Some recent semi-automatica from Japan. For animation, of a sort, but also with obvious use for comics makers who only need slightly different variants between comic frames.
1. Live2D Euclid 1.0. Illustrated 2D characters in 3D space, seemingly auto animated (once you have the character set up)…
Their less turn-tastical but more polished version of this is their Live2D Cubism 3.0 software. 3.0 appeared in 2017, and it’s now at 3.3. As with Euclid you also feed it a multi-layer 2D .PSD file from Photoshop, but with Cubism you can only set up relatively subtle camera-facing animations. Looks interesting, and there are templates to base your new characters off…
Sadly the software is a monthly subscription, but reasonable at around $10 per month. There’s a free trial for Windows and Mac, with translated UI, and an English manual. It’s interesting to know that this software is out there. But without looking at it too deeply I’d suspect that the latest CrazyTalk Animator (soon to be Cartoon Animator 4.0) would be feature-comparable and possibly easier to use. Though possibly more expensive if Cubism has a thriving hinterland of low-cost third-party animation and template packs over in Japan.
2. PaintsTransfer. AI-assisted auto-painting of line art. The user first places and adjusts ‘wheels’ over the line art, then indicates general colours at the centres of these. A first approximation of the colouring is tested, and then if the auto-colour is broadly acceptable the user refines it by placing further colour dots onto the wheels. The code has been released, but it’s not for Windows.
Again it’s interesting, but Krita 4.0 seems to be the most vigorously-developed choice for auto-colouring of line-art at present. Note that the free Krita also has the ability to auto-colour by greyscale value (e.g. lighter tones become skin-pink)…
3. Anime generation with AI, in a recent conference presentation. Give it three keyframes, have the AI intelligently interpolate the animations in between, to generate 16 flowing frames.
A glimpse at the future of semi-automated AI-assisted workflows! Next stop, 3D strand ‘autohair’ from a photo…
