What's New in Animation
 
 
 

Camera Sequencer

The new Camera Sequencer gives you tools to layout and manage camera shots, then produce movie footage of the animation in your scene. Even for large scenes, you can produce movies in the Camera Sequencer to achieve real-time playback.

With the Camera Sequencer, you can start to layout shots in Maya, or start by importing your own editorial files containing audio and video clip information in AAF or FCP format.

Refer to the following topics for more information:

Multiple audio track support

You can now import, display, and playback multiple audio tracks in a scene.

See the following topics for updated information:

In addition, Maya now includes a test application for tweaking and testing your sound configuration on Linux.

See the following topic for more information:

Scene timecode

A new heads-up display item and scene timecode options in the Animate menu let you set and display a timecode in your scene. See Set and display timecode for the scene.

Improved global timewarping effects

A new set of options in the Animate menu and in the Graph Editor let you set up global time warping effects in Maya. Time warping is also sometimes referred to as speed ramping, an effect where motion appears to speed up or slow down within a camera shot.

Using these options, you can create a timewarp curve – an animation curve that lets you warp the global time in your scene. Changing the shape of this curve lets you manipulate the global timing of other animation curves in your scene.

Refer to the following topics for more information:

Graph Editor improvements

The following improvements have been made to the Graph Editor.

Stacked curve display

A new display mode lets you view a stack of individual curves in the graph view, rather than viewing all curves overlapping.

See Display stacked curves and Stacked Curves.

Pre-selection highlight

You can now turn on pre-selection highlighting for curves, segments, tangents, and keys in the graph view.

See Turn on Pre-selection highlighting in the Graph Editor and Pre-Select Highlight.

Pin curves in the graph view

You can now pin and unpin channels in the Graph Editor. When you pin a channel, its curve displays in the graph area regardless of what is selected. See Pinning channels.

Improved normalized curve display

The curve normalization options are now located in the View menu instead of the Curves menu. These options have been improved so that no extra nodes are added to the scene when you display normalized curves. The Normalize icons in the Graph Editor toolbar have also been updated.

See Display normalized curves and Display Normalized.

A new Renormalize option lets you manually refresh the display of normalized curves. (Curves are automatically renormalized when you turn on Display Normalized or the active curve list changes.) See Renormalize.

Single-click editing

The Move Nearest Picked Key Tool lets you single click and drag to adjust tangent handles and keys on a selected curve. A new Selected only option in the Move Nearest Picked Key Tool options window lets you turn on single-click editing for all curves.

See Use single-click curve editing and Move Nearest Picked Key Tool options window.

Display directly connected curves only

A new option in the List menu lets you limit which curves display in the graph view for a selected channel. See Display directly connected curves only.

Improved curve color options

A new option in the Edit menu of the Graph Editor lets you set up a custom color scheme for curves. Select Edit > Set Curve Colors to open the Curve Colors window.

This new window lets you associate a curve color with the name of the attribute. For example, you can set a Translate X attribute to purple so that Translate X curves for all objects display in purple.

See Associate curve colors with attribute names.

Improved filtering options

New filtering options have been added to the Show menu in the Graph Editor to give you added control over which attributes display in the graph area.

The new Select Attributes window lets you control which attributes display using a series of check boxes. To open this window, select Show > Select Attributes in the Graph Editor menu bar.

You can also filter the Graph Editor to display only attributes that are driven by a Driven Key. To see only attributes with Driven Keys, select an object animated with Driven Keys, then select Show > Attributes > Driven By Driven Key.

See Filter curve display in the Graph Editor.

Pickwalk and view navigation hotkeys

You can now use the pickwalk hotkeys ( and keys) to modify selected keys in the Graph Editor.

In addition, you can move to the previous or next view in the Graph Editor using the right and left square bracket keys [ and ]. These are the same hotkeys that let you move between camera views in the viewport.

To navigate through views using these hotkeys, click in the Graph Editor then press [ to move to the previous view, or ] to move to the next view. See Navigate the Graph Editor graph view or Dope Sheet view area for updated information.

Animation layer updates

Animation layers help to support the new HIK retargeting workflow. Refer to What's New in Rigging and the following topics for more information:

Improved rotation interpolation options

The Curves > Change Rotation Interp menu in the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet windows now includes additional quaternion rotation interpolation options.

See the following topics for updated information.