Unit Nine & the Butterfly in Motion
Updated: May 16
22nd of March 2026
In this unit, I will explore the principles of the delicate flight of butterflies and the wings' complex movement. I will gain a further understanding of the rhythmic motion of the wings and the tiny manoeuvres that define the butterfly's flight. The project will take me through how to create a realistic wing movement and a motion cycle to achieve a dynamic animation.
The rig I will use for this project is the Boxy Butterfly Maya rig made by Truong. It is another free rig available on Gumroad.
The first steps of the project are to look at live action references (see end of this post for resources) and to print thumbnail sketches.
The boxy butterfly rig didn't have many controls, and due to this, I couldn't add the same flexibility to the wings as I did in my crow animation. However, due to the butterfly's size and quick movements, this detail didn't have a big effect on the work.
The first thing I had to do was to move the rig's controls (wings, legs and body) into position resembling a butterfly in flight. Once this was done, I set the timeline from frame 1 to 17. I usually set it from 101 to 117 to follow the industry standard process. This helps to add additional frames without any problems.
As soon as the basic pose was set, I selected the root control and set my keyframes at 1, 5, 9, 13 and 17. This was followed by moving the body down at frames 3, 7, 11 and 15. As shown in the above image, I had a nicely flowing wave; however, they are not identical. The up and down motion in flight is usually not perfect, so imperfection makes it more realistic.
The next step was to start animating the wings. I selected one wing and set the key frames at 1,5, 9, 13 and 17. Following the thumbnail sketches, the wing should be up in these frames, and the body should be down. In this case, I had to amend the up & down body motion by selecting them in the graph editor, shift + drag and pulling them up in the opposite direction.
Once this was done, I selected the wing and rotated it down in frames 3, 7, 11 and 15. Usually, in-betweens equally favour the extreme key frames; however, following the thumbnails, in this case, frame 2 favours frame 1 more. So I set a key frame at 2 and move the wing slightly higher/closer to the key position, and set another frame at 4, where I rotate the wing closer to the wing's down position in frame 3. This was quicker to do in the graph editor by editing the Rotate Z curves.
After the first wing's movement was done, I selected all of its curves and copied and pasted on the other wings one by one.
The next stage was to create a Motion Path for the butterfly to follow. This was easier to do in the Orthographic top view, so I could draw a circling path around the butterfly. First, I went to the upper menu to select Create > CV Curve Tool (Nurb CVs also need to be turned on for this), and then, clicking around the rig, I created a circling line which I adjusted in Control Vertex mode.
Imperfection was key again as butterflies fly with an unpredictable fluttering motion. Once I was happy with the path, I just had to attach the rig to it by going into the Animation menu > Constrain > Motion Paths > Attach to Motion Path. Here, I first selected the option box to set everything right before attaching it. When I played it, I wasn't too happy with the result, as the rig followed the path like being on a roller coaster, so I had to do further adjustments to the path in Control Vertex mode. To further refine the butterfly's movement, I selected the motion path in the channel box and its U value. I was able to add key frames to the U Value by adjusting them in the Graph editor. I could increase or decrease the speed of the butterfly's movement.
The next step was to create a scene where I got familiar with the Visor tool and how to add moving flowers to an animation.
Resources:
YouTube (n.d.) [Video]. Available at: YouTube video
YouTube (n.d.) [Video]. Available at: YouTube video
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