Kitestring has announced Ozone Engine and Ozone Studio, a new rigging paradigm for MODO that allows users to export characters and rigged assets directly into other apps, including real-time apps like Unreal.
The two tools work side by side. Ozone Engine is a standalone engine that powers the deformations, whereas Ozone Studio is the set of tools for MODO that allows the user to author Ozone assets.
According to the developers, the goal was “to take full advantage of MODO’s strengths (which are numerous), add a bit of our own magic to create a best in class rig authoring environment. This means all the MODO goodness… Weight Maps, Weight Containers, Gradient based weighting, Order of Operations… compiled into a compact file format, running naively inside of other apps (as well as back into MODO as a single flattened file).”
The Ozone plugin is currently available for Unreal, with Modo, Maya, Houdini, Omniverse and Cinema4D planned for the future.
Early alpha access to Ozone Studio is available for users with an active Kitestring subscription which starts from $19.95 per month.
Find out more on the Kitestring website.
Actually the assets will be able to get rigger in Ozone Studio as well. The advantage of Modo is that it already has the Order of Operations workflow (OOO), making it easier for Modo users to pick up Ozone.
According to Rich, you’ll be able to animated in Modo, Maya or Unreal feature animation quality characters at around 60fps and be able to make changes to the characters while not breaking the rig.
My understanding as well is that since the concept came from Modo, you’ll be able to also use Modo as a rigging tool for animation in other pipelines.
Looking forward to seeing more things on the tool.