In this beginners guide we discuss how to build a simple humanoid character and how to animate it. It was not our intention to give a step-by-step guide on how to build a character and how to animate it, because there is extensive amount of literature available on this. This guide can be used next to the “Learning Maya 5 Foundation” book as a source for more information and explanation. We found that although the book is very clear on what actions to do and what the actions will result in, it lacked somewhat in explaining the meaning of concepts and the reasons for performing actions.

In this guide, we first give an explanation of the Maya interface and the main interface elements that are important for character building and animation.
We then follow the “Learning Maya 5 Foundation” subjects on building and animating a humanoid character. First building the basic character by creating a skeleton, adding geometries, flexors and selection handles. Then preparing the character for animation, by adding controls for movements with expressions, rotate planes and vector constraints. Then animating the character by creating character nodes, keyframes, linear animation, non-linear animation and non-destructive keys (secondary animation) and the Maya Embedded Language (MEL). In the last part we discuss shortly the use of cameras, lighting, texturizing, rendering.

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