EOV Rig Helper v0.1.3

EOV Rig Helper gives you a rig in a couple of minutes, in two cases: a clean character with no rig at all, and existing animation that needs fixing when mocap, FBX or someone else's rig won't let you. The animation moves into the controls frame for frame, so nothing shifts until you change it. When you're done, bake it back onto the bones and the rig is gone.

Soft keys and the Hard / Soft switch

Knees and elbows stop popping. Mode says what kind of animation you're making. Hard suits most work: frames are hard, the control sits exactly on the joint, and you soften single frames and ranges yourself with Soft frames. Soft is for a viscous world, like gym mats or the Moon: everything is soft from the start and only the hits stay hard.

Spine and bone chains

The hardest place in a character animates as simply as a leg. Create Spine puts a point on every joint and a lever on every bone. The bones can be both moved and rotated, and they don't stretch. A point tilts its bone, a lever turns the bone around its own axis, and several points under Rotate curl a whole piece of the spine.

Ctrl+click puts the rig on exactly the selected bones: just the neck and head, or a piece of the lower back. That rig rides on the joint above it, so nothing is left hanging in the air when the pelvis squats or tilts.

Open Skeleton

Riggers often hide the bones and lock their channels. Select a root and press Open Skeleton: every joint under it shows up with its channels free. Close puts everything back as it was. The rig's controls and geometry aren't touched unless they share the same layer.

Centre of mass

The Center of Mass fold measures the character by its meshes and shows its centre of mass as a yellow ball right in the viewport. Its shadow on the ground takes the colour of the support: green while the centre is over the feet, red outside them, white in the air. You see at once whether the character stands or falls, and where a punch throws it off balance.

Things in the hands, a sword or a stone, pull the centre by their mass: select the thing and press Add Item, and Drop lets go of it on the frame you pick. Draw Trail draws a live trail of the centre: a dot per frame, blue before the current frame and pink after it, redrawn by itself after every key you change. It checks a jump against real gravity, floaty or heavy. One scene can hold several characters, each with a centre of mass of its own. A scene with a centre of mass plays without the tool: it is built from Maya's own nodes.

Centre of mass animation, as in Cascadeur

Select the pelvis and press Animate Center of Mass: magenta rings appear on the centre of mass. Move and turn them, key them, and the whole character follows as one piece, turning about its centre of mass. That is how a jump goes higher, a flip turns further, and the body moves aside without touching the pose.

A live trajectory of the centre redraws after every key, and its points can be dragged with the mouse. When you like the motion, To Pelvis bakes it into the pelvis keys with any rigs on the character, and the spine, arms and legs are fine-tuned with the tool's rigs from there.

A ballistic curve for jumps

In the air only gravity acts on a body, so its centre of mass flies along an even parabola. Pick the jump's frames and press Ballistic Curve: a curve of three points appears, take-off, top and landing. Snap puts the centre of mass on it on every frame of the flight, and the pose doesn't change. Drag the top and the jump goes higher or lower; move the landing and the whole animation after the jump goes with it, with no foot sliding. The curve shows its own gravity, and Real g puts the top where gravity is real, 9.8.

IK and FK on arms and legs

Select thigh, shin and foot (or upper arm, forearm and hand) and press Create IK. Mocap bones, FBX joints and plain transforms all work, as long as they form a chain. Create FK works the same way, and the same buttons switch a rig between IK and FK with the pose kept. Stretch goes on and off for the whole animation without a jump. Character presets remember the chains, so one selected bone is enough from then on.

Over someone else's rig, in any space

The character has its own IK, but the control lacks a space? Over a rig lays our controls over theirs. To Selected puts a control on a weapon, the head or the other hand for the whole animation, and the animation doesn't change. World brings it back.

Locators for anything animated

A bone, a control of someone else's rig, a prop, a camera. Proxy moves the animation onto a locator, Proxy Offset lets you place it first, on a door's hinge for example, Proxy Orient takes the rotation only, and Proxy Layer gives you a free locator whose keys add on top of the animation.

Bake and remove

Bake & Remove writes the result back into the source objects: on every frame, or only where keys were before the rig, so the curves stay light. Discard Rig takes the rig off without baking and returns the original animation. Every action undoes with one Ctrl+Z, and rigs live in the scene itself.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't remove the constraints of someone else's rig: Create IK won't take bones that rig drives, which is what Over a rig is for. It won't take a bone on an animation layer, and it tells you why. Create Spine refuses a bone with an animated length. The spine has no Space, because its points depend on each other. A rig from the pelvis (Hips) doesn't carry other rigs: for a squat, start it at the first vertebra.

The centre of mass rings go only on a character fully on FK: take our rigs off the pelvis and everything under it with Bake & Remove first. The body follows the rings as one piece, feet included: this is not a physics solver, balance and ground contacts are yours to set.

Baking "keyed frames only" doesn't keep edits between the source keys exactly. When you need exact, bake on every frame.

At a glance

• System: Autodesk Maya 2019-2026, Windows; checked in 2019, 2022 and 2025
• Install: drag one file into the Maya window, once for all versions
• Archive size: 5.4 MB
• Hints and messages: English and Russian; manual in both (F1)
• License: free, MIT, open source
• Version 0.1.3: the centre of mass, its animation and a ballistic curve; a video lesson in English and Russian