Something for the DEVS: Gen Crowd 3D

Genemation Ltd. A leading developer of character modeling tools has recently announced the launch of GenCrowd 3D v2.0. The is application is intended for use by 3D artists who need to generate large numbers of synthetic realistic looking 3d heads.

The developers of GenCrowd 3D boast that the output can be easily exported into industry-standard art/animation tools and pipelines.

They also boast that the heads are fully customizable and are generated via age, gender, and ethnicity, are easily animated, can be used for a multitude of applications such as video games, web authoring, post production, and other digital content applications.

Some features:

• GenCrowd 3D allows any number of unique 3D heads to be generated easily and quickly
• You can set the number of heads you wish to generate in a given window
• Individually generated heads can viewed 360º at different mesh resolutions in a dedicated window
• You can mix selected heads to produce sub sets of ‘related’ heads, then change the characteristics of the new group
• If youÂ’re looking to create a particular head, GenCrowd enables you to change the ethnicity, age or gender
• If you want to generate a crowd of heads with certain characteristics, GenCrowd 3D enables you to define the types of heads you wish to generate by specifying the age, gender or ethnicity
• Whether you want your heads to smile or frown, GenCrowd allows a variety of morph targets (expressions and phonemes) to be added to each head. You can mix expressions, phonemes and other traits to produce truly unique characters
• Morph targets can be applied to large numbers of selected heads with a couple of keys strokes
• Animation: to speed this up in your animation package the heads are exported with a bone rig and animation sequence, which cycles through sample expressions and visemes
• Bump and specular maps can be created and exported
• Once you have created your desired head or group, you can then save and export them into many of the popular 3D art animation packages in the following file formats: obj, maya binary (.mb), VRML, fbx, and DotXSI
• The supplied mesh is a high quality quad mesh (which enables easy subdivision, in ZBrush for example). There are 4 export mesh resolutions: 1, 2, 5 and 9k. All of these mesh resolutions come complete with a bone rig for animation
• The meshes can be imported into Maya® (.mb file compatible with 6.0, 6.5, 7.0), 3ds Max®, SOFTIMAGE|XSI® and other packages where finishing touches, e.g. hair, can be added.

Nice, a program that allows devs to give a virtual model a virtual head… er, wait, that sounds wrong… Anyway, this certainly makes you look forward to seeing larger crowds in games where crowds matter.

Genemation Ltd. A leading developer of character modeling tools has recently announced the launch of GenCrowd 3D v2.0. The is application is intended for use by 3D artists who need to generate large numbers of synthetic realistic looking 3d heads.

The developers of GenCrowd 3D boast that the output can be easily exported into industry-standard art/animation tools and pipelines.

They also boast that the heads are fully customizable and are generated via age, gender, and ethnicity, are easily animated, can be used for a multitude of applications such as video games, web authoring, post production, and other digital content applications.

Some features:

• GenCrowd 3D allows any number of unique 3D heads to be generated easily and quickly
• You can set the number of heads you wish to generate in a given window
• Individually generated heads can viewed 360º at different mesh resolutions in a dedicated window
• You can mix selected heads to produce sub sets of ‘related’ heads, then change the characteristics of the new group
• If youÂ’re looking to create a particular head, GenCrowd enables you to change the ethnicity, age or gender
• If you want to generate a crowd of heads with certain characteristics, GenCrowd 3D enables you to define the types of heads you wish to generate by specifying the age, gender or ethnicity
• Whether you want your heads to smile or frown, GenCrowd allows a variety of morph targets (expressions and phonemes) to be added to each head. You can mix expressions, phonemes and other traits to produce truly unique characters
• Morph targets can be applied to large numbers of selected heads with a couple of keys strokes
• Animation: to speed this up in your animation package the heads are exported with a bone rig and animation sequence, which cycles through sample expressions and visemes
• Bump and specular maps can be created and exported
• Once you have created your desired head or group, you can then save and export them into many of the popular 3D art animation packages in the following file formats: obj, maya binary (.mb), VRML, fbx, and DotXSI
• The supplied mesh is a high quality quad mesh (which enables easy subdivision, in ZBrush for example). There are 4 export mesh resolutions: 1, 2, 5 and 9k. All of these mesh resolutions come complete with a bone rig for animation
• The meshes can be imported into Maya® (.mb file compatible with 6.0, 6.5, 7.0), 3ds Max®, SOFTIMAGE|XSI® and other packages where finishing touches, e.g. hair, can be added.

Nice, a program that allows devs to give a virtual model a virtual head… er, wait, that sounds wrong… Anyway, this certainly makes you look forward to seeing larger crowds in games where crowds matter.