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tools

The animation process is very time consuming and tools will help us save the time we spend on repetitive tasks. Over the years I've collected some tools that make my life easier - the following are tools that I use on a daily basis.

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They are character animation specific, it is important to note that they won't make you a better animator, they will only help you be faster and make the process a little bit more enjoyable, or at least they do for me.

Tools - How I use them

Those above are the tools that I use, but to improve my time even more, I use "elgato stream deck" to call them.

This tool helps me to remember all the hotkeys in a visual way and I don't have to remember the specific hotkeys, since I have so many it would be really difficult to memorize them all.

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 Click here to see the setup of my hotkeys. I change as little as possible from the default hotkeys and the ones that I changed are clearly stated, so in case you are having any problem you can always go back.

Press each button to understand what it does.

This is the layout I use, if you like the design you can download the folder with all the files here

I try to keep the original shortcuts of maya but change a couple of them for faster use

  • Hotbox                                              SPACE

  • Frame Selection                               F

  • 2D zoom pan                                    \

  • Time dragger tool                            K

  • Previous Key                                    ,

  • Next Key                                           .

  • Previous Frame                                ALT+,

  • Next Frame                                      ALT+.

  • Translate                                          W

  • Rotate                                               E

  • Scale                                                 R

  • Show Manipulators                          T

  • Open file                                           CTRL+O

  • Save file                                            CTRL+S

  • Save file as                                       CTRL+SHIFT+S

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