StretchMesh for Maya to be made open source
Indie developer Kickstand is to make its StretchMesh plugin for Maya open source – but first, it wants to raise $15,000 to help it live in the wild.
First released commercially two years ago, StretchMesh gives geometry an inherently ‘stretchy’ quality similar to skin by preserving the initial relationship between vertices.
The tool proved popular with character TDs, particularly for its ability to simplify the skinning process, but users were frustrated by its infrequent updates – notably, the lack of support for Maya 2012.
In a thread on the CGSociety forums, company founder Rob O’Neill admitted Kickstand had been “stretched thin”, but hoped that releasing the source code to the community would speed up the pace of development.
Kickstand aims to raise $15,000 so it can “continue to support the code and community around it”, but will make StretchMesh open source at the end of the year regardless of the total donated.
Visit the StretchMesh donation page
Download a two-week trial of StretchMesh (registration required)