Anima

this is a quick and easy tutorial on how to make animated pie charts. these can be easy additions to course content to help visualize data

I know you can snap a camera to a curve, but wondered how you’d handle switching between 2 curves. Here are two solutions:
http://www.creativecrash.com/forums/animation/topics/one-camera-attached-to-two-motion-paths

(a script to decide which motion path drives translation during which frames, or just keying the level of influence from multiple constraints).
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here’s a cool quick tutorial Calvin found:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-maya/animating-grass-and-flowers-using-paint-effects-in-maya/

Quick example after the break: 
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Here’s a super cool script James found:
http://lesterbanks.com/2012/04/use-polygon-extrude-along-curve-in-maya-while-adding-animatable-subcurve-attributes
it lets you extrude polygon faces along a curve (much like the NURBs extrusion experiments we gave up on in the past, because they had open ends. Except this script lets you dynamically control the number of Divisions, and gives you a “taper curve” slider to keep the end closed as it grows).

To Set it up:
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To whomever stumbles across this blog:

I’m a multimedia developer in the Ecampus Course Development & Training unit. I’ve talked with some of our Maya animators (student workers) about storing the cool tips and tricks we find in a format that is easier to share. I’ve found myself crafting emails which are pitches for some cool script, plug-in, technique, or tutorial. Because it helps me cement what I’ve discovered. But later it’s often hard to dig up that random email for my own reference.

So here’s a blog where we can all contribute (and maybe discuss and build on each other’s discoveries).

I’ll post some examples in a bit.

(this blog might also end up covering tips and tricks for Flash and Unity. we’ll see. And if you’re interested in contributing, let me know)