WhisKEY Pro

The WhisKEY Pro Toolkit is an Animator’s swiss army knife of animation tools. Faster and completely rebuilt from the ground up to help assist in day to day animation tasks.

• Realtime in-between sliders.
• Many widgets to choose from.
• Lots of workflow and cleanup tools.
• Fully customizable UI.

Quick Tips

There are a few tips that will help you get the most out of WhisKey Pro.

• Settings for the tool are stored in a prefs file outside of Maya. The really cool thing about this, is that if you store a pose, or create a customization, it will be available in your other Maya sessions. This is great for people like me that have 5 Maya’s running most of the time.
• Many of the sliders and tools will look to see what channels you have selected. So keep this in mind when you’re working with WhisKEY Pro.
• Ill be adding new Widgets, so please let me know if you have any requests!

Installation

• Save “ebLabs_whisKEY.py” to your maya/scripts/eblabs folder.
• Add the following command and icon to a shelf button (or hotkey).
• 

Version Info

• Python script, tested with Maya 2014+, Linux, Windows and Mac
• [lastupdated]

Widgets

Classic

This widget is based on the original WhisKEY Tool layout. For convenience this widget combines both the Inbetween Widget and Extras Widget.

**Note: Sliders will use selected channels as well.

Anim Layers Toggle	Use this to affect an individual layer, or to create inbetweens based on the cumulative values of all layers (this is default).
Red And Green Set Key Buttons	These buttons will allow you to set keys on your selection, or the pinned objects. The green button sets a regular key, but it will be colored green or whatever color you have set for the Special Key Color in your Maya Color Preferences. ** Note: Right click for some keying options.
Easy Tween	This button will set an inbetween key on your selected objects. It will be based on a linear interpolation of the neighboring keys based on your timeline position. Simply put, if you are closer to the previous key, the inbetween will be closer in position to the previous key. If you are half way between two keys, it will be a 50/50 inbetween.
Main Slider	Slide this left and right to set an inbetween key. Its realtime too, so as you move  the slider around you will see how its working right away.
Presets	Some handy presets for setting common inbetween values. Previous key value 90% previous value 75% previous value 50% inbetween 75% next value 90% next value Next key value
Multiply	Use this slider to multiply a controls values. Sliding to the left will make the values closer to zero (often this is the default position) and sliding to the right will increase the values. ** Ctrl Slide to set Strength, Right click for options.
Pose Pusher	This is a slider to work with overshoots. It will project your animation forward and backwards along how its moving. Really helpful to make poses more extreme, or to have a pose continue along further. ** Ctrl Slide to set Strength, Right click for options.
In Out	The In<>Out slider will move an object(s) towards or away from the camera of the active view. This is actually something thats pretty tricky to do by hand, but very useful. ** Ctrl Slide to set Strength, Right click for options.

Inbetween

**Note, Please see the documentation on the Classic Widget.

World Space

This slider will set inbetweens based on world space positions rather than local positions.  

• Really helpful for things like fixing foot sliding when your character is animated by a global control, and the walk cycle is ‘in place’.

Extras

**Note, Please see the documentation on the Classic Widget.

Snapshot

Use this widget to store a pose and apply it somewhere else in your scene.

**Note: Right click menu on Capture Pose same as Pin menu.

Tools

** Please see Tools documentation below.

Options

These buttons will set the tangents for the selected objects and will also set the default tangent type for new keys.

• Auto Tangents
• Spline
• Clamped
• Linear
• Flat
• Step
• Plateau
• Free Tangent Handles, Weighted Curve

Animation Principles

Its never too late to brush up on your animation principles.

Customize

There are any number of ways to customize WhisKEY Pro, here are some  ideas!  

 

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Main Menu

Right Clicking most anywhere in the UI will bring up the Main Menu. Here you can find quick access many of the additional tools and customization features.

Tools

Check here for some frequently used tools. Also available as a widget.

Rekey Selection	Will go through and rekey the selected objects where there are already keys. This is really helpful during blocking when youd like all of the controls to share the same key times. **Note: Works with Channel Selections as well.
Rekey To Match Last Selected	Same function as the previous tool, although it will match the key timings to the last object selected.  **Note: Works with Channel Selections as well.
Clean Subframe Keys	This will cleanup your animation curves and remove subframe keys, while preserving your animation as closely as possible. Works much more nicely  than Maya’s snap tool.
Remove Boring Keys	This will remove flat sections of unchanging animation. For example, keys on scale where nothing is actually changing.   **Note: Works with Channel Selections as well.
Smash Bake	Occasionally Maya’s bake function doesn’t work with complex animation. That’s where Smash Bake comes to the rescue, this will bake out your animation much more reliably.

Profiles

Since the new WhisKEY Pro toolset is so customizable, you may find the need to save multiple arrangements. Use this menu to switch, create and remove profiles.

Move Up/Down

Move the Widget up or down in the list.  

Collapse Widget

Click on this menu item, or simply click the button in the top left of each widget to collapse it.

Add Widget

Click to add any number of widgets, see below for more info.

Remove Widget

Remove the widget that was  right clicked on.

Advanced

These are mostly for testing, but the Reset Prefs menu option is quite useful when you want to reset your layout back to default. You will need to  relaunch WhisKEY Pro  after resetting.

Widget System

You will see some common functionality throughout each Widget.

Pin and Rename

Description Area	Click on the description and write in your own. This is a great way to keep track of your widgets.
Pin Selection	Select your objects and click Pin Selection. This will store the selection within the widget. You won’t need to select anything in order to use the widget.
Pin Selection ** Right Click	Use this menu  to made changes to what “Pinned” to the widget.   The two items at  the top gives you some brief info about whats Pinned. Add/Remove Objects. Add Channels to whats Pinned. Select Objects. Select Objects for selection namespace, this is helpful for making the same selection on other rigs in your scene. So the Hand widget can work on various other rigs that have the same controls.

Final Thoughts

This tool will continue to grow and collect  new widgets. Suggestions and feedback are welcome!

Happy animating.

 

Version History

__version__ = ‘2017.06.04’

• subframe key too bug fixes