Animtoolbox

by Tal Hershko in Addons


Animtoolbox is a new addon with a set of tools and workflows for animation such as Temp Controls, Editable motion path, Retime markers, Copy Paste Matrices and more.


Updates, Feedback and support are currently available also at Animtoolbox Discord channel

UI updated

With new colored icons and was also added to the header menu. There's also an option for a quick icons menu.


Recently updated to version 0.0.5.3

New Temp Ctrls updates -

Temp Ctrls Live -  Can add and remove ctrls in realtime, while setting them up in the UI. Going out of the UI panel will cancel and remove them.
World Space - Track Target - known also as Aim Controls. Can now select any axis and an offset (instead of the previous bake location: Tail option)
Temp FK - Create Temp FK chain with a new Hierarchy based on selection order.
Link Temp Chains - Connects different Temp ctrls chain setups. Select any bone on a chain and press Link. The parent chain will be the chain with the active bone.
This allows a basic modular rigging, while keeping the animation and setup on the original rig intact.
Updated recently also Keyframes offset - which is now also based on selection order, and has also a Filter keyframes option in the Filter menu.

EDITABLE MOTION TRAILS!

Lots of improvements to Editable motion trails - Bezier Handles, Performance boost. New hotkeys (available only when hovering over keyframes).
It's possible to change handle types such as aligned handles in the viewport using 'V' hotkey. Ctrl + T to change interpolation.
Zooming into keyframes with Blender's numpad hotkey. Move Rotate and Scale keyframes using G R S hotkeys and also removing or adding new keyframes with Ctrl + Mouse click.



New Addition to the display panel. You can now edit your motion trails directly in the viewport! and with more visualization options.

You can select and move keyframe points with left mouse click and add or remove selection with shift, use mouse drag or G to move the keyframes, add and remove keyframes with Ctrl and mouse click.


it's also possible to change the colors for before and after the current frame separatly.
Scale the keyframe control box, hide and unhide both points and the lines.
and to adjust manuel frame range with the marker widgets.
I will also add bezier widget, adding keyframes

TEMP CONTROLS

Bakes your selected bones/controls into a new temporary control rig with new controls which control the original selected controls in the original rig.
Bake back to the original rig using Smart Bake to keep original keyframe positions and to recaluclate handles.
Since version 0.0.4.6 it is possible to use it as a basic modular rigging system.



World Space Ctrls - (renamed from Bake Anim to Ctrls) are based on an older addon I wrote called bake anim to empties, however empties are not convinient when working with rig animations, since they are always in object mode and bones are working in pose mode.In this version you can bake the animation of all selected controls to a new local temporary rig with the controls and the animation baked in world space.Instead of world space you can also use a root bone based on the original rig bones, and also add child bones for extra control.This is used mostly for space switching technics. After doing all your adjustments in world space, quickly bake back to the original rig and the temporary rig will be removed.

Temp IK - Bake your selected controls animation into a temprorary single or multiple IK Setups. Useful for quick editing of raw motion capture data, like fixing the feets to the ground. Cleaning curves in IK mode, and having temporary setups that are not available in your current rig but necessery for a certain action, like having fingers or elbows fixed to a table for example.

Temp FK - Create a new hierarchy chain based on the selection order.

Link Temp Chains - Connects different Temp ctrls chain setups. Select any bone on a chain and press Link. The parent chain will be the chain with the active bone.
Using Link to Active Chain Tip or Base option will link the chains to the Begining (Last Parent) or tip (Last child) of the chain.
Using Link from Chain Tip or Base option will link the chains from the Begining (Last Parent) or tip (Last child) of the chain.

Quick Bake  - Bakes the current temp controls back into the original rig and removes the temprorary setup.
from Version 0.0.1.7 it is using a complete new bake method, with an option to smart bake. It can keep the original frame count or the temp ctrl keyframes or both, and recalculate new handles. Or bake everyframe within each controller own range

Cleanup - If you are not happy from the results you can always quickly remove  temporary rig setup. Choose All to remove all rig setups, or selected to remove only selected chain, or relative to remove the rig setup realted to current selection.

Temp Ctrls Switch - Enable or disable the Temp Ctrls influence on the original rig.

Temp Ctrls Shapes - You can always change the shape and size of your Temp Ctrls. Also after they were created.

Select -Selects all the control bones or the constrained bones from the original rig. When using relative selection it will select the controls or constrained bones related to the current selection.



ANIM TOOLS

Keyframes Offset -Offsets all the keyframes of the selected bones. very usefull together with Bake Anim to Ctrls. It is now using an interactive slider for a non-destructive workflow.

Copy World Matrix -Copy the world matrix of an object or a bone. It recalculates also child of constraints, so it will always go back to the same position in world space.Examples for Useful cases:

  • Fix sliding legs for cyclic animation that move with a root bone
  • When switching between different setups, and things start to jump around
  • align object with bones

Copy Relative Matrix -Works only with two selected bones or objects.Copy the distance between the selected object or bone to the active object/bone.go to a different frame or transformation of the active bone, select the first selected bone and paste.The object/bone will move into the same distance from the active object.This can be used instead of parenting, especially during animation blocking phase.

Paste Matrix - Pastes the matrix that was copied to the selected bone. It is possible to paste to the current frame, selected keyframes or a frame range.
When using frame range it is possible to define the frame range easly with the markers widget.

Sharekeys - select multiple bones or objects, with keyframes on different frames in the timeline. press Sharekeys and keyframes will be added to all controls across the timeline, so now they share the same amount of keyframes at the same frames. This also can be usefull during blocking phase.


RIGGERTOOLBOX

A set of tools for creating customized rigs. Current tools are still very experimental. It's added as a bonus tool that needs to be turned on in the preferences. It still works also with Blender 4 but not much maintained since I'm currently focusing on the Temp Ctrls, as a modular rigging system.

Add Chain Controls - Creates a chain of parent and stretch target controls for all the selected bones. can create also closed chains such as mouth loops. Can keep the hierarchy order within the bone controls.

Add Bbone widgets - automatically create controls for Bbones. These are not the built-in standard Blender Bbone controls, but rather controls that are working similiar to bezier handles. They are connected to the bbone properties through drivers.

Merge Rigs - join rigs together into the active rig. Removes duplicated bones and keep their hierarchy order and constraint connection. The duplicated common bones can be used as connection points between the two rigs.



Updates

V0.0.3.6 - Animated Collections Visibility to turn on all collection with animated bones, and another click to go back to original setup, this switch everything to visible and selectable, for quick retiming all controls during blocking.
Filter Properties is now used for all the tools in Anim Tools category.
Editable motion trails -  new editable motion trails. Currently can move keyframes, add and remove them.
Upgrades for copy world/relative matrix.
Convert Rotations and recommend an Euler rotation operators - will also keep the original keyframe positions.
Smart Bake for Temp Ctrls. it's now also always possibe to change the ctrl shapes and turn on/off temp ctrls.
Multikey and Riggertoolbox are bundled into animtoolbox and are optional from the addon preferences.

V0.0.1.3 - Temp IK - Bakes the animation of the selected controls into a temporary IK setup. It can create multiple ik setups at the same time based on different hierarchies within a selection, or a single setup based on the selection. Add Extra IK ctrl or use the last selected bone as the IK ctrl. Add pole target, and like with other Temp control can also add extra child controls and a Root control based on another bone, object or the 3D cursor



V0.0.1.2 - New Display Category - Giizmo Size Hotkeys - Gizmo/manipulator size can be changed using hotkey alt and numpad + or -, the size settings are also in the display ui of the addon

Isolate Pose Mode - Isolated the Armature when going into posemode from other Armatures. This is very usefull when working with a lot of rigs in the scene and There are too much controls on the screen, it helps to isolate and view only the rig that is currently being animated.



V0.0.1.1 - Blend To Miror - a slider for mirroring poses. Instead of using Blender's mirror pose, you can use this slider for mirroring but without having a complete symmetry.

Inbetween Keyframe - Based on Anim Layer's inbetweener. Adds a keyframe with an inbetween value, between two keyframes. Can work also within anim layers or nla tracks.

V0.0.1.0 - Inbetween World Matrix - This is similar to copy/paste world matrix but works as an in-betweener.
Value of one is the the world matrix position of the next keyframe. Value of minus one is the world matrix position of the previous position. Entering a value over the limits will push the pose.


V0.0.0.8 - Interactive Keyframes Offset - Changed the offset keyframes operator to an interactive slider. keyframes offset can moved back and forth with the slider, to find the best offset. Apply operator can be used to apply the new time values as the initial values, and select can be used to select all bones and objects that have an offset applied to them (before applying it).



V0.0.0.7 -Relative Selections - Selects Controls or constrained bones related to the current selection, Or select All Controls/Constraints.
I've added also Relative Cleanup - When using different temp controls for different rigs it removes only the setup related to the current selection or choose to remove All setups


V0.0.0.5 - Markers Retimer operator was added. This is used to scale and retime the animation using markers.


V0.0.0.4 - Added Frame range Marker widgets - Added an operator next to the frame range, which adjusts the frame range using Markers. This works also with frame range preview. The temporary markers will be removed when turning off the operator






Roadmap

  • Adding more temp control such as spline ik and bbones, option for multiple setups on the same bone with a switch between them.
  • Editable Motion path - propotional editing, scale, rotate and box select
  • Colored Selection sets gpu render in the viewport
  • Micro-values
  • create lattice from vertex selection with controls
  • Auto breather using noise modifiers offsets

$25

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Details
Sales 300+
Rating
8 ratings
Dev Fund Contributor
Published over 1 year ago
Software Version 4.1, 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2
License GPL
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