Month: July 2012

MotionArtist from SmithMicro

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SmithMicro, developers of Poser, have launched a fully-functional public beta for new software called MotionArtist. It’s a basic ‘motion comics‘ tool that will sell for about $50 and let you make “semi-animated” comic books and strips.

Judging from the demo video, it looks a little rough around the edges at present. The finished version is set for release in early Spring 2013. But I must say was wowed by the feature to “slice an animated panel in half, and move it around”. You can see that feature happening in the demo video…

Mmmm…. HTML5 output, and an official mobile app to host it. Nice.

Here’s the MotionArtist interface video…

And the Manual is here in PDF.

Reallusion’s excellent CrazyTalk Animator must be nudging toward a version 2.0 sometime soon (just my guess), if CTA is going to hope to attract a much-needed ecosystem of talented content developers. There was talk at the New York Comiccon (Oct 2011) of a future ‘CrazyTalk Motion Comic Creator’ edition. If so, then judging by MotionArtist’s likely release date, it looks Reallusion might want to get that released for January 2013.

APC 2

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My quick iClone conversion of APC 2, a Creative Commons Blender model by Yazjack.

I reduced it from 230,000 polys, to about 150,000. This has resulted in two easy-hidden (or easily Photoshopped) holes in the mesh, while making it managable for loading into iClone. The excellent textures seem to be locked and can’t be exported from the Blend, but I’ve added a few basic ones to the iClone version. The wheels are fixed, and the vehicle is not rigged.

So basically, you might only want this to help you make a static 2D background render for an animated sci-fi street scene. Or it could be lit and then used as the basis of a 3D/2D sci-fi painting.

Download here.