AniKin v1.0.0: The Advanced Workflow Update (IK/FK, Retiming, & Playblast)

We are incredibly excited to announce AniKin v0.5.0, a massive milestone that brings the toolkit up to professional feature parity. This release introduces five brand new, highly-requested advanced workflow modules, alongside a major stabilization pass for AniPose Pro.

🌟 What's New

🔗 AniMatch (IK/FK Snap & Match)

A robust, production-grade IK/FK matching engine.

• Auto-Detect Heuristics: Automatically scans your rig for _IK_CTRL and _FK_CTRL naming conventions to pair limbs without manual setup.
• No-Flip Math: Uses constraint-based rotational transfer to completely avoid the dreaded 360° gimbal flip bug.
• Pole Vector Solving: Mathematically calculates perfect pole vector placement using mid-limb perpendicular projections.
• Bake-Match Range: Right-click to bake the match across your entire selected timeline range.

📍 AniBake v2 (Temp-Space & Micro-Pivots)

Smart Bake has evolved into a full world-space protection tool.

• Temp-Space Unlock/Relock: Select multiple extremities (like both hands), click Unlock to freeze them in world-space, freely edit the torso/parents, and hit Relock to bake the local offsets back.
• Dynamic Micro-Pivots: Drop a temporary red locator, rotate/position it to act as a custom pivot point for your controls, and commit the orbit motion directly to your curves.

⏱️ AniRetime (Scale & Integer Snapping)

Scale curves without breaking your timeline.

• Collision-Aware Snapping: Native Maya scaling causes fractional keyframes (e.g., frame 12.4). AniRetime's new snapping logic rounds keys to whole frames while actively preventing overlapping keys from collapsing/merging and destroying your data.
• Quick Retime: 1-click x0.5 (double speed) and x2.0 (half speed) scaling from the start of your selection.

🎬 AniBlast (Advanced Playblaster)

A 1-click, professional output generator.

• HUD Burn-ins: Automatically injects Current Frame, Camera Focal Length, Scene Name, and Animator Name into the viewport.
• Smart HUD Allocation: Dynamically searches for free HUD blocks so it never collides with your native Maya viewport overlays.
• ffmpeg Integration: Captures an image sequence and silently hands it off to ffmpeg in the background to spit out a crisp, H.264 MP4 file.

☄️ AniTrail (Editable Motion Trails)

• Replaces the old AniMotion module with a proper wrapper around Maya's native motionTrail node, meaning you can click and drag the trajectory vertices directly in the viewport.
• Auto-cleans up all trail nodes on Scene Save so your outliner stays pristine.

🎨 UI & UX Improvements

• Icon Pack Upgrade: Downloaded and recolored brand new Tabler/Lucide icons specifically for the new modules (Orange for Retime, Blue for Playblast, Green for Match).
• Merged Toggles: Combined Lock/Unlock and Play/Pause into dynamic, state-aware toggle buttons to save toolbar real-estate.

🐛 Bug Fixes & Stability

• AniPose Pro Crash Fix: Resolved a critical bug where Maya's C++ garbage collector would destroy the Pose UI window, causing a fatal crash. Widgets are now properly parented to the Maya Main Window.
• Undo Queue Flooding: Dragging the Tween/Ease sliders no longer floods your undo queue with hundreds of tiny chunks. It now packages the entire drag action into a single, atomic Undo step.
• HUD Collisions: Fixed a RuntimeError in AniBlast where the custom HUD would fail to render if the user already had native Maya HUDs enabled.

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Installation:
Simply run drag_drop_install.py in your Maya viewport, or execute:
import anikin; anikin.launch()

Full Changelog: v0.2.0-beta...v1.0.0

AniKin v0.2.0 Beta — First Public Release

🎉 Welcome to AniKin!

Today marks the first public release of AniKin (Animation + Kinematics) — a free, open-source productivity toolkit built for Autodesk Maya animators.

AniKin was created with one goal:

Help animators spend less time fighting tools and more time creating great animation.

Whether you're a student, freelancer, indie developer, or professional animator, AniKin aims to streamline everyday animation workflows through a unified, dockable toolkit.

✨ Highlights
🎬 Core Animation
AniTween
AniOffset
AniTangents
AniBake
AniNudge
AniAlign
⚡ Workflow
AniSets
Hotkey Manager
Dockable UI
Reorderable Toolbar
👀 Visual Tools
AniMotion
AniGhost
🎨 Modern UI
Premium SVG icon system
Dark theme
Dockable interface
Designed for Maya animators
💻 Supported Versions
Maya 2022
Maya 2023
Maya 2024
Maya 2025
Maya 2026
Maya 2027

Supported on

Windows
macOS
Linux
📦 Installation
Drag & Drop

Simply drag

drag_drop_install.py

into the Maya viewport.

AniKin installs automatically.

❤️ Open Source

AniKin is released under the GNU GPL v3.

Special thanks to the Key Machine project for inspiring portions of the AniTween workflow and helping advance open-source animation tooling.

⚠️ Beta Notes

This is the first public beta release.

While core functionality is stable, you may encounter bugs or missing features as AniKin continues to evolve.

Please report issues and suggestions through GitHub Issues.

🔮 Coming Soon

The roadmap includes:

AniMirror
Smart Key
Foot Slide Detector
AniBookmarks
AniSnap
AniExport
Animation Health Report
Root Motion Inspector
Balance & COM Visualizer
Auto Curve Cleanup

…and much more.

🙏 Thank You

AniKin began as a personal tool to improve my own animation workflow.

I'm sharing it with the community in the hope that it helps fellow animators—especially students, hobbyists, and independent creators—work faster, iterate more freely, and spend more time animating.

If AniKin saves you time or improves your workflow, consider giving the project a ⭐ on GitHub. Your feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions will help shape future releases.

Happy Animating! 🎬

— Mihir Patil