The Autiton Archives WIP Blog

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Here are some animation tests of a three-legged walk cycle to explore how NineOh (0090) might walk with three legs. In these tests I’ve rigged and animated the 3D character with IK Booster in LightWave 9.3.1. I’m also testing my spinning lights LScript UDF in the fully rendered test. Click the thumbnails at left to view the OpenGL animation test of the IK Booster rig as well as the fully rendered animation walk cycle. Stay tuned, more to follow... ;-)

Welcome to DreamLight’s Production WIP Blog for The Autiton Archives - A 3D Animated Web Series

The Autiton Archives™ is a 3D animated series of shorts to be released on the Web. It will follow the adventures of a couple of 3D characters, NineOh™ (0090™) and ThreeBeDee™ (03BD™), who are object-oriented software Autitons™ (Awe-ti-tawns) in search of meaning in a digital universe.

The Autiton Archives is a project with a 20 year history of research & development. Ever since the inception of DreamLight Interactive in 1987 I’ve been periodically researching and testing the viability of producing an online 3D animated series with off-the-shelf hardware and software. Until recently, these tests typically indicated that the technology wasn’t quite ready to create such a project. The research did however result in a number of successful spin-off projects over the years including: DreamLight Verttice™: An Award-winning Game of Skill & Strategy, Quipples™: The Internet Game Show of Satirical Riddles and finally BlastOff!™ An Award-winning 3D Animated Short Film.

With the recent success of the test project BlastOff!, the incredible power of the new LightWave 3D 9.3, phenomenal workstations like Apple’s 8-core Mac Pro and a direct distribution link through the Internet, iPods, iPhone and Apple TV, all the necessary components of technology have risen to a level that will finally enable me to create the Autiton Archives series as I had always envisioned it.

I’m thrilled to finally begin full production on The Autiton Archives: Episode 000 - The Big Bang!

Be sure to check in periodically to see the latest progress during production.

I’m always interested in hearing any feedback about my projects. So please feel free to send in a DreamLight feedback form and/or participate in the online discussion WIP thread about this project on SpinQuad’s forum.

Enjoy the ride,

Michael Scaramozzino
President and Creative Director

Read Michael Scaramozzino’s LightWave 3D Interview/Profile on NewTek.com

3D Character Facial Animation Morph & Lip Sync “Tuna Fish” Test of 0090 in LightWave 9.3.1

Here’s Tuna Fish, the first lip sync & facial animation test of NineOh™ (0090™) doing an impression of one of Billy Blazejowski’s (Michael Keaton’s breakout role) hair brained ideas from the movie Night Shift. This was a simple screen test to exercise the 3D character’s phoneme morphs and basic facial morphs in an actual lip sync test scene using morph mixer in LightWave 3D 9.3.

Above is a basic facial morph test that simply exercises all the facial morphs to see how they deform the facial mesh. At right is an OpenGL preview animation of the Tuna Fish lip sync test that can be seen fully rendered above. Below is a dual-screen shot of the morph mixer, graph editor and dope sheet as I was adjusting the key frame timing while working on the animation in LightWave 9.3.1.

Please Support Our Continuing Independent Film Making Efforts! Order your Award-winning BlastOff! Special Edition DVD today!

DreamLight Interactive Releases New ScreamerNet UB Launcher

DLI_SNUB-Launcher™ is an XCode Aqua GUI front end to interactively configure and launch multiple LightWave 3D 9.3.1 ScreamerNet UB instances for standalone, batch and network rendering. Download your copy today!

Created by the author of Mastering LightWave ScreamerNet Rendering for Mac OS X, Michael Scaramozzino - LightWave 3D Artist Profile.

(1) 2 Next: 3D Character Design & Creation of 0090