Maya & Motionbuilder tools, scripts, resources + more

An oldie but goodie. This is one of my all time favorite little scripts.

randkey has been around since the beginning - Maya (Alias) 1.0 if I'm correct. This is a must have for any animator wanting to generate a bit of randomness in their curves. I mainly use it for cameras to help add some natural looking movement which steers away from the ultra smooth cg camera. When the director screams "MORE CAMERA SHAKE", this is your golden ticket to convulsive lensing. Create your camera, set some keys, then run the script. Open your graph editor, select the range of keys you want to randomize, put in some values in the "time" & "value" fields and boom - pure chaos!

Awesome pose library and it's free!

StudioLibrary is a free python script for Maya 2011-2015. The author Kurt Rathjen has provided easy installation .exe's or you can do the manual install. He has 3 tutorial videos - the longest being 3 minutes - on how to use this setup. You can blend poses, mirror poses, mirror animation, create selection sets, and more. It's unique finding a script you can jump right into using AND it's incredibly powerful and fast.

Another lengthly fermented script, my buddy Damon Shelton over at Naughty Dog wrote this a few years back. Don't worry Damon, I'm not saying how many years back!

ds_rigToolsPack_v1 If you have to rig anything, this is a handy toolset to quickly create some curve shapes, re-orient joints, name joints etc. Definitely one of my more used scripts in my library.

A newer script, I have to admit it's pretty amazing and has saved me a lot tears during the skinning process.

as_SmoothNearest written by Subbu Addank, he has provided for free, a feature of his skinning system, HyperSkinning. SmoothNearest basically will average the skin weights of selected vertices. Save it to your shelf, select your verts and it will smooth out some of those hard to reach areas. One thing to be aware of is that it may add influences to verts you may not want affecting that area, and causing your total weight value to exceed 1.0, so just be aware that can happen. Otherwise this tool is incredible. I'm still playing with his rigging system HyperSkinning so stay tuned.

When Autodesk launched Motionbuilder 2014 and it's new solver Flexible Mocap, for whatever reason they didn't ship these scripts with the software.

Flexible Mocap is similar to iKinema or Peel solver, and these scripts unlock the necessary features to get the solver to work. The same rigid bound markers to bones idea is employed, but there are some additional features, such as animating goals with the story tool, that make it a quantum leap beyond the vintage actor set up.

OK this tool is pretty awesome. Maya Bonus tools does have a similar dynamic chain feature, but this is the complete package

Dynamic Joint Chain written by Riham Tolan automatically creates an IK/dynamic joint chain system with baking controls. I'm always impressed when I see a rig with realtime dynamic appendages, and this script is a easy way to achieve that. I'm using it on my latest rig for my characters ears and tail and I couldn't be happier with the results. Very cool tool!

Part of crossing that uncanny valley is a good eye rig and this is the tool to achieve just that.

zv_radialShape written by Paolo Dominici is a clever script that eases the pain of eye rigging. A very easy setup, Paolo has made rigging soft eyes clean and simple. I highly reccommend this tool.

PoseDeformer and poseReader are from the earlier days, but still incredibly useful.

poseReader written by Michael Comet is the stuff legends are made from. These scripts have been around for ages, but are still very relavant to rigging. Michael stopped compiling his scripts for newer versions of Maya, but most of his tools still work. If you need poseDeformer2015, DJX was nice enough to re-compile it for us. He also has a variety of useful tools in his download section.

An alternative to Comet's poserDeformer/Reader, lbrush, or lip service, is an great choice

lbrush written by Joe Alter, who also wrote Shave & Haircut, is another neccessary rigging package. Lbrush brings Mudbox-like sculpting tools into Maya and makes corrective sculpts much faster and easier to do. Complete with a pose reader, pose library, and sculpting tools, this is a fantastic addition to anyone's toolset.

Rigbox written by Jennifer Conely makes certain elements of rigging much easier. What I like most about this tool are the proxy rig generating features. Chopping up a rig to create a rigid proxy rig is very fast and easy. Great for making production freindly rigs, or your heavy animation rigs much faster to work with.

Stop whatever you are doing and just buy this script.

RapidRigModular written by Dustin Nelson is the most complete and affordable rigging system I've found. The modular system can be used to create bipeds, quadrupeds, birds, robots, cars - anything! It's very straight forward and easy to use. Auto fk/ik, ribbon splines, auxiliary chains, joint naming, etc., so far I've found this to be the most practical and robust of all auto riggers out there. Animation or game engine ready.

fStretch2 is a really interesting deformer for Maya. Potentially can achieve close to final rigging with only 2 shapes - stretch & squash. Great for really organic or cartoony rigs and effects. A different tool and has been really easy and fun to work with.

StayOnFloor written by Sergey Solokhin is a tool to help with sliding feet in Mobu. I've found it to be very effective when used with caution. It can help save you hours of cleanup and get really great results almost immediately. Since it deletes x/z keys for the desired range, it can be destructive but effective in it's use.

iCollide Another great deformer to add to your rigs, iCollide can add to your vehicle rigs, or any element that may need interactive squash. The tire demo is just one example of what can be done with this deformer. Check out BraveRabbits other scripts on their playground.

Shapes is an amazing tool put out by BraveRabbit. It allows you to sculpt corrective shapes and get to those really difficult overlapping vertices quite easily. There is a tolerance you can toggle than can go from sculpting on the surface of your mesh, to sculpting/grabbing those intersecting verts just below the surfce. Really amazing toolset and worth the purchase.

Stay tuned...