Pen tool
NPen tool
Drop anchors one at a time, drag to pull a curve out of a corner, click the first anchor to close. Shift gives a corner that curves on one side and stays straight on the other — and that split survives saving.
Am_Picker is a graphical animation picker for Autodesk Maya. A rigger draws the control layout once — shapes, colours, the character’s own artwork — and from then on the whole team animates by clicking it, instead of hunting for a curve in the viewport or a name in the Outliner.
[ THE PROBLEM ]
[ FEATURES ]
No add-ons, no tiers, no upsell. Hover a card to read what it does.
Drop anchors one at a time, drag to pull a curve out of a corner, click the first anchor to close. Shift gives a corner that curves on one side and stays straight on the other — and that split survives saving.
Import SVG from Illustrator, Affinity, Figma or Inkscape. Each outline becomes a picker item with its curves — not a straight-edged tracing. Names, fills and stacking order come from the file.
Turn a bitmap silhouette into shapes by edge detection. Extra detection modes when OpenCV is present; it degrades gracefully when it isn't.
Ship-with presets for the shapes every rig needs, with thumbnails — plus anything of your own you save into it.
A real outliner for the canvas: reorder, group, rename, lock and hide. A two-hundred-item picker stays navigable.
One tab per page — body, face, props — each with its own layers, grids, bookmarks and background art. The switcher shows live thumbnails and jumps with 1–9.
Edit the selected item's channels without leaving the picker window, docked on the right in Edit mode.
An item can be a slider, a toggle or an enum that drives a Maya attribute directly — IK/FK blends and space switches without touching the Channel Box.
Attach Python or MEL to any item, with a syntax editor and picker variables. There is also an API for opening the window from your own tools.
Shapes that read as part of the drawing but are not clickable — outlines, dividers, the character's silhouette.
Background artwork with colour grading built in, so a concept drawing sits behind the controls at the right weight.
Store viewport positions on the picker and return to them with a click, so the shot camera is one item away.
Rebind anything. The Quick start panel then reads your map back to you — it teaches your keys, not the defaults.
13 features · hover or tab through a card to read it
[ TWO MODES, ONE WINDOW ]
Almost every editing tool is gated behind Edit mode, so an animator cannot move the furniture by accident. Same window, same picker — one keypress apart.
Am_Picker — Anim Mode
Am_Picker — Edit Mode
Anim mode is what the shot artist sees: click a shape, its controls select; select a control in Maya, its shape lights up. No grid, no tool strip, nothing draggable. Press Alt+W to swap.
[ WHY IT WORKS ]
Freehand polygons, pen-tool Bézier outlines, presets from a library — or artwork you already have. Trace a concept drawing, or import an SVG and get one picker item per outline, curves intact.
Items store their controls without a namespace, so a single picker file drives any referenced instance of the character. Pointing it at the right one is a single dialog — not a rebuild.
The picker is a node inside your Maya file, so it travels with the shot. It can also be exported as a self-contained .ampkr package, images included, for sharing between scenes and artists.
An item can drive a Maya attribute directly: drag it as a slider for an IK/FK blend, click it as a toggle, or pop an enum for a space switch. Any item can also run your own Python or MEL.
[ WHO IT’S FOR ]
You were handed a picker. Open it, point it at your rig, and start selecting by clicking. Nothing to build and nothing to configure.
You build it. Draw shapes, bind controls, arrange and colour, and hand over something that survives being used every day.
Per-item Python and MEL, items that drive attributes instead of selecting, and an API for opening the window from your own tools.
One picker per character, stored in the scene, working across every referenced copy. No licence server, no seat count, no renewal.
[ INSTALL ]
No installer to run as administrator, no folders to move, no environment variables.
Downloads, the desktop, a network share — it does not matter. Nothing reads from where you left it.
Drop drag_n_drop_install.py into a Maya viewport and press Install. It writes into the shared AM_Tools module and registers itself so it is there at every launch.
It lands on whichever shelf you pick. Clicking it offers Anim Picker or Edit Picker. Removing Am_Picker later leaves your other AM tools exactly where they are.
Installing, building your first picker, every menu and every default key — written for the person using it, not for the code.
★ Free & MIT licensed
Version 1.0.0-beta.1 · 1.8 MB · Maya 2022–2026 on Windows, macOS and Linux. No account, no licence key, no payment — now or later.
We sent the download link to . It works for 7 days, on as many machines as you like.
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[ WHAT’S NEW ]
Am_Picker tells you when there is a new version, and what it added — combining the notes of every release you skipped, not only the newest.
[ FAQ ]
Yes, and there isn’t one. Am_Picker is MIT licensed: use it on paid work, change it, pass it on — just keep the notice, and expect no warranty. There is no paid tier, no seat count and no licence server. If it saves you time and you want to support the work, there is a donation link, and that is the entire business model.
Maya 2022 through 2026, on Windows, macOS and Linux. Both PySide2 and PySide6 are supported — whichever your Maya ships — and it runs on whatever Python that build embeds, 2.7 and 3.x alike.
No. Both are optional. NumPy speeds up image tracing, colour grading and the colour wheel; OpenCV adds extra edge-detection modes to Image to Picker. Every feature degrades gracefully without them — nothing disappears, some things are just slower.
Inside your Maya scene, as a node — AmPicker_data1 by default — so it travels with the shot and nothing needs re-linking. A scene can hold several, one per character. You can also export a picker as a self-contained .ampkr package with its images included, for sharing between scenes and artists; a picker that only ever lives in one scene never needs one.
Yes — that is the point of how binding works. Items store their controls without a namespace, so a single picker file drives any referenced instance of the character. Pointing it at the right one is a single Set Namespace dialog.
Almost every editing tool is gated behind Edit mode — gizmos, drawing, alignment, grids, the outliner, the channel box and the whole Window menu. In Anim mode there is no tool strip and nothing is draggable, so clicking around only ever selects.
Am_Picker checks once a day in the background, off the main thread, and stays silent when there is nothing to say or no connection. When there is an update it shows what changed across every release you skipped — not just the newest. You can skip a version or ask to be reminded later, and the decision sticks. There is also a Stable / Beta channel switch; beta receives prereleases and stable releases both.
Two honest reasons: so the download link belongs to you rather than being a permanent public file URL, and so we can reach you if a release turns out to break something. You get one message now and release notes when there is a release. No account is created, and you can unsubscribe from any message.
Help → Report a Bug or Suggestion inside the tool opens the contact form on this site. The About window has a one-click copy of the build information worth attaching — version, channel, Maya, Python, Qt and install path.