Crab Scuttle Animation Tutorial

Animate a crab scuttle underwater

In this new animation tutorial we demonstrate how to create a locomotion cycle in Maya with a crab rig, showing how to take a complex motion, break it down - and make it simple.

A crab's sideways scuttle looks complex, but is in fact very easy to animate, by following this basic tutorial.

We start by animating a single animation curve, and then copy it across the crab rig. 

Spider Animation Tutorial

Spider Animation by Mark Lawson-Hall

In this new animation tutorial we show how to create a locomotion cycle with a spider, demonstrating how to take an apparently complex action and, by breaking it down into simple components, we can make the animation much easier.

A spider's walk looks complex, but is in fact very easy to animate, by following this simple tutorial.

Should You Run the Latest Version of Maya?

Should You Run the Latest Version of Maya? This is a question recently asked by a student at Animation Apprentice. You would think the answer would be obvious - run the latest version, which (as of today) is Maya 2022.  However, there is a simple reason why this isn't necessarily a great idea. 

No Audio Playback in Maya 2020

One annoying bug in Maya 2020 is that audio playback can be troublesome. Scrub through the timeline and you get audio playback. However, press play and there is no audio playback. Fortunately, after Googling the problem I found a discussion thread that solves the problem. 

Assuming that your Evaluation
Mode is set to DG (check your preferences to find this. Go to Preferences / Settings / Animation / Evaluation / Evaluation Mode), and change DG to Parallel.  Then right-click on your timeline and disable "Cached Playback". Once this is done, you should get audio back in Maya when you press play. 

Maya 2018 Transform Manipulator Problem

Maya 2018, like all new recent releases from Autodesk, can be a bit buggy.

Many students downloading this latest release of the 20-year old software package have experienced a problem selecting the Transform Manipulator on their character rig, meaning (in plain English) that you can't move your characters around.

Fortunately the solution is a simple one. So, how do we fix it?