Non-Linear Animation: Animating with the Trax Editor in Maya 4.5 and 5

By Brian J. Immel

The Big Show: Recreating a Slow Motion-Hyper Fast Animation Sequence

This section of the tutorial is incomplete. Hopefully this section will be finished by 8/22/04.

a. Using the library of Clips, create an animation where the character runs, jumps and kicks in mid-air, lands and runs again and finally stops. In the sequence where the character is running, the playback speed will be normal. About half way through the jump though, we want to slow down the animation of the jump and kick to almost a crawl. After completing the kick, double the speed of the landing and running sequence. Finally, come to a complete stop in a strong pose.
b. Lets build the basic animation first. Start off using the Running Clip. Loop it three times.
c. Grab the main control node of the character and keyframe the character moving forward to match the motion of the feet.
d. Place the Jump Clip at the end of the third loop of the Running Clip.
e. Split the Jump Clip at the height of the jump. Pull the second half of the Jump Clip away so that we have some space to add the next clip in there.
f. Add the Kick Clip in between the split of the Jump Clip. Be careful not to overlap the Clips.
g. Place the Landing Clip at the end of the second Jump Clip.
h. Place another Run Clip after the Landing Clip. Scale out this Run Clip so that its about twice its normal length. Keyframe the main control node of the character to match the motion of the feet.
i. Finally, create a new track and place the Neutral Pose at the end. Blend the Neutral Pose with the last frame of the last Run Clip.
j. Now lets play with making the animation appear super slow motion and hyper fast. Select all the Clips and the Pose and go to Create > Clip.
k. The first section we want to exaggerate the time of is the jump-kick. Move the Playback head to the frame where the character is about half way through the jump but not to the kick yet. There is where we should split the Clip so we can start retiming.
l. Move the Playback head to the frame where the character is about three-fourths of the way complete with the kick and split the Clip there.
m. Move the Playback head to the frame where the character is about half way done with the second run sequence and split it there as well.
n. Now lets get surreal. Rescale the first Clip to be super slow motion
o. Rescale the second Clip to be hyper fast
p. Hit the Playback button and watch the fun!
q. For added fun, add a camera that pans during the slow motion sequence.