DIFFERENT ANIMATION SOLUTIONS: faster & easier !

Hi,
i just would like to have your opinion

mhhh sounds awesome! IHope you get picked up!

this stuff males me think about when sega animanium appeared the first time on the web! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRd5uaM18Qg
allways wondered why nobody else tried this!
the Dev's probally got assassinated by some autodesk folks... that hate innovation.... haha

If nobody else picks you up - commercial 3D software makers that is - you could always submit your ideas to the Blender developers.

Blender could use some advanced workflows.

If I were you, I would sketch/document my workflow & UI ideas in great detail, and maybe even apply for a Patent for the really good stuff.

If you're going to sketch out any UI stuff, I highly recommend doing it with Adobe Fireworks.

Nothing out there quite beats Fireworks' object oriented design philosophy for creating fast UI mockups.

Hi Bjoern and De Paint,

Yes, you're right about Animanium.
I think it's the only software which tried to make something different, to explore other directions. Main problems were the navigation (which was horrible to me) and transformations (how to reach what we want by moving the controller).
I liked the fact they tried to transpose the traditional exposure sheet. It was an excellent idea, but needed to be improved and adapted for 3D.


Thanks

Aurelien

I am glad to see some attempts for a more efficient workflow for animators.

I have been a professional animator for about 10 years. I have lots,of ideas on how to improve workflow.

Your rig is impressive.

If you don't mind me giving feedback, I suggest trying something that moves away from arrow clicking workflow. I don't see this UI workflow all that different.

I think we need to move towards touchscreen workflows or even hardware that we can use in existing apps.

Hi Gauranga,

Concerning your feedback, yes, we should investigate in this direction.

Cordially

Aurelien

What I've always wondered is.... Whether rigging and animation can be done a lot more easily if you could fit a Joint as separate from a Bone.

So that your app had a Single axis joint object, a Ball joint object, etc..... and two Bones can be fitted end to end and they can only twist along their Y-axis and so on.

Kind of like Joints that have built-in constraints and can therefore have some underlying logic of how they react to weights.

Yeah I know that's kinda like turning 3D apps into LEGO. But for me I think I would like that kind of system.

On the discussion at hand, I like Charrier's idea of posing based on Camera view, I like the Spinner system (which already looks like it would work with touch-based systems).

Interesting that this system favors lists rather than the usual Interpolation Curve-based tracking of Keys or the moving coordinate plane system of poses. I can see though that indeed, listing the poses would have been more intuitive.

Overall Timing entry by use of Integer also very nice.

I see, that's cool.

I'd say that the joints are the RIG then not that it has NO RIG, you know what I mean? Sorry to be a jerk and start an argument.

Great stuff still. We need more innovators for animation workflows.

If you have contacts or persons that could be interested, please don't hesitate !

Thanks

Aurelien

Really brilliant! Groundbreaking work you're doing I wish my 3d software had such intuitive animation tools!

Thanks for your support !
We're living a period it's difficult to propose something new or different. But i truly believe in this project, so i'll try to push it as far as possible.

Oh, and there's something i did not talk. You'll maybe have noticed i did not mention curves or graph editor .... it's because we never used it ! i have almost never touched a curve in my life.
I admit that some times it can be (really) usefull, but it proves that a graph editor is not essential to animate ;-)

If you have questions (because i go quick on videos) please don't hesitate.
And if you know some people at Autodesk, Sidefx, Luxology,.... don't hesitate too !! ;-)

Thanks

Aurel

Might be stating the obvious but, this is perfect time for Luxology to use something like this since the merger I'm sure nows the time for them to consider there options.

No I don't know anyone at Luxology sorry . . .

Good Luck

No a lot of people did try it. It wasn't successful because animanium was a piece of shit software that didn't do anything well aside from some cool novel ideas that look good on paper. You spent most of your time fighting animaniums terrible posing and full body IK instead of on the animation.
--

Hi,

How does this compare to systems like Source Filmmaker, Animanium and Digital Fish's Reflex? in regards to there graph editor, pinning, locking methods and blendshape correctives? How are arc's kept smooth without a graph editor? Do you have trajectories?

Interesting software, i need to see more!

Cheers

Completely agree. I think the perfect formula would be a combination of ease of use and full control for the artist. ..And a lot of programs that try to do this end up targeting amateurs with custom made rigs/animations, rather than focusing on improving and advancing the workflow for artists. Programs like Zbrush/Mudbox are slowly doing this for high poly modeling.

Can't wait to see how this pans out!