Computer animation downloads

Good news for animators. Their favorite tools are at SIGGRAPH with version updates and deeper tool kits. A new Kaydara Motion Builder release targets a broader range of animators with the addition of critical keyframing components. Discreet 3DS Max offers a new version that includes Character Studio for the first time, a natural step since the company acquired Unreal Pictures, the makers of that character animation tool. NewTek has finally released LightWave 8, after beefing up its character animation functions.

In this report, representatives from Side Effects and Softimage talk about their new Houdini and XSI releases, respectively, while also addressing some broader industry trends. Side Effects' front man Tony Christiano believes the larger studios are retooling pipelines and looking for strategic partners. Softimage has introduced a third pricing tier for the cost conscious and has thrown open its technology for easier customization.

SOFTWARE: Kaydara MotionBuilder V.6.0, release--September 2004.

PLATFORM: Windows, Mac

PRICE: $4,195--MotionBuilder Pro. This year's pricing includes the required one-year software maintenance license; the base software price remained the same. $995--MotionBuilder Standard.

PROJECTS: Splinter Cell 3 game for XBox and PS2 (UbiSoft)--one of the accounts that has been working in developing V.6. Polar Express feature film--"They didn't use 6, per se, but their feedback was instrumental in building version 6" with their requests for many animation paths, better IK/FK synching and better character animation control, says Kaydara president Michel Besner.

USERS: "A key area we're focusing on is the game market--we'll have a very strong solution for the game animation process--and also on preproduction for film and TV, mainly in layout, cinematics [and] animatic-level production," reports Besner." Our focus as a product is on the animation part of things--we don't do modeling, raytracing. But you'll be capable of doing all animations in the product itself."

He adds, "The strength that we have in our product, that we've had in the past--like our realtime capabilities, our strong character animation features and our nonlinear capabilities--have always been appreciated but we were always limited in our growth because we were lacking in some of these keyframing capabilities. We always had a lot of clients who wanted to do more with our product."

SIGGRAPH NEWS: Version 6 is a one-stop solution. "[It] is focusing on increasing the user base of our product. We've been known for the longest time for motion capture and character animation, and our goal right now is to become the ultimate animation tool, adding a lot of basic components that are standard applications in other packages but were missing in MotionBuilder," says Besner. Additions include keyframing tools like scripting and better controls over character animation tracks with seamless Inverse Kinematics/Forward Kinematics syncing.

"Another key area is one of the biggest problems when you're animating. Say you have a character that's taking the elevator, then walking outside and going to a car. Your character will be animated using multiple types of references. How can you easily animate a character within these multiple references? We've simplified the process of doing that. Usually that can take a lot of hours just to animate and to have your constraints work between different references. We've done a lot of work to simplify that entire process so it will be completely seamless to animate a character that goes from an elevator to a car, in and out, and focus on the animation itself, not the technology."

SOFTWARE: Discreet 3DS Max 7.0, release--fall 2004.

PLATFORM: Windows

PRICE: $3,495--This year's price includes Character Studio 4 for free (a $999 value) for users who buy or upgrade to V.7.A subscription program--for automatic downloads of new builds, enhancements or bug fixes--is available for $350. This has grown by nearly 50 percent in the past year, reports Dave Campbell, 3DS Max product marketing manager.

PROJECTS: The feature film The Day After Tomorrow and the Spider-Man 2 game for XBox and PS2 used V.6. At press time, Max 7.0 was still in alpha.

USERS: Games, films and design/visual effects. "I think normal mapping [see explanation below] is going to secure our position in film even further [invented for game animators, normal mapping can be used in film and TV projects as well]. Historically for Max, the position of film has been around digital matte painting. A lot of the digital environments that you see have been done with Max," says Campbell.

SIGGRAPH NEWS: Normal mapping, a new function for the games industry, has been added. This technique mimics the high resolution of a character by "tricking" a low resolution 2D map, polygon mesh of the environment into thinking it has all that detail.

"The trick with ours--and this is what's really going to change things--is that normal maps are also renderable. So film effects and visual effects experts are going to be able to have this 20-million-polygon character but only have it be 100,000 polygons. They're going to be able to extend a little bit beyond what the game cards will be able to do just because they don't have to run these things in realtime. The levels of fidelity required by today's demanding pipelines are really extreme and they take a long time to render these highly-detailed characters. We're going to be able to crush that down to a very reasonable amount and Max is going to continue to produce a high volume," says Campbell.

The new version includes Character Studio 4. While this feature has been in Discreet's advanced animation toolset for years, not it will be included in the 3DS Max release.

Version 7 features an update of Mental Ray 3.3, new functionality and further integration. It now adapts to scene scale automatically since, often, artists are working in different scales. Hardware accelerated rendering functionality allows artists to accelerate without changing the look of the render. Also, a new subsurface scattering shader for rapid rendering of advanced translucent surfaces.

"Version 7 is a substantial release," adds Campbell. "What we're looking to do this time around is help others prepare for next-generation 3D pipelines across the board in the game space--as the new hardware comes out, we get to retool. It's also for next-generation film pipelines and evolving what designers and visualization experts are able to do."

SOFTWARE: NewTek LightWave 8, release--June 2004

PLATFORM: Windows, Mac

PRICE: $1,595--same as last year.

PROJECTS: Feature films Garfield, Spider-Man 2, Van Helsing.

USERS: Film and a wide range of digital content creation including games, Web, industrial and print. "We've got users up and down the spectrum," says Andrew Cross, VP/software engineering." I was out in Hollywood recently and I was stunned at the number of people using LightWave for high-end production. On the flip side, we've just got a huge number of individual users out there. We tried to listen to a broad range. We were consistently being told where the weak points of LightWave are--character animation was clearly one of those where we've made huge strides.

"Something that we've not been that strong in is the games industry," he admits. "The way it's looking today, probably the two biggest game releases this year [Doom 3 and Dark Sector, the new game from Digital Extremes, the makers of Unreal] are very significantly based in LightWave."

SIGGRAPH NEWS: Last year, NewTek showed a preview ofV.8; this year, users get the real deal, loaded with more features. "One of the key things is we've got a whole new dynamic system--new rigid bodies, new soft bodies. There's bone dynamics, something completely new, that allows you to apply dynamics operations to the bones themselves which would then deform the mesh or the model that they're attached to. That gives you very good realtime performance," says Cross. "We've got a new particle system, new modeling tools, we've got a new morphing system. How much more do you want?"

SOFTWARE: Side Effects Houdini V.7, release--beta at SIGGRAPH

PLATFORM: Windows, Linux

PRICE: $1,599--Select (modeling, rendering, animation).

PROJECTS: Feature films: Spider-man 2, Around the World in 80 Days, The Day After Tomorrow.

USERS: "We are dedicated to our existing customers. We build these products based on their feedback," reports Tony Christiano, Side Effects COO/VP of US operations. Side Effects is focused primarily on film, though it has customers in many sectors of digital content creation.