Animate a Character Dancing Using Live Action

"Monty" Does Riverdance

We've uploaded a new animation tutorial to our expanding Vimeo tutorial channel - how to animate a character dancing - using live action reference.

The purpose of the tutorial is to learn how to import live action reference footage into Maya and use it to create believable animation.

You can find the tutorial, which is free for all our students, at our Vimeo Channel.

Monty Does Riverdance

Michael Flatley & Riverdance

The tutorial shows how to animate a character dancing, in this case the marvellous "Monty" will do Riverdance - just like Michael Flatley.  

What you will Learn

• How to Import video into Maya so that it can be used for animation reference 

• How to use the live action reference to animate a character dancing

• How to improve upon the live action and add a performance

Step 1 – find your reference

Monty is going to animate Riverdance, so begin by finding Riverdance reference at YouTube. Download the reference, using the 4K Video Downloader. Alternatively, use the reference supplied with the tutorial, which you can also find UG Shares at Escape Studios in the Live Action Reference folder. Drop your movie file (it should be a .mov) into your Movies folder in Maya.

Step 2 – Import your reference into Maya

Now import your reference footage into Maya. There are two ways of doing this: as a video, or as a series of images. See below for both methods.

Work Method A  - Import your video into Maya

1. Open Maya, create a project, name it, and set to it.

2. Find a YouTube video clip you like. Then use www.keepvid.com to download the video. OR film your own reference on your phone, and import the video into your computer.

3. Copy the video into your Movies folder in your Maya project (note that Maya prefers .mov files, but if a .mov does not work you can try .avi or .mp4 formats),

4. In Maya, go to panels/orthographic/front

5. Now go to View/image plane/Import movie

6. The movie file should be directly imported into Maya.

7. It will only be visible in the window in which you imported it.

Work method B – Import an image series into Maya

1. First find a YouTube video clip you like. Then use www.keepvid.com to download the video.

2. Now import the video into AfterEffects, Premiere, or maybe Quick Time Pro, and render out the individual frames as tiffs. Note that Maya will not accept underscores in the tiff file names - you will have to delete these.

3. In Maya, Create an image plane 1080x720

4. In Maya, Create new material/Blinn. In the Attribute Editor take eccentricity way down.

5. Under colour/file/select a tiff/

6. In the Attribute Edior, make sure that use image sequence is turned on, then select the first image in the image sequence. You may need to click on image sequence again.

7. Use frame offset to move animation around (say by advancing it 10 frames or so - or whatever you need).

8. Now you can match the animation frame by frame

Step 4 – Import the Monty Rig

Meet "Monty"

The dance tutorial uses the free "Monty" rig which you can download free from HighEnd3D.com. You can see more about how to use Monty here. 

Step 5 – Using spline curves, block out the key poses in Maya

Follow the reference footage, using your thumbnails as a guide to the key positions. Block out the whole shot quickly, roughly one pose every 4 frames or so. Try to do this fast and not get bogged down in details. 

Step 6 – add detail

Once you have the whole shot blocked out, start to add breakdown positions. This stage is called “blocking plus”. 

Step 7 - Polish

Once you have all your breakdown positions layered in, it’s time to add refinements and detail. Keep your eye on the reference footage and your thumbnail sketches so you don’t lose contact with the original reference material.

Monty Riverdance Tutorial

You can find the Monty Riverdance tutorial at our Vimeo Channel here.

Live Action Reference Resources at Escape Studios

For more on how to use live action reference, follow the links below:

• Animate a character dancing using live action
• Using Live Action Reference to Create Animation
• How to Film Animals for Live Action
• Animate a character throwing a ball using live action reference
• Great camera tripod for shooting live action reference
• Endless Reference for Animators
• How do animators use live action to create believable animation?

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2022, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.