Make Instant Animated Project Presentations With This 3ds Max Plug-in

Leverage your project presentation skills and make your scenes and models dynamic with Showcaser, a new 3ds Max plug-in by Spline Dynamics, an incredibly simple and handy tool that comes with an intuitive interface and doesn't require any prior animation knowledge and experience.

It works this way: you provide the objects you want to animate, set the animation order, adjust a few of parameters, and press Build Animation.

Showcaser offers two general animation modes: Scene and Model. 

The Scene mode is used to perform the animated presentation of a scene, a scenario, or a shot with a focus on the overall view and not the individual models. It creates an animated sequence in which the scene is progressively assembled, object by object until it is complete.

Model aims to present models individually, for example, you can set a turntable animation. With this mode, Showcaser sequentially exposes the elements on screen, one at a time, with an entry and exit animation.

The plug-in also automatically creates all the necessary keyframes on the position, rotation, and scale tracks for each object in 3ds Max.

If you want to make modifications, you can manually edit the animations with 3ds Max native tools. Showcaser technically functions as a script, so it does not create plug-in dependency. You can use any 3dsMax or third-party tools to export the animations created with Showcaser to any other software, just like exporting native 3ds Max animations.

Other features:

• Create multiple animated sequences for a single scene
• Define sets of objects and establish the animation order for them with the option to load them from 3ds Max layers or groups
• Handy tools to automatically order the elements in the animation by name, size, position, or custom order
• Different options to load objects from the scene: by manual selection, by name, by layer, by group
• Animation types (combinable): movement, rotation, scale, abrupt appearance/disappearance
• Easing options: linear, ease in, ease out, ease in/out, spring (semi-cartoon inertia)
• Option to animate certain groups of objects together, at the same time, according to different criteria: by size, by layer, by instance condition, by user-defined sets, by quantity (every N element)
• Configure start and end times of each animated sequence/duration of entry and exit animation/overlapping between object animations
• Configure a special pivot position to use for every element, exclusively for the animation
• Support for geometry, helpers, groups, and hierarchies (containing any kind of objects)
• Exportable to real-time and game engines that support 3ds Max animations (Unreal Engine, Unity, Chaos Vantage, etc.)
• Includes a collection of handy presets for instant parameter settings
• Ability to load and save custom presets
• Options to edit, save, delete, and select animated elements
• Easily restore the initial scene/element state

Showcaser requires 3ds Max version 2015 or higher. It's available on the Spline Dynamics website at $19.00 and comes with a fully functional 10-day trial if you want to check out the product before purchasing.

Check out the Script Manual for details and get Showcaser here. Also, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.