Easy Character Setup in Maya: Animating, a brief overview Animating, a brief overview Character animation is a long, complicated process that takes years of practice only to begin to understand it. Being able to make objects move in 3D space does not make you an animator. There is an art to it. It«s a learned skill that takes quite a bit of attention and patience. This tutorial was designed to show a quick and easy method of putting a skeleton in a character to set it up to be animated. This is not an animation tutorial. However, I will briefly go over some of the tools and processes for animating. I like using Forward Kinematics on everything but the legs. It gives me ultimate control of the angles of expression in a pose or even just an arm. Using the rotate tool to animate the joints is the only way to go, and translating the Root joint to move your character through space. When animating, it«s always a good idea to start with the basic broad movements, and fill in with the details as you go. First, I move the whole body: translate the Root through the scene the way I want my character to go, and then key frame the IK handles of the feet to place them under it. Then I move the torso around to give the character balance and weight in the right spots. After that comes the arms, then the head. Finally, I flush it all out with my dangling or bouncy parts of the characters like hair, or hands, or ears. Something to flop around and give it extra life. The details always come last. That order again: Body, Feet, Torso, Arms, Head, Overlapping action pieces. When setting key frames, set the timeline where you want it, rotate the joint, then save the key. After you get the motion close to what you want, use the Graph Editor to make subtle changes in the movement. The Graph Editor is a «MUST-USE« in character animation. When animating a scene I pretty much live in that window. The camera in which you choose to view your scene is important when animating. It«s always a good idea to sketch out on paper some poses and facial expressions that you want to try and accomplish with your model, as well as the composition for your action. You donÕt need to animate legs, if they aren«t in the scene. When viewing your animation, timing is important. Every time you change something, check it. Use the Playblast to quickly render out a shaded view movie to playback at a normal speed (30 frames per second). Right-click in the timeline to access Playblast. When animating a scene I might playblast it 60-70 times a day depending on how much I want to tweak it.