Autodesk Products Occupy Millions of Design “Seats” Ranging from Architectural Design Applications to 3D Animation

Everyone enjoys a good blockbuster movie or video game now and then. Both of these media—and others spanning the gamut from network television to modern videobased advertising kiosks— often rely on animation software to produce characters, backgrounds, vehicles, and other special effects.

This is where Autodesk comes in. Since 1982, the company has delivered state-of-the-art 2D and 3D technologies that let customers visualize, simulate, and analyze the realworld performance of their ideas. Today, Autodesk is a recognized industry leader and innovator in these cutting edge technologies. But the company’s products span more than just entertainment applications. There are dozens of product offerings in the Autodesk® software repertoire to serve such diverse industries as architecture, mechanical design, and even collaborative project data management.

The Autodesk world-class Media & Entertainment software solutions provide sophisticated toolsets for image production, including integrated drawing, modeling, rendering, and animation packages. These applications feature intuitive interfaces and internal data handling structures that enable highly interactive image characteristics and actions. In addition, a vigorous and innovative third-party development community offers a wide range of unique tools and plug-ins that help speed the animation of complex phenomena – from wind-blown hair to exploding buildings.

The operative concept here is “speeding the creation and animation” of on-screen visuals. It is a fact of life in the graphics intensive entertainment business: media production budgets and delivery deadlines rarely offer producers enough time to design and refine their products they way they would like. Vast sums of money ride on finishing a complex animated scene in days when they need weeks. Game developers are under intense pressure to be first to market with the latest, most realistic characters and realms. These situations are tailor-made for tools that enable individual producers to get more work done more quickly.

Lights… Camera… Animation

Although Autodesk tools are by no means limited to movie industry applications, products like Autodesk® Maya® software have a proven track record among makers of big budget feature films. Year after year Autodesk animation software clients continue to receive prestigious Oscar® nominations and awards in the Best Visual Effects category. Autodesk software products are designed to foster innovation within a developer community that includes hundreds of independent specialists worldwide. Their creations, designed to be fully compatible with Autodesk products, assist in the timely completion of virtually every film title that includes special effects.

The catch-all term “animation” describes only one facet of a tremendous production task. Yes, it is essential to achieve realistic proportions, perspective, and motion in a character, whether it is an invading alien robot or a child’s teddy bear brought to life. But recording cameras must be positioned, lighting effects calculated, shadows cast, colors balanced, and textures ranging from reptile skin to satin robes applied. All this is done virtually, of course, and meticulously developed within the computer animation process.

A tool like Autodesk Maya or Autodesk® 3ds Max® software, makes today’s increasingly complex animation projects possible. Small teams of artists, working within a tight production schedule, must quickly accomplish many individual creative steps such as texturing. Figure 1 depicts a scene from the Oscar-nominated short film “9” by Shane Acker. The director used Maya for modeling, animation, dynamics, and particle effects. He strove for a “stop-motion” look in a gritty and stylized environment—a deliberately non-photorealistic appearance. With Maya, Acker was able to explore intricate movements and staging that are simply not possible on a real stop-motion set.

Where Innovation Begins

Autodesk’s animation platforms encourage innovation within the independent developer community and foster efficiency in the end-users’ applications. Both the 3ds Max and Maya products offer comprehensive tools that ease the developer’s task. These include Software Developer Kits (SDK) and powerful, easy-to-use Application Programming Interfaces (API). In each case, the tools are architected to be open, flexible and extensible. The APIs for Maya and its command scripting languages (MEL and Python®) exemplify this approach. During the initial design of Maya, the application itself and its C++ API were conceived and built together to provide a consistent and extensible environment.

A quick look at the Maya architecture clarifies this concept. At its heart, Maya is a very efficient database for storing graphical information. This database is known as the Dependency Graph (DG), a structure that stores information in objects called nodes. Nodes have properties —“attributes”— that store the configurable characteristics of each node. These attributes can be connected together in complex interactive arrangements, allowing relevant data to flow from one node to another.

The result of this very flexible connectivity is an environment that encourages interaction with specialized plug-ins. These add-on tools enhance the creation of the complex imagery demanded by today’s media. Because the DG architecture provides these image elements with knowledge of each other, they can then interact very realistically.

These features and other technology innovations grow out of the ongoing pioneering work by Autodesk innovators such as principle scientist Jos Stam, who has recently been honored with a Technical Achievement Award (Academy certificate) by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The award acknowledges Stam’s groundbreaking research on subdivision surfaces, among other contributions.

The innovation continues, of course — like the realms and characters they depict, animation tools must evolve, improve, and grow more powerful. Autodesk’s recent release of its 3ds Max 9 package is just one example. With 3ds Max long-established as a leader in the field of game development, 3ds Max 9 is 64-bit ready. To the animation artist working “under the gun” to finish a critical scene, the 64-bit architecture makes it easier to work with the huge datasets required to support tomorrow’s realistic images and dynamics. At the same time, the latest version of mental ray® 3.5 rendering software greatly enhances that key process.

The Power of Partnerships

Innovation is not limited to the intellectual property contained within Maya and 3ds Max. The Autodesk core platforms are configured to make it easy for independent developers to create plug-ins that bring their unique workflows and concepts to life. The sight of a building coming apart during an explosion, or a photorealistic flower trembling in the breeze — these effects are often enhanced by products created by the Autodesk partner developer community. Autodesk innovation extends to strategic programs which encourages developers to compliment and extend the Autodesk product offerings with unique tools that are innovative in their own right.

The Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) Sparks® partner program is one such program. It provides members with low cost access to software, support, co-marketing, and training to expedite their products’ passage from concept to profitable implementation. The program offers a number of membership options and pricing to accommodate the specific size and development requirements within any partner company.

Among other benefits, ADN members get access to a knowledge base that includes answers to frequently asked questions as well as technical support from ADN dedicated and skilled API support team. This structure ensures that two precious resources — expertise and time — are routinely available to support the unique challenges that only developers encounter. Equally important, ADN members are offered comarketing opportunities to exhibit their wares at Autodesk events, earning invaluable exposure to highly qualified customers. And with the ADN membership comes the privilege of downloading Autodesk products, code samples, and access to pre-release beta versions.

“At present we have over 250 partners offering products compatible with Autodesk Media & Entertainment platforms,” says Craig Dean, Program Manager, ADN Sparks Media & Entertainment partner program at Autodesk. “Our partners are attracted by the opportunity to associate with a respected world-class brand, the technical advantages built into our toolset, and by the fact that our market spans the entire range of entertainment and design industries.”

The advantages to partnering have so expanded the Autodesk animation universe that some end users may see many competing choices when selecting a plug-in for their application. They may want special assurances that the plug-ins they buy for their critical-path production needs will offer proven interoperability and enhanced support. For this category of power users, a range of Autodesk Certified Animation Plug-ns is also available. Candidates for certification are subjected to stringent testing procedures defined by the Autodesk Media & Entertainment division. Premium animation plug-ins provide peace of mind. They are rigorously proven to work reliably with 3ds Max and other Autodesk tools, and with other Autodesk Certified Animation Plug-ins.

Plug-in Roundup

A look at some of the animation tools that power today’s movies, video games, and even business presentations provides a perspective on the innovations coming from Autodesk and its partners. Although the full list of plug-ins designed for Autodesk platforms would be too long to include in this article, below are some examples. You can also view the complete list of Autodesk Media & Entertainment compatible plug-ins at www.autodesk.com/adnsparks

“Kiloton” from Blast Code simulates the breakup of structures in response to explosions and other catastrophic forces including earthquakes and hurricanes. Kiloton makes it possible to convert any NURB surface into a fracturable object instantly and then destroy it just as readily.

Absolute Character Tools is an Autodesk Certified Animation Plug-in from Turbo Squid, Inc. The plug-in offers entirely new object classes for modeling muscles and skins. It features a skin deformation technology that incorporates the sub-skin and in-skin deformations that accompany physical movement.

Afterburn 3 from Sitni Sadi is a volumetric effects tool. It enables rendering of ultrarealistic effects depicting clouds, pyroclastic smoke, dust, explosions, liquid metals, water and various procedurally-defined solid objects.

Digipeople from Digimation, Inc. is a collection of procedural, low-resolution mannequins that can be quickly inserted into scenes to create crowds and promote a realistic sense of scale relative to surrounding objects.

Alan Whiteside brings more than 25 years’ marketing experience to his technology writing and consulting business, Descriptor Communications. He writes about topics as varied as music production and industrial plant equipment. He is based in Portland, Oregon.

Autodesk, Maya, Sparks, and 3ds Max are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc./Autodesk Canada Co. in the USA and/or other countries. mental ray is a registered trademark of mental images GmbH licensed for use by Autodesk, Inc… Oscar and Academy Award are registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Python is a registered trademark of Python Software Foundation. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.