Free Anchor Transform Plugin Stops Feet Sliding

Anchor Transform by Robert Joosten stops feet sliding

Sliding feet can be a problem when animating a character walk or a walk cycle. Fortunately for Maya animators, Robert Joosten’s new Anchor Transform Maya plugin offers animators an easy solution.

Rather than manually tweaking your animation to stop the feet sliding, rigger Robert Joosten has come up with a script that lets you anchor a transform for any given time range in your animation.

What is Anchor Transform?
Anchor Transform is an easy to use tool that helps plant feet firmly on the ground when animating walks or runs. So, no more sliding feet.

How does it work?
Anchor Transform uses the Maya API to calculate new local space attributes. That means that it doesn’t have to loop over the frames, significantly improving the speed of the tool. The process will copy existing in and out tangents when Anchor Transform adds new keyframes.

How do you find it?
Robert Joosten’s Anchor Transform script is free to download from his official site. You can visit the page for more information.

Used by Industry

Kevin Richards, who is using the Anchor Transform Plugin at Cloth Cat Animation in Wales, had this to say about the new tool:

"Cloth Cat have brought in a very useful plugin; it welds the foot to the spot while the character is walking so you don't have to go through the palaver of trying to match move the foot against the moving world control. It saves a massive amount of time and effort."

Installation
To install the Anchor Transform plugin, follow these steps

1. First download the script from the official site. It is free, but you are given the option to pay for the service.
2. Copy the rjAnchorTransform folder (the folder is titled "rjAnchorTransform") to your Maya scripts directory. (Tip: make sure you paste in your 2018 scripts directory as well as your general Maya scripts directory) Make sure all the files are in the folder. 
3. Under the Python tab in the Command Line, type

import rjAnchorTransform.ui 
rjAnchorTransform.ui.show()

======================
import rjAnchorTransform.ui
rjAnchorTransform.ui.show()
======================

Middle mouse drag the Python script into your shelf and create a shelf; name it "slide", or "anchr".

Video Demonstration 
To see a short demonstration of how Anchor Transform works, watch the video below:
Maya : Anchor Transform from Robert Joosten on Vimeo.

Mac Installation

To install the Anchor Transform Plugin on a Mac, go Library/Preferences/Autodesk/Maya Scripts. Library is hidden on a Mac; to find it, select the Go dropdown menu, and then press the alt button on your keyboard. Library will now appear.  Now you can navigate to the Scripts folder. 

Anchor Transform Plugin Installation Video

To see how to install the Anchor Transform Plugin, watch the video below:

 

Why won't it install?

As with many free plugins, Anchor Transform can be fiddly to install successfully.

In theory, installation should pull up a user window that looks like this (see below).

Checklist

• Have you copied all the files over to your scripts folder? (clue: there are a bunch)

Using the Anchor Transform Plugin
To use the Anchor Transform Plugin, select the foot control. Make sure that the box "From Time Control Selection" is unchecked. Now you can type in the "Start From" box the frame you want the anchor to start from, and type in the "End From" box the frame you want it to end at.

Other free Maya Plugins
Other free Maya plugins we recommend include the TweenMachine, Studio Library, the Parent Master, and also aTools. All are free to download and install, and super helpful ways to speed up your workflow.

2024 Update

Note that the Anchor Transform tool is not py3 (Python 3) compatible and hence does not unfortunately work with newer versions of Maya. 

There is no current plan to update the plugin.

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