AUTODESK MAYA
BONUSTOOLS 2018
Blue pencil 2 Price $65 website zurbrigg.com/blue-pencil-2 If you’re a 2D artist making the move into 3D, you should check out this sketchpad for Maya, Blue pencil, which provides 2D drawing to Maya’s 3D viewport. The useful plugin features a grease pencil tool that allows artists to plan, annotate and illustrate shots. Like most painting tools, Blue pencil benefits from drawing tools that include the pencil, brush, eraser and eye dropper. It also has built-in pressure-sensitive controls of line thickness and opacity. But don’t expect the quality of other 2D imaging software such as photoshop; Blue pencil is simply a multi-purpose tool designed for roughing out ideas. If you are reading this thinking that Maya’s own grease pencil does the same, then take a look at the features comparison list on the Blue pencil 2 website, to see if the many additional options are something you could use. For a small fee this is a powerful plugin.
advanced skeleton Price Free website www.animationstudios.com.au
since working on various animated feature films such as Happy Feet and Legend of the Guardians, technical director Oyvind nostdal developed Advanced skeleton to make character creation a much more efficient process. A collection of Maya tools for doing character setup, this useful plugin creates a complex motion system from a simple joint chain. A brilliant, time-saving tool, Advanced skeleton will have your characters up and running in no time.
Maya Bonus tools Price Free website area.autodesk.com/bonustools
Who better to get some free Maya tools from than the makers of the software themselves? The helpful bunch at Autodesk not only provide a huge amount of supportive information on their online community site Area, they’ve also uploaded this brilliant free collection of useful Maya scripts and plugins. Installation creates an additional pull-down menu, which provides easy access to a variety of everyday tools and utilities. And so not to confuse you, tools have been organised to mimic the layout of the standard Maya menu sets, with each sub-menu containing a number of relating tools, which can be torn off and floated just like standard Maya menus. krakatoa Price $1,000 website thinkboxsoftware.com/krakatoa The latest issue of high-volume particle rendering plugin Krakatoa, My 2.3, comes with full Magma support, higher particle counts, and prt surfacing over and above the previous versions. Creator Thinkbox software has also fine-tuned existing features so that all platforms are now feature equivalent and more than fully capable of handling anything artists throw at them. Krakatoa can work with a single data source to then render in either voxel or point format, meaning that billions of particles have even more power and versatility than ever.
Miarmy – crowd sim plugin Price Free website www.basefount.com/miarmy
If you want to create your own battle or crowd scene but have no idea where to begin, crowd simulation software Miarmy may be just the solution. This complex Maya plugin offers a range of features, including the ability to enable agents to be affected by forces or Maya Fluids systems, for a believable performance. The professional version will set you back almost $1,000.
But, if you’re starting small, take advantage of the Express version, which, although limited to 100 agents, is free to download forever. you can also take advantage of completely free demo scenes, presets, samples and tutorials, to get you up and running fast.
the andy rig Price Free website bit.ly/2rqqc1u
Character rigging can be a tiresome, not to mention tricky, task. Aware of this, artist John Doublestein created the Andy (short for androgynous) rig to save the students at the savannah College of Art and Design the trouble. This brilliant customisable character rig is probably one of the most used, flexible and stable rigs around. updated based on student feedback, this tool plays both male and female roles and has multiple hairstyles and textures readily available.
The latest release includes features such as IK/FK matching on arms and legs, squash, stretch and bendy arms and animatable pivots on feet, root and head to make the task of rigging as simple and as quick as possible.
“this brilliant Customisable Character rig is probably one of the Most used, flexible and stable rigs around”