Chris Zurbrigg has been developing some great products for Maya Developers and animators, and his new PlayBlast Reference Viewer continues with that streak.
Here, Chris looks at his new PlayBlast and reference player for Autodesk Maya, that is a custom video player that is integrated right into maya with features that are specific to animators.
The Playblast/Reference Viewer brings a compact, yet powerful, video player to the Maya toolset and includes a number of features specifically designed to assist with animating in Maya
Chris developed the Playblast/Reference Viewer for Maya as an alternative to other tools such as the QuickTime Player, or Windows Media Player; While both do the task, there is a lot of room for improvement simply with workflow and convenience alone.
The features that sets it apart from other viewers are many, with the fact that it is directly used and embedded in Maya, and that the Playblast/Reference Viewer for Maya actually syncs with the Timeline leads the pack.
This means that the Maya timeline will actually drive video playback on the Playblast/Reference Viewer. This is a great workflow addition, as you can use Maya’s standard hotkeys to step through to the previous and next keyframes, and have the video player follow suit.
You are also able to set a custom frame range to isolate areas of interest, and the playback controls are built to be useful for animators, with single frame stepping and the ability to scrub a sequence with the mouse.
To find out more about the PlayBlast / Reference Viewer for Maya, check the page at zubrigg.com here.
