All images © Innoventive Software LLC.

With VFX getting more complex as well as independent budgets getting tighter, previsualization is becoming more and more widely used in the film and television industry. Storyboard drawings have been a tool to devise shots since the beginning days of the art form. However, filmmakers are expanding on just sketching down a few still shots to creating animated renditions of the camera moves, including 3D characters and sets, produced in leading industry software like Maya and LightWave. Responding to this need, Innoventive Software LLC has recently released FrameForge 3D Studio, a storyboard software that allows users to create extensive 3D storyboards from stock 3D models. Previs experts at VFX houses shouldn't worry yet about being put out of business. However, independent artists or students have reason to rejoice.

Loads of Features
Giving the users a wide array of objects to construct locations both indoors and outdoors, the program has easy-to-use drag-and-drop control, along with move, elevate, spin, tilt and scaling controls to help manipulate objects and characters. Walls can be snapped together easily with adjustable heights and lengths. In addition, door and window sizes can be changed simply. Characters-to-characters and characters-to-objects have preset relationships to ease in constructing the scene. For instance, dragging a character closer to a chair will make him sit down automatically. An actor’s hairstyle, skin color, eye color, shirt color, etc. can be changed, and modified characters can be saved and used over and over. Each character can be posed precisely on-set or in the Green Room function, down to moving each joint in the character’s fingers. The library of objects allows the user to create sets with little or great detail. All it takes is time (and after awhile, memory space).

The control room set-up (left) helps users look at the scene from various angles. In the Green Room (right), characters can be posed and manipulated in multiple ways.