Articles 178
April 12, 2017 1:00 PM
by B. N. Reporter
On April 4, 2017, AXYZ design has released ANIMA 2.5 (the famous crowd simulation software) with added support for Open Collada--a file format Blender & Lightwave can import. Previously, ANIMA had support for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D only. Now on its export option for Open Collada, you can see "Blender" as default. If you have not seen the software, how good is it? And how good is its support for Blender? And is it worth to buy its PRO version--beside its free "lite" version which has 4 second animation limits?
What is AXYZ design?
AXYZ design is Italy-based company well known for its photo-scanned human models and crowd simulation tool. The quality of its human model contents had been well demonstrated in a few Archviz renders featured here at BlendNews.org such as the followings:
How good is ANIMA 2.5's support for Blender?
Check out the following animation made using Open Collada export files from ANIMA 2.5 lite--a free version with 4 second animation limits. The shots were made from different angles and edited as one long video.
When imported, the file was imported as Blender Internal file, so a conversion had to be made from Blender Internal to Cycles. There's a python script that automatically converts BI shader to Cycles at: http://pasteall.org/52917/python.
And note that only the human models are exported from ANIMA 2.5's scene. Please have in mind that the above demo has used addition assets to create the scene. And more tweaking in the Cycle shader nodes might be necessary, since all shaders are imported as defuse shaders.
How to export the scene for Blender
Check out the following gif:
Is it worth to buy its PRO version?
If you can afford it, yes definitely. Even with the free lite version you can use it in your static Archviz shots or short animated sequences less than 4 seconds. It's a great news that Blender users now have at their disposal what was once at the realm of 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.
Related Links:
1. https://secure.axyz-design.com/anima-crowd-simulation-software-home
2. https://www.facebook.com/axyzdesign/
3. http://pasteall.org/52917/python (BI to Cycles sript)