balloon to the path in order to see if it would pass through or not. Like last time, I changed the format settings to ‘animation’ and selected the balloon and curve. Then in ‘constrain’ and ‘motion paths’, I selected ‘attach to motion paths’ without checking the box in order to make it fit the timeline automatically in length. I need to do this here because I could then make adjustments as needed, finishing each section of the course before moving on to the next instead of going back and forth between the different obstacles to change the path.
Immediately, I could see that the balloon didn’t pass through correctly and overlapped with the top of the sign and wall. I moved the curve down using the verts around the balloon, including the one that I had added, repeatedly scrubbing through to make sure that it passed smoothly all of the way.
I noticed that the object moved along the path according to where its pivot point was, and I felt confident I could move as needed. It also rotated along that point, which made it unrealistic to how a balloon would actually move but I wasn’t sure of how I could emulate that bobbing, floaty manner and I still had yet to complete the animation anyway. So I continued playing through the animation, watching the balloon travel along my path and making adjustments as needed. The next major obstacles were the spiky arrows that jabbed at the balloon when passing, and unluckily, I had managed to go through exactly when they moved forwards.
Here, I opened up the graph editor so that I could make changes to the balloon’s speed. I wanted to make it stop and move backwards, hesitate and time it just right to slip through. To do so, I had to add multiple keyframes and experiment with where I moved them, although the basic step was just down. Here is what the graph looked like once I had achieved what I wanted.
The final section was pretty easy to do and the balloon was finally safely through! I played back the animation, happy to see that everything was in order apart from the realism aspect in how the balloon moved (which I expect comes with more experience, time and knowledge).
As you can see, the above video showcases the journey of the balloon in a clear but mediocre manner. We can see what is happening but do not get a good sense of the individual movements and details. Therefore, we were taught how to animate a camera! This came as a pleasant surprise and turned out to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the lesson for me.
In ‘create’, we chose the ‘camera’ option in order to create a new one. As always, there was a lot that could be done and Maya provides extensive settings and options to play about with cameras, which could be seen in the attribute editor, under ‘camerashape1’ – but we were simply going to be animating it. To actually do this, we had to actually be the camera, which was a little strange to grasp before we were shown. In ‘panels’, a little bar sat on the top of the workspace, you can go into ‘perspective’ and choose what to look through. ‘Perspective’ is the general camera that Maya always uses and is what you see your work through, by default, but we clicked on ‘camera1’ in order to change the view that we were looking out of. When generated, cameras always appear in the middle of the grid, exactly as a poly primitive would, which is why at first, you couldn’t really see anything apart from the spikes of one of the obstacles. The teacher explained that by panning and moving about, you are essentially moving the camera.
So, we all moved our cameras somewhere at the start of the course, the angle above being the one that I personally chose. Next, we opened the outliner and made sure that the camera was selected. Like we have done before, at the first frame of the timeline, we hit ‘s’ and made a keyframe, after which we moved the needle to where we wanted it to be next, panned/moved the screen and hit ‘s’ again. This process was repeated a couple of times, especially for me since I wanted a lot of dynamism in the animation, to reflect more intensity from the obstacle run.
Quick Tip:
To move a keyframe after it has been placed, hover your mouse near it and hold left-click + shift. Then, highlight the area that encompasses that keyframe and use the middle two arrows to move it about anywhere on the timeframe. To delete, right-click after highlighting and select the fourth option. If you simply hit the delete button, all of the keyframes may disappear.
An improvement that I now feel should be made is more alteration of the speed. If I could go back, I would open up the graph editor and move to where the balloon was going ‘through’ and ‘under’, where I would slow it down significantly. At the moment, it goes too fast to fully register/appreciate what is happening. Other than that though, the added camera makes it so much more interesting and lively to watch! I really enjoyed seeing the final result.
With the time remaining, we were asked to create something else using motion paths. Usually, I am quite alright at thinking up ideas but this time I struggled to find something original or even interesting. Conscious of time, I chose an idea that doesn’t even require motion paths – a sphere rolling down a slide. I had already started when I realised that you can simply use rigid bodies but I carried on with no other ideas at the time.
The first step was to build a slide. Here is where I got the idea of experimenting and seeing if I could use the same curve for more than one purpose in a model. Firstly, extruding along a path, for which I used a cylinder and secondly, animating along a path, for which I would use the sphere. I was quite certain that it would work and continued creating the slide. I added more segments to make it bendy and then used SMP and extrusion to push the middle face in slightly and make the whole thing more purposeful and smooth.
I created a poly sphere and, since this was a new scene, I had to change Maya’s context menu to ‘animation’ once again. I then attempted to attach it to the already existing curve but this didn’t work because it was still connected to the model and if I moved it, so would my slide, which wouldn’t allow me to edit how the ball would roll down. So, I clicked the slide, went to ‘edit’ and then ‘delete all by type’ – ‘history’. They were then separate from each other and I could follow the same steps as last time in ‘constrain’ to animate the ball along the path. It worked, but it didn’t quite look realistic enough. So, my experiment proved successful but also a little pointless, as you would just use rigid bodies to avoid the faff of adjusting the route of the ball to match that of the slide, which is what I had to do.
I didn’t finish in time before the lesson ended and so there is no playblast however, here are my plans if I had more time, which I outlined in my notes as we were packing up.
- I would have edited the verts of the curve to make the ball roll realistically downwards
- I would have used Bifrost to add a liquid mesh and make it a water slide
Entrance Model
A final, fun modeling task that we had for the last part of the day’s workshop was to create an entrance of some sort. It could have been for anything: a cafe, shop, museum, house etc. but the goal was to make something finished and portfolio-worthy. I wanted to get this done in the lesson and have something refined and complete. I struggle with this since I often overshoot and don’t manage to complete what I want to do, so I really tried to dial back and go for something within my technical ability. I settled on a contemporary house entrance because the modern themes generally use simpler shapes such as cubes, which is exactly what my reference images had.
My main one was the largest on the left but I didn’t want to copy block for block, so I changed up the design ever so slightly. Before that though, I made a quick pre-vis so that I could see what I was going to be working on and at what scale. The one you see below changes quite a bit though and is just a base design that I was working from.
I wanted to quickly create a stairway for the entrance and I tried to look in the Maya guide for how to use duplicate special, but only the more complicated parts were there and I had forgotten the simpler step. After asking a friend, I remembered that it was indeed shift + tap ‘D’. So, I stretched a cube out, flattened it and positioned it near the top of the walkway to ten be able to duplicate it and move it underneath and out. Tapping ‘D’ with shift held down made perfect copies appear the same distance away as the second from the first for each one and I soon had a nice set of stairs! It did take a couple of tries however to get the bottom one to line up with the ground since it often went to far under or didn’t reach the ground at all (I didn’t want a hovering step).
Slowly, I built up the model by adding more details using my references. I stretched out some cylinders for some easy poles and also added more cubes to the main model and the front. I was planning on making the front one something like a plant pot/plant area? Like in one of the images, where there is some shrubbery and a tree. I added a back to the roof as well, for some interest.
The top was looking a little plain so I decided to play around with it. I had no particular goal in mind for this part and was doing what looked good in the moment, which I think was also my downfall here since overall, these detailings on the tops of the buildings don’t really match with the modern design of the rest of the entrance. They were made with some simple extrusion and moving around some of the edges. I may need to see my design in colour before deciding if I want to keep them as they are or not.
I would have liked to add materials but I still had a lot that I wanted to incorporate into the entrance anyway, so once again, I didn’t finish in the time we had for the lesson. This task has been added to my list of work to finish outside of lesson time which truthfully, I do not know when I will find the time to do since the creative project is taking up a lot of my hours during the week. I want to add greenery and some windows, as well as finer details like textures, rocks and pathways etc.
