Welcome to MG-Picker Studio v2!

MG-Picker Studio is a very intuitive and animator-friendly Maya picker tool, with powerful features that enable you to create your own picker without any prior knowledge of coding.

Meanwhile, it also comes with full-fledged API support which makes it fits well into your pipeline.

▪ What's New in V2 :

1.Support Maya 2017+, for Maya 2016 or older versions, you have to stick to MG-Picker v1.

2.V2 is fully compatible with the v1 file, and the v2 file is partially compatible with v1, which means the new flags introduced will be lost if loaded in v1.

3.The tool is available as a standalone application beside the Maya plug-in so that you don't need to launch Maya in order to design the picker.

4.The standalone mode come with remote connection feature to other DCC, e.g. Blender, and the list will keep expanding.

5.SVG support: Draw & design picker in your favorite vector graphics editor, export as SVG, and import as multiple picker buttons. Tested with SVG exported from Inkscape & Adobe Illustrator.
There is also API support to do batch SVG import.

6.Support for hover state image for image shape.

7.Batch editing image component feature is added to quickly set images of other states based on existing state.

8.Outliner Panel: Similar to Maya's outliner panel, which provides an overview of items in the picker file, including those hidden ones.

9.Style Panel: An easy way to store a batch of styles and apply it later.

10.Relationship View: To help the picker designer easily understand the visibility control relationship, some relationship values, and visibility operator editing.

11.Picker UI Panel: A centralized place to edit picker-level attributes: author, email, message, background color, and command callbacks.

12.New picker item: Group, a simplified version of the picker panel, a set of grouping features added: Group, Ungroup, Parent, Unparent, etc.

13.New picker item: Graph Item, a non-interactive item that is purely for decoration.

14.Support view anchor for group and panel, so that you can pin a certain group or panel to the viewport, keep it anchored and stretched with viewport. This is ideal to mimic menu bar, docker panel, etc.

15.Use clipped shapes for all items.

16.New "Equilateral" property for a triangle shape.

17.Support scale and scaleFit for image shape.

18.Support icons and icon options for attribute button with widgetControl shapes.

19.Support disabling auto-generated tooltip.

20.New alignToLastSelected option added for easier alignment.

21.Allow user to customise the separator characters between picker namespace and sub-namespace and node base names.

22.Massive refractors and code clean-up for easier future maintenance.

23.Improvement on picker run-time performance, especially for those shape-heavy and link-heavy pickers.

24.Auto-Save Temp Picker on exit and auto-load at the next launch, it can be turned off in the user preference dialog.

25.Global Transform Tool: By default now we transform all descendants and you can toggle this option in its context menu.

26.Performance HUD: A small display to measure your picker file performance.

27.Dnd enhancement: Support dnd picker file to load it, image file to set as image path.

28.Various API enhancements to cover the new features.

29.New UI style and icons.

30.Use a non-native file dialog where you can paste the file path to pick it.

31.Various bug fixes and tons of minor improvements.

▪ V1 Feature List :

1.Design powerful, animator-friendly pickers even without any coding.

2.Very rich picker interaction with animator, selection synchronization.

3.Multiple picker views at the same time, zoomable picker view.

4.Select-button for node selection.

5.Command button for command executing.

6.Attribute button to control other picker item visibilities as well as Maya attribute.

7.Slider to control two attributes maximum via its translation in x/y.

8.Text item to annotate your picker.

9.Picker panel to organize your picker.

10.1-click to create all the types above.

11.Snapshot for images used in the picker, image editing within the tool.

12.Pose command button with thumbnail images.

13.Free-form picker shapes, fully customizable looking. Supports polygon and bezier curve button shape drawing.

14.Left/right-clicking menu creation/editing for each picker item.

15.Powerful mirroring feature.

16.Embeddable within the asset using Maya's built-in node type.

17.Templates to speed up picker creation.

18.The full solution for distributing pickers among the production pipeline.

19.The rich mechanism for extending the picker functionality. All picker items are fully programmable using MEL/Python API.

20.No custom node types, Maya scene is totally independent of the tool.

▪ MG-Picker Studio v2 OS & Maya Requirement :
Maya 2017+   Click here to view the latest Maya version supported

▪ About the Developer :

Miguel Gao, a senior software developer in Animal Logic Australia, a former animator, a former animation lead, and also the developer of the Maya animator utility belt: MGTools Pro.

▪ Feedback:

Any bug reports or suggestions will be appreciated, the best way is to e-mail your feedback to mgpickerstudio@gmail.com.

▪ Use MG-Picker Studio in your own language:

MG-Picker Studio utilizes Qt's translation mechanism and could be translated into your local language using a tool called Qt Linguist.

If you are willing to contribute by translating MG-Picker Studio into your local language, please contact mgpickerstudio@gmail.com to ask for the .ts file, which will be greatly appreciated.

The full translation will cost you maybe three days.