I dropped the compress zip into your drop folder titled "Sam Welch - Explosion.zip".

This next lesson in the book I read was a bit more complex than the previous one about motion trails. This one was about alternating between IKs and FKs in order to create more fluid animation. To be clear, (F)orward (K)inematics means that the position of the end of the joint (usually arm or leg) is dependent upon the joints leading up to it, whereas (I)nverse (K)inematics is the opposite; it's inverted. The hand is on it's own and controls the limb. They both have their strength and weaknesses. In this case, FKs are not useful for pushing or pulling things because they follow the arms. IKs are very helpful for this, because they stay in one spot; the position of the body or limbs is irrelevant. The Character is pushing on a box without success. I was provided the man stepping forward but his arms had no animation. By using the Channel Box, I was able to set the FKs in the hand to switch to IKs at a particular frame, giving me IK control after and FK control before. The frame was of course when he made contact with the box. By moving his hands into position using FKs and keeping them there with IKs, it creates a much more realistic movement. Here's the final rendering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YrNjnPcsOg&feature=youtu.be Overall, this, along with the layers from a while back, is one of the most useful things I've picked up from this book.

A much smaller update than the last time, but it's still an interesting concept. The book taught me how to utilize and manipulate animation paths. An obvious but necessary skill. As you can see here: the book provided a ball moving in a figure 8 pattern, and then explained in detail the workings of all the attributes. By going to Animate -> Create Etidable Motion Trail, a visible and changable path is created. The book emphasizes the importance of having weighted tangents in the graph editor in order to make the techniques function properly. To be honest, this is just a different medium of editing curves in the graph editor, it's just more visual since you can see the object since it's in the viewport and you don't have to deal with obstructing graphs if you don't have enough real estate. By using attributes like Beads and Tangents, you can change the path to your liking, although it's beneficial to break the tangents first in the graph editor.

Finally time to give an update on here. I got "How to Cheat in Maya 2013" as a Christmas gift, so I've been going through that and learning some new tips. To start with, I learned about Maya's animation layers, which are possibly the most helpful thing I've ever utilized in here. They're basically Autodesk's answer to Adobe's layers in Photoshop. They can be enabled or disabled to apply whatever set of animation is attributed to that specific layer. The book provided a default animation and walked me through the task of using layers to exaggerate the pre-existing animation. The original animation can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY-eAn1l894&feature=youtu.be The great thing about layers, though, is that they can be toggled on and off. So after I edited the curves to give it a more exaggerated feel, I could just go ahead and disable it to revert the animation back to it's original format. Here's the layer area right here: That single button makes animation much easier. Here's a clip of the finished, exaggerated version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL-kZOe3spc&feature=youtu.be Continuing the book's guidance, I added a bit more character by giving him a head shake. Again, all of this can be undone with the click of a button without the need to rustle between save files and scenes. Truly a lifesaver. Here's a clip of the final everything: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUk48E89G6g&feature=youtu.be

Textures!

Models for the personal project.

Rig for the bird is functional! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kd9e0L_GKY&feature=youtu.be