The Locus Corporation releases the Locus Sync Player, which is a stand-alone media player with some great features for animators. One of the most notable features, is that fact that the media player comes with a plugin for Autodesk Maya.
Locus Sync Player is very useful for animators to use a movie to reference timings and poses.
Using the plugin along side the player, allows you to have bidirectional sync between the player and the Maya timeline. This makes it interesting for animators who are using reference videos with their animations.
When the “sync” button is selected, you are able to control the Maya timeline from the Locus Media Player, or the player’s timeline from Maya.
The Locus Media Player, being a stand-alone application can be run without Maya, or syncing to Maya’s timeline. The player will play most of the popular media formats including mov, avi, mkv, mp4, fly, ogg, etc.
The player has all the features that you would expect as a basic animation tool, with resizable windows, keyboard shortcuts, aspect ratio toggle, and media bookmarks.
Main Features:
- Plays most of the popular media formats such as, avi, mov, mp4, mkv, flv, ogg and etc.
- Play controls can be synchronized with Maya bi-directionally.
- Bookmarks to save a list of media file paths with extra options.
- Play controls by keyboard shortcuts.
- Resizable windows.
- Able to toggle the aspect ratio on/off of original source movies.
Tutorial movies are available at Locus Studio Youtube channel
Locus Sync Player looks like a useful tool for keeping reference video in sync with the Maya timeline. You can learn more about the Locus Sync Player on the Autodesk Exchange. Unfortunately, the media player is only single platform, running on Windows 64 systems. If you meat those requirements, The Locus Sync Player is a low $4.99 to pick up.
