Discreet's Character Studio 4
Back in 1996, Discreet Character Studio introduced a new and easy way of creating 3D character animation. When you opened CS, by click-and-drag of a mouse button, you created a biped (a human skeleton, to be exact), and then you used the footstep tool to create a path of footsteps for your creature. After assigning the footsteps to your biped, it began to walk, run or jump accordingly.
But Character Studio had its own limitations: For example, animating the character's hands was very difficult and the results were far from realistic. That's why some experts called the CS results "canned animation." But artists who needed quick results, such as game development professionals, admired the ease and production speed of the product.
We're happy to report that Character Studio 4 addresses most of the shortcomings pointed out by critics and leaves the world of canned animation far behind.
After installing Character Studio 4 and 3ds max 5.1 in a HP XW5000 workstation (reviewed in this issue), I realized that this is a major upgrade. For the first time I could apply any type of motion to my characters and edit and modify the motions to a pinpoint level. You can use the function curves to edit the animation of the characters, which results in a high level of accuracy in editing.
With CS4, I could also select any joints in the hand or arm of the character and move or rotate them in order to achieve the motion I had in mind. The responses of the animated joints were realistic. The beauty of animating the joints in CS4 is that you can copy the animation of one joint to another, or even to the similar joints in a different character.
Motion Mixer, the non-linear animation editor of CS4 acts intelligently when it blends different motion tracks in its timeline. You can mix all kinds of motions from motion capture data to key frame animation. You can also determine the foot position of your characters when blending two tracks of motions which means avoiding foot-striding problems that occur in such cases.
Good News: Now you can hand up to three props to your characters! These props accept motion capture data. You can also animate the props. For example a sword could be used by different characters in the same scene.
Wish List: I would like to see some improvement in the physique module of the Character Studio in a future version which would facilitate attaching the 3D bodies to the bipeds. Adding a light version of CS4 to 3ds max will help introduce it to new users of character animation.
The Bottom Line: No doubt about it: Character Studio 4 is a very powerful and easy-to-use character animation tool. Version 4 of CS has eliminated most of the previous model's limitations. If you are a character animator for games or movies, you should definitely take Character Studio 4 for a test drive.
Web Address: www.discreet.com
Final Score: *****
Animation Magazine's Seal of Excellence
Ease of Use: *****
Interface: ****
Power of Tools: *****
Quality and Depth: *****

Imagineer's mokey 2
An old Tibetan proverb says, "Just do one thing right, and it becomes a pillar for your heaven and to jump in hell, try a thousands goals in your life." The creators of mokey must have listened to these wise words because their new tool helps you do only one or two important tasks (wire removal and matte creation), but it does the job brilliantly.
I installed the mokey in a HP xw5000 workstation and a Dell M50 laptop system. mokey worked quite well on M50 and super speedy on the xw 5000.
To test the mokey, I imported a video clip I had shot of a man jogging along a busy sidewalk. In the New Project Wizard window, I was able to specify the portion and the frame rate of the footage I intended to use. To achieve a perfect result for any object or wire removal, mokey allowed me to import the camera lens distortion information. This excellent feature allows mokey to match the look of the result to your original footage. With the Selection Creation tool, I drew a border around the background of the running man in order to define the part of the background I intended to use.
The selection tools of mokey are very powerful and easy to use. That's why you can add more points to your selection curve or attach two selections.
Next I created an outline around the foreground layer, the running man. Now it was up to mokey to start tracking the background and foreground layers. Of course, before the tracking step, you can set the number of the tracking points or how far you want your tracking selections to move during each frame.
mokey removed the foreground layer and replaced it using the information it acquired from the background layer within the used footage. As a result, I had created a matte of the jogger ready to be used in a compositing program, as well as footage of the sidewalk without him.
Good News: mokey 2 comes in two versions, Studio Edition for video work and Soho Edition for SD, HD and film projects. Wish List: I want to see a compositing software such as Adobe After Effects or Discreet Combustion bundled with the Studio Edition of the mokey to offer a complete video post solution.
Wish List: I want to see a compositing software such as Adobe After Effects or Discreet Combustion bundled with the Studio Edition of the mokey to offer a complete video post solution.
The Bottom Line: mokey is a dream come true for artists and producers alike. I have not seen any wire removal and matte creation tool as easy to use or as powerful as mokey, especially in its price range.
Web Address: www.mokey.com
Final Score: *****
Animation Magazine's Seal of Excellence
Ease of Use: *****
Interface: *****
Power of Tools: *****
Quality and Depth: ****

HP XW 5000
Anyone who has ever tried to show a client a DVD of a project on a PC workstation while running a power-demanding software can tell you horror stories about how the DVD can start skipping frames and the software show signs of major weakness. This problem is caused by CPU trying to handle a challenging multi-tasking function. But all of us should forgive Intel, the maker of all those processors as its new Pentium 4, 3.06 GHz has resolved this problem. I can testify to this because I tried a few difficult multi-tasking operations on HP xw 5000 that comes with the new processor, and the system passed with flying colors. The 3.06 GHz Hyper-Threading technology lets the software packages view this CPU as two CPUs. Of course you really need Windows XP or Linux operating systems to benefit from this Hyper-Threading feature of Pentium 4, 3.06 GHz.
The HP xw 5000 workstation I tested also came with 1 GB of RAM, a 120 GB hard drive, a DVD ROM, a DVD RW, four USB ports on the back, two USB ports in front and a Fire Wire port.
My hat goes off to the HP engineers for their superb design of the xw 5000 box. It is very easy to access and modify for expansion. The cooling system works perfectly, and I never detected any problems or experienced any crashes during the two weeks that I used the system for this review.
To check the xw 5000 performance, I installed Adobe Photoshop 7, Macromedia MX Studio, Imagineer mokey 2, Discreet 3ds max 5.1 and Maxon Cinema 4D 8 XL bundle. All these programs performed fast and free from any problems or crashes. For example when I was working on a sophisticated 3ds max scene, I was also burning a DVD of a video project, and neither of the tasks was slowed down. My rendering time in both max and Cinema 4D was reduced compared to the time required on a Pentium 4, 2.5 GHz. A part of this great performance is due to the use of the NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL graphic card that comes with 120 MB of RAM.
Good News: You can configure your own HP xw 5000 by determining the speed of the processor, kind of operating system, size of the drive(s) and type and quantity of all its other components. This means you can fit your system to your budget and goals.
Wish List: Small video and animation post shops will welcome the chance to buy a video-ready and animation-ready HP systems.
The Bottom Line: The system I tested, a HP xw 5000 (Pentium 4 3.06 GHz, one GIG of RAM, 120 GB hard drive, DVD ROM, DVD+RW, NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL) with all its other components has a price tag of $3,637. Add a few software packages and a digital camcorder to this system, and you'll have a studio right in your room.
Web address: www.hp.com
Final Score: *****
Seal of Excellence of Animation Magazine
Ease of Use: *****
Ease of modification and Maintenance: *****
Power: *****
Expandability: ****