Transitioning from creation to development is no easy feat. However, when faced with technical challenges and the desire to enhance my efficiency and creative possibilities, developing my own tools quickly became a compelling path.

Cube creative

During my first professional experience at Cube Creative, I was responsible for creating and setting up various props, including some cartoon FX. One of the biggest challenges was developing a flame setup that could be reused and easily adjusted in size, shape, and color.
To achieve this, I learned Maxscript, the internal language of 3ds Max. This allowed me to add the necessary options to my rig, enabling us to manipulate various FX parameters as needed.

Canal +

During my studies, I worked on a short film project for Canal+. This film featured a character in a pixelated world, requiring the entire environment to be modeled with small cubes. To reduce modeling time, I developed tools to accelerate pixel modeling. This innovation allowed us to construct the film’s pixelated earth, a task that would have been too time-consuming to complete manually.

Rigging and Development

Building on this initial experience and finding the default biped rig in 3ds Max too rigid and restrictive, I decided to create my own auto-rig. This project, which began in 2011, has continued to evolve with each production.

My auto-rig debuted on three films at Supinfocom in 2011: Tuurngait, Douce Menace, and A Fox Tale.

Watchmaking

My first professional projects involved creating advertisements for luxury watches with Le-Truc.ch. These projects, though similar, presented many opportunities for automation. Over two years, I developed tools to improve the studio’s 3D pipeline efficiency. The first tool was an auto-rig for watches, which automatically calculated the gear teeth and their interrelations.

Subsequent tools included UV placement tools, automatic modeling tools (for screws, rubies, etc.), and animation and rigging tools (for exploded views, bracelets, etc.).

Manager

The most significant tool I developed at this studio was a scene manager.
This tool organized the thousands of 3D components in watches, making them much easier to handle. It also managed Nespresso scenes, another recurring project at the time. Additionally, the script quickly handled all rendering parameters (Vray, Deadline, etc.) and managed the necessary render passes for final image creation.

Crowdfunding

In 2014, I launched a crowdfunding campaign to develop and improve my animation tools. To my surprise, the campaign was successful, motivating me to continue developing my tools for public sharing. This effort led to the creation of my first site, CG-Animation.com, where I share and sell my tools.

During this period, I focused primarily on enhancing the auto-rig and related tools, aiming to create a comprehensive rig with numerous cartoon options for any animation while maintaining user-friendliness. With the help of animator friends and Mopa students as beta testers, I released this first tool in March 2014. It was quickly adopted for the short film “Horde” by the Brutus collective.

Les légendaires

I was approached for the “Les Légendaires” series project to rig all the characters—over a hundred rigs. The goal was to make managing these characters and their animations simple and intuitive for the animators.

Over several weeks, I developed a rig and animation manager that allowed animators to easily select their characters, transfer animations between characters and animators. Working on “Les Légendaires” was a deeply enriching experience, enabling me to better understand the specific needs of 3D animation series and significantly improve my tools.

Animating More Naturally

During a demo of their animation tools for their short films Presto and Monster University at the Nvidia GTC conference, Pixar showcased an incredible system without visible controllers in the viewport. Inspired, I wondered if I could replicate this in 3ds Max. From this idea, I developed a new tool called NoController, which allows animators to control a rig directly using zones on the model without needing to display controllers, providing a more pleasant animation experience.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Inspired by the groundbreaking film and making-of feature by Sony Pictures Animation, I challenged myself to develop a similar tool for 3ds Max. This tool creates 2D-style drawings within a 3D space, adding 2D effects directly to 3D scenes.

This technical challenge, tackled in my spare time, has been incredibly rewarding. The tool is still in beta, but once completed, it and all my other tools will be available in the dedicated section on my site.