Two new mocap sets landed on Anim.Works this week. One is Halloween themed, the other is Wild West, cowboys and all. Both captured by Raised by Monsters in Madrid, and both incredibly clean. Every set comes with a tutorial for retargeting in Unreal, which is the useful bit. #mocap #UnrealEngine

Week 17 is here, Subdiv just went free, Animo Toolbelt got a massive update, and we have a new mentor on the platform. Busy week! Check it all out https://youtu.be/dSh-6U2M8pw

Subdiv Goes Free, Animo Updates & Meet Mentor Will | Animworks Weekly Drop #animation #maya #gamedev

Harvey Newman on YouTube

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The shortcut everyone's after isn't a plugin. It's an hour with someone who's already done it. Anim.Works has mentorship now. Book time with someone further along, ask what you're doing wrong, and skip a year of guessing. https://anim.works/ #Animation #GameDev

People want what you already know. Studio experience, how the pipeline really worked, what broke, how long the tech actually took. That knowledge saves teams money and stops them doing it the tenth time. It's a wake-up call, and I think a good one. #gamedev #gameindustry

A few weeks back Xbox axed four studios, Ninja Theory being one of them. My heart goes out to everybody who lost a job this year. But honestly, I think those studios might end up in a much better place than they were inside Microsoft, and I'm saying that as a studio owner. Part three is live. https

Finding the right animation mentor is usually word of mouth and luck. On Anim.Works you can browse coaches by speciality, rigging, storyboarding, VFX, compositing, see what they have shipped, and book a session. Recorded, downloadable, yours forever. https://anim.works #Animation #GameDev

I left a great job and a brilliant salary for a lot of uncertainty. Mostly it was frustration, and wanting a bit more independence. A tiny YouTube channel showed me the stuff in my head mattered more than I thought. It took 2 to 3 years to earn that salary back. I would do it again. #gamedev

In every GTA so far, the crowds just walk from A to B and loop the same path. I think GTA 6 blurs the line between the story NPCs and the background ones, so you won't be able to tell them apart. You bump into them and they react back. #GTA6 #NPCs #GameDev

Our first exclusive is here. Santi left Gumroad & brought Erlich Dynamic Tools to anim.works - live dynamics in Maya, jiggle, cloth & collisions in real time. + upgraded course pages and a new Discord sessions page. Full drop on https://youtu.be/hNDWFJeooNo

Live dynamics in Maya, jiggle, cloth, collisions you dial in and watch solve in real time. Plenty of Animworks updates and a place to host all of our AMA's and Q&A on Discord and more.. This week's Drop premieres in 5 minutes, I'm in the chat. https://youtu.be/hNDWFJeooNo

Live Dynamics in Maya Without the Rebuild | Animworks Weekly Drop

Harvey Newman on YouTube

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If you animate in Maya and you're still alt-tabbing to a video player, have a look at Santi Erlich's EVP. Loads your reference straight into Maya, frame synced to your timeline, so you scrub and it moves with you. Free version on Anim.Works. #Maya #Animation #AnimationTools

Everyone is talking about the jiggle. I think it is physics driven bones layered on top of the animation, solving in real time. The animator sells the attitude, the engine adds the secondary motion. Very anime, very exaggerated, and honestly great tech. #GameAnimation #GameDev #GTAVI

I made my first animation course before I really knew what I was doing. So I made the mistakes and put them all in one video: how to plan, shoot, edit, and pick a platform that actually shows your work. If you've got knowledge to share, this one is for you. https://youtu.be/VYBgwiQVDnY

Anim.Works has a mocap section now. First library is up: Motion Crowd, from Raised by Monsters in Spain. Nearly 100 city crowd animations, captured and cleaned up, already in Unreal as UAssets. More of their sets to come. https://anim.works/product/mocap-crowd-city-animation-library/ #mocap #unreal

Hair is the most expensive thing in a game that nobody thanks you for. Costs memory, costs performance, does almost nothing for gameplay. Yet cardboard hair is why characters stop feeling real. From the GTA 6 cinematics, I think Rockstar has solved it. #GTA6 #GameDev

Kong is on Anim.Works. Two new rigs from Marine Alsoni, King Kong and Crocodile Man, joining last week's Godzilla. The monster shelf is filling up nicely. Animating at that size teaches you more about weight than anything else I know. Share your shots in The Vault. #animation #3danimation

What makes a game art isn't the polish, it's the struggle behind it. Small team, ex-Ubisoft, met on LinkedIn, first game together. When you know the story, it means more every time you play. So if AI and human become the same thing, do we lose that? #GameDev #GameArt

Didn't expect our Discord AMAs to take off like this, but here we are. Two sessions in. Alex Maniotis on Unreal 5.8, then Keith Lango sharing his studio pipeline. The film and games cross-pollination right now is exciting stuff. More coming soon. Come and join us. #UnrealEngine #GameDev

The video is live. Studios have quietly stopped hiring junior animators, and this one breaks down why it happened and the ways in that still exist. If you've been blaming your reel for the silence, watch this first. https://youtu.be/vkSxGwm

A lot of people reckon Unreal games are starting to look the same, because studios share the same tools now. Back when everyone built their own engine, you got different solutions to the same problems. Vibe-code everything, and does that fresh thinking just go away? #gamedev #indiedev

Studios have quietly stopped hiring junior animators. No announcement, no headline If you've been applying everywhere and hearing nothing back, it's probably not your reel. New video premieres in 15 min, https://youtu.be/vkSxGwmzkyE

The Junior Developer Time Bomb

Harvey Newman on YouTube

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Three drops this week on Anim.Works. OverRig by Pavel Barnev adds the control your rig is missing, then nukes it once you've hit the pose. There's a Godzilla rig that looks gigantic in Maya, and Woody and Buzz are back, tied to next month's competition. Keep it locked on Discord, right.

Epic just dropped a stack of Unreal Engine updates. Mesh Terrain makes world building far easier, MetaHuman Collections brings proper crowds, and Lumen now runs on lower spec machines. I've seen Lumen bog down memory on weaker rigs, so I'm really glad it landed right. #UnrealEngine #GameDev

I was one bad day away from quitting animation for good. Then a mentor called Jason Ryan, working at Disney at the time, started giving me feedback on my shots for free, in his own spare time. Coming from a background with no support, that kindness meant everything. #Animation #Mentorship

Three years of relentless layoffs in the games industry. Just when it felt like things were turning, another wave hits. 90% of the blame belongs to the companies but there is a 10% that is on us. Our career decisions, our independence, our willingness to build something sustainable. https://youtu.be

Only a few signed copies of my book left. How to Thrive in the Games Industry is out everywhere you like, Amazon, Waterstones, wherever. But for a signed one from me, head to Anim.Works. The first reviews are trickling in and honestly I couldn't be happier. #GameDev #GamesIndustry

The games industry is broken. 90 percent of that is on the companies. The other 10 percent is ours, and that's the part nobody wants to talk about. New video premiering today in 5 minutes. I'll be in the chat while it airs, come and tell me if this feels like a collapse or an opportunity to you: htt

My whole career started with a chat on a train. A mate told me he tested games for Microsoft. So you just play all day? Pretty much, he said. Six months later I was in, testing at Sega. Funny how the biggest doors open from the smallest moments, right.

Three free drops for animators this week, right. Noah Lee's guitar rig, a lovely elf rig for your showreel, and Animo, a free drag and drop Maya tool belt that just works. Give them a try and let me know what you think. Join the community ➡️ https://anim.works/ #animation #Maya #gamedev #animator

We just launched a mentorship and coaching platform inside Animworks. 1-on-1 sessions with experienced animation pros, built-in recording so you can revisit everything, no Zoom needed. 90/10 split for tutors, no fee to join. Check it out: https://anim.works/mentors/