Creating an easy way to define initial velocities when using building Maya Rigid Body Simulations, Yeray Diaz Diaz shares a script making it easier to get control from rigid simulations, allowing you to direct more and tweak less. Dynamica Bullet Velocity Helpers will allow you to visually create rigid body sims in Maya in a visual way right in the viewport.

The script creates a series of locators that define a vector and hooks it up to the initial velocity and spin of the rigid bodies, giving the artist an intuitive way to visualize the direction the rigid body will follow

The script adds a series of locators for each rigid body, that will define the vector that will be used for the simulation’s initial velocity. It is then as simple as moving and orienting the locators in the scene and the objects will simulate in the direction and orientation of the locator, which is a pretty clever and really intuitive method for visually creating Rigid Body Simulations in Maya. The Dynamica Bullet Velocity Helpers script for Maya is offered as freeware, and can be found here.