How To Speed Up Or Slow Down Animation In Maya

No thing what 3D awarding yous employ, there's always going to be a do good to finding new ways to streamline your workflow. Your workflow is extremely important as a 3D creative person because it non only speeds up the process but can likewise help you create even better 3D art. Maya is a powerful program with many different tools that can assistance you establish a better workflow for your projects whether it's for modeling, animation or rendering. Let's accept a look at some important tools and tips in Maya so you can brainstorm to streamline your workflow for your side by side project.

Modeling workflow tips

When it comes to modeling, yous know that it involves a lot of pushing and pulling vertices, at that place'southward not much y'all can practice to speed upward this workflow. However, there are many different ways you can assistance this process along by utilizing some of Maya'southward customization features.

Custom shelves

The shelf tin really be your best friend when it comes to modeling considering, as you're probably aware, at that place are many different tools required to model, from the extrude command to the insert edge loop tool; the listing is a long one. Having to search through the dissimilar modeling menus takes a lot of time, and information technology'due south fourth dimension that could be spent modeling. The shelf is at that place to give yous easy access to the most used tools speedily, then accept advantage of it! To create a new shelf, all you need to do is go over to the shelf tab and open the driblet downwards carte du jour and select new shelf, name it and yous're good to get! To add a tool onto your new shelf, simply become to i of the menus and CRTL+Shift select a tool, for example the Bridge command and it will be placed in your shelf. Bridge Pretty absurd, right? Well the shelf doesn't stop at that place, because you can actually create custom shelf buttons from regular commands like selecting your render camera or switching orthographic camera views. To do this open up your script editor window which is that little icon at the end of the command line. Once you have it opened, go to Commands>Echo All Commands. This will show the script for just about whatsoever action you have. With the Echo All Commands activated go to Panels>Orthographic>Front. You lot should run across this command echo in the script editor. The resulting script should be this, lookThroughModelPanel front modelPanel1; but highlight this text and MMB click and drag it onto your shelf. Front Script You tin can right click the new icon and select Edit and go into the shelf editor and in that location you can modify the icon characterization to whatsoever yous similar, as well equally change the icon graphic itself. You lot tin create a custom button like this for any command you lot do often in Maya.

Custom marking menu

Forth with having the shelf speed upward your workflow, you tin as well create custom mark menus to speedily access your favorite tools. If you're unaware of what a marking menu is, it's the popup menu in the viewport. For case, if you right click a polygon object you'll see a marking menu popular-up with things like Object, Vertex, Edge, etc. Well, you can actually create your own custom marking menus in Maya. Equally you can imagine having custom marking menus can profoundly speed upwardly your workflow. Let'due south get over how to prepare a quick modeling marker card with some of the about used tools. Become to Window>Settings/Preferences>Marking Carte du jour Editor. Once the Marking Menus window is open, select Create Marker Carte. This will open upwards the mark menu creation box. You should see several greyness boxes, this is where each control volition be placed within the mark menu. To get-go adding things to your marker bill of fare simply MMB drag the tools from your shelf and place them where yous want in the marker carte du jour. For this example, the Insert Edge Loop Tool, Extrude, Merge Vertex and Cutting Faces have been put into the mark menu. Once you proper name your mark bill of fare click relieve. Yous should see the marker menu added to this listing. Now all you demand to do is gear up the hotkey control. Under the Employ marking menu in drop box set up it to Hotkey Editor and apply the settings. Now go to Window>Settings/Preferences>Hotkey Editor. Roll down the categories and discover the User Marking Menus. With the press command selected, assign it whatsoever hotkey combo you want. This means that when these button combos are pressed it will open upwards your custom marking menu. Hotkey setup

Saving viewport layouts

Modeling ordinarily requires more than than one viewport window to be open. Frequently times you can have several viewports opened while yous're modeling. Mayhap have the front and side views open up while you lot're blocking in the base mesh from an image airplane. Well it'southward a good idea to save off different viewport layouts that you like working with. Call up about how y'all want your viewport for the texturing process. You lot'll probably want one window with the UV Editor, the other with the Hypershade and the next with the perspective view. Start saving off these custom layouts so you don't have to worry near them next time y'all burn upward Maya. You can quickly select your texturing layout when you're set to texture, and you're modeling layout when y'all're ready to model. Having these custom layouts will save you a lot of time when you have to come up back to a project. Save Layout To save your layout just go to Window>Save Current Layout. All you lot take to do is proper noun it and click OK. You can find your new layout nether the Window>Saved Layouts panel.

Blitheness workflow tips

When it comes to animation, it's simply equally important to discover ways yous can speed upwardly your workflow and learn means to practice tasks faster.

Autokey

Taking advantage of the Autokey function as an animator is really a no-brainer. Unless you desire to ware downward your "S" fundamental then the Autokey function is a huge benefit. Autokey At commencement glance the Autokey function nearly sounds like the hidden "auto animate" button which everyone wishes was on a keyboard. Sadly, that's not the case, simply the Autokey role is vital for automatically setting keyframes when yous move any role of the control rig. To gear up a keyframe in Maya you must press the "Due south" fundamental to lock it down. This can be a lot of unnecessary pressing of the "S" cardinal because when y'all think about it, as you're really getting into the details of an animation, i.e. facial blitheness or polish you're going to make a lot of petty adjustments and having to press the "Southward" key over and over slows you down.

Shifting keyframes

The timeline in Maya does a whole lot more than set your keyframes. As you're animating you'll likely need to suit keyframes whether that means moving them to tweak timing or copying a keyframe to hold that position or pose. You could do this in your dope sail, but information technology's usually much faster to but work in the timeline. Shifting Keys If you want to shift your keyframes in the timeline to suit the timing of an action simply concur downwards Shift and click and concur the LMB on the keyframes yous want to alter. The area y'all select will go red and you can either shift the keyframes to the left or correct, or select the two center arrows to movement them across the timeline simultaneously.

Copying keyframes

You'll probably run into the scenario of having to copy a certain pose to create a moving hold for your character or object. This can be done in a few seconds. Just select the keyframe you desire to copy and agree down CTRL+MMB click and drag on the timeline to where you desire to place the copied keyframe and then press the "Southward" key.

Adjusting the timeline

When you lot're animative the place you're going to put the most attention in is the timeline, that'south why it's helpful to arrange the timeline to fit your needs. You tin can become into your Animation Preferences and adjust the height of your timeline to 2x. By default it's set up to 1x, which is fine, just when you're animating y'all want to be able to completely see the timeline, the frame numbers and the keyframes in information technology. Editing animation prefs You tin can even take this a step further and adjust the Key tick size to make the red keyframe marks on the timeline larger so they're easier to see.

Scaling your animation

Have you ever run into the problem where maybe your team atomic number 82 asked you to slow downwards your unabridged animation by 20%? Well, that might exist a chip disruptive at first, simply it'due south actually extremely piece of cake to practise in the Graph Editor. In this case, information technology's but a simple ball animation, simply y'all tin do this with a complex rig as well. If you demand to speed upwardly or slow down the blitheness select all the Translate keys in the Graph Editor and turn on the Region Scale Tool. If you marquee select all the curves in the Graph Editor you should see a grey box around all the keyframes. Yous can select the box on the right to uniformly speed upwardly or slow down your entire animation past dragging the box left or right. This is a great way to make large timing changes to your animation without destroying any poses or keyframes. Scaling Keys

Editable motion trail

An editable motion trail is an amazing tool in Maya that will quickly get you're best friend when you're trying to suit the arc of a move. You can select individual curves, similar the mitt for example, and get to Animate>Create Editable Movement Trail> this will create a red motion trail with each keyframe you have created. Create Editable Motion trail Y'all'll see exactly where in 3D space your object is moving past the red line and you can see how well the arcs are. Y'all can brand changes to the keys on the motion trail and it will update the blitheness to follow the new trail. This is a keen manner to interactively suit the arcs in your blitheness and become instant feedback to encounter how the modify has effected your animation. Make sure yous accept these workflow tips into consideration whether y'all're working on a model or animating a fight scene. The tools in Maya volition help y'all speed up your workflow and become the job at hand done faster. If you want to learn more check out ten Ways to Enhance Your Productivity in Maya.