Tools

Update: Sep 16th, 2008

This is just a collection of tools and scripts that I use on a regular basis. Not only are they probably very useful to you out there, I also will know where to find them the next time I kill my system ;)

Maya: animRange

Lets you define several timeslider ranges and jump between them. Very handy when working on longer animations. For example you could have a preset for each part of a dialogue etc.

animRange at Highend3D

Maya: pose2shelf

Simple, yet helpful script that adds the current object selection to your shelf for quick reselect. Can be handy if for example you have set up a tricky selection of fingers and arm segments etc.
You could use use abxPicker for that as well I guess.

pose2shelf on Highend3D

Maya: TradigiTools

Collection of animation tools, some similar to tweenMachine (I think it actually is based on that), a nice configurable shotmask, some camera tools, some retiming tools etc. (see link for full feature set)
This plugin is not free, but I think it is well worth the money. It’s available for Win and OSX (no Linux yet unfortunately) and at the current time of writing this it is 49$ (less for AnimationMentor students!)

TradigiTools Homepage

Maya: zooToolBox

Brilliant selection of MEL scripts for Maya. Too many to list here, but believe me, you want them. Not just for animators but modelers, riggers etc. as well.

zooTools Homepage (download link at the top of each posting)

General: ScreenMarker

For those who, like me, think drawing with a marker on your screen just isn’t a good idea, but still want to draw curves etc on the desktop, this is the perfect little tool! The drawing is overlayed over the desktop and moving stuff below does not affect the drawings. This means you can sketch out that movement and then just follow that curve on the screen! Plus, its free.

ScreenMarker Homepage

Maya: abxPicker

abxPicker is a highly, but easily configurable picker tool. You can create buttons and assign selections (or basically any script) to them. This has saved me a lot of nerves when the control curves are once again hidden behind all kinds of geometry.

abxPicker at Highend3D

Maya: tweenMachine

MEL Script to create inbetween poses easily. Basically you select a position between two keys and then automatically create an inbetween. You can select how much the new key tends towards the before or after key, thereby influencing e.g the timing.

tweenMachine Homepage

Maya: UI improvements

The maya interface is a bit “stiff”. You can’t easily move or reorganise windows and if you are working on a dual monitor setup like me, it gets annoying soon that you are “wasting” so much of your space with toolbars. So, these scripts should fix that to some degree. They kinda belong together:
Hierarchic-DisplayLayer-Manager at Highend3D
Floating-Tools at Highend3D
OPA-flyChannelBox at Highend3D
ktShelfResizer at Highend3D

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