Free tool Kiko ports animation curves from Maya to Nuke
Crowd simulation software developer Toolchefs has released Kiko, a new open-source pipeline tool for transferring animation curves between DCC tools, including Maya and Nuke.
Suggested use cases include transferring camera paths without the need to use a file format like FBX.
Transfer animation curves between DCC apps in a lightweight, user-customisable way
Kiko – the name stands for ‘Keys In, Keys Out’ – enables users to export a custom set of animation curves from a 3D scene and export them in a lightweight format that can be loaded in other compatible software.
Users can control the part of the scene hierarchy and the frame range from which curves are exported – you can see the workflow in this video – and how the animation is imported into a host scene.
As well as animation curves, it is possible to define operators to export static or baked values from a scene channel, or data from the world space matrix of a 3D object.
According to Toolchefs, the software, which is written entirely in Python, was “designed specifically to handle animation curves data in a pipeline-friendly way, but it can do much more”.
System requirements and availability
Kiko is available free under an open-source LGPL licence. It is currently compatible with Maya and Nuke, and has been tested with Maya 2016+ and Nuke 11.
Toolchefs is looking for contributors to make Kiko compatible with other tools, particularly Modo and Houdini.
Read more about Kiko on Toolchefs’ website
(You can also find the product wiki here)