5-Star Anim Lab

Overview

5-Star Anim Lab is a standalone Windows app from 5-Star Films for GTA V modders, FiveM creators and machinima animators. It imports, poses, keyframes, edits and exports character animations in the native .ycd format, so a finished animation goes straight into GTA V without a round trip through another program.

It is made for the GTA animation workflow: you pose bones the way you would in a 3D suite, watch the result on bundled GTA-skeleton characters, and export a dictionary the game will load.

Features

• Import. Built-in .ycd and .xml support with drag and drop, so GTA animations come in without a conversion step.
• Preview in real time. Bundled GTA-skeleton MP Male and MP Female characters play the animation as it really runs, and included idle, walk, run and sprint presets give you a starting point.
• Pose and keyframe. Click-select bones, move and rotate with axis locks, and keyframe with a single key. Animate in FK or IK, with pole targets, hand and foot pinning, and root and pelvis control.
• Edit. Auto-key, copy, cut, paste, box-select, undo and redo, plus a timeline, a graph and curve editor, and an audio timeline for syncing to sound.
• Switch between IK and FK. Motion is baked across the switch so the animation is preserved.
• Retarget mocap. Drop in a Mixamo or ActorCore FBX and it is retargeted onto the GTA skeleton, with the rest pose and bone mapping detected for you.
• Stage a scene. Up to seven rigs at once, any of them swappable to a Sync Dummy, each placed and rotated independently.
• Light the shot. Fifteen lighting presets, including Studio, Daylight, Golden Hour, Night and Neon.
• Stay organized. Autosave, recent projects, and double-click to open a project file.

Availability

5-Star Anim Lab is $5 and is hosted on Gumroad, where the download, the presets and any updates all live. It currently holds a 4.8 out of 5 rating from five ratings there. Nothing is sold on this site: the app page links straight to the Gumroad listing.