Basefount ships Miarmy 4.7
Basefount has released Miarmy 4.7, the latest update to its crowd animation system for Maya, adding a new buoyancy mesh system to let crowd agents interact with liquid surfaces.
The update also adds new functionality to Miarmy’s PhysX character controller and ragdoll system, and a new real-time display system for previewing complex crowd scenes in real time.
Lets crowd agents float in water or stand up after ragdolling
Top of the feature list in Miarmy 4.7 is support for buoyancy meshes: animated geometry representing a liquid surface on which crowd agents can be made to float.
Sadly, there’s no demo video of the results yet, but Basefount says that the system supports drag forces and animation offsets.
The update also adds the option for agents to be made to stand up again after being converted to ragdolls, enabling actors to switch back and forth between AI control and ragdoll physics.
The results can be seen in the video above: the skeletons get up again after being knocked down by explosions.
Updates to the character controller, new real-time display system
In addition, CCT – Miarmy’s PhysX character controller, which enables agents to walk over deforming terrain, or one another – now works in vertical space, enabling agents to swarm over walls or ceilings.
There is also a new Geometry Force, which attracts or repels agents dynamically from selected geometry.
Performance has been improved, with a faster IK system and a new real-time display, which Basefount says is capable of showing over 100,000 geometries with GPU skin weighting in real time without stuttering.
There are also a number of smaller new features, which you can read about in the changelog.
Pricing and availability
Miarmy 4.7 is available for Maya 2014+ on Windows XP+, Linux and Mac OS X 10.6+. It is now available on a rental-only basis, with a node-locked licence costing $2,950 for the first year, then $1,450/year thereafter.