COMPARING DIFFERENT ANIMATION SOFTWARE PACKAGES

In animation, many animators tend to have animation software that they are most comfortable with. They normally look at the software’s features and its complexity to make sure that they will work well with it. I am going to compare 2 pieces of animation software that would be normally used in media professions: Autodesk Maya and Bryce

AUTODESK MAYAAutodesk Maya was originally created by Alias Research Inc. coincided with the Walt Disney Animation Studios during the production of Dinosaur. They requested the team at Alias to create one of Maya’s unique features: its customizable interface. They did this to ensure a personalised workflow was created. This program was released in Feburary1998 and has been continued to be updated ever since. The latest version of this program is 2014, which was released in the 25th September 2013. At the moment the price of this software £3,300

Maya has many distinctive features that make it an industry standard within the media industry, they allow for dynamic animation with movies, video games and TV shows:

Maya is well known for having a very customizable interface, allowing the animator to set out where their tools go in what category. This is really helpful to set out a personalised workflow, which allows the user to go at their pace, not go on a pace where

people expect them to be on.

The software has introduced new features where the animation becomes more smooth and human-like, for instance, Autodesk have included joint centring and symmetry which makes it quicker to place joints into a character and

allowing for much quicker work with animation, and the Camera Sequencer, which allows users to make dynamic and interesting scenes by positioning cameras in such a way.

In Maya, there is a massive range of renders for you to use and customize to your likings, for instance, you can change the lighting to show the time of day or make a dynamic environment. These allow for dynamic visuals within animations users create to make a more visually interesting animation.

Included with the new version of Maya is a new mechanic with Paint Effects. This is when you can paint new environmental features (like flowers and ferns) and others. Once painted, they will interact with objects that you have placed and with characters that you have made (like when they step on them, the objects that you made with Paint Effected will react to that situation naturally). This feature gives the world a more natural feeling to it.

Maya will also allow you to edit node networks in a more enhanced way to make it easier to put everything together in your animation’s mechanics. You can also debug these networks to find any technical issues concerning the animation or the overall look of the entire animation, but these are mainly used for making a more realistic effect on the objects around the characters that you create.

Maya has also a higher quality result than with Bryce due to its range of different rendering options and has wonderfully flowing animation that the user creates and also for the allowance of different quality results (depending on what options you choose whether it may anti-aliasing).

BRYCEBryce is a 3D computer graphics software made by DAZ 3D and was first released in 1994 for the Macintosh and later in 1997 in Bryce 2.0. As it stands now, the latest version of Bryce (Bryce 7.0) costs the user £11.69, which compared to Maya, is the cheapest software out of the two. This software is mainly designed to be specifically for building environments, but has some features like:

An importer where you can import characters and objects from the program DAX Studio, allowing you to have characters in the user’s environments and scenes.

Particle emitters that will allow for the creation of particles. There is a realistic world terraforming tool which allows for the user

to create realistic worlds.

Bryce in result, compared to Maya is software that is very small and has very few features and in result, if animators want to have a professional animation done quickly and with multiple features, then they should really pick up Maya. However, Bryce has the advantage that it is both easier to learn and master than Maya due to Bryce’s interface having some features that people will easily get used to in minutes while Maya’s interface will take a while to learn due to the handful of features that it has including

the customizable features make Maya so unique within the market of creative media.

Bryce has a well laid out interface with a control palette (allows you to control the camera and move items on the screen.), the create palette (where you can add items in the workspace or add dynamics to make your scenes feel more realistic.), the workspace and the display palette (where you can change the display), however, the animation controls are hard to find as they are hidden within the program, but they are located on the bottom of the workspace, whilst Maya’s animation tools are easy to find via a tab within the program itself.

Bryce allows the user to manipulate the environment with the lighting (which works similarly to Maya’s lighting function) of which uses a dome of which covers the area with light and casting shadows in a realistic way so

that the environment looks more believable. It also allows the user to change the sky and the sun in different ways to show different times of day and also different types of weather like rain, thunder etc. This also helps the environment and the animations that users create to be more believable and also, more dramatic with the harsher colours and the effects that are presented within the animation.

Bryce also allows users to create distinctively interesting environments and fantasy like settings by using the particle effects creator which allows for the creation of realistic effects like waterfall particles to fantasy

Animation tools

elements like magic and aura. These can be customized from the colour to the amount of particles that are produced.