edglazer

Hey Ross, I really like your films, they're inspiring and funny. Not like, inspiring in a "I want to go save the world," kind of way, but inspiring in a "people do some cool sh*t," kinda way. Anyway I saw you're looking for new engines and wanted to offer some possibilities. A cool open source digital puppetry project called Movie Sand Box: http://moviesandbox.net/ and some cool examples of the program's capabilities: http://www.moviesandbox.net/?page_id=38 Similarly, open source digital puppetry, with really cool demos): http://animata.kibu.hu/ and since a couple people above mentioned Blender, I also saw this, on facial expression capture using the latest Blender (with tutorial): http://machin-x.blogspot.com/2011/12/facial-capture-using-blender-3d.html I don't know that Animata and MovieSandBox meet your outlined needs, per se, but they might offer intriguing options you can use in combination with source engine, or Blender, compositing figures onto backgrounds, etc. Also worth noting, there's a lot of interesting (free!) tools for Blender, like this City Generator: http://arnaud.ile.nc/sce/index.php Also, while I'm posting, I've found another freeware tool called MikuMikuDance in the past, which can be used to create animation data. I believe the vpd or vmd files are exported, and essentially like .bvh files (and are also convertable to .bvh, though I'm not sure how other have done it, but I have seen videos indicating it's possible). Anyway, this post has a video that shows a cool implementation of compositing an animated figure on top of a handheld video, using motion tracking: http://www.cgspeed.com/2010/01/dancing-3d-avatar-software.html I can imagine members of the Civil Protection force kicking some sweet moves to J-pop. Anyways, thanks for doing cool stuff!