Busting at the Seams Autodesk Animator. UPDATE New website, animatorpro. Source code now online. Join special guests, Bill Polson, Dirk Van Gelder, Manuel Kraemer, Takahito Tejima, David G. Yu and Dale Ruffolo, from Pixar Animation Studios GPU team. Autodesk Animator Studio Download' title='Autodesk Animator Studio Download' />Heres a little story about a neat old computer program, and how I plan to save it from the brink of digital death. For the past few years Ive been fascinated by this program. Way back in the beginning, I became aware of the existence of dedicatedcommunities devoted to solely pixel art. One of the communities, pixelation, had a highly regarded tutorial titled so you want to be a pixel artistLinks are to mirrors, the original site is long gone. The AREA CG Gallery showcases artists best work using Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, Maya LT and Mudbox. Upload and share your CG art with the AREA community. Autodesk Animator Pro, free autodesk animator pro software downloads. Artist3D stock of free 3d model downloads sorted by universal categories. AutoDesk 3DS Max, Humans Anatomy Cars Tutorials and similar type modeling. Autodesk Animator Pro 1. First released in 1989, AutoDesk Animator was a DOSbased professional animation tool. It could create full motion animations using VGA 320. Autodesk Animator Studio' title='Autodesk Animator Studio' />How to Draw Cherry Pinup with Paris Christou. Cherry Pinup is the creation by YouTube artist Paris Christou. Cherry has gathered a huge Fanbase of over 100,000 fans. When I read that tutorial was the first time I became aware of the fact that there was a program called Autodesk Animator. Autodesk too, 3D Studio. When I read that tutorial was the first time I became aware of the fact that there was a program called Autodesk Animator. The native format of Animator fli, flc was certainly ubiquitous in the 1. Even today, Mac OS X doesnt need any special software to play FLI files, quicktime handles them natively. I have also been a participant in the pov ray community, which used independent dos utilities to string together ray traced frames into Animators FLI and FLC format. Why It was the very first widely available delta compressed video format What really grabbed my interest, was this spectacular animation by a guy named Paul Robertson. NSFW who allegedly used Autodesk Animator to make it. So cargo cultist that I am, I set about attempting to obtain the software. This is really difficult to do, it turns out. Eventually I succeeded. The software can only be run on a modern computer by means of emulation. Dos. Box is quite capable of running the software. Heres me on the Dos. Box forums trying to make that experience suck less. The software is really very much like another contemporary peice of software called Deluxe Paint. Between Autodesk Animator, and Deluxe Paint, you can account for about 9. These were thepixel art programs. They belong to a class of paint program designed around the limitations of computers that can only display small amounts of colors. A style of paint program that has really fallen into obscurity ever since the photoshops of the world took over with their fancy 2. New Pokemon Hack Roms Free here. Dr. Katz, Home Movies, and Science Court were made in Animator, also, most of these youtube videos, and also, my cool dinosaur animationWhat sets Animator apart from its contemporaries is its direct keyboard control over animation functions, a very useful Sprite animation mode, and a built in scripting language named Poco. Script. What sets it apart from Modern paint programs is that while it is only capable of producing 2. In addition, the functions available for manipulating that limited palette are unmatched by any other program Ive seen. These properties make it ideally suited for producing art for platforms with limited capacity such as game consoles, mobile phones, toys, etc in other words, pixel art. In its own time, this was thought of as a severe limitation. Today, this is its advantage this is its characteristic difference. Justoneproblem. So, Im going to do something about itI had an idea. In my research, I found out quite a bit about the history of this program. I found out that before it was a PC program named Autodesk Animator, it was an Atari ST program named Cyberpaint. Before that it was Aegis Animator, and Flicker, and a conglomeration of other small paint programs and experiments, all authored by a guy named Jim Kent, who had a funny habit of negotating software contracts that let him keep the rights to the source code. Hmm. Interesting little story about Jim Kent. In the year 2. 00. PCs in his basement, Beating out a biotech firm by a day, and thus saving the technology, and our genes from patents. Oh yeah, and he likes open source software. So I decided to email him, asking if he might, maybe, kind of, consider maybe open sourcing our favorite program. This was his response Oh, and by the way. So, he kept his rights to the source code, and now, he is granting me access to the source code, to make it available to you all Well not so fast. He also asked me to get in touch with Gary Yost to ensure that he didnt object. Former owner of Yost Group who licensed the original software to Autodesk, Well okay, that wasnt so easy, since hes now a big shot vice president in a tiny little company called Mental Images. But I managed, and I got his support tooSo now that all the relevant parties are up to speed with my idea lets go Hold on, though, theres some chores to do first before I can release it to the public. I know I know, blah blah blah. First off, theres a bunch of material in these little zip files which suspiciously looks like stuff that Jim Kent did not write. Theres piles and piles of documentation that looks suspiciously. Theres piles of fonts licensed from Anim. I can find ZERO information about. Sample artwork that I cant use, because I dont know who made it. Theres also the technical challenges. It would be nice before I release the source code, if I knew all the tools and software that it depends on, and how to compile it. It would be even better if I could adapt the code to compile with tools that are Free and Open Source, rather than tools that are proprietary, out of date, and impossible to find. So I know its frustrating, but Im going to have to sit on the code for a short while, so I can sort these issues out. Im soliciting for anyone that can help with writing documentation, any artists that are willing to make sample artwork using the software, any lawyers that are willing to offer me advice on how to avoid stabbing myself in the foot, and anyone who is a particularly clever programmer that knows anything about programming for MSDOS, or is willing to try their hand at pocoscript to make some sample scripts. Im kind of a clever cookie myself, and given enough time I can probably get a lot of this stuff done on my own, but it will take me a loooong time without help. I will detail the technical challenges in an upcoming post for those interested, and document my progress through this new project.