Animata

Animata is a real-time animation software, designed to create quick animation prototypes from photos or drawings very quickly, which can be used for interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances.

The peculiarity of the software is that the animation – the movement of the puppets, the changes of the background – is generated in real-time, making continuous interaction possible.

This ability also permits that physical sensors, cameras or other environmental variables can be attached to the animation of characters, creating a cartoon reacting to its environment. For example, it is quite simple to create a virtual puppet band reacting to live audio input, or set up a scene of drawn characters controlled by the movement of dancers.

In contrast with the traditional 3D animation programs, creating characters in Animata is quite simple and takes only a few minutes. On the basis of the still images, which serve as the skeleton of the puppets, we produce a network of triangles, some parts of which we link with the bone structure. The movement of the bones is based on a physical model, which allows the characters to be easily moved.

The software can be run on multiple operation systems like Mac OS X, GNU Linux and Windows. Animata can be connected with widespread programming environments (e.g. Max/MSP, Pure Data, EyesWeb) used by multimedia developers and artists in order to make use of the possibilities of these applications in the fields of image editing, sound analysis, or motion capture.

Credits

Software development: Péter Németh, Gábor Papp, Bence Samu
Animata Jazz Pub: János Gárdos, Bence Samu, Gábor Csordás

Animata was developed in Kitchen Budapest in 2007.
For more information please visit http://animata.kibu.hu/.