5.x AXYZ Design anima ALL Subscription

FAQ

What is the duration of the contract?

The duration of the contract is annual from the date of contracting the service. At the end of the term, you will have the possibility to renew the service for another year.

Is anima® ALL compatible with my 3d software?

If you use 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Maya or Unreal Engine you will be able to import and render the scenes and characters generated with anima® through the plugins supplied with the product.

IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE TO CONVERT THE SCENES AND CHARACTERS TO ANY STANDARD FORMAT (FBX, COLLADA, ALEMBIC).

Can I cancel at any time?

No, the anima® ALL contract requires a minimum annual commitment. You can terminate the contract after one year by simply skipping the service renewal.

Can I add additional seats?

Yes, you can add new seats for your team professionals at any time. You will be charged for the proportional part until the renewal date.

What content is included?

anima® ALL includes all metropoly® 3D People rigged, ready-posed, ambient and 4D Digital Humans® character libraries, as well as anima® PRO and all the software needed to create the best images in your favorite 3D software.

Can I use anima® ALL on multiple computers?

Yes, each seat you subscribe to can be used on 3 (three) different computers, as long as they are not used at the same time. The administration of your computers can be done from the subscription control panel.

anima® has been designed to run on a wide range of hardware and software configurations, although performance levels will vary depending on the processing speed, graphics card and memory of the system.

• Intel® i5 or AMD FX processor or better.
• Microsoft Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, or Windows 11 (all 64 bit).
• 8GB of RAM (32 GB recommended).
• 10 GB of available hard disk space.
• DirectX® 10 or OpenGL® capable graphics card with 1Gb VRAM (8 Gb recommended).
• An internet connection is mandatory with the Subscription license

Compatibility

• Autodesk 3ds Max® 2016 – 2024
• Autodesk Maya® 2018 – 2024
• Maxon Cinema 4D® R15 – R26, 2023
• Epic Unreal Engine® 4.26, 4.27, 5.5, 5.1

anima 5.2

NEW FEATURES:

• Pixotope® Plugin: Added support for the Pixotope virtual production package.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Significantly enhanced performance during material rebuilding in very large scenes.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Improved V-Ray and Arnold material handling.
• Unreal Engine® Plugin: Introduced support for versions UE 5.2 and UE 5.3.
• Cinema4D® Plugin: Implemented support for C4D 2024.
• Maya® Plugin: Integrated support for 2024 in the command-line deployment tool.

BUG FIXING:

• anima®: Resolved issues within the bone matcher tool.
• anima®: Addressed a crash occurring when using alive™.
• anima®: Mitigated a potential crash during the interface redraw of the root object.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Resolved an issue preventing users from creating a drop scene more than once within the same project.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Fixed a crash that occurs when opening a scene via command line.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Addressed issues experienced when cancelling the drop in Max using any button other than the right mouse button.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Fixed issues occurring when Drop models are downloaded and dropped into Max simultaneously.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Corrected the application of material conversion to non-loaded drop characters.
• Cinema4D® Plugin: Resolved issues with using dropped characters that share the same model but are in different phases.
• Cinema4D® Plugin: Fixed potential crash when loading a c4d file that contains a aniproj that has been modified externally.
• Unreal Engine® Plugin: Fixed a potential crash that may occur when reimporting the same scene.

Anima 5.1

AXYZ design S.R.L. is proud to present anima® 5.1. The latest version of anima® brings many improvements and compatibility with the latest versions of 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, and Unreal Engine 5.1

• anima®: It is now possible to duplicate and modify subscription assets however you like! Simply duplicate the asset in your project and start editing it as normal. Keep in mind, however, the original asset must be installed and available to keep using the modified resource. Only the changes you applied are saved to the file stored in your project’s libraries.
• anima®: New animated thumbnails will now be displayed for assets from the online store! Simply hover the mouse over one of them and it should play a short animation if a preview is available. This should allow you to see more easily what kind of animation the product you’re about to download has.
• anima®: You can now select the size of the thumbnails in the actor panel. Simply right-click and select the size you want or you can even use the Control key and the Mouse wheel to adjust it.
• anima®: The search engine from the online store has been integrated into the actor panel! You can now type different terms and get search suggestions to more easily find what you’re looking for. This should be very helpful for anima All users to filter and find the asset they need.
• anima®: It’s now possible to configure the time it takes for actors to be teleported to the start of a path when they reach the end by using the new reset time slider.
• anima®: The sign-in dialog now has a new toggle to show or hide the user’s password to help look for typing errors.
• anima® Plugins: The plugins can now display a special model to indicate an access error has occurred when reading from 4D resources when the source of the project itself is unable to be reached. This should be helpful in determining if rendering errors have occurred due to networking issues.
• anima® Plugins: Project packing performance has been improved by skipping unnecessary duplication of the resource cache when preparing the projects to be sent to render farms.
• anima® Commandline License: Extra information has been added to the device list function.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Duplicated drop characters can be a copy instead of an instance only and they can be converted to anima® scene.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Improved compatibility of the 4D models with Chaos Vantage (V-Ray 6.10.06 or newer required).
• 3ds Max® Plugin: Added support for 3dsMax 2024.
• Maya® Plugin: Added support for Maya 2024.

anima 5.0.2

The latest version of anima brings many improvements and compatibility with the latest versions of 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, and Unreal Engine 5.1

NEW FEATURES IN 5.0.2:

• anima®: User configuration has been moved from the “My Documents” directory to “%LOCALAPPDATA%/anima”. This should provide higher compatibility with systems that use this directory with protection or synchronization software that could cause problems during runtime. However, anima will keep suggesting creating the default Projects and Purchases directory under “My Documents” just like always for the users who wish to take advantage of that functionality.
• anima®: The visual scene tree has been revamped completely internally to provide a much faster response time and decrease loading times significantly on projects with large amounts of actors.
• anima® Commandline License: Two new actions are now available for anima all administrators. It’s now possible to retrieve the active list of devices and export it to a JSON or CSV file. You can also delete devices registered to an anima all subscription.
• Unreal Engine® Plugin: Added support for Unreal Engine® 5.1

anima 5.0.0 – Release Oct. 3, 2022

New Features

• anima®: Brand new crowd simulation engine powered by a neural network that has been trained with thousands of hours of motion capture data! Actors will now show much more realistic behavior when interacting with each other and when traveling across different types of surfaces. A wide variety of improvements have been made to the simulator across the board.
• anima®: Walking 4D actors are now available! Enjoy the benefits of volumetric captures that can loop seamlessly and walk over any path you wish on your scene. These characters can also avoid each other to prevent collisions. Use these actors to their full potential by bringing them closer to your camera and showcasing their realistic motions and clothing deformations.
• anima®: You can now make any path a closed loop. This will prevent actors from teleporting at the edges of the path, which can be useful depending on the needs of your project.
• anima®: Numerous optimizations have been made across the board to the application, reducing loading times drastically for anima ALL users or just users with lots of purchased models.
• anima®: The dock visibility buttons and the workspace settings have been merged into a single panel next to the account button.
• anima®: The camera list that can be opened inside a scene now supports scrolling if there are a lot of cameras to choose from.
• anima®: A new lightweight IPC service has been introduced to enhance the communication between anima and supported plugins. This also has the benefit of supporting multiple anima instances being connected to different anima plugins at the same time.
• anima®: The resource cache “Read from file” option has been extended with various improvements to allow working with plugins or multiple users in a network without running into file access errors. The resource cache will now write to a temporary file any changes it wishes to save if the file is not available for modification and the changes will be merged the next time the file can be opened for writing. This should allow users to work on the same project that another application is currently rendering from without having to rely on the “Keep in RAM” feature.
• anima®: The background importer has been improved to automatically detect duplicate meshes to reduce the size of the background files significantly if the source geometry does not feature instancing. This should result in a significant optimization for any backgrounds that feature heavily duplicated geometry.
• anima®: You can now edit the visual scale of actors. You can also edit their orientation values directly instead of using the single Y axis rotation that is available on the simple rotation mode. Please note that some file formats or applications might not support non-uniform scaling correctly when modifying this property in rigged characters.
• anima®:  The configuration file behavior has been improved and all changes a user makes will be instantly saved whenever an option is changed. The changes will also be visible instantly in other applications that support changing these preferences. This allows multiple anima applications to be used without overwriting each other’s preferences when quitting.
• anima® Plugins: The anima® Drop panel has been upgraded to support a wide array of features in the same way anima does. It is now possible to browse and download new actors directly from the panel without having to go to anima to install them. You can even activate your anima ALL subscription directly from this panel without ever using the application, which makes it very convenient when used with compatible plugins.
• 3ds Max® Plugin and Cinema4D® Plugin: It is now possible to drag and drop ambient and 4D actors directly using the anima® Drop panel. The plugin will now create a hidden scene so it is possible to work with anima® Drop in a similar way to anima. You can convert this hidden scene to a regular anima scene at any point if you wish to do more extensive modifications to it.
• 3ds Max® Plugin and Cinema4D® Plugin: The plugin will now create parent objects for each scene that was imported from an anima Project, as it already happened before in Maya®, allowing for easy movement of the scenes and quick browsing of their elements.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: The plugin now supports dropping and placing actors and updating them automatically once they are installed, just like in anima. A placeholder arrow mesh will be shown while the product is being downloaded.

BUG FIXING:

• anima®: Fixed an error where anima would unnecessarily load other resources used in the project even if the scenes were not opened when saving a scene for the first time.
• anima®: Fixed an error where locked ready-posed and stream actors would save useless information on the frame blocks when baking the animation.
• anima®: The registry key for the user’s configuration has been changed. The installer will migrate any relevant variables from ‘anima 2’ to just ‘anima’.
• anima®: Improved the behavior of automatic reconnections for anima ALL users after suspending the system while the application was running or disconnections during extensive sessions.
• anima®: Fixed an error where 4D characters would be unable to continue playback if they encountered a file reading error during streaming. The application will now reattempt to open the stream in these cases.
• anima®: Various minor user interface issues to improve the general experience.
• anima®: Fixed an error where actors would slightly reposition themselves after being dragged and dropped inside the viewport.
• anima® Plugins: Fixed an error where Plugins with different versions than anima could be used together, leading to undefined behavior. The plugins will now check properly and show an initialization error if the version of the Plugin and the version of anima have API differences that make them incompatible.
• anima® Plugins: Fixed an error where the Plugin would not attempt to re-authenticate correctly to the anima ALL service if the session was disconnected.
• anima® Plugins: The render farm packing functionality will now prompt for an error if the required resources for rendering are somehow missing from the resource cache, preventing incorrect submissions and render processes from being launched.
• Maya® Plugin: Fixed the texture issues on 4D models when using V-Ray to render animated sequences.
• Unreal Engine® Plugin: The materials created by the importer have been improved and will be less prone to compatibility errors between Unreal Engine versions.
• Unreal Engine® Plugin: Fixed various issues that could appear when re-importing scenes from anima. The naming scheme used by the importer should now be more consistent and less prone to errors.

KNOWN ISSUES:

• anima® and Unreal Engine® Plugins: If you see black textures on the 4D models, it means that you are using an old version of your GPU driver. The issue will disappear after you update your driver.
• 3ds Max® Plugin: The 4D models might be shown with heavy deformation artifacts only in the 3D viewport when using the IPR (interactive render) on multiple renderers, but this is only a cosmetic problem as it does not affect the final render and is automatically corrected when the IPR stops.
  In Corona, this problem is also visible in the interactive render, but this has been confirmed by the Corona developers to be caused by a bug on their side that they plan to fix in a future version.
  In Redshift, after an interactive render is made the mesh on the 4D models becomes unstable, but it can be fixed again by rendering a production render. This happens because Redshift does not notify correctly at the end of the interactive render, so we have already reported this issue to the Redshift developers.
• 3ds Max® Plugin:  When using Corona in interactive mode and 4D models, having the Maxscript MacroRecorder enabled may cause a crash if the current frame is changed by moving the timeline. This issue only happens with Corona and has been already reported to ChaosGroup, the other renderers work fine in the same situation.
• Cinema4D® Plugin: The 4D models cannot be used with Motion Blur on Cinema4D® due to an incompatibility with the architecture of this application. When 4D models are rendered with MB enabled, they appear to lose the mapping of the textures on some frames. The problem is caused by a missing feature in the Cinema 4D SDK that is present in all the other platforms we support. We have reported this issue to Maxon and asked them to add this feature in order to enable Motion Blur compatibility.
• Cinema4D® Plugin: V-Ray 5 may render some frames as corrupted meshes on the 4D models when the Motion Blur is enabled. This is an error caused by V-Ray ignoring the MotionBlur tags in the actors and must be fixed by ChaosGroup, it is not caused by anima®.
• Maya® Plugin: The renderers supported on Maya® are Arnold, Redshift, and V-ray.
• Maya® Plugin: V-ray renderer does not support motion blur on 4D models.
• Maya® Plugin: The viewport must be set in DG Evaluation mode to correctly display the animation of the models. Serial and Parallel modes can cause mesh corruption on 4D models and break the animation on the Rigged models.
• Unreal Engine® Plugin: In version 4.27, the textures of the 4D models might disappear when using the STANDALONE GAME feature. This is a retro-compatibility bug that was introduced by Epic and can be fixed by recompiling and resaving the base material again (“Anima4D_material“, no modifications needed).