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| Not that kind of baking |
What do 3D animators mean by “baking curves”? Baking curves in Maya is a way of creating keyframes on every frame, so that you can then go in and edit the individual keyframes, and adjust the performance of your animation.
Let’s say - for example - that you have created a 13 frame run cycle with our old friend Monty - the green pea with legs. Turn on your infinity curves, and set your timeline to 100 frames, and your character will keep running for the full 100 frames, because Maya's infinity curves will keep the character running for an infinitely long time.
But let’s say we want to add a performance to the end of the shot. Perhaps Monty stops and sees an old friend. Or falls down a manhole. Or has to dodge a falling object. We can’t do this because the infinity curves are turned on. If we change the run cycle, it will change every single step, which we don’t want. So, what should we do?
