Advanced Bézier Arc Editor

Advanced Bézier Arc Editor by Levent Ulas: interactive motion arc editing for Autodesk Maya

Editing motion arcs through individual XYZ curves in Maya can take a long time. Advanced Bézier Arc Editor makes that process easier and more visual: select an animated object or rig controller, see its motion trajectory, and edit the arc directly in the Maya viewport using interactive Bézier points and tangent handles.

You reshape the movement, preview the result, and apply the change to your animation. The tool rewrites the keys for you, so you fix the arc instead of fighting the graph editor.

What Advanced Bézier Arc Editor does

It turns an arc from something you infer out of three separate curves into something you can hold and reshape. Add an animated control, enable Bézier curves, and move the control points and tangent handles until the path is the one you wanted. Smooth it, push it further, or pull it back, then blend your original motion against the proposal before anything is committed.

Key features of Advanced Bézier Arc Editor

• Interactive Bézier editing, edit motion arcs directly in 3D using control points and tangent handles
• Smooth, exaggerate and soften, refine or exaggerate existing motion without manually editing every curve
• Flexible editing range, edit the complete motion arc, the timeline range, or a custom frame range
• Offset pivot editing, temporarily change the pivot used to reshape a motion trajectory
• IK and FK support, work with compatible IK and FK animation controls
• Protected frames, preserve important frames while modifying the surrounding motion
• Key reduction, optionally clean up unnecessary animation keys after editing
• Non-destructive preview, compare and blend your original motion with the proposed change before applying
• Undo and restore, keep control of the process and restore the original animation when needed

What Advanced Bézier Arc Editor is great for

• Character animators polishing arcs on hand-keyed performance
• Creature animators working on motion that has to read from any angle
• Gameplay animators cleaning trajectories without losing timing
• Cinematic artists refining camera and character paths for final polish
• Anyone working with animation in Autodesk Maya who would rather sculpt an arc than rebuild it key by key

How it fits your Maya workflow

Because the edit range can be the whole arc, the time slider range, or a custom frame range, the tool drops into a polish pass without disturbing the rest of the shot. Protected frames keep your key storytelling poses where they are, offset pivot lets you swing a whole arc around a foot or a shoulder, and key reduction tidies up afterwards. Nothing is destructive: preview and blend first, restore the original at any point.

Compatibility and support

Builds are included for Autodesk Maya 2022 to 2027. For questions, bug reports or suggestions, Levent can be reached at levent.animtools@gmail.com.

Advanced Bézier Arc Editor by Levent Ulas. See more animation plugins on Animworks.