FARNHAM, UK — IKinema (www.ikinema.com), a developer of realtime inverse kinematics tools, announce the latest release of its 3D animation software, Action 5.0 for Maya. The release sees advancements to accelerate speed and performance, and live motion capture tools borrowed from their LiveAction software.
The new realtime playback capability enables users to solve mocap data live, and retarget that motion directly to characters inside the viewport, allowing animation teams to see exactly how characters behave for a faster on-the-go workflow. For the first time in Maya, Live ACP (Animation Cleaning Pipeline) is on hand during live set-ups to filter imperfections commonly found in mocap data, reducing workload and time for in-house or outsource teams and studio expenditure.
“We’ve seen a spike in post production studios preferring to adopt game engines to their animation pipelines for their ability to handle heavier content loads and faster render times,” says Alexandre Pechev, CEO of IKinema. “We quickly realized that by introducing LiveAction’s MoCap and retargeting tools, as well as fine-tuning components of Action, meant faster feedback time, and smoother animations. Maya users now have a further advanced and user friendly realtime platform to perform a wider range of tasks.”
New to IKinema Action 5.0 is an optimised core plug-in that improves performance, delivering twice the speed as previous versions, with realtime mocap playback, solve and retarget directly to characters. Animation cleaning during live setups removes motion jitters, feet sliding and stop body and object penetration on the go. The revised IKinema solver improves solver quality, stability and consistency. A number of time-saving features have also been added.
Action for Maya incorporates streaming interfaces for Vicon, OptiTrack and Xsens motion capture systems (Windows only). Action software is available for professional and academic users, and students. It’s priced at $1,175 per license, and is available as floating or node-locked installations.