Does anyone use FragMOTION?

Hi all,

Does anyone use FragMOTION?
Is it a modeller + uv mapper + animation package?

Thanks in advance.
Sammy
:)

I tried it briefly. It looked pretty good; I'm not going to be switching from the tools I'm currently using, but if you're starting from scratch it looks like a good option.

jhocking, just out of interest are you still using CFX? If so do you still find that it`s up to the task or has it become outdated as it is no longer in development?

Also have you tried PaceMaker?

Jason.

Yeah, I'm still using CharacterFX. It's still up to the task, but that's because the task hasn't changed any. That is, I'm animating the same sort of characters, and creating the same sort of animations, and I only need b3d export. If/when I start doing different stuff (in particular, significantly higher polygon counts) it may become outdated, but for the time being it's still a great tool.

Indeed, my evaluation of FragMOTION was mostly comparing it to CFX. It seems pretty much as good (in particular, it has a similar keyframe editor, the most important feature) but not significantly better, so I saw no reason to switch.

If I had to choose between CFX and Fragmo, I would choose Fragmo. Infact I own both and never got on with CFX.

Pacemaker is damn good as well, but they are very different beasts. Try both see what you like.

Thank you.

Sammy
:)

i enjoied cfx. But now I am all about XSI and Blender. I need those feet glued to ground when I need it...

i have been using CFX but ive switched to pacemaker for one of the projects im working on. the built in physics make for some very cool death animations!

Can't say anything about fragmotion cause I never tried it.

I purchased CFX and it's useful.
CFX sucks when it comes to the assignement of vertices to bones. The auto-assignement doesn't work for me, it kind of assignes, but I have to reassign half of them manually, so I do it myself in the first place.

The Assignement and the Physics extras of PaceMaker make it indeed something outstanding.

In my opinion, they are technically surpassed by Blender.

That's true. I assign vertices to bones in Milkshape and use Milkshape's ASCII format to transfer the data.

Not that Milkshape is much better for assigning the vertices, but I just find the interface easier to deal with.

Only prob with using Milkshape for vertex assignment is that it doesn't support vertex weighting.

Well, that and there's no auto-assigning.

I didn't use autoasigning with cfx, but manually edited weights. Kindda painful, but more accurate. I have animated in several softwares and allways end rigging putting weights by absolute values, typing them. Of areas and often individual vertices.

I couldnt go back to cfx now...

XSI and blender are rather sweeter.

Unfort. XSI is rather pricy.

I use Maya when I'm doing intricate animation, but for most of my Blitz work I'm banging out some simple animations. Thus, why I use CFX a lot; it isn't good for involved animation, but the stripped down interface (to go with the stripped down functionality) makes it hella easy to do simple animation. Bing bang boom, done!

"those feet glued to ground when I need it... "

It is really a must
Does PaceMaker support this feature?

Well, 500$ for Foundation. Imho for a software that did tend to be like 6k, is not bad. I purchased as great global solution for an indy artist (GI rendering, character animation, etc)

And those foot glued to ground with the touch of a key.Its bones and ik basic tools are so well done that for a similar rig in Blender I need to work hard till I have a nice rig. Even so, it does not get even near to xsi speed of use etc, in that area.

And even so, imho you can do way more With Blender character animation than with , for example , CFX.(and similar tools) You can use copy location and rotation constrains, you can use its automatic IK -that works quite well- you can use its paint weihts tool, you can use its new envelopes, limit ik angles rotations, use empties or bones with track to or similar constrains, and a way long etc.

In Character fx, is , yep, very, very much more simple to learn, direct to the point, and imho is a great tool, but once you want to animate with a bit more of functionality (and trust me you want to be able when doing some serious animation, to glue things to world cord space, not only feet, but also a hand in a fence, in a branch, etc, etc) you find cfx only allows weights asigning and location+rotation simple bone animation.

It all works straight and its x, md2 and b3d exporter are functional and good. But you will at some point probably want better animation tools.

In xsi you can configure all your keys. I do have one to trigger "pin object" , which allows me to glue feet without compromising my rig or its fk/ik. And that counting I don't use th epremade character rigs, but i do all with basic ik bone chains, etc. Maybe as I am to used to raw bones stuff and constrains, helpers, etc. As whenever at work I don't use Biped, I build my self so my rig(helpers, constrains, IK, etc).And do so in any package.

OT [btw, jfk, your engine is looking better and better ;) ]

Yes - its possible to anchor/unanchor any joints with a simple click.
You want genuine mo-cap quality death scenes and impacts - you can do it with a few mouse clicks.
You want to manipulate a rag-doll in realtime and then capture the resulting the animation as keyframes - just a few mouse clicks away.
It is the easiest to use and most powerful animation tool of its class and price.