“Antics is a tool that can be accessible
to everyone. The director can block out It was perhaps inevitable that Pre-Viz (pre-visualisation) would start to look to machinima as a new market. For those of you who don't know the history of pre-viz, it's still just over a decade old, having begun in the early nineties with CG artist Colin Green while working on the film Judge Dredd. Essentially, pre-viz is a form of 3d storyboarding that allows the director (and usually the effects crew) to see their scene/shots in real time with real world measurements in order to properly plan the shots they are interested in and, most importantly, budget them correctly. Of course, this is the high end version of pre-viz created with programs like Maya and XSI. You've probably seen some of them on “Special Edition†DVDs of films like “The Lord of the Rings†and “A.I.â€. So where does Antics come in to the picture? Well, as the idea of pre-viz became more popular, many indie and low-budget filmmakers began to look for a way to get the same benefits from 3d storyboarding, but without the huge price and steep learning curve of Maya. Antics saw a need for a simple drop-and-click program that just about anyone could learn that was priced for companies (and individuals) on a budget. Antics released version 1.0 in 2000 to positive reviews and strong interest from the professional film world. It's growth as a company (still centered in Cambridge, England) has led it to create branch offices in London and in Los Angeles. I was initially exposed to Antics through a recommendation from a fellow machinima filmmaker who told me that the program was promising. I was interested, but when I did some research I realized that while Antics (then in version 2.0) was cheap for the professional filmmaker, it was too expensive for a poor machinima filmmaker like me. I did like the look of the 3d world and the community looked interesting. With some regret, I turned back to games, but I've kept my eye on the development of Antics. Then in the late fall, my friend, Phil Rice (aka Overman) blogged that Antics had released their version 3.0 and that the base program plus a decent amount of content was free. Well, I was very impressed with this move by Antics. After downloading the free program and checking out the site, I realized that Antics was now a viable machinima tool. And it appears that I am not alone in this opinion. Antic's user base went from around 700 to almost 10, 000 in three months. When Brad Kolacinksi, the sales and marketing director for the Los Angeles branch of Antics, told me this at a recent Antics LA users meeting, I was dumbfounded. What a huge change in direction for Antics. And if the huge increase in user base is any indication, it seems to be paying off. This review will be a little different from a traditional software review in that I am going to focus primarily on viability of Antics 3.0 as a machinima tool. My background (in addition to writing) is in machinima, and I have a personal interest in Antics as a tool for several machinima projects I have planned for the future. Yes, I'll cover some of the basics of how Antics functions in version 3.0, but I won't go into great depth. I had planned to create a small film in Antics 3.0 (5 minutes) and journal the process, but deadlines and other projects pushed this idea aside. So, lets get started with a short interview I did with Brad. I can say right off the bat that the support and communication with the community by Antics LA is very good. I've met Brad and listened to him demonstrate how to import Google Warehouse models into Antics 3.0. He is an interesting person who obviously likes his job and likes the product he is selling. We spoke last week on Skype about the history of the company, the Antics decision to create the free base program, machinima and a bit about Brad himself. This interview has been slightly edited for brevity and content. Interview with Brad Kolacinski (mp3 format) Antics3d version 3.0 was released in the fall of 2007. The free base program can be downloaded from the main Antics site. As Brad mentions in the interview, the added content for the download was light because they didn't want to make the download size too large. There is a large amount of additional free content available at the Antics site once you register. You can also buy additional packs which are reasonably priced. They have been releasing 2-3 new content packs every two weeks. This content includes sets, characters, props, landscapes, animations and more. Antics also makes a professional version of the program available for purchase ($595 USD) which contains a significant amount of content, free downloads of all premium content for a year, licensing for 2 activations, beefed up customer support and a 3DS Max Exporter, which will soon be available for separate purchase by Base pack users. Since there are no significant differences between the Base program and the Pro program, in terms of functionality, I'll be reviewing the Pro version. It's clear that the free Base program is not a “lite†version, but can do nearly everything that the Pro version can do. My thanks to Brad and Antics for providing the Pro version of Antics 3.0 for review. Â
Antics 3.0 is the simplest and most intuitive entry level 3d
movie-making software program on the market today. I created a set,
decorated it, placed characters, charted their movements and
animations, set up cameras and made timing adjustments on the
time-line, all within an hour or so. And that's without reviewing
the user's manual or watching any of the excellent video tutorials
available at the Antcs3d.com site. Once you've either built your set and/or downloaded one from the Antics Warehouse, you proceed to peopling your scene with characters and setting up your shots/cameras. Camera control is one of the best parts of Antics 3.0. You can create simple camera shots, free cameras, follow camera or treat your camera as a prop and key-frame it's actions all with simple point and click actions. You'd expect this level of control for a pre-viz program since production companies are most interested in how the shot works and what will be seen within the shot. For a machinima filmmaker it's a relief since so many games have such complex and difficult methods to set up camera shots. Antics makes working with your camera simple, leaving you to work on timing the various elements of your scene.
Working with characters and their animations is an easy process
within Antics as well; choose your character from an interesting
range of ages, races, genders and classes, then simply click and
drop them where you want on the set. You can then position them
with ease. Choosing the correct animations is a bit more involved,
but with some practice it becomes easy and straight-forward. Posing
characters for Storyboarding down to the finger level is a snap
(literally) and you can take screen caps with a click of a
button. The Antics time-line is extremely simple, and yet it allows you
to make very subtle and precise changes to timings of props,
characters and camera movements. Again, by simply using the point,
click and drag functions you can re-time just about any element of
your scene with almost complete freedom. When you have your scene
the way you want it, you can easily render it to Avi, Quick Time or
image sequence. The preference section allows you to choose your
output size and any other elements you want to tweak for your final
output.
And that's how simple and easy the work flow is with Antics 3.0. I found that while I was working through a few simple scenes that the program was very solid with no crashing or lock-ups. The default "save project" occurs about every five minutes, but is completely adjustable. One of my buddies who has been working with Antics a bit longer says that there is a little bit of instability once your time-line gets complicated with a lot of elements to manipulate. I also found that repeated use of the assets viewer forced me to re-size it each time as it would revert to it's default size each time you close and re-open the window. I have a large monitor (Dell 24â€) and it became a bit of a pain to do this every time I wanted to look through the assets. While Antics 3.0 is a very good program for the machinima
filmmaker, it still needs development before it becomes a major
tool. The lighting in Antics is very basic, and although lighting
is simple to set up and modify, it really isn't robust enough for
the kind of look filmmakers need in creating dramatic scenes.
Moreover, there are no shadows cast by characters or props which
makes it even harder to create convincing light effects. There are
workarounds with exporting to Photoshop or After Effects and
hand-creating them there, but this is somewhat time-consuming and
not everyone uses these programs or can afford them.
In summing up, Antics 3.0 is a promising 3d animation package for machinima filmmakers. The Antics company has made the base program free and is making a concerted effort to connect with the machinima community. Ease of use, commitment to providing interesting and varied content at a price point that is affordable, strong customer support and the recently announced ability to import the Google Sketch Up file format into Antics 3.0 (coming in March, 2008) make Antics 3.0 a serious option for machinima filmmakers who want to work outside of the game EULA and own their own content. There is strong competition from other programs like Moviestorm and Frame Forge, but I'm impressed with Antics. If they are able to add facial animation and lighting to the program (and Brad , their director of marketing and sales, assures me that this is one of their goals for the future), I think Antics will be the program of choice for many machinima filmmakers. Notes: My system: Abit P35 Pro Mobo -Antics 3.0 is essentially a Windows based program (2000, XP, Vista) and does not support the Mac OSX operating system, however there appears that by using Apple's Boot Camp software, Antics will work on a Mac. I don't own a Mac, so I can't vouch for Boot Camp's effectiveness. I did see several Mac laptops at the L.A. User Group meeting last month, so it appears to be an effective workaround. -The Antics 3.0 system requirements: Microsoft® Windows® 2000 (SP 4), XP (SP 2), Vista -The Antics website is a very well-designed (like their software) and the community is active and helpful. You'll find a wide range of users from pros looking for pre-viz advice to newbie machinima filmmakers. The Antics staff is extremely good. I found it easy to communicate and get help. The Los Angeles office is planning a series of monthly user's group meetings. The January meeting was attended by about 20 people some of which were professional cinematographers and art directors. The networking is great and the presentation was superb. I hope to attend most of the future meetings as I learn more about Antics 3.0. -Here's a nice product overview produced by Antics. You can also download the tutorials if you like. -Mike Jones (fast becoming a Susan Sontag for machinima) has a fascinating essay/blog “Machinima, Software GUI and the Aspirational User†where he analyses the GUI of Antics and Moviestorm and who he thinks they were designed for. There are intriguing and feisty comments on the blog entry as well. Worth a read. -I haven't come across any major reviews for Antics 3.0 yet, but there are lots of interesting reviews for the earlier Antics 2.5. You can sample them at the Antics site here. -Pre-Viz has an interesting history. Wikipedia has a good overall history. Excellent interview with one of the founders of pre-viz, Colin Green. DV Magazine has a decent round-up of low cost pre-viz software (including Antics 2.5), you can find it here. -Tony Bannon (Ammo PreViz) has probably created the most interesting work from a machinima perspective. His recent “Folie a Deux†is an excellent and imaginative film which won the Antics Medical Pack competition (you had to use elements from the recently released med pack). Tony's blog is a good source of information for Antics and Antics-related news. CJ Ambrosia is doing some good work as well. His recent “Have a Ball†is an amusing short that shows off some of what Antics can do. Leo Lucien-Bay's “Anonymous Coward†is another well-done machinima film shot in Antics. Both films are available for viewing at the Antics Cinema section of their website. Ricky Grove [gToon], Contributing Columnist with the Renderosity Front Page News. Ricky Grove is a bookstore clerk at the best bookstore in Los Angeles, the Iliad Bookshop. He's also an actor and machinima filmmaker. He lives with author, Lisa Morton, and three very individual cats. Ricky is into Hong Kong films, FPS shooters, experimental anything and reading, reading, reading. You can catch his blog here  |
March 3, 2008
Please note: If you find the color of the text hard to read, please click on "Printer-friendly" and black text will appear on a white background.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Comments