Collodi - New Animation Software

[NNois]

Hi, for thoses reading french.
The Guerilla renderer team and INRIA are devellopping a new Commercial Animation software.

There's some infos on their facebook page + here http://www.mediakwest.com/post/item/col ... -maya.html

[Hirazi Blue]

As far as I can tell after using Google Translate on this link, this may prove to be interesting.
Here's hoping more info will surface soon...
;)

[Hirazi Blue]

mercenaries engineering (Guerilla Render) teases the unveiling of "new generation animation software you are dreaming of… " at this year's FMX...
https://www.facebook.com/notes/guerilla ... 472126233/

[wesserbro]

Back in the days there was a teaser of "new upcoming revolutionary node-based animation software" called sylyn (from syflex creators). Till this day there is nothing but 3 low-res screenshots.
Also I remember being hyped by the Guerilla Render, when they promised it to be a mysterious hybrid engine. Now its just another cpu pathtracer... SAD
It would be great if they bring something new to the table, but i'm really skeptic.

edit: to save you several minutes of googling. This FMX event will happen 'May 02-05, Stuttgart, Germany'

[Hirazi Blue]

While I am quite certain, this won't be the software I am "dreaming of", I am looking forward to this possible unveiling, as it would appear to be software that already is "production-proven". And frankly every newcomer in the wonderful world of 3d software is welcome at this point...
;)

[Draise]

Yeah, I agree, anything new and built of new architecture is welcome these days. Healthy for competition.

[wesserbro]

So we would not hear about this magnificent software for another several years? (Just noticed original post have news from 2015)
I had bad luck trying to find some info from previous FMX, so i suppose if you were not IRL on the event you can forget about anything related, am i right?

[Mathaeus]

There's some info posted on Modo forum. According to that, it's looking really impressive, imho idea of implementing some 'animation generator' in pro animation software is brave idea. When saying 'Animation generator', I'm thinking about of 'line of action' feature which seems to be able to generate complete let's say basic layer of animation. Something like that traditionally was "forbidden" for key frame animation, through years, all tools are endless variance of how to set poses but not that much about interpolation between them... while btw it seems to be not "forbidden" for animators at DreamWorks/ and similar big facilities (according to what they displayed about their animation software).
There are also a few interesting simulation solvers focused on character animation, while no one of them is looking as 'revolutionary' thing.

However, 'line of action' feature seems to be relative easy to replicate in Maya, simply because of brute power, should be (well, relative) easy to just add and connect an 'line of action rig' and connect with anything already existing on scene. Simulation solvers will be 'translated' to Maya or Max, in some way to Blender too, sooner or later....

....but it's hard to believe anything of that will successfully transfer to another 'newcomers', small players and such. So I'm afraid it's same story as before: big players will get inspiration and will become bigger, while (potential) success of such story would be able to kill the last chance to even jump in animation field, for players like Modo or Houdini. In case of Houdini which still (totally destructively) does not allow to put a plain chain of more than two or three linked parameters into HDA (so one has to build HDA first, then..), and it's desperately slow with any even little complex serial anything, and, and ........ perhaps it's chance to stop the disgrace, once forever.

We'll see, number of implemented things and number of facilities involved, does not promises affordable price.

Personally I'm more in gamedev field, motion capture and related, so nothing for me here, according to these lists.

[wesserbro]

Stepping aside Collodi..
I think mocap even for games isn't an ideal solution: it takes time to record, to clean up, to retarget etc. Retargeted results often feels lame on a model with different proportions (im not talking about obvious errors), even human-to-human is not ideal at times (new 'mass effect' as a very evident and numerous less vivid examples).
Many animations cant be recreated with mocap, captured fightings still look staged choreography and so on.
So the end goal for an ultimate animation software i would think of is to be a complete artistic driven simulation, an engine which takes on itself all the physics and biomechanics of the movement, leaving the directing part with all its subtleness to an artist.

[wesserbro]

So i checked out links on the modo forum. Looks like "let's make some rough pity even faster", while i would be more interested in "make perfect animation within timecost of average one"

[Mathaeus]

Stepping aside Collodi..
I think mocap even for games isn't an ideal solution: it takes time to record, to clean up, to retarget etc. Retargeted results often feels lame on a model with different proportions (im not talking about obvious errors), even human-to-human is not ideal at times (new 'mass effect' as a very evident and numerous less vivid examples).

For what I'm doing right now, it is a solution for around 90 percent, because, well, it is a solution. By nature it seems to be better field for implementing a new technical solutions or technologies, than hand - made animation, so I think we can expect further improvements. One huge gift is already there in form of Microsoft Kinect. It's always great exercise in kinematics, vectors, quaternions and such. Looking for artistic side, art is present, it's just a professional dancer instead of animator.
I mean, somehow similar story with Maya, to hell annoying sometimes, but possible to solve the problems, one by one.

[Mathaeus]

Found this on SI mail list. So it seems that Line Of Action, Dynamic Sketching or whatever, is rolling all around... we won't be able to live without in next year probably, in two years will become forgotten but who cares...

[Bullit]

If it works like it appears then it is finally something modern.

[wesserbro]

Found this on SI mail list.

Drew a line for almost every joint in several views except those cant be controlled by a line and were rotated old-school way. This is so modern and amazing i've almost shred my pants

[MauricioPC]

I was yesterday on the FMX (and go there again in a few minutes).

My opinion: Collodi is VEEEEERRRY interesting! You can compare it like an up-to-date Messiah Studio combined with Presto and all Maya animation features with a quick 3D view and there you go.

You have pretty much all deformers that Maya offers to animators implemented by default and some more. You can also create your own rigs completely in this tool or program and implement your own deformers. It´s realtime preview is absolutely speedy, able to animate billions of polygons at high frame rates and you can do top notch animations with it. The sketch based tools are there, but that´s by far not all - only one highlight of many others. I´ve seen animation methods like Presto offers. In my opinion it surely has the power to make HQ character animations without Maya, yes.

If you know TeamTO and what they´re doing - take a look at Oscar´s Oasis - then you know what it needs to convince them to jump into such a tool development.

And the best: It will be much cheaper than a Maya.
edited by: Crushbomber

https://community.foundry.com/discuss/post/1080847


Well, this might be interesting. Anything that hurts Autodesk is good for the industry.

[wesserbro]

My opinion: Collodi is VEEEEERRRY interesting! You can compare it like an up-to-date Messiah Studio combined with Presto and all Maya animation features with a quick 3D view and there you go.

Videos or didn't happen.