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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. well by mastershake_phd · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hopefully their source code isnt cryptic...

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  2. Requires 3DS Max by claytongulick · · Score: 3, Informative

    I just took a quick look, it requires 3D Studio Max and only runs on windows.

    If anyone from the Blender team reads this, how realistic would it be to incorporate this stuff into Blender? Or is the rigging functionality in Blender pretty much the same as this already?

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  3. Open-source? by David20321 · · Score: 5, Informative
    This has nothing to do with open-source... they are releasing a demo of their animation rig for 3D Studio Max in order to trick animators into using it so that they will shell out for the 'deluxe' version later. From the OGDC announcement (http://www.ogdc2007.com/session.php?id=33 , May 14):

    "We're proud to announce that CRYPTIC AR Lite will be released as a free "learning" rig... The Cryptic AR Deluxe is much more robust version of its Lite counterpart. The Cryptic AR Deluxe was developed to make animating on the Cryptic rig easy for animators of a variety of backgrounds and experience levels. It also allows for quick animation prototyping for different character types before final game assets are completed, removing a potential bottleneck without compromising final animation quality... The CRYPTIC AR Lite version 1.0 will be available for download at www.crypticstudios.com"