4D Digital Humans, a new standard for the industry.

Axyz design, creators of the crowd simulation software Anima and 3D people asset library, has been developing some exciting products. They might have even made a breakthrough in the 3D people model industry.

Ambient 3D people

Let's start with the feature they call ambient people. It is based on technology that makes the already existent ready-posed models come to life, so to speak. A new automatic rigging system is applied to the static models to create an idle animation. These animations include looking at the environment or other actors, arms, legs, and breathing movements, which are subtle but a very welcomed improvement if you were using those non-rigged models (ideal for stills) to populate your animations. But the great news is that they will upgrade all their ready-posed library to Ambient 3D people completely for free! Meaning that all your already purchased, AXYZ ready-posed assets will soon be more suitable for animations, at no extra cost! And if you are using Anima, they will retain the same options as the old ready-posed ones, like the possibility to change clothing color for variation. They said they will upgrade the library gradually, not referencing any dates, so I really can´t make an educated guess for how gradual it will be. If you know some more about it, tell us in the comments below.

4D Digital Humans

But the most impressive feature added with the release of Anima 4.0 was the introduction of the 4D digital humans. Their rigged models were always very useful but only worked well at medium distances. You would end up having to add real footage in post-production if you wanted 3D people closer to the camera. That meant losing precious hours applying the correct lighting, shadows, and looking for footage with a suitable perspective. With their new 4D Digital Humans, the models are perceived as real people due to the amazing way they catch the light, their animated facial expressions, and how the clothes deform naturally to every movement. Yes, natural and seamless fabric deformation! Take a look at the videos below and see for yourself.

You would think that capturing so much detail and information would make the 3D file huge and impractical to use. They tackled this problem by developing a new data compression codec able to reduce each file from about 2 GB to a more manageable 40 to 100 MB!

AXYZ design managed to create a new way to make high-quality, super realistic 3D people which will probably set a quality standard for the industry and save us precious time now that we don´t need to add 2D assets in post-production!

This article is not sponsored by AXYZ design and I truly believe this feature is a breakthrough for archviz animations and visualization in general. What do you think?