MIDAS TOUCH INTERACTIVE LAUNCHES “MIDAS CREATURE” – 2D AUTOMATED ANIMATION ENGINE AND WORKFLOW TO QUICKLY AND EASILY CREATE COMPLETE ANIMATIONS
Developed by Veteran Technical Director at Pixar, Jiayi Chong, Premium Editions of Cutting-Edge 2D Animation Software Now Available
REDWOOD CITY, CA – (June 1, 2017) – Midas Touch Interactive, a groundbreaking physics based animation and VR/AR interaction technology studio, today released its latest product, Midas Creature – a Directable Automated Animation Engine and workflow for quickly and easily creating complex 2D animations for video games and other creative applications. As part of the product rollout, the company is also launching a new website that contains product information along with a purchasing shop.
Midas Creature was developed by Jiayi Chong, a former Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios whose experience includes working on many feature films, including Toy Story 3, Wall-E, UP, Brave, and Monsters University. Chong’s role at Pixar spanned ten years and involved developing physics simulation tools and engines, including simulations for rigid body dynamics, deformable solids, cloth, hair, fluid dynamics, and skin simulation tools. In his role as Technical Director of Animation for Midas Touch, Chong leads his team on creating cutting-edge animation pipeline and service, such as Midas Creature, that is made available to both internal projects as well as licensing partners.
“Midas Creature is the ideal pipeline for game developers and anyone else looking for a more powerful, efficient, and easy-to-use 2D animation process,” said Kevin He, CEO of Midas Touch Interactive. “The Directable Automated Animation Engine of Midas Creature allows you to create animations you might have previously thought impossible with key frame or flash animation. This includes motion like hair and cloth fluttering in the wind, as well as 3D-to-2D Mocap transfer.”
Video game developers and others can use Midas Creature’s powerful Skeletal Rigging and Animation tools to build, pose, warp, and bring their art to life. These tools are made to streamline the user’s workflow, reducing time and money spent while maintaining high-quality results.
“We’re very excited to have Jiayi on our team as he brings tremendous passion and expertise,” continued He, “which he utilizes to build and implement our next-gen AI driven physics based animation pipeline helping to further establish Midas Touch Interactive as a burgeoning immersive entertainment technology expert developing cost effective and deeply interactive content creation services.”
Midas Creature caters to 2D developers of all sizes with its “Creature Enterprise” and “Creature Indie” levels. Enterprise is a premium offering that gives users everything they need to get started using Creature for their company and projects. This is the full-featured version of the tool and gives users a license for Sprite Bump, a normal mapping tool that gives 3D lighting effects to 2D images. Unlimited support tickets are included in the Enterprise package. And for first-year Enterprise customers, a Creature Lead Engineer will offer one hour a month of feedback on their projects. “Creature Enterprise” is offered as a subscription, renewed annually.
Indie is designed for small-scale development teams who prefer more flexibility without an annual commitment, while still offering product complete features and support for indie teams to realize their animation needs. The “Creature Indie” license is available to those with less than $100,000 in gross revenues in the current year, and can be purchased for $19.99 per seat for a 30-day license and to be renewed month-by-month. Committed to inspiring young and aspiring creative developers, Midas Touch is also offering students a version of Midas Creature that allows them (with proof of enrollment/student ID) to use the tool free for one month.
Midas Creature is a blend of traditional tools and new technologies. Both premium levels will have comprehensive customer support to aid user needs. Early adopters have used Midas Creature and seen positive benefits, including a 10x increase in speed of art pipeline performance (source PlayStudios).
Midas Creature is available at the shop page: http://www.creature.midasphysics.com/shop
About Midas Touch Interactive:
After holding senior positions at Blizzard, Roblox, and Disney Interactive, Midas Touch Interactive CEO Kevin He had a unique vision for next-generation AI driven physics based animation technology. Instead of focusing on key frame animation for linear media, as other solutions had in the past, Kevin felt that it was more important to use artificial intelligence and simulation to drive character movement and interaction for games, film, VR and AR. His vision has been realized in the company’s first of its kind tech demo game released from the Midas Touch Games studio, Fist of Physics, a robot beat ‘em-up featuring robot opponents that respond to attacks precisely as they would in real life, with no canned animations; and followed by the introduction of Midas Creature, one of the multiple products to be unveiled in the year to come. Learn more about Midas Creature at: http://creature.midasphysics.com/
