Emmy nomination expected to animate sales

By ADAM GIFFORD

A Dunedin animation software developer hopes an Emmy nomination will stimulate sales of his Character Animation Toolkit (CAT).

Scott Pearson, the president of Character Animation Technologies, said CAT came out of work animator Philip Taylor was doing for the television series The Most Extreme, running on the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet.

Pearson's animation company, Ra, has a long relationship with the channel.

"We had to produce 10 minutes of character animation per show for stuff-all budget, so Philip made some tools for the animators," Pearson said.

CAT, which is a plug-in to the widely used animation program 3D Studio Max, creates what animators call a rig - a computerised framework that forms the basis for any subsequent movements.

The rig can have any number of limbs, limb segments, spine or neck links and bone segments.

The CATMotion tool creates the movement characteristics required, and then uses a position controller to hand-animate overall orientation and velocity.

Automatic collision detection enables rigs to make their way over rough surfaces, realistically, without lengthy handwork.

Artists can also import motion capture data, and other tools allow quick editing, switching or blending with keyframe animation.

Pearson said the company had just finished the beta version of CAT, and should have the finished product ready for release within a few months.

The Emmy awards will be presented on September 3. Pearson and Taylor are nominated for their work on the Jumping episode of The Most Extreme.

"It features animals like the kangaroo and the flea, and says things like 'If a man could jump like a flea he could jump over the Empire State Building', and we did an animation of a guy jumping the Empire State," Pearson said.

CAT will cost US$995 ($1750) per user and will be sold over the internet or through resellers.

Pearson said there was a sizeable market, as 3D Studio Max owner Discreet claimed its software had 180,000 commercially licensed users.

"Animators are a tech-savvy audience. They are used to downloading stuff from the web. They use online forums and talk to each other. They are ideal for viral marketing," he said.

"I am not naive. I think we may have a year's headstart with this, but no one to date has come up with anything to match this.

"There is some very clever thinking, some of which will be apparent, some of which is hidden deep in the code."

Character Animation Technologies