Manage your bots. Here you create and destroy bots. There are 12 slots for 12 bots in a scene at one time.
Automatron also has it's own animation file format, so you can quickly move animations between bots and scenes with 2-3 mouse clicks.
1. Quickly block out a characters steps using this parametric queuing tool.
2. Animators can control each step or group of steps of the walking sequence with a series of parameters such as angle, scale... etc. The character can also walk over terrain and follow a path at the same time. The entire queue of commands can be saved and quickly applied to other characters in the system or other scenes.
3. Each Queued event, such as 'One Step Forward with the right foot', is divided into smaller time step events. Each of these events can have the character playing back predefined poses from a Library of poses that you can build and share with other characters. Each of these pose playback events can also filter out unwanted parts of the predefined pose.
4. Each Queued event can be moved up and down in the Queue and copied and pasted where ever it is needed.
1. Almost every parameter of the skeleton is presented in one place. No need to hunt around and unhide objects in order to change values. Also there is no need to grab objects in the viewport in order to animate them. You could have only the character skin visible in the viewport as you animate with the skeleton hidden.
2. Animators can snapshot any pose and play it back in whole or in part. Each pose can also be mirrored with one button.
3. The poses can also be played back from alternate coordinate systems. For instance, a pose can be played back with the right foot as a root of the pose, thus keeping the right foot still as all other parts move around it. This makes it possible to capture a series snapshots that make up a complex walk cycle that can then be played back in series to recreate that walking loop any where in the scene at anytime.
4. Animators can build up huge libraries of poses and pose sequences.
5. Each limb can blend smoothly from forward kinematics to inverse kinematics. Also, multiple IK targets are already built in, so it's easy to have your character lock it's hands to the hips, head or knees, or to other arbitrary targets. The positions and rotations of these IK targets are also saved with the pose snapshots.
6. Each limb and the hips can smoothly re-parent to other objects in the scene, so it's easy to have your character be ride a bike on a boat, then the jump the bike off the boat onto the ground and then have the character jump off the bike and onto the ground. All this can be animated and you can still move and retime each of these parenting systems without having to worry so much about the start and end points of these complex transitions.
I have created a special time slider for Automatron. You can quickly change the animation range, loop a segment, play forwards, backwards, scrub and ping pong and lay down pose snapshots, all without stopping playback.
1. These hands also have there own pose snapshot and library system. So you can create as many saved poses as you need. Imagine having the entire American Sign Language saved as a library, or the fingering of guitar chords.
2. Each individual finger will also blend smoothly from forward to inverse kinematics.
3. The state of each hand is saved with the main body pose.
4. Each' bend' joint slider can also control other bend sliders for each individual finger, the same joint of each finger, or all the bend joints of all the fingers on both hands at the same time. This makes it quick and easy set up extremely complex looking poses with ease.
Here we have many helpful functions and tools to tweak your animation. Many of the parametric walking system functions and sub routines will be represented here in button form.
Flavor Packets, (see at the bottom of the page) these are plugins to the Automatron system. So far I just have two finished, and ideas for many many more. This is where Automatron really gets fun.
You should never have to hunt around Max's 'unhide by name' to get objects in view. Here you'll find all your Automatron object display needs.
With 2 clicks you can Hide/Unhide multiple bot systems
Also, you can easily define which objects are needed in a "Render This" selection set, and Hide/Freeze them without hassle.
Here you will set your skeletons figure/initial pose and also the shape of the bone objects. The bone objects are set up with pre-made morph targets to give each character skeleton a unique look. Cat heads and big noses and big fat limbs can help you animate by seeing a more accurate object volume in the viewport.
Each limb has pre-built IK targets. Here we can view and edit the blend weighting of each of these targets. You may not even need to use this panel as all the keys for these systems are set automatically in the skeleton panel. But, here it is just in case.
Secondary Mojo, put spring animation on your skeleton or smooth out your animation. You can also resample you animation, for example; key the entire system on every 5th key while either deleting the old keys or adding to them or only when the track curves change direction in value.
Harryhausen, make your animation look like a stop motion animation, or just add jittery vibration to a few frames. Great for electrocutions.