Week 1 – Introduction to 3D Animation in Autodesk Maya

In the first week, I was introduced to the basic 3D workflow in Autodesk Maya, and the concept of Golden Poses in character animation. As I was not familiar with Maya, I also did some self-study by taking a Maya Beginner Course, and learn about 12 Principles of Animation.

What Makes a Golden Pose?

Clear silhouette – no confusing shapes or overlaps,
Includes a clear line of action,
Balance and weight – imagine the body being cut in half to check whether the two sides are asymmetrical,
Exaggerated emotion and personality through secondary motion.

Golden pose refers to a strong and effective pose, while a Hero Pose is a more generic pose representing a character.

12 Principles of Animation

I watched Alan Becker’s video about the 12 Principles of Animation to further understand the elements that contribute to good animation.

The 12 principles are Squash & Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose, Follow Through & Overlapping Action, Slow in & Slow out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing, and Appeal. Though this was not the first time I watched and learned about animation principles, this opportunity helped me to remind of those principles when I started to animate for this course’s assignments.

Getting Familiar with Autodesk Maya

I used this tutorial by Animators Journey to start getting familiar with Maya. Although I found the tutorial quite slow and long, it still gave me a better understanding of how to navigate the Maya interface and introduced me to some useful hotkeys that I can use while working.

As I have already had some prior knowledge about 3D principles, I found it relatively easy to start working in Maya. The hardest part was getting used to new hotkeys and navigation system. However, I found that Maya has some useful feathers, such as being able to view the silhouette of my poses in the viewport simply by pressing 7.

Golden Poses Assignment

I decided to challenge myself to the Golden Pose assignment to become familiar with Maya. This assignment included four tasks:

Pose a Hero Pose
Pose a Standing Pose
Pose a Happy Pose
Make my poses in 360 degree camera

After receiving feedback from Ting, I realised my biggest problem when posing was that I tended to make the arms and legs slightly curved rather than straightening them. Therefore, the line of action was not continuous. Moreover, I also learned that when drawing a directional lines for chest, hip, and eyeline, these lines should not be parallel. Otherwise, the pose is going to look unnatural. Last but not least, I also learned that I should try to incorporate as many lines of action as possible from different angles of the pose.

Hero Pose