Numerous Questions about Creature

Discuss issues pertaining to the Creature Animation Editor here.
Post Reply
chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Numerous Questions about Creature

Post by chong » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:55 am

Hello,

Thanks for your interest in Creature.

1) The quality of the exported animation is the same as your original if you are using the game engine JSON export.
If you are using the other export options, the quality is actually almost the same for video export(it uses high quality encoding).

You can also export out into autodesk FBX (so same quality) or raw PNGS (also same quality, no degradation at all)

2) Yes, you can animate the alpha opacity of each render mesh and even key them over time(so you can easily fade in fade out your characters).

3) Yes you can. Although with Creature's advanced mesh and bone weighting system, typically you would use a lot less pieces :)

4) Currently not right now, but you can change the FPS in the exported out Creature Game Engine runtimes.
During video export, you can also set how fast or slow you want to export the animation. (So if you want to do a slow motion export you can)

5) Yes you can import separate images into Creature, Creature has a built in Sprite Packer that will create an image atlas for you. If you change those images outside, you will have to re-import them again. However, the pipeline has been setup in such a way that when you re-import as long as the names stay the same, Creature will try to infer automatically the changes and fit your new rig to your new images in the best possible way. Remember because everything in Creature is a mesh, this process is required.

6) The workflow of Creature is actually the standard workflow used in high end VFX software. You go through the standard process of Meshing -> Rigging -> Animation. An experienced user can actually get a very complex character with fancy walk cycles/effects etc. going from start to finish in about an hour.

Here is an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xbUyKofH48

The Zombie character used in OTK Games was rigged + animated in about an hour. Because of the powerful set of procedural animation motors and advanced skin weighting tools available, animating complex effects like cloth, a walking gait, dynamic flesh etc. is very fast to achieve in Creature.

You will need to take a bit of time to go through the learning curve (that's what the whole host of tutorials online are for) but once you grasp the concepts, most studios find they can animate very complex motion in a tenth or even less the amount of time in Creature compared to other animation tools.

7) Right now only 1 character.

8) Full export options are listed here:
http://creature.kestrelmoon.com/more_info_3.html

This should cover most major use cases as well as all the major game engines out there.
It also does Autodesk FBX so you can export to Maya or any 3D program that reads it (which should be most of them)

9) You can warp objects multiple ways in Creature, either using bone weight skinning (because again everything is a mesh), Mesh Pt Motors or if you are specifically doing anime type face animation, you can do this as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwDUyYNAaDQ

10) Currently no but this option is being explored for future releases.

11) You can duplicate meshes/images yes in the rigging mode so you only need to have say on hand and you can duplicate it multiple times.

12) The program is currently being used by quite a few game studios in full production for their games already.

Some video examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IiqKemMH6Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDHGp8bILGU

I have quite a few more videos to share (in fact a couple more coming up in October soon) but since Creature just got released earlier this year, a lot of the demos they have are still NDA. However the runtimes especially on the UE4 and Unity front together with the Creature editor itself have been stress tested quite a bit.

Also, Creature gets regular updates and you get all updates for free once you purchase the product. There are no update fees.

Cheers

Post Reply