Naughty Dog character TD and tools developer Hans Godard has released Skinning Converter: his amazing Maya plugin for converting any animated mesh to a bone-based animation.

The $199 tool has been in development for a few months – you may have seen the tech demo above when we shared it on the CG Channel Facebook feed earlier this year – but is now commercially available.

Convert any animated mesh to bones and skinning maps
Skinning Coverter takes any animated mesh and converts it into a bone-based rig and skinning maps. It works with blendshape-based facial animations, Alembic caches, Delta Mush systems – or even cloth sims.

As well as making simulation data hand-animatable, the process converts complex data into a lightweight format for archiving.

The conversion can make use of existing joints in a character rig; and simple parameters for the number of joints and iterations control the accuracy of the conversion. It also supports multiple meshes.

Updated 17 March 2016: Skinning Converter has been removed from sale.

Godard tells us that while the technology is a personal experiment, Naughty Dog parent company Sony does not permit its employees to make money from products related its video games.

Tags: Alembic cache, animation, archive simulation, blenshape animation, bone animation, bone rig, bone-based, character rigging, cloth simulation, convert animated mesh to bones, edit simulation, Featured Articles, Hans Godard, Maya, naughty dog, plugin, price, simulation, Skinning Converter, skinning maps