AZ Clock Auto Rig

What it does

A clock is a body, two or three hands and often a pendulum. AZ Clock Auto Rig turns those meshes into a finished rig: every part is rigidly skinned to its own joint, gets a control, and a time expression turns the hands and swings the pendulum from the timeline.

Every part is optional. Build a wall clock without a pendulum, a lone pendulum, hands without a body, a stopwatch with only a second hand. The rig only gets the controls and settings of the parts that are really there.

Workflow

1. Pose the model at 12:00: both hands pointing up, the pendulum hanging straight down. That pose becomes the zero pose.
2. Put each moving part's pivot on its axis: the hands on the clock axis, the pendulum on its suspension point. Parts turn around their local Z axis.
3. On the Build tab, select body, hour, minute, [second], pendulum in that order and press Fill From Selection, or use Pick per field. Clear any part you do not need.
4. Dial, glass or other case pieces outside the body hierarchy go to Extra body geometry.
5. Press BUILD RIG + SKIN. With Verify vertex motion on, the tool moves every control and checks the real vertex positions; a failed check rolls the whole build back.
6. On the Settings tab set the start time, the speed, the tick and the pendulum, then press Play.

The window

Rig

Every AZ Clock rig in the scene, found through its source links, plus <New Rig> for a clean form.

Build

Body, Hour, Minute, Second and Pendulum, each with Pick and Clear; Fill From Selection; Extra body geometry; BUILD RIG + SKIN with vertex-motion verification.

Settings

Live attributes of MASTER_CTRL, only those the rig has: start time and Clock Speed with 1x / 60x / 600x presets and Set From System Clock, ticking or sweeping hands, second-hand motion and tick step, pendulum amplitude, speed and phase, start frame, global scale and control display.

Tools

Select any control, FPS check with Update FPS, Check Rig with a log.

Footer

Select MASTER, Play / Stop, Check, Delete.

How it works

• Rigid skin, not constraints. MASTER_CTRL drives body_CTRL, which drives the root joint the case is skinned to. Each hand and the pendulum is skinned 100% to its own joint, turned by an AUTO group plus its control.
• A stateless expression. The angles are computed from the frame number alone, so scrubbing, playblasts and batch renders always agree. Constant Clock Speed is a timeline multiplier; for variable speed, key Clock Time Offset or the hands' own Rotate Z.
• Controls that read at 12:00. Hands get nested arrows of different length, width and colour on separate depth layers, so they never share a line when they overlap. MASTER_CTRL lies flat at the world origin and moves, rotates and scales the whole asset.
• Safe on existing scenes. Original names, parents, materials and history stay. Unrelated skins and animation are never touched; a rebuild replaces only this tool's own rig.
• No plug-ins. Joints, skinClusters, curves and one expression: the rig opens in any Maya without AZ Tools installed.

Good to know

• Clock Speed starts at 1, real time: the hour and minute hands barely move. Set 60 or 600 for a visible preview.
• Scene FPS is stored at build time. After changing the frame rate, press Update FPS.
• Meshes must be unskinned, not referenced or instanced, and free of incoming transform connections. The build stops and says what is in the way.
• Turning an automation off returns its contribution to zero; it is not a pause button.

Availability

AZ Clock Auto Rig is a free product of AZ Tools, in the Rigging category: every registered account can install it from the AZ Tools Manager. The rig itself is plain Maya, so scenes open anywhere.