Play the Creator

Perhaps the most outstanding new feature in Creator 4.1, is the ability to automatically synchronize your 3D model's mouth movements to an arbitrary voice soundtrack. There is a plug-in that performs this function for 3DS MAX, but it costs hundreds of dollars, and of course, it isn't directly compatible with Creator. The drawback of the new feature is that the process is fairly painstaking; you've got to model an appropriate head mesh, add bones to animate the mouth, and then create and save a set of phonemes. Then you train Creator to recognize sound samples, and use the results to analyze other sound files. Many settings and refinement steps are required, but the results can be much better than the standard procedure -- a virtual actor mouthing to a voice track.

For the ultimate in customized character animation, Creator includes a scripting language called Joescript. You can use it to create new ways for users to interact with objects and build new animation types. You don't necessarily have to learn to program, though; Creator comes with quite a few useful examples, and 4.1 adds several new scripts, including one that lets the simulation send messages to the HTML host environment, two others that let you animate camera settings and switch cameras, and one that lets you switch textures for objects.

Other new capabilities include the ability to set a bump map's bump strength; you can do this on the fly for a special effect. You can also take advantage of animated transparency and tinted alpha, which works like colored cellophane. And speaking of mapping, Creator 4.1 adds a cylindrical wrapping mode. A new workflow feature lets you fit the view to selected objects. And instead of having to pre-calculate inverse kinematics in Creator, you can let Player generate the IK in real-time. The new SpectrumBox feature can produce or modify animation based on changes in the audio stream, and can also stream MP3 files. That's not all, but you'll have to download the software to find out the rest.

If 3D is ever going to fly online, Pulse will undoubtedly play a big role in its popularization. Even if you're not quite ready to start adding 3D to your site, check out some of Pulse's demos. I think you'll be impressed.

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