Anima 2.0

[PGD]

Is anyone using this on a regular basis?

 

Or is there a better alternative for adding 3D people into scenes?

 

I'd be interested to hear your preferred method of adding people into scenes, and getting their scale and shadows correct quickly.

[Francisco Penaloza]

It depend what you are trying to archive.

I only use Anima or the default 3D Max populate when I am doing animations.

For still renderings I use 3D scanned people or 2D people in post.

[PGD]

I'd like to start using 3D people in scenes, mainly still's but some animations. And I want to do this to save time on adding 2D people in post, get real shadows at the same time and get a better result than using RPC's.

 

So with that, I'm open to any solutions that are out there. Feel free to reccomend or suggest any others I need to look at.

 

The AXYZ models look good for the stills, then Anima popped up as a solution which could do both still's and animation.

 

Which scanned people do you use Fran, I wouldn't mind having a look at them.

[Francisco Penaloza]

AXYZ, renderpeople, Future scan. and many others that you can find in Turbo squid.

Quality will vary, but also prices

[PGD]

Has anyone got any animation examples they've created, which have animated 3D people in there?

 

I'm struggling to find any info on this tbh.

 

Trying to use Anima (trial) at the moment and finding it difficult. Adding the people inside buildings seems difficult so far

 

Added a bunch of Populate people to a dining area. Thought all was going quite well but on closing and opening the scene I find the file is corrupt :(

Edited November 4, 2016 by PGD

[alexberry]

Phil, just a little bit of advise from experience, don't walk away from that software.....run. In concept its fantastic but in the actual battle field, tested, it's extremely buggy. This risk is too high...IMO

[alexberry]

Not sure why my previous reply wasn't posted, perhaps to blunt. Regardless, would advise to distance yourself from this software until they get all the glitches out.

[Jesper Pedersen]

Hi Phil,

 

Yes, I'm with Alex on this. We purchased and used Anima on a single project (please note this was version 1).

We had a lot of problems with it (some may be fixed in version 2) but in general, we found it overcomplicated our workflow to the extent that we have not used it since.

As Alex said, the concept is so good we are tempted to look at it again, but I'll need to see signs of people actually using it in production before we start getting involved again. The 3d static models from axyz are great!.

 

Regards

Jesper Pedersen

http://www.pedersenfocus.ie

[PGD]

Here's a trial I've rendered..

 

 

(how do you embed videos?)

 

I'm on the Trial mode so the actors are limited to 5, and you can only render 120 frames so it's quite short.

 

The flickering at the beginning is my fault, it's the HDRi sun animating to suit different viewpoints.

 

The still model in the foreground is the free AXYZ model, I just wanted to see how that looked in a render

 

What do you think to it?

 

Overall, I think it's fairly easy to use to a basic level, but try to push it and I soon struggle. You need to spend a lot of time setting it up, going back and forth from Anima software to 3ds. The support is non-existent now, though it was ok when I started using it. And I dont think it looks great either

[Francisco Penaloza]

To me none of the software that are one click solution will give you the result you hope, Why?

because it is a very complex task for being one click solution. and When I say that I mean, you don't have to setup your own character(model, and rigging), animate them, run Physics and so on. The next step to this software is is Goalem, but that works with Maya. and you have to do your homework.

I have and use the default 3D Max people and Anima. When people are not important, I use the 3D Max system and render the people white or gray. IMO the animation is more natural and does not have those strange jumps, but is also limited.

 

Anima has better looking people, Yes is a pain to setup but you get semi good looking people.

Sadly and incredibly this is all what we got, unless of course you create your own animation, but that does't fit in my regular animation time frames.

I guess the best you can do is do not make people the center of attention for your animation, or use less people.

[John Dollus]

Here's a trial I've rendered..

 

 

(

)

 

for context background motion, it's honestly fine for the lion's share of work. Compared to dealing with mocap, rigging and scripted work, it's easily a huge time and money saver. I wouldn't use it for closeups or interiors. It's funny how the entertainment side can't grasp paying for designing architectural environments ("Just use a generic supermarket that fits our narrative") and the architectural side can't understand paying for entourage ("just use a couple dozen generic mixed-ethnicity students 18-24").

[jobwallis]

Hello

We have used it for the last few months on big jobs.

We have scenes with 500+ people. This requires a more powerful machine. 64 GIG Ram etc.

I find the workflow good. The anima tool is easy on the eye and intuitive.

My critique is centered around support AND render node functionality.

The render nodes often render inconsistent frame outputs from different nodes. People disseapering on different frames, different lighting, positional popping.

More often than not we have to render locally to achieve consistent frames.

This thread is about the closest i have seen to any support as of today there is STILL NO AXYZ forum. The link on their support page is to a place holder page.

I think it is a great product but without the support they are possibly not aware of the things they need to focus on to make it even better. Esp when version 1 carried such a reputation (not so good apparently)

[jackbird]

I used both anima 1 and anima 2 at different stages of a large airport interior animation. 1 was borderline-unusable (I ended up making an enormous point cache to get it to render at all, and ended up overlaying a sillhouette render in AFX for the people. Not to mention the ridiculous overacting on all the characters); 2 is a whole new program from the ground up.

 

There are still a couple of annoying workflow glitches (note to all developers - I don't care how cool it looks, re-making standard open/save dialogs is always a mistake; you WILL break something fundamental in the workflow), but it's actually fun to use and generally works once you wrap your head around the way it works.

 

There are a couple of problems that I expect to be ironed out in maintenance releases (No way to make people wait in a line or pause their travel at specific times, No way to remove default assets/behaviors from a project, and not being able to import max cameras into anima means a lot of dumb guesswork), but overall I found it a usable tool at a good price.

[jobwallis]

"No way to make people wait in a line or pause their travel at specific times"

 

Hi Jon

You might be able to use the "traffic light area" library object to get people to stop and wait at specific areas? Doubt they would line up unless you made a very thin path?

[jobwallis]

(No way to make people wait in a line or pause their travel at specific times,

 

Just ran a test and made a thin path (.4) and placed an obstacle library object across the path. This resulted in people in the path lining up in a line before they hit the obstacle. Looks just like a ticketing desk

[jobwallis]

you can get them to line up (using thin path) and using the traffic light (make it thin ie 1 unit across) wait for a specific period before progressing.

[PGD]

..not being able to import max cameras into anima means a lot of dumb guesswork

I suggested that to them too actually. Back when you could get a little bit of support.

 

This seems like a good product which could be great with further improvements, it's a shame we can't input or see any of that development anymore

[jackbird]

you can get them to line up (using thin path) and using the traffic light (make it thin ie 1 unit across) wait for a specific period before progressing.

 

I found that the stoplight thing broke down quickly when I tried to apply it to my real scene of a TSA checkpoint:

 

-Needed a gap between people at the counter and people at the front of the line

-Needed to be able to make 2-3 people go to the counter at once - often times one of them would decide to just sail past the counter

-Given how hard it was to get anything to happen at the podium, getting people to go through the body scanner was a total impossiblity.

 

I had similar problems getting people to line up at a cafe - it was too robotically stacked, then everyone moved at once and mobbed the counter, which resulted in the anima people eating each other (frankly my favorite part of working with anima - each simulation run is like a mini-Thunderdome with the colliding people eating each other) and the line having weird gaps on the second playback..