Horse Rearing Tutorial with Live Action Reference |
The purpose of the horse animation tutorial is to learn how to import live action reference footage into Maya and use it to create believable animal animation.
You can find the tutorial, free for all our students, at our Vimeo Channel.
• How to Import video into Maya so that it can be used for animation reference
• How to use the video to create believable animation
• How to improve upon the live action and add a performance
Step 1 – find your reference
The first step is to find reference at YouTube or elsewhere of a horse rearing up. Note that reference filmed on a tripod will be easier to use. If you select reference that has not been stabilised, you may need to stabilise it in After Effects. Also note that not all live action reference is playing real time; has it been slowed down? If so, you will need to compensate for this.
In this case you will need the same reference that I used to create the video - so you will need to email me for the reference footage.
Once you have selected your reference footage, import it into Premiere and trim it to the size you need. Export it from Premiere as a .mov
Step 2 – Import your reference into Maya
Now import your reference footage into Maya. There are two ways of doing this: as a video, or as a series of images. See below for both methods.
How to Import Live Action Reference Into Maya
To see this process explained step by step, watch the video below.
Work Method A - Import your video into Maya
1. Open Maya, create a project, name it, and set to it.
2. Find a YouTube video clip you like. Then use www.keepvid.com to download the video. OR film your own reference on your phone, and import the video into your computer.
3. Copy the video into your Movies folder in your Maya project (note that Maya prefers .mov files, but if a .mov does not work you can try .avi or .mp4 formats),
4. In Maya, go to panels/orthographic/front
5. Now go to View/image plane/Import movie
6. The movie file should be directly imported into Maya.
7. It will only be visible in the window in which you imported it.
Work method B – Import an image series into Maya
1. First find a YouTube video clip you like. Then use www.keepvid.com to download the video.
2. Now import the video into AfterEffects, Premiere, or maybe Quick Time Pro, and render out the individual frames as tiffs. Note that Maya will not accept underscores in the tiff file names - you will have to delete these.
3. In Maya, Create an image plane 1080x720
4. In Maya, Create new material/Blinn. In the Attribute Editor take eccentricity way down.
5. Under colour/file/select a tiff/
6. In the Attribute Edior, make sure that use image sequence is turned on, then select the first image in the image sequence. You may need to click on image sequence again.
7. Use frame offset to move animation around (say by advancing it 10 frames or so - or whatever you need).
8. Now you can match the animation frame by frame
Step 3 – Thumbnail the key transitions in the reference
Free Horse Rig by Mothman TD |
Step 4 – Import the Horse Rig
You can use any horse rig you like. We recommend:
• Horse Rig by Mothman TD. You can find the free rig here: http://www.mothman-td.com/portfolio_items/horse_rig/
• Rhett the Clydesdale. Rhett is a good free rig and you can find him at http://stockcg.com/assets/rigging/animals-rigging/rhett_v5/.
• Joel’s 3D horse. http://www.joel3d.com/downloadsFromJoel3d.html Joel is based on Samson, the horse from Disney’s Cinderella
Step 5 – Using spline curves, block out the key poses in Maya
Joel’s 3D horse |
Step 6 – add detail
Once you have the whole shot blocked out, start to add breakdown positions. This stage is called “blocking plus”
Step 7 - Polish
Once you have all your breakdown positions layered in, it’s time to add refinements and detail. Keep your eye on the reference footage and your thumbnail sketches so you don’t lose contact with the original reference material.
You can watch the two tutorial videos below:
Video Tutorial Part One
Video Tutorial Part Two
Whether you are a professional motion designer or an aspiring one, Muit Online offers the best motion design/graphic courses online which will help you learn everything you need to be successful in the field.
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