Tangents Explanation

Tangents Explanation

So, after teaching animation for close to 2 years I have learned that many animation and novice animators do not fully understand the tangents curves in Maya. I have also noticed that sometimes they forget to use them all together. Which in turn hurts their animation. The truth is that I was the same way. It wasn't until that I took some time and read a few tutorials and put in a lot of practice that I came to realize how powerful using different tangents throughout the same animation can tremendously improve one's animation. As a matter of fact it makes the work flow move very nicely. Lucky for me I learned this early on in my career. I hope the you out there use these explanations of the tangents to use and learn how useful they are.

Spline - Splines are used to create natural fluid movements. It is a great tangent for transitioning between Key Poses.

Linear - Linear is used to create mechanical movement. It lacks the animation principle of slow in and slow out.

Clamped - Clamped creates an animation curve that is similar to linear and spline curves. It makes straight line between frames especially between two key frames of the same value. However, it resumes the curve.

Stepped - Stepped tangent creates an animation curve that is flat. Rather than displaying the

inbetweens of the animation, it jumps from one key frame to the next.

Flat – Flat tangent is the actual principle use of Slow In and Slow Out. It is similar to the Clamped tangent, however the Flat put the key frames on a flat level.

Plateau - Plateau tangent forces your animation curves to not go beyond the positions of their key frames so that their maximum and minimum values (‘hills and valleys’) do not extend past or overshoot their key frames. Plateau tangents are useful when you want the positions of your key frames to be exact because they stop your animation curves from wandering beyond the boundaries set by the values of their key frames.