PEN Characters:
PEN Animation Characters:
PEN Productions Inc. is proud to announce the release of Walter and Oliver, production proven character animation rigs that uses the RAIC (Referenced, Autonomous, Intelligent, Controls) system. The RAIC system is for clients of PEN Productions Inc. only and will not be available to the public as a separate down load. Clients of PEN can choose to have their characters rigged using the RAIC system, CAT or Biped or fully custom animation systems.

Read more about the RAIC System

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PEN Animation Characters will be a series of characters that have been developed for the budding animation student to help aid in the learning process. Walter and Oliver, are the first of these characters and will give students a chance to work with a production proven animation tool and character rigs. Walter is a full body character rig with a simple face that only includes eyes for aiding in direction and to allow simple expressions and Oliver is a leg only character with a ball body.

A special thanks to Terry Posthumus and Mathieson Facer for their efforts on this project.

License:
GNU General Public License

Walter and Oliver are the property of PEN Productions Inc. All characters are free for use, PEN Productions is not responsible for any problems or issues caused by using this charactera in production.

Walter and Oliver are free for use in any not for profit production by students or professionals. If you are in need of character development, character rigging, production pipeline development, modeling, texturing or animation solutions please contact Paul Neale using the information on the contact page of this site.

Installation:
To install all the characters that will come with the package just down load the PEN_AnimationCharacter.mzp file, then drag and drop it into the viewport of any version of 3DS Max from Max 2009 or above. Other versions of Max are not support and will not be supported at any time in the future.

Once installed you can create any of the characters by opening the create panel, changing to Geometry and the sub category PEN Animation then choosing the character that you would like and clicking in the viewport.

Note that some browsers will change the extension to .zip or try to unpack the installer. You need to right click and use save file as and save the file to the desk top then install from there.

If using Max 2009 you need to have service pack 1 installed for parameter wires and custom attributes to work correctly.

Down Load: PEN_AnimationCharacters_2-02-00.mzp

Usage:
I will endeavor to create camtasias of the animation rig and how it is use. For the time being you can find all the controls for the character in the modifier panel when any one of the controls is selected. The refresh of the modifier panel can take some time so it is advised to "Pin" the modifier panel or use the Launch Character Floater button to open a floating panel that will allow you to manage all the characters in the scene.

User interface:

History / Known Bugs:
Known Bugs:
  • When deleting a post from the pose library and there is no pose selected there is a dotNet exception error.
  • Errors are thrown when resizing the floating UI when no character has been selected.
  • Plugin paths might need to be set manualy for the plugins to reload when Max it restarted.
    • Max 2010 Specific Issues:
  • Max 2010 is having problems loading the encrypted plugins, this could be a Max 2010 bug and not an issue with the RAIC system as it doesn't have issues in Max 9, 2008, or 2009 in production so far.
    • Looks there is a bug in Max that is causing the loading of the scripted plugins to fail. ADSK knows of the problems and are looking into it. I will post when the problem is resolved.

      Installing the package works on first install and the characters can be used, the errors only come up when Max 2010 is restarted. This means the character tools will not work after a restart of Max and if the machine is being used for network rendering the errors will stop Max from launching correctly. If you want to test the characters in Max 2010 I would sugest removing the folder and its contents under plugins\penProductions.

  • Max 2010 design has issues with loading the scripted plugins. I don't have a way to test this so if any one using Max 2010 design is trying these characters please let me know. Also the character is very slow in 2010 design.
History:
  • May 29 2009 V:2-01-00: Update
    • Made changes to the look of the Walter character. This was requested by Animation Mentor as they felt that it looked to much like their own character. To ensure that there is no confusion about which character people are representing on their demo reels I have added a nose, hat and a head with a different shape.
  • May 15 2009 V:2-00-01: Bug release.
    • Scope problem corrected with statusLb in undefined error.
  • May 14 2009 V:2-00-00: First public release of Walter and Oliver as well as the RAIC system.