(Updated) The author of the Auto-Rig has posted a message on the project’s page, explaining upcoming developments. More on KissKissBankBank.com.
(Updated) We did it! It’s official, the Ludo Auto-Rig is 100% funded! Congrats to all who pushed for it to happen, including Alberto, Andy Van Dalsem, Chad Smith, everyone who contributed, posted and shared the news, and the people in charge of Autodesk social media, who gave a helping hand. Ludovic, c’est à toi maintenant!
(Updated) In order to help with the last stretch of funding the author of the Auto-Rig has uploaded a new video. Watch it on YouTube.
The suite of tools for rigging and character animation is 91% funded and its campaign deadline is approaching. You can help it become a reality by visiting KissKissBankBank.com.
Auto-Rig project – FUNDED!
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This example here shows the true current state of 3dsMax animation tools demand: a Maya similar autorig tool, a few years ago a dream of each max animator, which looks and works already very nice, is not able to collect for 3 months enough money to pay 1 month salary for a programmer.
If Autodesk is watching this, they would be crazy to invest a cent in the future 3dsmax Bitp/Cat/IK/Etc animation tools – apparently only 34 persons on this planet show interest in character animation.
Lets play a simple multiple-choice game:
This plugin is not sexy because:
( ) no one uses 3dsMax for character animation any longer
( ) we wait till it come out so we can download the crack
( ) is there a C4D/Houdini/Blender version?
Sorry for sarcasm, i felt bad.
I’m actually one of the 34 who backed this project and I know where you’re coming from, Igor. I would’ve thought after years and years of being ignored by Autodesk Max animators would have flocked to back a project like this. Apparently the only flocking they’ve done is to other animation packages I guess?
It’s too bad because I did a walk cycle with this rig and it is literally MILES ahead of any other rig I’ve used. The pelvis/spine/shoulder set-up alone is so juicy and easy to get clean, smooth movements with. This is the rig I’ve been dreaming of. I desperately hope he finds the backing he needs before the deadline runs out. If I had the money I’d fund the entire thing myself.
if I had enough money , I paid all 4000$ for this project .That’s very painful because this is an excellent tool for product fast character animations on projects in max and maybe many user are going to back to max again …
Well maybe the author didn’t really promote it well enough…
Does the link appear on the area etc… ?
Its still doable.
This rig system looks great. I’d agree it’s not promoted well. I’ve only heard about this through MU. Going to start sharing this info.
Hope autodesk bring 3dsmax character rig and animation more better, because now animation movie use only maya. 3dsmax animation movie very down.
Hi!
I do some character animation when i have a job that requires it,
but i am no professional animator.
So far i have used Biped with Skin,
and it works fine (for the last 10 years ^_^)
Can someone explain why this tool is better,
i am sure many more generalists would back it,
if there was a simple comparison with biped or cat.
Kind regards,
tammo
Hi Tammo,
I used to animate with biped for about the first 5 or 6 years of my career. It does work fine, but it’s not until you animate with a really nice custom rig that you realize what you’ve been missing.
When I finally switched over to Brad Noble’s rig at work I felt like the first half decade of my career had been spent learning to animate wrong. It’s hard to explain but your animation just looks better and is easier to control when your rig is a) set up really nice and b) uses Bezier controllers instead of Quaternions (Biped uses Quaternions). Once you start adjusting keys in the Curve Editor I think you’ll see what I mean. Things just move smoother. Also, being able to offset keys on the limbs, etc for drag and/or overlap can really add a lot to your movements which has never worked right in Biped. Biped definitely has some nice tools but I can produce better, more fluid, more subtle animation in less time when I’m not using Biped.
CAT as far as I understand is still very buggy but I can’t speak on it with a whole lot of authority. I’ve used CAT a few times and I can say that this Auto-Rig just ‘feels’ much better. Download the sample and mess around with the hips/spine/shoulders. I think you’ll really see what makes it better.
Other than that I just think it’s good to support Max developers, especially when they’re offering something that has been badly needed in Max for a long, long time.
One more example. We just hired an animator who came from a Maya background animating in TV and film. We were deciding which rig to use in our next project when I found this Auto-Rig. I had him check it out and he said this one in particular feels like the really high quality ones he’s used in his Maya productions. So again, it’s hard to explain fully, but there’s just a feeling to it. Try it out and I hope you’ll decide to support it.
I think the project seem to be amazing, The Autorig seems very capable and modular.
However I am fully convinced to spend 150 on it, when I can get a similar production proven plugin for free to Maya (Advanced Skeleton).
The major flaw with max is the reference system, and that in itself makes this quite hard to justify. I am guessing that the bigger studios out there have built there own ref. system. but for a freelance generalist/animator then I am guessing this will be a quite risky workflow :/
@Micha Bostrom
Maya Advanced Skeleton is not free – it costs $3675,- (+ VAT)
Most Max users do not have maya, we have to buy and learn it first. Concerning this fact, $ 150,- is much cheaper, and I still move in my familiar environment.
And yes, you are right, max reference system is terrible 🙁
Just contributed. This is really very much needed. I would not have known about it if not for maxunderground.
What reference system are we talking about here – Xref? Or is there some kind of reference system in animation that I don’t know about? What’s the equivalence in Maya, and how is it better? 🙂
It certainly looks pretty good, but as an unemployed generalist I hardly have money to pay the rent next month, so it is completely out of my reach to fund such a project. But if I had the money, yeah!
Kristoffer: Maya has a name-based referencing system, where you can reference in external files, and connections will be done according to how objects are named. So you can do animation on a referenced rig, and then easily change the entire rig, keeping the animation as long as the names stay the same. With Xrefs, animation will be cleaned out as soon as you change the Xref, which is of course not what you want. Maya’s system is beautifully simple, and very easy to manage, helped by Maya having an ascii file format.
I’ve programmed my own system to work around this, where animation is saved out, and then re-loaded onto the updated rigs. It was painful to do, but works pretty good with some limitations. Its part of my own rigging system (available on my site, sorry about the plug!). A proper referencing system for animation is sorely missing in 3ds Max, and something I hope finds it way to the core package. There are other things making Maya popular for large scale animation (better graph editor, overall speed, channel box), referencing is the feature I miss the most.
I am developing an animated series, and this seems interesting.But I am torn between using maya or 3ds max. I want to do all the rendering and FX in Max but I am worried about doing the animation there. I have used Maya for character work before and I have found it quite flexible specially the referencing and there are so many great rigging tools for Maya.
CAT shows great promise but the two projects I have done with it have made me skeptical. I would like to see this succeed but I am a bit uncertain about committing to max animation wise so I would like to wait and see how it will turn out.
I had some of my maya animator friends look over and test out this max Auto rig and they all agree it’s very good, with much of the nice functionality you’d find in the good maya auto-rigs and other good ideas. FYI, my max animator friends who use CAT prefer this Auto Rig over CAT after testing it out.
re: Max reference system
well maybe only a few people would need better reference system in Max, you can see in Max general feature requests “better xref for animation without break the rig” only get 220 vote
and in the end I build my own system
100% funded! Man, this seemed like such a long shot just a couple of days ago.
Congratulations !
Congrats indeed.. proud funder here as well! 🙂 lets see where this tool goes! 🙂
Cool! It’s funded. Now we just need to fund someone to create a proper reference system :-/
Has someone tried this tool with 2 or more characters in one scene? How is it performance wise?
Congratulations!.. another case of MU Bump(trademarked,lol), so far 2014 is going great for Max..
Hats off to all the backers.
Hi Daniel,
I actually asked the same thing to Ludo, prior to funding a few days back..HE says:
“There is no limitation of character rig by scene. About the flow of work , depending on the machine and skinned character, but I will say that the scene remains fluid up to 5 characters and then begins to slow down. ”
So that was very good to know. :).
Can we still donate or is it useless now it’s Funded? I just heard about it. I realy realy would like to have a rocksolid rig in 3dsmax.
Hello everyone,
Thanks you all for your support. You participated greatly to the success of this project.
Jan, the project is finalized but it is not useless to continue to participate in the project if you wish. Each has advantages for Kissbankers we have help with this project and it is also valid for the new. If you have other questions, do not hesitate. Now, I will follow maxunderground.com despite my bad English.
Again thank you to you all.
Ludovic Habas
this is show clearly that autodesk really not thinking about 3dsmax rig and animation, that’s why many 3dsmax user waiting better rig system, cos it poor long time ago. i think this useful rig such are auto rig or bony face rig should be in 3dsmax native to bring 3dsmax animation more better,
this is how it should be made.. the user cant be wrong.. all i can say is.. the correct way is how fast enough to make production without headache.. and how easy to make quality production.. autodesk people make it difficult.. and thank to you, you made it easy.. imho