THINKING ANIMATION TUTORIAL - PART ONE - Maya Shot Hygiene 🦄
This is Part One of the "Lighting a Playblast in Maya's Viewport 2.0" series. 💥
Your demo reel is crucial for landing your dream job as a professional character or creature animator, and every shot needs to look its best.
Included:
- Video Download
- Maya Shot Hygiene Checklist
- Marker List for Navigating Specific Sections of the Video
This 20-minute video is a practical guide that covers every aspect of setting up your shot in Viewport 2.0. It's not just a tutorial, it's a valuable resource designed to help you create an impressive playblast for your demo reel, an essential skill for any CG artist. Shot hygiene, file organization, and lighting are all real-world challenges that this video addresses. This tutorial will help you maintain a clean workflow and earn the respect of your colleagues. It will also help you prepare your playblasts with streamlined and efficient scene files ready for lighting.
Remember, this video is not just a standalone tutorial but part of my comprehensive THINKING ANIMATION TRAINING courses. Click the profile to see more...
I have found a need to cover these concepts as a mentor at iAnimate and my one-on-one mentoring sessions with students, and now I offer this guidance to you for 1 dollar.
Shot Hygiene Topics Covered:
- Referencing a Clean Rig: How to prep and reference a maya character rig with namespace, props, clean textures, ready for a scene.
- Camera and Set Creation: Setting up cameras and sets, using a plate, and performing necessary clean-up.
- Outliner Clean-Up: Managing file name paths for textures, namespaces, display layers, and removing unused nodes.
- Explanations and Demos: Detailed explanations and demonstrations of why each measure is necessary.
- Final Scene Setup: Preparing the final scene with characters, props, plate, and camera, ready for lighting in Part Two.
💥 Rig Used: Leo from Wonderwell - Well made and appealing rig! 🤡 I encourage all of my students to buy this rig and his female counterpart - Jin Eun.
💥 Props Used: Whiskey Glass
💥 Tools: The Key Machine
💥 Maya Versions: Most of the Viewport 2.0 functions will also work with Maya 2022 and later versions. This tutorial is created using Maya 2024.
💥 Audience: This webinar is for advanced Maya users and animators looking to learn how to set-up a shot for a character animation cleanly.
💥 Speaker: Angie Jones - Mentor | Author | Director - ThinkingAnimation.com
This session is 22 minutes
MARKERS
00:00:00:0 START
00:01:11:08 CLEANING UP A SCENE
00:02:49:13 COPYING CURVES TO A REFERENCED RIG
00:04:47:14 KEY MACHINE
00:05:09:21 WONDER WELL STUDIOS - LEO AND JIN EUN RIGS
00:05:37:04 COPY KEYS WITHOUT PLUGINS TO NEW REFERENCED RIG
00:08:22:04 REFERENCE CHARACTER WITH PROPS
00:09:03:03 CREATING CHARACTER RIG ASSET WITH PROP
00:09:45:01 CLEAN UP PROP
00:10:16:18 PREP PROP FOR CONSTRAINT
00:11:16:05 PREP PIVOTS ON PROP ASSET
00:13:31:20 REPLACE REFERENCE RIG WITH NEW RIG WITH PROP
00:14:12:15 CONSTRAIN PROP
00:15:04:08 CLEAN UP OUTLINER
00:15:35:20 CLEAN UP NAMESPACING
00:16:57:11 USING A PLATE
00:17:36:18 CAMERA CLEAN UP
00:18:13:00 ATTACH PLATE
00:18:47:16 DEPTH OF PLATE
00:19:31:10 CAMSET
00:20:15:03 SCALE SCENE
00:21:31:23 CLEAN UP BROKEN SHADERS
If you've always wanted to learn how to set up your shots in Maya, this video tutorial is perfect for you. It covers everything from referencing a character rig and copying curves to setting up a plate background, creating a hero rig with a prop, and preparing for constraints. Additionally, it will guide you through deleting unused nodes, namespaces, display layers, and more. This Shot Hygiene Tutorial is Part One of the "Lighting a Playblast in Viewport 2.0" series. If you're familiar with setting up a clean scene, you can skip to the "Lighting a Playblast in Viewport 2.0" session.