v1 NewTek LightWave ChronoSculpt

Time-Based Cache Sculpting for All 3D Software Pipelines

Challenge traditional animation and dynamic simulation limitations, with ChronoSculpt.

ChronoSculpt is a powerful stand-alone application that revolutionizes working with animation and dynamic simulation cache files from any application by allowing you to use sculpting and transformation tools over time. ChronoSculpt also introduces a radical new geometry engine based on our “Hydra” technology which allows the deformation and manipulation of 8 to 10 million polygon objects with ease.

Using industry standard vertex cache files in Alembic, LightWave MDD, or Autodesk Geometry Cache formats you can easily paint out errors on your dynamic simulations or even completely change the look of a character either with layered sculpting “clips” in the timeline or globally to affect every frame in your cache animation. ChronoSculpt also allows you to export any frame from your sculpt or deformation direclty to a LightWave endomorph or OBJ object file (for blend shapes in Autodesk Maya). ChronoSculpt could potentially save you hours of work by allowing you to quickly make changes to the baked dynamic simualation cache files to address simulation jitter, soft body penetrations, or to remove stray simulation pieces and get the shot out the door.

ChronoSculpt Overview

Revolutionary Time Sculpting

• Quickly and easily remove dynamics simulation errors, and jitters to sculpt deformations on cache files from most 3D software programs

Sculpting Tools

• Use tools like sculpt, drag, pinch and erase to deform and manipulate geometry over time

Transform Tools

• Edit individual geometry over time within a dynamics simulation cache, using tools like Transform, Pin, and Bulge to complete projects quickly

Enhanced Geometry Engine

• Handle massive geometry files, 8 to 10 million polygon objects can be edited with ease.

Universal File Support

• ChronoSculpt supports LWO, OBJ, LightWave MDD, Autodesk Geometry Cache, and Alembic for easy integration into all software pipelines

OBJ Blend Shape and Endomorph Export

• Easily save any frame from the ChronoSculpt timeline as an OBJ for Maya Blend Shapes or as an Endomorph directly to LightWave object files to create facial morph targets and deformation effects

Clip Timeline

• Quickly reposition and adjust the length of your ‘sculpts’ anywhere in the timeline to get the perfect effect on your cache animations or make global changes that apply to the whole animation

Fixing Simulations

Correct simulations without the need to re-calculate

Adjusting Cloth Simulations

• Cloth simulations are complex. Often achieving the right look can involve a lot of tests and sim time. With ChronoSculpt, adjusting simulations or correcting penetration errors is a simple as using a brush.

Correct Dynamics

• Using ChronoSculpt to correct dynamic simulations can greatly speed up your delivery times. Often a rogue part of the simulation can be the hardest problem to fix by re-calculating the whole simulation due to the chaotic nature of dynamics. ChronoSculpt gives you powerful tools overcome this problem.

Resting Dynamics

• Simulations that suffer from ‘jittering’ where parts of the simulation never come to rest can often be very difficult to correct with affecting the whole animation. ChronoSculpt’s ‘Pin’ tool is perfect for wrangling these problem areas to a smooth stop, saving endless tweaking and re-sim time.

Add Detail, Create Variations

Sculpt finer detail into your models

• Typical bone animations and morphs/blendshapes tend to lack subtleties such as showing the tendons of an arm when flexed, or the wrinkles of the face when a character smiles. By exporting out a high resolution point cache and importing it into ChronoSculpt, it is possible to sculpt in these fine details and export the resulting point cache to apply back onto the model.

Time Sculpting

Animate any changes over time

• ChronoSculpt’s focussed toolset allows editing of cache data with any of the tools over time. It features a simple, yet powerful timeline to allow any ‘edit’ to be blended into the existing cache data.