Changing The Industry With New Animation Systems

Boo Wong from the Mill has recently joined Shots to discuss how new real-time character animation systems like their studio’s Mill Mascot can change the industry. She talked about recent advancements and the way artists can save time today.

The article discusses their collaboration with the Mill’s creative director Jeff Dates that led to the creation of a character animation system they later called Mill MASCOT that “uses live inputs from puppeteer to drive a photoreal furry creature for our clients at Monster and KBS.” The team set up a day-long “shoot” where their puppeteer performed and they captured, “live on set, over 4 hours of final pixel animation – i.e. no post rendering or composites.”

The artist states that this was truly a huge advancement from a standard CG animation job which can sometimes take weeks or even months. “Using the Mill MASCOT workflow and a live animation session, our render times ran at 42 milliseconds per frame, meaning that final pixel performance and capture were, for all extents and purposes, instantaneous.”