Class Practical - Relationships

In this weeks practical we looked at relationships between objects. This can be as basic as parenting an object, however, Maya offers a variety of different relationships that can be implemented to your objects.

The first thing I implemented was the Point Constraint. This allows me to move any of the spheres wherever I want and allows having the cube follow it. Wherever I move the sphere, the cube will be sure to keep an average distance between them.





The next one I used was Aim constraint. Essentially this makes the target abject allowing aim itself towards the master object. In this case you can see the cylinder is always aiming at the sphere, regardless of where the sphere is.

Moving away from constraint types, I had a go with Set Driven Keys (SDK). Essentially, SDK's allow you to scale, rotate or translate your object, only if it is triggered by an event. In the example I made on the left, The cube spins 1800 degrees, only when I move my sphere away. This works similar to key frames, considering the cube spins only when the sphere is moved to a certain point, However with SDK's that cube will only spin when the sphere is moved.
This would be ideal for a gun trigger, when the trigger is pulled, the barrel would kick back.


These tools would come in handy for my final star wars animations, especially SDK's.  A great example would be the Imperial Shuttle, as when it is idle the wings are up, however when in flight it opens up. So in terms using these skills I learnt in the practical, every time the Imperial Shuttle is on route, the wings open up.