PEN Productions Inc. announces the release of Walter and Oliver, production proven character animation rigs that uses the RAIC (Referenced, Autonomous, Intelligent, Controls) system.

PEN Animation Characters will be a series of characters that have been developed for the budding animation student to help aid in the learning process. Walter and Oliver, are the first of these characters and will give students a chance to work with a production proven animation tool and character rigs. Walter is a full body character rig with a simple face that only includes eyes for aiding in direction and to allow simple expressions and Oliver is a leg only character with a ball body.

The RAIC system is for clients of PEN Productions Inc. only and will not be available to the public as a separate down load. Clients of PEN can choose to have their characters rigged using the RAIC system, CAT or Biped or fully custom animation systems.

We've already downloaded and installed these two characters. We can say that both the download and installation is very fast and easy. After the quick download all that we had to do is drag and release the file into a viewport in Max (3ds Max 2009 and later). The two characters were available through the Creation Panel by clicking Pen Animation in the dropdown menu.

One thing we did notice that after closing Max 2010 and then reopening Max 2010 we were greeted by a number of warning dialogue boxes stating that Max was unable to load the Pen Animation scripts. When we went to the Create Panel's drop-down list - Pen Animation was no longer there. We had to reload the installation file in order to use the plugin. The warning boxes go away when you delete the PenAnimation folder in your Max 2010 installation and a PenAnimation folder in your plugins folder and one from you scripts folder. We are not saying this is a bug but if anyone knows a better way to fix the warning dialogue box problem please let us know at our Feedback email address.

We've been in contact with Paul Neale about this issue and have been told by Paul that they will be looking into the problem. For those interested in trying the rigs he added: "Also remind them that they can sign up for the RSS feed and they will be the first to know about updates to the rigs or the site in general."

And as a side note he said: "Good to know that Max user group meetings are still being held in some places. I wish that I was closer by and I would drop in some time but it would be a little to far out of my way." He's based in Ontario, Canada.

We'll play with rigs while we wait for the promised Camtasia instructions on the use of the rigs. We think if you already tried your hand at character animation in Max you should have no trouble getting some results just by clicking around.

Oliver reminds us of the Michael "Mike" Wazowski character voiced by actor Billy Crystal in Monsters Inc. Both Oliver and the Walter rig feel very responsive. Both should be a blast to animate.

Find out more at Paul Neale's site. It seems the whole site has a lot of good info...

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