Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
The secret of how to make perfect loops in Maya lies in the power of INFINITY!!!! More specifically, the pre-infinity and post-infinity options in your graph editor.
So if you need perfect looping cycles for your game or show, endure this 7 minute tutorial. It's only 3.5 minutes on 2x speed ;)
Oh, and one last thing: My animation was 28 frames long, but frame 28 and frame 1 are identical. If you want a perfect loop, follow all the steps in the tutorial, but then move your timeline back 1 frame. Instead of 1f-28f, you'll be at 1f-27f. This way, the same pose (1f and 28f) aren't playing twice. If they did play twice, you'd have a 2-frame hold and your loop would absolutely NOT be perfect.
If this tutorial helped you out, please consider subscribing. It would help me out immensely to be over 1k subscribers as it unlocks community posts.
Thank you! :)
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PART 1 - Learn Animation in Maya (in 20 minutes):
youtu.be/sqgiCZs7X5M
PART 2 - Smooth Out Bad Animation (Conquer the Graph Editor)
youtu.be/2Mm-OfVJhJU
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0:00 Intro
0:18 Dock the Graph Editor
0:37 Why the loop isn't perfect
1:04 Pre/Post Infinity
2:21 Smoothing curves
2:57 How to Navigate the Graph Editor
3:31 Understanding Start/End Curves
4:27 Smoothing Start/End Curves
5:50 Manipulating multiple tangent handles
6:40 Playback
About this channel:
--------------------------
3D Coach is your community for digital creative hobbyists. Consider coming along for the ride by subscribing. See you next week!
The secret of how to make perfect loops in Maya lies in the power of INFINITY!!!! More specifically, the pre-infinity and post-infinity options in your graph editor.
So if you need perfect looping cycles for your game or show, endure this 7 minute tutorial. It's only 3.5 minutes on 2x speed ;)
Oh, and one last thing: My animation was 28 frames long, but frame 28 and frame 1 are identical. If you want a perfect loop, follow all the steps in the tutorial, but then move your timeline back 1 frame. Instead of 1f-28f, you'll be at 1f-27f. This way, the same pose (1f and 28f) aren't playing twice. If they did play twice, you'd have a 2-frame hold and your loop would absolutely NOT be perfect.
If this tutorial helped you out, please consider subscribing. It would help me out immensely to be over 1k subscribers as it unlocks community posts.
Thank you! :)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART 1 - Learn Animation in Maya (in 20 minutes):
youtu.be/sqgiCZs7X5M
PART 2 - Smooth Out Bad Animation (Conquer the Graph Editor)
youtu.be/2Mm-OfVJhJU
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
0:18 Dock the Graph Editor
0:37 Why the loop isn't perfect
1:04 Pre/Post Infinity
2:21 Smoothing curves
2:57 How to Navigate the Graph Editor
3:31 Understanding Start/End Curves
4:27 Smoothing Start/End Curves
5:50 Manipulating multiple tangent handles
6:40 Playback
About this channel:
--------------------------
3D Coach is your community for digital creative hobbyists. Consider coming along for the ride by subscribing. See you next week!
