Cross-platform modeling, rendering and animation package, specifically designed for classic character animation.

Features

SPLINE BASED MODELING, ANIMATION, AND RENDERING - allows smooth organic models and natural freeform motions.

BONES MODE for easy IK construction.

INVERSE KINEMATICS - to interactively pose articulated characters.

SKELETAL, MORPHING, AND BENDING ACTIONS IN COMBINATION - all three kinds of object and character motion can be overlapped and used in unison.

TIME BASED MOTION "EASE" - for accurate acceleration and deceleration of movement.

TRUE PATCH-BASED "UV DECAL" MAPPING - using bit mapped images that are locked to a surface and distort properly when an object bends and twists.

D3D or OpenGL real-time rendering.

MOTION LIBRARIES - so that a complex action needs to be built only once and then used over and over again. Includes motion capture input & motion control output.

LIP SYNCH KEY FRAMING - for assembling lip shapes with automatic inbetweening.

Animation:Master 2006 lets artists tell their story through pictures and motion, more easily than ever. It has the tools you need to bring the world in your head to life. Make a movie, design characters, create 3D presentations & storyboards and more -- you’ll be creating your own virtual reality in no time! Complete sculpting features and superb rendering tools, for creating beuatiful animation - without thousand-dollar graphics packages Supports Windows 2000, XP, Mac OS 9.2 or OS X 10.3.4 or greater

Animation:Master 2007 lets artists tell their story through pictures and motion, more easily than ever. It has the tools you need to bring the world in your head to life. Make a movie, design characters, create 3D presentations & storyboards and more -- you’ll be creating your own virtual reality in no time! Complete sculpting features and superb rendering tools, for creating beuatiful animation - without thousand-dollar graphics packages Supports Windows 2000, XP, Mac OS 9.2 or OS X 10.3.4 or greater

Animation:Master lets artists tell their story through pictures and motion, more easily than ever. It has the tools you need to bring the world in your head to life. Make a movie, design characters, create 3D presentations & storyboards and more -- you’ll be creating your own virtual reality in no time! Complete sculpting features and superb rendering tools, for creating beuatiful animation - without thousand-dollar graphics packages Supports Windows 2000, XP, Mac OS 9.2 or OS X 10.3.4 or greater

Does NOT play at all with others!!!

You may skim over my review, discard it as just a bitter person ranting about software that annoys him...

But if you read some other reviews, you will see a common issue, for me THE issue.

Don’t get me wrong, I used to love Animation Master! I used to love the patch modeling, for me, the most effective way to model! It is second only (IMHO) to Maya, that’s right, Maya!

However, and here is where I get angry... Hash wants to be you’re "One-and-only", which these days is like asking someone to have only one pair of socks or underwear! PUH-LEAZE!!!

I don’t know any serious 3D artist that only uses one package, except for a handful of Maya snobs, and even they are rare! Everyone I know that is creating 3D models, graphics and animation, are using 3-5 programs on a regular basis!!

Animation Master WILL NOT EXPORT!!!!! That’s right!!! They used to support DXF, and as pathetic as that was, I pine for the days I could export to DXF!! Last I spoke with their indifferent support staff, they all but told be to go poke myself.

I have since moved on, which is sad really, I am a loyal consumer, to good products with good support. But when they turn their back on loyal users? Well they can kiss my money good bye!

I predict they will be defunct by 2010.

Look elsewhere

I’ve been in the 3D industry for over 10 years, and I’ve worked with Lightwave, Maya, Softimage, Modo and several others. I’m also a graduate of Full Sail.

There are several reasons to avoid Animation Master. The most prominent is that it is non-standard. For example they use spline modeling, which no major package uses. The list goes on. On top of that most of the features are not even documented. The manual is a small book with a couple tutorials, and if you hope to find a book by a third party, good luck. Just search on Amazon. Most of the books (all of 2) are old and out of date. This further proves that no one uses this program. They don’t even have a trial of the program to test out. Probably because they know no one would buy it. They hope that by just hearing the good reviews (see below) then they have a chance to maybe sucker some people into it.

Look for yourself, go to their site and look at their "films" page. Only a very small handful (maybe 3 or 4) are actually good. The rest are god awful. With limited documentation how can you expect to learn it to use it.

The other major problem is that without decent documentation you are left to go to their forum for help. The community is helpful, yes, BUT the moderators will delete any post that mentions another program, any negative comments about Animation Master and even posts about bugs.

When they ask for feedback they only want to see good comments, no negatives or "if only" and "buts". Go read it for yourself. Even the "Off Topic" thread says "Go Nuts (but no competing product discussions) ". They are deathly afraid of people hearing about the competing products and also why they don’t offer a trial. This is a company that will delete your post if you complain at all about their product.

SO with the lack of documentation and the lack of being able to even complain about a problem how are you ever going to learn to use this program?

You won’t. So please don’t waste your money. $200 might sound like a bargain, but this is truly a situation of you get what you pay for.

BUT, I won’t leave you hanging. If you need a budget 3D program there are several much better alternatives. Look up Blender for one. Yes, it’s free, but it has a great community and has been proven to produce quality productions (look up elephants dream). There are even 2 "current" book available on Amazon and the community won’t kill you for mentioning a problem or another product. It’s is also much more standard and has a huge list of features. Many that Animation Master dose not have. They also have a large growing Wiki with a ton of information. Something Animation Master also doesn’t have.

Next would be Softimage Foundation. For $500(US) you can have a program that is easily worth $1000(US) plus. Great character animation, industry standard modeling etc, a great renderer and more. There are a ton of training materials out there. Especially DVDs and videos (like digital tutors and 3dtutorial). Save your $200 and wait for this, you won’t be sorry.

So there you go. If you still buy Animation Master, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

One of the great CG apps

I’ve been an A:M user for probably 10 years now. I’ve used it for school, I’ve used it professionally and I’ve used it as a hobby. If you’re an artist who want to make his/her own characters and animate them, this is a superior package. One of the great things about it is its unified workflow. The modeler, the rigger, the lighter, the animator, the renderer, all live in the same program and all work well together. I’m not saying A:M makes all of those automatic. Such a program just does not exist. But there is no better workflow for 3D animation than exists in A:M.

The all-spline modeling is a somewhat different strategy than polygon apps use and that’s where most people who come from them to A:M get confused. They’re trying to use lame polygon techniques that are really awkward workarounds rather than using splines to their real advantage.

Animating in A:M is something the other apps can only wish they did as well.

If you’re coming to CG with the notion that all that great imagery you’ve seen in movies is the result of a computer program and not the ingenuity and hard work of talented humans then you will be disappointed with any CG app. Something that just offers you some premade choices with a few variations, like Poser, might be a better for you.

But if you’re person with a story idea that you’d like to get off that storyboard you’ve been dreaming up and get in front of people, A:M is a really strong tool for making that happen.

Very unprofessional company

I ordered this software from Hash In....and guess what? I open the box, and it has...NO SOFTWARE IN IT! When one orders software, or any product for that matter, when you expect to actually get the product, right? Wrong: I basically spent a couple hundred dollars for a stupid book, and a pair of 3-D glasses. Because there’s no one works on the weekend, I have to wait until Monday to get this resolved. Which defeated the purpose as to why I spent money on priority mail in the first place, right?

Yes, this is a situation that I’m having with them as we speak.

Read this or you’ll be sorry...

Hash is a small business located in an empty church in Vancouver, Washington. They travel around the country doing the same demonstration over and over, trying to convince everyone that their software is better than anything else on the planet. Its like watching a late night infomercial. If you try to ask specific questions, the guy won’t answer them and ask you to talk to him later.

The software, while having some redeeming qualites, is pretty primitive. The big selling point is that it uses splines and "Hash Patches". They don’t tell you how quirky the sofware is, or how unstable and prone to crashing and lock ups it is.

The software comes on a CD that must be kept in your CD tray for the application to function. The documentation that comes with the software is a joke. A bunch of little tutorials that really do nothing to explain how to really work with the program. But "Mr. Demonsrator" addresses this in his presentation. "When I want to learn about software I don’t read a book, I go to the website and ask questions in the forum". He says the same thing every time.

But the forum is all volunteers, other users. The worst of it is that if you say anything bad about the software, Martin Hash himself (as if he doesn’t have anything better to do) will censor or edit your post. So of course, all you’ll see on Hash’s site is people raving about how great the software is. Try it, you don’t have to own the software to join the site. Join up and post how you like Maya’s interface better or something like that, and bingo!, you’re censored.

Animation Master works in a single window, you can’t have mutltiple views of what you’re working on. This alone really puts it in lower league than a lot of other applications. Compared to Maya, 3Ds or Cararra, the render times in Animation Master are huge. It can take hours, even DAYS to render just a single frame. What I notice most of all is that there are a lot of "users" in the forum posting pretty pics, but not a lot of animations, and not a lot of high quality animations. There are some, but the fact that they are so far and few between leads me to believe that there is something inherent in the software that makes rendering tedious. This seems confirmed by Hash’s sensitivity to any comments about render times for Animation Master.

A few years ago, the idea of a complete 3D software package for a few hundred dollars seemed unbelievable. But things have changed, and there are a lot more options out there, Cararra 3D basics for example. Take a look around, but if you buy Animation Master, just remember, you’re not going to get any customer service (I’ve never had an e-mail answered from their "technical support"), and when you go on-line, its not a forum where opinions are expressed and debated, its a fan club.

BUY IT

AWSOME!
I have had the software and I can’t express how much it helped me learn how to animate. I came into the animationg world only knowing what keyframe and motion capturing meant. Now, well... I am not Pixar, but I am almost there.
It has exited unexpectantly a few times, but otherwise is very stable.
If you can get the demo do get it, but I didn’t know there was one until I got the software.
Bottom line: GREAT SOFTWARE

BUY IT

AWSOME!

I have had the software and I can’t express how much it helped me learn how to animate. I came into the animationg world only knowing what keyframe and motion capturing meant. Now, well... I am not Pixar, but I am almost there.

It has exited unexpectantly a few times, but otherwise is very stable.

If you can get the demo do get it, but I didn’t know there was one until I got the software.

Bottom line: GREAT SOFTWARE

Unqiue ideas but poor software quality

This runs OK on a windows machine but crashes often. On a Mac machine it is very
unstable. Some of the conceps are quick and unqiue and not too many other
packages in this price range offer these features. Poser 6 is a better deal, or
Cinema 4D for Mac owners. Windows users can also use either of those but they also have access to 3D Max.

Unqiue ideas but poor software quality

This runs OK on a windows machine but crashes often. On a Mac machine it is very

unstable. Some of the conceps are quick and unqiue and not too many other

packages in this price range offer these features. Poser 6 is a better deal, or

Cinema 4D for Mac owners. Windows users can also use either of those but they also have access to 3D Max.

READ: THIS IS IMPORTANT

First, go to www.hash.com and view the online demo. This will tell you more about what the software is capable of than any review will. Additionally, you may find that you can get the software cheaper when bought directly from Hash.

The software is, simply, figgin’ amazing -- it does everything they say it does and more! The graphics are INCREDIBLE.

HOWEVER.

The catch is that while the software can do it, UNLESS YOU HAVE SIGNIFICANT KNOWLEDGE IN ANIMATION you’ll become frustrated. If you do have even the slightest bit of expereince, you’ll LOVE this package.

THERE’S GOOD NEWS, though. The software comes with an amazing manual that provides beautiful walk-throughs of the software’s main features, which teaches the basics of animation and gets something up pretty quick!

THERE’S SIGNIFICANT BAD NEWS, though. The manual is nothing more than a light collection of tutorials. Don’t expect to find everything laid out and clearly explained. The online help is barely adaquate as a user’s guide but is just fine for a reference guide. In short, if you know what want to do, know what you are supposed to do, know what it’s called in terms that Hash uses, and you understand the implication of what will happen when you do it, then the online help will tell you the ’how to do it.’

THERE’S EVEN MORE BAD NEWS. I’ve been looking, and looking, and looking for printed books on this software. I can’t find any that pertain to recent versions. At this moment, I see there’s a Animation:Master 2000 book that’s out of print, but the software is at 2005. Some graphic artist could clean house by documenting this tool.

TECH SUPPORT. Tech support is *GREAT* for installation and basic questions. Tech support is about the industry average for any real questions or advice -- meaning, they don’t get back to you for a very, very long time, if at all.

RAZOR AND BLADES. As for the software, value over cost reaches near infinity -- the bang for the buck is impressive. However, without training materials, you’re going to go back to their site and buy the many, many volumes of training materials on VHS and DVD. DON’T BE FOOLED BY THE SALES DEMO -- which until itself is awesome. The capabilities demo you see on the website is smooth, well rehearsed, and impressively edited for sound and presence. The web demos have poor audio and the VHS demos look like someone just had a camera at a expo booth. Quite often the demoer will work himself into the very problem you have, say "oops", stumble a bit, say "I know why", and press some shortcut key that solves the problem and move out without explaining what went wrong, how he knew, or how to fix it. The ’tutorials’ are just topical demos. Beware.

ON THE UPSIDE, this product accelerated my 3D knowledge and helped me figure out how to use features in POSER that I didn’t understand. Between Poser and Animation Master, I’d pick Animation Master for ease of use and power. However, I haven’t seen a lot of downloadable models.

ONE MORE THING TO BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT. Be careful when they sell you an upgrade, which comes at a very fair and impressive price. There’s a weird scheme where they treat the software more like a subscription. The CD you buy today will also let you download an upgrade patch in the future. But at that point the free ride ends. If you buy the upgrade, they send you a CD with the software YOU ALREADY HAVE, and that is used as the "key" to allow you to download the next upgrade when it comes out. For your troubles, you get ’extras’ on the disc that don’t come with the downloaded patch.

BOTTOM LINE: GREAT SOFTWARE. WEAK ON DOCUMENTATION. ABOVE AVERAGE TECHINCAL SUPPORT. PAINFUL TUTORIALS. LACK OF 3RD PARTY BOOKS.

The best software in the world

Super,amazing thoes are just two of my thoughts when I think of A:M.I have had it for a month, and I’m amazed at what it can do.I’ve made a few things with it and it just blows me away at how high tech it is.So if any body is interested in telling there stories using moving pictures this is the best software for it.Oh, I almost forgot A:M best runes on windows xp,with a Pentiuem 4, and you should have at least have 5GB. min.(or a fast running mac)