Chapter 4 - Techniques

This is the fourth chapter of How To Cheat in Maya 2012 - this chapter will talk about a techniques that are used throughout the animation process.

The Auto Key (when it's set) will automatically create another key on the timeline automatically as king as you have defined the values you want to animate.

It spoke about techniques used within the timeline. The timeline itself is an important asset you will use much more than anything else when animating in Maya (next to the Graph Editor). However, the timeline is used for more than just scrubbing the timeline.

Figure 8 Motion
Figure 8 Motion is simply an arc where side-to-side movement is offset from the up-and-down movement.

Copying a curve works really well for taking a curve that has similar transitions.

IK/FK
FK (Forward Kinematics): how the body works in in real life. The position of the hand (or the foot) solely depends on the joints that lead up to it are, works very well with walk cycles and gesturing.
IK (Inverse Kinematics): instead of relying on the position of the joints to determine the position of the hand (or foot), they are positioned on it's own and the system will figure out the rest.

It's also worth noting that it is important to know when you have to switch between using IK and FK.

Character Sets are all the attributes of the model you are going to animate grouped together in a node that makes it easier for animating objects together.

Another post is too follow.