Animation with MayaLaajuus (5 cr)

Objective

You learn the fundamentals of character and mechanical rigging.
You learn various weight painting techniques to improve your character skinning.
You learn about blendkeys.
You learn how to setup constraints for you rigs (aim constraints, IK, FK etc).
You learn how to setup a facial rig with custom controllers and control bones for inverse and forward kinematic (IK/FK) setups.
You learn manual keyframe animation.
You learn how to bring in motion capture data, setup character definitions and perform retargeting.
You learn how to manipulate existing animation data with timeline clips and additive and override layers.
Advanced: You get introduced to programming based rig generation.

Content

What are the fundamentals of character and mechanical rigging in Maya?
How do you weight paint and skin characters effectively?
What are blendshapes, and how are they used in character animation?
How do you set up constraints such as aim, parent, and inverse and forward kinematic (IK/FK) for animation control?
How do you build a facial rig using custom controllers and support IK/FK switching?
How do you animate using manual keyframing, and what are the principles behind it?
How do you import and work with motion capture data, retarget it to characters, and enhance it with animation layers?