Ecstasy Animation Tool by BrokeAss Games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fwZixrYRL0&feature=channel_page

Howdy Folks,

ECSTASY is a DYNAMIC MOTION SYNTHESIS program. What that means is it takes in CHARACTER MOTION, either from MoCap or from wherever source, and it puts it on any character - all within a RAGDOLL PHYSICS ENVIRONMENT!!! It gives you joint motors and ragdoll capability, and then it adds in some AI, and basic motions, for things like "GET UP" -- and then it gives you a big, red, RECORD button to capture what you create.

Anything you do in ECSTASY you can save right back out, into: Torque dsq format, bvh motion capture format, or COLLADA, open standard digital asset format.
So, what that means is you can immediately use ECSTASY for your Poser projects, SecondLife, or any major 3D modeling app.


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Now, we certainly didn't invent this dynamic motion thing at BrokeAss. There's definitely a name or two, out there in the industry, of companies doing just what we're talking about here, with a lot more bells and whistles as a matter of fact. But what they're NOT doing is making it available to the little guy. That's where BrokeAss comes in.

So, one more thing that ECSTASY does that not everybody might know about(?), is provide an animation editing environment right there INSIDE a fully functional game environment. We chose Torque Game Engine Advanced, by Garage Games, as the development platform. Besides just giving you nicer graphics to look at while you're tweaking arm anims, let me explain a few other possibilities. One thing ECSTASY is really good for is making really long sequences, for cut scenes or scripted NPC animation in a game. Imagine a bunch of scientists, like in the beginning of a game like HalfLife, when a door blows open and a bunch of headcrabs enter the room. You could make the scientists all fall down with a few falling animations, then make each one get up and follow a path out of the room, and that would be your scripted event.

OR, you could use ECSTASY, and fire off an explosion force, watch them all ragdoll against the walls, then turn and get up and find their own paths out the door in response to the threat that entered the room. Recording your sequences IN the game engine means you have Torque script, a tried and true open scripting language, to modify the behavior of your actors, and then you can record it all out and use it for your movie in Poser, for example. Or you can have it all happen in game, but without physics even turned on. If your game doesn't have physics, or needs to scale it down for underpowered clients, ECSTASY is here to help, just hit record.

Another advantage to working on your anims from inside the game engine is the fact that you have access to the full range of advanced shaders and pro lighting and texturing effects. It may not have facial animation and advanced hair and cloth (yet) but for distance shots you can start making your movie RIGHT IN ECSTASY, or at least render out pretty nice looking concept footage. Ecstasy comes with a greenscreen mission, where everything except the characters is rendered bright green, and you can use this to inject your footage right into Final Cut or any other editing package.

So, basically, ECSTASY is the new tool you GOTTA HAVE, if you're an indie game developer or video producer or anybody else who works in 3D.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fwZixrYRL0&feature=channel_page

BVH from http://www.truebones.com