focus on Alexander Sokolov

Alexander Sokolov

Is a russian previz artist who is my feature artist this time around.

He most recently worked on "Wanted" which starred the lovely lips of Angelina Jollie.

In addition to his site which is packed with great stills, there's also an old blog with a couple of interesting production stills.
Alexander Sokolov’s is a
3D Artist with production experience in television, аnd feature films. Specializing in Layout, Camera work and Vehicles animation. Alexander Sokolov’s Specialties:
Software: 3ds max, Vray, Adobe After Effects, Photshop, Illustrator, Premiere, PFTrack, SynthEye. Skillset: Planing, Layout, Vehicles animation, Dynamics, Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering Alexander Sokolov’s has Experience
as Previz/VFX Artist, Supervisor
Bazelevs (Motion Pictures and Film industry) Jan 2005 — June 2008 (3 years 6 months)
Wanted (2008) - dir. Timur Bekmambetov Ironiya sudby. Prodolzhenie (2007) - dir. Timur Bekmambetov Dnevnoy dozor (2006) - dir. Timur Bekmambetov

Action

Hi all, in between drinks and eating way too much, I thought it might be of interest to you to have a look at this action sequence I built earlier. The whole clip is done in the timeline, it does continue with the girl kicking the guys butt, but that part was a little buggy.

Check out the project file if you get a moment. It was done on v4.

Third Floor Reel

OMG I loved Cloverfield. 1 oscar coming up.

Merry Christmas

Snake prop!

check this out anyone know about the assets used in this official antics clip. In particular the snake at 28sec. Also I'd like to tip my hat to the artist who did the helicopter blasts! very cool.

NEW FORUM UPDATE

The new forum is coming along nicely, there has been some real progress in the character development area. Also there's an important petition for pro users to check out. The forum is very open and becoming a great resource for veteran and newbies alike.
please take some time to check it out.
Also news is that the new offical characters have now been released and are available to download on the antics site.
If your are thinking of contributing to the discussion on Project Talent, the forum topic dedicated to character building, (both kinds), then check out this tut on skinning.
This latest test is from Quidam to Max to Antics.

make 'em jump

The library of character animations available within Antics is very large no doubt. But there are times when you need to have your character do things which are a little more custom built. Creating poses and blending to them will work quite nicely, as will importing .bvh animations (if you can find what you’re after).
But there are ways to set up your scene to get Antics to solve these custom moves for you. If you can get Antics do to do it realtime, then the process can be much faster.
For example, say I wanted my guy to run, then jump over something. Firstly, I set the walk (in properties:general:walks) to a run animation namely male_run.k3d so now wherever I direct him to go, he’ll get there real fast. Then I get him to perform the jump animation Jump_1.k3d
Ok so far so good. He runs, he jumps. Brilliant. But of course it’s very very unlikely the jump will take him the exact distance you have in mind, I mean, we could just let him drop into that lava pit, or croc pit or whatever he’s meant to be jumping over. So. Rather than go off in search of longer jumps, what if we move the room to make up the distance? If you setup a move on the room with him just standing there, you’ll see him move with the floor. So we simply setup the floor to move at the precise moment he leaves the ground, and have it stop moving just as he is to land.
Try it, it’s fun. In my example clip I moved the floor vertically as well, to get the guy to jump down to a lower level. Oh and then I added a little bounce off move using another jump and floor/combo.

As you can see I also changed the guy into a girl, it’s like a kill bill, bourne identity, bond thing now!
Moving the room also solved another problem I encountered a little while back. The idea was to have a whole bunch of shooters aim for the one target which was moving. The shooting animations in Antics are cool so I wanted to use those. Plus they work with the props! The solution was to put each shooter on a little room about the size of a floor mat. Then have these rooms hooked up to a cam. The room is linked to the cam.
The cameras (one for each room) are then told to target the target, (if you get what I mean). This way the target can move and the shooters won’t miss! You can get the cameras to look where ever you want, just make the target at ground plane level.
T.
(part 2 here)

Making the Fairy fly - Sketchup tip

In one of the packs was an angel, I thought it might be fun to go through the steps needed to make the wings of the fairy move. It’s possible to use the tab key to allow selection each wing, set a pose or two and then get the fairy to blend from one pose to another, but, I thought you might want to have a little more control, plus this way you can have your fairy free to do other stuff. (Like walking.)
For this you’ll need some eggs, a little flour and an inclinometer. (just kidding you won’t need the eggs!) Actually this process works best with photoshop and sketchup and of course Antics. We’ll be plucking the wings off our fairy and then sticking a couple of new ones on. So place the fairy on a new room. To remove the original wings, right click the fairy, choose textures then right click on the wings.ksh texture in the list, to select edit. Under the colour tab you can set the transparency to 100%. So now you have a wingless fairy. Not bad looking as a female character, bar the ears and the ridges in her back!.
The next step is to set up for creating or own wings. We do this by importing a new fairy and positioning her so that all we see is the wing sticking up through the floor like a wing shaped floor mat. (Turn off the snap to position,rotation option.) Line your camera up to this wing and when it’s large in frame save out a single frame. This’ll be what we use the create and texture our new wing. Your wing should look like this…….
Using sketchup, import the wing still frame (as an image) so that we can trace the shape. I found a Bezier Curves plugin for Sketchup which made the job much easier. Once you have a completed the outline of your wing, you can import the stillframe again (as a texture) and apply it to the surface. A little scale/rotate/position fiddle and we are all set. Remember to do the other side as well. Ok now save the .skp file as wing.skp then back into Antics and jump into the file/import and select your wing.skp
All good. So now you should have a wing and a wingless fairy. At this point I saved the Antics project. When you do this you can access the texture map being applied to the new wing so that you can set the look of it to match the original wing texture map. These maps are found in a “maps” folder within the saved project. The original wing was mapped with a fairy_hair_wings.tga file. If you want the new wing to be identical to the original you’ll need to use photoshop to match the RGBA channels. Otherwise you could set the transparency value so the new wing has the look you want.
The next part of the process is to get the new wings flapping. As usual, I’ve gone for the old, “use a camera to create a motion curve” trick. If you haven’t heard of it before, it goes something like this. Put a freecam in the spot where you want an animatable axis of some sort. Link the asset/prop to this freecam. Now use the pan, tilt and dolly values to drive your prop. In this way the values are recorded via the camera’s motion curve, and therefore editable. For the wings, make sure the pivot point is in the right spot, then link each wing to it’s own freecam, which you put, right on the ridge on the back of our wingless fairy. It’s useful to have two viewports open. One is the Mastercam, framed so you can see the whole wing, (say from the top). The other viewport (which you make active) is to see what the freecam is looking at. When you pan left, the asset will swivel to the left. Make sure the freecamera animation is recorded in the timeline.
Once you’ve got your cameras doing their thing, link them to your fairy. Now she is free to be directed, and the wings will perform on cue.
Have fun.
T.

speed utility

Trolling through the old forum I found this speed utility created by Col Klink.

Using Machinima to teach film

Using machinima to teach film
Machinima has the potential to be a powerful tool for teaching film-making techniques. It has several advantages over existing 3D animation technologies such as Max or Maya. The film-maker doesn’t need any knowledge of 3D animation techniques – controlling the characters is as easy as playing a computer game. The virtual world is “live” - in other words, everything takes place in real time, and so it feels more like directing on a real set.

The disadvantage of using machinima is ......................
(article continued in comments section)
 
----------------------
Thanks go to
Matt Kelland, Short Fuze, for writing this article.

New emotional characters

Here's a sneak preview of the upcoming new emotional characters.
Keep a lookat at the Antics download page.

New forum - Antics

here
Invitations to JRay, Colonel Klink, Ricky, InfoCentral, AnticsFife, afterThought, dazza101, klate & Michael and to all current and future users of Antics. All are welcome. Learners especially welcome.

to be honest - the artist formerly known as Antics

There's a lot to be said for the Gordon Ramsey way of expressing yourself. Shooting straight from the hip and getting on with it. I started as a beta tester for v2 and have been fortunate to have been commissioned a number of times for various demo pieces. Like a couple of other select few, I was asked to join the moderating team on the official forum and contribute to the official blog. So it certainly surprised me with the nov 28 news and now with the closure of the web site/forum. (F**K!) Like many others I have invested way too much time in getting across the product to just let it slide. When I setup my little previz shop under the name AMMO PREVIZ, I thought I had identified a future market. The concept was "AMMO" : to provide ammunition to the previz creator. I choose Antics at that point as it was the only one I felt suited my creative and 3d skill set. Even with the current owners orphaning the child, I can see plently of growth possible. This one product is in use by around 20,000 people. The best solution available to us all is one which takes into account the most popular features. Without taking away any credit for the artists formerly know as Antics developers, the product evolved in part as a result of our community feedback. So we do owe it to ourselves to keep the momentum going. So lets take the batton, stir the pot and work on that F***ng recipe. Please leave your mark for what worked best for you, in the comments section.

Keeping the Blog afloat.

Fellow survivors, feel free to use this forum ,or use the shout box on this blog, or just post comments as you wish. If any one is keen enough to help with posts etc, let me know.
Here to help.
T

lights are on, nobody's home - Moviestorm anyone?

The Antics site is closed. For some registered users, you can continue to download the 1.1 gb content file as well as the v5 installer.If you are having logon trouble, perhaps try brad
or support
I am wondering about v5.1 and reported new emotion characters.

Here's hoping Matt K or David B (Moviestorm) will shed some light as our crew of 20,000 decide whether to sail on or jump ship......I can hear the band is still playing.......lovely music......nice night for a cruise... pity it's so cold out.....hmmmmm what's that lump of ice ahead.
T.

Indiana Clone

thanks to afterthought for finding these iclone examples.

Will the last one to leave please turn off the lights!

Well last day for download of v5! (sad, but maybe there'll be an unofficial link out there) .....
The good news is there's a link for the content library now!
download content
Still no news on V5.1 and those extra emotion characters!
I noticed there are still new comers on the forum! Wow seems wacko that a product is being phased out whilst the customer base is growing!
If anyone wants to share how they have been going with alternative programs I'd be interested.

JRAY posted this final wishlist on the forum
Antics3D is ceasing development of the software, but if someone out there is looking to create the next best thing in RTR / Pre-viz, these are my top suggestions of which direction I'd like to see the field move in (considering Antics3d's feature set as the base). FIXES OR NECESSITIES:
-Off-line Help File
-Rigging specs for Emotional Characters (or more Emotional Characters)
-Accurate BVH animation importWISHES:
-A "Replace" object command-Move Main Camera to this View command-Color Coded Toolbars (i.e. "Direct" is red, "Camera" is blue etc..)-U/V or other coordinate control for Textures
-Keyframeable Textures
-AVI Textures
-Keyframeable Object Movements
-Object Clipping-Add Custom Content to Content Viewer
-Depth of Field Control-Automaton Characters and Traffic
-Automated Chase, Follow, and Fight scripts
-An Automated Environment Engine
-A Physics Engine
-A Particle Engine
-Hi-fidelity Stereo Positional Audio
-A variety of 3D geometry importers and exporters
-Camera Track Exporters
-Text (xml) based user editable files for everything including takes
-Integrated Video (or Macro) Tutorials
-A character rigging converter workshop for mocap data
-The ability to split animations (waist up and pelvis down)
-Recordable game style real time control of vehicles, characters and cameras (a la Machinimation)
-Multi-actor real time character controls
I know it's a lot of stuff, but many game engines already utilize the majority of these. I'm sure you have your own ideas, post them here and hopefully the author(s) of future machinima - rtr 3d software will have a single post to reference.

----------------------------------
I suppose Iclone scores highest on this list. I haven't checked out the new v but the cam control was a definate dud on the prior v. Also the poly count was quite low.

If I had the time I'd think an engine like that in Half-life 2 would probably be able to be kitted up to get us there. Maybe we should get across those modders, I know that community is about the size of a small country! What's happening with Z-Viz?
I'm still thinking the Antics toolkit is looking good for a good while yet. Good.


Finally, Please ... a moment of silence for the victims in Mumbai and Afghanistan.

What's new in Google SketchUp 7

tree plugin for sketchup

natasha hurt.mov

check out filmwerx77 's clip, a like the bearded baby!

Quidam the "Holy Grail"

I've started to get stuck into working on a pipeline for custom character creation. I've now got acess to 3ds so I can try out some modding of the sample character supplied by Antics. The Plug-in "Antics exporter" worked nicely from Max to Antics. The main tip is to name your root node "pelvis". I'm no max expert but I was able to get in and play with the mesh to make the guy have a fat tummy or a big head.(bit like some people I know!)

As for building my own character, I was able to create a biped in Max which exported into Antics quite well, (although the eyes will require a node each.) My next step is to bring in a character mesh from say Quidam or Poser and skin the Biped skeleton. Better still would be to try a fully rigged character imported into Max. I remember going down the Poser road a while ago and I ran into a deadend with the skeleton being too different from the max biped structure. (and not knowing enough to fix it)

Although Deep Exploration do have a poser to max solution now.

I see Quidam have a max exporter and it'd be good to get hold of a 3ds converted file from someone to try this out.

I'll let you know....

please let me know if anyone out there is having as much fun as I am.

DVD of ANTICS ASSETS.

Recently I emailed Brad/Gary about this same idea, that is, a dvd of all the content.....
here's a question by infocentral on the forum which is along the same lines

He writes"I was just thinking that it would be a win-win situation, providing $$$ for Antics and at the same time helping out the Antics community, if with the upcoming 5.1 update they put all the content and tutorials on a dvd for purchase. Of course not to be priced gouged either. There also should be a big price difference between the Pro users who already own all the assests and the Home user who needed to purchase it."

It could also include other files/documents to aid the community.
Comments welcome.

9/11 bits

Here's some response from the media about Antics' news

press and a nice review prior to 9/11

Def-con One (Antics 3d)

Now this is how you respond to the latest news from anticsville!.... Simply great work, love the atmosphere...

Survival Guide

I agree with Colonel Klink -
"If the 3DS Max examples for set pieces such as vehicles (autos, boats, planes, helicopters), characters with the emotions, door and window animations, etc, I'm sure there are talented people within the Antics3D community that could create new content.
As a 3D modeler who has made content for a couple of games, and contracted to create models for a commercial 3D application, I had considered purchasing Iclone before buying Antics3D. What endeared me to Iclone was that I could create content to give away or sell.
Now if people at Antics could provide the necessary examples as mentioned above I am willing work with folks who wish to keep Antics alive.
While I accept there would be no improvements to Antics apart from bug issues, as Antics have stated, the application as it stands can still produce decent animated video. But if we can add more diversified content, particularly characters, then I'm sure we can continue using Antics3D for years to come.
For the Antics3D community to survive then I suggest that:1. Antics3D make available the necessary 3D animation examples and information so that the community can continue developing content that doesnt require invisible original Antics models.2. Release a character animation tool so that the community can create their own animations that will fit seamlessy with the suppled content.3. Allow interested parties who wish to continue making content to do so using the above supplied Antics3D technologies in much the same way Iclone does with their user base."

And also with Infocentral - "I too would like to continue using this product but I agree we need the information to create content. This is really crucial with character development technology. While I can create these easily in Modo or Lightwave, I need to know a bit more on how to rig then and set them up for use as Antics characters with the motions attached.Please, please before leaving us, release the SDK for creating content in Antics??? "

In my view,
We've got the keys to the car just need to get under the bonnet.

Antics did release 3DS max examples very early in the piece. I have had success in getting the mannequinn style characters into Antics.

I'd love to get a fully rigged character and some documentation on how to export it to Antics. If anyone gets a max version of an existing Character please let me know.

ammo

IJ 4, Pre-viz: Jungle Chase

And this too.

IJ 4, Pre-viz: Area 51 Escape

A little Indy, to keep your focus

preViz Reel

Sheldon Whittaker previz reel

Showcase - Pineapple Pictures

Revenge from Pineapple Pictures on Vimeo.
Kate Fosk and Michael R. Joyce

It's just a flesh wound!

 So I'm thinking, it'd be cool to have the content library shipped over to this blog, that way we can just go about our daily chores. Also whilst we're at it, why not have the application downloadable from here as well. In that way at least the community can continue to grow.  If the application user base grows then the chances of 3rd party interest may also be viable.

Antics Custom Character Content for Sale? Scene Systems, Free-D

--------------PRESS RELEASE-------------------------
Antics Technologies will no longer offer Antics3D after November 28th, 2008.
Existing license of Antics3D is permanent.

Antics Technologies has reached an agreement to license the Antics3D Core Technology to Free-D Pictures, a production house for children’s animated films. For reconstruction, pre-visualization and training uses, Antics3D has been licensed by Scene Systems Ltd.

We want to extend the wide range of services our new companies will offer to you for your current and upcoming projects to show the high-quality animations and rapid turnaround times we can deliver.

Sales of Antics3D through Antics Technologies were not generating enough returns.
Antics3D has a user base of 20,000 customers, about 1,000 of whom have acquired the professional version, the revenue simply doesn’t cover the very high cost of development and content.

We will continue to provide support for Antics3D through June 5th, 2009
You can continue to download all of the available Antics3D Content from the Antics3D website.
We will shortly release v5.1, which will deliver a number of enhancements and updates to v5.0. After this, the only public releases will be for critical bug fixes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the news from Antics I recieved today.  Unless the new owners of the core licence, continue to develop Antics as a product, the next version (V5.1) may need the final one.

I wonder if an enterprising 3d artist or an establish character creation company (like Quidam) would like to add 20,000 to their client list? The opportunity to sell character content has now been presented. I would be happy to use this blog to market this service.

I do not know what the new owners will be offering us in terms of Antics content/characters.


Antics is a solid toolkit, even without further development it's a good solution for a whole range of clients. 21,000 users think so.

Time will tell, Tony, time will tell.

Antics Academy

Thing best thing about a pencil, is that it's compatible with all forms of paper! So as a tool for creating a storyboard it's always going to be king! However, as a tool to create moving storyboards, well Antics is now royalty. It's a fun and creative kingdom we live in.

An ever growing sector of the Antics community is the Machinima group. Traditionally Machinimals would express a creative concept using the 3d engine of their favorite computer game. Short clips were made featuring scenes and characters derived from the game world.

This artform has produced some wonderfully imaginative and brilliantly written works.

It's great appeal is that it opens up animation to anyone with a computer and a little creative flair and you can create pieces very quickly. Of course people were limited to staging stories in some other artist's world, using some other artist's characters but that was also the appeal.It's a bit like a movie spoof. The gag's are funny because you are already familiar with the backstory.

Then along comes Antics. As more and more of us study at the Antics Academy we are being given a much wider choice of stories to tell, and ways to express them.

Take this clip , here the artist has followed through with a creative presentation of a subject that is very close to him. It's an interesting showcase as it mixes game scenes with Antics scenes. It's also worth noting, it's the first clip by this artist. Aside from some framing and sound elements I think it's great. Thanks to Michael Stitt for the clip.

FYI here is my favorite clip. by JAYDEE. It's made with the SIM'S but it's the one that got me in search of a product like Antics and to start making my own stuff.

Oh and if you get a chance drop by my son's blog, he'd be wrapped if some comments are left.

Give your characters a Second Life!

Starting to compile a new list of "wouldn't be great if"... here's one.

WIBGI .... there was a "youtube" setting.

also I found these Second Life animations bvh

they can be a lot of fun for your Antics characters.

new version - new tips

A couple of quick tips. Having the emotions feature is so cool and getting the eyes to move around a little just adds even more to the performance. The way forward is to roll out the "lookat" command and have your character lookat at dummy axis. Send the dummy axis on a little romp around a path and you'll be set. Note; if you activate the Display/Targets mode you'll see the eyes are looking at the centre of the bounding box (of the dummy axis). This means the eyes won't actually look at the dummy axis, but rather off to one side. So, take the dummy and scale it right down. Reducing the dummy axis size also reduces the bounding box and gets the target much close to the center of the axis. Remember you can also tweak the scale of the path and the duration of the move to obtain some different eye movements. One more tip, I found that when it came to render, there was a real twitchy action in the blinks. It did seem related to the amount of emotions active in the timeline, but still, it wasn't much chop. Anyway if you set your render to 12fps the twitching gets sorted out.

T.

Oh btw click on the image to see my little test clip, then check out this cool clip as well.

Deeper into v5.

An important asset that the Antics v5 development team exhibit is the ability to listen. It is a real credit to them and it is what makes being part of this maturing market such fun and satisfying.
I've been following the forum for a while now and it's quite clear that the Antics dudes have been taking all the feedback to heart. Just look at the new forum!
V5 is full of concepts which have derived from your comments and suggestions. Not to take anything away from the innovative and creative core design at the heart of Antics. Take this example in V5. Now when you save a pose it now prompts you with the name of the selected item so you can type in a description to it. This is helps you organise your poses better. In the prior release, a pose was simply called "pose..(#)".
Let me know what you guys like/dislike about v5.
T.

V5 first look

First impressions,

The first thing that struck me with V5 is the new design for the gui. There's a
fresh coat of paint over the whole work area and the icons have all been updated with new coloured icons. The tooolbar sets have been designed to remove clutter, and are set to autodock. Shift click rotates the toolbar 90 degrees, and Ctrl click lets you float it. By default the Project and construct windows, come up without the transform, display or cameras toolbars, with the Direct windows giving you all toolbars. You can alter these layouts simply by selecting View/Toolbars/ and choosing which toolbar you require to be on or off.Many of the icons have a new design and holding your mouse over the icon will reveal the name. Some the operations have been consolidated in the one button. Some have been removed, (like snapshot).A new tool is the edit object tool, (it's a hammer/wrench icon), this allows you to adjust the height/width of primitive at any time using a gestural action, very handy.The Camera controls are the same but also with a new set of icons, The selection of skeleton joints has been carried over from the prior version also. As before you select the character then click on the TAB key on your keyboard to enter the pose mode. You'll find the PIN operation is now invoked as an option once you have selected an appropriate joint. Right click on any object in the scene and you'll find some new options in the list. "Direct commands" lets you choose an operation. For a character, it's here where you get one way to direct a lookat or eyeball command. (you can choose from a list of items currently in the set) Another way to direct your character is with a new Context- Sensitive feature. And it relly works well, selecting the direct icon and choosing your character puts you in a direct mode, now when you hover over things in your set, the icon changes depending upon what is available to you, these can be lookat, goto, pick up, put down, that sort of thing. Antics V5 comes with a quick start project which is a fast way of trying out the latest features. Perhaps the most exciting new feature is the implementation of Emotions to Antics V5. They have achieved this throught the use of two new "smart" characters which are in the Characters/Emotional folder. There is a male and female model and they look good. The have a certain "sims"-ness to them, they appear to have a higher poly count, (especially around the face). Strangely, they are about 80% of the scale of all your current characters which may be a issue! (try placing them closer to cam to offset this). Also the lookat commands are set to the forehead rather than the eyes. (may be related issue). There are a number of ways to use the emotion modes. I suspect the faces contain blend shapes which warp and distort the mesh to give the appearance of expressions. The emotion can be set as a personality of the character, this'll means the character will retain the mood. You can choose from Aggresive, Average, Cheerful, Confident, Implusive, Shy, Sorrowful, Submissive andUptight.

These are all very cool. All the while the character will blink randomly, which adds so much life. But this is just one part of the new feature.The other important aspect is best used in the direct
mode. Selecting the character and then choosing the set emotion mode (by clicking the emotion icon, or by right clicking and choosing "change emotion") will bring up a new set emotion window. In this window you'll see a your characters face and you can load in a preset emotion from a drop down menu. These are different again to the personality choices. When you Apply the emotion it'll run for a set time and that'll give you an element in the timeline which you can adjust. Opening up the advance features tab gives you the option to really tweak the expression. Saving the emotion adds it to the drop down list.

V5 - Dial in that smile!

As you've probably heard Antics' latest version, V5, has just been released and it looks like the team have hit a home run!
There's some info  on the website, which among other features describes how  
you can add expressions!

They say you use the emotion tool and then click on one of our predefined expressions to instantly add emotion and then you can use fine-grained controls to edit facial expressions intuitively, adding or taking away degrees of happiness, sadness, anger, and so on. To really hone in on the exact expression you need, and convey a truly subtle emotion.

I totally agree. The smile on my face gets bigger every time I think about those sliders!
Full review coming soon.
 

New Antics Website, logo and V5 coming... Is it xmas already?

Wow the guys in the steam room have really been chucking in the timber. The new website for Antics looks very slick and now has that search feature we've been looking for, what a great resource for users. I'll cover off the V5 news just as soon as it's released. How exciting, emotions on our characters! And what do you think of the new logo. I guess they'll change the watermark in the new version also!

Also checkout the latest Machinima Podcast called The Overcast. This week Ricky talks to Brad Kolacinski from Antics3d about the latest improvements to the Antics program in version 4, including a much improved lighting system and a new pricing structure, and he gives us a taste of what to expect in version 5 (FACIAL EXPRESSIONS!) (here's the link they released)

http://theovercast.com/overcast-038/

I'm home for my (once a month) weekend with the family right now, but when I get back to Adelaide I'll post some more.....

T.

Panning a light

Here's a trick Antics user "Knownic" came up with for controlling a light,
add a light to a set then get a free camera to look through at where you want the light to fall , then attach the lamp to the camera, you can then pan and tilt the camera and see where the light is acting... you can also get it to target a moving item....

good one.

Project - Spiral Stairs

So for the past few days I've been attempting to work out a way to get a character to walk down a spiral staircase. As you may know Antics allows you to simply point and click your way to stairway heaven, so long as you use the Antics stairs. If you do wish to import a set of stairs from Sketchup you'll have to take some further steps to get the action to work. The workflow goes like this: Import your staircase. Count the steps. Create an antics staircase with equal steps. You'll probably have to scale the imported asset to match. If you're lucky you'll be able to align the stairs so that the character appears to walk on the imported one. Most probably, the imported stairs will be taller or longer. You can overcome this by moving the staircase whilst the character is ascending/descending. The probem though, is that you cannot simply move the staircase alone, if you do so then the character won't know where the stair starts/stops. So you move the room that contains the whole lot.

Ok, so that's how the straight line setup works, but what if I want to use a spiral staircase? Well, as I found out, this required much more head stratching! I tried lots of things, camera key- framing, poses, linking to axial billboards.... The problem was how to build the rotation into the setup, given that the rotation needs to be relative to a character who is moving.I sorted this problem out by moving the staircase/room in "z" and "x" axis. This gave me the illusion of the character walking the wrong way up an escalator. That is, the character is doing the stepping action but not actually moving in any direction. The idea was then to get the whole room to move around a centre pivot and float down the centre pole of my spiral staircase. O.K. if you followed that you've done very well. The problem was, it was a nightmare to setup!! I think it worked once but there were plenty of errors and it was really unreliable.
So I abandoned the idea of using the stepping action and set about just using a walking action. I built a long corridor of a room, one that would allow my character to take the same amount of a steps as I had in the spiral staircase. I then moved the room, so she just walked on the spot (like a treadmill). Then I had this setup move through a series of poses to get the rotation and z position correct. A lot of work, but it turned out ok. here

Cambridge Film Festival - 2 films short listed!

Wow, I 've just read two of my ANTICS films made the shortlist to screen at this year's Cambridge Film Festival.
They are "Looking Back" which is in the Synthetic Cinema session,
and "Folie a Duex" which is in the Dreams and Shadows session.
Antics also makes an appearance with "Right Guard" by Eric Kmetz and "Pawn Trailer" by V.W. Scheich. (Sorry if I missed someone).
We share the screen with work from Phil Rice (aka Overman) and Tom Jantol, not to mention Hugh Hancock and Lit Fuze and Frank L Fox. These guys are all from the Machinima scene, where Antics is the new kid on the block.
Fingers crossed.

(prays to Peter Rasmussen)

ANTICS v10 - Absolutely Fabulous

A little while back Ricky Grove chatted with Brad about Antics3d. It makes for some interesting listening and it got me thinking.....
When you're learning Antics (or any other app) it's great to get an idea of where the product has evolved from and where they are heading. Because there is so much out there in terms of solutions, it's hard to know where to invest your time. So learning about the software's plans for the future and checking out the path they are taking, helps sus out whether the product suits your current needs and aids in forecasting what your needs may be in the future. Aside from the feature set Antics offers, a strong appeal for me is the way Antics are responding to feedback from everyday users. We asked for lighting, we got it, needed more characters, got it, needed a better cam system and an easy way to get more assets in, got it. Soon we'll get emotions and that's a direct result of community feedback I'm sure. These are positive points. But lets not forget the reason we like Antics. The innovation and simplicity of creating 3d content in a world where you once needed an entire team to create stuff. We like the innovative, imaginiative way they took the 3d game engine out of the game box and put it into our creative toolset.
So here's a thought, inject some wild and crazy thoughts into the discussion. Let this community know what you think would be the most unlikeliest, yet Absolutely Fabulous new feature of Antics v10. Let's keep the innovative going. Build upon your own investment in learning this app. We know they're listening.

Oh BTW, found this earlier.....


It's from a blog for Moviestorm development
Check it out.

MACHINIMASH OR ANIMASH

Cute iclone clip, nice demo of a simple idea excuted well. By MassiPG. Obivously Antics would have made this easier to create. The use of a full sound mix helps so much. Why not try your own rebuild of a favorite clip. Should we call them MachiniMash or Animash.
T.

HULK - PREVIZ PLF

Here's another cool previz comparison clip from the gurus at Pixel Lliberation Front. - enjoy

Let's try it one more time but with feeling......

Antics3D HQ are busy getting ready for the launch of v5 in October.
I'm told V5 will have a number of cool new features, including CHARACTER EMOTIONS.
That's great news. There's been a few workarounds for users in the past. These include making a face animate in Crazy Talk. Some results were cool but the main issue is that the face is not 3d. Photoshop and lighting can also help evoke some emotion. In fact even with the upcoming feature lighting and head angle may aid in the delevery of emotion in your scene.

For your research ..Dr. Robert G. Nulph article

Aaman Akram article

10,000 HITS! ANTICS BLOG

Wow, 10,000 hits on my blog. That's more than a year's worth of sparring with Mike Tyson! It's been fun. Let me know if there's anything in particular you want covered.

T.

ANTICS3d - ZVIZ the a to Z of Previz

Zviz is an application being developed by ILM. Currently in Beta Testing and soon to be released. If you see some info on this very interesting PREVIZ product please let me know.

Martin McEachern writes for Computer Graphics World.
His cool Computer Graphics World article gives us a little more info.

Bill Desowitz talks technology, convergence, The Force Unleashed and Star Wars: The Clone Wars with Richard Kerris, who recently left Apple to become CTO of Lucasfilm
VFX World article

T.

jump!

Make 'em Jump More,

A little while ago I posted on the Antics Blog a tip showing how to have a character jump over large distances and various heights.
Here is another example. Thanks to Brett for asking for clarification on the workflow.
It went something like this...

(Given that your satanic dude is on his own little "floor mat" size room already)
1.Go to direct mode and with record on,
animate devil to jump. (use jump 1, see note below)
2.scrub timeline to where he lands.
3.turn off record
4.now position room to line character up to where you want him. (by moving the little room he came from)
5.save a pose for this new room position.
6.turn record back on.
7.animate room to blendto pose.

Now you have a jump element and a room move element in the timeline.
8. Adjust the room move element to eleminate sliding. (see pic)
Set the room to start to move only when the character's trailing foot is off the ground,(leaves floor), then set the end to make sure the ground is not moving at the moment the foot touches the ground.(lands)



(Note: I got weird results using the jump 2 animation, the problem was that the character would pop to the original room position once the animation finished. Seems it reverts to the original state rather than the current room position)

IronMan previz PLF

Hi Guys, found this cool comparison clip from PLF. Enjoy

Adding to Antics

It's was quite entertaining showing off the sketchup import in Antics. "Pick a location" I ask (like a guy saying pick a card, any card), "the Eiffel Tower" was the response, in a few minutes I'd found a model and had girl walking around the base. How cool is that. In the same session we got serious and took the current script to task. In about 10mins I had placed a car on a turntable, positioned a huge megascreen behind it and set the whole lot up in the middle of a birdnest style stadium. Once I'd put a couple of cameras in the scene we started to get a real sense of how the concept was going to work. Everyone agreed the process was very quick and produced useful results straight away. There were a couple of things that would have made it even better. When I'm working one on one, on my laptop, I like to one viewport open and I like it as big as possible. I also prefer to use the master cam for this as I find the ability to orbit around a selection the quickest. At one point the director and I spent a good deal of time setting up the ideal framing, the difficulty then came when he wanted to have a object in the background moved into this frame. In this case it was the light towers, and the issue was that the axis controls where no longer in the frame. My thought here is, wouldn't it be good if I could move the item from where I select it. Or, better still, an axis for an item could be repositioned to a new point by clicking there, (similiar to the 'edit pivot' option on an imported prop).

Another feature which I desperately needed was the ability to quickly tell what lense we were on. I know you can set a freecam to get this detail but director's want to see this stuff displayed in the viewport. Also it's almost becoming a regular question from the 3d guys and compositors "can you export the camera?". It really makes sense, until you can get in on this part of the workflow, you aren't offering a full solution.

I'm talking cam export to maya/max, AE and the autodesk compositing products. Just on that, it works back the other way also. Part of Storyviz's appeal to me was the ability to import a camera move. They had a cool demo where a once a shot was 3d camera tracked, the cam data could be imported into the app and then assets could be placed into 3d space relative to the shot. Like characters running along the surface of a kitchen bench shot by a hand held camera.
While I'm on the camera side of things. The curve editor in Antics really needs a good going over. For starters the ability to cut and paste keyframes is needed. Also needed are linear and curved options on individual keyframes. I'd like to see users able to invoke a series of hand held or camera shakes easily, and when are we going to get the ability to do a dutch tilt easily!! Try it with the master cam let me know how you go.

On a side note, I was very fortunate to talk with some fellows from the computer science faculty at the local uni here and thought you might like to see what the've been working on here.

It's really innovative work.
Some of the tips I've been posting involve ways to get assets to animate in ways that don't involve poses or preset animations. On reflection, the use of cameras to perform these tasks is really a workaround. The better concept is to have Animatable Dummy Axis. They would come with many features that currently exist in the cameras and billboards, things like target, link, pin and the ability to always face camera etc, but also have other features, like the option to keyframe position and rotation values on the timeline or the option to set rotation limits, or to be constrained by the room's floor. The ability to easily cycle a motion curve would be another animation aid.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

A letter from a new user

I welcome the views of all users of Antics, here's a letter from Mark Willner.

He wrote...."I acquired Antics to be able to take a script and create a motion picture per se or a design for live action . Antics provides a way to explore all areas of movie making, inexpensively. I purchased the pro bundle and thought it was a bargain - a movie studio on my desktop. I did look at competitors and there are quite a few. I liked Antics model the best.Making my first Antics movie took me a lot time and was very frustrating.........................
continued in the comments section

Good points for discussion. All comments welcome. - T

Making a bullet hole in a wall

John V Howard was wondering about creating a bullet hole effect.
I suggested using an arched window with the textures set to invisible. Copy this and rotate it until it makes a circular hole. You can scale these windows down to the size of a bullet hole.
Use the hide/unhide command to make them appear along the wall.
The use of billboards with textures of actual bullet holes will help add some detail to the edges.

Physics in Antics.

Wow, the implementation of lighting and shodows to the feature set of Antics really shows what a talented bunch they are in the Antics Labs. And it was done in a very short time it seems. I'm sure we'll be reviewing the character modification toolset in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I'd like to raise the subject of physics. As we all know Antics has evolved from a game engine technology and as such I'm sure a teamup with a physic engine like Havok would yield some spectacular results.
The wow factor when I first used Antics, was the 'click and point' simplicity of the product. The ability to get something to go from "a" to "b" so quickly was impressive, that, combined with the automatic invoking of walk cycles and animations really gave a sense of A.I. to the character. Which in turn really opened up the xreative opportunities to a user.
The next evolution of that, in my mind, is to be able to perform actions which are based on physical world properties.

Havok Physics, better known as simply Havok, is a physics engine developed by Irish company Havok. It is designed for computer and video games by allowing interaction between objects or other characters in real-time. By using dynamical simulation, Havok allows for more lifelike worlds and animation, such as ragdoll physics or intelligence in massive falling things. Another product worth investigating is Endorphin. Endorphin is a dynamic motion synthesis software package developed by NaturalMotion. Endorphin can be used to generate computer simulations of large numbers of independent characters interacting with each other and the world according to brief scripts or 'behaviours'. It combines physics, AI, and genetic algorithms to create realistic animations. Essentially it is a simulator for characters. It allows for an animation to be derived from the setup of a number of physical properties. (like Gravity, surface tension, forces and mass, that type of thing.)

The ability to expand the product's appeal to simulate real world events could bring on an entirely new market base. Imagine re-enactments and crash investigation performed realtime, after a minimal setup of variables, on a laptop, on location! (try seeing that on CSI!)

For every action there's an equal and opposite Antics Action.

Screenshots shadow/lighting

Some cool screenshots from Antics v4. Showing off the new shadows and lighting features.

Monty Granito - Focus on

Welcome to my first "Focus On" article, this time I'd like to present the work of Monty Granito.
I first became aware of his work through the extra's portion of the Jumper dvd. The film itself is fantastic and the work involved in creating the previz for the film is really first rate. The best part of being part of the Antics community is that, in the field of previz for film, one can find plenty of research material to develop our own skill in the field. Antics is of course, just one of many tools available in this important story telling phase. I believe Antics is a revolutionary tool in aiding everyday filmmakers, plan and design thier visions to achieve hollywood at home. As a film effects junkie, I live for the process. I'm very fortunate to be working in the field but people like Monty Granito are my idol. One day when Antics has saturated into the hollywood, ........