

For example, you could define the attributes of a character’s right arm as a subcharacter set because you plan to do extensive keyframe animation of the right arm as compared to other body parts. Subcharacter sets are useful for keyframing and for creating animation clips with the As a result, you can animate the larger set together, and in certain situations, animate subcharacter sets separately. This structure supports a hierarchical relationship between a character’s various parts, while still providing character-level control over the various parts. When you create a character set, you can include subcharacter sets within the character set. Animating the character set includes setting the current character set, and then setting and editing keys. Defining the character set includes creating it and editing its collection of attributes. Using Maya’s character set feature involves defining the character set and then animating it. Defining a character set provides greater convenience during animation because all the attributes are available in the same place, and also because you can leverage Maya’s animation features to act on the character rather than on various separate objects.

You can bring together all the attributes of the objects you want to animate together by defining a character set for these objects.

The character might be a character in the traditional sense (a robot, for example), or could be any collection of objects that make up something you want to animate as a distinct entity (a flying logo, for example). During character setup, you create a complex, hierarchical organization of objects that provides the features of a distinct character.
