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Cryptic Studios Open Sources Animation Tools

Posted by Zonk on from the go-make-a-better-coh dept.

GameDev.net reports that Cryptic Studios (makers of the Massive title City of Heroes) has released a powerful animation tool under the GPL. Called CrypticAR, for Cryptic Animation Rig, the software will allow animators to bring 3d models to life via a toolkit of scripts and rigs. "'Our goal is to foster a community of animators by providing them the power to generate animations without having to worry about supporting a toolset. Since we were already developing the rig for our core technology team, we decided to release it to the public under the GNU GPL,' said Shayne Herrera, Art Development Director for Cryptic Studios. 'We feel that the development and gaming communities will benefit greatly from a professional tool like the Cryptic AR.'"

3 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Is it just me? by spocksbrain · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Besides the Second life client, CoH has pretty much the most bloated of all the MMO clients. It even runs slow on most of my buddies high end machines. I wonder how useful the released dev software will be, when there are planty of open source options already available (blender)?

  2. Windows and 3D Max required... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Maybe now that it's open sourced it can be ported cross platform and have support for more formats added (FBX and Collada would be a nice place to start)

  3. Re:Open-source? by Vampyre_Dark · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's released under the GPL, yet you can't view the source or anything because it's packed away in an installer .exe that only works if you have a working copy of 3ds max 8+ installed, doesn't this violate the GPL somewhat?

    And I guess Cryptic Deluxe will be under the GPL too, since it will be built over the GPL'd lite version.

    http://www.crypticar.com/LICENSE.TXT