pouët.net

So I was talking to an animator I know last night and he was bewailing the astronomical cost of animation software tools and I found myself wondering out loud what the recent history of people trying to use demotools or game dev tools for similar tasks was (in the past I imagine computing power was too much of a stumbling block). And he said yeah, but what are the poly counts like? And I said not great, but it does have to render realtime . . .

I know there are answers out there, but I cannot find them through Googling. Although I am thinking of pointing him at Messiah (discussed in a http://www.displayhack.org/2011/the-lacquerer/ DisplayHack article last year) and seeing what he thinks . . . cheaper than Maya anyway.

polycounts possible on modern gpus are huge - millions per frame - so its rarely that which is the limit.
if polycounts in demos are low its usually because of limitations of the art or the size requirements.. :)

"if polycounts in demos are low its usually because of limitations of the art or the size requirements."

That's what I thought. Yay, not wrong!

Okay, so if I'm not barking up the wrong tree . . . I'm wondering what or who I might point him at. I love the idea of connecting up animators and tool creators in a way that could result in cheaper software options for independents, learners, and hobbyists to use who can't afford Maya and the other behemoths.

the problem is, and no disrespect to those who made them - i wouldnt dare set an animator whos used to, or expecting, maya on most of the demotools ive seen (or even the gametools) unless they really really wanted to actually make.. well, games or demos.

"you could always use blender" is a running joke response to this kind of question, but even given its shortcomings the reality is that blender's way more suitable for doing 3d/animation than any of the demo or game tools that i know of.

the premise of the question is flawed i think: demotools are middleware, most of the time they're meant for postproduction only - the creation of content often happens in a commercial tool.

ah well. maybe someday someone will do a project of this kind.

And yeah, I know interfaces on demotools can be "unusual" -- or just coder-oriented. : D

I figure if someone did make a robust low-budget animation tool someday, you've got to cut corners somewhere, and a crap GUI didn't make Painter any less delicious back when I used to use it. No worse than the Macromedia effect, although one did see what happened to them.

( In fact I thought he was using Blender yesterday when I didn't look closely . . . but it was MudBox. )

Thanks Smash!

What Smash said. There's not a single demo tool (and also I don't know any game engine/SDK) that's even close to Blender, modelling and animation wise. But the reason is simple - demoscene artists have always worked with the usual bunch of software that was available. Back then it was pirated copies of 3DS or Lightwave, nowadays it's similar (tho more people go the legal route thanks to either open source software or an income :).

And concerning the polycounts possible: I accidentally 6 million polygons per frame while clicking together this quick thing and I didn't even realize. And that was two years ago.

"the creation of content often happens in a commercial tool"

point, but I guess I was wondering if there had been any skill transfer from what people learned making demo production tools to content production tools, specifically for animation because one is doing similar things like camera angle setting, soundtrack synchronization, etc.

Anyway, wrong tree, but maybe somebody else was thinking along the same lines, hence not just to say this on IRC or email.

I just opened pouet and read "pony count". Somebody halp me plz.

metoikos: i think you want to google up machinima

but .. but .. but .. Kewlers suck!