After a successful crowd fund campaign, Nicolas Dufresne has released Duik 15, which represents the biggest update to the After Effects rigging and animation tools since its inception.
New to Duik 15
Some of the changes you will notice right away, while others are going to be more under the hood type of changes.
Duik 15 has a completely redesigned user interface, and offers a new setting for experts. In expert mode, Duik 15 uses a smaller and more compact interface, minimizing its presence in After Effects. The redesign was driven by making Duik easier to understand, and faster to use.
Duik has been conceived to be as simple and user friendly as possible.
Accessing Duik has moved from under the Scripts Menu in After Effects to the Window Menu.
Installer
There is also a new Windows and OS X installation routine for Duik 15, making installation of Duik an automated process. The installer will detect all versions of After Effects on your machine, and allow you o install for all or any of them all in one shot.
Rigging Tools
The center of Duik has always been rigging. It was the first tool that introduced IK and FK controls into After Effects, and it has expanded on those tools in version 15.
There is a new 3 layer IK system that will allow you to add to the simple 2 layer or 2 bone IK. The new version also ads a Bezier IK system that allows you to rig and animate ropes, chains and the like.
Duik 15 also adds a new auto rig that will allow you to rig up bipeds and quadrupeds, birds or even fishes.
The new version also makes it easier to import and use rigs from other projects with a new import tool.
Animation
Duik 15 adds some new automated features to animation. There are new settings for Randomize, Paint Group and Paint Rig, Move Away, Blink, Cel animation, Exposure tools, and Time remapping.
The addition of the paint automations make it easier than ever to creating animated reveals in After Effects. Say goodbye to how you created write-on animations in the past.
Camera Tools
New is the 2D Multi-plane Camera Tool, which lets you quickly set up a parallax scroll in After Effects. There is also a new Scale Z-Link Camera tool. Duik 15 now allows you to import cameras from the animation app, TVPaint.
New Libraries
Duik 15 is based on the new library libDuik. This houses all Duik functions, and other tools for developers. Being free software, you can include Duik functions in your own scripts under the same license as a non-commercial software.
Check out the newly launched Duik 15 for more information on what is new, and of course, for a download.
Mark Miller
Question. If i’m pretty unfamiliar with rigging and want to learn it. Should I learn how to do it without any plug in assistance to really understand what’s going on before messing around with something like this?