Maya Overrides: An Easy Way to “Take It Down” a Bit

If you have ever had a director leaning in over your shoulder, barking out commands on how to change an animation, you know that doesn’t always go quickly. If you are using keyframe animation, you can make use of Maya Overrides in the Animation Layers to easily “pump it up” or “take it down” a touch.

Tips like this are why it’s a great day when animator Richard Lico posts something new. Richard is an award winning animator that has worked on some top-notch titles such as such as Destiny, Halo and others.

A quick demo of how to use additive and subtractive motion layers when animating.

Here, Richard shows us how we can use Maya overrides in the Animation Layers panel to quickly lessen or strengthen the effect of an animation, without changing any keeps at all.

Maya Animation Layers are a great way to work nondestructively with animation. You can create and blend between multiple levels of animation within your scene. They are also a great way to organize keyframe animation, or to key something on top of an existing animation. The best part is that you are working nondestructively the whole time.

Using this blending premise with Maya Override layers, you can easily increase or decrease the strength of your already keyed animation. Pretty cool stuff!

If you want to check out another of Richard Lico’s tutorials, have a look at how you can easily add secondary animation by animating with aim constraints.