FridgeMonsters : Animation Tutorials


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	Rolling Cubes

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Rolling Cubes

Introduction
One of the many powerful features of Maya is the ability to animate the location and properties of an object’s pivot point. In this lesson, you will use the animatable properties of a primitive cube’s pivot point to animate it rolling on its edges. This process will involve the use of the Channel Control window (window > General Editors > Channel Control) to make certain attributes Keyable.

Once they are Keyable, they will be available in the Channel Box for you to set keys and edit their value. Also in this lesson, you will also use the Graph Editor to refine the animation curves to get exactly the kind of motion that you need.

Lesson Plan
Here is list of the steps involved to give you a clear outline of the direction of this tutorial before we start.

1. Create the Cube
2. Display the Local Rotation Axis
3. Make the Local Axis Keyable
4. Edit the Local Axis
5. Key Start Rotation Value
6. Go to frame 10, Rotate and Key
7. Move Local Axis & Key Local Axis
8. Graph Editor – Step Tangent

Repeat Steps 6 – 8.

6. Go to frame 20, Rotate and Key
7. Move Local Axis & Key Local Axis
8. Graph Editor – Step Tangent.

[level advanced]