General Discussion

Carolyn Koh files her third report from the recent Online Game Developers conference. In this article, Carolyn had the opportunity to talk to some of the people over at Cryptic Studios about their recent decision to release their animation tools to the general public.

Cryptic Studios announced that they were sharing their Animation Rig (known as Cryptic AR) on Wednesday, May 9th and launched their website www.crypticar.com at the same time, following immediately with a presentation by Sean Burgoon - the talented programmer behind CrypticAR and Shayne Herrera, Cryptic's Art Development Director.

Shayne opened the talk with a simple greeting, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." This writer chuckled appreciatively at his deep voice, a fair imitation of Cash's distinctive opening, and waited to see if he would be talking about CrypticAR with evangelistic fervor.

The Cryptic Animation Rig has been released under the GNU General Public License and is free to download and use. CrypticAR will allow animators of all experience levels to familiarize themselves with some of the tools used in a professional development environment. Unlike other free animation rigs, Cryptic AR is not an approximation of production tools, but the very tools currently being used to produce next-gen game visuals at Cryptic Studios. This is the same software that is being used to animate the upcoming Marvel Universe MMOG. The core concept of the rig is to provide the artist community with a free set of tools.

Read the whole article here.

Well done.

Its VERY rare that dev teams actually do something that deserves praise, but from all angles i currently see on this, this does.

And god knows, the industry needs NEW people with talent more than anything else.And if this move makes it more possible that such people with get into the industry,Im all for it.

Originally posted by project8six
if you don't already have whats needed to use their software, you probably don't need it.

Too true. Their animation rig is for digital artists to use. Average joe blow isn't going to be able to do squat with it. There is no software that will turn someone with no artistic training and ability into an artist.

Originally posted by project8six
if you don't already have whats needed to use their software, you probably don't need it.

Well I can understand people that read this article being upset a bit with the fact you need 3D studio Max, because of this statement:

"CrypticAR will allow animators of all experience levels to familiarize themselves with some of the tools used in a professional development environment."

It does say of all experience levels, so one would think that includes unskilled or animators just starting out at the very least.  Anyway, i'm sure this statement is what makes people think its for anyone that wants to try it.