COMPUTER GRAPHICS ANIMATION TOOLS

For someone new to the world of animation, especially real-time animation, the
industry and what’s available can appear downright bewildering. There are a great
many solutions it seems, starting with Autodesk’s wonderful, but pricey solutions, to
free and shareware solutions. There are of course the most well-known and perhaps
also the most popular solutions such as Autodesk’s solutions, Kinema for the Mac
and Reallusion’s iClone4. But there are plenty of other options as well.

The Pricey
Autodesk Real-Time Animation Suites

Undoubtedly the industry leader. Some of Autodesk’s solutions have been around for years,
especially 3ds Max (which was previously called 3D Studio Max). The Autodesk Suites come in
two flavors: the Maya real-time animation suite and the 3ds Max real-time animation suite. Both
suites include MotionBuilder. Here is a look at each software individually with pricing (free
trials are available):

3ds Max: 3ds Max includes 3D modeling and rendering software. The 2010 version has a
number of features including: a new Graphite modeling and texturing system; integrates the
Mental Mill technology; extensive polygon modeling capabilities; efficient character animation
software with an integrated Biped toolset; Spline and 2D modeling tools; character animation
through skeletons and inverse kinematics; an integrated Mental Ray renderer; advanced motion
capture capabilities; and much much more. Priced at $3495. 1GB RAM required, with 2GB Hard
Disk space and Direct3D 9/10 or OpenGL graphics (128 MB). Windows XP Professional or
better.

Maya: Maya is a 3D modeling, animation, rendering and visual effects software. It

has a host of features including: professional camera tracking; polygon texture
assignment and editing; NURBS modeling; Trax nonlinear animation system; Motion
Capture with Dense Data Editing and Resampling; Rigid and Soft Body Dynamics; a
number of rendering controls and effects; integrated scripting; and more. Also
priced at $3495. 2GB RAM required, with 2GB Hard Disk space and OpenGL graphics
(128 MB). Windows, Mac or Linux.

MotionBuilder: MotionBuilder is a character animation tool, that allows you to

create real-time animation fluidly and quickly. Characters can be built using
intelligent skeletons and kinematics. Then bringing them to life is through keyframe
or effection motion capturing tools or both. There are a host of animation tools and
motion editors, to get exactly the motion effect that you want. Its feature set
includes: multi-threading and optimization; real-time simulations of characters; real-
time support for deformation of highly-detailed, fully-textured characters; and
support for multiple characters through a large animation data set. Sells for $3995.
Requires Windows XP SP2 or higher with 2GB RAM, 1GB Hard Disk space, and
OpenGL 1.5 Graphics.

Mach Studio Pro

According to its publisher’s Mach Studio Pro really gives you the capability to “Work at the
Speed of Thought!” Whether this is accomplished or not is for you to find out, but it does have
an attractive set of features that seem to promise much. To begin with there is the real-time
rendering engine that will easily render the animation on your desktop without requiring a
separate rendering utility. It provides a great deal of interactivity with the 3D graphic workspace
and that is one of its strongest features. Student version is available for $999, full version is
$3,999 (if you already have an ATI FirePro or compatible high end Graphics card), else the price
with an ATI FirePro card is $4,999.

Animate Pro

Toon Boom’s Animate Pro combines vector technology, real-time animation tools and nodal
compositing to provide a comprehensive animation toolkit. The beauty of the suite begins with
the interface that can be user adapted and customized as needed. Working comfort is further
enhanced by a smooth integration of the pipeline and workflow. Artistic freedom is supported by
the fact that Animate Pro allows a number of multiple brush tools, textures, and gradients, along
with an advanced clean, ink and paint toolkit – the combination of which will let you keep your
paper artistic style alive on the computer screen, with the benefit of nuance and intricacy.
Symbols and pegs work in unison with key framing is possible in cut-out to speed-up the
animation process.Windows XP or higher OR Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. At least 1GB of RAM
and 300MB Hard Disk space. NVIDIA or ATI video card. Priced at $1999.99, but there is a trial
version available.

The Mid-Range
Craft Director Studio

Craft Director Studio is a set of tools that extends the capabilities of existing software such as
Maxon Cinema 4D and SoftImage, and enables real-time functionality on them. (It also works
with Maya and 3ds Max, although in their case the real-time enhancement point is a bit moot.
There are of course other enhancements that can be added to extend their functionality.) Based
on Artificial Intelligence and autonomous control systems research, the main objective and
achievement of the Craft Director Studio set of tools is to radically transform the workflow to
make them real-time or near real-time. Individual features can also be bought as modules, such
as Craft HumanizerCam (part of Camera Tools Bundle), Craft Airplane Extended (part of
Vehicle Tools Bundle) and so on. Prices range from $129 to $1199 for individual modules.
Bundles vary from $986 to $5099. Note that depending on how much you buy, this can easily go
into the “pricey” bracket, and that there is the price of the core software to be considered as well.

DX Studio
DX Studio is a complete integrated development environment for 3D graphics creation that
includes a comprehensive suite of editing tools (including real-time editing tools) as well as a
real-time 3D rendering engineOther modules include a vehicle module and a streaming module.
Wide range of light and shade effects possible and there is a comprehensive DX Studio Shader
system. At approximately $409 (299 British Pounds) this seems to be a really good buy.
Requires 1GB RAM with Shader Model 2+ Graphics with 128MB RAM. For Windows XP SP2
or higher (DirectX 9.0).

Messiah Studio

Messiah Studio is an award winning 3D animation and rendering application. The professional
edition costs $599 and is worth it when you consider that such films as Ghost Rider, Hell Boy,
and the Harry Potter movies have used Messiah Studio. If that is still too high a price tag, there is
also the basic edition that is more affordable at $399. Messiah Studio has excellent motion
capture capabilities and the renderer is a hybrid of scanline and raytracing technology

The Cheap
iClone

At $199.95 iClone 4 is certainly an affordable real-time 3D animation solution. It allows for

drag-and-drop based fast editing, and object’s can be individually edited In-Screen. It is very
easy to bring live actors into iClone and then proceeding from there to creating animation using
this as a basis is quite simple. This is simplified by a number of features such as: customizable
actors and styles; body transformation and facial deformation capabilities; CloneCloth costume
design for the actors; 3D facial puppeteering; interactivity between actors and In-Screen objects;
In-Screen motion editing and more. Other features include: HDR video effects; set designing
with 3D blocks and material balls, as well as the ability to build a stage with terrain, sky and live
plants (see figure); advanced camera and lighting options, with lens effects, directional and point
lights, HDR and IBL lighting effects, etc.; and a whole lot more.

Kinemac

Kinemac is a solution for Mac OS X which, coming in at $299 is a great deal. It allows you to
drag images, text, movies and songs onto the Kinemac stage and you can easily integrate them
into your animation. Movies and text can be applied to ready-to-use objects such as cubes,
cylinders, spheres, tubes, pipes, etc. and these can easily be animated using key frames. The
animation control system is based on Brezier curves and it allows you to control individual
aspects of movement including translations, rotations, resizing, fading, speed, acceleration and
deceleration. This can be done for any object that is on the Kinemac stage, and the animation can
be played in real-time. A number of helpful tutorials explain how to get things done in Kinemac.

Blender

Blender is an Open Source solution available for Windows 98 or higher, Mac OS X, Linux,
FreeBSD, SGI Irix 6.5 and Sun Solaris 2.8 or higher. It is mainly a modeling and rendering tool
which can be used to create things such as 3D avatars, architecture models, and animations from
photos. The 3D object modeling progresses through a traditional polygon mesh, NURBS
surfaces, Bezier and B-spline curves. Mesh modeling is possible based on vertex, edge and/or
face selection. Requires at least 128MB of RAM with 20MB free hard disk space and an
OpenGL graphics card with 16MB RAM; but 2GB of RAM recommended with OpenGL
Graphics card that has 128MB RAM.

Animata

Animata is another Open Source tool that is ideally suited to such tasks as real-time animation
and interactive background projections for shows. The movement of puppets as well as the
changes in the background are generated at real-time allowing for continuous interaction
between you (or the performer) and the end-result animation. It is possible to create an animated
character that reacts to its environment through the integration of such things as physical sensors,
cameras or other environmental variables. Jazz Pub is an amazing example of an animation
reacting to an audio input stimulus created using Animata.