Ben & Jenna's

Figured I'd post this here even if it isn't needed.

Walk cycle is 32 fps for one cycle, starting from one foot and ending on the same foot. Generally work to 24fps for one cycle.
Down in the bottom corner of maya, there's a button next to the little key, which is the settings menu. Towards the bottom, in playback, there is a playback speed. Usually set
to play every frame, you don't want that. Change it to 24fps. This is so it will play it at the correct speed. Set up the frames you want by dragging the bar under the timeslider.

If you require more than 48 frames, change the number at the end of the timeslider. Set it to 24 frames unless you need a buffer (like T-Pose). If you need buffer, set number at the start to 0 instead of 1.
Setting up render frame: Change the perspective camera's environment background color to white if you do not have a background scene. Create > Lights > Ambient Light > move behind light. Always render to the front viewport.

Ambient light goes at the back, slightly raised. It does not have shadows on it, if you find it's too bright turn down the intensity to 0.5. The next light is Create > Lights > Directional Light. It does not matter where it is in the scene, although you want it in a place where you can control it.

There has to be an angle on it, otherwise there will be no shadows on the render. Put it wherever you want as long as it is infront of character. Top of render, click resolution gate. This shows you what is going to be rendered, gives you a better idea of what you're rendering.
Render settings, clipboard > render settings. Click on it and switch to mental ray. If mental ray doesn't show up, go to window > settings > plugin manager and find mayatmr and enable it.

Click on loaded + auto loaded and click on refresh to enable mentalray. In the common tab, scroll down to render options. Uncheck the Enable Default Light button. In the common panel, there are a few things to change. Under File Output, In Frame/Animation ext change default option to name_#.ext
Make sure the project is setup in a project file, make sure it goes into the right place. By default it'll dump it into the images. Go into edit and open the project window editor.

Set up a subfolder in the images folder so the .iff files of the walk and idle animations don't get mixed up. In order to add a subfolder, click on the folder next to the folder name, go to images and right click add new folder and call it whatever you want. A subfolder is needed for every animation you do, otherwise everything will get mixed up.

Click accept and it'll close the dialog box. At the top of render settings the path will have changed. If it's a walk animation, change the name to walk animation so the name walk animation will be in the file prefix. In the frame range section, set start frame to 1.000 and end frame to 10.000 (for example, you need to figure out how many frames you exactly need.)

Next step: Renderable camera is persp. If you make custom camera, make sure that one is selected. In Image size, set it to HD 720. Leave resolution as it is unless you want to be rendering forever. After this, the render settings are done.

Last step: Change window from Polygons to Rendering. Click Render > Batch Render > click box. Don't touch anything here, just click on batch render and close. In order to keep track of what is rendering, open up script editor. It will go through every single render frame until every frame has been rendered. Glance at it occasionally, to make sure it hasn't stopped or showing error messages. To make sure the render was successful, go to the project folder and in the images subfolder and look for the .IFFs.

Double click the IFFs and it will open up fcheck. If it doesn't, look in Autodesk > Maya > fcheck and manually open up the .IFF files. You shouldn't need to do this, this is to just to check if everything went fine.
Open up aftereffects. Click new composition, although aftereffects doesn't have the option for 720HD 24fps. Select 1080HD 24fps, make sure framerate is 24 and click OK. click side window, select Import and select multiple files. Find animation folder with IFF files click on first frame and check IFF sequence, click open. Click OK to the dialog box and click done. your sequence will be in the top left of the program, click and drag into composition box. Make sure the frame fits the window.
Make sure you adapt scene length to the length of the animation.

Click file > export and add to render queue. Down the bottom, the render queue will pop up. Leave render settings at the best settings. Change output module, by default it's lossless, change it from Avi to Quicktime in the format dropbox. In format options, set video codec to MPEG-4 Video. Check the box that says Resize and set it to 1280 x 720 (click the numbers). In the drop down box select DVCPRO HD 720 23.976. Click OK. click output to, set it to where you want to output the render to. Set it to the folder where you want the mp4 to go, click save

And then, in the corner, click render. Once you've done that, you can close it if you wish and double check the mp4 is where you saved it. It'll play in quicktime, it can embed in powerpoint and play in VLC. Make sure the bar is in line with the end of the animation (the red bar) otherwise you will get black after the animation stops playing.

We need to have the mp4 file and the raw maya file on the disc. Make sure everything is in a project folder so nothing needs to be repathed. Walk and Idle animations should be separate scenes, in a project folder.