After the response to my recent demo reel, I’m excited to share what’s been going on behind the scenes — and to announce that I’ll be making this plugin publicly available by the end of the month.
The Idea
The concept is inspired by DreamWorks’ Premo rigging system — specifically the way controls sit flush on the character’s surface rather than floating around it as separate curve shapes. I first encountered this during my time at Oriental DreamWorks Shanghai, and it stuck with me. I’ve been working toward bringing that same idea to Maya ever since.
For those who missed the demo reel: instead of traditional curve controls, you interact directly with mesh-based controls that sit on the character’s surface. You hover, select, and manipulate them just like any other Maya control — but they read and feel like part of the character.
What to Expect
- Works with any mesh geometry as the control shape
- Live hover highlighting and selection in the Maya viewport
- Full compatibility with Maya’s move, scale, and rotate manipulators
- Designed for primary controls — face and other areas where surface-hugging controls make the most difference
Performance
On modern hardware the impact is minimal. The recommendation is to use mesh controls selectively for your main controls rather than replacing everything — and keep in mind that overlapping meshes can make hover selection ambiguous.
Coming Soon
Public release by end of this month. I’ll follow this up with a technical breakdown for anyone interested in the implementation details.