Minor update 9/19/06: Shelf button icon now available

For those who already have the tweenMachine, visit the tweenMachine page of my site to download a new shelf-button icon (XPM format - cross-platform compatible).  If you're downloading the tool for the first time, the icon is now included in the Zip file.  Thanks to my buddy Keith Lango for making the icon!

UPDATE 9/12/06: v2.02 is now available!

Added a tick color toggle for those using Maya 7 or higher.  By default, the normal tick color will be used for new keys created using the tweenMachine.  If the tick color toggle is on, the "special" tick color will be used.

UPDATE 8/30/06: v2.01 is now available!

In addition to fixing some small bugs, I added a couple features that make it more useful for folks who use Maya's character sets. You can either use a single slider that affects the active character set, or you can import your character sets into the tweenMachine, creating a custom group that contains sliders for the specified character set and all its children.  Details are in the included docs with the new version.

Original post

Some time ago, my friend Doron Meir told me about a MAXScript someone had written for him that allowed him to easily add "in-between" poses somewhat similar to the way he was used to doing in 2D animation. The tool allowed him to add a new pose between two existing poses, and automatically bias the new pose toward its neighbors by a user-selectable amount. I'd been thinking of trying my hand at MEL scripting, so I offered to try creating a script for Maya that would accomplish the same task. The end result was the tweenMachine.

After publishing version 1.10 about a month ago, I decided it was time to push beyond the limitations of that version and expand the tool into something much more useful and versatile. After working many late nights (and early mornings), I'm happy to present version 2.0. There are still many features I plan to add, and I'm open to suggestions from others on features they'd like to see.

• Sets: create custom sliders that affect a specific set of controls. With this feature, you can sculpt the start of a breakdown pose without selecting a single object. For example, make a slider that affects the entire body, another that only affects the spine, one for the left arm, etc. Controls can be assigned to any number of sets.
• Groups: Sets can be organized into collapsable named groups. For example, you could create a group for each character in your scene.
• Save with scene: data for groups and sets is automatically saved with your scene file. If you have the tweenMachine active when you open a scene that contains tweenMachine data, it will read the existing data and rebuild the UI automatically.
• Load/Save: data for all groups and sets can be saved to a text file. This allows you to easily share settings across multiple files.
• Timeline ticks: enable/disable ticks on the timeline for any set or group, so you can see where your poses are without having to select anything.
• Channel isolation: when channels are selected in the channel box, using the "Selected" slider only affects those channels
• Overshoot mode: changes the slider range so you can easily create overshoot and anticipation poses
• Management tools: easily manage sets and groups with included management tools

More details and examples of use are available on the tweenMachine page of my site. HTML documentation is included in the tweenMachine zip file.

The tweenMachine has been successfully tested on Maya 6.x and 7.x under both Windows and Mac operating systems. It no longer works under Maya 5.x on Windows.  If anyone is using this successfully on Linux or Irix, please let me know so I can update the info here.

JBarrett