Character Studio

[Paul_Boland]

Hi.

Many years back when I was in my search mode for a 3D graphics package to do some rendering (this was before I invested in Caligari TrueSpace), I was exploring all the 3D packages available and it came down to two; NewTek Lightwave and Discret 3D Studio (I settled on TrueSpace because it was a good easy to use package for beginners and it was more in my price range). Anyway, Lightwave had a huge pull on me because being a Star Trek fan, I loved the work I was seeing Lightwave produce every week. However, 3D Studio had one thing that really caugth my attention every time; Character Studio.

The years have moved on, I'm quite good at 3D now, using TrueSpace 5.1, and I'm still learning. And I have a saving fund going, I will become a Lightwave 8 owner next Summer if all goes well :D . But I've always kept my eyes on Character Studio.

Recently, in an issue of 3D World magazine, I recall seeing a review for Character Studio for XSI!! I couldn't believe it! 3D Studios prize claim of "only for 3D Studio Max" has moved on to another piece of software. I still like what I see in Character Studio and was wondering if this marked the start of a trend where the software would be migrating to other 3D packages? If so, has anyone heard any news about it being ported to Lightwave?

[Castius]

Character studio is not used by XSI they have there own prebuilt rigging system similar to character studio style but its there own. CS was bought by discreet so we will to be seeing CS in any other apps. There are lots of free and commercial rigging tool available to LW these days. So that is not as big an issue as it used to be. Plus LW8 add some nice new future to help rigging and animation. They have along way to go but the tools added are very usefull.

[cresshead]

whilst i'm a character studio user and a lightwave user [plus xsi....] i think that character studio is pretty good though by it's procedual nature it can also be somewhat limiting it does what it does really quite well and is unique in it's approach with footstep driven animation and motion capture data thinning as well as a adapable biped primitive and pasteable bip file animations...there are things that i find annoying such as physique is timeconsuming to set up the bones and the envelopes in comparison to lightwave and though footsteps are amazing they are not much real help for quality animation..you'd eaither hand key or you'd load a motion captrure..both of which all app can do pretty well

character studio is really great for fast pre visualisation of what's needed in a character animation but as you know it's can't really handle non bipeds with any ease and the crowd aspect really should be called "gang" as it can't handle more than 20-30 bipeds

it is good but it's not going to put other apps out of business because they don't have it...CS is only available for 3ds max BTW.

steveg

[Paul_Boland]

Oops!! Sorry, my mistake. I went and dug out the magazine in question and the product is not Character Studio but Character Animation. Sorry about the mix up but thanks for your input on the subject.