News and Releases

Animation Release 26 brings a complete overhaul of animation within FirstStage. Rigid animation, character animation and camera animation all behave the same way: Simply move the thing, pose the puppet or set the camera shot where you want it to be at the current time. Scrub time to set more keyframes and create motion. The

New Digital Crafting Tools We have added some new procedural shapes which should open up lots of new creative opportunities: find them in the Asset Library under Shapes. Image Panel This panel allows you to attach an image to it. The panel will preserve the aspect ratio of the image and can be scaled with

Improved Script Management The Script View has been greatly improved. It now provides two columns: The right hand column lists all the activities in the scene in order of their start times. Each activity is shown as a block with the start and stop times on the left hand edge. You can scrub time by

Grabbing by proximity Regardless of which tool you have selected on your controller, if you reach into an object you can now grab it directly. Your controller will turn into a gloved hand to indicate you can grab: pull the trigger and move it in exactly the same way you would from a distance with

New Console Room We now have a much more stylish console room that replaces the old Office that you used to start in. This is also used when browsing for assets and when working Through The Lens with cameras. Introduction Tutorial When you first start on set, you are now offered a tutorial which will

Closed Beta Launch! Many fixes and a lot of clean up and polishing since the end of the first.stage project… New Repository The asset and content repository used for the duration of the first.stage project has now been retired. The new repository has been primed with a variety of assets from the Unity Asset Store

Release for end of project review in Bremen You can now steer a character in first person mocap mode using the left thumbpad: walk or run by double clicking the thumbpad. You can now make a character climb in first person mocap by using the grip controls much as you would normally. Major performance improvements

Review candidate for rehearsal meeting at Linz Much improvement to rigid motion and character paths. Particle flow paths show path of characters through scene and indicate speed of movement. Pose ghosts show poses of characters sample through the scene. Many fixes for Mocap

Physics Synthesizing animation with rigid body physics and ragdolls has been much improved (yet there is still much to do). You can enable physics from the Inspector panel on the WristPad. When physics is enabled, things will collide with each other and bounce off each other. Puppets also have simple physics behaviour and their limbs

2019-04-24 (Update b) Camera movement Cameras now have visible paths showing their movement during the scene. Cameras no longer move in straight lines: their paths are smoothed. Speed curves allow ease in/out of shots. You can grab a handle in the middle of a camera path and drag it out to change the shape of

New controller model for Animation Tool (to distinguish from Grab Tool). When working on a sketch, you no longer need to switch to Grab Tool to move a face, edge or vertex: simply touch the controller to the sketch to activate a proximity based grab (identified visually with a black knob). Pulling a face will

Update (a) Sketches now save painting brushstrokes: Painted surfaces will be preserved across sessions You can now undo/redo individual brushstrokes If you are working collaboratively you will see when a remote user paints a surface New stage machinery: fly bars New panel on the WristPad for Stage Controls: Each control has a slider and a

Update (a) Major improvements to motion capture Timeline now has the notion of an activity inspector or editor: click on the activity to reveal it. The editor for motion capture activities includes a widget to mask which body parts the performance will drive. The mocap editor also allows warp markers to be set which limit

Update (a) New server backend – hopefully all you will notice is the server doesn’t crash so often! New Office UI: scenes now belong to projects. You should have an initial project with your name holding all previous scenes you had created You should also have a First Stage project for sharing scenes You can

Update (a) Rigid animation: Select the Time Tool and then point at a thing and grab with the trigger to record some motion The path can be editted afterwards using the Grab Tool Puppets can now be placed on things (e.g. Lottie on the trampoline) The WristPad now includes a Web Browser (Chromium). Initially this

Camera Sequencer: Desktop window now shows the camera sequencer – can be dismissed with top right button. Select from the available cameras and create camera clips on the time line with “Cut To” button. Clips can be trimmed/revealed/deleted Monitor shows the sequenced output Currently only linear edits supported Export to VP9 lossless video (in user

Update (a) Prototype Collaboration support: Users in the same scene should be able to see each other (if in VR) and talk to each other. If a user makes a change to a scene, other users in the scene will see the result. If you open a scene without saving (going back to the Office),

Update (a) More improvements to the Sketch tool: If you draw a polygon on a face, that will now cut a hole in the face If you extrude a face through a shape to the other side so that it cuts an opposing face, that will cut a tunnel through the shape. If you draw

Update (a) Improved behaviour when placing assets and snapping to floor and touching objects New handles for precise movement and rotation of a thing Improvements to the Sketch tool: Wireframe shows when geometry can be manipulated When pulling faces, there is now a default 15 degree snap which can be overriden with the grip button.

Update (a) Rokoko Smartsuit is now supported – if a suit is connected it will be used when the user “Takes Control” of a puppet (otherwise the VRIK fallback will be used). IK based animation has been greatly improved including support for animating the pivot (root) position – shown as a cube between the character’s

Update (a) In the Office, you can now filter scenes by author. The Time Tool now includes a Jog function for replaying the scene forward/back IK poses can now be animated. New mode for working with cameras: Through The Lens Early but incomplete implementation of shot blending and camera keyframes New ‘wrist-back’ location for the

Asset rack replaced by Asset Browser accessed by pressing both menu buttons at once. Navigator re-rigged – touchpad handles teleport and trigger grabs a world handle. New stage: Mohren provided by Vogel. Scale and rotate handles should be accessible again.

Improved selection of assets using “pixel perfect picker” (does not yet handle cutout materials) Toolbelt tools replaced with radial tools menu triggered by the controller menu button Asset Rack Toggle moved to icon on Toolbelt

Update (a) Improved waypoint paths Simple posing of puppets Fixes: Cannot create a new scene with an old name (4490) Projects open unexpectedly (4492) Library menu should not show in the Office (4494) Update (b) Very early rough stage for the Landestheater Linz Removed several tools accidentally included: Puppeteer (retired) and Sketcher (WIP) Fixed issue

Update (a) Vehicles and Pedestrians Waypoint Paths Basic Cameras Simple Timeline Transport Controls Choice of Stages Update (b) Cameras should now work in Old Town Fixed issue with pointer click acting outside initial element Issue with login focus fixed Update (c) Fixed issue with walk paths being accidentally duplicated