EOV Speed Retime v0.11.0
retime a whole Maya scene: one speed curve, live preview, bake into keys
// About
EOV Speed Retime is a free tool for Maya that changes the speed of a whole scene with one speed curve. Slow motion on the hit, faster after it, and every character, prop and camera stays in sync. You see the new timing in the viewport at once and bake it into the keys only when it looks right.
Retiming a scene is usually manual work: select keys in the Graph Editor, scale them, shift them, then do the same for the next character. In a shot with a stunt, traffic and people on the sidewalks that takes days, and the sync still slips somewhere.
A speed curve
The window is a graph: animation frames across, speed from 0.1x to 4x up the side. Click the curve to add a point, drag to move it, right-click to make it smooth or a corner. The Scene ruler underneath shows which scene frame each animation frame lands on: where the scene slows down, its ticks spread apart. Curves are kept as presets, and the curve you baked is saved by itself before every bake.
Live preview
Enable turns on a preview through Maya's own Scene Time Warp: the scene plays in the new timing right away, and your keys stay where they are. Edit the curve as much as you like; it has its own Undo / Redo. The 0.5x and 0.3x buttons slow down playback itself, handy for checking how smoothly the scene eases into slow motion.
Bake Retime
The bake moves the keys of the channels to where the preview played them. Three ways: Move keys moves them as they are and lets Maya work out the tangents; Snap to whole frames puts them on whole frames; Resample every frame keys every frame, for mocap and simulations. Keep motion exact adds keys only on the frames where the moved keys alone would drift from the preview. Bake into the keys themselves or onto a new animation layer on top of everything, so the retime can be muted with one button. The whole bake is one Ctrl+Z, and a progress bar runs at the bottom of the window while it works.
What to bake: Targets
Select Free Animated finds every free animated channel of the scene in one click, meaning those not driven by a constraint: a constraint gets the retime through its target. + Add takes the selection, cameras, lights and blendShapes included. Whole rigs are easiest to take by selection sets, Maya sets or EOV Selection Sets: a set is read at the moment of the bake, so a control added to it later gets the retime too.
Switches, static channels, references
Visibility, IK/FK and space switches are not stretched: each change keeps its length and only its start moves. Static channels, whose keys change nothing, stay as they were. Maya won't let anyone edit curves that come from a referenced file, so the tool copies such a curve into the scene and bakes the copy; the referenced file itself is not touched. Animation layers don't need merging: the keys of every layer and of their weights move together.
A lesson with its scene
The archive carries a lesson in English and Russian, "Slowing down a stunt on the avenue": a street scene with about a thousand animated objects and over twelve hundred curves, where a flying car falls and tumbles. One 1x - 0.3x - 1x curve slows the crash down together with the whole city. The lesson scene and the before and after videos are in the same folder.
What it does not do
Caches, simulations, Alembic and image planes with a sequence are not retimed: the Time Warp may move them in the preview, and after the bake they go back to the old timing. Sound is not taken into account. Driven keys and locked curves are left alone. Switches are worth a look after the bake: the tool keeps their length, but it can't guess how that moment should look in the new timing.
At a glance
- Autodesk Maya 2019-2026, Windows
- free, MIT license, open source
- install: drag one file into the Maya window, once for every version
- 22 MB archive, the lesson and its scene included
- interface in English, manual and lesson in English and Russian
- the same tool is part of the eov animation tools panel
// Promo
// Specs
// Download & versions
Free for personal and commercial use. No registration, no limits, no ads. Every release stays available, so you can always go back to an older build.
The tool's window now matches Maya's size - on 4K and on a laptop at 150 % alike.
- Scales like Maya. On high-resolution screens with Windows scaling at 125-200 %, Maya draws its interface bigger, while the tool's windows stayed small. Now they follow Maya's scale by default (Auto) - buttons, fonts, the speed curve and every dialog.
- Interface Size. Want it bigger or smaller than Maya? Click ? in the window's title bar, then Interface Size, 100 to 200 %. The window reopens at the new size at once, with the same curve and preview. The choice is remembered for every Maya version.
- Scale shown in About. The last line of the About box shows Maya's and the tool's scale - handy when you write to the author about how the window looks.
- Manual updated in English and Russian: a section on Interface Size and fresh window shots.
To update, drop the installer file into Maya and click Update - presets and settings stay.
Faster bake on long, dense takes - and a way to stop it.
- Long takes bake in seconds. Takes with a key on every frame or subframe - mocap, simulations - used to bake for many minutes, and Ctrl+Z took nearly as long. Now both take seconds.
- Cancel Bake. While it bakes, the Bake button turns into Cancel Bake: click it or press Esc, and the scene goes back to how it was - keys, range, preview and the speed curve.
- Clean uninstall. Uninstall now also removes the tool's small undo plug-in from Maya's plug-ins folders.
- Manual updated in English and Russian: Cancel Bake, and why a very long take bakes slowly only in the first Maya session after the install.
To update, drop the installer file into Maya and click Update - presets and settings stay.
First public release.
The shot is nearly approved, and the note comes back: slow motion on the hit, then catch up. The scene has a stunt, traffic, people on the sidewalks and three cameras. That used to mean days of rescaling keys character by character - now it is one speed curve for the whole scene.
- Draw the speed, see it at once. A curve from 0.1x to 4x with presets; the viewport plays the new timing right away through Scene Time Warp, while your keys stay untouched.
- Bake in one undo step. Bake Retime moves the keys where the preview played them: Move keys, Snap to whole frames or Resample every frame, Keep motion exact. In place or onto a new animation layer.
- The whole scene in one click. Select Free Animated takes every free animated channel; or go by selection or selection sets - whole rigs at a time.
- Nothing breaks. Visibility and IK/FK switches keep their length, static channels are left alone, animation layers need no merging.
- References too. Curves from referenced files are copied into the scene and baked - a referenced city slows down with the stunt.
- You see how long it takes. A progress bar and the time left while it bakes; "?" in the title bar opens the manual and About with the version and build number.
Installs by dropping one file into the Maya window - once for every Maya 2019-2026, checked in 2019, 2022 and 2025. The archive holds the manual and the lesson "Slowing down a stunt on the avenue" with its scene: about a thousand animated objects and 0.3x slow motion on the crash, in English and Russian. Free, MIT.