This tutorial will help you get started animating Xbox avatars in Maya 2013. This tutorial is for users who already know how to manipulate a rig and keyframes in Maya.
To get started, you will need to have Maya 2009 - 2013 (As far as I know) and access to the education catalog in Xbox Live Indie Games:
http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/
Once you have both of those ready, you will want to find a tool called: Avatar Animation Rig. Click that link and it will open up a bunch of options for your to download. Download:
AvatarRig_4_0_Maya_2009.zip
Once downloaded the zip file, unzip it, and you will find: Documentation, Textures, Avatar Rig Maya 2009.ma, and the Microsoft Permissive License. Read the license at your leisure. The documentation folder is good for when you want to export the animation to XNA. For exporting please see my import/export tutorial.
Fire up Maya and open up the .ma file. You may want to create a project file so you can store the textures stored in the Textures folder. Once the .ma is open you will see a full rigged model! The trick to start is to grab the controllers and look at the channel box. If it has a field called IKBlend or IK**** change the value from 0 to 1. The IK's for the legs, arms, and fingers are locked by default.
Once those are changed you can start animating! Good luck and post any questions in the comments.
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