

Autodesk has updated the Maya Bonus Tools, its free collection of add-on scripts and plugins for Maya to support Maya 2020.

New features added the update are also compatible with Maya 2019.

11 new tools for modellig, layout, rigging and rendering work

The Bonus Tools provide Maya users with a set of useful small features, particularly for modelling, UV editing and character rigging, on an ‘as is’ basis, without active product support.

While previous recent updates have primarily made existing tools compatible with the current version of Maya, this one adds 11 new tools and updates 14 others.

New modelling and layout features include tools for stacking and aligning objects, offsetting and randomising transforms, and placing locators at custom pivot axes.

Riggers get new tools for creating joints at custom pivot axes, creating circles to use as rig controls, and for performance-profiling an individual frame of an animation.

At the time of writing, Autodesk’s Bonus Tools resource page hasn’t been updated with details of the new features, but it includes links to video tutorials for many of the existing tools from the collection.

System requirements and availability

The Maya Bonus Tools are available free for Maya 2017 and above running on Windows, macOS or Linux, although some tools may only be available to users of Maya 2019 and Maya 2020.

Read a full list of changes in the Maya Bonus Tools

(Includes download link for the tools themselves)

Tags: add-on, autodesk, character rigging, download, free, Maya 2019 Bonus Tools, Maya 2020 Bonus Tools, Maya Bonus Tools, modeling, new features, plugin, rendering, script, system requirements, UV editing