Miscellaneous Tips

Maya Tips

• Use the Dope Sheet to modify or move keyframes. (Autodesk Knowledge Center Info)
• Do not play the animation on a loop or scrub the timeline back and forth, reset the animation by letting go of the time-slider and clicking where you'd like to start viewing the animation. Scrubbing back and forth may show inaccurate joint values due to accumulated joint rotations. Releasing the cursor and reclicking will correct the joint values.
• Use parent constraints for grasping. Be careful to keyframe Blend Parent and the Parent constraint as "0" the keyframe before grasping, and change both to "1" for the duration of the grasping, and do another "1" to "0" switch to let go of the object. Right click each value box and click "Key Selected" to keyframe this attribute.
  • The Blend Parent value will interpolate between 0 and 1 which can cause strange movement during the transition. Check the Blend Parent and Parent Constraint values to troubleshoot and add any missing .
  • Blend Parent is found in the Channel Box of the child object, underneath the translate/rotate/scale values. The Parent Constraint information is found in the Channel Box inside the "Shapes" section

Singularities

• If your robot's default home position is in a singularity it is best to set an FK keyframe with the exact joint poses, then use FK to move the robot out of singularity and set another FK keyframe (example: move J5 of a Kuka from 0 to 30 degrees).
  • If you want to transition to inverse kinematic control set an IK keyframe immediately after the last FK frame (without moving the robot).