RENNES, FRANCE — Golaem is widely used in the visual effects industry for animating massive scale scenes. The company’s (http://golaem.com) latest release, Golaem 5, enables artists to take control of their simulation results and modify them in a post simulation step without going back to square one. On top of facilitating the workflow, a new layout tool helps artists to populate smaller scenes where little to no AI is needed, but artistic control is key.
“Getting the last 10 percent of a shot right can take 90 percent of the time,” says Nicolas Chaverou, Golaem product manager. “It is especially true with crowd simulation. Being able to edit simulations results is a game changer, as it enables artists to immediately answer supervisors’ or director’s requests.”
He adds, “Before, artists had to go back to the beginning of the workflow to move a character a bit, simulate, re-export everything... All this without even being sure if the modification will be validated or not. Now they can just select a character, translate it left, and it is done! They can see the result at once thanks to Golaem advanced viewport previsualization.”
Simulated characters can be transformed simply by using the Maya translate, rotate and scale tools and duplicate / kill functions. Artists do not need to care about snapping characters to the ground as it is still automatically done by Golaem. To add variations, the characters’ props and shading can be randomized or manually hand-picked using the character palette. And animation can be offset in time or have its speed increased/decreased.
Artists can also quickly edit postures directly from the simulation layout tool, or import a complete character skeleton to manually animate it. Because the layout tool works as a layer on top of the simulation, it is very quick and all modifications can be cancelled or customized at any time.
Lastly, Golaem Layout enables studios to build a simulations library and quickly reuse them. To celebrate the launch of Golaem 5, both Golaem and Golaem Layout rental licenses are available with a 50 percent discount until March 21st.