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Author Topic: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?  (Read 27773 times)

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PrestonD

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Hi everyone,

I went through the various posts and on Mnemonic's 3d demo test we had a little slice of discussion about what character animation or design software to use.  Seems like a lot of folks use Poser, and I saw some suggestions on using Milkshape but what do most of the respondents and viewers here on this forum use for their character design software and why?

I thought about maybe using even some of the character development and skins used in other games that allow you to create your own character and just doing a screen capture to create the character bitmaps or graphic screens. 

Any suggestions on what to use?  Seems like character graphical development is one of the most labor intensive aspects of game development here...

Thanks,
Preston D
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gfx johnny

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2004, 08:30:54 PM »

Do we talk about realtime animation or prerendered graphics (you mentioned both)?

Poser would be about prerendered art, because as said before, the characters have too many polys to get decent speed. I would say to use Poser is a bad idea. Its so favourite because you just need a small amout of knowledge to get results. But first of all, you can recognize that ugly "poser look" without much effort, and it's not so easy to customise your model in every way. The interface is not so good when comparing to other established 3d apps. If you just need a generic human model for prerendered animations it would be enough though. Perhaps you could edit the renderes frames in your favourite graphic app to get away from the poser style.

Milkshape is the choice for wintermute realtime character animation, because afaik thats the only supported format. Its cheap, easy to use and quite powerful for generating realtime content. It wouldnt qualify for prerenderes graphics, because it lacks an powerful render engine.

I dont know much about animation possibilities in Blender, so maybe thats an alternative.

Of course there are the big, expensive 3d apps like 3dsmax (+character studio), Maya, Lightwave, Cinema4d and so on. Character rigging, the setup for animations, is not that easy although there are lots of tutorials everywhere. Powerful with a learning curve, and expensive to buy.

As you said, you could use modification tools of good games, a nice idea. I dont know if you will get animation tools though. For example, Max Payne 2 uses 3dsmax for creating animations even camera paths).

Zbrush 2 is also a nice application and features Zspheres, so you could eays pose your model and create an animation of single frames (much easier to learn character rigging). And ZBrush isnt that expensive, too (but more expensive than Milkshape ;) ).


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martin

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2004, 09:16:51 PM »

Quote
I dont know much about animation possibilities in Blender, so maybe thats an alternative.

blender has everything, including a full animation support rivaling even ligtwave in that respect

there is a plugin called makehuman, which gives you a completed model that you can modify every single bodypart of (including breast size and various aspects of the genitals :o), the problem is that there is no support for clothes afaik

I guess that milkshape is the best alternative, since it's easy to use
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Mnemonic

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2004, 10:10:37 PM »

there is a plugin called makehuman, which gives you a completed model that you can modify every single bodypart of (including breast size and various aspects of the genitals :o), the problem is that there is no support for clothes afaik
I was wondering if MakeHuman gives you some control over the resulting polycount. Anyone knows?
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Nihil

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2004, 10:58:20 PM »

Not really as far as I know, only thing you can do is not using Subdive & co, but else than this you have to go with the given polycount. Maybe in the future someone creates low-ply basemodels? That would be the only real possibility I think,

Nihil

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2004, 11:12:29 PM »

And to answer the question, I think there is no real best tool. It all depends on what you want to achieve and what your capabilities are. I use Poser, even if I hate it (and I do ;-) ), because I totally suck at charcter-design in other apps, and even MakeHuman is no alternative for me, because I can't model clothes and do decent animations and so on. So for me Poser is the way to go. (of course I use 2d-sprites for my actors, not 3d-models :-) )

If I was good enough to model the characters myself I would do it, but I prefer a good-looking but not very unique Posermodel over a self-modelled onethat looks like the result of a serious car-crash :-)
I have no problem with people knowing that the characters were done in Poser, and I think most people who will play the game won't have one either, because we are talking about amateur adventures here, and the graphics are by far not the most important part here.
Just look at all the AGS-games that use ripped graphics from 15-year old games ... who cares if the game is fun to play?

Another case is if you aim to do a commercial game - but how much of us are doing this really? I think not too much.


gfx johnny

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2004, 12:50:50 AM »

You are right imho. I used Poser myself some time ago and i loved it, because i wasn't able to create characters on my own (in fact i'm not sure if i am able today ;D ) and it was fun to create any kind of animation. I love amateur adventures and would play them with any kind of graphics. If you are interested i could try to create an animated character for you btw; i have to do more on my game design (not sure if i will change my game idea big time) and it would be good practice for me  ;D
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PrestonD

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2004, 05:33:17 AM »

Thanks for all the replies, this character development is primarily for a game on the Wintermute engine, and I dont think I would be very good at character animation along with many of the other posters as they replied above.   I would essentialy create a 3d character and make screenshots for use as a 2d sprite as an actor/character in Wintermute.  Trouble is you have to create a large variety of characters in various positions (8 for walking, other positions for talking, etc.) and I am not much of an artist, so that is why I am thinking about using the 3d characters, pose them for the needed positions and make the bitmap shots.

I did download a program today for creating Sim characters using their meshes, etc. called Simposeium http://www.simpose.com/ but I have not tried to use it yet and cannot report on its usage and effectiveness.

I am also looking at the Milkshape 3D as was mentioned above.   

Again thanks for the replies I will continue to monitor this thread for any more input from anybody else.

Regards,
Preston D
« Last Edit: November 28, 2004, 05:40:16 AM by PrestonD »
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Martin

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #8 on: November 28, 2004, 09:56:33 AM »

I don't think that if a game is 'amateaur' it should have bad graphics. I know that this is the case for most games of this type, but I think that this should change and I'm trying to do just that in the game I've started.

gfx johnny

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2004, 04:29:03 PM »

It's not obligatory to have bad graphics in an amateur adventure, of course. I personally want to achieve quality graphics too. But creating an adventure is a lot of work, and sometimes there is only one creator, so its impossible to make everything high quality. And you can enjoy an adventure (even every other genre, too) even with bad art, because the gameplay or the story is that good. So if you can create good graphics, go for it of course. But there will be lots of adventure fans who will play nice little games with bad graphics too :)
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Nihil

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #10 on: November 28, 2004, 04:47:00 PM »

Speaking about art: http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=609.0

It is not really state-of-the-art  8) but I loved it :-)

Of course bad graphics are not a must-have for an amateur-adventure, but I prefer one with not so perfect graphics over one that aims to be super-comercial quality but never gets finished - and thats what happens to the most announced games, unfortunately.

Of course, if you are a good artist it will push the game to higher levels, but if not, well, just give your best ;-)

@Johnny: Thanks for the offer! Next week my new PC finally arrives (at least I hope so :-) ), and then I start again with character design, maybe I need some help then :-)

gfx johnny

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2004, 04:59:55 PM »

Here is an example of Zbrush and its ZSpheres-Posing. I guess it's similar to Simpose, but you can create everything within ZBrush of course. The character is an old one of mine, not that good, but just for showing the ZSpheres. It's very easy to control that Spheres, you just drag them around, rotate them and so on.



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Nihil

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #12 on: November 28, 2004, 05:09:50 PM »

Are they comparable to metaballs in Blender?

I downloaded the demo-version of zBrush a while ago, but of course it didn't run on my PC :-)

gfx johnny

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #13 on: November 28, 2004, 05:28:25 PM »

I dont know Blender that good, but i know Metaballs from Truespace for example. Its different from standard metaballs.

I think a picture says more than lots of words, so look at this animated gif.

You construct your model using spheres, and Zbrush will skin it according to position and scale of that spheres. After that, you con edit your model using standard Zbrush Tools, paint 3d structure directly on it (so great), push and move 3d geometry, it's like sculpting clay. And after your model is finished, rotate the Zspheres and the geometry will adapt, so you can have any pose you wish.
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Nihil

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Re: What is the best Charactor/Actor Animation software/tool utility?
« Reply #14 on: November 28, 2004, 08:21:56 PM »

Sounds good! Unfortunately, Zbrush is out of my financial range :-)

According to the gif-file I would say that Zspheres are very advanced versions of metaballs? They look somehow similar, but I think they provide way more complex interaction from what I have seen there.
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