Creation: Horde features a powerful animation system that dynamically stitches sequences together to deliver plausible, natural motion for characters. Horde scales from one to thousands of characters in real time, making it applicable to previz and virtual-production scenarios as well as large-scale crowd work.
The semi-procedural locomotion system in Horde enables limbed creatures to navigate over complex terrain such as stairs or rough surfaces while being driven by source animation clips. This combination of keyframe animation and proceduralism allows characters to convey the intent of the artist while adapting the motion to their environment. Character skeletons are driven by customizable solvers that enable traditional animation to be layered with procedural motion such as secondary dynamics, cloth, and muscle simulation.
Horde takes full advantage of the performance capabilities of Fabric Engine's Creation Platform. Not only do these rich characters play back in real time, but also you can work with thousands of them! This real-time capability allows crowd artists to make many more changes and iterations than with traditional crowd systems. Horde front-loads creative decision making by enabling a directors to see the effect of their change requests immediately. Through deep integration with Maya and Softimage, Horde provides high-level controls to enable fine direction of agents through nulls, enabling rapid setup of formations and pathing. Horde also provides controls for direction of agent groups through a time-based painting system. With a simple brush stroke, a director can send armies into battle, start a Mexican Wave at a stadium, or manage background characters on an individual basis.
Philip Taylor
Fabric Engine Inc.