text: FARNHAM, UK - Realtime animation technology specialist IKinema (ikinema.com) has today announced the debut of IKinema Project Studio, a newly developed interactive software framework designed for those who generate animation content in the fields of virtual production, games, VR/AR, and enterprise. IKinema showed the technology for the first time at closed-door meetings during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
  Relied on by the animation world for their powerful full-body solving technologies that deliver 3D characters that respond with high fidelity motion and more naturally to the world around them, IKinema has recognized the increased demand for interchangeable high performance 3D animation tools across the industries. To align the company’s offerings with the evolving needs and challenges in these sectors, they have moved to unite their entire collection of realtime animation technologies under a single software plan – code-name Project Studio. The new plan is set to bolster digital artists and developers with a more intelligent and streamlined workflow, giving them greater creative control to produce hyper-realistic character animations.
  "We’re seeing a growing overlap of industries requiring the same animation tools and software to power their virtual animation projects,” says Ahmed Elhasairi, technical director at IKinema. “It makes sense to improve our consumers experience by allowing them to make flexible software choices and enjoy working with the IKinema technologies in a more interactive way, so they can deliver multi-functional animation projects."
  IKinema’s realtime SDK integrates to universal game engines and rendering environments, acting as the central brain for procedural animation. Within the Studio app, the user has flexibility to mix-and-match software add-ons depending on the projects requirements, including all behavior set-ups. For example, VR projects – combine RunTime’s core rigging capabilities with IKinema’s motion capture tools such as foot planting, penetration correction and filtering. For virtual production, one can stream live motion capture data to LiveAction’s retargeting solver in combination with RunTime’s foot planting and further customised behaviours.
  Project Studio consists of a dedicated app for set-up and a runtime SDK that contains all solving capabilities and behaviours to be used inside to engine or render environment of choice where the procedural animations are applied in realtime. The Live Bridge is the dynamic two-way path linking IKinema SDK and app, transferring on-the-fly iterations, and eliminates repetitive file creation and export/import processes. The user is equipped with a complete real-time animation pipeline including pre-made plug-and-play modules to boost productivity.
  The software framework is under development. Project Studio for game development is now available for beta testing, with an estimated release for the full suite in Q3 2018.