Today I bring you a small animation application called Akeytsu. From what I see on the website, it looks like an interesting tool, so I am going to find out if it’s good.

Animation in Akeytsu works similar to animation in any other app. You select your body part, and then use transforms to modify that body part. One thing I found strange is how, apparently, you need to set a key before you move the body part, something that is counter intuitive, since you usually move the body part and the key is created automatically.

To animate body parts, you just select the body part on the viewport. The selected body part is tinted to show the deformation area (going from yellow to blue). In the case of limbs, you can either rotate the joints or move the entire IK chain without the need to do anything special (meaning, no “IK-FK switching”). You can just rotate at the knee, and then move the entire leg by moving the foot without any special prerequisite.

Also, in the case of the limbs, you can do something really cool using the floating radial controller. You can use the red/green/blue controls to rotate the hand/foot, or you can use the orange controller at the center to twist the limb along the length (for example, to move the knee left or right).

Sometimes you won’t be able to select the body part directly, so you will need to select the body part from the Picker floating window. For example, in this character I wanted to pick the pelvis, but I ended up picking the shirt, because this one has a “secondary shirt motion” setup. If I wanted to select the actual pelvis, I needed to do it from the Picker.

One thing I liked is how you can setup looping animations. For example, this boy’s animation was a looping walk cycle, and the animation is setup in a way that changes made to the first frame are reflected at the end of the animation, so the animation is always looped, no sudden jumps. As you know, in other applications you actually need to copy the first keyframe to the end of the animation, and, if you make changes to the first frame, you need to copy it again so those changes are reflected in the last frame. No need to do that here.

You can also setup your own characters inside Akeytsu, so you can animate them. This works for characters that have no skeleton, or characters that already have a skeleton. For example, I brought a CC3 character inside Akeytsu to test the rigging setup.

Right now, Akeytsu going through a transition period to make the application free. Those who already had the subscription now have the app for free but, if you are like me and you just found this app, you need to get the educational license, which is apparently being given to anybody.

Try Akeytsu now: https://www.nukeygara.com/