In Maya 2011 now, we can create better skinned characters with extra sensible deformations within a lesser amount of time. Innovative skinning tools and workflows include a double quaternion option for smooth skinning, interactive volume binding, multiple enhancements to the Paint Skin Weights tool, deformer weight mirroring, and a surface falloff mode for the Wrap deformer.

The reason everyone uses Maya is, because it does everything that a whole bunch of small programs exept all in one, much easier to use and has a great UI. And i have taken the time to other programs (Lightwave, Mudbox, Z-brush, 3ds max, 3d coating) and there are all good in their own small way, but i have none of them as simple as Maya.
In this video tutorial we will take a bird eye view on some new improvement of Skinning Feature of Maya 2011. First new tool is Interactive Skin Bind. Now with this new tool you can adjust you bind skin with Manipulators. you can rotate, scale and transform you effect area very easily in your view port. This tool has another very good feature that it is mirror you adjustment on other side of your model. There are a lot of new features added into Skin weight tool option pallet. For more information watch the video below for detailed information about new skinning features in Maya 2011.

This free video tutorial will tell you how to create joints for 3d organic character. After this video tutorial you will be able to create joints for any organic character including human characters within Maya.

21. Go to the side view and create a joints chain as back bone of the character, follow the image below,

22. Create one joint for jaw and make it a child of the neck joint, follow the image below,

23. Go to front view
24. Create three joints’ chain for right arm

25. Go to the Top view

26. Adjust right arm’s joints on their proper place, follow the image below,

27. Mirror the right arm’s joints as you mirrored the right leg’s joints

28. Go to perspective view
29. Examine all of the sides of the character and make sure that all joints are going to be fit very well, see the image below,

30.Go to the side view
31. Get Joint Tool for creating joints chain for the foot
(Note: We are not going to cover reverse foot in this lesson, because reverse foot is an advance level matter and we’ll discuss it in Projects Chapter of this website)
32. Start creating foot’ joints right from the ankle’s joint
(Note: you may need to make template of the joints’ layer in layer editor before starting foot’s joints from ankle)

33. Create 3 joints for foot, see the image below,

34. Go to the front view
35. Move the foot joints into the right foot
36. Rotate the foot joints to fit them into the foot
37. Repeat the steps that you have done for mirroring the joints of leg and arms,
38. Mirror the right foot joints to the left, see image below,

(Note: you have done almost all necessary joints, although there are a lot of joints left yet of hands fingers, feet fingers, ribs, reverse foot and etc but the joints which we have created in this lesson are sufficient for making a simple walk animation of human character. Now you need to parent all joints into the root joint and name them)
39. Go to perspective view
40. Open the Outliner from window > Outliner

41. Rename 1st joint to rLeg
42. Rename the 4nd joint to lLeg
43. Rename the backbone joints to root
44. Likewise use the names rArm, lArm, rFoot, lFoot and so on for more joints in a body
(Note: this is the time you need to parent all joints into the root, let’s do it)
45. Select rLeg , lLeg and root joint (last selected should be root)
46. Press the Key P on keyboard

47. Repeat the same action for the rest of the joints

(Note: This is the time; you need to un-template the mesh of the character)
48. From layer editor un-template the character’s mesh

49. Select the root joint (this will automatically select all of the joints)
50. Shift select the mesh of the character

51. Go to the Skin Menu
52. Bind skin > Smooth Bind Skin (with default settings)

53. Go to Skeleton Menu
54. Get IK Handle Tool
55. Click on the rLeg Joint and then on the ankle joint (in actual joint No.1 and then joint No.3)

(Note: you have created an IK handle it means that you have created the muscle of the leg and by moving the ankle joint you can move the leg now)
56. Repeat the same thing for left leg, arms and feet
57. Create an Ik handle for backbone joints start from root and end on the chest joint.
58. Create Ik Handles for neck and jaw as well
59. Use Move Tool and move legs, arms, backbone, neck and jaw
60. Enjoy the funny movements of the character and be ready to rig them and animate them in next lessons.

Congratulations:

You are now ready to animate your 3d human character. Simply select ik handles and keyframe them. In next lesson we shall cover creating joints for fingers, ribs and then rigging them with readymade objects for better control. You should stay with me if you have reached here.

Learn here something about character animation. The character animation is simple process which allows you to work in specific area with the help of different characters. These characters are used for animation purpose. The character animation is actually another name for the actor’s performance. Your animation will be called perfect only in this way if you are creating it with emotion and other physical features. You have seen many character animation scenes in 3d movies and video games. Now a day this technique is being used rapidly in film industry. Similarly game developers are also adopting this technique to create easiness in any complicated scene. In Maya there is great exposure to animate your characters with various methods. Character Animation is the most appealing and complex element of some 3d animation software application. If you have been using 3D Studio Max ever you must know that we face the troubles with our characters meshes when we want to animate them with intense action, but Maya has solved all of the problems at all and launched the paint weight tool for smooth skinning the 3d characters.
A character needs many things before being animated for example,
• You must have a very good mesh with 100 percent accurate topology and parameterization.
• You need to create joints that are bones of organic model
• You need to assign IK handles
• You skin your 3d model with joints weather you are using smooth skin or rigid skin options
• You will have to edit the skin weights with various methods, paint weight tool is one of the thousands ways
• You need rigging your model as proper as you can. Rigging is just like tying a puppet to the threads for creating movements
• You need to key frame rigged objects or you need to adopt some other way of animation.

This free tutorial will tell you how to create joints for 3d organic character. After this video tutorial you will be able to create joints for any organic character including human characters within Maya.

This text tutorial will demonstrate creating joints for 3d characters in Maya. We’ll use a realistic human model and we’ll create joints for the character for animation purpose.

Requirements:

You should have a 3d realistic human character in your scene. The character should be in standing pose with stretched arms out. If you have one of your own, that’s good, otherwise,

(Note: this file is of Maya 2009, if you are not using Maya 2009 then maybe you will be unable to open this file in your version of Maya. In this case you will have to use some character of your own for completing this tutorial thanks)

Let’s start lesson,

This will make your object a template, and object will become dim

once again you need to create another new layer in layer editor for joints,
let’s do it
10. Create a New layer change its color and name it Joints

11. Choose animation Menu Set and Go to the Skeleton Menu
12. Get Join Tool with default settings

13. Start creating joints from the hip of human model
14. Create three joints for leg in side view as shown in image below,

If you see the Joint size is larger or smaller in accordance of
the character, you should set the new Joint size from
Follow the image below,

15. Go to front view

16. Get Move Tool and move the 3 leg joints to the right leg
17. Get Rotate Tool and rotate 3 leg Joints and fit them in leg, see the image below,

18. Go to the Skeleton Menu > Mirror Joints > options

19. Reset settings and change the Mirror across to YZ

20. Leave all other settings as it is and hit Mirror,

This video tutorial is split into two parts and here you will learn about character setup in Maya 2010. The video tutorial is describing about character setup, the basic thing in character animation. When you are going to design 3d model, suppose this is human model then character modeling will be definitely engaged in this matter. The character model is created with joint setting and this joint application is integrated in Maya. To find the joints, first go to main menu and choose menu as animation and here you will find joint setting in its sub menu. The joints are created mostly in side view because side view is thought perfect for this purpose and also provides accuracy in your projects. The character setup may vary from other model so don’t worry it is always shaped with respect to real image geometry. 3d animator used different technique for setting up there character for animation. In Maya 2010 we have now different tools and MEL scripts for character setup. This video tutorial is an introduction to character setup in Maya. You can create any kind of character here in Maya and there is no limit of their sizes and shapes. In short the video is given for the best of Maya learners so that they might learn with detail. Watch the video and enjoy.

This tutorial is related to 3d modeling and animation in Maya. From this tutorial we are starting about character setup of robot part 1. This tutorial deals with how to create joint setup for robot modeling. Here we are only working for robot model rigging. The rigging is the first step in modeling. The character modeling is combination of complex geometry of different joints. These joints are created under animation category. When you want to create joints for the modeling, you have to set the setting as animation. Here in sub setting you can find joints option. The joints are generally created in side view port, it doesn’t matter about same shape of character rigging because every character has different look. Many parts of character are double in number, so you can create the other one by using mirror option. There are joint making, joint resizing and orienting tools in Maya. But here we shall read about only joint making in this basic part of robot character setup. Again I am pointing out that main menu setting should be animation. Import the reference image of robot, and now bring you viewport as orthographic viewport and active the side viewport. We take start from pelvis joints and then neck, head and mouth joints. This is the best sequence for character modeling setup and in next part we shall work for joint sequence in detail. The given video link is describing visual concept of character setup of robot.

Character animation is generally defined as the animation of one or more characters in any complex scene. It is one of the best effects among 3d film industries and after this you have to add voice acting for your 3d characters. The character needs the voice narration for performing in any movies therefore the voice is provided them through background sources. The character talking scene is also included in animation and they are done through assigning key frames. Character animation is much different from other general and emotional physical action. In simple meaning the animation is the constancy of character movement along the key frames application. Animation is actually name of giving soul to still image or character and it is because of animation that you can move the character anywhere in the scene. When you want to create animation in your character position, you need two things, first character and then key frames setting. The key frames are placed on the bottom side of the workspace and it allows you to create illusion of movement in your character. The keys are assigned where you want to create movement in your character. Suppose we have a character and want to create animation, first of all set the key frames range which helps you to set the duration of your animation. Drag and place the character anywhere in the scene and set key frame there and so on. There is radio button system on the end of timeline setting, play the animation and you see that your character is moving freely in the scene and you can see the changing in character with respect to key frames. The character animation process is shown in the following video in detail.

Using Human IK (HIK) with animation layers lets you retargeting the character animation and modify nondestructively.

In this video tutorial you will learn about Maya 2011’s new animation Retargeting workflow. This tool is based on Human IK. Using Human IK (HIK) with animation layers lets you retargeting the character animation and modify nondestructively. The new retargeting workflow is process in which you see your process immediately. This tool helps you to reprocess, correct, and improve motion-capture and other animation data faster and more easily.

Shift animation from one character to another and fine-tune retargeting parameters live to observe and edit results without the need to re-bake.  Now you can use your motion capture data very easily in Maya and you have no need of other application for this purpose.

These tutorials willshowyou how to create character setup for a robot.

This video tutorial is split into 12 parts. You will learn how to character setup a robot in these video series. We will start from basic and will finish our work by completing full hierarchy of robots joints.

The purpose of the character setup is too aware you about character animation. Maya is computer 3d animation software and we are using Maya to learn you character setup. a lot of expert animators mostly use Maya for creating some model so it is also called professional animation software. Character setup is the initial step to learn 3d modeling courses. You can get free 3d modeling software from some web browser. There is another option to render the model for actual view and this is called 3d rendering. In the previous tutorial you have read about the essential joint to form a skeleton for the body.
To form skeleton, your menu setting should be at animation because animation provides you skeleton menu setup. Right viewport is preferred for the skeleton. It is simple to copy and view about skeleton in this view. In the previous stage we have created joints, and now we can to join them by using hierarchy. The question is how to connect the joints, when we click on the joint end it automatically selects and similarly when you click at next stage it will combine together. Through this process we shall make a chain of the bones. We can join all the joints through graph editor; it will show all the joints. The first joint is the parent of every one the rest joints. This joint setup is called joint chain and it was we required to teach you. The video will provide you same process with visual tutorial.
This video tutorial is split into 12 parts. You will learn how to character setup a robot in these video series. We will start from basic and will finish our work by completing full hierarchy of robots joints.