If you’re a student with an interest in filmmaking then we’ve just launched a great contest for you.
Use our free 21-day trial to produce a short clip showing a filmmaking concept and you will receive a free copy of Antics 3D V4 Professional ($295 on our web store).
What’s more, the top clip will earn $1000 cash for its creator. With two runner up prizes of $250 each you’re in with a great chance of picking up some cash as well as some free filmmaking software!
For more details, including how to download your trial copy of Antics and how to submit your video, check out this link
The choice of which filmmaking concept to demonstrate is yours. For example you could show the rule of thirds, the 180 degree rule, a shot-reverse-shot. This is the kind of thing we’re looking for:
If you have any questions then email us at getintouch@antics3d.com or post on our forum.
Full time students at any level, from any country, can participate. Proof of student status may be requested.
Ammo Previz (aka Antics3D user Tony Bannan) runs a great Antics3D community blog over at antics3d.blogspot.com. But then, you already know that as his blog is amazingly popular amongst Antics3D users; it’s just passed through the 10,000 views mark
With articles on all things previz and some great tips and tricks the blog is essential reading for anyone with a copy of Antics3D.
It’s packed with detailed how-to articles that are always a great read, such as this recent post which shows us how to get our characters jumping. You’ll also find extremely useful techniques on how to achieve particular effects in Antics3D; who would have thought to use windows to make a bullet hole effect in a wall?
If you’ve read one of Tony’s recent articles on this very blog, such as the SketchUp masterclass, then you’ll know what to expect. So congratulations to the Antics Community Blog, here’s to the next 10,000!
The 28th Cambridge Film Festival will feature a machinima track showing around 50 films, including the winner of the Antics3D Medical Shorts competition that we ran earlier this year. Tony Bannan’s short ‘Folie a Duex’ will be screened alongside movies made in a variety of Machinima tools, including Antics3D, iClone, Second Life, Moviestorm, The Sims, Half Life 2, and Second Life.
Running from September 18th to 28th the Cambridge Film Festival is one of the largest in the UK. Audiences have grown by 40% in the past 5 years, reaching 16,500 participants in 2007.
Last week I posted up a list of online libraries where you can grab free content for use in your Antics3D movies.
This inspired many of you to send in your own recommendations of sites that you use regularly, so here’s an updated list. You can never have enough mocap, audio and textures when creating a scene so keep the suggestions coming.
This mainetenance is now completed. If you encounter any licensing difficulty please let us know in the Installation & Getting Started section of our forum.
Our IT team will be performing some essential maintenance on our licensing server this Wednesday, 3rd September. Downtime will be minimised and we will let you know here as soon as the license server is available.
This will only affect you If you are attempting to activate Antics using a license key. Similarly, if you need to make use of the ‘unlock’ facility in Antics to move your license from one machine to another.
There will be no impact on our other services – the Antics web site, online store, community forum and blog will all be operating as usual.
If you should encounter any difficulty with the activation process outside of this time then please let us know over in the Installation & Getting Started section of our forum.
There’s a fascinating interview over on Adaptive Path with Pixar’s Michael B Johnson. He gives an interesting insight into the processes Pixar use off the back of the recent release of WALL-E.
What caught my eye was the fact that they effectively made WALL-E twice, once as a story reel and then again as the final film. You begin to see how it took four years to finish.
This is an excellent case study in the value of previz. Johnson sees the value in being able to ‘fail fast’. That is, he accepts that mistakes will be made and problems will arise. So the quicker those issues are identified the better. Having a previz of a movie helps you spot those problems before you get into the expensive realms of production. Not to mention the boost it gives communication between departments in those crucial early stages.
I went to see WALL-E at the weekend, it’s an amazing movie, I would say my favourite from Pixar. Great animated short to kick things off too. I must admit to being left a little flat, but I think we can put that down to the mountains of spoilers and opinion I had read before seeing the movie. In this online age you can go to a movie premiere feeling like it’s a re-run.
So if you want Antics V4 to be a fresh, sparkling surprise, don’t read this blog, it has spoilers. I’m off to mail a USB stick with a copy of Antics Professional to the guys at Pixar.
Have a great weekend, Antics V4 will be with us next week.
As we mentioned recently, we’re beginning to offer exclusive webinars for Budding Directors and Power Users and our first exclusive Budding Director’s webinar will be on the topic of ’storytelling.’
All Budding Directors and Power Users will receive an email with the instructions on how to join the exclusive live event shortly.
The 30 minute presentation on the topic of storytelling will feature Antics user/writer/director, Stefan Avalos. Stefan will be walking us through some of the storytelling methods he employs in using Antics to develop his film projects, namely, the Diamond Chasers, which you can see featured on the Antics Cinema.
Date: Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Time: 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PDT
As for all of you Antics ‘Newbies’ out there, you can be upgraded to Budding Director simply by meeting one of the following requirements:
* Submit an original video made in Antics. Read this post to find out how to submit and publicise your work. The video does not have to be long, sophisticated or complex (it could be all of 10 seconds). It just has to show that you can manage the different stages of using Antics : creating or modifying a set, directing action, choosing the appropriate camera shots, producing a timeline and outputting it as a final video
* Make 25 posts on the forum
* Provide helpful advice on the forum to others which indicates your knowledge of Antics and/or animation
So, what are you waiting for?
Output an Antics movie, upload it to YouTube and share the link with us on the “Showcase your Work” Antics forum. You’ll quickly be upgraded to Budding Director and included in the invite for the exclusive webinar. You’ll even get special offers on Antics Premium Content packs and sneak peaks at upcoming Antics releases!
I look forward to “meeting” you on the webinar on Wednesday!
First off an introduction, I’m Trevor, I’m a software tester here at Antics. If you find a bug in the software, well it’s the developers’ fault, nothing to do with me what so ever – although I suppose I should have spotted it first. As well as diligently searching for bugs in the Antics application, one of my roles is to build content packs.
Some of the more observant among you may have noticed that when you import a prop into a set, its x-axis aligns with the world x-axis but when you import a character into a set, its x-axis aligns with the world’s negative y-axis.
Why?
Well that’s the way it’s always been done.
What’s New?
From now on, the character based content packs will have the characters import into the set with their x-axis aligned to the world x-axis. There are a couple of reasons for this; issues with props attached to the character, inconsistent behavior between characters and prop and last but by no means least, because I have to manually rotate every character in a content pack before it can be built and that seems like a lot of effort just to propagate a system which is wrong to start with.
What are the side effects?
If you have some old characters which you drag into the set from the content viewer, they will face in one direction, while the characters from newer packs (see Foot Note #1) will face in a different direction. However, the first thing pretty much everyone does when importing characters and props into a set is to manually move and align them to their start positions so this change should be pretty minimal.
Note #1 – I believe Characters Casual Female Adult 08 Content Pack is the first pack which will have characters aligned in this way
If you have any questions about any of this then please drop us a line over in the Content Help section of the Antics Forum.
I’m very pleased to see that an article has just been published on Wikipedia covering all things Antics.
Two very generous members of the Antics community have taken the time to write the article. It’s a fascinating read for anyone who wants to know more about where Antics came from, what it can do, and where it’s heading.
I can’t wait to see how the entry evolves now that it’s opened up to the wider community. It’s an open encyclopedia so as an Antics user be sure to chip in if you have something to add! We will be watching with interest, although we won’t contribute directly on there as it’s purely a community driven project.
If you’ve upgraded to Antics V3.1 then you will be getting familiar with the new native Google SketchUp and Google 3D Warehouse import features. If you haven’t already, have a look at the new Google SketchUp Tips & Tricks section in the forum.
Many of you will want to take advantage of the ability to import .skp content from the massive Google 3d Warehouse (available from File > Google 3d Warehouse in Antics), but keep in mind that most of these tricks are relevant to models imported from the .3ds and .fbx format, as well.
Posted by gcon 
Posted by gcon 
Posted by gcon 
