Rapidly Create New 3D Creatures/Characters From the Same Ziva Rig; Free Lion and Cheetah Assets
Today, Ziva Dynamics launches Ziva VFX 1.6, bringing anatomy transfer capabilities to the world’s most advanced character creation software. With Anatomy Transfer, artists can take the full anatomy of one character and automatically fit it to the mesh of another, removing the need to start from scratch every time a new character or creature has to be developed.
The new Anatomy Transfer feature attacks one of the most time-intensive portions of the character pipeline, so studios can scale their projects at a level never seen before in high-end productions. Now, instead of waiting days or weeks for new inputs from the modeling team, characters artists can begin right away, using the anatomy of one creature to generate another. Transferred rigs require little to no remodeling and come with the full power of Ziva physics, producing characters that move, flex and jiggle just as they would in real life.
“Creating hundreds of high-quality characters has never been easier,” said James Jacobs, Co-CEO of Ziva Dynamics. “When we were at Weta, we would have given our left arm for technology like this; now, every artist and studio in the world can ‘build it once,’ instead of again and again.”
The transfer process starts with a source creature that has been simulated with Ziva VFX, and the external skin mesh of a target creature with similar topology. Artists run two functions (a proprietary bone-warp and spatial-warp) that automatically reshape the bones, joints and muscles to the second creature. Then a simple load function automatically transfers the simulation properties to the new rig, including attachments, fibers, materials and more. The result is a new creature that is simulation-ready, out of the box.