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Golaem releases Golaem 9, the latest version of their crowd simulation software. Golaem explains:
Golam 9 facilitates the creation of such characters by providing universal joint rig animation support and direct animation replay, as well as crowd levels which enable adding secondary simulations on top of chosen characters after the main simulation pass. To bring details even further, Golaem 9 also includes a beta ML Deformer able to bring advanced character deformation into the crowds.
Keeping Golaem’s mantra of making artists’ life easier in mind, a slew of workflow and UI improvements have been added into Golaem 9 based on customer feedback and their experiences in major crowd productions.
In a nutshell, the new animation engine intruduced in Golaem 9 should make it easier for artists to create crowds. Golaem explains that this will save “significant time and effort.”
Here is a video overview of the new features. An article with all the details is also available.
0:05 Easier Character Mapping
0:18 Direct Animation Replay
0:35 9-DOF Animation Support
0:47 Modular Rigs Support
1:04 Crowd ML Deformer
1:37 CreateEntity Layer
1:53 PlayMotion Layer
2:07 CreateEntity+PlayMotion in other DCCs
2:21 Crowd Levels
3:22 Track Locator
3:44 Foot Locking
4:01 Custom Skeleton Display
4:18 New LOD Workflow
4:32 New ChOps nodes
4:45 Character FX
4:50 Skinned Fur
5:00 Traffic Simulation
5:06 Flocking Behaviors
5:16 3D Navigation Sensors
5:27 Get Golaem PLE version
And you you want to dive into a good example of what Golaem can achieve, here is our interview with Mikros Animation Paris, published a few months ago. They told us about their work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Crowd sims are discussed at the 13’13” point. The audio is in French but English subtitles are available.
