What an incredible plugin Maestro has turned out to be.
At version 1 it is hands down the best plugin I have ever used for character rigging.
Within an hour of rigging bones for my character in Modeler I was ready to animate in Layout. The hot spot interface is extremely intuitive and after a few minutes I was able to get clear fluid motions. This is proving to be as good and simple as it gets.
I have purchased other rigging plugins before and each eventually offered some technical limitation and design short coming. I was beginning to believe that I was going to be out of the character animation loop indefinitely. With Maestro not only is this not the case anymore, but I am already planning to build up work around it. Simply put there are no hidden animation complexities in its UI and associated operations.
Maestro effectively takes all the voodoo out of bones and rigging them to your characters. There are a good number of default bone rigs that can be adjusted to suit most any biped and quadruped model. There is even an effective facial morph system included.
I have yet to utilize all the assets this small but powerful program offers. I could easily write pages on the benefits, but I think I can summarize in writing that this is the best $120 I’ve spent in a long while.
Rough Around the Edges
There are few quirks in this first version and they can’t go without notice in an otherwise stellar debut by this Stillwater Pictures program.
• There is no install program. So for the uninitiated, unraring or unzipping files into appropriate directories can be frustrating.
• You also need to put the Maestro program in the same directory path as your models.
• There are also some details in the PDF documentation that need to be corrected, clarified, and updated for clearer understanding of the tutorials.
• Registering the program requires you to forward your emailed payment information to support@stillwaterpictures.com before you can get your user name and password. Some may or may not catch that readme file in the plugins directory.
Conclusion
Overall the program is a must have for inexperienced and experienced Lightwave users alike. For people like myself who struggle with bones and IK it’s a big plus. For experienced riggers, this can only help to speed up their setup processes. Since the program operates entirely within Lightwave, there is no import export exercises to take away from the creative process.
Read more about Maestro here
Other Blogs
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