Animation in Maya

Use Maya's powerful and versatile animation tools to bring your 3D creations to life using industry-standard techniques.

Use the Ghosting Editor to preview frames before and after animation

Maya animation provides you with the powerful tools you need to bring the characters and objects in your scenes to life. These tools give you the freedom to animate any attribute of an object and the control you need to successfully transform joints and bones, IK handles, and models over time.

Start with the Animation Basics section for information on the various animation techniques in Maya, how to use the different types of animation, and how to preview, playback, and save your animations.

The Animation interactive tutorial in Application Home

You can also try the Animation interactive tutorial in Application Home or watch the Intro to animation in Maya explainer on the Maya YouTube channel.

Topics in this section

• Animation Basics
• Keyframe Animation
• Nonlinear Animation in Maya
• Time Editor
• Graph Editor
• Path Animation
• Motion Capture Animation
• Geometry Caching
• Animation Layers
• Animation File Formats
• Animation Reference