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, ........

SHADOWS! OMG !!!

Firstly, let me say, if you're in Australia you probably heard my scream of joy, when I saw these images from the upcoming V4 release of Antics!
These frames alone bring tears to my eyes. The shadows on the walls, the depth, the degree of softness, all these attributes indicate that Antics have nailed the shadow feature spot on. Some other apps we've seen, struggled with this task, forcing the users to endure shadow popping and noisy edges over a couple of releases, but it seems that Antics have got the tech sorted.

The release is out very soon so stay tuned.

future of Antics

At the recent webinar some exciting news was discussed about the next release. Antics V3.5
it is well worth having a listen
The biggest news was the announcement that shadows and fog lights are heading our way.

Also covered in the webinar was the adoption of user customised shortcuts, the status of facial expressions, an ANTICS version for MAC, Some wonderful news on character generator (including clothes/sizes faces, headsizes),
Topics such as depth of field, real world constraints, particle effects and physics were also noted as being on the agenda.
More fourlegged content (a present we have a reindeer) this would allow users to integrate animals with animation into work.
A measure tool, import fbx animation and a bvh editor within Antics was also talked about.
The ability to import/export data from Antics to your 3d app was also raised. The ability to improve the data exchange of camera paths between Antics and Max/Maya is great news.
It's been possible in some other applications for a while now (Storyviz) and it would be great to exchange this data with 3d and compositing applications (like After effects)
The developers put out a call for uses to define the export data pipeline (how would people use the ability to export a camera path for example....)

I also found it interesting to hear about a command console solution for text, something I'll investigate further. It is great to hear the developers are open to our input and are calling for more sugestions.

Anyway have a listen. It is very encouraging that this great product has such a great team behind it. And if you would like to discuss these features or outline features not covered, this is the place to do it. Not all the points listed above are going to make it to the next release BTW some are more for future releases.
T.

Thanks to
Gary Conway and Adrian Leu

Third Floor - FXGUIDE SEYMOUR ARTICLE

listen to interview

Hi guys, found this fantastic article on The Third Floor. It is written by a fellow flame artist in Mike Seymour for fxguide. The Third Floor did the previz on such films as • Beowulf• The Happening• Cloverfield• Eragon• Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian and are currently working on • Avatar• Star Trek• Starship Dave• Chronicles of Narnia: The voyage of the Dawn Treader• X-men Origins: Wolverine !!!!!!

If you get a chance checkout the article. It's not Antics but it's very interesting. (BTW check out the level of detail in the Narnia material, gone are the days of GREY BOXY PREVIZ, The King is Dead, Long live the King!!)

Antics for Previz

Today I want to chat about using Antics as a previz tool for production. As you may know, I run Ammo Previz as a service to directors and producers who wish to communicate creative concepts to particular audiences. Many of you may have travelled down the same road as I did in researching and developing skills to service this growing trend.
(more in comments)