Check out free Maya animation productivity toolset KeyFlow

Animator Sebastian Jaksan has released KeyFlow, a set of free animation productivity tools for Maya, and KeyFlow studio, a free standalone video review app.

KeyFlow itself is a set of over 25 tools for speeding up day-to-day tasks in character animation for visual effects, game development and motion graphics.

KeyFlow Studio is a lightweight shot review tool with A/B comparison and annotation capabilities that can also export video to Blender.

The two are designed to work together, but can be used independently.

Based on its creator’s production experience in games animation
Both tools were created by Sebastian Jaksan based on his experience as an animator at VFX and animation studio Platige Image and game developer Flying Wild Hog.

Coding duties were handled by his brother, programmer Łukasz Jaksan.

“In collaboration with my brothers, we created the tools I needed in my daily work as an animator,” Sebastian writes on LinkedIn. “Now I want to share them with you for free.”

KeyFlow: a set of time-saving Maya productivity and animation tools
KeyFlow itself is a set of over 25 tools intended to speed up day-to-day animation tasks, from blocking through to polish.

That includes tools for tweening, copying and pasting animation between character or scenes, creating a pose library, working with transforms, and baking animation.

Each is quite specialised in itself, but used in conjunction, Jaksan says that they lead to a significant cumulative time saving.

All work with “any standard Maya rig”.

KeyFlow Studio: a lightweight collaborative shot review and annotation tool
KeyFlow Studio is a standalone collaborative shot review tool: a kind of lightweight alternative to commercial tools like Cinesync, or Autodesk’s RV, now available free.

It has a standard set of features for A/B comparing shots, annotating them with text or drawing directly onto the frame, and reviewing them in live feedback sessions with collaborators.

Collaborative reviews can be done over a local network, or online.

KeyFlow Studio can also be used to manage reference footage, trimming or retiming video to match a shot, then sending the finished reference directly to Maya or Blender.

However, it’s a completely standalone tool, so it can be used independently of either app.

It supports a range of standard file formats, including MP4 (H.264, H.265), MOV, AVI, MKV and WebM for video, and PNG, JPG, EXR and TIFF image sequences.

Price and system requirements
KeyFlow is compatible with Maya 2021+ on Windows 10+ only. KeyFlow Studio is a standalone app, running on Windows 10+ only.

The software is free and licensed for commercial use, but you can donate to support development.

Read more about free Maya animation toolkit and video review tool KeyFlow

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