Studio Tools

Locators

World-space locator helpers for fast animation reference, baking, and retarget workflows.

Overview

World-space locator helpers for fast animation reference, baking, and retarget workflows.

Locators creates static, key-time, or baked world-space locators from selected transforms and organizes each run into clean Set groups under a customizable root. With built-in bind and unbind actions, it supports quick controller retargeting and reversible workflow-safe cleanup.

Features

Create Static Locators

Creates world-space locators for the selected transforms and organizes them into an auto-incremented Set under the chosen group. Ideal as lightweight reference or retarget helpers.

  • Each run creates a new Set (Set001, Set002, ...).
  • Locators store source metadata for reliable re-binding.
Create Static Locators demo

Create Animation Locators (Key Times)

Creates locators and transfers animation by sampling the union of key times on translate/rotate channels of each source object, then writes matching keys onto the locator.

  • Great when you want motion fidelity without baking every frame.
  • Uses world-space snapping and preserves rotate order where possible.
Create Animation Locators (Key Times) demo

Create Baked Locators

Creates locators constrained to the selection and performs a single optimized bake over all generated locators across the playback range. The Bake Step controls sampling density.

  • Use Step 1 for maximum accuracy.
  • Higher steps reduce keys and speed up heavy scenes.
Create Baked Locators demo

Run Sets and Custom Group Root

Automatically manages a stable root group (default: PZ_Locators_Grp) and creates a new Set per run to keep locator batches clean and reversible.

Run Sets and Custom Group Root demo

Bind Controls

Binds controllers to PZ locators using parent constraints. If two transforms are selected, it binds the locator to the other node directly; otherwise it batch-binds using stored metadata.

  • Supports fast retarget workflows via stored pz_source and bind target attributes.
  • Constraint links are tracked via message attributes for clean cleanup.
Bind Controls demo

Unbind Controls

Removes outgoing constraints created by the tool and clears binding metadata on all PZ locators under the group.

Unbind Controls demo

Cleanup Locator Sets

Unbinds all PZ locators and deletes all Set groups under the locator root, effectively resetting the tool’s generated data in one step.

Cleanup Locator Sets demo
FAQ

What is Locators used for?

Locators creates static, key-time, or baked world-space locators from selected transforms and organizes each run into clean Set groups under a customizable root. With built-in bind and unbind actions, it supports quick controller retargeting and reversible workflow-safe cleanup.

Which host application does Locators support?

Locators is built for Autodesk Maya and is distributed through AO Studio Tools.

Where can I download Locators?

Download the current AO Studio Tools package from https://aostudio.tools/getthetools.html and install it through AO.Hub.