Animate a "Take" With the Pixo Jr Lamp

Animate a "Take" reaction shot with the Pixo Jr lamp

In this simple free tutorial we show how to animate a "take" (a reaction shot), with the Pixo Jr lamp rig which you can download from highend3d.com. 

The tutorial is a simple one, aimed at animation beginners, but it helps if you are already familiar with the Maya Interface.  Follow the thumbnails below to replicate the tutorial.

Fixing Problems With The Pixo Jr Rig

Pixo Jr is a great rig for learning animation, which you can read all about here.  You can also see a series of short tutorials for animation beginners, showing how to make the lamp hop.  But Pixo is an old rig (2006) and works less well in Maya today.  This is because of Maya's implementation of Parallel Evaluation, designed to make rigs perform faster in the Viewport.  Part of the Pixo Jr's rig is not behaving correctly in this new evaluation mode.  To see how to fix it - scroll down below. 

Lamp Animation by Kamile Pranckunaite

Above is a very good example of First Year Character Animation created in the First Year Animation Module AN4001, in which Escape Studios' students learn to master the art and craft of character animation.  The "Pixo" Lamp Animation above was created by Kamile Pranckunaite, an animation student studying the Art of Computer Animation, who has just completed the first year at Escape Studios.  The shot was animated in Maya and rendered in Arnold.

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.