Maya Plugins & Scripts for Animation

today we're going to talk about 13 plugins and scripts for animation inside Maya that can aid you to create different animation styles for characters animals creatures and vehicles or anything else you want to animate probably there are more tools out there but here is a list of useful ones that you might need number 13 wave it wave it is an animation tool for Maya which speeds up the process of blocking in simple wave motion for things like tails capes or anything else of that nature even though the practical use of this tool is limited to a certain extent but if you find yourself in a situation where you will animate animals or characters with capes then this tool can save you a lot of time I must say also we can get creative with it and use it for other purposes it was not intended for in the first place number 12 studio library it is a free tool for managing poses and animations in Maya a studio library is able to store animations so if you've got poses you can select sets and click on specific poses and it will bring it straight up if you do all the work beforehand I mean if you set it up properly then it will really help to speed up the workflow this tool is something you don't realize you need until you see it and I think it is a big time saver if you work using it number eleven path a named path a name is a flexible tool for path animation in Maya the goal behind path anime was to make it simple and intuitive to attach any rig with any number of limbs and body controls to a path and animate it walking or running along with it it will work for bipeds quadrupeds insects and so on and it includes a function to pack the path animation back to the rig number ten a m-- tools aim tools is an animation tool Bryan Horgan created for Maya inspired by the workflow demos of Richard Lecco it streamlines the process of using aim targets to control rotation animation and applying the animation back to the controls this gives a powerful and intuitive ways to visualize and interact with rotation based animation in 3d space this tool can be useful to animate weapons in fight scenes or anything that can move in circular curves I can say it is a nice way to fine-tune and polish those types of animations also it is useful to have more control in the process number nine a craft erector studio with this animation plug-in you simply hook up a model and start driving vehicles and aircrafts through 3d environments adjust variables like suspension and add camera effects to vehicles to achieve the exact look and feel you are after crafts director studio was built to solve an old problem in animation which is the long hours needed to be spent simply to make a vehicle roll forward and turn instead of endlessly key framing and scripting animating animation professionals can spend that time fine-tuning the realism of their scenes in crafts director studio animations and keyframes are created in real time which means you get instant results providing better movements this plugin is used in VFX to create natural compelling motion in 3d movies and it is used by car and truck manufacturers to demonstrate new products and bring concepts to life frapp directors studio can also be part of game development to enhance in-game animations and cinematics with dynamic and lifelike animations number eight overlap or overlap or is a tool created by Dimitri Kabakov which can make overlapping action type of animation easier by eliminating all the work animators need to do to make overlapping actions believable overlap or does not use dynamics which means that the script is more stable for a wide range of use cases the animation tool can also automatically find controls in hierarchy so it works equally well with simple and complex rigs in maya number seven physics tools maya physics tools allow you to spend more time on creating appealing poses that better show human emotions and movements rather than technical issues that animators usually spend most of their time on like how to achieve a great physics overlapping actions switch control space manage time visualize the geometry and create animation layers from the first lock at physics tools I can say that it is going to make a big difference in any type of character animation work because it takes the load off of you when it comes to animating since these types of motions can be calculated by software and this as a result will leave more room for creativity and focus on generating better results number six twin machine twin machine was originally developed by Justin Barret and used extensively throughout the animation and visual effects industries for years the development was taken over by Alex whitener in February 2018 this tool allows you to break down shots on stepped curves and gradually break them down and do the in-between without losing control of the curves you simply adjust the slider and see the results immediately better still if you created a custom set that controls the entire character you can skip the first step and save even more time number five ghost this is an animation to Brian Horgan Road for Maya that provides a different approach to ghosting in 3d animation the idea came to him when he was watching a recording of a live lecture with Jason Ryan from DreamWorks when a student asked him if he used ghosting when animating in 3d he mentioned a couple of reasons why he usually doesn't use it which means it is not good enough in other words so Brian said about writing the tool that will give an outline of the character rather than a fully shaded one one ghosted it's also a little different in that the animator just goes to specific frames rather than having something heavy that is constantly updating in the scene this tool is actually something that a lot of maya animators use and find useful to make their workflow faster and let them create even better quality animations number four advance skeleton advance skeleton can create rigs with unlimited body configurations not only creatures but you can also rig props vehicles and just about anything you can at any time go from advanced Kalinin back to fit skeleton make changes and rebuild it was used in future animated films such as Happy Feet and the legend of the Guardians they developed advanced skeleton to make character creation a much more efficient process as a collection of my tools for doing character setup this useful plugin creates a complex motion system from a simple joint chain which makes this tool useful and time-saving number three mg tools mg tools can save time and create more efficient workflow miguel Winfield's plug-in mg tools has a number of features that aim to make things simpler and easier for my animators I think what these tools have to offer is interesting and useful some of them are onion rescue this one is really important because as an animator you probably work on something for an hour or so before you save your work if Maya crashes or the system crashes the problem is sometimes the files that Maya save will not be useful this tool here saves the animation automatically for you which is a nice thing also there is come to the viewer this won't allow you to navigate the viewport in a 2d fashion like you are navigating a 2-d software this one is sometimes useful if you feel like you need something like this also another tool is animation transfer this tool is used to copy animations from one rec to another then you make sure that some things are done correctly in order to get your animations transferred to the other rig without trying to do the work all over again also there is animation library which is a tool that allows you to create a library of actions such as a walk cycle a run cycle and so on this is useful for saving time as well in fact there are a lot more tools that come with mg tools and these were just a few of them number two Ziva VFX Ziva dynamics at the developer of Ziva products was founded in early 2015 by Academy Award winner James Jacobs and dr. Barwick this tool specializes in advanced muscle simulations enabling you to have dynamic soft tissue physics in your character renders with Ziva you can avoid spending all that time sculpting every little detail of your character's muscle to try to make them appear as realistic as possible from scene to scene this technology is not really new because it was first developed by what a digital to create realistic movements for characters and animals in 2009 to work on the avatar movie by going from the inside out creating bones muscles and skin the animators still do the main animation work but the muscle movements underneath the skin happen automatically which makes everything way better number one Anna MAHT anybod is a set of tools for Maya aimed at speeding up workflow it has lots of tools that can make animators daily tasks feel like creative work rather than doing a chore Adam bot has so many good tools that complement Maya animation workflow because to be honest with the amount of work animators have to do there has to be something that can make things easier and faster and probably adding but is the best option because it has so many useful tools that come with it I think an empath is great for animators because it makes the process of animating characters easier and faster at so many levels I hope you found these my animation plugins and scripts useful if you have something to add please leave it in the comment section below also you can check some of our previous videos thank you very much and I'll see you in Venus one

Channel: InspirationTuts

Views: 71,472

Keywords: 3D, Software, Plugin, Plugins, Animation, 3D Animation, 3Ds max Tools, Animation plugins, Animation tools, Animation plugins for Maya, Maya animation plugins, Animation Plugin for Maya, Maya Animation Script, Maya, Maya Plugin, Maya Scripts, Maya Animation Tools, Best Maya plugins for animation, Animbot, Ziva VFX, MGTools, Advanced Skeleton, bh ghost, TweenMachine, Physics tools, Overlapper, Craft Director Studio, bh aim tools, bh path Anim, Studio Library, bh waveit

Id: x8gEfLzBcHI

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020