Dear Akeytsu fans, dear fellow animators and riggers,

First of all, thank you so much for your patience and understanding during these long months of silence. The year 2021 has been extremely hard for Nukeygara and the difficulties encountered forced us to find a buyer. 2021 was for us an incessant fight.

Akeytsu has never been a software like the others. It’s a passion product combining strong identity and unique workflow whose singularity must be preserved, whose difference has all its place into CG market. It’s inside an environment fully in harmony with my ideals, a school, symbol of transmission and bearer of many values, that Akeytsu will follow its route. I have the pleasure to announce you that Game Sup, video game school based in Lyon (France) is now its benevolent home.

A big news goes along with this new stage as the current Akeytsu version being soon perpetual and free for everyone: schools and students, of course, but also Indies and studios. Concerning Steam, a free version is planned too. That will enable our software to finally spread without any break and offer the visibility it deserves. And on account of its current capacities and impressive accessibility it will interests without any doubt a lot of developers. The ways and means of Akeytsu’s future are not yet completely set but, after a necessary transition time, Game Sup’s goal is to pursue the development into the direction I initiated.

You know how much Akeytsu is important to me and all the energy I involved to make it exist and grow. So, thank you all for your support and warm messages during all these years, showing how much its accessibility and so singular philosophy (artistic & manual centric) mean every day to you. Thank you for your curiosity. Thank you for being able to see all the breadth, freshness and depth offered by this software. Thank you, last, to appreciate the passion behind this product because it is, without any doubt, its motor.

Nukeygara doesn’t exist anymore but a new page is opening for Akeytsu with Game Sup, different but promising and I intend to be part of it.

Thanks for continuing to support Akeytsu because it is here more than ever, faithful to its DNA and its principles and soon available to everyone. Thanks to my team and to all the people that assisted me during the first part of this amazing adventure.

Stay tuned for the rest,
Aurélien Charrier
(Note: For the ones who can’t wait the future release of free Akeytsu (Windows only), please do not hesitate to take Learn licenses on our website. Thx)

We deliver a first pass on the Space Switching ie. Dynamic Parenting constraint for akeytsu Indie 2021 right on time before Christmas. This opens up tons of possibilities to create convincing animations featuring a character and an object.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1468090/akeytsu_Indie_2021/

This comes together with a unified timeline experience to facilitate multi-character animation following up on the addition of Cameras in our previous release.

We also updated our akeyboy test character model to give him a modern look and illustrate the use of Space Switching. Sky Surfer also gets a board and a gun that you can play around with as well as a new Sky Jump animation showcasing Space Switching.

Read more about our release highlights on our website. Changelist follows.

Note: This release is only available for PC users for now.

• [Picker] Click chain icon opposite to joint names to define them as possible space
  
• [Mixer] Create Space Switching layer
  
• When creating a key on a Space Switching layer, prompts a dialog to define new space

• Time cursor now keeps same time code when browsing through animations/characters
  
• Time cursors now stops/plays without resetting to previously selected key

• [Timebar and MixerDialog] Changed and unified stacker colors
  
• [Test Characters] Akeyboy V2 with new modelization, basic face rig and space-switched skateboard
  
• [Test Characters] Added gun and flying board props and Sky Jump animation to Sky Surfer

Here is the opportunity to get akeytsu at discounted price udring the summer. The sales end on July 8th 2021 10:00 AM PST time.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1468090


This offer is only available for owners of akeytsu Indie 2020.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1497320/akeytsu_Indie_2021_Upgrade/


This offer is only available for owners of akeytsu Indie 2017.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125100/akeytsu_Indie_2020/

Have a great summer everyone !

Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! Santa Keytsu comes back yet again this year to give you the opportunity to purchase or upgrade akeytsu at a sweet price during Winter Sales. The special offers last until January 5th 2021 10:05 AM PST time.

If you've ever considered getting your hands on our accessible and intuitive 3D animation toolset, now is a good time !



For newcomers, you get 40% OFF:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1468090

For akeytsu Indie 2020 owners, you get 40% OFF on the loyalty offer:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1497320/akeytsu_Indie_2021_Upgrade/


For owners of akeytsu Indie 2017, you get 60% OFF on the loyalty offer available on this page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125100/akeytsu_Indie_2020/


We have more gifts for you with two revamped models that were introduced in 2020.3 and made available in akeytsu Indie 2020 & 2021.



Akeyboy V2 got a considerable update. We've remodelled the character with a fresh and modern look. We have included low-resolution textures in our installation package to keep things light but PBR versions can be downloaded from our Free Characters page. Looking at the rig, we have reworked the position of joints and pivot orientations for the skeleton and reskinned everything for improved Move, Rotate and Scale transforms and added a basic facial rig that you can draw your inspiration from for your own cahracters. Taking advantage of Space Switching ie. Dynamic Parenting we have also updated animations with skateboard to show you how it should be done.



On the other hand Sky Surfer is getting new toys for Christmas and can now play with a skysurf and a gun. A Jump Trick sample animation is provided here too so that you can see how to correctly build an animation with a Space Switching layer. PBR textures are downloadable from our Free Characters page.


2020 was again a year filled with many updates to turn aeytsu into the ideal 3D animation tool for Indies and mid-sized studios. In a nutshell, updates included biped Auto Rig, Cameras, Retargeting, Screen Space, Sticky Aim, Space Switching ie. Dynamic Parenting, Audio support, FBX compatibility fixes, BVH importer and many quality-of-life improvements and enhancements to already-existing features.

If you'd like to read on what you have missed out this year, Release Highlight articles are listed below:

Read about 2020.1 Release Highlights
Read about 2020.2 Release Highlights
Read about 2020.3 Release Highlights


The whole Nukeygara team wishes you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. The team will get back at work in 2021 after much needed winter holidays.

Stay safe and healthy everyone, much is already in the works to let you animate even more in akeytsu next year !

We deliver a first pass on the Space Switching ie. Dynamic Parenting constraint for akeytsu Indie 2021 right on time before Christmas. This opens up tons of possibilities to create convincing animations featuring a character and an object.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1468090/akeytsu_Indie_2021/

This comes together with a unified timeline experience to facilitate multi-character animation following up on the addition of Cameras in our previous release.

We also updated our akeyboy test character model to give him a modern look and illustrate the use of Space Switching. Sky Surfer also gets a board and a gun that you can play around with as well as a new Sky Jump animation showcasing Space Switching.

Read more about our release highlights on our website. Changelist follows.

Note: This release is only available for PC users for now.

• [Picker] Click chain icon opposite to joint names to define them as possible space
  
• [Mixer] Create Space Switching layer
  
• When creating a key on a Space Switching layer, prompts a dialog to define new space

• Time cursor now keeps same time code when browsing through animations/characters
  
• Time cursors now stops/plays without resetting to previously selected key

• [Timebar and MixerDialog] Changed and unified stacker colors
  
• [Test Characters] Akeyboy V2 with new modelization, basic face rig and space-switched skateboard
  
• [Test Characters] Added gun and flying board props and Sky Jump animation to Sky Surfer

This year we set up a special offer for your to upgrade akeytsu at discounted price for the Black Friday week-end.

Don't miss out ! Our special offer ends December 1st 10 AM PST.


This is our biggest sales this year and you can take advantage as long as you already own akeytsu Indie 2017.

For akeytsu Indie 2017 owners, you can upgrade to akeytsu Indie 2020 at preferential price thanks to our loyalty offer. During Autumn sales this offer is discounted by 40% to show our goodwill to those who have been with us for a long time and let them enjoy another year of updates in 2020.

This not only gives you access to our latest 2020.2 release but also upcoming 2020.3 features as clarified in this forum post.

Head over here to take advantage of the discount NOW:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125100/akeytsu_Indie_2020/


If you missed our previous updates this year here is a quick catch-up: support for audio layers, biped Auto Rig, FBX importer/exporter improvements, added BVH importer, Cameras, Retargeting, Screen Space, Sticky Aim and many quality-of-life improvements and enhancements to the already-existing features.

Our last update of the year 2020.3 will bring Space Switching ie. Dynamic Parenting and other goodies.


More on 2020.2 Release Highlights here
Browse Release History here for the full notes

Hi all,

This post will attempt to clarify all questions related to the upcoming introduction of akeytsu Indie 2021 and the release of our last major update this year. Although things are not set in stone for 2021 and we have no definite roadmap for that year it will also touch on the main development areas, how we'll go about running this devs and perhaps most importantly for the community how we'll communicate on our progress.


We are currently all hands on deck to get version 2020.3 released by end of the month. Believe us when we say no time is spared to make this happen and it isn’t short of challenges.

Contrary to what was highlighted on the shop presentation page at some point it was decided that all 2020.3.X updates will be made available to akeytsu Indie 2020 users to reward early adopters for upgrading from akeytsu Indie 2017, ease the transition to an annual release and make up for what some, and for the right reasons, saw as a lack of proper communication on our side.

Feature-wise our priorities are to ship

• Space Switching (Dynamic Parenting) which will enable an object to change space across a single animation and will let you animate character props with a lot more ease by binding it to world or a joint of interest such as a given hand in the case of a weapon.
  
• What’s internally known at Nukeygara as Global IK which will provide you with an additional tool to better manage the behavior of a given IK-chain across multiple layers and let you decide whether IK should have priority over certain layers or the opposite.

Both these features are highly technical and require us, at a very low level in the code, to augment our engine with new concepts or protocols to keep akeytsu the way it is: simple and user-friendly. It's often hard to grasp but some of akeytsu most potent innovations are hidden under-the-hood so that the user doesn't have to worry about it

This requires us to consider a great number of use cases so that everything works like a charm. For this reason we've decided to postpone some of what was announced on the roadmap to a later date namely Looker, Roll joints and Meta-controllers (although no one really knows what these are at this point because it's our little secret).

Some of these may or may not come by end of this year at which point they'll be patched as a 2020.3.X update. We want to reassure you that we are not holding on to anything that’s ready for obscure reasons. If anything we are actually developing "just-in-time” to make the most of it. And this of course, as some of you know, can be a lot of stress on a dev team.


The akeytsu Indie 2021 product will be released on Steam together with 2020.3 with exactly the same price as akeytsu Indie 2017 (now delisted) and 2020. This product will be patched with 2021 updates until akeytsu Indie 2022 releases end of next year.

A loyalty offer to upgrade from akeytsu Indie 2020 to 2021 will be put in place as soon as possible. Please bear in mind that COVID-19 has slowed down operations for a lot of people including Valve so this may take a bit of time but will be arranged eventually.

More importantly there will be opportunities to upgrade from 2017 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021 at discounted price during either or both Autumn and Winter sales depending on how fast all can be set up. There will be no direct bridge from akeytsu Indie 2017 to 2020. I'm not at liberty to tell discount rates and exact dates for these sales according to Valve policies but be on the look-out for them. Every user counts and we want you guys to embark on a journey with us. Patience is a virtue and those who bear with us will be rewarded.

In terms of content, our roadmap for 2021 will be available by beginning of next year and while it's too soon to get into specifics I can already tell you a little more about what's currently brewing in our minds. Obviously one thing we want to offer is more “smart” constraints just like we have for IK and RF. We want to improve in-app discovery and accessibility to reduce friction when switching over from another app. We'd also like to facilitate the import and tweaking of mocap assets in akeytsu while staying true to our keyframing spirit. Finally we want to add more interface options to make akeytsu even more relevant for professional use.

Feel free to discuss these in the comment as we ARE reading everything and hear your concerns although we don't always answer.


We have also noticed that the way we built our roadmap did not let us have enough maneuverability with development and created frustrations among users for wrong reasons. While we absolutely want to bring in more into akeytsu we need to be able to pilot either time, content or quality. Quality is not an option for us as our basic promise is – simply put – “to do it better”. The way we wrote our 2020 roadmap was interpreted as a full-on commitment on both content and time.

From that point onwards we kind of brought doom on ourselves for the whole of 2020 as it always turns out to be a steeper slope to climb when you start climbing. We are still proud and satisfied, in that turn of event, to be in a position where we should deliver 80% of what was initially written with 2020.3 on a modest team (of remarkably skilled and passionate people) compared to other big players. Of course, we'll keep on aiming for 100% and will get better at it with more time and experience.

We understand that people are expecting a lot of akeytsu. If anything that's kind of a good sign. We also appreciate that one needs visibility if one is going to purchase based on the promise of future updates. We'll still plan for several major updates next year that we will let you know about in the form of a roadmap as soon as things are better shaped out.

That being said and in order to keep things manageable internally, we’ll change the way we design our roadmap along with production methods. For each update package, our 2021 roadmap will sanctify one Feature that will be our absolute priority. And while we’ll still have internal launch windows for each version, we will refrain from sharing them so as to not be deceptive when we have to postpone by a week or so to make sure it's ready.

Finally there will be a list of Feature Candidates that will be shared along Priority Features. These Feature Candidates may or may not find their way into akeytsu Indie 2021 depending on production impediments BUT we'll aim for roughly 70% of it to be delivered before akeytsu Indie 2021 launches on Steam.


We think that this is the best compromise we can offer and we hope that you'll find it agreeable. Feel free to let us know your thoughts and list what you’d like to see put as Priority Features or Feature Candidates. More than anything we hope that you'll be willing to keep on animating in akeytsu and help us build a tool that will unleash both aspiring and savvy animators. Feel free to share

We wish you the best in these very challenging times,
- The Nukeygara Team

No trick in that treat. We have a terrific offer for Halloween.


Akeytsu Indie 2017 owners can upgrade to akeytsu Indie 2020 for $99 until next Monday ! The offer ends November 2nd 10:05 PST.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125100/akeytsu_Indie_2020/

During Halloween the $129 akeytsu Indie 2020 upgrade is discounted at $90. Get it NOW !


With 2020.2 we expanded our toolset with Cameras, Retargeting, Improved Biped Auto-Rig and other noticeable quality-of-life improvements that make akeytsu a 3D animation powerhouse for Indies and mid-sized studios. Read more about it here !


In case you missed out you can also check the full Release History. More is on the way for 2021 with 3 major releases to be revealed soon !

-The Nukeygara Team

No trick in that treat. We have a terrific offer for Halloween.


Akeytsu Indie 2020 is discounted by 30% until next Monday ! The offer ends November 2nd 10:05 PST. During Halloween akeytsu Indie 2020 is discounted at $239 $167.3. Get it NOW !

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125100/akeytsu_Indie_2020/



With 2020.2 we expanded our toolset with Cameras, Retargeting, Improved Biped Auto-Rig and other noticeable quality-of-life improvements that make akeytsu a 3D animation powerhouse for Indies and mid-sized studios. Read more about it here !


In case you missed out you can also check the full Release History. More is on the way for 2021 with 3 major releases to be revealed soon !

-The Nukeygara Team

Time to break down what happened this year, put on a happy face and decorate with festive colors for Winter holidays.

This year's December release includes blendshape controls, Tween Machine and UI options. Read more about our release highlights on {LINK REMOVED}our website. Changelist follows.

Note: This release is only available for PC for now. macOS update will be available in 2020

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125100/akeytsu_Indie_2020/

Features

• Blendshapes
  
• Tween Machine
  
• [UI] Color Picker
  
• [UI] Tree and AnimBank window options (freeze, hovering, bottom-right docking)

Bug fixes

• [Reverse Foot] No more "NaN" (Not a Number) displayed in the Transform panel when a joint constrained by a RF controller is set to 0 scale
  
• [Licensing] Right-click/Paste is now allowed when entering license number
  
• Joints are not invisible anymore in Front and Back views
  
• Other minor bug fixes