10 TIPS to IMPROVE YOUR Maya WORKFLOW

[@harveynewman]

What is your favorite tool in Maya? If you have any questions of any tips of your own you'd like to share feel free to share below.

[@Tsk12]

Can you do a video on polishing animation? I'm having a pain finalizing my works. P.S I use Tween machine ..

[@flopzerules]

AnimBot the magical toolbelt :)

[@SorenTilInfinity]

I'm BRAND new to animation and this channel. Thank you so very much for providing these tips and running this channel. You are appreciated. :)

[@harveynewman]

Thanks for watching and glad you found this channel at the start of your animation journey. Keep in touch.

[@kromozome4181]

Motion trails all the way baby, I Track my arc ALL THE TIME with it and that Improve the Smoothness of my animation tremendously. Love the Video mate keep up the good work

[@quinngeorge173]

Another great video, thanks!

[@harveynewman]

Glad you enjoyed it Quinn!

[@serenafisherart]

Finally. This guy gets how part of the work with maya is brain work. We need to make the experience as human-friendly as possible.

[@harveynewman]

Couldn’t agree more Serena. Thanks for watching

[@forzamaya4087]

Thanks, great job👍

[@harveynewman]

Thanks for watching Forza!

[@dustinmaassen]

Great video! Exactly what I’ve been looking for to speed up workflow!

[@harveynewman]

Hey Dustin. Glad it helped. I have more in the pipeline keep it locked. ;)

[@MasterVertex]

Thanks for all these tips, It's shocking how much I missed after using Maya for so long already. Sometimes it's a good idea to watch basic tips and 101's for a software, even after using it for a long time.

[@harveynewman]

Hey Master. Yeah so very true. Feel free to share any of your own and thanks for watching.

[@chrissyt8111]

Great video, thanks for the tips. One of the things I always preach is to clear the noise from what you are looking at. And by that I mean the thousands of controls (even under the primary ctrl list), props, sets (unless your character is interacting with any of it) etc Personally I am the kind of person who needs a clean space to work, and this includes inside Maya. I have to first of all analyse the rig - sometimes riggers create different ctrls that essentially do the same thing, this is because they want the rig to suit as many animators as possible but it's unnecessary for us to use allll of them - it can also cause issues with counter-animation down the line. So the first thing I do is group ctrls myself, in layers or quick selection sets and leave the bare bones of what I am working on at the time. Then once I've done my initial pose and cannot push it further due to limitations, that's when I unhide all of the fun extras to see if I can do a 'push-the-pose' pass. It's procedural, and not many people enjoy organising like I do at the start of each shot, but it saves you so much time if done well. Then, I also recommend everyone get a graph editor snap tool, what this does is when you select a key to move around in the GE, it'll snap the timeline to that key so you can see exactly how you are changing things in the viewport (in case you go down a GE rabbit hole).

[@harveynewman]

Great tips and you couldn’t be more right. I actually have a video dropping this week about minimising that amount of controllers when animation. ;) you’ve read my mind.

[@puneeth77]

Tq Bro,U r Video is Very Calm

[@harveynewman]

Thanks for watching, hope it was useful.

[@JohnBeauchemin]

YES! I am also a non-weighted tangent guy. I used weighted tangents for 10 years before a fellow animator convinced me to try non-weighted tangents and I've never looked back. Its SO much faster and less complicated. If you use key placement instead of the handles to build your slow-ins/outs, too, then your curves will survive an accidental 'autocurving'.

[@harveynewman]

Cannot agree more John. Once you see the light there's no turning back...I am with you on key placement. Keep in touch man.

[@Jerrytohg]

@@harveynewman Yes please.. a video with the pros-cons of both tangents will be excellent. For me, as a key animator, its so fast clean and easy not to deal with strange tangents, everything keeps in place when retiming. But for any other user, maybe weighted its the way to quick results (motion graphics, basic animations, etc.) blender-cofCof!

[@jorgsonneborn8963]

Hey Harvey, the idea to deactivate shelfs which I never or rarely need to use is great! but when I delete a shelf, I´ve no idea to find it back if I need it. Would be great to get a hint. Your channel is very handy!

[@delphineava827]

Your so humble...

[@harveynewman]

Thanks a lot Delphine.

[@antoneinarsson5510]

Thanks so much for this video Harvey! A lot of great tips :)

[@harveynewman]

Hey Anton. Most welcome glad you enjoy it.

[@Tsk12]

Keep up the good work man!!!

[@dioidia]

Thanks for the awesome tips Harvey! cheers!

[@harveynewman]

Hope it helps K-rol

[@dioidia]

@@harveynewman it does indeed! i never thought about making hotkeys other than ctrl+z but now I clicked haha same with grease pencil i've never used before, only motion trail but now i'll give it a go! many thanks :D

[@AkiraDebiruman]

There is a really nice settings for selecting more efficiently. you can hide manipulators when ctrl, shift or alt are pressed so u can select objects close to each other without using a small manipulator size :)

[@harveynewman]

Thanks for sharing Fabio. Great tip need to give it a try.

[@win_in7003]

Thanks for the video! its a good TIPS!

[@harveynewman]

Glad you enjoyed Win.

[@eddieandersson5570]

Thx for another great video Harvey. So here's some more tips. Fiart and foremost I use RMB on timeline and choose playblast I think that is pretty fast. Second there is another option in the settings to temporarily hide even the manipulators if you need to. You can choose by hiding when you hold down shift or ctrl I think. And also you should give a a shout out to Brian Horgan bh Ghost script too. It's a lot more to it than first meets the eye. Watch his Vimeo for a complete run down of all its features. Now for a request can you show how you use the grease pencil in more detail for tracing arcs. I know you showed briefly here, but I thinking more in depth how to trace an arc on say the shoulders, elbow etc? Maybe what I'm really after is how should the arcs on those look in the first place. Also I'm a bit perplexed here what you meant step away from Maya and draw acrs elsewhere? As Grease pencil is part of Maya. Or did you merely use the wrong word and you menat draw with something like Epic pen on top of the playblast? If so I have that too. Ohh man when I desided to write this, it was so clear in my head what I wanted to ask for? But now I've lost my train of thought. 🙄 And about weighted tangents I've actually gone the opposite route towards them, instead of away on my latest animations. Maybe b/c they are bounces of different kinds? I just feel it's easier to tweak them.

[@GPChannelTM]

Thanks for tips mate

[@harveynewman]

My pleasure GP. Thanks for watching.

[@3dartstudent973]

Find this viduo sooo helpful, didn't know most of them, i was struggling with my long workflow, if i may ask, u mentioned moving between keys, what is the defoult keys, dont know how to show it, i'm still learning maya, and is there a way to increase frames between keys?, thank u in advance

[@harveynewman]

Glad you found it helpful. The default keys are as follows: Previous key ' = Comma and Next Key .= Period

[@3dartstudent973]

@@harveynewman , it worked like charm, (thank u soooooo much)^9

[@titinilofle]

Very cool, now I can prank my coworkers with pink viewport backgrounds

[@harveynewman]

LOL! Do it!

[@SamF135]

Love the vid, do you got like a hot key keyboard layout, would be nice to see

[@harveynewman]

That’s a great idea Emanuel. Need to share that at some point.

[@89emeza]

Omg... non weighted tangents?!?! I need to find this explanation video! Lol

[@jasoor09]

hey, what is the name of background music?

[@rexildur3266]

Thanks as always Harvey! btw here is the code for hiding your curves string $myPanel = `getPanel -wf`; if(`getPanel -to $myPanel` == "modelPanel") { modelEditor -e -nurbsCurves 0 $myPanel; }; for animator out there that wants it.

[@harveynewman]

Thanks for sharing the Script Indra. I forgot to mention how and where to get it.

[@harveynewman]

LOL!!

[@sandydasari207]

it is working for Curves off only , to Curves on it is not working .

[@luizcouri]

Hi Harvey, first of all, thank you for sharing those tips, the video is super helpful. Maybe I am missing something simple, but do you mind explaining how did you set a hotkey for the Insert Key (slicing the curves without affecting the tangents) in the Graph Editor? Thanks again! :)

[@AniketRajAniketkno]

Bob's my uncle!

[@harveynewman]

LOL it works perfectly then.

[@AniketRajAniketkno]

@@harveynewman Great video man! :)

[@chompet123]

Non-Weighted tangents feel like I'm in a boxed room. Edit: I mistakenly wrote weighted

[@Jerrytohg]

Agree! In other softs, theyre so restricted to just weighted. I think that softs should have both, given the final selection to the user for his workflow, or needs.

[@bassgod8971]

i want maya :(

[@086009970611]

What do I have to learn to become animator in game industry? like Do I have to learn how to use game engine too? well I still have many questions but.. LOL

[@harveynewman]

Hey thanks for watching. And no you don’t have to learn how to use an engine just how to animate. The rest you can learn latter.

[@086009970611]

@@harveynewman Thanks a lot :)