David Rodriguez shows how to overlay animated jitter effects for feathers in Maya.

Small animated details in characters such as wind effects add so much to your scene. Take, for example, a feathered creature like a bird flying through the air. Adding wind effects like animated jitter to the features can really take the animation to the next level.

Check out this tutorial from David Rodriguez (Animation Methods), which shows how you can add jitter effects to a bird’s feathers by using Maya’s Animation Layers. Animation Layers is a feature that got a revamp to work more in-line with the way that other layer strategies work in Maya. Often overlooked, Anim Layers are a powerful way to stack animation.