Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Animation Tools
There are many ways to produce and control animation in Maya (in fact, whole topics are
written about them), so we'll just look at the main animation controls.
Animation Controls
At the bottom of the Maya user interface are various animation controls; these can be seen
in
Figure 16.2
.
FIGURE 16.2
Maya's animation controls
Let's first look at the Time Slider. This bar shows the range of frames you are currently
working on. Clicking anywhere in here with the left mouse button will highlight the selec-
ted frame with a black box and update the view to show that frame of the animation.
Tip
Clicking with the middle mouse button in the Time Slider will select that
frame but not update the time in the views. This is handy if you want to
quickly copy the pose from one frame to another. You simply select the
object whose keys you want to copy, select the frame you wish to copy to
with the middle mouse button, and then set a key on the object at this new
frame.
Right-clicking on the Time Slider will open up a new contextual menu (
Figure 16.3
)
.
These options allow you to cut, copy, and paste selected keys, snap them to specific times,
and adjust the playback and range of the animation. We'll look at other contextual menu
