Friday, February 16th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

YcdiVFX releases Physics Tools for Maya


Tools firm YcdiVFX has released Physics Tools for Maya, a new plugin for automatically adding believable secondary motion to keyframe animations.

Based on former Bungie animator Richard Lico’s workflow
According to developer Iuri Monteiro, the plugin is based on the workflow of Richard Lico, former principal animator at Bungie, now animation director of VR start-up Polyarc.

“As a indie developer, I had to come up with a way of developing as many animations as possible without compromising the quality and the believability of the motion,” wrote Monteiro.

“For that, Richard Lico’s workflow was a great source of inspiration. [It] makes use of your keyframes and breakdowns and makes the computer interpolation smarter. It suits any style and you can edit at any point.”

Add physically plausible inertial movements to any keyframe animation
The Physics Tools plugin builds on Maya’s default interpolation, automatically generating secondary translations and rotations.

When applied to a keyframed character, it adds instant, physically plausible inertial movements to clothing and body parts like limbs and fingers, increasing the realism of animation.

Secondary movements are created on separate animation layers, with the option to merge sets of layers, change their intensity, or mute them entirely.

You can see the workflow in the video above, and read a full list of features via the link below.

Pricing and availability
Physics tools for Maya is available for Maya 2014 and above, running on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It costs €150 (around $190).

Read a full list of features in Physics Tools for Maya on YcdiVFX’s website