Maya: 13 Useful Plugins for Artists

Today, let’s talk about some of useful plugins for Maya. Maya is one of the most full-featured 3D applications available. It is powerful, which means that certain tasks may be more difficult to accomplish as you learn the workflow and navigate the menu system.

This is not a failing, as artists working in a specific field will build muscle memory to do what is needed, but it can be frustrating for many generalists who rarely use certain tools. This is where the community comes into play, where the smart artist writes scripts or the savvy developer finds the need to simplify odd jobs.

Maya can help improve your workflow in several ways. But plugins are familiar to most people, and they often have better support than random MEL scripts; they are often developed by companies or large studios with the right teams, development cycles, and support.

We briefly introduce here the plugins that will be very useful for you.

1. Massive

If you are a Maya artist, there are probably many reasons why you need to create small or large crowds for your projects – not just as a visual effects artist, but if you work in engineering design or architecture. There are several options for generating crowds, but Massive is one of the most famous, and it is now fully integrated into Maya.

The Maya version gives you the easiest workflow using Maya tools, so you can use familiar tools such as the Outliner or Graph Editor to navigate scene properties. This makes the process more intuitive and the workflow less to learn. Stay in an application to build hordes of zombies or armies of apes, or populate your streets, bridges, and buildings with realistic townspeople.

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2. Krakatoa

Krakatoa is capable of rendering millions of particles.

The high-volume particle rendering plugin Krakatoa, MY 2.3, features full Magma support, higher particle counts, and PRT surfaces beyond previous versions. The creators of Thinkbox software have also fine-tuned existing features so that all platforms now have the same functionality and are fully capable of handling any artist’s projection of them.

Krakatoa can be used with a single data source and then rendered in voxel or point format, meaning billions of particles are more powerful and versatile than ever before.

3. The Andy Rig

Character bonding can be a tiresome, not to mention tricky, task. This brilliantly customizable character rig is probably one of the most used, flexible, and stable plugins available. The tool can play as both male and female characters and is readily available with a wide range of hairstyles and textures.

The latest version includes features such as IK / FK matching for arms and legs, squash and extending and bending arms as well as animated pivots on feet, roots, and head to make rigging tasks as easy and fast as possible.

4. MGTools

Save time and effort with this animation tool

Designed by animators, for animators, Miguel Winfield’s plugin MG Tools has many features designed to make the life of an animator easier. By downloading this plugin, you will benefit from a floating channel box dedicated to animation, a series of constraint tools to speed up the process, an MG to MA converter, a motion path animation calculator, and much more.

MG Tools is known as the animation tool belt that can save time significantly and create more efficient workflows.

5. BHGhost

Onion skinning is a technique used by animators to see multiple frames at the same time. By using this technique, the artist can easily see how to change or adjust the image based on previous images in the sequence.

This free script by animator and rigger Brian Horgan provides a different but useful way to handle Onion skinning in 3D. Maya’s built-in ghosting tool displays translucent animated objects in the scene to give an overview of the animation created.

But BHGhost went a step further and created an Onion skinning that creates an actual 3D outline of the animation in the Maya viewport, making it easier to see the relationships between poses and further refine the animation.

6. Maya Bonus Tools

Who better to get some free Maya tools than the software makers themselves? Not only do the helpful folks at Autodesk provide a wealth of support information on their online community site, but they’ve also uploaded this wonderful free collection of useful Maya scripts and plugins.

The installation creates an additional drop-down menu that provides easy access to a variety of everyday tools and utilities. So as not to confuse you, we have organized the tools to mimic the layout of the standard Maya menu set, with each submenu containing many related tools that can be torn off and floated just like the standard Maya menu.

7. Miarmy – Crowd Sim Plugin

If you want to create your own battle or crowd scenes but don’t know where to start, the crowd simulation software Miarmy may just be the solution. This sophisticated Maya plugin offers a range of features, including the ability to subject agents to forces or the Maya Fluids system for believable performance.

8. TweenMachine

Use TweenMachine to easily implement keyframe animation

Every animator will know how time-consuming keyframe animation can be, and the Maya plugin TweenMachine is designed to greatly simplify the process of creating faulty poses between key poses.

TweenMachine dramatically reduces the number of steps required to create poses for a character using the step key. While TweenMachine does not claim to create the perfect breakdown pose, it helps you get closer to your goal faster than other methods.

9.ShotView

ShotView is a free and simple but very effective Maya plugin that provides a continuous and clean representation of the camera view in a floating window.

This tool is very useful, especially for artists with two monitor setups, as it allows you to view both the default Maya perspective view and the camera view at the same time, saving you the hassle of switching between the two and helping to develop the perfect cinematic shots.

ShotView also allows you to set automatic filtering options that will turn off any controllers you don’t want to see when running the player, which will be restored after creation.

10. Advanced Skeleton

A collection of Maya tools for character setup, this useful plugin creates a complex motion system with a simple union chain. This is a wonderful, time-saving tool to get your character up and running immediately.

11. Blue Pencil 2

If you’re a 2D artist getting into 3D, you should check out this blue pencil sketchpad for Maya, which provides 2D drawings for Maya’s 3D viewports. This useful plugin features a grease pen tool that allows artists to plan, annotate and illustrate shots.

Like most drawing tools, Blue Pencil 2 benefits from drawing tools including pencils, brushes, erasers, and droppers. It also has built-in pressure-sensitive line thickness and opacity controls. But don’t expect the quality of other 2D imaging software (like Photoshop, Blue Pencil) to be just a versatile tool designed for rough ideas.

12. Studio Library

It can store animations, so if you have posed, you can select the scene and click on a specific pose and it will show up directly. If you do all the work beforehand, it helps speed up the workflow if you set it up correctly to start it.

13. AnimBot

AnimBot is a whole bunch of tools to speed up your workflow. Designed to speed up the workflow. It can simplify your animation, if you want a character to look more on the left side of the screen and you’ve been having him look right at the screen throughout the shot, all of a sudden you just adjust one controller and it readjusts everything instead of having to manually adjust each controller afterward. There are a lot of useful gadgets there.

Above are some of the plugins for Maya compiled this time. If you need to know more about additional Maya information, you can continue to follow Wingfox.