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eMotion - new animation plugin from Ishani
Here's a description of a new upcoming amazing free plugin from Ishani called eMotion.
eMotion Animation Morpher [beta]
Copyright(c) Ishani 1997
Design by Harry Denholm and Michael Koch, code by Harry Denholm.
Concept:
eMotion is a tool for blending animations together. It works along similar lines
as a weighted morpher (infact, some of the interface is identical to the MIX
morphing plugin) - defining animation for groups of objects and then blending
values of these together. It will be released with a simple skeletal deformation
system along side, but can be used easily with products such as Bones PRO
MAX, Character Studio or the 3D Studio MAX Inverse Kinematics (IK)
system.
Typical Use:
With eMotion, there is no need to build lots of copies of your original object,
taking up memory and CPU cycles. All you need is a base mesh (say, a
face) and then the bone structure or animation chains defined for that mesh.
Once bones have been built into the face (or animation chains have been
setup), each one is loaded into a group. each item in this group can have a
target animation point, and objects can be used in more than one group at a
time. This means that you only need to have two bones defining 'jaw
movement' for example, and have them present in many groups, in many
different configurations (smile, scowl, etc)
Once you have loaded your objects, making the animation targets couldn't be
simpler - mearly turn on eMotions special 'Transform Capture' button, and
move the objects into position. The objects' target position will be captured
and stored, and then the objects will be returned to their original position to
be captured again if need be. This system lets you design your expressions
and animations visually, and let eMotion do the work of handling values and
settings.
Then, after all your expressions have been set up for the groups, its as
simple as moving a slider to blend and mix the animations together. No more
multiple meshes, or missing verticies. eMotion smoothly blends the animation
settings together, to let you have a huge range of expressions from only a few
simple groups.
Using this technique with IK can let you build robots or cranes with
pre-programmed movement, or build a human figure that can be controlled
using simple values. Anything that can be moved can be animated with
eMotion.
There are 100 groups available, with 10 objects available for each group.
Each one of these objects can be any other object in the scene.
eMotion is applied as a modifier inside 3D Studio MAX 2.0 to any type of
object, geometric or otherwise.
The skeletal deformation system will exist as a spacewarp, and be bound to
any geometric object. |
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