MAYA TOOLSET · CHANGELOG

What shipped, and when. Bugs we already know about live on the known issues page.

Two products, two version lines. Armature is a standalone app at 2.1.3; the Maya Toolset is at 1.4.0, and its entries before August 2026 use Armature for the Maya skeleton stage, which is what it was called at the time. That stage is now Skeleton Building.

ARMATURE · THE STANDALONE APP

v2.4.3

Bug fixes

A USD now brings its normal, ambient occlusion and emissive maps in as well as its base color.

FIXES

  • A USD now brings its normal, ambient occlusion and emissive maps in as well as its base color, and its roughness and metalness when they are packed into a single map. Only the base color was arriving.
  • An exported USD now carries your ambient occlusion and emissive maps. Both were being dropped on the way out.
  • A textured USD no longer arrives darker than the file it came from. Its base color was being dimmed on the way in, and dimmed again every time the file went out and came back.

v2.4.2

Bug fixes

An FBX now brings its normal, ambient occlusion and emissive maps in as well as its base color.

FIXES

  • An FBX or OBJ now brings its normal, ambient occlusion and emissive maps in as well as its base color. Only the base color was arriving, so five of the six texture slots could be filled by hand and no other way.

v2.4.1

Bug fixes

Textures inside an FBX now arrive with the mesh, and material edits reach your exported file. Both had been failing silently.

NEW

  • Rename a run of joints at once. Select several, right-click, and they are renamed as one numbered series. The joints under a pivot no longer have to be renamed one at a time.
  • Delete Skin, under Generate Skin, throws away the weights on the meshes you have selected. The skeleton, the influences and the modules all stay.
  • Join the Discord from the What’s New card.

FIXES

  • Textures inside an FBX or OBJ now arrive with the mesh. Every FBX import was silently dropping them, whether or not the media was embedded.
  • Material colors, names and relinked textures now reach your exported file. They had been staying inside the app.
  • The Materials panel scrolls, so a character carrying more materials than fit the wall is fully reachable.
  • Identical copies of one material are edited together. A file that repeats a material once per mesh no longer asks you to relink the same texture six times.
  • Right-click menus open at the pointer and stay on screen, including at the bottom of a long list.
  • Toolbar menus draw over an open drawer instead of behind it.

CHANGED

  • The Bind Skin window opens with the joints you selected, or the joints your template built, instead of every joint in the scene.
  • In the Bind Skin panel the green circles show which joints are influencing the skin you have, and stay dark until something is bound. All and None moved into the Bind Skin window, where the choice is made.
  • The Bind Skin panel is the two lists and Generate Skin. They fill the wall now and share it on a draggable seam, thirty/seventy in the joints’ favor.
  • Buttons, tabs and drawer corners are squared off across the app.

v2.4.0

Feature release

A material editor in the Fitting Room: every material on the selected mesh, its base color, and a slot for each texture.

NEW

  • A material editor in the Fitting Room. Select a mesh and the right wall shows every material on it, its base color, and a slot for each texture.
  • Point any texture slot at an image on disk, for a character whose textures did not come through on import or have changed since.
  • Override a material’s base color, for a mesh that arrived with a material and no texture at all.
  • Rename a material. The new name travels with your export.

FIXES

  • A character with colored materials and no textures shows its colors again instead of arriving in grey clay.

v2.3.0

Feature release

A character can be several meshes now, quads survive the whole trip from import to export, and the interface has had a full pass.

NEW

  • Full quad support. A quad model imports as quads, saves as quads and exports as quads.
  • Select several joints at once, move them together, and parent them in one go.
  • Copy weights from a mesh and paste them onto another mesh for fast accessory skinning.
  • Snap-align and move joints along the center of a mesh, super handy for fingers!
  • ROM animation sections. Double-click a section to set the timeline to that region.
  • The pre-export checks have a Re-run button, and a quick fix that turns out not to apply to your rig now says so instead of appearing to work.
  • Pick a blueprint and Armature offers to place the skeleton on your character for you.
  • A joint with one next joint rolls around its own bone and can no longer be pointed away from it.
  • Aim target names the joint you are aiming at, and every joint offers World for the times the rules do not cover.
  • Your rig has a mirror convention, switchable between what Unreal expects and Maya’s default, and your rolls survive the change.
  • The pre-export checks read joint orientation and offer to put a joint back on its bone.
  • A Component Editor, for weights you would rather type than paint.
  • Generate Skin opens a bind window where you choose the joints the solve may use and the solver that runs it.
  • A selection brush. Drag over the body and every vertex the ring crosses joins the selection.
  • Shift+double-click a second vertex and every vertex on the shortest edge path between the two joins the selection.
  • The Gray weight ramp is now Heat, so weight reads at a glance across a whole limb.
  • One Symmetry button at Skin, doubling every vertex pick, lasso and brush onto the other side of the body.
  • Hammer and Chisel are one-tap verbs on the shelf, alongside Copy, Paste and Mirror.
  • A navigator under the timeline. Drag its handles and the ruler zooms to one part of the exercise.
  • An arm can be built without a clavicle, and a hand without metacarpals.
  • A light dial on the shelf takes the whole room brighter or darker.
  • Solid comes in three surfaces: Clay, Wax and Steel.
  • The camera re-centres on what you select, and F frames your selection.
  • Right-clicking a recent file opens a menu instead of jumping straight to a delete confirmation.
  • A saved template card wears your character rather than a joint diagram.
  • Armature keeps a log. Every message and error is written to a file you can open from Help.

FIXES

  • Importing a rigged file no longer doubles up the twist joints your file already had.
  • A rig you exported from Armature opens again with its modules intact, instead of as loose joints.
  • Importing a file no longer reports your joint orientations as rebuilt when nothing of yours was wrong.
  • The mesh group in an export is named geo_grp, so the Maya toolset can find it.
  • The first joint of a neck, cape, tail or satchel chain is aimed down its own bone.
  • A skeleton that arrives misoriented is corrected on the way in, and the app now tells you it happened.
  • Projects saved by earlier versions open looking exactly as you left them.
  • The welcome screen answers when you pick a file, and a second file can no longer land on top of the first.
  • A file that carries a skeleton just brings it in, instead of asking whether you wanted the rig it already has.
  • Guides survive a save, so Fit skeleton to guides still works on a project you reopen.
  • Vertices stay on the model when you scrub the timeline.
  • A mirrored pair of joints with no children mirrors properly instead of sharing one orientation.
  • The axis gizmo lands in orthographic on the first press.
  • The chain exercises test all three axes, and the spine no longer curls into a circle.
  • The test motion no longer starts itself when you walk into the Skin Sculptor.
  • The wireframe overlay stays legible on the dark back side of a character.

v2.2.1

Fix release

The character fades properly while the skin solves, generated skeletons come with a root at the world origin, and four-legged characters are read correctly.

FIXES

  • Your character fades away properly while the skin solves. It was going oddly see-through and staying that way instead of dissolving, in every shading mode except x-ray.
  • Generated skeletons arrive with a root joint at the world origin, so the whole character can be moved as one instead of being dragged around by the hips.
  • Four-legged characters are read correctly. The spine is followed along the body rather than up it, so the pelvis, the spine and the hind legs are all named. The front legs are deliberately left unnamed rather than called arms.

v2.2.0

Feature release

Generate skeleton now builds the whole thing: a complete skeleton, named and tagged and ready for a Control Rig, worked out from the shape of your character rather than from what anything is called.

SKELETON

  • Generate skeleton builds the whole thing for you. Press it and Armature reads the body, works out where every joint belongs, and lands a complete skeleton: joints named, tagged and grouped into modules, ready to build a Control Rig from. It used to hand you markers to snap a template onto by hand, and you still get those too.
  • It identifies joints by the shape of the skeleton rather than by what anything is called. A character with unusual proportions, or one that arrived from another tool with its own naming, is read just as well. Anything it cannot identify with certainty comes in untagged and tells you which part it could not place, instead of guessing.
  • Fingers arrive with their metacarpals, seated at the proportions of the Unreal mannequin’s own hand. The engine does not propose them, so Armature adds them.

THE WAIT

  • Watch your character while it works. Generating a skeleton and generating skin both dissolve your model into a sheet of glowing points that holds its shape and breathes until the result lands, then re-forms. The viewport stays yours the whole time: the grid is up and the camera still orbits.
  • If your system asks for reduced motion, the waiting effects honour it: the points still appear and still fade, they simply hold still instead of moving.

WORKFLOW

  • The range of motion starts playing the moment a skin solve lands, from the beginning, so you see what the new weights actually do.
  • Replace mesh has moved to the File menu, so you can swap a character from any station instead of only from the Fitting Room.
  • Module options read left to right: the setting on the left, its control on the right.

v2.1.9

Fix release

Exporting works again if you installed the AutoSkin component, and the app no longer fails to start when its viewport lighting cannot load.

EXPORT

  • Exporting works again if you have the AutoSkin component installed. Installing it could leave the exporter without the piece that writes USD files, so every export failed with a missing-module message. Nothing was wrong with your character.

STABILITY

  • Fixed a crash on load. The viewport could take the whole window down when its lighting failed to arrive. The lighting is now built on your machine, so there is nothing left to wait for.

v2.1.8

Feature release

Export is unblocked for characters with feet, single joints can carry a control, and Unreal builds stop depending on what you named things.

EXPORT

  • Exporting works again for any character with feet. The pre-export sheet was failing a foot check on characters that were fitted perfectly and telling you the mesh and skeleton disagreed, which blocked the export button.

MODULES

  • Single joints can carry an animatable control. Drop a Pivot on a hood, the base of a tail, or anything that just turns, and it arrives in Unreal as a control you can pose. It is on by default, with a switch in Module Options for the ones you would rather leave alone.

UNREAL

  • Characters build correctly in the Unreal Control Rig whatever your joints are called. The arm bends at the elbow rather than the shoulder, clavicles get their own controls, and fingers arrive however you have named them. Rigs brought in from Maya get the same treatment.
  • Chains you have marked dynamic are left to the simulation instead of also receiving controls that fought it.

v2.1.7

Feature release

AutoSkin can be removed from inside the app, and exports arrive at the right scale in Unreal.

AUTOSKIN

  • Remove the component from inside the app. The install panel gained an Uninstall button beside the location, and it tells you exactly what goes and from where before it frees the ~9 GB. Reinstalling later downloads it again.

EXPORT

  • Exports carry their measurements in centimetres, matching Unreal and Maya. Characters built for the Unreal Control Rig land at the right scale first try, whether the file came from Armature or from the Maya toolset.

v2.1.6

Fix release

AutoSkin installs where you tell it to, and says so before it starts rather than partway through.

AUTOSKIN

  • Choose where the AutoSkin component installs. The install panel now shows the location with a Change button: pick any drive, and the whole download, cache included, stays there. If you installed Armature to B because C is full, the component finally respects that.
  • Free space is checked before the download starts, and the installer tells you honestly when a drive cannot take it, rather than failing partway through.
  • The component can move between machines. After this update, a fresh install copied to the same location on another computer runs as-is, which is useful for offline workstations.

v2.1.5

Fix release

Startup survives a graphics driver that stalls, instead of hanging on a blank window.

FIXES

  • Startup no longer hangs when Windows forces the app onto a specific GPU. If the graphics driver stalls, Armature now recovers automatically onto a working graphics path and remembers it. If it ever has to fall back to software rendering, it says so plainly and tells you how to restore full speed. Reported by enqui.

v2.1.4

Fix release

No dead ends: a stopped download can be resumed, and nothing sits greyed out without a way forward.

FIXES

  • An interrupted AutoSkin download announces itself when the app starts, with a one-click Resume that picks up exactly where it stopped. No more reinstalling to recover. Reported by enqui.
  • The AutoSkin installer has a permanent home, under Help menu > AutoSkin component. The SkinTokens options are never greyed out anymore either: if the component is missing, clicking one takes you straight to the install.

v2.1.3

Fix release

Textures survive the trip in. A USD imported alongside its textures folder now arrives with its materials.

FIXES

  • USD textures come through on import. Keep the .usd and its textures folder together, the way Maya writes them, and the materials arrive with the model instead of the mesh landing untextured.

v2.1.2

Feature release

The circle closes. A rig imported from Maya arrives as real modules, so the work you did in Armature survives the trip out and back.

NEW

  • Imported rigs arrive as modules, not loose joints. Spine, arms and legs come back as proper rows with rename, mirror, twist steppers, regions and the full range-of-motion tools, rather than as a hierarchy you have to re-teach the app about. Twists regenerate cleanly and the skinning follows them by name.
  • Rig in Maya, skin in Armature, export. Your module build survives the whole round trip.

v2.1.1

Fix release

Rig in Maya, skin in Armature. A USD that carries a skeleton but no skinning now imports the skeleton and drops you straight into the binding flow.

FIXES

  • Weights are no longer required to bring a rig home. Importing a rigged USD used to expect skin weights alongside the skeleton, so a character that was rigged but not yet skinned had nowhere to land. It now imports the skeleton and opens the binding flow, which is the whole point of bringing it into Armature.

v2.1.0

Feature release

The first feature release since launch. Save your own modules and templates into the library, bring rigged characters back in from USD, and tag a chain as dynamic so it simulates in Unreal.

NEW

  • Save your work into the library. Right-click a joint or module for "Save as module", or save the whole character as a template. Your cards appear under "Yours" and place exactly like the built-ins.
  • Rigged USD files open with their skeleton and skinning intact, so a character can come back in from Maya or from your own exports rather than starting again.
  • Dynamic chains. Check "Dynamic" on a chain module and it simulates in Unreal at rig-build time, colliding with the body. The Cape preset ships first.

FIXES

  • Textures land correctly in Maya and Unreal. Exported UVs now follow the USD convention, and materials carry the full set: color, roughness, metallic and normal.
  • When a USD export cannot embed its rig data, the dialog now says exactly what went wrong instead of failing vaguely.
  • The app version shows in the title bar, which makes bug reports easier to answer.

v2.0.2

Fix release

The second same-day fix from founding-user machines. USD export failed on computers without Microsoft’s C++ runtime installed, which is most computers that have never had a game or a dev tool on them.

FIXES

  • The USD converter now ships its own Microsoft C++ runtime. Our bundled Python carried one of the two runtime DLLs but relied on the machine for the other, so the converter’s USD library failed to load on any computer without the Visual C++ redistributable. Every development machine has it; a clean laptop does not. The build now bundles both DLLs and refuses to produce an installer without them, so this cannot quietly return.
  • Confirmed working in the wild, one hour after it shipped: the 2.0.1 port fallback moved the converter off a taken port on the very first user machine that needed it.

v2.0.1

Fix release

Reported by the first founding users within hours of launch, fixed and shipped the same day. If USD export told you the converter was not running, this release is for you.

FIXES

  • USD export no longer requires the AutoSkin download. The app misread one field of the converter’s health report, so on machines without the optional AI component a healthy converter was reported as "not running" and USD export was blocked. Every machine in our loop had the component installed, which is exactly why the first fresh installs found this before we did. Tests now pin the healthy-without-AutoSkin case so it cannot come back.
  • Cold starts tell the truth. On a fresh install the converter can take a few seconds to wake. The export window now keeps checking while open, says the converter is starting instead of declaring it dead, and waits longer before giving up.
  • Port conflicts no longer kill the converter. If another app owns its port, Armature finds a free one before anything starts. Healthy machines see no change.
  • A Restart button at the export surface respawns the converter on the spot, so relaunching the whole app is never the remedy.

v2.0.0

First release

Armature is out. A standalone app that takes a character mesh in and hands back a rigged, skinned, engine-ready character, with no Maya licence needed. Free for personal work and for studios under $100k a year.

THE APP

  • Load a mesh, fit it to a real-world height, place a skeleton from a template or from modules, generate skin weights, and export one USD carrying mesh, skeleton, weights and textures together.
  • Two skinning engines, both local. Geodesic Voxel solves in seconds on any machine, with no download and no particular GPU. SkinTokens is the AI engine, and is where the quality lives.
  • The safe, versioned loop. Every skin lands as a pass you can keep, overwrite or compare side by side, so fixing a joint never costs you a skin you liked.
  • Joint placement tools one keystroke deep: extrude, snap to the mesh, snap to other joints, and automatic symmetry that names sides as joints cross the centre line.
  • Range-of-motion exercises for every chain, so you can prove a spine or a tail bends the way you expect before you skin it.

INTO YOUR ENGINE

  • The exported USD imports into Unreal and Maya, and the rig blueprint travels inside the file, so a character can come back into Armature later.
  • Auto-update is on. Armature checks quietly on launch, downloads in the background, and installs when you quit.

MAYA TOOLSET

v1.4.3

Fix release

Five fixes, a What’s New window inside Maya, and a first ask for support.

SUPPORT

  • FabricatorStudio has been free since launch. If the tools have helped you in any way, there is a Buy Me a Coffee link in the new What’s New window. No obligation, and nothing is gated on it.

COMING SOON

  • FS Unreal Control Rig Builder is released! Build a character rig in Unreal in one click, using FS Control Rig Modules. Packed with the latest UE 5.8 features. The rig features auto IK/FK match on the switch, an IK/FK spine, twist joints integration, and much more.
  • Auto skeleton placement. It builds a skeleton and fits it to your character automatically. The final step in full FS rig automation.
  • Mesh editing in Armature. Manage and organize your accessory meshes, and copy weights straight from the base mesh for fast accessory skinning.

IN THIS RELEASE

  • A What’s New window. It opens once per Maya session and shows what changed, with a page per release.
  • A character with no clavicle keeps both IK arms.
  • The thigh twist no longer cancels its own rest pose (Advanced Ribbon Pack 1.0.2).
  • The proximal twist joint no longer flips past 90 degrees (Advanced Ribbon Pack 1.0.2).
  • The ribbon spine’s mid controls lead instead of follow (Advanced Ribbon Pack 1.0.2).
  • Anim export runs again, and its clips bind to the skeleton.
  • Three of these fixes live in the Advanced Ribbon Modules, so they arrive with Ribbon Pack 1.0.2 rather than with the free toolset.

v1.4.2

Fix release

AutoSkin stops tripping over joints the engine declines, and errors that explain themselves.

AUTOSKIN

  • Bind Skin survives the engine returning fewer joints than it was given. On twist-heavy skeletons the engine can set some joints aside; that used to end the run with a matrix-dimension error. Now every joint keeps its coverage through the round trip, and anything the engine still declines simply receives no weights, with the affected joints named in the log. Reported by a user in the morning, fixed and shipped the same day.
  • The skeleton-generation error explains itself. Running Generate Joints on a simple prop now says plainly that skeleton generation is built for characters, instead of reading like an internal bug report.

v1.4.1

Fix release

Skeletal export works on clean installs again. Found by a user and fixed the same day.

FIXES

  • Skeletal export works on a clean install again. The export runs in a background process, and on a machine without a separately installed copy of the YAML library it could not find the toolset’s bundled one, so the export died mid-run for both USD and FBX. The process now carries its own library path.

v1.4.0

Feature release

The last version you download by hand. The toolset updates itself now, and a model can travel to Armature unskinned.

AUTO UPDATER

  • The toolset updates itself. Maya checks quietly at startup and shows one small note when a new version exists. One click in Settings downloads the release, verifies its published fingerprint before touching anything, backs up your current install, and updates. Your project configs and any installed pack survive untouched, a failed update restores itself, and the restart prompt is never forced.
  • Off if you want it off. Settings gains an Updates section with the startup toggle and a Check Now button. Studio machines linked to a shared or development install are detected and left alone. What the check sends, which is nothing about you, is written out on the privacy page.

USD EXPORT

  • Skinning is optional. A model and skeleton with no skin weights now export to USD cleanly, so you can build and joint a character in Maya and do the skinning in Armature. The FBX path still expects a bound mesh, and skinned USD exports behave exactly as before.

v1.3.0

Feature release

The road out of Maya. The Rig Exporter can now write USD, so a rig you built in Maya opens in Armature as named modules and imports into Unreal from the same file.

USD EXPORT

  • One file for Armature and Unreal. Export Options gains a Format choice: FBX, still the default, or USD. USD writes a single delivery file per skeletal entry, carrying the mesh, the skeleton, normalized weights and materials with their textures beside the file.
  • A Fabricator rig travels as modules, not loose joints. The export embeds your module layout and blueprint, so Armature ingests the character with its arms, legs and spine named and understood. Unreal reads the same file with its own USD importer.
  • The export checks its own output before shipping it. Root frames, weights, joint names and the embedded data are read back from the written bytes; a file that does not verify is deleted and the reason named, rather than leaving a plausible-looking corpse on disk.

FIXES

  • Skeletal export is faster and no longer crashes at exit. The throwaway export process stopped loading the toolbar and Qt it never needed, which takes roughly ten seconds off every export and fixes a crash that could fail an export after it had already succeeded.

v1.2.0

Feature release

The bridge release. A character you rig in Armature now walks into Maya and comes out the other side with a working control rig.

ARMATURE IMPORT

  • Turn an Armature export into a Fabricator rig. The new Armature button on the toolbar reads the USD you exported from Armature and stands the character up in your scene. The mesh, the skeleton and the skin weights come straight from the file; nothing is rebuilt and no weights are transferred. The import writes a Fabricator blueprint from the rig Armature embedded, assigns components, applies your authored aimers, and leaves Build Rig as the next click.
  • Simple or Advanced, one choice. Simple assigns the free set: FK spine and neck, IK arms and legs. Advanced assigns the ribbon spine (headed by the pelvis) and ribbon arms and legs when the Advanced Ribbon Modules pack is installed, and tells you why when it is not.
  • Imported rigs are checked by posing, not by looking. A joint frame rolled off its bone can read perfectly at bind and still twist the moment anything rotates. After import, drivers are posed and the motion is measured, so a rolled frame or skin that stopped deforming is reported before you build on it.
  • Refusals name their reason. A USD from another tool, a scene that is not empty, an export from a newer Armature: each one stops before touching anything and says what to do instead.

POLE VECTORS

  • Leg pole vectors build in front of the knee now. On many characters the left leg's PV control landed in front of the right leg and the right leg's in front of the left. A near-straight leg was letting millimetres of bind-pose noise pick the direction; placement now follows the knee joint's own forward axis, which also respects Y-forward and Z-forward joint conventions and deliberately angled creature knees. Simple IK, IK Leg, both ribbon limbs and the quad leg all share the fix.
  • A pole vector marker in edit mode. Every IK limb spawns a locator cross where its PV control will build. Leave it and placement is automatic; drag it and the control builds exactly there, including behind the knee for a digitigrade leg. The auto pole vector space and the solver follow the marker too.

v1.1.3

Patch

Reported in the morning, shipped the same day. If you restyle your controls, take this one.

FIXES

  • Changing a control’s shape no longer breaks the IK/FK switch. Swapping the shape on an FK control, an IK hand or a pole vector in the Ctrl Editor left that control on screen in the mode that should have hidden it. The switch hides controls by their shape, so replacing the shape dropped the connection doing the hiding. Swapping now carries that across, along with the control’s colour. Affects every IK limb, including the Advanced Ribbon Pack’s arm and leg.
  • Rigs already showing this get repaired. The pre-build checks now spot the dropped connection and offer a one-click Reconnect visibility. Building the rig fixes it as well, and your control shape edits survive a rebuild, so the shapes you made stay yours either way.

v1.1.2

Patch

Second fix of the day, also from the field. If you own the Advanced Ribbon Pack, take this one.

FIXES

  • Updating Fabricator no longer removes the Advanced Ribbon Pack. The updater rebuilds the install folder from the new version, and that step was silently deleting the pack’s ribbon modules and Advanced templates. It now carries add-on pack files across the update, including packs installed before this fix.
  • Ribbon Pack 1.0.1 records what it installed, which is what makes the carry-over exact. If your pack already went missing after the last update: re-run RibbonPack_Install.py once and restart Maya. From here on, updates keep it.

v1.1.1

Patch

One fix, shipped the day after it was reported.

FIXES

  • Templates load onto an existing skeleton again. Dropping a template into a scene that already held its skeleton failed with "Armature: no root joint". The load now adopts the joints already in your scene, creates only what is missing, and stands the Armature up as usual. Partial matches (just the root, or part of the hierarchy) work too.

v1.1.0

Feature release

Fabricator opens into an empty window, and its two ways in are the two least visible controls in it. This release is the fix for that first minute, plus four things the first outside users asked for.

GETTING STARTED

  • A guided tour of Fabricator, offered the first time you open it and available any time after from File > Take the Tour. Eight stops in two parts: one names the four regions of the window, the other builds a rig with you.
  • The hands-on stops wait for you. They advance when the template actually loads, when the build actually finishes, and when you actually drop back to Edit Mode, and each one says what it is waiting for. Nothing to accidentally click past.
  • The tour reads your scene rather than assuming an empty one. If you already have a rig loaded it starts where you are, and if that rig is built it offers to drop you back to Edit Mode first.
  • Armature Tools is now a labelled group, and the Components, Rig Outliner and Properties headers pick up the same accent, so the window reads as four named regions instead of loose chrome.

ARMATURE

  • Solo handles. Drag one joint without taking its whole subtree with it. The main control still moves the whole branch. Show, hide and reset live under Skeleton.
  • Straighten Mid Joint. The classic knee or elbow fix, corrected on one axis only so the deliberate forward bend survives. Most straighten tools snap the joint onto the line between its neighbours, which eats the bend. This one picks the error axis for you and says which it chose.
  • Aim All at Child. Points every aimer down its chain in one pass. This is the repair for an imported skeleton whose aimers all sit on Local with nothing aimed at anything, which used to mean setting every target by hand in the Channel Box.

EXPORT

  • Right-click a row to export just that entry or clip, in either exporter. No checkboxes, no multi-select.

FIXES

  • The first launch welcome tour ended early instead of skipping a stop when the button it wanted to point at was not on your toolbar.
  • Fabricator could open a second window on top of a live one if a rebuild raced a window that had not finished closing.

v1.0.1

Patch

First patch, straight from the first outside installs. Thank you to everyone who ran it early and told us what broke.

FIXES

  • AutoSkin installs on a fresh machine. The engine installer used to require uv and git to already be present and failed otherwise; it now downloads pinned, verified copies itself, so a clean artist machine installs with nothing pre-set-up.
  • AutoSkin uninstall cleans up fully on Windows. It used to leave its model checkpoints (about 1.6 GB) behind; now it removes everything it created.

IMPROVEMENTS

  • Project bindings live in Project Setup now. The per-project folder bindings and the shared configs pointer moved out of Settings and next to the project list they belong with. Settings keeps only the truly per-machine options.

v1.0.0

First release

The first public release of the FabricatorStudio Maya Toolset: a Maya rigging, skinning, animation, and export pipeline, free for solo developers, indies, and small teams.

RIGGING

  • Rig Fabricator, a network driven modular rigging system. Drag components onto your skeleton, build the whole rig in one pass, and rebuild it as often as you like without losing work.
  • The Armature skeleton builder, with live aimers you can see and adjust while you work.
  • Save a finished rig as a blueprint and rebuild it on a differently proportioned character.
  • Limb units group a chain and its twists and fingers together, and derive themselves from the scene rather than being hand maintained.
  • Selectable mirror conventions: Mirrored Behavior for Unreal, or Mirrored Orientation for studios that keep the same axis down the bone on both sides.
  • Rename anything. Rig state lives in the scene as connections, not name strings.

SKINNING

  • AutoSkin, one button machine learning skinning that runs on your own GPU. It predicts the weights and writes them onto a fresh skinCluster in about two minutes, and it can generate the skeleton from the mesh as well.
  • Influences you locked keep the weights you painted by hand.
  • Skin IO and Skeleton IO for moving weights and skeletons between scenes and characters.

ANIMATION

  • Animation Studio, a pose and clip library that carries across characters, with selection sets to mask what an imported pose touches.
  • Animator friendly controls out of the box: IK and FK matching, space switching, smart pole vectors, and a marking menu on every control.

EXPORT

  • Static, skeletal, and animation FBX exporters, with the rig layer understood so you can export an armature, built modules, or bare joints.
  • Structural checks run before a build and surface problems in Build Issues.
  • Project Setup holds per project paths, FBX presets, and session settings, from engine templates.

IN MAYA

  • Bridge, a compact toolbar that puts the whole toolset one click away.
  • Reggie, an AI Technical Artist you connect to your own AI key. Read only, enforced in code, and able to file a bug report for you with the details filled in.
  • Hover cards on the toolbar and palette, pulled from the same docs published on this site.
  • A one drag installer that wires the shelves, menu, and hotkeys, and a four step welcome tour on first launch.