Two years in the past, Cartoon Brew interviewed Praxinos, a French firm with the bold venture of constructing a 2nd animation software program with Unreal Engine.
On this replace interview, co-founders Elodie Moog (supervisor) and Fabrice Debarge (CTO) defined the explanations that motivated the Praxinos workforce to develop Odyssey and two different plugins for Unreal Engine: ILIAD to attract and paint and EPOS to create storyboards. Each might be downloaded without cost from Epic Market.
In 2021, you had been about to begin the beta of a storyboard plugin, EPOS. What’s occurred since?
EPOS was beta-tested by many freelance artists and studios. A few of them had been variety sufficient to indicate their work at completely different events, like Ardour Photos at FMX 2022.
The closed beta ended, and EPOS was launched in Might 2022 on the Unreal Engine market without cost, the place greater than 43,000 accounts downloaded it. Praxinos has additionally just lately teamed up with Incas Coaching, an Unreal Engine-authorized coaching middle, for a three-day session on studying how one can make storyboards in Unreal Engine utilizing our plugins. If faculties and studios are considering EPOS / ILIAD coaching, they’ll additionally contact us, even when they’re Unreal Engine rookies.
There’s nonetheless room for enhancements in EPOS and ILIAD, however in the intervening time, we’re specializing in the event of Odyssey.
Are you able to remind us about what precisely Odyssey is and what we are able to count on from it?
Odyssey is a 2nd animation software program with the ability of 3d real-time software program. It multiplies the probabilities of what you are able to do as an animator, which is why we signed a partnership with Epic Video games to make use of Unreal Engine 5 as a basis for Odyssey.
Unreal Engine is kind of a chunk of software program, and if you’re not a 3d technician, there are such a lot of options and choices that may make it fairly discouraging to make use of it. That is really the issue with most 3d software program, particularly in the event you’re a 2nd artist.
So, we would have liked to take away all of the pointless modules from Unreal Engine to make it lighter. We went from a program of virtually 50 GB, which additionally generally want further packages like Visible Studio or Xcode, to a 12 GB program. Clearly, we’re preserving all the nice and helpful options from Unreal Engine that make sense, akin to modeling instruments or the latest enhancements for 3d animation.
Ultimately, a consumer of Odyssey can have the selection between beginning a venture in a 2nd setting or a 3d setting. If the consumer picks up the 2nd setting, all of the work will nonetheless be prepared for use with a 3d background and real-time renderings. That method, any 2nd animator can be taught, step-by-step, how one can manipulate the setting or the cameras.
What stage of growth are you in proper now?
In April, Odyssey entered an alpha-test part. It means the software program remains to be unfinished and is barely being examined internally at Praxinos. Nonetheless, that is already very promising. The structure to combine 2nd animations with a 3d setting is already there and purposeful.
We’ve additionally improved rather a lot the mesh portray by utilizing our blueprint brushes, which implies it’s simple to change textures from 3d belongings with out utilizing one other exterior software program. This opens the door to the design of 3d backgrounds in which you’ll be able to transfer in any path and from any angle, however which look as painted in 2nd as you’d on a sheet of paper with watercolors, inks, oil brushes, and so forth.
We’ve additionally been engaged on vector-based drawing instruments to supply extra prospects to the consumer. Mixing the ability of each instruments may be very attention-grabbing as a result of you may profit from vectorized photographs that may simply be rotated or rescaled with out high quality loss, and you’ll profit from bitmap brushes to emulate conventional work.
When can we count on the software program to be launched?
We need to begin the beta-test part as quickly as doable. To encourage potential beta-testers to affix in, we’ll do demos of Odyssey throughout Annecy’s MIFA on the Epic Video games and Praxinos cubicles. The beta might be free, however candidates must apply on our web site to be chosen. You generally is a freelance artist, a scholar, a instructor, or a technical director from a studio. We’re in search of anybody that’s actually motivated to check Odyssey and provides us suggestions. We’ll have a devoted Discord channel to speak with our future beta-testers.
Plus, beta-testers will get pleasure from an vital low cost when shopping for their future copy of a lifetime license of Odyssey if they’re satisfied by its potential. This might be undoubtedly the easiest way to assist Praxinos’s closing launch of Odyssey, after nearly 5 years of intensive growth.
