I've been learning to animate in Maya for awhile now, producing walk/Run Cycles etc. While I know how to use the tools, just wondering if anyone can shed some light on the actual concepts of 3D animation.

For example, If I where creating an animation of a character running, jumping onto a wall then crawling along the top.

1)Do you animate everything from scratch in the correct orientation (say the scene is not orientated correctly with the grid... the wall sits at a rotated x 17.3 degrees). The problem being you dont have a side view to animate the model correctly, everything has to be done in 3D world space.

2)Or would you do the whole animation in a streight line aligned to the grid, then move it into position and tweek to fit.

3) Or maybe split the animation in 3. Therefore animating a walk cycle, the jump then the crawl. Move into the correct position and orientate then merge the three animations?

Or maybe do 2/3 in blocked out (stepped) poses, move to the correct position then finish the animation with fluid movement between keys.

I'm guessing there is no correct solution to this problem, with everyone hving their own workflow, but any information would be a great help!

Thanks in advance

Jamie.