First it was Antics3D

Now ZenCub3d? Well, at least the post says they are going on hiatus during the next development phase and not shutting down. Hopefully this is good news and not bad but with tough economic times everywhere you learn to expect the worst.

(previous Antics3D posts #1, #2).
(previous ZenCub3d post).

Machinima Week And More Money Woes

Back.

Wow, what a week! A festival last weekend, millions in funding to machinima.com, the Machinima Expo this weekend, and another important event just occurred. All within one week. Perhaps we should declare the first week in Nov. Machinima Week!

The bad news:

Antics3D will no longer accept new purchases, and subscriptions will no longer be renewed after Nov 28th. Existing customers and support will continue to June 29th, 2009.

The writing was on the wall. I recently noted my unhappiness with the V5 upgrade. It's too bad this had to happen, but with a lack of customers I suppose it only makes sense to discontinue development.

Time to go crank up Blender.

I Machinimate!

Therefore I am? Or something to that effect.

An exploration of augmented reality. Submitted to the Machinima Expo!

Filefront.
Internet Archive.
Vimeo.
BlipTV.

Antics V5 Upgrade

So I was happily looking forward to the new version of Antics, until I found out it came at a heavy cost (Forum post from Brad Kolacinski Marketing Manager - Film & Entertainment Antics Technologies Inc. in response to some user inquiries):

As we no longer offer the free Home version, we're offering existing Home users to upgrade to V5 Home for only $45 and existing Pro users can upgrade to V5 Pro for just $145. Earlier Professional versions of Antics3D came with free access to the content on our old website until December 3, 2008. This has been carried across to our new site and explains why you're seeing a message about your subscription that is set to expire in December. However, this content subscription did not include the promise of any free product upgrades. Albeit, we gave everyone a free upgrade to V4 Pro anyways. If you upgrade to V5 you will be on the new subscription scheme which not only extends your content subscription through June 2009, but also entitles you to free upgrades during your new V5 subscription.

So at the V4 upgrade they took away Google Sketchup import for home users (which had been introduced at V3) so that only Pro users could use that feature (unless the user stayed with V3). The V4 upgrade was only a few months ago, and now they are upgrading again and basically turning Antics3D into a subscription based system. Does that mean every few months users are required to purchase another software upgrade? The set of feature updates is not that significant, although on the plus side they have added emotions to characters. I am not the only one unhappy about the clear lack of communication by Antics on these issues as judged by the forum posts.

May have to find another solution.

Miscellaneous Antics3D Tips

Sometimes software makes me want to tear my hair out.

Antics v 4. For all I know I am the only person in the world with these issues. Perhaps they are fixed in v 5.

1. Center selection not working for you? Make sure you only have a single object selected, otherwise it appears the selection is far removed from any sort of center (deselect all and then reselect to be absolutely sure).

2. Unable to do anything on your set? Make sure you're in master camera view for some strange reason as being in a custom camera (free or follow) seems to block certain commands. Not sure why.

3. Your character refuses to take directions? Send them back to their trailer for the rest of the day, then have the gaffer cut the power. That'll teach them. No, just kidding, the guild will get you if you do that. Actually, make sure your character is attached to the room (antics room) and that will allow the character to take directions.

4. Not happy with the fluctuating velocity in the in-world viewport controls? Try using the arrow keys for finer control (these seems to work in some instances, not others). Maybe I just need an upgrade.

Speaking ofAntics3D, they've redesigned their website and v 5 is out at any moment.