AXYZ PEOPLE

[cristoforo]

Just recently discovered these 3d moving people....seem great for animations. Considering buying, but wanted to try it first to be sure I know how to make it work!!! I found a demo, but when I make it walk....using the MOCAP.....there is a strange growth that slowly comes out of the characters neck! Sounds pretty creepy, huh?!? The longer the animation goes, the more it grows! Anyone know anything about this? Starting a new project for which I have to do an animation, and I would love to use these. Any suggestions for proper use (and will it be easy or a big headache!) so that I do not find myself in difficulty as the deadline arrives! I just read the post about putting a point cache modifier to reduce memory.....don't know what that is, but I will certainly put it to use! Is it also in MAX 7? Thanks for any suggestions!

[RErender]

sounds like some of the vertices in the neck are not properly weighted.

[cristoforo]

How can that be fixed? I do not want to buy these and have these types of problems......they will then be useless!

[ShaunDon]

We invested months back in some of AXYZ's pre-rigged people models with mocap data, and we were shocked to find that they were far from ready to animate even though they sold us all the ingredients to do so. An email to their tech support resulted in an explanation that you need to refine envelopes and rigs for your specific purposes.

We were more than a little pissed. Once the guy in our office who was preparing them got into it, it took him only an hour or so per character to get them up to snuff, but that's not what they advertised.

So yeah, beware, you still need to have more than a clue about Character Studio and how to rig characters before you buy a collection like this. And it's going to cost you labor on top of the retail price tag.

Shaun

[tricky]

We were in a similar boat - bought the models and mocap and assumed they would work fine but they all look at the sky unless they are tweaked manually.

[panthon]

I have used library characters for a long time and although it´s true that they are not perfect, they work quite well for standard poses like standing up or walking. Even in movies, some characters have different setups depending on the actions they have to perform, so i see it´s quite common to have differents rigs. I have found myself that some envelopes are easily fixed, but, as u were saying, u need to know a little about skin modifier and biped. If u dont know nothing about and still want to use them, u shouldnt expect perfect results but quite acceptable for the majority of distant shots (ex crowds). If u are looking for accurate riggings for medium distance or even closeups, library characters are a great start. I think it´s really cost effective to purchase a collection like that, because the time to fix (or improve) them is less than the time u need to create them from scratch. They should say, however, that some of their collections are not exactly "ready to animate" though . Anyway, apart from the skinning issues, u will have to work on the material too, otherwise they will look like little monsters trying to suck your blood.