Referencing in Maya using proxies and high poly models and jazz like that

To enable me to animatie while the others are still modeling we will be using referencing. This means that we can create low poly proxy models for me to animate and he replace them later with the high res meshes.

Here is an example using a cylinder.

Low poly mesh with joints, the mesh is parented to the joints rather than skinned as it is broken into two parts. as well as saving time skinning, it means that maya will run faster while I animate as it doent not have to calculate the skin weights all the time.



I saved the scene as "low poly" and then in a new scene loaded it as a reference


I then animated the low poly version

I saved this and then went back to the low poly file and created i high poly version of the cylinder that fitted over the lowpoly



After skinning the high poly i saved the scene as "high poly" and went back to the animated scene. I then replaced the low poly reference with the "high poly" scene


Because the joint names are the same in both the high and low poly scenes the animation carries across. It is even possible to create the high poly and then overwrite the low poly file and then reloading the reference instead of replacing it.