CompuServe Messages

Sam, >> I'm curious about AM, but I don't seem to understand exactly what makes it so great for character animation. << Have you ever seen Greg Rostami demo Animation Master here in LA? He's been at numerous conventions including the VTU conference in Dec. and 3D Art Forum (naturally <g>). If you missed 'em, your next opportunity will probably be at SIGGRAPH in August. I don't know if they're going to be at the CD-ROM devs conference this week. (What's it called, E3, E6, or something?) Yes, you can do many equivalent things in Imagine, but splines offer a different kind of flexibility than polys. They have a more fluid sculptural feel. The main reason I recommend people look at it for character animation is the spline modeling. It lends itself well to creating characters, both realistic and bouncy cartoony-looking. AM also has some unique animation tools geared especially towards character animation. Their spines (roughly equivalent to Imagine's spline deformation), joints (roughly equivalent to Imagine's bones), and `muscle-motion' (roughly equivalent to Imagine's point morphing), have a uniquely modular design. AM allows you to apply behavior created with this techniques to many different figures, so just about any animation you create can be effectively recycled on many different characters. AM has its problems though, (confusing file structure for one, and rather slow rendering from what I hear) and I frankly still prefer to do my animation in Imagine because it feels more solid. But that's no reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. Many 3D artists have done amazing things with AM. The reason you probably aren't hearing much about AM from other folks at the moment is that it's in the midst of a major overhaul. I use it mainly for modeling so my focus is getting its DXF Export more polished. >> I looked through the tutorial in the April CGW, but I didn't see anything that I couldn't do easily in Imagine.<< Maybe so, but I think, after learning how to model with splines (which can take awhile, I'm still learning new things, and I've had the program for about 6 months), you'd find creating a robot, like the one shown in the article, a lot less painless in AM than Imagine. Since your working with quadrilateral spline patches, there's far less visual spaghetti, many fewer control points to deal with. For more perspective on AM look at the January 95 CGW article on Facial Animation. But keep in mind that, although relatively new to the medium of 3D, Rod Altschul did a tremendous amount of work to push the envelope as far out as he could on his first attempts. So don't expect to be able to create realistic talking heads like his a few days after getting the software. >>Is there any way to get a demo version of this program? I'm interested, but confused about the whole spline thing. << A demo copy probably wouldn't do much good because it takes a lot of practice to learn the program well. It's not the sort of thing you can just sit down and pick up right away. That's why I recommended Greg Rostami's demos because he shows all the features quickly and efficiently. Also, because of the current refit of the program, it might be wise to wait until the next release comes out in a few months before making any decisions. In the meantime you could ask Hash to send you their demo tape with some of there hot-shot animators stuff. Again, (the usual caveat) as with any 3D program, remember that the quality of the work that comes out, has lot to do with who's hands it's in. Some of the work on their tape was, I believe, created by the pros at Will Vinton's studio. Playmation (AM's precursor) does not have all the features of AM, but it might be adequate just to get a feel for the program, and perhaps someone would be willing to sell you a used copy on the cheap. Hash (the maker of both programs) maintains a forum in ANVENA. -Tim