For 3D Artists
The Artists's Marketplace
Have you ever built a cool 3D object, rigged character, or set of animations and tried to sell them? There is no good way to do this. You may upload your creation to a site like Turbosquid but it is seemingly random chance whether it is bought or not. The reason for this is that it’s a very capital and time consuming process to create 3D animation or visual effects for a live-action movie. The market is there, but there is no way to use it. Imagine as a parent I want to create a custom movie where Mechagodzilla fights King Kong in Toyko and wins. It’s going to take hundreds of thousands of dollars and months, at a minimum, to realize this. I buy the characters and . . . then what? I may load them into an animation program but that’s as far as it goes. With AniBot, we can build a marketplace for popular or custom characters to act out any story, any setting, any scenario a customer can imagine. Suddenly you can sell a character to a broad or specific audience, changing the potential marketplace for your creations from very limited to limitless. Anyone in the world can license your creations for use with their stories. To accomplish this, we use a UI we call “Asset Manager” to control the upload of objects, rigged characters, music, sound effects, backgrounds, sets , and more.
Standardizations
An explanation of what it takes for Anibot to use your art
This requires some forethought, such as a set of standards to the art assets in a way that an AI can use. The basic format is thus:
1. Objects must be scaled correctly so when imported into animation software (such as Blender 3D), they scale correctly. So a human needs to be the correct size, say 2m for an adult male, or 60 ft high for King Kong, or 1453 ft tall for the Empire State building. In this way AniBot doesn’t have to worry about correct scaling at first, it has a baseline to work with.
2. Objects must be oriented so that they “face” a camera that is sitting on the Y axis facing +Y. That is to say, “Up” is the +Z axis, “Left side” is the +X axis (remember it’s the opposite of camera facing), and “facing camera” or “ahead” is the -Y axis. The bottom of the object should be at Z 0.
3. Objects must have their parts be named according to a logical naming convention. A human will have a “head”, “left arm”, “right arm”, “torso”, “right leg”, “left leg” etc. These naming conventions are a bit arbitrary because there are so many variations, but they must be internally consistent. This is so AniBot knows what to focus the camera on and track. Most human camera shots are focused on the body from Wide Shots to Medium shots, and then on the face for Close Ups and Extreme Close Ups, but this can vary shot to shot. The important thing to to have a naming convention that is consistent so that AniBot can understand how to frame the actor. A jet fighter or spaceship would have a “cockpit”, a “left wing”, a “right wing”, etc. A car would have a “drivers seat”, a “front passenger seat”, “grill”, etc.
To find out more about our methods and get involved in the prototype demo, contact us today.
For Technical Artists
Scripting and Automation
We define technical special effects as rain, water, smoke, fires, explosions, mesh fracturing and destruction, and anything that has to do with particle effects or emissions that are not part of a character, such as fur or hair. For instance, a method of destroying a building where parts of it collapse and emit dust particles, or a fire effect that emits fire and smoke particles. Technical artist contributions consist of scripts with variable names that can be controlled by AniBot, with logical names. This is the most complex and computationally expensive type of visual effect that AniBot can deal with and it usually (but not always) requires you to work with an AniBot staff member in order to properly bring a consistent visual effect script to life.
