A female model generated in Hash Animation:Master.

In 1986, I was reading the classifieds in the back of a computer magazine and was attracted to an ad with big bold letters promising "Disney Animation" on a computer. Wow! That took me back to a conversation I had in 1979 with coworkers at Ruby-Spears about the possibilities of doing animation on a computer and what that could mean to a couple of guys without the capital to purchase a few supercomputers. The program in the ad, which I purchased, was Animation:Apprentice, the start of a long history of products from Hash Inc. After Animation:Apprentice came Animation:Journeyman and Animation:Master.

This month Hash Inc. debuts Animation:Master version 5. A long, long way from Animation:Apprentice, version 5 is a matured and accessible program that covers the full spectrum of tools for the beginner to the experienced computer animator. Using the Microsoft Foundation Class libraries, the interface has everything you need available at the click of a mouse. All of the features and keyboard equivalents are customizable to fit the style of the individual animator. There are also extensive tutorials to help the user on working the features. Macmillan's New Riders computer book division is also close to releasing the advanced Power User's Guide to Version 5.

New Modeling Tools
If you're a 3D artist and haven't worked with splines before, you're in for a treat. Splines allow an animator/modeler to jump in with a 'hands on' feeling for the modeling. I like to imagine splines as rubber bands with thumb tacks at each end. Add a thumb tack (control point) in the middle of a line and you can simply create a curve. Lay down a mesh of splines and you can create beautiful organic shapes. As another example, imagine polygon-based objects that are made of straight match sticks which join at the ends (think of a geodesic dome made up of tiny triangles). Splines don't think of these lines as match sticks but rather as pipe cleaners. You can attach pipe cleaners at each end or in the middle but you can also bend them to get smooth curves.

From The Sound Experience, an animation project done for Apple Computer and Bose Sound Design with animation by Tim Elston.

Over the last year several articles in Computer Graphics World and 3D Design have focused on the work done for Marvel 2099 by Jeff Bunker and the Avalanche group in Salt Lake City using the Animation:Master program. Whereas most polygon-based human forms are limited by the process of being scanned from physically sculpted models, the characters done by Jeff and his staff have amazing personality and a look that makes you feel their presence. Best of all there are no facets so the characters are easy to animate and only take about 10% of the disc space required for a polygon object with the same apparent resolution. Plus, they are modeled by hand (incredible!). The characters have to be seen to be believed.

Those of you that have used Animation:Master before and are knowledgeable of splines will be happy to know about 'hooks.' Hooks allow a modeler to attach, for example, a vertical spline between two other vertical splines to a horizontal spline without needing to carry the spline beyond. This works very well when changing modeling resolutions, like from a face which has a high spline/patch density to the rest of the head which usually has a low spline/patch density.