Meet Pixo Jr - The Animator's Favourite Lamp!

Pixo Jr - a great training rig for Maya animators

Pixo Jr is an excellent rig, free for student download at highend3d.com.

We recommend Pixo Jr. for the early stages of learning animation - it's a great way to get used to the Maya animation controls without things getting too complex, too quickly.

Pixo Jr. was created in homage to Pixar's pioneering animated short - Luxo Jr. - the film that made the studio's name and proved that CG animation could connect emotionally with audiences.

Luxo Jr.

Pixo Jr
Pixo Jr. was created by animators Amrit Derhgawen and Alex Crouch in 2006.

Inspired by Pixar's Luxo Jr., Pixo was created to "help animators practice animation principles, such as timing, weight, spacing, phrasing, and overlapping. Pixo is simple, so you can do basic animations without being distracted by a whole lot of gadgets and gizmos that get in the way."

Pixo Jr Quirks
Like any rig, Pixo Jr has a few quirky features that might fox you when you first give him a test drive. Below are some commonly encountered problems to help you on your way.

Turn the light on 

To turn on the light bulb inside Pixo Jr.'s "head", first select the yellow star-shaped icon next to the lamp head, which controls the light bulb settings.  In the channel box you can control the intensity of the lamp, the cone angle and also colours. To turn the lamp off completely, set Intensity to 0.

In order to see the effects of these changes, go to the lighting tab in the top left hand corner of your viewport, and click on "use all lights".  Also, you can render the current frame to see the rendered effects of the light bulb.

To turn the bulb itself on, go to Incandescence Red, Green and Blue and set the values to 1. Now the bulb itself will light up.

To further adjust the bulb, go to Outputs in your Channel Box and click on Bulb_Phong. Here you can adjust the settings for the bulb.

Change Parallel Evaluation to DG

Change "Parallel Evaluation" to the older mode "DG"

Pixo works less well in Maya 2016 and up. This is because of Maya's implementation of parallel evaluation, designed to make rigs perform faster in the viewport. Part of the Pixo Jr's rig is not behaving correctly in this new evaluation mode.

You can get Pixo to work correctly in Maya 2016 and up (including old scene files) by going to windows > settings and preferences and then in the settings > animation category, change the drop down menu for evaluation mode from "Parallel" to the older mode "DG".

Pixo Animation Demo Reel

Most of all, have fun with Pixo! And be inventive! Most of all, have fun with Pixo! And be inventive!

Is there another free lamp rig available online?
Try this one at Turbosquid. This excellent free lamp rig was created by Mangesh Kondalkar.

----Alex

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.