Mixamo Fast Tracks Character Animation for Unity Developers

SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Mixamo Inc. today announced the integration of Mixamo's online animation service within the Unity Asset Store digital content marketplace. Mixamo's ever-expanding repository of animation is now accessible to developers immediately in the Unity development platform via a free plug-in, providing an in-editor means to browse, customize and purchase character animation. A quick walkthrough of the process can be viewed here: www.mixamo.com/c/mixamo-unity-asset-store.

(Photo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110322/SF69429)

A striking departure from the conventional, labor-intensive and time-consuming character animation workflow, game developers can now animate characters in an intuitive and flexible way right inside Unity, while at the same time tapping into thousands of professional animations and motion capture data. A user can simply select a character from their game project and browse the animation collection to find the perfect motion, previewed directly on their character. Customization is quick and easy using an intuitive slider control system, to suit the animation dynamic they are looking for.  

"With Mixamo's service integrated into the Unity Asset Store, game designers can get their characters animated incredibly quickly and without access to specialist animators," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. "It's a real shift in the whole process – developers are getting custom character animation at a dramatically lower price than conventional means, and they don't have to wait. In so boldly democratizing creation Mixamo feels like family."

With the Mixamo integration, customizing animation data to suit a character's personality, body type or dimension, emotional state and activity cadence becomes a seamless and straightforward process. Customized animations are freely previewed on the actual game character inside Unity, so users know exactly what they are getting. Users are able to purchase the final animation in just a few clicks resulting in an animated character that is ready to be used in their Unity project.  

"We want to make the process of creating animations for game characters as simple and quick as possible while still giving to the developers freedom and interactivity," said Mixamo Co-founder and CEO, Stefano Corazza, "The unprecedented extendibility of the Unity editor allowed us to convert what is usually a long process into a real-time fun experience."

For the initial release, animations can be purchased at a promotional price in Unity .anim format, while the full FBX is always available on the Mixamo.com website. The next level of seamlessly integrated game development is just a few clicks away.

YouTube video walk through of the Mixamo Animation Store for Unity3D:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17V3_j1NZhM

About Mixamo
Mixamo Inc. is a Silicon Valley, VC-funded company founded by 3D pioneers Stefano Corazza, CEO, and Nazim Kareemi. Based on research from Stanford University's BioMotion lab, Mixamo offers the first online 3D character animation service that provides 3D game developers the power to customize and create professional-quality character animations at unprecedented speeds. Mixamo currently employs a team of outstanding animation and machine learning experts, 3D animators, software engineers and serial entrepreneurs from around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.mixamo.com, or follow Mixamo on Twitter.

About Unity Technologies
Unity Technologies is revolutionizing the game industry with Unity, its award-winning breakthrough development platform. Unity Technologies has more than 400,000 registered users worldwide -- including Bigpoint, Cartoon Network, Coca-Cola, Disney, Electronic Arts, LEGO, Microsoft, NASA, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., large and small studios, indies, students and hobbyists -- all using Unity to create games and interactive 3D, like training simulations and medical and architectural visualizations, on the web, mobile, consoles and beyond. Unity Technologies is aggressively innovating to expand usability, power and platform reach along with its Asset Store digital content marketplace and Union game syndication so that it can deliver on its vision of democratizing interactive 3D technology. Unity Technologies is headquartered in San Francisco and has development offices worldwide. For more information, visit: http://unity3d.com.

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SOURCE Mixamo Inc.