your ANTICS 3d community

Animeeple is closing up shop

2011-12-18T14:24:00.000-08:00

Sad new to hear that Animeeple are closing up shop on Jan 31st. If you'd like a great fbx, bvh editor that can output .fbx then you better be quick.

A great companion to Quidam.

licence update

2011-09-21T20:49:00.001-07:00

There's some new info on the forum.

ANTICS 3D - REPLACEMENT SOFTWARE

2011-02-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

A program that allows realtime animation of 3d characters and scenes. Allows you to easily pose and animate, as a number of preset animations to allow a character to interact with props. Allows you to import from google sketchup. Provides for animation of camera and switching of many cameras in a scene. Allows import of motion capture files (.bvh).

Provides realtime lighting with shadows. Has a timeline and graph editor for manipulating events. Sound too good to be true?

How about a program that animates the characters lips when you load a sound file? Or even has some preset emotions available for your characters.

Well my friends, that program was Antics 3D.

It was available about 4 years ago and had a following of around 20,000 users.

It has been discontinued.

If you are a developer out there and your are looking for a market that needs a solution.

We'd love to support your efforts.

Ammo Previz.

If you'd like to know more about what this product is capable of ...

www.previz.com.au

or ammoant on youtube.

If you'd like to see how the community has been moving forward, or to check out how to get hold of old versions etc

goto to the forum

http://previz.yourbb.eu/

password is "antics"

State of Previz Today

2010-12-23T05:16:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas all.

I've come across a number of previz applications available today.

If you happen upon some others please email me.

Previz in 3d stereo Latest Previz software

2010-05-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

I guess we've all seen Avatar in 3d stereo by now and it does raise a good question.

What solutions are out there for creating your own Machinima style Avatar film?

Well the folks at iClone

I think iClone is probably the best choice. It seems to have evolved in leaps and bounds to not only provide fantastic environments but now it offers 3D stereo as well!

TVnima is a new player entering the machinima toolkit. Now in Beta, it's worth keeping an eye on.

3d doesn't have to be a headache. If you have a set of Red/Green glasses and you want to see some very cool print ads click on the pills.

Lastly, thanks to the organisers of the FILE exhibition this year. It was fun to be a part of this international event.

Moving Antics onto a new PC?

2010-03-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

"Very interested to hear if anyone has success with this solution."

Laplink

PCmover can migrate your PC across a network, Laplink USB cable, Windows Easy Transfer Cable or any type of removable media that can be read by both PCs. If your computer has multiple users, PCmover gives you the option to migrate some or all of the users at once. The security information about file ownership and access control is preserved for each user. You can even use PCmover to migrate your PC to an Intel-based Mac

Tony Bannan - Manager Double G Post Productions

2010-01-27T05:09:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, been a little busy of recent times. I've been flat out moving cities, jobs and relocating the family back to Perth, Western Australia. I've taken up a position as Manager of Double G Post Productions. I'll still be doing my Flame work and of course my Previz work, wherever I can.

I had a great time away in Adelaide where I was fortunate to work on 5 feature films and a 26ep kids sci-fi series. Now I'm back, I'm really looking forward to sharing my experiences with the Double G team of excellent artists.

AMMO Previz - cg EXTRAS

2009-10-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

Ammo Previz was engaged recently to aid in the creation of a new spot for a television campaign promoting a v8 supercar racing event. The brief called for a single shot, lasting 25seconds, of a fellow walking toward camera whilst a massive grandstand is constructed behind him. Antics was used to create nearly one hundred workers which populated the scene during the construction phase. These workers were created in various animated positions, with lighting to match the final scene. Ammo Previz also used Antics for previz stages to provide composition and shoot planning. The final previz was used on location to determine framing and timing for the key talent. Post Production was completed at Oasis Post.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Previz Society

2009-10-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

Introducing the Previz Society! Check out this great news from my PREVIZPOST blog.

free bvh files - 1000's

2009-08-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, things are looking up on all fronts. Here's a batch of bvh files you may like to bookmark.

Here is a list of the actions.

I big shout out to the quidam guys. Must say I'm enjoying the way these guys have designed to posing feature within quidam. Just posed up a guy to dirve a forklift. Brought the forklift in as a prop, scaled it to suit the guy and then set a transperency value of 50% to the scene. This way I could see exactly where to position him. Too easy!

Looking forward to the day I can animate within quidam.!!

Oh If your'e a lightwave user, check out JimmyRig. It's a bit like a junior Motion Builder, great for building/combing bvh motions.

Also if you're looking fix a machinima fix, I strongly recommend mellowhardy on the Moviestorm channel. Judging by the results he's getting out of Moviestorm, it may just be time to take another look at this app. I hope they can get over the flicky textures and robotic (linear) movements of the characters soon. That would be a fine day.

Machinima in Brazil - FILE 2009

2009-07-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

This year sees two ANTICS entries in FILE 10 NURBS PROTO 4KT, the title of the FILE 09 exhibition, that will be held in São Paulo, Brazil, from July 28 to August 30, 2009.

Congrats to Pineapple Pictures: Kate Fosk and Michael R. Joyce
for the machinima clip - Revenge
A short machinima work made using Antics software. A wife discovers her husband is using their caravan as a place to take other women. In a fit of jealous rage she sets fire to the van.

For my part, I was fortunate to have been invited for "Dark Previz"

If you get chance to check it out, I really had some fun with the lighting, in fact the project for me was really a test to see if some emotion could be presented from the 3d characters with set expressions. Also have a look at the artwork on the table and wall, some of my attempts at drawing.

I started this project using V2 of Antics3d. It was completed with V2.79. V3 of Antics fixed the wierd facial action that occurred when a character spoke. So if you're wondering if V3.1 of Antics is worth trying out, I'd say a big yes.

Quidam followup

2009-07-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been pushed for time on all fronts, I did managed to get some more time on Quidam recently when a client in London was in a bit of a fix. Tony, can you create a poster for an event, I kinda need it tommorrow! Quidam turned out to be the perfect tool for creating a Dancer element. I find the program very good for customising and then posing a character. The ability to add props and paint textures is quite well implemented. For my renders I chose the cell shader look which was quite nice. The poster turned out quite well, although it wasn't used it the end!

On the Antics side of things, I'm currently in R&D on a concept requiring an animated crowd presented in a timelapse style. The tests are looking really cool and the pipeline will probably include Antics and Quidam to build elements for Maya. The job is for later in the year so I'll post some images once it's gone to air. Antics is being used for previz on this job also.

For my day job I've been fortunate to have worked on around 20 shots for a feature that's just about to be released. For our part the project was completed at 4k which was something new and way cool.

EXCLUSIVE: Take A Look Behind The Scenes At

2009-06-09T06:00:00.001-07:00

EXCLUSIVE: Take A Look Behind The Scenes At ‘Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series’

Posted using ShareThis

Free Bvh Motions - Mr Bones New site!

2009-06-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

Truebones is proud to present a brand new website! Key features of the new Truebones website: A HUGE Variety of high quality Motions in BVH format Free Motions in BVH and FREE animation software. Informative monthly newsletter Animation Video channel gallery. Fast motion search and ordering system. Online Store with instant downloads of products. Full discussion and customer support forum. Full previewing of for sale motions, Try before you buy! (via FREE Animeeple Software) Please feel free to Join Truebones today by registering at our brand new website. http://www.truebones.com Join today and you will receive over 50 Free BVH Motions, In addition you will get a 50% discount for the New MonsterBones MegaMotions 2400 Pak just by signing up.

quidam3 25% discount offer

2009-05-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Q3 demo version has just been released, check it out.
Also have a try of Animeeple for character animation!
It is new, it is very intuitive and it lets you:» Apply animations onto characters» Layer and sequence the animations» Edit animations using procedural modifiers» Render images and movies» Animate your Second Life™ avatar» Export content as FBX, Collada, BVH and XMLExporting from QUIDAM to Animeeple requires the COLLADA export plugin (included in QUIDAM Studio, this plugin can be purchased separately by QUIDAM users).

If you are interested in markless motion capture, drop by my other blog, PREVIZPOST I think it's pretty exciting technology.

FrameForge Previz Studio 3

2009-05-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

The wait is nearly over! While the new version will be released to the public shortly, you can be among the first to preview the powerful features soon to be available in FrameForge Previz Studio 3, the software that's redefining storyboarding and previsualization.
At upcoming events in Seattle and Paris, Ken Schafer, Lead Program Architect at Innoventive Software, will present an exclusive look at the latest edition of this ground-breaking program. He'll demonstrate how every filmmaker can benefit from translating a script to an optically accurate previsualization, complete with a three-dimensional scale location stocked with actors, props, wardrobe, set dressing, basic lighting and backgrounds. Check out this page for a rundown of new features.

History of 3d Animated Films

2009-05-20T01:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks to ArianeB for this History of 3d Animated Films.

Have a read through, I'd like to hear which ones are your favorites and why?

Dan Tindell

2009-05-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Dan Tindell is my "Focus On" artist on my PrevizPost blog!
You just have to check out his reel!

Scene Systems - Brad in a suit!

2009-05-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: Brad Kolacinski of Scene Systems, Inc. from LexConference on Vimeo.

Quidam3 first look

2009-05-18T02:51:00.001-07:00

Well I got my copy of Quidam3 along with the 3ds max plugin and some packs. I went for the studio version thinking that the low poly feature would serve my needs better in the long run.
Quidam is a very quirky app. I think I will enjoy it more when it gets to version 5. I suspect they'll have animation controls by then. In any case it is built to build characters and you certainly get that. Unlike Poser, Quidam gets you quick results that are easily modified. The use of gestural modelling techniques and "on model" painting means you don't need to venture outside of Quidam very often. You can select a base character, add some imported props and then adjust the shape of the mesh a bit like clay. (similiar to mudbox, z-brush and modo).
The base model allows for materials to be adjusted or you can paint direct onto the mesh (like bodypaint, silo & modo paint). A really nifty feature is the ability to paint an imported image onto the surface interactively. They have some tutorials on the n-sided site.

The best news for antics users is the ability to get the characters from Quidam into Antics whilst keeping the skinning and texture maps. I've worked on getting a mesh skinned and then weighted in Max before and it takes an awful lot of time. You have to line each bone up to the middle of each limb and then apply skin weights for the skin to be driven by each bone in the skeleton. Invaribly you then need to go through and tweak the weights until the mesh behaves like it should. There are two ways to skin a cat, sorry bone a mesh, hmm .... there's the skin modifier and the physique modifier. Youtube both to get familiar.

When you bring in a Quidam creation you'll see it's the skin modifier that's invoked.

What I worked out was that if you rename the bones on the newly imported Quidam skeleton so they match the naming convention of a Max Biped. Then it's possible to copy the skin weights across. (drop me a line if you want to learn how to do this). Then you can export the character out of max into Antics (yipppeee!).

So now with Quidam I can make previz with any characters necessary, and with any facial expression I want.

Character Update. - Quidam 3 - skeleton to biped.

2009-05-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well I've been busy with tests and R&D for characters for Antics and I thought I'd write an update. A little while back I touched on the idea of using bones to drive facial expressions. The concept is cover in this Bones for facial expression Tut.

My experiements with Max went o.k but there was a major hiccup. Whenever the character moves the skeleton would return to a default bone setup. This means if you create a look for your face, then you would lose the look once the character moved. I have considered creating a face model which is driven by a biped skeleton, which would then attach to a host body. But this would need further investigation. The idea comes from stopframe animation, where a range of expressions are created out of clay. Then the faces are swapped out as needed. My adaptation is to have a face, with a little skeleton inside it. Antics will drive a mesh as long as it thinks it's a full character. Of course it may be possible to have a bones setup in a "prop" but I've haven't gone down that road yet.

My other news is regarding Quidam 3. I contacted them to gain permission to build an Antics library of characters which I'd market to users. Unfortunately they are only interested in the selling of characters in the .Qui format. Any other format is not allowed. I thought the indie Prime product would cover this, it does not. Still, I'll be getting Quidam 3 for my own use, and I've been wading through the issue of converting the Quidam skeleton to a biped so that Max can export it! Currently the skeleton looks a little like the skeleton structure you get when you bring poser models in (pCharacter or .DAE via Daz)

My main quest is to keep the body weights which Quidam creates. Sometimes I think it might just be easier to stay and animate in Max! I've done some tests with the Q3 characters as a prop and the models look really good, as did the textures. I did find I had to add the texture from within Antics though, but it all lined up ok.

My two sons have completed thier assignments for school using Antics. Micheal got an 'A' grade and Alex has entered his forensic clip into a comp for the museum in Sydney.

Once I crack the Quidam - Antics pipeline I'll post the solution for you guys. (happy to hear from other pioneers). Quidam looks like being a very valuable tool for us. The customisation of characters may now become a reality!.

92 years or 3 days? MachStudio Pro

2009-04-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

Toy Story took 800,000 render hours to complete what is still a fantastic example of 3d animation. This week

I'm very excited about Studio GPU and MachStudio Pro.

"StudioGPU's MachStudio Pro reinvents the visualization workflow by putting the power of real-time graphics processing at your fingertips and real-time rendering on your desktop.
This isn't just an incremental shift, but a bold change in the way 3D CGI is created!
MachStudio Pro lets you truly Work at the Speed of Thought!"

Judging by the look of the finished renders, a film like Toy Story could be rendered in less time than it took to render the original credits!

Running on Microsoft Windows with off-the-shelf computers and high-end graphics cards, the software features a nonlinear animation timeline providing for multiple layers of animation channels, unlimited camera setups which can be animated via splines or key frames, intuitive lighting set-up for designing both simple and complex light rigs, an interactive materials editor, and particle generator. All these features and more are available through an intuitive GUI, which allows for real-time manipulation of scenes. Check out the site.

This is great news for our Antics community. Although this product is aimed at a studio market, it shows that the future of realtime animation is alive and well.

antics v4 download

2009-04-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

Here's thanks to Robotguy4 for this link, looks like a legal way to get hold of v4. This page asks you to submit an email address and then allows you to download the 157Mb file.
"You have successfully registered. We have sent you a reference email with your username and password." I guess once you have that info you could then get v5 via the Antics website. I suspect it's a leftover from the old site so I wouldn't expect it to exist for very long.

Here's my disclaimer. I haven't tried it out as I wouldn't want to upset my existing licences/registrations. Use your own judgement.

Using the SAY command to invoke blendshapes

2009-04-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, hope you had a good Easter. Mine was pretty cool, as usual trying to do family stuff and my own Antics stuff. There's not enough hours in the day, even when you get 4 days off! Anyway, I discovered something today you might be interested in. Recently I posted about having bones drive the facial expression of characters. The theory is good and it's been used to great effect within Max by some clever fellows. In case you missed it, the expression of a character is achieved by having the mesh deformed in certain ways, just like our skin. When we smile the corners of the mouth are raised, so if you raise the mesh in that region you get a smile from your character. Now, if your'e in a 3d app that gives you control over the mesh (the vertex's) then all is as easy as pie. However within Antics we have no such tools. So the other way is to prebuild the smile and the no-smile meshs and then have the character "blend" from one to another. This is most certainly how the EMOTIONS feature is being implemented. So, today I took another look at the 3ds max example as supplied and realised that the example is showing us the way they have achieved a moving mouth effect. For those who don't have Max, the example consists of a "rest" mesh and then a bunch of identical mesh's where the mouth is slightly adjusted to look like it would if it said a range of (phoneme) sounds. When the character is commanded to "say" an audio clip, then the blend shapes are used. Sooooooooooooo I thought, rather than adjust the mouth, what if the geometry was adjusted in other ways. (like a smile). Then instead of a moving mouth we'd get some other stuff.....The result was quite good. The character would blend to the new shapes even whilst walking, looking and playing animations!. On the downside, the character will return to the rest pose once the event is complete. Still it means you can use a sound file to drive a specific set of poses, in any version. I'll keep you posted. It would be great to see if a continuous tone keeps the pose steady. So then we could run say 400hz for sad and 1khz for happy, etc.

Chow.

Bust out!

2009-04-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

A nice thread in the community forum is going on about "Audience Reactions" to seeing Antics clips. Everyone has a slightly different use for Antics but ultimately the results of our efforts will be presented to an audience. Whether you are a storyteller creating Anymation clips, or an industry guy building Boards, the technology under the bonnet of Antics is going to serve you well at least for the next few years. So it's an important issue to discuss, what do people think about the look of the animation in antics?
Do they see it as a viable medium for communicating ideas or are they quite happy with pencil and paper?
Now that I've played around with the pipeline for creating characters. My question is, what style of characters will assist us in presenting ideas the best. If I was planning a Transformers or Bond fight sequence, I'd already know the look of the talent, so an avatar would work. It works because the viewer has an established point of reference for the actor/character. The ability of the viewer to fill in the missing details of the character is a given, and that sets the tone for the physical performance as well, they adjust to the production value.
The creation of avatar style characters is now possible and they will expand our choices over and above the original library.
But what of the characters for Boards. Do avatar style (real world textures), characters set up the viewers for a in-game or cut-scene style presentation. Does that work for us or against us?
Do we need simplier representations of people in our presentations to industry audiences?
Or is it that the style is fine, it is just the low poly count that people have trouble with?
Thoughts.

Facial expression - All versions

2009-04-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

Been working through the theory of using bones to move features on a face. The good news is it turns out a few guys have used this technique for animating facial expressions within Max and have produced some really cool (and wonderfully intricate rigs). I started with a test using the ponytail bone to drive the chin of a character. It was a good feeling being able to push that chin around within Antics. It is encouraging me to continue the tests. One problem was that the pose was lost once the character was directed to do something else, like walk. So I'll need to sort this.
At the very least facial expressions for static poses are looking good at this point.....

New Character project- Facial poses

2009-03-27T00:15:00.001-07:00

Making good progress with the New Characters tests. There are a number of stages in the pipeline. Essentially what seems to be working is the skinning of mesh to a biped bone system within Max. The biped system is what the 3d exporter is most happiest with. It should be possible to create the mesh/bone structure in any app so long as the naming conventions and the joints, match what Max does. (very important!) BTW There is documentation from Antics on this, so if someone wants to rig up a character following those guidelines I could put it through Max for you.

So here are some images from Antics, I am learning heaps with this project, take the grey ponytail girl, when you create a biped bone system within max you can set extra bones, for example a ponytail. This is of interest to me, not only because it means one could adjust the ponytail, but I am thinking one could rig up a character so the bones affect the facial mesh. Sort of a cheat way to get some posable facial expressions. If successfull then these characters would be compatible with all versions of antics.

These other pics show a much denser poly count. Antics will allow a mesh up to 64,000 approx, which is much higher than what is in the existing characters. (except the emotive ones). I would like to develop a character whose hands and feet and face are a much higher polycount. The comic face compares low/high poly counts.

A higher poly count means more curves which makes the edges smoother.

I am yet to solve the hair, eyelash and eyeball elements. Another consideration for the facial expressions is to construct a face plate with various expressions and have the ability to swap out the entire head. (using a link to the original head joint!). It may be possible to build it just like a skull where the eyes and hair remain on the original character, so the join is disguised.

Consideration is also being given to the texture maps for these characters.

Cheers Ammo

Crime scene update

2009-03-22T02:39:00.000-07:00

Here's an update on the school project, Alex(14) has finished adding the furniture to the house where the crime is committed. As you can see there are two victims and they don't look healthy. (Either that or there's been a party!) The assignment is a forensic examination, I'm told shots were fired shot I expect we'll see blood splats and such. I'll let keep you in the loop.

My oldest son Michael(17) did a 30sec spot with antics this weekend for his school project for media, so we had a bit of an antics weekend!

Want to be a previz artist?

2009-03-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a great tip list from Brian Pohl, CEO Persistence Of Vision ...
"If you want to become a previs artist focus on:
1. Camera Animation and cinematic language.
2. Camera Angles, Composition, and Continuity.
3. Low Rez Poly modeling and digital sets.
4. Low Rez Poly characters and rigging.
5. Understanding storytelling.
6. Editing and timing.
7. Non Linear Animation.
8. Tricks and cheats for improving speed and setup.
9. Animation vs VFX pipeline structures.
10. Integration for technical previs.
11. A solid understanding of various camera lens, camera backs, and aspect ratios.

A previs artist is: A Director, a Director of Photography, an Animator, a Modeler, a Rigger, an Editor, a Storyteller, an FX artist, a MoCap engineer, and so on. If anything, to become a previs artist, you must be ready to don any of these hats at anytime. However...ultimately, you'll have to decide if you wish to focus on conceptual previs or technical previs. Each focuses on different parts of the preproduction pipeline."

if you want to read more about previz, try my other previz blog Brian is also running a previz course at Gnomon

NEW HALO character in antics3d

2009-03-04T04:19:00.000-08:00

Master Chief anyone? I finally worked out the pipeline for new characters into Antics. I was able to sort out the mesh, skeleton and vertex linking so that the MC can walk around quite happily in the Antics world. The buggy is straight from sketchup (took 3mins to download, gotta love that!) The process is a little fiddley but worth it in the end. The biped in Max is the native skeleton structure for the 3d exporter to create an Antics file. The mesh came from linefour

Update March 10.

Current Aim: to create new female character with better poly resolution. Researching texturing and hair solutions. If you have a character you need for a project pls let me know.

Accurate scale - floorplan - CRIME SCENE

2009-02-21T03:34:00.000-08:00

One of my kids is doing a school project, coincidently he's doing forensics this year are reconstructing a crime scene! I found it amusing when he asked if he could use our Antics 3d application, given the direction Scene Systems are heading. Anyway he's off and running and it's an excellent example of how well suited Antics is to this type of use. The first thing we covered off was how to setup the floorplan to scale. He has a blueprint of a home and is wanting to build it in Antics3d. We set the plan up as a .jpg 512x512 pixels. Texture maps for billboards will be resized if they are not a variant of this size. (ie 256x256, 1024x1024, that sort of thing.) The plan here (so to speak) is to use a billboard with the floorplan texture applied as a template for our construction. Now simply create a billboard ("house"), rotate it so it's flat on a floor plan and then you are ready to set the scale. We were lucky because we had a doorway which was labelled as 1m wide.
So in order to know what 1m was in the antics world, we built another billboard 1m by 1m. when rotated that to lay flat on the floor as well and then we could scale the "House" Billboard so that the doorway size matched the 1m Billboard. This gave us absolute confidence that the floorplan could now be traced with new rooms. A couple of good tricks, set the House billboard to FREEZE.
Set the texture of the rooms you build as transparent or 50% opacity. (that way you'll be able to see the measurements). Try to not have overlapping floorplans/rooms, they will cause problems when you want characters to navigate from room to room.
As the project moves forward I'll post the progress for you.

tutorial de storyboards

2009-02-15T02:42:00.000-08:00

tutorial de storyboards 3D animados recorrendo à ferramenta Antics 3D

NEW Characters for Antics

2009-02-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

I've been chipping away at the character creation challenge. You may have seen on my blog that I found some interesting examples of assets which Antics seemed to have purchase outright, (as opposed to creating them in house). So I'm thinking that at least a portion of some of the characters probably were outsourced also. So I went in search of fully rigged 3ds Max characters and found bucket loads. Of course almost all were expensive. Some came in to max and exported quite well. Others required a bit more 3ds Max knowledge than I currently posses.
With the 3ds Max Antics exporter, it's now a given that Max is the only way to get extra character content into Antics. (with the exception of rigid body solutions. like the skeleton and Mech examples). Ultimately I'd like to learn enough to build my own character's, import them into max, skin and rig them and sort out the bodyweights (that's so the mesh doesn't get messed up when the joints move). But for the mo, I'm happy enough experimenting with importing someone elses bipeds and perhaps modding them slightly.

Make Human , Ava Pack , AXYZ , Quidam , Poser , LP3d , proviz3d 123d buy3dmodels 3drt

Character Catalogue

2009-02-11T03:25:00.000-08:00

thanks to el_fuica for the character catalogue!

QUEST 3d

2009-02-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

Here's the sales blurb....

Quest3D is a very flexible authoring environment for real-time 3D applications. It is packed with a huge set of features, very good support and very attractive license conditions. The edit-while-executing and graphical nature of Quest3D makes it one of the most intuitive tools to work with. Quest3D is used by hobbyists, educational institutions and big name companies. Projects include anything from small freeware games to huge industrial virtual reality setups.

Sounds Good. I'd like to check out the demo and see how it goes. It is quite pricey though.

Scene Systems - Proud Parents of LiveFrame

2009-01-31T20:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a screenshot of LiveFrame, from the new owners of the product formerly known as Antics 3d. The jury is in, and the verdict on the future of the product development has been handed down. Scene Systems look to be a service provider, not a software provider. This means the product will certainly be developed as time goes on, but unless you create for Scene Systems, you'll not get to see the newer versions of the technology first hand. Still, if Scene Systems are successfull in this new market, perhaps there'll be an opportunity for those who have a skillset on the tools to freelance for them!

"Scene Systems turns complex expert testimony into powerful 3D animation that helps legal professionals prove their case in court. Unique LiveFrame(TM) technology delivers unprecedented flexibility and efficiency, producing high quality animations with a process designed to meet the demanding requirements of technical demonstrative evidence. Powerful visual persuasion, built for law. "

how to get antics

2009-01-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

You may be interested to know Antics 3d version 3.1 featured on PC Utilities magazine coverdisc 99 . Original UK on sale date: 3rd Apr 2008 (USA 15th May 2008, Australia 5th Jun 2008)

You can order a back copy here They have a download section for software featured on the coverdisc here.

Antics 3d v.1 read more from Digital Arts and Microfilmmaker

You could also try getting a back order of edition 106 of 3D World

Once you do, check out the community forum

Antics Assets

2009-01-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

Having a look through Turbo Squid I found this very familiar set.

Here I was thinking the artists at Antics had come up with a really cool set design. Still, it doesn't take anything away from the huge body of work they were responsible for. If you happen across any assets you find that Antics outsourced or aquired, please add them in the comments section.

Antics3d v5 review

2009-01-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

The new Antics 3d forum is growing and now has over 100 users. It is a great meeting place for Antics users of all levels.

There are many open topics for discussion, including a help section where Antics support staff are still actively helping out. Also there a many threads on asset creation and charcter development. As well Colonel_Klink has some great screenwriting articles.

Antics v5 is an excellent program for machinima and previz.

For a great breakdown of v5 check out this review ,

and thanks to prolific forum poster "Infocentral" for finding it.

KKFFOO KKLLIIPP

2009-01-12T21:09:00.000-08:00

Revenge from Pineapple Pictures on Vimeo.

This short project is Kate's first experiments with Antics3d v5. Having never used this platform before I kept the animations very simple..walk, look, emote.The sets are adapted from Google warehouse downloads, and the final render was considerably mucked about with, using newbluefx.The music track features the track Rust from No Really, find more track by this artist on Jamendo

New PREVIZ Blog launched! Previzpost.blogspot

2009-01-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

Hi all, if you are after purely previz articles, check out my new PREVIZPOST blog. This'll be the home for all things previz. All applications, all types of previz. If it's on the web it'll end up in
http://www.previzpost.blogspot.com
contributors please email me

Sketchup animated

2009-01-12T01:27:00.001-08:00

Depth of Field

2009-01-12T01:24:00.001-08:00

You can create a depth of field look in all versions of Antics, it just requires a compositing application like after effects, and the creation of a special type of file. A file that has the closest elements to camera white and the furtherest elements black. The steps of gray in between set the amount an element is in focus. Here is an article which explains this a little better. So how do you get z map out of Antics?

Depth of Field in action.

Well the way I found worked best of all was to texture map all the elements with a white texture and then set the fog level so that the furtherest items faded off to the blackness.

Cool Clip - Antics V7 (not really!)

2009-01-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

Sin City Yarn Wip -
I've yet to see anything as good as poser for character creation. If you do get a moment, check out Daz 3d as an alternative to Antics.
It's free and it has 3d in the name so that's two good things.

Tutorial Project.

2009-01-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

Found another antics tutorial project here.

focus on Alexander Sokolov

2008-12-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-22T17:48:00.000-08:00

OMG I loved Cloverfield. 1 oscar coming up.

Merry Christmas

Snake prop!

2008-12-15T04:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-06T03:47:00.000-08:00

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

Using Machinima to teach film

2008-12-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

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

New forum - Antics

2008-12-02T04:10:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-02T01:41:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-12-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-30T21:03:00.001-08:00

thanks to afterthought for finding these iclone examples.

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

2008-11-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-24T03:06:00.001-08:00

tree plugin for sketchup

2008-11-24T02:33:00.001-08:00

natasha hurt.mov

2008-11-24T02:14:00.001-08:00

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

Quidam the "Holy Grail"

2008-11-16T05:10:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

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

press and a nice review prior to 9/11

Def-con One (Antics 3d)

2008-11-11T04:42:00.001-08:00

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

Survival Guide

2008-11-08T23:52:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-08T05:56:00.001-08:00

And this too.

IJ 4, Pre-viz: Area 51 Escape

2008-11-08T05:55:00.001-08:00

A little Indy, to keep your focus

preViz Reel

2008-11-08T05:47:00.001-08:00

Sheldon Whittaker previz reel

Showcase - Pineapple Pictures

2008-11-08T01:27:00.000-08:00

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

It's just a flesh wound!

2008-11-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

--------------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

2008-11-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-20T05:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-14T04:37:00.000-07:00

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.

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

Deeper into v5.

2008-10-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-11T01:17:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

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.....

Panning a light

2008-09-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-28T01:42:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-09-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-19T17:01:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

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......

2008-09-16T16:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-09-08T06:50:00.001-07:00

Make 'em Jump More,

2008-09-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

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

Adding to Antics

2008-08-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-13T03:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-10T06:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-08-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

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

Monty Granito - Focus on

2008-07-25T04:25:00.000-07:00

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, ........