Animation Tool

Whilst creating rigs in Maya and testing the skin weights by creating animations for the model, i found i would sometimes forget to key frame one of the control shapes so when the animation played some of the mesh moved in unexpected ways. I also found it quite time consuming to go through each control shape individually to reset their positions and rotations.

​

Because of this i decided to make a simple tool written in Python that lets the user type in their control shape naming convention, allowing all controls using that name to be selected with a simple click of a button; they can then be reset by pressing the 'Reset position' and 'Reset rotation' buttons, putting the shapes back to their original positions. By selecting all control shapes and key framing them it ensures all controls shapes are in their appropriate positions for the animation. If one needs to be moved or changed, the user can then select the specific control shape, find where its key framed and then delete or move it to its desired location.