Battle Axe Rubberhose -

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Stay flexible. Rig dangerously.

With Battle Axe Rubberhose, rig anything in After Effects. Now with more bends and connections and speed and nesting and possibilities.

Build bendy limbs with a click and set up full characters faster than you ever thought would be possible with Rubberhose.

A bendy line when you need it with visual and bend styling and control over pins and layers for total creative flexibility. Think less about rigging and more about character.

What’s new in Rubberhose 3?

First released in 2015, Rubberhose v1 forever changed how animators work and think about characters.

A new set of concepts have been introduced in v3, but like always, built on the foundation of simplicity.

Animation is hard work, so enjoy the process.

Nonlinear character creation

Animating a character can unlock new ideas for design and Rubberhose was built for exploration. Everything is adjustable and you will never have to trash keyframes because of a new rigging idea.

Stay flexible.

Design

Build a simple rig with a click or by drawing a path. Style limbs with the collection of powerful presets and create your own.

Add additional bend points anywhere along a hose to create S-curves, fingers, tails, dog legs, strings, octopi, or just about anything else your mind can conjure.

Rig

Connect art layers with a new and intuitive hose-parenting and stretchy-bones system to combine anything from small details to complex shapes. Add a whole new level of design freedom to characters.

Or non-characters. Everything is connected and now layers can be too.

Walk cycle and Recycle

Reuse a single precomped rig multiple times and leverage the power of After Effects Essential Properties.

Set new keyframes, add styling variation, and reuse animation inside the precomp to speed up production.

Personal Stylist

Style presets have been a part of Rubberhose since v2, but never as capable of such limitless potential. Bend presets make customizing the way a hose works even more flexible.

What is it?

Rigged animation, but simplified. And far from simplistic.
A powerful set of tools to connect characters or shapes or anything.
An animation system that works like how you imagined animating would be before you learned about keyframes.
The freedom to let animation inform design in a non-linear interplay of inspiration that never locks you into decisions made by your past self. You are the master of your destiny.

What it’s not?

Mathematically perfect IK. Because IK usually looks like a robot. Of course, you are free to dial in the realism to your taste if you’re into robots. Everyone loves robots.
The subject of a heavy manual requiring late-night reading in preparation to start using it. There is a help page, but you probably won’t need it. Simple is kind of our thing.
A rigging solution for every conceivable setup. Rubberhose does a few things incredibly well, and it plays well with other systems like Duik and Limber.

Learning

Rubberhose 3 is pretty intuitive, but it does have a bunch of buttons and features. So reference the Manual often.

USER GUIDE

Learn by watching

Continue learning from the industry’s best and get started on the fundamentals of creating walks. Then go out and pick up the Animator’s Survival Kit and say goodbye to your social life.

Rubberhose 3.2.0

Apr 8, 2024

Added

Multi-bend hose creation (hold SHIFT)
Simple bend option for quicker renders with fewer options (more like a lightning fast RH2)

Changed

Removed 3 from the extension name

Fixed

Korean language bug preventing the panel from loading correctly

Rubberhose 3.1.0

Sep 28, 2023

Changed

New hose rigs will be set to 100% Realism for Path to Hose, RubberRig, and RubberPin for more faithful reproduction of the design. New Rubberhose will still respect the Realism setting.

Fixed

Computers being logged multiple times when on a VPN or corporate network.

Rubberhose 3.1.0

Aug 10, 2023
From the Battle Axe Discord channel:

We are happy to release Rubberhose 3.1.0: with the return of RubberPins. We had hoped to include it in 3.0.0, but just couldn’t figure out a way to make it feel right. And now it does. Thanks to @Jake Bartlett for figuring out a way to parent pins to a hose via Voids, and ushering in a new interpretation of puppet pinning.

Update available at http://license.battleaxe.co/ or download from the blue link at the bottom of the RH3 panel/

Rubberhose 3.1

3.1.0

Released: 2023-08-10

Added

RubberPin build system
Korean language

Fix

Essential properties inside of groups would break EGP to Rig
Reduce warning when opening finder
SHIFT key was unresponsive in RubberRig
Support preference when non-separated dimensions

3.0.2

Released: 2023-05-31

Fix

Remove apostrophes from hose names to avoid expression error
result[name].sort is undefined error
Expression errors when controller parent scale [0,0]
Bend Crease style expression error
Support for scaling styles:
- Basic outline
- Bend crease
- Fancy pants
- Noodle
- Noodle+

3.0.0

Released: 2023-05-22

# Initial release

Is this purchase a subscription?

No. Rubberhose 3 is a one-time purchase. Updates to version 3 point updates will be available for free for v3 license holders.

I already purchased Rubberhose 2

If you purchased Rubberhose 2, after Nov 1, 2022, you are eligible for a free update to version 3.

If you purchased Rubberhose 2, after May 1, 2020, you are eligible for a 20% discount on version 3.

Do my teammates need to buy Rubberhose 3?

Rubberhose creates rigging elements with native AE functionality. Purchasing a seat of Rubberhose 3 is not required to render a comp or edit keyframes, but is required to create new rigs and do complex management of hoses.

What happened to the controller rotation?

Animate with RubberRig in BattleAxe Rubberhose

Jake in Motion shows you how to use the RubberRig feature in BattleAxe RubberHose, which allows artists to work with raster rigs.

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RubberRig Workflow with Battle Axe RubberHose 2

Jake in Motion shows you a rigging technique for Character Animation in After Effects. He uses Battle Axe RubberHose 2. Super easy!

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v3.x Battle Axe Rubberhose

Stay flexible. Rig dangerously.

What’s new in Rubberhose 3?