Personal Shopper: 3D Animation Tools
If Jay Leno could be animated in 3D on the Web, then
why not Alice in Wonderland? That was the challenge
before Manny Marquez, a 3D animator at EA.com, the
online arm of Electronic Arts. EA.com is getting set to
launch American McGee's Alice, a sinister-looking,
creepy video game based on the main characters from
Alice in Wonderland. So what better way to preview
the game on the Web than to put a knife-wielding, 3D
Alice on the Web a la virtual Jay?
The job of building the 3D Alice character, which "greets"
visitors to the American McGee's Alice site, was
outsourced to the animators at Pulse Entertainment, who
received a full model and scan from Rogue Entertainment,
the developer of the game.
The original skeleton for Alice was created in 3D Studio
Max, the de facto standard for 3D modeling. Animators
from Pulse, using Web animation tool Pulse Creator, were
able to make Alice do a realistic lip synch. Marquez
helped write the script that lets Alice perform specific
actions, such as twirling around and welcoming visitors
to the EA.com site.
In March, Discreet (3D Studio Max's parent company) and
Pulse Entertainment announced a partnership under
which animators like Marquez can continue to work in
Max, the environment with which they're most familiar,
while using Creator to develop complex 3D characters for
the Web. "I was hyped on Pulse being integrated into
Max," says Marquez. "I immediately started picking up the
tools. Basically, I found out that I could take all the
animation I could do in Max�to Pulse directly."
The import-export business
Three major 3D Web animation technologies support 3D
Studio Max, and each brings its own strengths to the
Web. Pulse has the edge in character animation,
Metastream dominates in product presentation, and
Cult3D is the favorite for adding intelligence and
behaviors to objects.
Torturing the technology
Marquez is now at work on an interactive toy he built
from scratch using 3D Studio Max and Pulse Creator. It's
set to debut on the site in a couple of weeks, so neither
Marquez nor Eiso Kawamoto, an EA senior Web
producer, were at liberty to say much about it. What
Kawamoto would say is that the main character "looks
really cool" and that "you actually get to torture it." He also
said that it was the first time any company had pushed
Pulse Creator so far in terms of Web animation and
abilities.
"We're going to be one of the first companies to take it to
the next level and bring the interactive experience to
characters and environments," says Kawamoto. "When
the people from Pulse came over, they couldn't believe all
the stuff we've done with their technology." <<
By Liz Garone