Handpicked Software » Animation

Macromedia Flash (PPC) – A tool designed for creating animations for use on the web

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Macromedia Flash is a tool designed for
creating animations for use on the World Wide Web. Flash specializes in
creating animations that take up very little space and thus are friendly
to even users browsing the Web with modems. This demo will expire after
30 days of use.

Developer’s website: Macromedia

LightWave 3D Updater – 3D animation software

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

LightWave 3D is the most complete and flexible software solution for 3D graphics and animation.

LightWave 3D is versatile enough to make the transition to and from all kinds of projects. Proven for years in television, film, and games, LightWave 3D is also being used to create graphics for print, web, industrial design, architecture, medical imaging, and anywhere else a 3D package is needed. A full, robust program, LightWave 3D includes many of the tools that other packages require to be purchased separately. Soft-body dynamics, particles, hair and fur, plus unlimited render nodes, to name a few; LightWave 3D ships with all the tools an artist needs to create.

Developer’s website: NewTek, Inc.

Maya Personal Learning Edition – Explore all aspects of the award-winning Maya

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Maya Personal Learning Edition, or Maya PLE, is a special version of Maya software, which provides free access to Maya for non-commercial use. It gives 3D graphics and animation students, industry professionals, and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics (CG) an opportunity to explore all aspects of the award-winning Maya Complete software in a non-commercial capacity.

The Maya PLE restricts users to non-commercial applications through the display of a watermark on images as well as through the use of a special non-commercial file format. If you are a business, school, academic institution, training center or any similar type establishment you should not use the Software or Materials, or any Personal Use Files in, or as part of, any business activity or educational or training program.

What’s New:
Version 8.5:

Modeling (NURBS, polygons, subdivision surfaces)
Character rigging and animation technology including full body Inverse Kinematics (IK)
Advanced Autodesk Maya Trax non-linear animation editor
Full dynamics system including soft and rigid body dynamics
Complete particle system
Many more enhancements

Developer’s website: Autodesk, Inc.

Array – Create animated Flash movies

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Array is an easy-to-use animation program. If you know the children’s toy where you poke transparent colored pegs through a backlit screen (LiteBrite), Array uses the same idea, but with multiple screens, to create animation. You color points on a sequence of frames. There are various functions to manipulate the points. You can play, save, and reload your animation. You can export your animation as a Flash movie.

Developer’s website: Aaron Calhoun

Star Fire Bubble – Screensaver with weird bubbles

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Star Fire Bubble is a screen saver with weird bubbles moving around.

Developer’s website: Cory

D-Trace – Traces Flash animation files

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

D-Trace is a little tool for Flash MX 2004 developer. With this software, you can trace your flash animation from the browser using standard trace().

Install the debug version of the player and the data send out the trace function of your animation straight into the D-Trace console.

What’s New:
Version 1.0.2:

compatibility with Macromedia Flash 8

Developer’s website: Ludovic PAQUOT

Macromedia Flash Player – View flash animation on the web

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Macromedia’s Shockwave and Flash Player, as it is formally called, is one of the most ubiquitous Web browser plug-ins, allowing you to view all kinds of nice interactive animations many people have produced for their Web sites. While not quite essential, this will make your Web browsing experience much more enjoyable.

Developer’s website: Macromedia

Rainbox – Strange drawing game that animates shapes

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Rainbox 1.2 is a strange drawing game that animates the shapes that you
put on the screen. It also adds psychedelic color patterns to the
shapes. Additional options include mirroring and more.

Developer’s website:

Framed X – Create animations from series of still pictures

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Framed is a quick and easy tool to create animations from a series of still pictures. You can use Framed to assemble stop-motion animations or create an impressive cinematic sequence by rapidly flipping through numerous images.

Features

Create sequences of any size with a virtually unlimited amount of images, and using any number of frames per second.
Preview images by double-clicking them, and reorder them if need be.

What’s New:
Version 1.3:

Added an add files button so you can browse and add a folder of images
Images can be sorted by clicking on the column headings on the images list. The order will be honored when the movie is made.
Instead of stretching images to fit the movie size, Framed will now downsize them proportionally and place them on a background color of your choosing
Pressing the delete key will now remove the selected frames from the movie
Image previewer will now downsize large images to fit onto the screen
You can now Select All (command-A) in the image list
When rearranging images, a dialog no longer pops up telling you where you moved the image

Developer’s website: Likely Software

Silo – Production-quality 3D modeling program

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Silo 2 is a focused 3D modeling application with the ability to effortlessly switch between organically sculpting high-polygon models and precisely controlling hard-edged surfaces. It can be used for anything from creating 3D characters for video games and movies to quickly exploring 3D architectural ideas.

Silo is currently being used at top studios worldwide as both a stand-alone design tool and as a versatile element of a multi-software 3D graphics workflow.

What’s New:
Version 2.0 now includes displacement painting, UV unwrapping, scene management, and a new, cleaner interface.

Developer’s website: Nevercenter Co. Ltd.

PhotoTunnel – Create 3D animated movies from iPhoto collection

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

PhotoTunnel creates animated 3-dimensional QuickTime movies of your photos and videos. Key features include:

Timeline based project editor
Import iPhoto albums, or any image or videos
More than 20 different animations
Animates Mac OS X Tiger Quartz Composition
Export your final project to QuickTime
Fast OpenGL hardware rendering

What’s New:
Version 3.7.1: Improved Image Quality, fixed bug on MacBook and Mac Mini (Intel).

Developer’s website: ReadPixel

MacMegaPOV – Unofficial compile of POV-Ray

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

MacMegaPOV (formerly UVPov, SuperPatch, and MultiPatch) is a cooperative work by members of the POV-Ray community.
This is an unofficial compile of POV-Ray. Do not ask the POV-Team (with the exception of Nathan Kopp) for help with this.

POV-Ray is a ray tracer, computer graphics software that can create amazing photo-realistic computer-generated images and animations. It uses an easy scene description language. This text file containing information of objects, lighting, texture, camera, etc., can be written in any ASCII editor, but with MacMegaPOV it is easier and faster and it includes some of the most recent patches.

What’s New:
release notes not available currently

Developer’s website: MegaPOV Team

iDraw – Create animated illustrations for the web

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

iDraw is a powerful, yet easy to use, illustration and animation program for Mac OS X. It has many of the features of high-end design programs, such as smooth anti-aliased rendered paths, different fill types including semi-transparent colors and gradients, object transformations such as tapers and arcs, text shape manipulation, and much more. Best of all, it’s only a fraction of the price.

What’s New:
Version 1.3.2 release notes not available currently.

Developer’s website: MacPowerUser Software

Movie Archive – Capture, compress & browse DV video

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Movie Archive enables you to capture, compress, browse, and organize a multi-tape video library.

Developer’s website: LQ Graphics

iCartoon – Make and export animations

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

iCartoon allows users to make and export animations. Its not intended for pros but for educational and didactical purpose. iCartoon is based on QuickTime, suitable for every platform and video application. iCartoon exports in QuickTime format DV size for a perfect partnership with iMovie. Working with iMovie you can add sound, voices, titles and special effects to your cartoon.

It’s very easy! Every cartoon is made of scenes and actors. A scene is a static picture; it can be realized with iCartoon or imported. You can also use photos,video-camera pictures or imported from a scanner. An animation is made of frames that, if copied, gives movement.

Developer’s website: Luca Paci

3D Data Visualizer Pro – Animates 3D line/surface plots from table based data

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

3D Data Visualizer Pro quickly creates and animates great 3D line, surface, and scatter plots from table based data. Choose your delimiter type(s), and select the type of plot desired. Specify your desired colors, lighting, and rotation, and animation.

Features include :

All the standard plot types including Line, Mesh, Scatter, Mutli-Line, and Area Plots with Transparency Control
Interactive Color Specification with 3D Light Positioning System
specify opaque surfaces with specular and shininess characteristics
specify colors using height based colors (choose from a variety of color schemes or define your own)
Quicktime Movie / TIFF / PDF Export
Multiple Plots Per Graph
Texture Map an Image to a Surface
Height Based Color Schemes
Orthographic projections simplify taking measurements.
Transpose Your Data Sets – swap rows for columns when loading in your data.
Undo / Redo your chart settings
Save and Restore your Plots and User Settings
Print, Export Images, and PDF’s of your charts
Background Color Specification
Set your chart title, and change your axis labels from X, Y, and Z

What’s New:
Version 1.0.7:

Unicode Support for Title, X, Y, and Z Axis Labels

(Greek Characters, Mathematical Symbols, Umlauts, etc.)

Font, Color, and Size selection for labels

Multiple Lines per Label

Version 1.0.6:

Animation (time varying data) now available for all plots

New Vector Plots

Additional textures

cobblestones
3 types of marble (white, green, yellow)
brick wall
round stone walls
stone slabs
light wood
… and more …

Specify an exact resolution for the graph (ie: 256 x 256)

Specify line thickness and point size for line and scatter plots.

User Guide is now available and included in the installation package

Version 1.0.5:

user definable color maps for plots using height based color (surface/mesh, scatter)
- color map viewer/loader
  - graph showing R, G, and B values vs color index
  - table of R, G, and B values, and sample color for each index
- several sample color maps included
  heat, cold, fluid, hue, spectrum, xray, etc.
- define your own color map with a simple table using TextEdit or any text editor
Bug Fix – In version 1.0.4, image textures may not appear when using a PowerMac G5 and certain Nvidia graphics cards. This bug is fixed in version 1.0.5.

Developer’s website: Optunis

PixelToy – Animate and distort PICT files

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

PixelToy is simply a visual plaything for PowerPC-based computers. The fully customizable program colorfully animates a variety of moving patterns. You can open and save PICT files, then blur or smear or distort them in real time. Watch swarming bees, a dancing sound wave, and more.

What’s New:
Version 2.6.1 adds the following:

Optimized Filters
Particle Brightness Control
Timer-based Animation
Better Audio Source Selection
Many other minor tweaks and fixes

Developer’s website: LairWare Software

Soude – Mesh figure animation

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Soude builds on Soda Constructor’s idea of a dynamic deformable mesh, except you can use a pencil to draw on the mesh, and create what amounts to a dynamic drawing that you can pull, push, move around, and animate. The default mesh is a stick figure, but you can edit the mesh and create arbitrary creatures.

Soude’s user interface is incredible simple, and the program comes with plenty of examples you can play around with. A Read Me details Soude’s non-obvious features, and explains how it works.

A subset of Soude is used in Comic Book Dollhouse for character graphics.

Developer’s website: Chaim Gingold

TOKI LineTest – Linetest animation creation tool

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

TOKI LineTest is a professional software solution that can create animation movies and cartoons. When the animator has drawn the drafts of his/her animation, he/she verifies the quality of it (fluidity, litheness, rhthm, speed), by shoot with a video camera its drawings one by one — thus creating a linetest. This program helps with that process.

What’s New:
Version 4.5.2:

Fixed a bug that freezes the video in the shoot window after a dialog box was displayed
Under Windows, fixed a bug in the network license avoiding the use of several installation at the same times

Developer’s website: Thierry Arbellot

GIFBuilder for OSX – Create animated gifs to add to a Web site

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

GIFBuilder for OSX… Want to add animation to your Web site? Animated GIF files are the way to go, particularly for those less accomplished in animation, and very few programs make creating animated GIFs easier than GifBuilder. This scriptable utility offers an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface that supports many different file types,
including PICT, TIFF, Photoshop (including layers), QuickTime movie, PIC, and of course GIF files. What’s more, GifBuilder lets you control pixel depth, the color palette, dithering, size, interlacing, transparency, interframe delay, disposal method, frames position, and looping. If these terms sound confusing,
don’t worry: easy-to-follow instructions are included, as is a sample animation.

What’s New:
Version 1.0 has a slightly more modern interface and is compatible with Mac OS X.

Developer’s website:

Toon Boom Studio – Professional cartoon animation application

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Toon Boom Studio is the leading animation software solution for individuals to easily create rich, eye-catching animations for video, websites, television, film, games, mobile devices, e-learning applications, and more.

Users can easily build animations digitally, traditionally or the cut-out way by selecting artworks from existing libraries and animating them using motion paths. Toon Boom Studio�s intuitive user interface and advanced animation keyframing, asset reuse and lip synchronization empower animators to make high quality animations faster.

Create:

Import media from templates, movies, photo collections, and more (SWF, AI, PSD, JPEG, TGA, GIF).
Create artwork with powerful drawing tools � as easy as working with pen and paper.
Add sound (WAV, AIFF, MP3) and speed lip-synching with powerful lip sync analyzer.

Animate:

Move images in 3D space.
Move, zoom, and pan the camera.
Animate cut-out elements with transform tool.
Automatically scale and rotate images through space and time.

Publish:

Export to Macromedia Flash (SWF), QuickTime, DV Stream, AVI, and image sequences.

Toon Boom Studio Express (beginners) and Toon Boom Solo (web/broadcast professionals) also available from the publisher: http://www.toonboom.com

What’s New:
Version 4.0: new user interface; photo animation made easy; extended line styles to create a multitude of line styles; feather edges; more peg functionalities; advanced Web publishing options; and over 30 new other features and improvements. More details available here.

Developer’s website: Toon Boom Animation Inc.

Concepts 3D – 3D modeling tool

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Concepts 3D is a precise software application that provides state of the art modeling tools without sacrificing speed and ease of use.

Use Concepts 3D to explore and develop new product concepts using a variety of modeling methods including curves, surfaces, and solids all seamlessly integrated into a user friendly design environment.

What’s New:
Version 4.0:

Apple Macintosh Universal Binary
ACIS R16 Major Kernel Update
Photo Rendering with Lightworks 7.6
Preview Drawing for Photo Rendering Material Exploration
Rail Revolve Surface
Faceting Improvements
Importing Paper Space and ViewPorts
Exporting Paper Space and ViewPorts
Improved Cursor Snapping
Saved Views

Developer’s website: CADSoft Solutions, Inc

Blacksmith3D – Suite – 3D animation software

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Blacksmith3D – Suite 2.2 provides you with a host of tools for reshaping and painting your 3D characters and objects. Never before has it been so easy to do. Features that are normally found in expensive, and hard to learn software packages have been brought together in this easy and affordable 3D detailing solution.

Using the analogy of a blacksmith, Blacksmith3D – Suite 2.2 allows you to “heat up” and “deform” objects in a very intuitive way. The hotter portions of the object deform the most and the cooler parts deform the least. In this way, you can easily create smooth and continuous morphs, with little effort.

In addition, Blacksmith3D – Suite 2.2 is a powerful, true 3D paint program. This means that you can simply rotate and position your object, select a paint brush and paint directly on the surface! You can also paint the color, transparency, bump and displacement maps.

Blacksmith3D 2.2 New Features:

Use with Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Maya or any program that supports OBJ import/export.
Auto-rigging between Blacksmith3D – Suite 2.2 and Poser(r)
Symmetric morphing and painting
High resolution maps (bump, displacement, transparent)
Layer manager
Multiple viewports

What’s New:
Version 2.2:

Large texture map support added (up to 8192×8192)
Compatible with more video cards than before
Various optimizations

Developer’s website: Blacksmith3D

Bricksmith – Virtual Lego builder

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

Bricksmith allows you to create virtual models of your Lego creations and enjoy them in all three dimensions. It is an excellent tool for creating instructions of your Lego building projects.

Bricksmith offers access to thousands of parts and dozens of colors. It also provides model-making tools for creating steps and submodels for intricate creations. Best of all, you’ll never run out of bricks.

The program is based on LDraw, a fan effort to create 3D models of Lego bricks. Converters are available which enable you to feed your creations into a raytracer to produce beautiful 3D renderings.

What’s New:
Version 1.6:

New Features:

Part Browser can be configured as a separate window
Export Part List feature
Background color preference
Always switches to perspective mode when drawing a head-on view
Key-commands for Hide/Show Parts

Bugs Fixed:

Colors aren’t so washed out
Ortho and Perspective are the same size at (0,0,0)
Double-click in Part Browser table inserts part
Unknown commands don’t accumulate extra spaces

Developer’s website: Allen Smith

TypeIndexer – Sample and process PostScript fonts without installing them

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:27:35 +0000

TypeIndexer is a font utility that finds, sorts,
catalogs, and samples PostScript fonts. In
addition to working with installed fonts,
TypeIndexer can find and process any number
of font files at one time without having to install
them. You can create font catalogs with samples
of all Postscript typefaces in your library.
TypeIndexer prints an alphabetical list of all
font names, with line samples of each, at up to
60 typefaces per page. For more detailed
inspection, it can sample 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 20, or
40 fonts on a page in a variety of template
formats. New free templates are added to this
Web site, and TypeIndexer provides tools to
write your own.

Developer’s website: Nikrom Technical Products, Inc.