akeytsu, 3D animation and rigging software for Unity

Hi guys,

I may create a new post here to get better visibility because i think i can interest lot of people.
My name is Aurelien Charrier and i am CEO at nukeygara, a french startup. We are developing akeytsu, a completely new 3D animation and rigging software.
(For information, i was lead animator during 12 years in video game dev, so i know well production problems ;-))

akeytsu is really different from any animation software you can know : for the first time an easy, intuitive and “designed by & for” animators product. A tool for us, guys. A tool for artists. At last.
akeytsu imports and exports FBX. It works already with Unity.

Please grab the free beta here and play with akeytsu !
You have 17 tutorial (short) videos covering the complete workflow.
And please talk about akeytsu around you :wink:



I am just coming back from SIGGRAPH where nukeygara was exhibitor on French Pavilion.
Fantastic moment ! Maybe i met some of you there :wink:

If you have questions or else, please don’t hesitate and contact us.
Enjoy akeytsu :wink:

Thanks

Cheers,
Aurelien




7 Likes

Hey there Aurelien! Nice of you to post here. Anybody interested in game character rigging and animation should really check it out! It’s a wonderful piece of software and I am certain it will have a bright future! Looking forward to future updates already! Here is a video (slightly older now) of Akeytsu in action:

1 Like

have it installed on my laptop and going to install it as well on my desktop ( trial version). Didn’t get a chance to give it a shot yet… Looks really nice. I’m so used to my workflow in 3Ds max though. It does look like a really intuitive software to use. Now I mostly use 3ds max for unwrapping, rigging, skinning and animating, since most of my modeling is done in z brush and retopo in topogun. If I could avoid to have to invest in a stupid subscription for autodesk product in the future it would be awesome. Just need to pick up akeytsu and a notehr 3rd party unwrapping / packing solution.
Keep up the great work Aurélien.
La France en Force avec Allegorythmic aussi!! :slight_smile:

I know that you guys are a rather small team yet but when is the next beta drop to be expected out of curiosity?

Uh, I have new PC that can actually handle this SW I am excited. I will never make a game I like personally without good help from SW like this.

Thanks for your messages and support, guys :wink:

@anon_61403428 : we target to deliver the next update with onion ghosts on october
Cheers,
Aurelien

1 Like

nice ! sympa!

Seems like it has some really innovative features in there! Going to check it out.

What I would like to see in the “Preferences” is a way to allow for Maya style viewport navigation. Well it mostly is but the zoom in/out is currently done by using mouse drag up/down which I would like to change to mouse drag left/right like in Maya.

I didn’t take a look yet… I’m just wondering if you guys already implemented some kind of physics simulation that we would be able to bake into keyframes.
thanks.

Hi guys,

Thanks for your messages!

@anon_61403428 : Well, yes, L/R mouse drag zoom is a request we can consider and add to our list. However here is how we will proceed: as we are still a tiny team (but i hope it will change ;-)) we got to make priorities in dev. So we have already in mind a map with futures dev (onion ghosts, skin paint, cams, multiviews, layer additive mode, etc…). We will inform the community about this dev map and get their feedbacks: are they ok ? what do they want first ? is there other thing they would like quickly or before ? etc. And if (a lot of) people request a new dev, if this dev is pertinent according akeytsu V1 (i mean, for i.e we won’t develop crazy high def dynamic clothing system as we target indie game market with our first version ;-)) and if we can do it technically, well, it can be a prio dev.
However Thomas, even you don’t have L/R zoom, you have a full “no shortcuts” view manip/character selecting mode ! And this, you don’t have it in Maya :slight_smile:

@PROTOFACTOR_Inc : Still no physics simulation in at the moment. akeytsu is still a newborn baby. Makes its first step. But it will grow :wink:
However even it lacks things by the fact it is the start, you have got in akeytsu things you don’t have elsewhere and that will boost your productivity: cyclemaker, our IK solver, our light rig allowing to build/modify your character so fast…

You definitely need to check it out guys :wink:
Here you have got all the tutos videos.
Enjoy !

And of course, i am still available for question and else.

Cheers,
Aurelien

1 Like

@ACharrier - The feature list/priorities sound good to me but please try to squeeze in the “Maya” style navigation :wink: Looking forward to future updates. Personally I will be playing with this some more over the coming weeks.

No problem about the physics simulation… it was just the cherry on top of the cake.

Painting weights, and handling skinning just like bones pro (plugin for 3DS max) and I buy just to support you guys until the update is out.

Thanks guys!

@anon_61403428 : OK ! We will do our best. Be sure of it ! However it is possible you have to wait a bit for the Maya style zoom. i can’t promise you.
@PROTOFACTOR_Inc : We don’t have at the moment all the features of Bones pro but did you try our vertices skin mode ? Well, it is quite easy to play with :wink:
(however it is fun to see we have a full 3D anim/rig software for a third of the price of Bones Pro ;-))

Oh and something important i often forgot to mention: you can do anything with akeytsu, i mean, not only bipeds but monsters, quadrupeds, birds, props, plants… or piranhas :slight_smile:


Thanks

Cheers,
Aurelien

1 Like

Aurélien, I know you guys are creating something big, and I’m sure it’s going to be even bigger down the road. Right now I’m on some contract gigs and I really can’t switch workflow, without wasting a little bit of time when I know I can get some stuff done blazing fast with my current pipeline. I really want to migrate to this animation software! be sure of that. Once I’ll have a little spare time, I’ll definitely switch to Akeytsu for my personal stuff and see how it can improve my workflow even more.
Quick questions, can you set up some bones to have some kind of secondary motion, like tail, jiggling antennas, boobs etc…?
Can you mirror vertices weight along axis? can you mirror bones ( well here I guess so) and what about key frames?
Anyways, I guess I’m going to buy it, just to support your effort to create such a nice piece of software and to have it ready to do stuff.
I think I read I can have it installed on two machines and use it not concurrently, right?

1 Like

you just took my money! :slight_smile: Looking forward to checking out the tutorials and playing around with it.

Thanks @PROTOFACTOR_Inc ! Thanks so much !

You have built-in animation layers, so you can have seconday motion for your overlaps (tails, boobs, etc). However you have to animate it manually (keyframes) at the moment. Still no dynamic at the moment.
Sure you can mirror vertices weight (with bones in same time, this way you save time). And you can mirror keyframes too :wink:
By the way about mirror keys, here’s how you make cycles in akeytsu

And here’s how we manage IK/FK

Cheers,
Aurelien

1 Like

I don’t know if you have tried Blender, but if you could implement some Grab/Move, Rotation and Scaling hotkeys for those of us who love to only use hotkeys for manipulating transform handles, it would be a blessing.

Well done!. :sunglasses:

It seems you have gotten several requests for key and mouse hot key editing. One maya user, one blender user and I’m a Max animator which would like to have the controls setup just like in Max. :slight_smile:
Maybe it would be best if all controls could be changed to the users personal preference. All controls in Max can be changed to hot keys or mouse buttons. Just a suggestion to make everybody happy in the end.

Oh - about request features - three of the animation controllers I use most in Max are the noise controller, the look at controller, and the spring controller. These are really valuable to Max animators for such things as animated vibration, destruction, after shocks from impacts and random motion. Look at for controlling a bone to look at a specific point such as head tracking. The spring controller is great for keying secondary motion for such things like fat, tails hair ropes.
These controllers are applied to bones and bone chains with the combination of list controllers so the animator can still retain keyframe control of the bones while allowing the software to animate things procedurally or based on weights.
Once the animations are complete the animation generated from these controllers can either be baked down onto the bones or key matched by hand.

It would be awesome if akeytsu could replicate these animation controllers that could be applied to bones and still retain the key-ability required for animators to capture this procedural or weight generated animation and place keyframes on top of this animation then bake down via layers or some common process already implemented in akeytsu.

Thanks for taking the time to read - and if you have any questions regarding these animation controllers I’d be happy to explain them further.

With respect. -

1 Like