About
Puppeteer is a collection of rigging and animation tools for Maya based on a space-switching workflow inspired by the ideas and teachings of animator Richard Lico.
To make the most out of the tools is highly recommended to check out the following resources:
- Animation Sherpa
- Designing the Bungie Animation Workflow
- Richard Lico Animation Workflow Siggraph 2018
Key Features
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Smart rig control aware of dynamic hierarchy and space-switching.
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Seamless space-switching while preserving existing animation.
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Seamless switching between IK, FK and Reversed FK while preserving existing animation.
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The translate/rotate/scale channels are never locked. No more need for extra offset nodes to bypass constraints locking.
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Guide lines shows the various spaces and the connections between rig controls.
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Joints/skeletons are not required. The tools doesn't expect joints or any predefined hierarchy. FK/IK chains can be defined for simple cubes arranged in a flat hierarchy, all sharing the same parent or none at all.
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Dynamic hierarchy. Create custom hierarchies on the fly without losing the existing animation.
The real hierarchy doesn't matter anymore, it's only used as an organizational tool to group the rig controls.
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Rig presets. Save preferred spaces and chain information for rig controls as presets, allowing quick switching to various rig configurations on the fly.
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Export a rig to a JSON rig definition file.
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Import a rig from a file on existing objects while preserving their existing animation.
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Dynamic overlap using particle physics.