Looping and copying keyframes in Maya

Looping frames and copying key frames are handy when making a walk or run cycle.  So today, I’ll share how to loop and copy key frames.

Looping key frames so that they cycle

Here’s a part of an animation that I’ve keyed and want looping indefinitely while the animation is running.

To make it loop, first tick View => Infinity in the Graph Editor.

Then select Curves => Pre Infinity => Cycle.

Also select Curves => Post Infinity => Cycle.

To make the loops smooth, select the end key frames and flatten the curves.

And here’s a smooth animation that loops infinitely.

Copying key frames from one object to another

Say you want to make a character walk and you’ve keyframed the right leg and you want to copy it to the left leg (and offset it).

Select the right control (or where the key frames are assigned to) and open up the Graph Editor. Go to Edit –> Copy without selecting any curves.

Click on frame 0 on the timeline. Now select the left foot control and go to Edit –> Paste in the Graph Editor. The copied key frames are pasted from frame 0. To offset this, type “+=” and then the number of frames you want to offset in the Stats input box. In this case, I want to move the graph by 24 frames, so I’ll type in “+=24” in the input box.

Now the graph is moved to the right by 24 frames and my character walks.

---

Did you find this useful?