Facial expression - All versions

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

NEW Characters for Antics

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

thanks to el_fuica for the character catalogue!

QUEST 3d

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Depth of Field

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!)

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.

Found another antics tutorial project here.