Update Log

Check-in here for future Animate 3D update release notes - Check out all our demo videos on our YouTube channel: YouTube.com/DeepMotionInc

Version 3.6 - June 7, 2022

DeepMotion’s Animate 3D V4.0 release brings our highly requested Hand Tracking feature to all users! We also have a lineup of other new features for you to check out as well - take a look!

Portal Updates:

• Hand Tracking Beta: Hand Tracking is now live for all users! You can access the new feature within the Animation Settings. For more information on capture guidelines and Custom Character Hand Tracking setup, check out our Hand Tracking FAQ!
• Upper Body Only Setting: We have further optimized half-body, or upper body only animations! Turn this new setting on when you have a video that has a subject visible from the waist up and it will reduce the leg and feet movement. This is great for Face Tracking and Hand Tracking captures.
• Default Pose Setting: Another new setting to help optimize your partial body captures when some joints are not detected, the Default Pose Setting allows you to choose which pose your want your character to default to should the AI not find any joint signals. There are three options - A-Pose: The character’s arms will be to the sides at 45-degree angles, I-Pose: The character’s hands will rest on the back of the character, and T-Pose: The character’s arms will be stretched out horizontally.
• Animation Credits: The way we track animation usage has changed! All accounts will now have an allotment of Animation Credits instead of the preview Animation Seconds. Animation Credits can be used for Full Body-Tracking: 1 credit/second or pose, Face  Tracking: 0.5 credit/second or pose, and Hand Tracking: 0.5 credit/second or pose. You can check out more on our updated pricing page.
• Studio & Enterprise Plan Boost: Studio and Enterprise plans can now upload videos up to 1.5GB and up to 6 minutes in length, allowing for greater flexibility for those larger projects.
• Freemium Credit Increase: We have increased the number of Animation Credits on the Freemium plan from 20 to 30. New users can now test our Face Tracking and Hand Tracking features without losing out on any testing time!
• 3D Pose GIF Export: Users can now generate a GIF of their 3D Pose and export it directly from Animate 3D.
• 3D Pose Rerun Update: Users can now rerun their 3D Pose jobs with Face Tracking.

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Version 3.5 - January 7, 2022

DeepMotion’s Animate 3D V3.5 Release adds a default Roblox character for seamless integration with Roblox, Vroid VRM Custom Character support, a massive UI overhaul for easier and quicker animation creation and a whole host of quality of life updates.

Portal Updates:

• Roblox Default Character: The Roblox R15 character rig will now appear as one of the Default Character options! You can now choose a Roblox R15 default character to automatically retarget your animations to. This will allow you to quickly and easily import your Roblox character animations into Roblox Studio without going into Blender.
• VRoid VRM Custom Character: You can now upload your .VRM character files to your Custom Characters library for fast retargeting and easy upload into VRoid and other AR/VR and live streaming apps that support the .VRM file format .
• Streamlined User Interface: Create jobs faster and with less clicks using our streamlined workflow that combines your 3D Animation or 3D Pose and Custom Characters steps into one simple interface.
• Animation Job Error Feedback: When creating animations, more detailed messages and recommendations will now display for jobs that fail due to various possibilities. Most failures are due to the following: video uploaded exceeds subscription limits for upload or video quality does not meet our minimum requirements for a quality animation.
• Multi-Session Support: You can now have multiple sessions of Animate 3D running at any given time. Start your animation, set it and forget it.
• .MJPG Support: You can now upload your .MJPG video files for your animation creation.

Animation Quality Update:

• Low Jump Detection: Increased detections of motions that have low ground jumps for example during jump rope or jumping jacks.
• 3D Pose Face Tracking: You can now use Face Tracking when generating static 3D poses. Turning on the Face Tracking feature can also improve the tracking of the head position.
• Improved Hand-to-Ground Contact: Improved hand contact to the ground when the hands rotate.

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Version 3.4 - October 22, 2021

3D Pose (Beta): Now available for all users! The brand new 3D Pose feature lets you generate a 3D pose from an image or a single frame video. Create static 3D scenes, easily storyboard your stories, generate full-body posed models for 3D printing and much more! Works with Custom Characters and the integrated avatar creator.

Rerun: Subscribers now have access to the new Rerun feature. You can rerun your animations to test different settings allowing you to refine your animation. Did you see a hand pass through the leg? Easily click the ‘Rerun’ button and turn on the Physics Filter setting to update your animation with the new setting without using any of your animation time! Subscribers get the following amount of Reruns: Starter: 3, Innovator: 5, Professional: 25, Studio: Unlimited

Portal Updates:

• 3D Pose: You can now choose between creating a 3D Animation or a 3D Pose through the ‘Create’ option.
• Rerun: Access the Rerun feature by clicking the ‘Rerun’ button on the button of the peviewer, or in your library. Your Rerun animation with new settings will overwrite your old animation.
• Freemium Resolution Upgrade: Freemium accounts can now upload 1080p videos which can provide an increase in animation quality. Studio accounts can now upload 8K videos which can provide more than enough details to capture both high quality face details and body motions from the same video.
• Face Tracking UI: Users will now be able to easily tell whether Face Tracking is available for Custom Characters. Check out our FaceTracking FAQ to learn more about the technical requirements. (Link)
• Library Custom Character Visibility: You can now see the name of your Custom Characters in your library so you can easily tell which character you used for each animation created.
• General UI Updates: Your Animate 3D portal will see a revamp including a clearer dashboard and visibility on your new rerun count.

Animation Quality Update

• Improved Ground Motions: Animation quality will see an improvement for ground motions that involve weight on hands, feet and other joints.
• Improved Ground Contact: General overall improved animation quality for limb ground contact and anti-tilting.
• Improved Tracking of Slower Movements: Real-time motions that are slower will see improved tracking.

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Version 3.2 - September 1, 2021

Portal Updates:

• Motion Smoothing: The new Motion Smoothing feature applies an advanced AI filter to help remove jitter and produces a smoother animation. This new feature provides you with the flexibility to manually set the degree of smoothness from 0.1 - 1.0. It’s recommended to test different levels of smoothing as your animations have a chance to become less accurate and lose motion fidelity the higher you set it. Currently available for Professional and Studio subscription plans.
• Unreal Engine / MetaHuman Compatibility: The new “Root Joint at Origin” setting allows you to more easily retarget your animations in Unreal Engine. This setting also provides compatibility with MetaHuman characters. You can check out the full tutorial walkthrough here.
• Job Setting Confirmation: A new job confirmation pop up will appear when you click “Create Animations” that recaps all your settings along with your available animation time and expected animation time deduction for a more clear and streamlined experience.
• Animation Settings in Library: Your animation settings for past jobs can now be  accessed in your library for easier review. This will only populate for new animation jobs moving forward.
• Animation Quality Check: A new AI check will analyze your input video to determine if it meets a minimum threshold requirement for animation quality. If it fails the check, your job will fail and you will not be deducted any animation time. If a job fails, it is recommended to reshoot your video or upload a new video that follows our capture guidelines here.
• MP4 Export Improvements: Users can now choose to keep or remove the audio from their original input video with the new ‘Enable MP4 Audio’ option. In addition, more options are now available for the MP4 camera motion under ‘Enable Camera Motion’ - Cinematic: The camera is following the character as the character is kept in the center of the frame. Fixed: The camera is set in a fixed location and the character will move freely. Face: The camera will keep the face and the torso in the center of the frame.

Animation Quality Updates:

• Improved Hip Motion: New spine joints have been added to our skeleton which enables higher fidelity hip tracking
• Improved DMPE: The DMPE sports analytics output now has smoother animation by applying point cloud optimizations.

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Version 3.0 - July 1, 2021

Face Tracking is now available for all users! Check out our full announcement & our Face Tracking FAQ.

Portal Updates:

• Face Tracking Setting: Try the new Face Tracking feature by turning on the Face Tracking toggle under your animation settings.
• New Animation Previewer: The new previewer provides users with the ability to scrub through your animation, pause, skip, control your animation speed & more!
• .MP4 Sound: Your video sounds now render with the .MP4 export.
• General Bug Fixes: Addressed various issues concerning custom character uploads, animation process time outs & more!

Animation Quality Update

• Head Rotation Tracking: The rotation of the head will be more accurately tracked around the vertical ‘Y’ axis.
• Position Confidence: We’ve improved how our AI interprets certain motions so that body parts don’t make erratic movements as often.  

Subscription Update - Annual Plans: All subscription levels can now be purchased as an annual subscription plan, giving you a significant monthly discount! Check out all the options here.

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Version 2.7 - June 02, 2021

Animation Quality Updates:

• Half Body / Upper Body Tracking: You can now upload videos with only the upper body on screen! The generated animation will provide tracking for the upper body with placeholder for lower body postures when the lower body is missing.
• Virtual Heel & Toe Joints: These new joints will make foot locking more accurate for custom characters. This will reduce the frequency of feet passing through the ground during foot to ground contact.
• Slow Motion Tracking Quality: The new video speed multiplier settings will improve tracking quality for videos in slow motion by telling the AI how much time the input video needs to be sped up to catch up with real-time speeds.

Portal Updates:

• Character Thumbnail Preview: Images are now generated for your uploaded custom models so that you can easily identify your characters.
• Video Preview: A small preview of your uploaded videos will show so you can play through it to make sure it’s correct before you generate your animation
• Video Speed Settings: You can now speed up your input videos to generate better animation results. Animate 3D works best when videos are in real-time and now you don’t have to manually do it yourself! Speeds can be selected from x1.0 - x8.0.
• Pose Estimation File Type: A new file type designed for sports analytics and research can now be generated for subscription levels Professional and higher. The new .DMPE (DeepMotion Pose Estimation) file includes 3D skeletal joint positions for the character with every frame.
• .MP4 Color Picker Update: When generating your .MP4 video files, you will now see a new color picker to help easily set the background color of your scene.

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VERSION 2.6 - April 22, 2021

Portal Updates:

• Foot Locking Settings: Users now have access to the 'Foot Locking' modes under the 'Animation Output' section of the 'Job Settings' - Check out what they do below:

Foot Locking Modes

• Auto: Recommended in most cases. This is the default mode. This setting switches between locking the feet to the ground and gliding the feet across the ground.
• Always: Recommended for when Auto mode has too much foot gliding. This setting forces the feet to lock to the ground at all times.
• Never: Recommended for aerial or water motions. This setting detaches the character completely from the ground.
• Grounding: Recommended for when Auto mode locks the feet to the ground for too long and prevents desired foot gliding (i.e. shuffle dances, sprints, jumps). This setting disables feet locking to the ground but still keeps the character on the ground plane.

Other

• Multi-level Ground Support: Available with Foot Locking modes Auto, Always and Grounding. Allows characters to jump, climb and interact with different ground levels.

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VERSION 2.5 - March 30, 2021

Portal Updates:

• Custom 3D Avatars: We have worked with our partners at Wolf3D to add a new Custom Character function, integrating the Ready Player Me avatar generator directly into the service. Check it out under the new ‘3D Models’ section in your side navigation. Check out our announcement and full walkthrough.
• New Subscription Plans: You asked and we listened - we have added 2 new subscription plans for Animate 3D. The Starter plan is available at $9/month for 180 seconds of animation and the Studio plan is available at $180/mo for 7,200 animation seconds. Whatever your volume, we’ve got you covered - Check out all the plans here!

Animation Quality Updates:

• Improved Side View: Improved side view tilting when input video is captured from the side view of the subject. Reduced foot gliding and arm glitches in depth direction when input video is captured from the side view of the subject.
• Improved Foot Locking: Further improvements have been made to stamp out floating feet - we’ve improved foot locking when both feet are on the ground.
• Grounding Hand Support: Motions that require the hands to make contact with the ground now better support the weight of the body, where previously they would sometimes float above the ground plane.

Pipeline Updates:

• Additional Custom Character Support (Daz3D): We now support more custom characters! With added support for intermediate joints between knees and hips for uploaded models, we can now support Daz3D characters. Keep an eye out for the Daz3D tutorial in the coming weeks!
• Character Mesh Export (Unreal Engine Support!): Our default character export now includes the character mesh. This means that our animations can now be easily imported into Unreal Engine. Keep an eye out for the UE4 tutorial coming soon!

Contest Announcement

Don't miss out on the Animate 3D Contest Spring '21 running from March 25 - April 30. Win thousands in cash and prizes just by creating an animation! Check out all the details: Animate 3D Spring Contest

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VERSION 2.4 - February 11, 2021

Animation Quality Updates:

• Ground Motion Tracking: Better near ground motion tracking (i.e. breakdance, rolling, cartwheels). The character’s root motion is more stable and the grounding of the character is more solid with heavy rotational motions.
• Extreme Clothing Color Tracking: Tracking quality improvements for subjects wearing clothes of extreme colors like all black or all white.
• Body Part Detection: Improved body part detection algorithm to reduce hands and feet glitches.
• Heel to Ground Lock: Heels now are more inclined to lock to the ground and reduce the “tip-toe” tendency of ground to foot contacts.
• Foot Locking: More accurate foot locking
• Leg Switching: Reduced errors when legs switch with each other.
• Hand Gesture during Ground Contacts: Improved hand animations when the hands touch the ground or support the body weight.
• Physics Filter: Fine-tuned collision detection with the ‘Physics Filter’ setting for smoother motion and to reduce the amount of mesh clipping.
• Shake Reduction: Reduced the shake in root motion for high FPS input videos.

Portal Updates:

• New Animate 3D Home Page: All of your important information is now easily accessible on the new home page.
• New Profile Page: You can now more easily access your account information and change your subscription from the new Profile Page.
• Animation Minutes Meter: Both your used animation minutes the minutes you have left on your account for the month are prominently displayed on the new home page. Custom Character Deletion: You now have the ability to delete past custom characters you’ve uploaded so you can add new ones.

Pipeline Updates:

• Daz3D Character Support: Use your Daz3D character with our ‘Custom Character’ upload feature and import it easily back to Daz3D. Tutorial coming soon!
• iClone Character Support: iClone characters with or without accessories are now supported. Use your iClone characters and upload them with the ‘Custom Character’ feature to easily retarget your animation to your character and import easily back to iClone. Check out our tutorial!

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VERSION 2.2.1 - December 22, 2020

• Improved Physics Filter: We have updated our 'Physics Filter' setting which helps remove mesh surfaces intersecting with one another. For default or custom models that have previously seen an issue with this mesh breaking surfaces with various parts of the body, try using 'Physics Filter' under the 'Animation Output' setting.
• Procedural Hand Animation Update: Fixed a thumb procedural animation bug, providing a more natural thumb gesture.
• Sound Previewer: Fixed a bug that prevented the sound from playing in the animation previewer.  
• Default Character Improvements: Fixed some hands modeling artifacts in default characters and added all finger joints to default characters for easier hand motion retargeting in Unity-3D
• Blank Previewer Bug: Fixed a “blank page” bug in the Animate 3D  browser previewer for some OS and hardware combinations.
• Terms of Use Updates: We provided more clarity on rights and licenses for user-uploaded content and site generated products https://www.deepmotion.com/terms-of-use

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VERSION 2.2 - December 18, 2020

• Faster Global Load Times: Our global community should now experience exponentially faster load times when processing their animations.
• Procedural Hand Animation: New features have been included in introducing procedural hand animations. This addresses the previous state of hands being stuck in a default flat hand position, leading to more natural all-around animations.
• Higher Precision Video Preprocessing: We upgraded the quality level of the video pre-processing pipeline to deliver smoother and more detailed mocap results.
• MP4 Output Quality Improvement: We have continued work on our new MP4 output, further improving their quality for a more shareable experience.
• Animate 3D Subscriptions: In case you missed it, we have launched our subscription plans for Animate 3D - check them out here!

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VERSION 2.1 - November 24, 2020

Check out all the updates for Animate 3D's Version 2.1, released on November 24:

• Anti-Foot Gliding Improvements: We have continued to work on minimizing the amount of foot gliding, which results in more stable animation. This addresses not only gliding but ground penetration, more accurate ground collision and more!
• Foot Shuffling: We've made a major improvement for recognizing animation that is intended to have foot shuffling, like a moonwalk or jumping jacks. The body will more accurately stay in place while allowing for the feet to glide on the ground.
• Better Root Motion:  Smoothing of the character root motion reduces the occasional vibrations seen with high amounts of foot movement. Stability is also increased, resulting in higher animation accuracy.
• Depth Axis Motion: The animation that faced forward toward the camera previously saw better quality than the animation output seen from panning around to view the side of the character. We have addressed this and have improved the animation quality from all perspectives.
• New .MP4 Output Features: We have added several new Video Output features for the .MP4 format that enables a more polished presentation of your animations. In addition to the side-by-side view with input video, we now have a Studio background and a Solid color background both able to be edited with a custom color picker.

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VERSION 2.0 - October 20, 2020

The Animate 3D version 2.0 is here! This major update brings you the highly requested Custom Character feature, continued quality improvements and more! See what’s new below:

• Custom 3D Characters: Upon creating a new animation, you will now be presented with the option to upload your own custom 3D characters. Your animation will be visible in the previewer and available for download with the animation retargeted to your custom character. 
• Jumping Optimization: We have worked on improving how our AI interprets jumping motions and refining the detection of more subtle jumping motions. 
• Large Movement Detection: The improved detection of large joint movements, such as high kicks and wide arm motions, will help with generating quality motions for more complex animations.
• Product Portal Updates: 
  • Sidebar Navigation: Navigate between your personal product dashboard, animations, library and other features easily. 
  • Product Feedback Form: A new dedicated form located in your sidebar navigation will allow you to provide us direct feedback. Your feedback helps us design this platform with you in mind, so feel free to reach out on things large or small!
  • General UI Improvements & Bug Fixes: You’ll see other general UI updates aimed at improving your experience with Animate 3D. 

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VERSION 1.6 - August 26, 2020

 Today we released Animate 3D Version 1.6.0 - a major update that includes quality improvements and more.  See what’s new below:

• Anti-Foot Gliding Improvements: we have spent a lot of time re-evaluating the way we process input motion and have vastly improved foot gliding in the output animation, which was the most requested feature. The result is a more stable and solid footing throughout.

• Leg/Lower-Body Improvements: new rotation fixes will assist leg and hip motion in many cases. This will also help make heavy leg movements appear more fluid and natural in the result.

• Better Root Stabilization: new and improved root motion stability will provide more weighted, natural-looking movements for your animations.