Collodi - New Animation Software

[wesserbro]

https://www.fmx.de/program2017/list
can you find something related to inria, TeamTo, Guerilla Render or mercenaries engineering in this list?
I've red from mauricio about Modo - here we have modo https://www.fmx.de/program2017/event/10479, for example

[MauricioPC]

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully he's not "lying".

[Mathaeus]

https://www.fmx.de/program2017/list
can you find something related to inria, TeamTo, Guerilla Render or mercenaries engineering in this list?
I've red from mauricio about Modo - here we have modo https://www.fmx.de/program2017/event/10479, for example

There are some new positive posts in same thread on Modo forum, by people who visited FMX... while yeah, such way of presenting the software, perhaps it is telling that they are far away of final release.
By these reports, it's looking like tool, very focused on hand made animation and variances of that - which is, well, exactly area where, very personally, I'm not today, and don't believe the tool like that will dramatically change, anything. Imho future is mocap, regardless we like it or not.

[wesserbro]

by people who visited FMX

i saw that post from the "witness/encounter" and it looks like total trolling

[Mathaeus]

by people who visited FMX

i saw that post from the "witness/encounter" and it looks like total trolling

Agree 101%. At least something is completely unusual here, politely to say.

[Pooby]

Imho future is mocap, regardless we like it or not.

I came from a traditional animation background in Stop motion at Aardman animations, back in the day when Pixar were hiring all the stop motion animators they could find. I turned down their offer as at the time I had no interest in CGI. A few years later bit the bullet and moved to Hand Keyed CGI because I was directing CGI and decided to have a go myself.
Ive been working in Performance capture for 13 years, 7 of which with The Imaginarium and Andy Serkis with whom I've done quite a bit of work. I spent a month with him out at Weta at both animation and mocap departments. So I have quite a bit of experience in both areas.

I disagree that 'future is mocap'. Mocap is great and I enjoy translating a performance onto a digital character. However, Hand Keying can allow for anything to happen. You can't make 'The Jungle Book' with mocap alone, Or a Dragon, or any non-bipedal character. Mocap can be useful as reference, and could even drive quadropedal motion. I was involved in making such a tool, but I don't think it would ever be able to replace hand animation. Just as photographs can't replace illustration.

[wesserbro]

I insist on artistic-driven generated\simulated motion as a future of realistic animation. it can take mocap data as a basis for simulation but still..

[Mathaeus]

Ok I'll change the statement into ''my future is mocap'' ;;) At least I hope so...

[wesserbro]

I came from a traditional animation background in Stop motion at Aardman animations,

by the way, Pooby, what do you think about having a theoretical puppet (with rotation sensors, no wires, lightweight etc) to pose a character?
I was nowhere near a stop motion, but it looks like while its of course order of magnitude more time consuming to animate, it seems like a more natural way to set a pose than any maya or softimage rig...

[Pooby]

I don't see it as a particular necessity to be honest. I know some places experimented with that in the 90s but I think it got abandoned over the years because posing the character in software is the least of your worries when animating.

As for Stop motion. What it does do is force you to plan. I used to have massive dopesheets with all my timings worked out in advance for body parts on every key because if you screw up, you can't really undo. (Or at least, couldn't in those days, shooting on film with tape based reference while you worked. Or when I started. working Completely blind. Now at least with digital you have a much better way of going back and deleting frames and getting your character back in pose.)
With CGI , it allows you to wing it and try stuff on the fly, which is great, but has in the past led to me being a lot more sloppy about planning.

[wesserbro]

i'm not a top notch animator, but still did it for a living. And all this endless clicking\dragging to pose a character not only was time consuming but also was hurting my wrist. Partly because of this i was happy to use blender when i could, it allows to rotate and move objects with released mouse buttons causing less tension in the hand. Indeed this puppet idea is delirious but i still think there is some room to improve keyframing process and posing particularly.

[MauricioPC]

I came from a traditional animation background in Stop motion at Aardman animations, back in the day when Pixar were hiring all the stop motion animators they could find. I turned down their offer as at the time I had no interest in CGI. A few years later bit the bullet and moved to Hand Keyed CGI because I was directing CGI and decided to have a go myself.
Ive been working in Performance capture for 13 years, 7 of which with The Imaginarium and Andy Serkis with whom I've done quite a bit of work. I spent a month with him out at Weta at both animation and mocap departments. So I have quite a bit of experience in both areas.

I disagree that 'future is mocap'. Mocap is great and I enjoy translating a performance onto a digital character. However, Hand Keying can allow for anything to happen. You can't make 'The Jungle Book' with mocap alone, Or a Dragon, or any non-bipedal character. Mocap can be useful as reference, and could even drive quadropedal motion. I was involved in making such a tool, but I don't think it would ever be able to replace hand animation. Just as photographs can't replace illustration.

You have to love the power of the internet + forum. It allows you to get in touch with amazing artists doing amazing stuff. Thanks for the info on the subject Pooby.

[Bullit]

Anyone tried the Mosketch?

[wesserbro]

Anyone tried the Mosketch?

Mixed feelings. I would not say its useless, but maybe it could be more suitable as additional mode to something like maya with the ability to quickly switching it on/off.
My verdict: technology is raw, application itself is just a wrapper to it, even less baked.

[Bullit]

Thanks wesserbro.

[wesserbro]

So.. Last day of FMX passed. No breaking news, no admiring talks in the web (except one troll), no disillusioned talks. NOTHING. Good job, mercenaries.
I even wonder who uses their Guerilla, having so moderate prices for industry best renderers including Prman.