Scenario Maya Animation

Maya animation (animator)

Expert animation means every frame is a choice: poses that read as drawings from the camera, holds and snaps placed on purpose, designed spacing, weight shown by resistance and a caught stop. Work big to small (story, body, face, detail); never add detail to a stage that does not read yet. An agent cannot scrub, so it measures (world and screen tracks, spacing, holds, contacts, a ballistic fit, overlap lags), then looks at a playblast or a headless sheet before calling anything done. If a sibling skill named here is missing from your available skills, ask the user to install it (npx skills add scenario-labs/skills --skill <name>); unattended, proceed from tool schemas and flag the gap.

REQUIRED BACKGROUND: scenario-maya-expert (execution channel, review loop, 2027 version traps).

Toolkit: scripts/mx_anim.py. Its analysis and image layer is pure Python and ran offline.

Stance (the expert delta)

• Pick the workflow per shot; blocking ends when the information is in. Neistadt: pose to pose for acting, straight ahead or extremes for flow; blocking is done when all five key categories exist (main, anticipation, overshoot and follow-through, breakdown, hold). Elver splines physical shots from the start; Camporota proves timing on two boxes first.
• Maya is "the worst in-betweener in the world" (Newman). Feed it keys: ones on fast actions, 2 to 4 frames apart on slow parts. Spline readiness is a test: spline the range, play; mush means back to stepped with more poses. Native Set Key reshapes neighboring curves (Wade): insert keys, prove it with a curve diff, and share keys across every control before splining.
• Weight is resistance, then release, then a caught stop. Wade: show what the character is up against (a delay, acceleration from rest) before its strength; strength is a frame count. Elver: more up and down reads as a balloon, not weight; weight is a fall caught abruptly, a bigger hold in the squash, residual jiggle. Heavy air is gravity-true [added physics]; Wade's weighted apex adds hang, for light or cartoony bodies.
• Feet and spine sell every weight shift (jump, hop, landing, lift). Camporota: animate the foot roll in every crouch, it sells the compression; in a big drop the spine drags behind the hips and only the arms drop; first passes overdo the anticipation, so dial it back; a touch-down goes flat "almost in one frame". Elver: on the first airborne frame the toe tip points back to where it left the ground.
• Judge in camera space, at speed. Elver: a motion trail can show a perfect 3D arc that fails on screen. Lazare: the eye goes to the biggest motion, so the non-focus character stays "appropriately still". Project tracks through the shot camera; read the playblast before any metric.
• The base layer is the animation; mocap is precious. Newman: a layer is a time-boxed experiment with marker keys and a protective key; never clean curves on it, merge with Smart Bake, then clean (Elver: only a late global note or an additive tremble, then bake). On mocap fix only the defect asked for, or the cascade ends "not hand key and not mocap"; after a merge, Euler filter, then delete keys down to extremes.
• Lip sync animates sounds, not words. Santos: jaw only first (the muppet pass), then the big five (jaw, two corners, top and bottom lip) for 90%; lead by place of articulation, bilabials on the frame. Lazare: shift every mouth key 1 to 2 frames earlier only when the whole line plays late.
• Polish is triage; review is top down. Elver ranks the notes, spends on the ones that pay, owns every contact frame. Newman grades Intent, Mechanics, Performance, Integration; a playblast does not prove game feel.

Establish first

Workflow

1. Plan in numbers. Beats with frames, the leading part per beat, key categories, contacts, windows (crouch, push, air, impacts), style; A.store_plan(plan). Physical shots: A.air_frames(rise, drop) budgets the air. Dialogue: phrases with subtext and an action verb, ruled sounds (M, B, P, F, V, L, T, D), 2 to 4 tentpoles (Santos, Wade). GATE: frame counts add up.
2. Set up. fps, range, sound, shot camera locked; query the tangent defaults (2027 notes). GATE: mx_validate.validate(profile="shot", rules={"fps": 24}) has no fail.
3. Proxy pass (big, fast or camera-bound moves). A.proxy_boxes(), key translate and lean, air with A.ballistic_keys(), rotation 1 to 2 frames behind (Camporota). The first anticipation is usually too big: A.scale_curve(root, "translateY", 0.8, rest_y, time=crouch). GATE: A.evaluate_gates() on the proxy (ballistic, catch, resistance, push_fastest); proxy_curves.png looked at.
4. Blocking, stepped. A.set_key_defaults("blocking"); A.key_pose(pose, f, fill=ctrls) keys every control on every pose; passes: main, anticipations, overshoots, breakdowns (favor a neighbor, never 50/50), holds (A.key_hold()); A.share_keys(ctrls). Never act from the neutral rig pose (Neistadt). Crouch poses: foot roll keyed, spine dragging, arms hanging (Camporota). GATE: every key category present; stepped playblast (GUI) or tracks.png; write the story it reads, then check silhouettes.
5. Spline pass 1, the core. snap = A.snapshot(ctrls) (the buffer curve); A.to_spline() on COG, spine, legs only; face, eyes, fingers stay stepped (Camporota, Santos). Air gravity-true; broken tangent into a hard landing (Newman); planted feet flat. Mush: A.restore(snap), add poses. Every later key: A.insert_key(), then A.curve_diff() on sampled snapshots is ok outside its two segments (P4). GATE: A.run_gates(plan) ballistic, hang, catch, slide, penetration, foot_roll, spine_drag, heel_to_flat pass; no A.overshoots() through holds.
6. Spline pass 2, overlap. Arms, head, secondary: correlated chains edited together first (Newman), then A.offset_keys() by 1 to 2 frames down the chain. GATE: overlap lags not all zero; pose_to_pose_tell low; tracks clean in camera.
7. Face, if the shot has one. Body first, then the mask (eyes, brows), then the mouth: muppet jaw keyed at A.mouth_keys(phonemes), big five, tongue, connection by A.copy_curve() (nostrils 1 frame behind the corners, dampened). Eyes linear, 2-frame darts; blinks close faster than they open. GATE: A.jaw_report(), A.lip_lag() against A.audio_envelope(), A.blink_report(), A.transitions(); close-ups on tentpoles.
8. Polish, by triage. Fix the top-ranked notes, one section at a time. Contacts and fast moves on ones; peel-off on every takeoff; impacts get a pushed squash and a bigger hold; pops become 3 frames on an arc plus an overshoot; A.retime() tightens a section; moving holds; a motion-blurred render before final (all Elver). GATE: every gate passes (peel_off, impact_hold included), layers merged, no sub-frames, Euler filtered, critique.md on the final playblast.

Variants. Cycle: poses every 3 frames, loop with A.cycle() before polish, offsets inside the cycle keep the period. Game clip: metrics, A.cycle_speed(), loop seam, root rules, then scenario-maya-pipeline-scripting. Mocap: procedures P12; retarget: P13; heavy interactions: P9.