Has anyone seen this movie? I just saw it a few days ago. It was really cool. But I must admit, I kept getting distracting because I was like, hmmmm I think I can get that at renderosity lol. And the cell shading looked like what you would use with poser. I'm wondering if they used poser or poser dolls to make the film? Anyone know?

Can you share a link with us? That name doesn't ring a bell <---signature---> Free your Maya Opaque3D http://www.digital-opaque.net

sure: http://www.appleseedthemovie.com

I am downloading the trailer now. To tell the truth I don'w want to put Poser's capabilities in doubt but if I see good animations in it and it was done in Poser they either used good mocap actors or they spent 3 or 4 times as much time tweaking their animations than you would normally take in any other program... The cell shading in poser is good but I could get very similar results in Maya with one light source and one gradient shader ^o^' <---signature---> Free your Maya Opaque3D http://www.digital-opaque.net

I saw the trailer but I was not able to download it onto my HDD. I saw a note about "from the makers of ghost in the shell"??? If that's true then my bet would be that they used Softimage|XSI for this film, because that's what they used for "Innocence" *shrugs* <---signature---> Free your Maya Opaque3D http://www.digital-opaque.net

Forget about Poser for cinematic productions. I've been dabbling around with Poser for a hobby and like the program for what it is - but it is too limited for the big stuff. Because of a traditional animation background I recently became involved as an animation consultant for a 3D production, and have seen from up close that programs like Maya and Houdini are a completely different ballgame altogether - as I am contemplating making a switch from 2D to 3D I've even started going through the first tutorials. This Appleseed movie looks like it has either been done with one of the major programs or with software that was developed within the studio.

not too sure if you can see it from the trailer as I did not notice it in the trailer, only in the theater. They probably did use another software, but the cell shading looked like poser. I guess you can do the same cell shading like poser (meaning the look) with other programs. thanks for the info. :)

samsiahaija - what is as an animation consultant? And do you have a website with your rates? I'm asking because I have a project and not sure how to go, whether to raise the money myself to produce (and then find distribution) or pitch it to an outside production company and have them produce and distribute it.

For the last traditional animation film I worked on - a European production that did not have a world wide release - 3d elemants were animated with Maya and rendered with a cartoon shader - what I know SoftimageXSI and most of the other packages either have built in cartoon shaders or available plug-ins.

I was present at meetings with the live action director (it was a combination of 2D and 3D) and was director of animation for the 3D character. This meant that I needed to maintain a continuity in style between the animators working on the project, overlooking the acting and technical quality of the animation, and communicating the ideas of the overall director to the animators. As the animators I worked with were talented and experienced people the fact that I cannot animate with Maya myself was not an obstacle; all I needed to do was some finetuning. I'm not involved in production: in Europe most films depend very much on film funding - better find yourself a good business lawyer before you go that way. And make sure about your copyrights before pitching anything to anyone at all.

"To tell the truth I don'w want to put Poser's capabilities in doubt but if I see good animations in it and it was done in Poser they either used good mocap actors or they spent 3 or 4 times as much time tweaking their animations than you would normally take in any other program.." I don't know about that. I find Poser extremely easy to animate with. Dealing with morphs and keyframing expressions is quite simple. It has IK, It's dopesheet is no less detailed than what's in the "big apps" (I also animate with 3dsmax v6), and it uses the same spline curve system for interpolating keyframes. It IS lacking in a few workflow-related areas, but overall, it's the same basic keyframe animation system you find in most apps. Poser's shortcomings in using it for high-end production is multi-fold: 1) It's renderer is quite slow (shadow map creation adds valuable time to each frame, and since it's a REYES renderer, raytracing is painfully slow). 2) It doesn't have network/distributed rendering capability natively, so it doesn't really fit seamlessly into a production pipeline. 3) No G-Buffer output channels, so it's virtually useless for compositing work and makes post-video production unnecessarily difficult. 4) It doesn't take advantage of hardware accelleration. 5) It's workflow also leaves lots to be desired (no multiple undo for instance). If future versions address these issues, you may see the overall professional outlook toward the application change dramatically for the better.

I know poser has the basic tools for producing animations and that it also allows you to somehow make remote controls (IE hand controls) but that knowledge is left reserved to those who actually know the nuts and bolts of CR2 editing (that rules me out). My main problem with poser is related to the graph editor (I am on poser pro). I hate the fact that just to break one single tangent in a specific way you have to add 2 keyframes that you wouldn't need otherwise. The built in interpolations are just not enough for certain situations... and not everybody has the time to do those tweakings "a la stopmotion"... <---signature---> Free your Maya Opaque3D http://www.digital-opaque.net

a little bonus for you... a toon shader made out of standard hypershade nodes in Maya :)

very cool :)

I can post a shading network "how to" if any maya user out here wants it. <---signature---> Free your Maya Opaque3D http://www.digital-opaque.net