Autodesk has released a new version of its real-time 3D character animation software – MotionBuilder 2010. The company claims that the latest release offers productivity-enhancing animation workflows and real-time physics capabilities.
MotionBuilder 2010 will reportedly ship as a part of the company’s Entertainment Creation Suites and the Real-Time Animation Suites, leveraging the software’s interoperability with its Maya and 3ds Max software and allowing to incorporate the technology into digital entertainment workflows.
The company said that the new offering has been integrated with the latest version of its HumanIK middleware. Also, the MotionBuilder pose controls, character controls and character definition list can now be used when working with the HumanIK plug-in. The character templates in MotionBuilder have been updated, providing improved support for 3ds Max Biped.
According to the company, some of the features of the new version include: enhanced pose control support – to enable animators to capture poses and apply them to another object for rapid reuse of animations; support for user-defined keying groups – to enable animators to work with custom rigs, props, cameras, and lights, as well as define their own methodology for setting keys; and the Actor tool – that has been exposed in Python scripting language, helping users save time by automating the setup and transfer of motion-capture data onto a character.
Within the new offering, improvements to and memory optimisation of the core engine help provide improved performance when handling large scene files. Also, the nonlinear editing capabilities of the Story Tool enable handling of data for cinematic and motion editing scenes, the company said.
Stig Gruman, vice president of digital entertainment group at Autodesk, said: Autodesk MotionBuilder is an ideal tool for high-volume game animation pipelines, director-driven virtual cinematography and real-time character simulations. The enhanced capabilities and accessibility of the 2010 release will help to further reshape the creative decision-making process, as more and more creative visionaries adopt the technology for virtual cinematography and pre-visualisation work.
