ericsmith
08-17-2005, 04:38 AM
When Maestro was originally released, it was viewed by much of the Lightwave community as just another autorigger, with a nice picker included.
Our goal with the release of Maestro 2 is to completely redefine what Maestro is all about. Yes, it can rig a character with a couple of mouseclicks. But That's only a small part of what Maestro can do for your animation workflow. It is a complete animation control system, with an advanced toolset specifically designed to eliminate many of the tedious, redundant tasks that are so prevelant in the process of animation. Animating with the Maestro controller is easier, more enjoyable, and most importantly, much faster.
The following is a list of the new features found in Maestro 2...
______________________________
Hotspot Modifications
The original hotspots were built so that the left mouse button and right mouse button could each have their own setup, effectively giving each hotspot two sets of controls. In Maestro 2, we've redesigned this concept to use the Alt, Ctrl and Shift keys to switch between these "layers". This gives each hotspot up to four complete setups. The real benefit of this new concept is that you can change layers "on the fly" as you drag the mouse. This means that with one hotspot, you can move and rotate an object in all 3 dimention with one mouse drag. Alternatively, you could setup a series of controls in one hotspot and easily pose a several elements at once. This is incredibly effective for things like complex tails, or being able to position an arm in 3d space, point the elbow, and point the hand, all in one mouse drag. The bottom line is that it makes posing much faster and easier by eliminating the back and forth process you usually have to go through to set an element's position and rotation in 3d space
You can now select multiple hotspots. If multiple hotspots are selected, dragging on any one of them activates all of them based on their own individual settings.
Rig Modifications
The hip centering and hand pinning setups have been redesigned to make it easier to switch between on and off on the fly. The hipcentering is no longer expression based, but instead incorporates a special follower plugin that keyframes the position of the hips when centering is on instead of overriding the keyframed channel. This means turning it on and off at any point in the timeline does not affect any previous animation on the hips. Hand pinning now incorporates two controls for the hips, spine and shoulder, giving a layered approach to animating the torso. You never have to turn hand pinning on or off, you simply move the torso with the appropriate control depending on whether you want the hands to follow, or stay pinned.
Saving and Loading Poses and Motion
You can now save and load Poses based on selections from hotspots or Layout. these poses can also be tied to new Pose Hotspots that allow you to animate from the character's current position to the pose tied to the hotspot. Imagine MorphMixer, but with objects instead of endomorphs. In addition to saving and loading Poses, you can also save and load motions, based on selection of keyframes. Motions can be loaded at their absolute time, or can be imported relative to the current time, making it easy to build complex animations from a library of motions. Pose hotspots are a useful tool for just about anything, but one area that they are especially effective in is lipsync. Because you can create keys for all facial controls at once with one hotspot, it's really easy to jump from one phoneme to the next without having to manually key the in and out keys of all the other phonemes at every key pose point. Also, the ability to export entire motions means you can create your facial and lipsync animation on an unrigged head-only model, and then export the animation to the fully rigged character. This makes it possible animate lipsync and facial animation on your character's fully detailed, subdivided head in real time.
Selection Hotspots
Selection hotspots allow you to group Items, hotspots and/or channels into one hotspot to make selection sets within the Maestro interface. Since Selection hotspots can be used to store a variety of different items in one place, they are great simplifiying the task of saving Motions, Poses, or even resetting a group of hotspots.
The Keyframe Editor
One of the major new components of Maestro 2 is the keyframe editor. This new tool brings the ultimate in flexiblity and speed in editing keyframes. To begin with, it works like a dope track, automatically displaying the keys for whatever items are selected. Then you can add additional tracks that display the keys for specific user defined items. Multiple items can be assigned to these tracks, and these items are not limited to just objects. You can access the keys for any channel in the scene, including light intensity, camera zoom, endomorphs, etc. The tracks can be custom color coded and labeled to make it easier to see what's going on when working with multiple tracks, and complex setups can be saved as presets. Keys can be moved, scaled, and dragged with a magnet like falloff. You can also dupe selected keys, and create hold keys by simply clicking right on the timeline. There are also tools to edit TCB values, as well as translating (move, rotate or scale) selected keys. The keyframe editor has been designed from the ground up to put all the controls you need to edit keyframes in one convenient workspace, and to eliminate wasted time spent sorting through all the channels in a complex scene to get at the keyframes you want to edit.
______________________________
We plan to release version 2 by mid-September. In the next week or so, we will post videos that demonstrate some of these cool new features.
Pricing information:
Maestro 2 will be available through Kurv Studios for $149.95.
Upgrades from Maestro version 1 will cost $39.95.
Anyone who purchased Maestro 1 after July 1st will receive version 2 free.
Eric Smith
Stillwater Pictures
note: The attached image shows the complete biped controller with facial controls. There are smaller interfaces available for those with more limited screen real estate.
Our goal with the release of Maestro 2 is to completely redefine what Maestro is all about. Yes, it can rig a character with a couple of mouseclicks. But That's only a small part of what Maestro can do for your animation workflow. It is a complete animation control system, with an advanced toolset specifically designed to eliminate many of the tedious, redundant tasks that are so prevelant in the process of animation. Animating with the Maestro controller is easier, more enjoyable, and most importantly, much faster.
The following is a list of the new features found in Maestro 2...
______________________________
Hotspot Modifications
The original hotspots were built so that the left mouse button and right mouse button could each have their own setup, effectively giving each hotspot two sets of controls. In Maestro 2, we've redesigned this concept to use the Alt, Ctrl and Shift keys to switch between these "layers". This gives each hotspot up to four complete setups. The real benefit of this new concept is that you can change layers "on the fly" as you drag the mouse. This means that with one hotspot, you can move and rotate an object in all 3 dimention with one mouse drag. Alternatively, you could setup a series of controls in one hotspot and easily pose a several elements at once. This is incredibly effective for things like complex tails, or being able to position an arm in 3d space, point the elbow, and point the hand, all in one mouse drag. The bottom line is that it makes posing much faster and easier by eliminating the back and forth process you usually have to go through to set an element's position and rotation in 3d space
You can now select multiple hotspots. If multiple hotspots are selected, dragging on any one of them activates all of them based on their own individual settings.
Rig Modifications
The hip centering and hand pinning setups have been redesigned to make it easier to switch between on and off on the fly. The hipcentering is no longer expression based, but instead incorporates a special follower plugin that keyframes the position of the hips when centering is on instead of overriding the keyframed channel. This means turning it on and off at any point in the timeline does not affect any previous animation on the hips. Hand pinning now incorporates two controls for the hips, spine and shoulder, giving a layered approach to animating the torso. You never have to turn hand pinning on or off, you simply move the torso with the appropriate control depending on whether you want the hands to follow, or stay pinned.
Saving and Loading Poses and Motion
You can now save and load Poses based on selections from hotspots or Layout. these poses can also be tied to new Pose Hotspots that allow you to animate from the character's current position to the pose tied to the hotspot. Imagine MorphMixer, but with objects instead of endomorphs. In addition to saving and loading Poses, you can also save and load motions, based on selection of keyframes. Motions can be loaded at their absolute time, or can be imported relative to the current time, making it easy to build complex animations from a library of motions. Pose hotspots are a useful tool for just about anything, but one area that they are especially effective in is lipsync. Because you can create keys for all facial controls at once with one hotspot, it's really easy to jump from one phoneme to the next without having to manually key the in and out keys of all the other phonemes at every key pose point. Also, the ability to export entire motions means you can create your facial and lipsync animation on an unrigged head-only model, and then export the animation to the fully rigged character. This makes it possible animate lipsync and facial animation on your character's fully detailed, subdivided head in real time.
Selection Hotspots
Selection hotspots allow you to group Items, hotspots and/or channels into one hotspot to make selection sets within the Maestro interface. Since Selection hotspots can be used to store a variety of different items in one place, they are great simplifiying the task of saving Motions, Poses, or even resetting a group of hotspots.
The Keyframe Editor
One of the major new components of Maestro 2 is the keyframe editor. This new tool brings the ultimate in flexiblity and speed in editing keyframes. To begin with, it works like a dope track, automatically displaying the keys for whatever items are selected. Then you can add additional tracks that display the keys for specific user defined items. Multiple items can be assigned to these tracks, and these items are not limited to just objects. You can access the keys for any channel in the scene, including light intensity, camera zoom, endomorphs, etc. The tracks can be custom color coded and labeled to make it easier to see what's going on when working with multiple tracks, and complex setups can be saved as presets. Keys can be moved, scaled, and dragged with a magnet like falloff. You can also dupe selected keys, and create hold keys by simply clicking right on the timeline. There are also tools to edit TCB values, as well as translating (move, rotate or scale) selected keys. The keyframe editor has been designed from the ground up to put all the controls you need to edit keyframes in one convenient workspace, and to eliminate wasted time spent sorting through all the channels in a complex scene to get at the keyframes you want to edit.
______________________________
We plan to release version 2 by mid-September. In the next week or so, we will post videos that demonstrate some of these cool new features.
Pricing information:
Maestro 2 will be available through Kurv Studios for $149.95.
Upgrades from Maestro version 1 will cost $39.95.
Anyone who purchased Maestro 1 after July 1st will receive version 2 free.
Eric Smith
Stillwater Pictures
note: The attached image shows the complete biped controller with facial controls. There are smaller interfaces available for those with more limited screen real estate.