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Animation program to complement ZBrush?

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#1

Hi guys,

I have been in the animation game for a few years. The tools I use are Max and Animation:Master for 3d and Photoshop and Painter for 2d. I was quite happy with this setup, especially A:Master - the software is so light, I can model and animate on my laptop! And I love being mobile. Some weeks ago I finally decided to give ZBrush a try. OH MY GOD! I had no idea. I’ve spent years bitching about how unintuitive the modeling workflow is in ALL major packages and here’s this amazing tool that gives me all I have ever dreamed off (well, almost). And guess what? It runs beautifully on my laptop!

Anyway, the problem is that I can’t get the ZBrush-modeled stuff into A:M. Does anybody know of another animation program that does import models from ZBrush but is also fast enough to run on a laptop? Max and Maya are too slow for that. I have tried Motion Builder and it is fast, but it lacks features as far as I can tell (no squash and stretch on their rig?). I hear that XSI could be the answer?..

Any ideas are very welcome.

#2

Messiah Studio is a good choice for animators. Mixes very well with zbrush…

http://www.projectmessiah.com/

#3

I personally use Motion builder 6 Pro with Zbrush… It works the best! :slight_smile:

#4

Normally I’d recommend Lightwave but the support for Zbrush is somewhat lacking until the next upgrade. Max, Softimage and Maya all seem to support it well. I’m partial to Maya but any of the three would be a good choice.

#5
  • Fast enough to run on laptop yes.
  • Can produce extremely life like animation yes.
  • SUUper easy to use yes.
  • Minimal interface and controls yes.
  • Can I integrate it in to my current pipeline yes.

Catch - it does’nt apply any type of bone based skin deformation to the character. After you’ve finished animating the character you must skin it. This will become a trivial task if you have a look at what Snoswell Design(http://www.cgcharacter.com/) have just recently released for Max.

ANIMANIUM!

I see it as the equivalent of Zbrush, in its capacity to revolutianize current methods of working, only as it applies to the animation industry. If you have’nt used it yet I offer here a few keypoints :

  • Automatic full body Ik and Fk, regardless of the shape or complexity of the character.
  • Pinning of any part of the character, with different modes to allow the freedom of local rotation or non at all.
  • Switch between FK and IK at any time of the aniamtion and blend between them.
  • The animation exported to Max is very easily edited.

The greatest pleasure I found with this application was that the technical side of animation has been seperated from the creative/generative(Just like Zbrush, hence I make the comparison). So, holding the most rudimentary principles of 2d character animation, and with keen observation for the mechanics of motion, I was able to produce high quality animation(based on my comparison of the animation with the actual video footage), of considerable length, in a manner of hours(=<5!). I should say that, by way of interest and regular practice, I am as far away from an animator as the Earth is from the Sun. But then again what is an ‘Animator’ hehehe :smiley:

I like messiah too, however mainly for the way you can texture your characters.

Kircho

#6

Thanks pnoland, jrodarte, and Kircho. I did a project with Motion Builder 6 and found it to be a bit limmited. Messiah on the other hand looks great - i’ve spent a few hours today playing with the demo and i have to say that it looks amazing (automatic skining! - well almost). Another option is XSI - this program seems to have everything and it’s optimized for the real-time preview for animation, but a bit mode complex then Messiah and it costs more. Now Animanium is something i 've yet to check out.
I will test Animamium and, if anyone interested, will post the results.

If there are more choices out there plese let me know!

Thanks guys.

#7

Belseth, Max is in the pipline already, and i am familiar with Maya, but both are too slow for a laptop. I am looking for more specialized product. Max and Maya have everything but are not great at anything. ZBrush is amazing for sculpting a character, Motion Builder and Messiah are great for rigging and animation and are very fast - both run great on my laptop. But I’ll keep testing and see what fits best.

#8

I use blender…

it is free, and you can share it, and what you learn with your friends for free…

it is great to learn the basics with, and if you find out that animation is not your thing… you wont loose any money…

lots of people start learning animation, and find out it it lots more work than they realy want to do…

If you want to use your knowlage to get employment, I suggest getting the learning additions of XSI, MAYA, or 3dstudio (GMAXX)… Motion builder has a new education package that allows FBX exports, so you can pop you charictors into a videogame VIA milkshape while you are learning…

well, anyways, I suggest Blender for people starting a home studio, comercial packages i suggest either if you want employment, or after you have mastered blender and need some more Gizmos to make your dreams come to reality…after you have some experiance you will know what you need to shop for. this can literaly save you thousands of dollars.

I payed lots of money for a few packages, when I was first learning… all except Zbrush are uninstalled, and sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

no matter what you get , make sure you buy Zbrush 2 :smiley:

best money I ever spent.

EDIT:
Look around google, there are ways to run blender remotely, and ways to make free render farms.
the best way to find all the cool free stuff is to go to project Orange, a movie they are creating useing blender, and other free software.

http://orange.blender.org/

lots of good stuff out there that you dont need to pay for.

#9

I didn’t make myself clear. Im an animator already and have a small studio with two of my friends(we’re struggling, but hopeful). I have no doubt that animation is my thing for a long time. What im looking for is a pipeline upgrade. I have years of experience in Max and Animation:Master and did a few projects with Maya and MotionBuilder. I realized that if its possible to share files between applications it makes sense to use a more specialized products for different parts of the work. I want to have something like this: MAX for layout, simulations (already have a bunch of plugins) and rendering (love vray). ZBrush for character modeling and X for animation.

So im in the search for X.

What i need is something thats fast (runs ok on my laptop - toshiba p25 17’ 1G RAM and only 32M g.card), has all i need for animation and rigging, has a good support and will not break the bank. We alreay have MotionBuilder but it lacks in a few arias.

The choices are:
Messiah:Animate - 250$, fast, easy to learn (im a fast learner, but my colleagues aren’t)lots of cool features, easy rigging and skinning

XSI - 500$ has everything and is very fast, but the learning curve is a bit steep. On the other hand its a complete solution and that is tempting. From what i see and hear if we get it we may consider doing everything in it.

Anyway, im still playing around, although i seem to gravitate toward Messiah.

I’ll let you know.

#10

Well Animanium is interesting, I looked at it a few years back and have watched it progress, and the others mentioned are great. However if you’re interested in an industry choice, go with Motion Builder. It really does all that Animanium and others do, is stable, relys on pretty light systems in general and allows you to export FBX to many of the other packages mentioned. FBX is also the standard now. You can setup in Max like you setup for games, animate away in MB, and pull it back into Max if you like or five it ot others. However every animation you do can become a base or addition to every other animation you do - just try it. Watch the videos. I can put you in touch with animators doing in excess of 700 frames a day (feature level) that swear by MB.

I do a lot of my Motion Builder reviews on a 450 MHz G4 with 1.5GB RAM, MB rivals Zbrush at this point in capability.

#11

Jason, I did a project with MB and loved it. It is fast, i loved the rig and the Story Mode (also XSI and Messiah have similar features). But it looks a bit limited. How do i squash and stretch? And am not talking about scaling a bone to stretch a limb, im talking of a control setup on a face for example? How about jiggle? can I have more then 2 pairs of limbs in the skeleton? Finally can I make my own rig from scratch? The project i have used it for had one pretty realistic character and about half of the motion were mocap - MB was great for that, but im not sure how much freedom i have with cartoony characters. Feel free to correct me if i missed something.

#12

Hell zaark, squash and stretch are all in the versions since 6.0, sample videos on the site.

And am not talking about scaling a bone to stretch a limb, im talking of a control setup on a face for example? No problem, we don’t do that stuff in Maya anymore, all in MB - only that animation is taken out. You can basically do anything in MB that you do with MEL in Maya (or other apps) with the great drag and drop constraints. (I’d refer you to old links, but all the great stuff many of us posted is lost from the Kaydara to Alias transition)

How about jiggle? Sure, especially with version 7.

can I have more then 2 pairs of limbs in the skeleton? Always could. I have combined biped and quadped rigs - remember that it’s all about Story, where you can layer and apply to spcific part os a object/rig/etc…

Finally can I make my own rig from scratch?{/B] Sure. You have to have the base rig named right or you have to create a mapping for the future - easy enough - drag and drop. I have some very complex ones, doing a Dragon these days, that you will find in one of my Zbrush posts. ;))

The project I have used it for had one pretty realistic character and about half of the motion were mocap - MB was great for that, but im not sure how much freedom i have with cartoony characters. Feel free to correct me if i missed something. - Well one of the best MB animators is a friend of mine, he does over 700+ frames a day, and although he is a mocap guru, he prefers to animate almost everything in MB. Prefers the fluidity.

Persoanlly I see little difference, but I come from the old school - motion is all that matters.

Glad to be of any help I can.

#13

Jason, I stand corrected. Thanks you so much for your time. I will finnish my test run of Messiah and will do one with MB to see how they compare. The only problem I see now is the price - we’re a small sudio and the software budget it very tight, but we’ll see.

#14

Check out XSI. You can download a free versoin geared towards game development for free from the softimage website. It’s called mod tool. Only restriction is the save format proprietary for that version. If you like it, the foundation version is available for about 500$. I can;t say anything else about it than “NO-YOU CAN’T HAVER MINE… GO AWAY… GO GET YOUR OWN COPY!”… Sorry I am as addicted to XSI as I am to ZBrush and BodyPaint. Those three packages and you conquer 3d space!
Lemo

#15

hi,

don’t know any thing about animation packages really but I sure was damn impressed with Taron’s animation here using messiah. And this one listed here is awesome as well.

just some links to show what’s possible with messiah that I found interesting and perhaps you will too while you are trying it out.

#16

I also think Messiah has potential. However not yet in real production. It also is limited to one OS and platform, which is crippling it. In a production environment tools that can flow back and forth are far more valuable than any app trying to do it all. It never succeeds. I’ve been waiting a long time for Messiah to follow through with it’s initial promises. I do love the rigging system, but it really doesn’t play all that well with others - yet.

#17

hahaha Jason you really hate motionbuilder…I can tell.

and the dragon? :wink:

#18

You can download, for free, the full XSI Foundation package >> HERE << and try it out for 30 days.

If you decide to buy their $495.00 package they will ship you version 4.2 now with all documentation then ship the 5.0 version with all documentation when it is released. Version 5.0 is very ZBrush friendly.

After purchase on line you get a key via email that immediately unlocks your copy.

I’m still climbing the XSI learning curve with my own copy.

I’ve found SoftImage to be a good company to deal with.

Sven

#19

Well aminuts, MB works. Working on Dragon.

As for Svengali’s sugstions for XSI, it is a great tool and worth looking at. However, the question was about animation and if a PLE of MB 6 or 7 is up yet, it really is worth looking into.

I’m not always giving my views, but those of TDs/animators/vfx’ers/etc. that I work with or know. My personal view is MB is the easiest tool for all kinds of animation - that is all it does and it has the best character system I’ve come across yet and I do explore them constantly.

Trial and evaluation are what’s left…

#20

Well, im in the meddle of evaluating Messiah and Motionbuilder 7 (didn’t get to XSI yet).

After playing for a few days with Messiah i found it has all the features i need, but it lacks in stability and does not work well with Wacom tablets. The interface, although simple is not very intuitive to me.

Motionbuilder is as stable as I remembered - very nice (im using the PLE version) and I love the interface. I have found that making a custom rig (tails, wings, additional limbs) is a snap! Animating is fluid even on my laptop, but squash and stretch are nowhere to be found! The search on the Alias’ user forum returns zero results for squash and stretch and there is no mention of it in the tutorials. The documentation states that its possible to stretch parts of the skeleton by grabbing the FK node. It does work (although i could not manage to get it to work on the legs), but it stretches the hierarchy (all children of a stretched node will also stretch) and i would like the ability to setup it up myself to have more control. Anyway, it looks like the documentation is lacking, so if anyone (Jason?) can point me on to a tutorial on the subject I will appreciate it greatly.