AM Tutoring Tips and Tricks part 1 - Maya Hot Keys Set Up For Animator.

Hey Animators,

I'm glad that AM selected me to host an 1 hour alumni QA on 8pm pacific every monday! It's so excited to me that I can share a little bit my experience with fella animators. I wish these tips and tricks can help you some how.

These tips and tricks will be my personal preferences, and not necessary works for you. If you know(or hear) something better and make our work easier, please ignore whatever I wrote here and kindly share them with me. :)

Ok, let's start with something easy, my Maya hot keys set up for animator.

The idea here is to reduce the time from press bottons in maya, or to avoid clicking the mouse.

A note before set up, I always use "Weighted Tangents" in graphic editor.

Here are my hot keys set up.

+ -add inbetween

- -remove inbetween

' -break tangent

; -free tangent weight

ctrl+' -Unify tangent

ctrl+; -lock tangent weight

You can modify your hot keys by go to window>setting/preferences>hotkey editor

These keys are all locate under "graphic editor".

So how they work?

+/- (add/remove inbetween) is very useful especially in blocking stage. After I throw bunch of poses in my scene, it can help me quickly put the poses on the right timing by just press +/-

How to use: Select all the controllers and put the timeline between keys, press +/- could move everything forward or backward. (you can find it on the right click menu on timeline as well.)

'/; are the hot keys I use while refining my curves in second pass or polishing. It makes free/break tangents easier by just press one button on keyboard, and lock them back quickly after I got the nice curves I want. You can do it by click little icon on the top of graphic editor, but for me, personally I feel it's much faster by press '/;.

In sum, these hot keys set up are not gonna magically save you hours, but they do save a little from here and there.

P.S. +/- default function could still work on the number pad (Scale up/down manipulator) after changed; '/; are not assigned for anything in default.

Hope this helps, happy animating!

Cheers.