This is a seriously impressive tech demo for an upcoming cross-platform virtual world (web, download, mobile) which handles avatar animations in a very impressive way -- watch:
"[This] is from our gesture system," lead developer Adam Frisby tells me. Adam was known as Adam Zaius in Second Life, and a longtime innovator in avatar animations. "That's 100% un-edited in-world footage," he goes on. "Our gestures allow multiple players to get involved; they cover camera angles, props, etc. All on a timeline. Our company chairman is an ex-film industry guy, we built it to his demands; which means it's built for making cool narratives. So you can drop a anvil on someones head. And have it played out cinematically."
Adam had a lot of success selling animations in Second Life, which is what led directly to this new project:
"We've really got tons. What we released in SL is probably 2% of what we actually recorded. We've got so, so much sitting waiting for a virtual world we can actually bring it into (true story; this is what led to us building our own worlds.)"
One aim with his new world is to create avatar animations that are fluid, believable, and a giant leap from what Second Life users are used to: "There's no silliness involving dragging out poseballs into the world," he says, "and having both players sit on the object first; you just open your inventory, click the animation, and that's it. It'll ask the other player for permission if it's a multi-user animation." (Multi-user animations theoretically can have 3+ participants, he adds.)
And yes, users can create their own moves: "Users can customize animations, but they need to do it from the editor; and have access to the source materials, etc."
As you probably guessed, the actual animation is motion captured from a couple actual dudes. "We grabbed a bunch of martial artists and tried to do some multi-user anims. It never worked right in SL; because loading times & various glitchiness meant that the anims never quite sync'd up right (and for martial arts it really requires it), but we've got a crap ton of multi-user stuff in our library we were testing with."
This is just the tiniest sliver of what Adam told me about his new world -- much more soon.
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