Set a Maya Hotkey to Roll Animation Like Flipping Paper

Brian Horgan shows how you can set a hotkey to act like a traditional animator’s lifting paper.

While experimenting with his animation workflow Animator and tools creatorBrian Horgan played with the idea of flipping paper back and forth as a traditional animator would. That lead to setting a single key in Maya that would rock the animation back and forth, letting you move between keys with a single keystroke.

Like Flipping Paper.

Horgan shows how the hotkey uses Maya commands discoverable with the script editor. Horgan describes the hotkey as “a ‘2D style’ workflow (where animators are drawing on a paper roll or flip their drawings between their fingers as they work).” The hotkey makes it easier to flip back and forth with a single keystroke, rather than using a forward and back key all the time. Pretty neat!