Freelance character and creature animator Brian Horgan shares a Lock To World-Space tool that can help you animate characters in Maya.

Horgan created his Lock to World tools while he was animating a quadruped in Maya. “I love animating quadrupeds but those extra feet do make things complicated. Even getting a first blocking pass on an animation where the animal is running and turning without the feet sliding like crazy can be pretty time consuming.” Brian says.

keep a controller in place while space-switching

This is how his lock to world-space tool came about. “[lock to world-space tool] locks a control in worldspace to prevent sliding, and the last one unlocks again, while keying the controller and running the Euler filter command to avoid gimbal issues as much as possible.”

The Maya script can be useful for fixing foot slip with walk cycles, keeping a controller in place while space-switching and lots of other uses. Brian offers a quick run-through that shows how to install the script and how you can use it to temporarily lock animation controls to world-space.