Basics of Playblast in Autodesk Maya

Playblast is the most useful tool for animators in Autodesk Maya. This video will show you how to control and customize the settings of PLayblast in Autodesk Maya so you can preview your animated shots in realtime.

Anticipation in Character Animation - Autodesk Maya Tutorial

Anticipation is a very important principle of animation whether you are doing 3D or 2D character animation. In this tutorial Mark Pullyblank will discuss about this principle and put some really important point regarding the same. Hope this will help you people to grasp the anticipation principle.

How to use Animated Sweep in Autodesk Maya

Animated sweep in Autodesk Maya is a very special tool where you can create a surface by using an animated curve. Though this tool is consisting in the animation menu, this tool is more effective for creating models. To give the demonstration, take a NURBS circle in maya, animate the circle in translate, rotate or scale any or all. You can look in the video for the reference of the animation. then go to the animation segment, go to animate menu and select "Create animated sweep" option box.

Now select the time range and the output geometry type from the option box and create the animated sweep to get the desired geometry.

Twist Deformer in Auodesk Maya

Twist Deformer helps us to create the twist effect on a geometry. Like any other deformer this also required the sufficient amount of subdivision. So for the required effect I took a polygon cube with a height and sufficient subdivision in it.

In the animation section , go to create deformer menu > nonlinear > Twist , by selecting the object you can apply the deformer into that. Twist deformer has very specific use and effect on the object you apply. If you go to the input section under he channel box you will get the parameters to control the twist. Envelope, high bound and low bound are the common parameters for all the deformers. Envelope control the overall effect of the deformer, where as high and low bound control the effect of the same above and below of the center point of the deformer handle. The unique parameters are Start angle and End angle. The start angle will control the twist from the base of the object and the end angle will do the same from the top. However this effect depend on how your deformer handles are actually staged. if you rotate the handle the result can be entirely different.

You can go through the video below for the details use of this deformer. Like other nonlinear deformer you can mix the effect of the deformer with the other nonlinear deformer like , bend or flare. SO hope you will learn and enjoy.

Squash Deformer in Autodesk Maya

Squash deformer in autodesk maya helps to create a setup where the animator can squash and stretch an object according to their requirement. This deformer can be used both in modeling and animation.

For applying this deformer you have to first select the object, then you have to apply the deformer from the Create deformer > Nonlinear menu. Let the default settings unchanged. Immediately the deformer will be created and you can check that through the channel box. In the input option of the channel box select the squash option to reveal the parameters for the deformer.

There are various kind of options are there to control the squash deformer. Some of the parameters are very much common for all the non linear deformers. The most important parameter is the "Factor" . By changing this parameter you will get the squash and stretch effect on the geometry. Nex important parameter is the "expansion" . This parameter helps us to define about the maintaining the volume of the geometry.

Start and End smoothness also tricky to use . These two actually help us to make the shape along the squash handles. Follow the video below for more details about the deformer.

Nonlinear Sine Deformer in Autodesk Maya

Nonlinear Sine deformer in Autodesk Maya let you deform and also manipulate an object or geometry along a sine curve. As you apply the sine deformer you can manipulate the deformer with various options to control the deformation.

Like the other deformers in Autodesk Maya first select the object and then apply the sine deformer from the non-linear section of the "Create Deformer" menu under the animation section. As the deformation required a healthy amount of segments, check your object's segments before you apply the deformer.

After you apply the deformer you will not found any deformation happening till you increase the amplitude value more than zero, which is the default one. Immediately after increasing the the amplitude you will notice that the object is deforming along the sine curve. Apart from the general parameters of a non-linear deformer like the high bound, low bound and envelope, you will found four other parameters in this deformer . These parameters are , Amplitude - which let you control the amount of deformation, Wavelength- which will let you control the length of the sine curve, Offset - this parameter will let you animate the deformation along the sine curve you created, and Dropoff - which will let you ease the wavelength from the center of the sine deformer.

The video below will help you to understand the use of the deformer in depth. Hope you will enjoy . Please feel free to comment regarding the tutorial and ask questions.

Flare Deformer In Autodesk Maya

Flare Deformer in Autodesk Maya helps us to create a flare or taper like effect on the 3d model. Like the other deformers in Maya this also has some common and basic properties, and also need subdivisions in the models. When you apply the deformer no effect can be seen, and you have to manipulate the properties to get the effect.

Flare deformer properties are divided into two axis 'X' and 'Z'. You can get the start flare and also the end flare option for those two axis. The start flare option is to increase the scale factor of the base of the mesh and the end flare is the scale factor for top of the mesh. The 'Curve' parameter is really interesting and also important as this will give you a nice curvature in between the top portion and bottom portion of the flare calculations. The Low bound and high bound are work same as other nonlinear deformers. Low bound restrict the effect of the flare in lower part from the center and high bound do the same on the top part from the center of the flare handle.

Bend Deformer in Autodesk Maya

Bend deformer in Autodesk Maya is the first nonlinear deformer in the list. As the name suggests this deformer helps us to create the bend effect on the selected geometry or 3d model. Bend modifier can be found in 'create deformer' menu under 'non linear' section. Apart from bend, you will found other deformers in this section like sine, flare , twist etc. The reason behind putting these under the non linear is, these deformers are depends on the topology of the 3d mesh. If you change the base mesh the effect of the deformer will also change. Before you apply bend remember to increase the subdivision of the mesh.

In bend optionsyou can found three options , 'curvature' , 'low bound' and 'high bound' . the curvature option let you set the amount of the bend curvature you want . whereas the high bound and low bound work as the limit factor of the bend value which you want to restrict from the upper portion and the lower portion from the center of the bend gizmo. Here you need to remember you can easily alter the direction of the bend by rotating the gizmo itself. The envelope option helps us to clamp down the entire effect of the deformer on the 3d model.

Lattice Deformer in Autodesk Maya

Lattice Deformer in Autodesk Maya create a cage like structure , which help you to reshape your model with like a lesser segments. First select the model then go to the create deformer menu and apply lattice. immidiately you can see the cage like structure appear around the model as lattice gizmo. Don't worry you can manipulate the structure and also the number of the cage. Now if you right click on the lattice gizmo you will get two options. One is the regular "object mode" and the other is the "lattice point" . If you select the lattice point you will see the lattice gizmo will show you the lattice points which are looks similar like vertex of a poly model. If you pull these lattice points you will effect the portion of the model itself , which are nearer to the lattice point you selected. This is the basic effect of the lattice deformer.

Now look at the different options of the lattice. To start with the number of division. There are three column are there for X, Y and Z axis divisions. You can set the numbers here or else from the attribute editor after you create it. Remember though you can set the number of the divisions even after you apply the deformer , if you increase or decrease the division number after manipulating the lattice points you might get weird result in the model. So be careful about it. To understand the use of local mode please go through the video tutorial below, as it is very hard to describe it with only text and image.

Position of the lattice gizmo is connected with the option named "outside lattice" .You will get different results for these combination. SO use them accordingly. in the video I have  already shown the example. The other option like group and auto-parent option create the lattice system in a group and also create a parent child relation respectively. The freeze option also to freeze the geometry mapping .

Next I have shown an example of using this lattice deformer in a practical way, where I use this deformer to create a flat tire of a car.Hope you will enjoy.

Blend Shape Deformer in Autodesk Maya

Blend Shape deformer in autodesk maya is one of the strong tool for creating morph targeted animation. This deformer helps us to create the facial expression for the characters. Blend shape deformer calculate the vertex position of the base objects and the target objects. Hence both base and the target object should have the equal number of vertex . We have to generate the target object from the base object itself.

For applying or creating the blend shape object we have to first select all the target objects then select the base object and apply the create blend shape from the create deformer menu. then you can select the base object and get the each target value from the channel box or from the blend shape editor. Blend shape is not limited for the one time use. You can add more target shape even after you already entered a series of shapes. Here add option in the edit deformer option will help you. apart from general option we have also discussed other options of the deformer in the video.Go through our video tutorial to know more.

Cluster Deformer in Autodesk Maya

Cluster Deformer in Autodesk Maya is one of the unique deformer in Autodesk Maya. This deformer can be found in Create deformer menu in Animation section.





If you just select any object and hit the create cluster button, the cluster will create but you won't feel any specialty in the creation. Cluster deformer is useful when you are using it in the component level, and not only any component but specific to vertex. If you apply to any other component than vertex it will show you an error message saying "No deformable objects found"





When you select and apply to a bunch of vertex it will create a control in the shape of "C" in your viewport and it is very easy to see even if you are in shaded mode.



Cluster deformer gives you and unique control over the selected vertices to manipulate them according to your requirement. This deformer also support the artisan brush in Maya to maintain the influence weight for the vertices you selected while creating it. The editing weight for the cluster deformer can be found under the "Edit Deformer" Menu as "Paint Cluster Weight Tool" . The details for the using of cluster you can see the video tutorial below.