your ANTICS 3d community

NEW Characters for Antics

2009-02-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-11T03:25:00.000-08:00

thanks to el_fuica for the character catalogue!

QUEST 3d

2009-02-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-31T20:22:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-12T21:09:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-12T01:27:00.001-08:00

Depth of Field

2009-01-12T01:24:00.001-08:00

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!)

2009-01-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-01-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

Found another antics tutorial project here.

focus on Alexander Sokolov

2008-12-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

Alexander Sokolov

Is a russian previz artist who is my feature artist this time around.

He most recently worked on "Wanted" which starred the lovely lips of Angelina Jollie.

In addition to his site which is packed with great stills, there's also an old blog with a couple of interesting production stills.
Alexander Sokolov’s is a
3D Artist with production experience in television, аnd feature films. Specializing in Layout, Camera work and Vehicles animation. Alexander Sokolov’s Specialties:
Software: 3ds max, Vray, Adobe After Effects, Photshop, Illustrator, Premiere, PFTrack, SynthEye. Skillset: Planing, Layout, Vehicles animation, Dynamics, Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering Alexander Sokolov’s has Experience
as Previz/VFX Artist, Supervisor
Bazelevs (Motion Pictures and Film industry) Jan 2005 — June 2008 (3 years 6 months)
Wanted (2008) - dir. Timur Bekmambetov Ironiya sudby. Prodolzhenie (2007) - dir. Timur Bekmambetov Dnevnoy dozor (2006) - dir. Timur Bekmambetov

Action

2008-12-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hi all, in between drinks and eating way too much, I thought it might be of interest to you to have a look at this action sequence I built earlier. The whole clip is done in the timeline, it does continue with the girl kicking the guys butt, but that part was a little buggy.

Check out the project file if you get a moment. It was done on v4.

Third Floor Reel

2008-12-22T17:48:00.000-08:00

OMG I loved Cloverfield. 1 oscar coming up.

Merry Christmas

Snake prop!

2008-12-15T04:32:00.000-08:00

check this out anyone know about the assets used in this official antics clip. In particular the snake at 28sec. Also I'd like to tip my hat to the artist who did the helicopter blasts! very cool.

NEW FORUM UPDATE

2008-12-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

The new forum is coming along nicely, there has been some real progress in the character development area. Also there's an important petition for pro users to check out. The forum is very open and becoming a great resource for veteran and newbies alike.
please take some time to check it out.
Also news is that the new offical characters have now been released and are available to download on the antics site.
If your are thinking of contributing to the discussion on Project Talent, the forum topic dedicated to character building, (both kinds), then check out this tut on skinning.
This latest test is from Quidam to Max to Antics.

make 'em jump

2008-12-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

The library of character animations available within Antics is very large no doubt. But there are times when you need to have your character do things which are a little more custom built. Creating poses and blending to them will work quite nicely, as will importing .bvh animations (if you can find what you’re after).
But there are ways to set up your scene to get Antics to solve these custom moves for you. If you can get Antics do to do it realtime, then the process can be much faster.
For example, say I wanted my guy to run, then jump over something. Firstly, I set the walk (in properties:general:walks) to a run animation namely male_run.k3d so now wherever I direct him to go, he’ll get there real fast. Then I get him to perform the jump animation Jump_1.k3d
Ok so far so good. He runs, he jumps. Brilliant. But of course it’s very very unlikely the jump will take him the exact distance you have in mind, I mean, we could just let him drop into that lava pit, or croc pit or whatever he’s meant to be jumping over. So. Rather than go off in search of longer jumps, what if we move the room to make up the distance? If you setup a move on the room with him just standing there, you’ll see him move with the floor. So we simply setup the floor to move at the precise moment he leaves the ground, and have it stop moving just as he is to land.
Try it, it’s fun. In my example clip I moved the floor vertically as well, to get the guy to jump down to a lower level. Oh and then I added a little bounce off move using another jump and floor/combo.

As you can see I also changed the guy into a girl, it’s like a kill bill, bourne identity, bond thing now!
Moving the room also solved another problem I encountered a little while back. The idea was to have a whole bunch of shooters aim for the one target which was moving. The shooting animations in Antics are cool so I wanted to use those. Plus they work with the props! The solution was to put each shooter on a little room about the size of a floor mat. Then have these rooms hooked up to a cam. The room is linked to the cam.
The cameras (one for each room) are then told to target the target, (if you get what I mean). This way the target can move and the shooters won’t miss! You can get the cameras to look where ever you want, just make the target at ground plane level.
T.
(part 2 here)

Making the Fairy fly - Sketchup tip

2008-12-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

In one of the packs was an angel, I thought it might be fun to go through the steps needed to make the wings of the fairy move. It’s possible to use the tab key to allow selection each wing, set a pose or two and then get the fairy to blend from one pose to another, but, I thought you might want to have a little more control, plus this way you can have your fairy free to do other stuff. (Like walking.)
For this you’ll need some eggs, a little flour and an inclinometer. (just kidding you won’t need the eggs!) Actually this process works best with photoshop and sketchup and of course Antics. We’ll be plucking the wings off our fairy and then sticking a couple of new ones on. So place the fairy on a new room. To remove the original wings, right click the fairy, choose textures then right click on the wings.ksh texture in the list, to select edit. Under the colour tab you can set the transparency to 100%. So now you have a wingless fairy. Not bad looking as a female character, bar the ears and the ridges in her back!.
The next step is to set up for creating or own wings. We do this by importing a new fairy and positioning her so that all we see is the wing sticking up through the floor like a wing shaped floor mat. (Turn off the snap to position,rotation option.) Line your camera up to this wing and when it’s large in frame save out a single frame. This’ll be what we use the create and texture our new wing. Your wing should look like this…….
Using sketchup, import the wing still frame (as an image) so that we can trace the shape. I found a Bezier Curves plugin for Sketchup which made the job much easier. Once you have a completed the outline of your wing, you can import the stillframe again (as a texture) and apply it to the surface. A little scale/rotate/position fiddle and we are all set. Remember to do the other side as well. Ok now save the .skp file as wing.skp then back into Antics and jump into the file/import and select your wing.skp
All good. So now you should have a wing and a wingless fairy. At this point I saved the Antics project. When you do this you can access the texture map being applied to the new wing so that you can set the look of it to match the original wing texture map. These maps are found in a “maps” folder within the saved project. The original wing was mapped with a fairy_hair_wings.tga file. If you want the new wing to be identical to the original you’ll need to use photoshop to match the RGBA channels. Otherwise you could set the transparency value so the new wing has the look you want.
The next part of the process is to get the new wings flapping. As usual, I’ve gone for the old, “use a camera to create a motion curve” trick. If you haven’t heard of it before, it goes something like this. Put a freecam in the spot where you want an animatable axis of some sort. Link the asset/prop to this freecam. Now use the pan, tilt and dolly values to drive your prop. In this way the values are recorded via the camera’s motion curve, and therefore editable. For the wings, make sure the pivot point is in the right spot, then link each wing to it’s own freecam, which you put, right on the ridge on the back of our wingless fairy. It’s useful to have two viewports open. One is the Mastercam, framed so you can see the whole wing, (say from the top). The other viewport (which you make active) is to see what the freecam is looking at. When you pan left, the asset will swivel to the left. Make sure the freecamera animation is recorded in the timeline.
Once you’ve got your cameras doing their thing, link them to your fairy. Now she is free to be directed, and the wings will perform on cue.
Have fun.
T.

speed utility

2008-12-06T03:47:00.000-08:00

Trolling through the old forum I found this speed utility created by Col Klink.

Using Machinima to teach film

2008-12-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

Using machinima to teach film
Machinima has the potential to be a powerful tool for teaching film-making techniques. It has several advantages over existing 3D animation technologies such as Max or Maya. The film-maker doesn’t need any knowledge of 3D animation techniques – controlling the characters is as easy as playing a computer game. The virtual world is “live” - in other words, everything takes place in real time, and so it feels more like directing on a real set.

The disadvantage of using machinima is ......................
(article continued in comments section)

----------------------
Thanks go to
Matt Kelland, Short Fuze, for writing this article.

New emotional characters

2008-12-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a sneak preview of the upcoming new emotional characters.
Keep a lookat at the Antics download page.

New forum - Antics

2008-12-02T04:10:00.000-08:00

here
Invitations to JRay, Colonel Klink, Ricky, InfoCentral, AnticsFife, afterThought, dazza101, klate & Michael and to all current and future users of Antics. All are welcome. Learners especially welcome.

to be honest - the artist formerly known as Antics

2008-12-02T01:41:00.000-08:00

There's a lot to be said for the Gordon Ramsey way of expressing yourself. Shooting straight from the hip and getting on with it. I started as a beta tester for v2 and have been fortunate to have been commissioned a number of times for various demo pieces. Like a couple of other select few, I was asked to join the moderating team on the official forum and contribute to the official blog. So it certainly surprised me with the nov 28 news and now with the closure of the web site/forum. (F**K!) Like many others I have invested way too much time in getting across the product to just let it slide. When I setup my little previz shop under the name AMMO PREVIZ, I thought I had identified a future market. The concept was "AMMO" : to provide ammunition to the previz creator. I choose Antics at that point as it was the only one I felt suited my creative and 3d skill set. Even with the current owners orphaning the child, I can see plently of growth possible. This one product is in use by around 20,000 people. The best solution available to us all is one which takes into account the most popular features. Without taking away any credit for the artists formerly know as Antics developers, the product evolved in part as a result of our community feedback. So we do owe it to ourselves to keep the momentum going. So lets take the batton, stir the pot and work on that F***ng recipe. Please leave your mark for what worked best for you, in the comments section.