Luxo Lamp Animation Tutorial at Vimeo

Lamp animation by Kamile Pranckunaite

Character animation at Escape Studios starts with a lamp - a version of the angle lamp made famous by Pixar in their 1986 short "Luxo Jr".  

As with much of our animation classroom content, we now have a series of tutorial videos hosted at our Vimeo Channel for any students who missed the class, or need to go over the tutorial a second time.

Pixar Lamp

Pixar's "Luxo Jr".

The lamp is a great place to start with character animation, because the rig is simple and easy to learn, and you can also get a surprising amount of creativity out of the lamp exercise. It's where our animators begin to dig into personality, acting, and performance. After all, animators are actors.

Vimeo Tutorial
To find the lamp hop tutorial, which is recorded in Maya 2018, visit our Vimeo Channel. Like all our Vimeo content, it is password-protected for our students and Escapees, so if you'd like access to it, send me a mail at alex.williams1@pearson.com.

Maya Rig
The rig we recommend is Pixo Jr, an excellent rig, free for student download at highend3d.com, created back in 2006 by animators Amrit Derhgawen and Alex Crouch.  However it is an older rig and may behave oddly in newer versions of Maya. 

Lamp SetUp - Change Parallel to DG

Change "Parallel" to "DG"

Pixo Jr is an old rig and does not behave correctly in Parallel Evaluation, implemented in Maya since 2018.  

To fix this problem, go to Windows > Settings and Preferences and then in the Settings > Animation category, change the drop down menu for Evaluation Mode from "Parallel" to the older mode "DG".

Updated Rig at UG Shares

You can also find an updated version of the Pixo Jr rig, fixing the problem, at UG shares.

Animation Tutorial

You can the animation tutorial here:

https://vimeo.com/album/5793268

For the timing of the hop, follow the thumbnails on the right hand side. 

Work Method

Part 1 – Basic Locomotion

1. Download the Pixo Jr rig and import him into your shot.

2. Create your project and set to the project

3. Set up your screen so you have a 3-way split showing perspective view (top right), orthographic side view (top left) and graph editor (below)

4. Familiarise yourself with the Luxo rig, especially the head control and base control.

5. Set your timeline from frame 101 to frame 141

6. Act out a hop yourself. Consider in your head what the main poses are.

7. Time the action out in your head. How long will it take?

8. Take a look the thumbnails (attached)

9. Keeping the thumbnails in front of you, pose out Luxo at frame 1 and set a key on the head and base controls.

10. Now do the other main poses, setting keyframes on the head control and the base control – but not on the world mover. 

11. Tidy up your curves in the graph editor.

12. Save your work.

Part 2 – Create a Looping Cycle

1. Now animate the World Control, bringing the lamp back to the origin point at Frame 41 so that he appears to be hopping endlessly on an imaginary  treadmill. 

2. Make sure that your poses at frame 1 and 41 are exactly the same, so it loops perfectly.

3. Turn on infinity curves in the Graph Editor (curves/infinity/cycle) so that you can see how the curves connect at the beginning and the end of the cycle

4. Save your work.

Part 3 - Copy and Paste Curves 

1. Select the animation on your world control in the Graph Editor and delete it.

2. Add some frames to your timeline, say to frame 299

3. Select the head and base controls, and press A in the Graph Editor so you can see all your curves. 

4. Drag select all the curves and press control C to copy them. Now go to frame 41 and press Control V to paste them (copying and pasting curves is fiddly in Maya and you may have to do this several times).

5. Repeat the process until you have Luxo hopping several times.

6. Create a shot camera and lock it off.

7. Save your work

Part 4 – Add a Performance

1. Now add a performance to Luxo. Maybe he notices something and reacts. Maybe he turns to face the camera. 

2. Have fun – try to create an entertaining performance.

Lamp Animation by Kamile Pranckunaite

Below is an excellent example of Pico Lamp Animation by first year animation student Kamile Pranckunaite

 

Rig Notes
Like any Maya rig, Pixo Jr has a few quirky features that might fox you when you first give him a test drive. Below are some commonly encountered problems to help you on your way.

How To Turn The Light On 

To turn on the light bulb inside Pixo Jr.'s "head", first select the yellow star-shaped icon next to the lamp head, which controls the light bulb settings.  In the channel box you can control the intensity of the lamp, the cone angle and also colours. To turn the lamp off completely, set Intensity to 0.  In order to see the effects of these changes, go to the lighting tab in the top left hand corner of your viewport, and click on "use all lights".  Also, you can render the current frame to see the rendered effects of the light bulb. To turn the bulb itself on, go to Incandescence Red, Green and Blue and set the values to 1. Now the bulb itself will light up. To further adjust the bulb, go to Outputs in your Channel Box and click on Bulb_Phong. Here you can adjust the settings for the bulb.

Most of all, have fun with Pixo! And be inventive!

Other Free Lamp Rigs
Try this one at Turbosquid. This excellent free lamp rig was created by Mangesh Kondalkar.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for one of our courses, follow this link.