This tutorial is intended to teach new animation students a few basic animation techniques and workflow based on fundamental animation principles using Maya and a free character setup named walkingBall_v2.3 created by the author. This character setup or “rig” has many useful features without being overwhelming to newer students. This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of how to navigate the Maya interface, find menu commands, and other basic computer file management skills.
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hen creating animations, you should be very careful what you do with the FloorRef. When walking or running, the character should stay at a constant height from the FloorRef object. When jumping, the Character should increase it’s distance from the FloorRef object to give the appearance of translation away from the floor. Characters should ALSO have a “stationary root” that only moves relative to the floor reference (e.g. for walking, jumping etc.) but that does not move constantly (i.e. in an idle animation the root should not move). This is very important if you wish to use your Characters with the Virtools Mulituser Pack, or the dead reckoning algorithm used for predicting distributed objects will not work correctly.
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Tentacled appendages have been around as long as weird creatures in movies and comic books have existed. But creating the proper movement, and getting the right look, is deceptively difficult. Mechanical tentacles such as the sentinels from the Matrix series, or like Doc Ock’s in Spider-Man 2, are particularly challenging.

This tutorial walks you through setting up a character with tentacles, and should give you a good idea of the general approach to take. Part of working in CG is the ability to push the limits of reality – mechanised parts can be exaggerated to stretch and reach further than possible, or be squashed like a slinky – if set up properly, they can do anything you like. Michael Ingrassia, from Escape Studios in London, has provided us with a cartoony character with tentacles to rig and animate. I’m assuming you’re already familiar enough with Maya that you can rig a complete character without a problem, so we’ll be focusing on the tentacles and claws – how they attach to the body, and how all the parts work together to help bring the character to life. The character rig is very basic, so if you’re trying to do anything fancy, you’ll probably need to add more to it.

We’ll walk through a spline IK-type setup in Maya. Maya has a very intuitive and powerful IK solver and its spline abilities function well when set up properly. There are no FK controls for the tentacles, although I would usually provide that to the animator as an option with the ability to switch between the spline IK controls and the FK joints. If you’re familiar with a three-chain FK to IK setup, then you could apply the same principles here. If you get stuck, take a look at the finished file on the CD.

Download pdf EXPERT RIGGING IN MAYA

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When creating animations, you should be very careful what you do with the FloorRef. When walking or running, the character should stay at a constant height from the FloorRef object. When jumping, the Character should increase it’s distance from the FloorRef object to give the appearance of translation away from the floor. Characters should ALSO have a “stationary root” that only moves relative to the floor reference (e.g. for walking, jumping etc.) but that does not move constantly (i.e. in an idle animation the root should not move). This is very important if you wish to use your Characters with the Virtools Mulituser Pack, or the dead reckoning algorithm used for predicting distributed objects will not work correctly.
Read the rest of this entry »

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