brucelay Posted December 3, 2007 Share Posted December 3, 2007 I just watched the Ant Bully's dvd. I personally found that Ant Bully's animation is not bad. (In terms of animation quality. e.g. timing, acting, overlapping.......) In my opinion, it is not completely worse than Sherk. What would you think about Ant bully's animation quality. (not counting the textures and modelling) Did they use houdini to do the keyframes or just Maya? thanks for your attention! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thekenny Posted December 3, 2007 Share Posted December 3, 2007 Houdini was used for lighting/rendering....for what was done at CORE.... Houdini was used for lighting/Rendering (Renderman)... Shake was used as the main compositor. DNA used lightwave for the jimmy neutron movie.. I'm not sure if that continued for AntBully or if they moved to Maya. I do remember seeing mdd exports for geometry, but that could have been legacy format usage.. hard to tell. There are a number of lurkers here who could tell you more:) -k I just watched the Ant Bully's dvd. I personally found that Ant Bully's animation is not bad. (In terms of animation quality. e.g. timing, acting, overlapping.......)In my opinion, it is not completely worse than Sherk. What would you think about Ant bully's animation quality. (not counting the textures and modelling) Did they use houdini to do the keyframes or just Maya? thanks for your attention! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted December 3, 2007 Share Posted December 3, 2007 I'm pretty sure they used Maya > mdd > Houdini as kenny said the mdd stuff is/was a holdover from their Lighwave days... there are a few here who were at DNA at the time so they can correct me on this... having said that there really isn't any point in wondering about what application was used to animate the characters...Ant Bully could have been animated in Maya, XSI, Houdini, Blender and it would have looked the same...it's just keyframes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thekenny Posted December 3, 2007 Share Posted December 3, 2007 having said that there really isn't any point in wondering about what application was used to animate the characters...Ant Bully could have been animated in Maya, XSI, Houdini, Blender and it would have looked the same...it's just keyframes... True enough. Really though having seen this first hand keyframing in Houdini is just as easy any other package and it has big pluses as well. Flipbook blocking, dopesheet and the channel editor in general is a huge over the graph editor in maya. XSI has a nice interface for editing and working with channel layers (think spare channels) and stronger tools when working with mocap data, but I believe motionBuilder still rules the pack for mocap munging. I've always thought that a noded based view for channels would be great for the channel editor so you could handle things at an input output level on a channel. CHOPS can do a lot but often the target and the manipulation get muddled in the middle. Time in time out I have heard Maya animators learn Houdini and go back to Maya and the miss Houdini more and more. Getting away from character sets is a huge step, but that takes time and a developer. It should be noted that I haven't used Houdini's pose library tools, but having one in house makes everyone's life easier no matter what the package.. once you get geometry out it makes your life easier. -k Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucelay Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 What would you think about Ant bully's animation quality compare with dreamworksPDI? (in terms of acting, staging, timing.....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thekenny Posted December 5, 2007 Share Posted December 5, 2007 I can't honestly say. I haven't seen the movie. (holds head down in shame) It is on the list of things to watch but I have two little munchins running around who occupy my time fairly well now Really animation quality isn't a "package" problem in my opinion, it is a people/schedule problem. Look at Pixar, they produce solid shows with solid animation but it is on proprietary software. (from what I've heard it isn't physically condusive software either). Sure some people who really know a piece of software will do very well and excel but if they aren't a solid animator then they are in trouble no matter what. Same goes for supervisors, and leads all the way up to the top. Add the factor of a schedule and the complexity of the action (all the other variables number of characters, complexity of characters, complexity of sets/props etc come into play as well) THATS where a show will suffer. There are ways to mitigate those issues, but they are often tough decisions to make and are largely creative in nature. As a result it takes a strong person(s) to realize the difference and they support the decision. You have to pick your battles and establish a clear understand where a show will always excel be it story, animation, effects, rendering, etc. Set the bar and make it known. Often it isn't the technology that fails a project, it is the sociology behind the project. Okay, I'll stop now hope that helps. -k What would you think about Ant bully's animation quality compare with dreamworksPDI? (in terms of acting, staging, timing.....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucelay Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 :)Thanks for the reply! How about just compare with their animation quality (e.g. judging by the implementation of some principles of animation......)? (without worrying about budget, time, software, render quality, lighting, technology, fur, particles.........) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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