MAKE A 3D ANIMATION BY YOURSELF

3D ANIMATION SOFTWARE

Anim8or is a 3D modeling and character animation program that I have written over the past couple of years, not as a commercial endeavor, but because I love 3D graphics, animation, and programming.  While it is far from a complete professional level application like 3DStudio MAX or Lightwave, I believe that it has enough capability to be of use to others.
Version v0.95 is now available.  Anim8or has come a long way since the first release called v0.1.  There are still may areas that need improvement, primarily the renderer, but it's getting close to what I had originally imagined as the magic v1.0.  I don't plan on stopping there, but it'll be a nice milestone along the way.

Download Anim8or Installation Instructions Anim8or is very simple to install and run.  It is composed of a single executable file that can be put anywhere on your disk.  I have plans to add a plug-in capability sometime in the future, but for now, at least, life is simple:  Download the latest version of the Anim8or program in the file animv095.zip below. Optionally download the PDF Anim8or user manual in the file animv095dPDF.zipbelow. Unzip them into your target directory.  (If you've never heard of  a "zip" file is, see the comments below.) Run the file anim8or.exe. That's all there is to it.

The latest version Anim8or, v0.95c dated April 2, 2007 is available here: animv095c.zip
I expect this to be the last update to v0.95.  The following bugs have been fixed:

• #095-064 - Bumpmap Texture/Material in Scripts Has Problems.
• #095-065 - GetAttribute Crashes on Nonexistent Elements.
• #095-066 - Initial GUI Settings Not Correct.
• #095-067 - ASL Function randseed() Doesn't Do Anything.
• Add texture coordinates to GeoSpheres.
• Add View->DefaultVisuals command to reset GUI and workspace settings to default.
• Set default value for scale controller expressions to 1.0 instead of 0.0.
• Fix several other minor ASL problems.

Theprevious version Anim8or, v0.95b dated February 6, 2007 is available here:animv095b.zip
The following bugs have been fixed:

• #095-051 - "f" Frame All Hot Key Continues to Zoom Out.
• #095-052 - ZNear Set to 50 in Object Mode.
• #095-053 - Canceling AVI Render Locks Output File.
• #095-054 - Materials on Shapes Within Groups are not Set When Project Is Loaded.
• #095-055 - View->Other->Light-n Always Selects First Light.
• #095-057 - GetAttributeOrientation() and GetAttributeInt() Don't Work.
• #095-059 - Modifying Cylinder Parameter in a Script Doesn't Immediately Take Effect.
• #095-060 - Transparent Shapes Hide Reference Images.
• #095-061 - Setting Material's Diffuse Color Forces Alpha to 1.

There are some minor new features in this release:

• Left-hand toolbars are scrollable with the right-mouse button when they don't fit.

There are some minor new ASL script features:

• New frame variable (like time)
• New orientation member variable added to shape type.
• quaternion references to x, y, z, and w components.
• normalize() and length() added for point2, point3 and quaternion.
• pseudo random number functions.
• GUI object with X, Y and Z axis enable members.

The previous version Anim8or, v0.95a dated December 2, 2006 is available here:animv095a.zip
There are no new features in this but the following bugs have been fixed:

• #095-017 - Incorrect Environment Map Reflection Calculation by Shaders.
• #095-040 - Importing a Sequence Crashes.
• #095-041 - Adding Bumpmap Textures to a Material in a Script Crashes.
• #095-042 - Middle-Clicking in Arc Rotate with View Pop-Up Menu Present Hangs.
• #095-043 - Implement shape.SetMaterial().
• #095-044 - Various mesh.AddMaterial() Errors.
• #095-046 - Referencing Members of NULL Materials Can Crash Scripts.
• #095-047 - Arrays of Materials and other types Don't Work in Scripts.
• #095-049 - String Member Functions Don't Work on Array Elements.
• #095-050 - Crash Exporting Sequence with Missing Objects to .3ds format.

Version 0.95 has some fundamentally new capabilities over v0.9.

• Graphic material shaders.  These show more realistic views of materials in the working views and can be used for very rapid image and movie generation.  They are available on computers with DX9 level and above graphics cards.
• A scripting language, called ASL.  Useful for modeling tasks and advanced controller functionality.
• Plug-ins.  Anyone can add new object export formats and parametric shapes by writing a plugin in ASL.
• Simultaneous shaded and wireframe views.  You can set the viewing parameters for each window independently.