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Stop Motion Animation is one of simplest and traditional form of animation technique used for animating inanimate things. Just like a cartoon animation, a physical object is moved in small amounts between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when a series of images played in a continuous sequence on a video playback system. It may sound very easy, but this process is always time consuming and the final result will not be as fluid as a captured video. But there are areas in which you can or have to use stop motion technique. This simple technique has inspired many to produce lovely creative animation videos.

A Short Love Story In Stop Motion from Carlos Lascano

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate

Florian from Andrew Gibbs

Fat City Reprise – Long Gone from Cesar Kuriyama

White Winter Hymnal from Grandchildren

Adobe Photoshop Cook from Lait Noir

automatic from ricfortune

Hoedown from Rodeo from Eleanor Stewart

My Paper Mind from Javan Ivey

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For someone new to the world of animation, especially real-time animation, the industry and what’s available can appear downright bewildering. There are a great many solutions it seems, starting with Autodesk’s wonderful, but pricey solutions, to free and shareware solutions. There are of course the most well-known and perhaps also the most popular solutions such as Autodesk’s solutions, Kinemac for the Mac and Reallusion’s iClone4. But there are plenty of other options as well.

A lot depends on what the application is. The applications for real-time animation can range from such a thing as creating 3D-characters that can be manipulated in some way at real-time, either for animated film or gaming purposes, to something as simple as setting up a nice animation that you want to send as a greeting. These days the subject of producing real-time animations in teleconferencing or video-conferencing scenarios is also becoming gradually more common. These can be thought of as a virtual puppet, with one person controlling the movements of the puppet, which is an animated object on a computer screen. Some people also refer to this as performance animation, since it implicitly involves someone directing the animated object or character’s movements, in that sense this person is the “performer” for the animation. No matter what you call it, and what the exact application, one thing is clear that it requires some kind of real-time capability, either through manipulation on an interface, or better still through motion capture. The second thing that it also requires is a real-time rendering engine that can render the animation being created quickly and efficiently, and display almost at the same time as it is being created.

In the degenerate sense many gaming platforms are actually doing a little bit of real-time animation, and something like the Wii platform in particular is doing something like that. There is motion capture (or you interact through an interface composed of input devices: keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.) and then there is rendering to show that motion on screen. However, the big distinction being that nothing creative is being achieved in this case.

Before moving on we should also mention that there are scientific and legal applications as well, where the animation can be used to simulate (or emulate) certain scenarios to glean more information or better understanding. Thus, the applications are plentiful, and so are the solutions. Another note of caution that is required is that sometimes real-time animation can mean real-time rendering, in that a given animation is not a recorded animation but rather that each frame is rendered at real-time as you watch it (however the animation itself may be predefined and there need not be a direct interaction producing it while you watch it).

We decided to take a look at a few so that a resource of a range of solutions would be available at one place. And then depending on what you need you can select whichever you prefer. The list is not comprehensive, but we hope that it will serve as a guide.

The Pricey

Autodesk Real-Time Animation Suites

Undoubtedly the industry leader. Some of Autodesk’s solutions have been around for years, especially 3ds Max (which was previously called 3D Studio Max). The Autodesk Suites come in two flavors: the Maya real-time animation suite and the 3ds Max real-time animation suite. Both suites include MotionBuilder. Here is a look at each software individually with pricing (free trials are available):

3ds Max: 3ds Max includes 3D modeling and rendering software. The 2010 version has a number of features including: a new Graphite modeling and texturing system; integrates the Mental Mill technology; extensive polygon modeling capabilities; efficient character animation software with an integrated Biped toolset; Spline and 2D modeling tools; character animation through skeletons and inverse kinematics; an integrated Mental Ray renderer; advanced motion capture capabilities; and much much more. Priced at $3495. 1GB RAM required, with 2GB Hard Disk space and Direct3D 9/10 or OpenGL graphics (128 MB). Windows XP Professional or better.

Maya: Maya is a 3D modeling, animation, rendering and visual effects software. It has a host of features including: professional camera tracking; polygon texture assignment and editing; NURBS modeling; Trax nonlinear animation system; Motion Capture with Dense Data Editing and Resampling; Rigid and Soft Body Dynamics; a number of rendering controls and effects; integrated scripting; and more. Also priced at $3495. 2GB RAM required, with 2GB Hard Disk space and OpenGL graphics (128 MB). Windows, Mac or Linux.

MotionBuilder: MotionBuilder is a character animation tool, that allows you to create real-time animation fluidly and quickly. Characters can be built using intelligent skeletons and kinematics. Then bringing them to life is through keyframe or effection motion capturing tools or both. There are a host of animation tools and motion editors, to get exactly the motion effect that you want. Its feature set includes: multi-threading and optimization; real-time simulations of characters; real-time support for deformation of highly-detailed, fully-textured characters; and support for multiple characters through a large animation data set. Sells for $3995. Requires Windows XP SP2 or higher with 2GB RAM, 1GB Hard Disk space, and OpenGL 1.5 Graphics.

Mach Studio Pro

According to its publisher’s Mach Studio Pro really gives you the capability to “Work at the Speed of Thought!” Whether this is accomplished or not is for you to find out, but it does have an attractive set of features that seem to promise much. To begin with there is the real-time rendering engine that will easily render the animation on your desktop without requiring a separate rendering utility. It provides a great deal of interactivity with the 3D graphic workspace and that is one of its strongest features. There are fully animatable properties for all objects, lights, materials and cameras, including an auto-keying feature. You can also change the lighting rigs at any point in the production process, giving you a great deal of artistic flexibility. It is resolution independent and thus allows rendering at any resolution and format. Best of all, it supports interoperability with industry standard tools such as Autodesk’s Maya and 3ds Max. Runs on Windows XP Professional, Vista Business and Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit) and requires ATI or NVIDIA DirectX9 graphics card with at least 1GB of RAM. Publisher’s insist on ATI FirePro Graphics capabilities as well. Student version is available for $999, full version is $3,999 (if you already have an ATI FirePro or compatible high end Graphics card), else the price with an ATI FirePro card is $4,999.

Animate Pro

Toon Boom’s Animate Pro combines vector technology, real-time animation tools and nodal compositing to provide a comprehensive animation toolkit. The beauty of the suite begins with the interface that can be user adapted and customized as needed. Working comfort is further enhanced by a smooth integration of the pipeline and workflow. Artistic freedom is supported by the fact that Animate Pro allows a number of multiple brush tools, textures, and gradients, along with an advanced clean, ink and paint toolkit – the combination of which will let you keep your paper artistic style alive on the computer screen, with the benefit of nuance and intricacy. Symbols and pegs work in unison with key framing is possible in cut-out to speed-up the animation process. In terms of camera control, Animate Pro allows you complete control along all three axes, including moving, scaling and rotation. Other features include: advanced lip-syncing and cell-swapping tools; frame tweening is possible using the timeline; drawings can be exposed according to your requirements using Xsheet; inverse kinematics; a vast range of over 50 special effects that can be applied in real-time, while an animation is in progress; and a nifty morphing tool. Windows XP or higher OR Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. At least 1GB of RAM and 300MB Hard Disk space. NVIDIA or ATI video card. Priced at $1999.99, but there is a trial version available.

The Mid-Range

Craft Director Studio

Craft Director Studio is a set of tools that extends the capabilities of existing software such as Maxon Cinema 4D and SoftImage, and enables real-time functionality on them. (It also works with Maya and 3ds Max, although in their case the real-time enhancement point is a bit moot. There are of course other enhancements that can be added to extend their functionality.) Based on Artificial Intelligence and autonomous control systems research, the main objective and achievement of the Craft Director Studio set of tools is to radically transform the workflow to make them real-time or near real-time. Automatic keyframing is used for time savings and the quality of animations is improved through the use of a real-time physics engine. Pricing is in terms of bundles such as a Camera Tools Bundle, an Architecture Bundle, a Forensic Bundle, and so on. Individual features can also be bought as modules, such as Craft HumanizerCam (part of Camera Tools Bundle), Craft Airplane Extended (part of Vehicle Tools Bundle) and so on. Prices range from $129 to $1199 for individual modules. Bundles vary from $986 to $5099. Note that depending on how much you buy, this can easily go into the “pricey” bracket, and that there is the price of the core software to be considered as well.

DX Studio

DX Studio is a complete integrated development environment for 3D graphics creation that includes a comprehensive suite of editing tools (including real-time editing tools) as well as a real-time 3D rendering engine. Apart from a full-featured 2D and 3D real-time interactive editor, which is powerful in itself, it provides support for a programming and scripting framework: DXMesh API allows you to build using C++ programming; using ActiveX technology you can build your own C++, C# and VB.net applications with the DX Studio player as a component; bring your scene to life with event driven JavaScript; and there is also in-built support for SOAP and OLEDB database access. A number of special effects are available such as Vertex Morphing, Animated Sprites, a Particle System, as well as a host of post-processing effects including bloom, radial blur, fractal clouds, rain, and more. There are a number of reusable modules. Especially worth noting is the excellent camera module which behaves much like a 3D game camera, or even real-life cameras. Other modules include a vehicle module and a streaming module. Wide range of light and shade effects possible and there is a comprehensive DX Studio Shader system. At approximately $409 (299 British Pounds) this seems to be a really good buy. Requires 1GB RAM with Shader Model 2+ Graphics with 128MB RAM. For Windows XP SP2 or higher (DirectX 9.0).

Messiah Studio

Messiah Studio is an award winning 3D animation and rendering application. The professional edition costs $599 and is worth it when you consider that such films as Ghost Rider, Hell Boy, and the Harry Potter movies have used Messiah Studio. If that is still too high a price tag, there is also the basic edition that is more affordable at $399. Messiah Studio has excellent motion capture capabilities and the renderer is a hybrid of scanline and raytracing technology. The Messiah renderer has a number of attractive features such as: a flexible node based shader editor; multithreaded rendering; global illumination; high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) lighting; subsurface scattering and more. Its other features include: an Armature system that provides a direct visual method for creating character and program control; easy-to-use skeleton and deformation features; modular interoperability with a number of major suites; a great many plug-ins for enhanced functionality; hair effects including clumping, guide hairs, dynamics and collision (click on image to see an excellent demo/tutorial); and much more.

The Cheap

iClone

At $199.95 iClone 4 is certainly an affordable real-time 3D animation solution. It allows for drag-and-drop based fast editing, and object’s can be individually edited In-Screen. It is very easy to bring live actors into iClone and then proceeding from there to creating animation using this as a basis is quite simple. This is simplified by a number of features such as: customizable actors and styles; body transformation and facial deformation capabilities; CloneCloth costume design for the actors; 3D facial puppeteering; interactivity between actors and In-Screen objects; In-Screen motion editing and more. Other features include: HDR video effects; set designing with 3D blocks and material balls, as well as the ability to build a stage with terrain, sky and live plants (see figure); advanced camera and lighting options, with lens effects, directional and point lights, HDR and IBL lighting effects, etc.; and a whole lot more.

Kinemac

Kinemac is a solution for Mac OS X which, coming in at $299 is a great deal. It allows you to drag images, text, movies and songs onto the Kinemac stage and you can easily integrate them into your animation. Movies and text can be applied to ready-to-use objects such as cubes, cylinders, spheres, tubes, pipes, etc. and these can easily be animated using key frames. The animation control system is based on Brezier curves and it allows you to control individual aspects of movement including translations, rotations, resizing, fading, speed, acceleration and deceleration. This can be done for any object that is on the Kinemac stage, and the animation can be played in real-time. A number of helpful tutorials explain how to get things done in Kinemac.

Blender

Blender is an Open Source solution available for Windows 98 or higher, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, SGI Irix 6.5 and Sun Solaris 2.8 or higher. It is mainly a modeling and rendering tool which can be used to create things such as 3D avatars, architecture models, and animations from photos. The 3D object modeling progresses through a traditional polygon mesh, NURBS surfaces, Bezier and B-spline curves. Mesh modeling is possible based on vertex, edge and/or face selection. Rigging features include a fast skeleton creation mode and automatic skinning. The rendering engine is tightly integrated with the node compositor and the render engine supports layers and passes. Real-time 3D functions include: a graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without the need of programming; collision detection and dynamics simulation with Bullets Physics Library support; full support for vehicle dynamics, multi-materials, multi-texture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, Normal and Parallax Mapping; and more. Requires at least 128MB of RAM with 20MB free hard disk space and an OpenGL graphics card with 16MB RAM; but 2GB of RAM recommended with OpenGL Graphics card that has 128MB RAM.

Animata

Animata is another Open Source tool that is ideally suited to such tasks as real-time animation and interactive background projections for shows. The movement of puppets as well as the changes in the background are generated at real-time allowing for continuous interaction between you (or the performer) and the end-result animation. It is possible to create an animated character that reacts to its environment through the integration of such things as physical sensors, cameras or other environmental variables. Jazz Pub is an amazing example of an animation reacting to an audio input stimulus created using Animata.

Ruby is one of the most versatile object oriented programming languages, which was designed explicitly to have a human focus, as compared to the machine focus of many other languages. Developed in the mid-90’s, initially in Japan and then elsewhere, Ruby is based on the “principle of least surprise” (POLS) which states that when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behavior should be the one that will be least surprising to a human user or programmer. In simple terms that the most obvious behavior is the one that will result. And this is perhaps what gives Ruby its power and in turn has caused Ruby to become one of the most widely used programming languages for the web. There are of course many other useful features in Ruby, including but not limited to Dynamic Typing, Duck Typing, Automatic Garbage Collection, First Class Continuations, an Interactive Ruby Shell, variable scope at four different levels (global, class, instance, local), facilities to support metaprogramming and a standard set of object oriented features (inheritance, metaclasses, exception handling, operator overloading etc.). Finally, Ruby supports a number of programming paradigms: other than object oriented, also functional, imperative, and reflective.

But in addition to all the things that the native Ruby language can do (and Ruby carries a pretty large standard library), perhaps what makes it so suitable (and useful) for programming of various types, and especially web programming, is the existence of a number of Ruby frameworks. A Ruby framework is collection of pre-written libraries, functions and controls that can be downloaded and used to make your programming task easier. In addition to a time saving, there is also a significant benefit in terms of programming efficiency and implicitly a more consistent programming style (since so much is pre-defined, one begins to use or utilize the paradigm of the underlying framework when writing a program).

Ruby-on-Rails is perhaps the most popular (certainly the most well-known) of the Ruby frameworks that is in use today, but there are also many others such as Nitro, Sinatra, Merb, and Camping. There are a number of things to consider when deciding on a framework. We will look at some of these things in detail before moving on to a description of some of the most common in use today, including the ones mentioned above. Since Ruby is primarily used for web programming, implicitly that will tend to be our focus.

Why Ruby in the first place?

Now, we have touched upon this a little bit in our introduction, obviously POLS and the sheer flexibility of the programming language makes it a natural choice for a number of programming tasks. There is also the fact that Ruby is in philosophy (and in other ways, syntactically) similar to a number of other programming languages such as Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp, Ada, and Eiffel – languages on which Ruby was based during its development. This makes it easy for programmers comfortable using these languages or their programming styles to quickly adapt to using Ruby. The same is true of programmers working with Python, Dylan, and CLU because Ruby is also similar to these in many respects. The strong focus on the object oriented paradigm makes it easier for anybody with a strong grasp of object oriented principles to quickly get cracking in Ruby. Finally, as mentioned before there is the flexibility of different programming paradigms, such as the functional, imperative and reflective (obviously in addition to the Object Oriented) that makes it attractive to programmers.

But there are other things going on under the hood that make Ruby such a popular choice, especially for web programming. It would be instructive to go into a detailed discussion of this, but we know this is neither the time or place for this so we will just mention two of the things that we think are most important. The first is something that is pretty obvious to most people experiencing a language like Ruby versus an extremely popular language like Java, and that is the scripting-like programming, which in addition to making code more human-friendly, also renders other advantages – everything in Ruby is an expression and everything is imperatively executed. What is less obvious and perhaps more important is the fact that with Ruby a strict adherence to the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture is possible. In fact, the power of the MVC architecture, and the capability of the Ruby frameworks to inherently support it (all 5 mentioned in the introduction above do so) is what makes Ruby so suitable for web programming.

A bit about the MVC

The core principle of the MVC architecture is to separate application logic from the user interface (UI). The View part, as the name suggests, refers to the UI part of the software, and this is completely separated from the application logic which along with the domain-specific data constitutes the Model. The Controller is in charge of receiving input from the UI and initiating an appropriate call on Model objects. Data is then returned by the Model which is directly delivered to the View (without any intervention from the Controller).

In the Web domain, the UI is HTML and the inputs received by the Controller are the GET and POST requests. The Controller then hands this over accordingly to certain Model objects, which then how to handle the request. The separation allows for a great deal of flexibility and the individual implementation of each piece of the architecture can be replaced without affecting the other pieces as long as the same interface is offered. This is especially important in business/commerce applications where policy changes can easily be applied by creating a different Model object, without touching the UI side.

MVC and Ruby frameworks

This kind of separation is what not only enables flexibility but in turn allows for rapid development of Web applications using Ruby frameworks. Most often the task of choosing the right Ruby framework boils down to the task of designing the proper MVC architecture (i.e. the individual pieces required for your particular application) and once these are well specified, this can guide you towards making more informed decisions regarding which framework to use.

To begin with it’s important to describe what the application domain is, that is what will the data look like. Are they records or are they files? What relationships, if at all, exist between different data elements and so on? This in turn will lead you to creating a new database for the application’s needs. Of course in many cases, you may already have the database available and that will automatically answer many of these questions for you.

The next task is to identify what can happen to this data. Can records be updated? Can they be deleted? And so on. It makes sense to spend a lot of time planning out all the possible ways in which you want user’s to be able to interact with data. Although, the Model part can be replaced easily, remember that the interfaces will still need to be consistent. Policy also plays a big role here.

Once you have elucidated all that you want the Model to do, you can proceed with the UI design. How do you want the application to appear in the Web-browser?

Ruby frameworks that support MVC (and most of them do) make the actual implementation of each of these pieces a breeze, because each of the three pieces of the architecture is handled by a specific sub-system, and if you have spent the requisite amount of time in planning you can pick and choose the specific functionality that you need for each sub-system. The skeleton is already implemented, you need to decide the details and you are away.

Choosing the right framework

The importance of the planning stage cannot be overstated, because the planning stage giving give you a road map as to what kind of framework you need. Essentially, this begins with the question of what you need to get done. What are the features and capabilities that are essential to the success of your project. This then gives you the outline for what you need.

Once you have the outline, there are several other things that you need to consider. Does a given framework have a strong support system and community? Is it used by a number of people? (Usually a more popular variant, or one that has been around for longer is also more likely to have a stronger support system and community.) Another related consideration is how well a framework is documented. In many cases there might be situations where your development team either has previous experience working with a certain kind of framework, or a certain style of Ruby programming, and this can direct your search for a framework.

If starting from scratch, then things such as how easy a particular framework is to use and understand, as well as how easy is it to develop and deploy, become important considerations. The development and deployment speed are also important considerations when not starting from scratch depending on the project timeline. Perhaps one of the things that is sometimes underrated is how comfortable you are using a particular framework.

Generally, to avoid errors/bugs and to ensure the stability of your web application, it makes sense to use a popular solution since finding answers to common questions and fixes for common solutions is easy. The most popular solutions (and those that have been around for a long time) have also been extensively tried and tested, ensuring a certain peace-of-mind for developers using it. And this, clearly, has something to do with that comfort aspect.

Compatibility checks (before installing a framework), and making sure that the framework has been installed and is functioning properly will ensure that once the development cycle is underway it will be relatively smooth sailing – at least in terms of the framework aspects – the problems of debugging the non-framework parts, and ensuring that you are using the framework in the right/desired way will remain, but don’t worry, these will surely get resolved as your project progresses (more so in the case of readily available documentation and strong support).

Ruby Frameworks

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is perhaps the most popular Ruby framework that is in use today, and with good reason. Ruby on Rails was the framework that popularized the MVC approach as it relates to the task of web programming. This is done primarily by the Ruby on Rails MVC framework that consists of the Model (ActiveRecord), View (ActionView) and Controller (ActionController) sub-systems. It is open source and comes with a rich set of features including: AJAX support (via Prototype/script.aculo.us JS frameworks); a host of testing (Unit, Functional and Integration), security, caching and form-validation frameworks; internalization and localization functionality; and there are also pretty standard features such as DB migration frameworks, MVC Push capability, etc.

Ruby on Rails emphasizes agile development, “Convention over Configuration” (developer only needs to concentrate on the non-conventional aspects of application development) and “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (information is located in a single, unambiguous place). Since it has been around for a while, there is a well-defined API, extensive documentation as well as tutorials all over the web and finally a vibrant and supportive community.

Nitro

Nitro is actually a framework that was around before Ruby on Rails became popular. There are a number of web developers who still swear by it. One of its finest features is a powerful template system that has a pipeline of configurable transformation steps. It is open source and along with the template style programming, there is the option of using the MVC approach as well. Og is the persistence layer (or object relational data mapping; ORM) that works with Nitro.

Nitro is comparable in its feature set to Ruby on Rails including AJAX support, testing frameworks, MVC Push, caching frameworks, security frameworks, internalization and localization, DB migration and more. However, its support and documentation is suspect, and in recent times interest in Nitro seems to have waned.

Merb

Merb is probably the second most popular framework in use after Ruby on Rails these days. One of the most interesting things about Merb is that it chooses not to make ORM, Templates, etc. frameworks/functionality part of the native system. These can be added via extension plug-ins and this allows the developer the flexibility to use whichever solution he/she prefers (or what makes sense for a given project). It does have a good feature-set that is part of the base system. It is an MVC based framework and has some of the best documentation (including useful getting-started tutorials).

Camping

At less than 4kb code size, Camping is one of the lightest Ruby frameworks around. In fact, it is one of the developers’ stated goals to always keep it below 4kb code size. It once again follows the MVC philosophy and provides a single file in which to carry out the development of the entire application (although the separation between each sub-system is still maintained). The developers also suggest that once initial or prototype development is completed in Camping the project can easily be migrated to Ruby on Rails. So in some cases Camping is a precursory development environment for Ruby on Rails.

Camping does not have AJAX support, internalization and localization frameworks, nor security, caching and form-validation frameworks, but has pretty much other necessary functionality such as DB migration, Testing frameworks, ORM, etc.

Ramaze

Ramaze’s emphasis is on simplicity. Ramaze also has a strict adherence to modular design and having minimal dependencies between different modules. Ramaze comes with a templating system called Ezamar and also has a fairly full-featured support for MVC applications.

Sinatra

Sinatra is a Ruby framework which like Camping is perhaps more suited for prototype development than actual business applications. It does, however, have a pretty standard set of features including MVC support, DB migration, Template and Caching frameworks. It does not have AJAX support, nor security and form-validation frameworks.

IOWA

IOWA is another framework that has been around for a long time. It has support for both Event based and Cluster based modes of operation. Interest in IOWA has also slacked in recent years.

Halcyon

Halcyon is another lightweight framework whose aim is to support service-oriented applications (SOA). It has AJAX support through the JSON interface, and overall is a very well documented project and has a strong support community.

Waves

Waves seeks to provide an alternative solution for applications that do not need an MVC architecture. Thus, it has support for such things as AJAX, Adobe Air, mashups, OpenID, rich-client mobile apps, etc. This is done through a rich DSL. Waves’ developer speaks of the concept of request lambdas which are basically request mapping into a certain block, which results in a certain level of flexibility by removing some of the responsibilities of the Controller and placing the emphasis more on mappings. However, note that this is a subtle or implicit modification to the MVC pattern, and so use only after you have a good grasp of what’s going on and are confident that this is exactly what you need.

RubyWAF

Ruby Web Application Framework (RubyWAF) is based on Jakarta Structs and enables web/wap application development. It can also serve as a starting point for developing custom Ruby frameworks.

Ruby/EventMachine

It is a Network I/O and Event Management system for Ruby.

Webby

Webby is a Content Management System, which the publisher’s call a website management system because they think it is not big enough.

Radiant

Like Webby Radiant is an open source Content Management System.

Ruby-GNOME2

And finally little off-beat, for Linux enthusiasts: Ruby-GNOME2, a set of Ruby language bindings for the GNOME 2.0 development environment.