XrayUnwrap and XrayBlendSkin creator Raylight has announced XrayCat Survival Toolkit. This new plugin designed to speed up workflow in 3ds Max’s CAT character animation system.
The tool adds shortcuts for the most common tasks when setting up a rig, plus new Layer and Clip Managers – the latter useful for backing up CAT layers and applying them to a new rig.
There is also a new Pose Manager, which enables users to “copy and paste poses [in Animation Mode], mirror the rig, swap arms, hands, legs and feet with only one mouse click.”
Rig poses are stored with a preview image, making them easier to browse, and a Limb Animation section is included “to switch between IK and FK mode when animating a limb”.
The plugin comes with a set of utilities for importing BIP, BVH, HTR files and other motion-capture data, plus Raylight’s fixed rig resizer script.
The price or system requirements for XrayCat Survival Toolkit are not set yet.