IKinema now available in UE4 for $19,99/month for movie like procedural animation

Just purchased a license, this is awesome!
works really well, I’ve always hated web-based tools but I must say, this one works almost as well as a desktop application, well done!

Hi ,

Very tempting. I’ve already tinkered with your web based tools and planned to utilize them in my pipeline.

This observation from an above post does concern me:

[QUOTE]
So from my layman understanding of your license, a developer would have to withdraw from sale any game that they had used Ikinema in, as soon as they stop subscribing.

If your tools are integrated in a project, is this really the case?

Cheers,
-D

Hi Guys,

Glad to hear that you like our tools.

Re: licensing - this is definitely not the case and the agreement is not meant to read in this way.

Essentially:

  • you can publish a game as long as you have a subscription at the time of publishing
  • once you publish the game, you don’t need a subscription
  • if you cancel a subscription, we assume that you are not interested in our tool or the project doesn’t need it.

I guess you can be on and off of a subscription depending on the dynamics of your work but we expect your support guys
so that we can bring all ideas/tools to this pipeline.

We are working on an amendment to the agreement to clarify the points above. This will go out sometime next week
and I will drop a line here.

Best

Thanks for the clarification!

Hi,

I’m confused, We downloaded the demo and it seems we still need a plugin. It made sense to me we had to subscribe to the service so I went on your website page ; http://www.ikinema.com/?mod=product_request&show=4

It seems that to buy the access for pc (unreal engine?) we need to subscribe here; /index.php?keyword=ikinemapage#signup

I did that and paid the 20 bucks through paypal but I still don’t find any location as to where to Download the UE4 plugin?

Ok I think I got it , there’s another subscription required and I’ve probably subscribed to the webkinema for nothing (we use maya).

To be honest and even though the price is low, I feel I have been misled buying another thing I did not need, not the best thing to do with new customers:-/

Regards

Hi there
I think you might have subscribed to a wrong package in , did you use professional for Game Developers?

Only this package allows exporting rigs and getting the UE4 plugin.
We have another package for $19,99 which is mainly used for mocap work.

Shall we refund you so that you can move to the appropriate package?

You can still use Maya and then apply the rig in .

Let me know

I’m having some trouble running the demo project. I’ve installed the plugin, following the instructions in your video.

However, when I try to launch the “IKinemaGame” project, I get an error: “The game module ‘IKinemaGame’ could not be found. Please ensure that this module exists and that it is compiled.”

I didn’t see any corresponding visual studio projects in the demo directory. Is there some other step I need to take before launching the demo project?

Hi natemartinsf,

The “IKinemaGame” Demo project is a code (c++) project. To be able to run it, you will need to right click on the IKinemaGame.uproject file, Then generate visual studio files. Once this is complete. Once this is done, run visual studio->choose the Development Editor configuration, then compile and run the game.

This should get you going with loading and experimenting with the demo pack.

Whoa, wait. Does this handle all animation and rigging? Or is it just an extension to add procedural effects to animations?
If it’s the first, this would be amazing in a pipeline with Modo, since rigging and animations are that program’s weak point.

[QUOTE=Mafibasheth;22266]
I followed your steps and I receive a ‘break point’ error message when attempting to compile.

Have you copied IKinema UE4 plugin to the correct location?

You should have Plugins/IKinema folder either under your game project or under Unreal4 plugin folder. Inside you should have the content of the IKinema.zip pack as downloaded from .

Let me know if this is the case.

You should have something like this
directory.PNG

[QUOTE=Grimwolf;21972]
Whoa, wait. Does this handle all animation and rigging? Or is it just an extension to add procedural effects to animations?
If it’s the first, this would be amazing in a pipeline with Modo, since rigging and animations are that program’s weak point.

Hi
is going in this direction but we will be releasing soon the missing functionalities for key manipulation. Currently it is mainly a mocap manipulation tool and a rigging tool for the RunTime engine in Unreal. You can still use Modo or other software for the animation work until we get all in place.

I’m very curious why you would choose to use a web page instead of a standalone program. Seems like a bad idea to me, since you can’t work without a steady internet connection.

[QUOTE=Grimwolf;22400]
I’m very curious why you would choose to use a web page instead of a standalone program. Seems like a bad idea to me, since you can’t work without a steady internet connection.

will be available in a stand-alone form; It is designed to do that. The browser was a suitable choice since the other use of is linked to mocap rework with some limits on the exports for the free version.

[QUOTE=MattW;18959]
@anonymous_user_6def4a85

From reading through your license agreement, it seems that while you can cancel the subscription at anytime, but once you do cancel you lose all rights to use Ikinema in any way. Which includes having it in a game that you have already developed and are already selling. So from my layman understanding of your license, a developer would have to withdraw from sale any game that they had used Ikinema in, as soon as they stop subscribing.

While $19.99 a month seems a very reasonable price, this does seem a unusual license. Normally I would expect to at least be able to continue to sell games that was developed while I was subscribing, even if I couldn’t use the product to develop any future games

Hi
We have reviewed the terms clarifying some of the questions you have raised. Please have a look at clause 17(d). I hope this clears it.

The “tool” looks really cool no question but 20 bucks a month? really? If every tool developer comes up now with a subscriber program we all will pay soon like 2000 bucks a month…
It’s the second month i pay the UE4 subscriber program but it feels ok for me because the weekly releases of cool and very useful demos “to learn” are a kind of invaluable for me… oh and of course you get a full engine for the price…
So no offense but in my opinion this wont work out for a long time…

Hi, fair point - the question is - what do you gain from a tool. If you don’t gain anything - you don’t need it; but if you do, say saving you time producing 15 animations vs. doing it procedurally, then it is worth having it, the choice is yours.

Hey , thanks for posting and responding to everyone’s questions. I’m a little confused as to what Ikinema actually does.
Does it have an animation library your can apply to a solver/hierarchy of bones? Or is it a tool that allows for more natural animation across several models?

Thats right, saving time is of course a important point… but in my opinion 19 USD a month for just a tool is a way to much…
These days you pay for two high premium “full applications” like Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC just 9,99 USD a month… and we are talking here about full high class standalone applications.

Take a look at the new quixel Suite, it is also an amazing tool “basically more than one tool” with really great features, the difference is i can get it for 49 USD as a student.
As i wrote, no offense it is just my opinion and also the opinion of some of my friends… anyway nice tool and good luck!

It’s a tool for dynamically modifying animations, so for instance there’s the club swinging animation, you create that animation and then IKinema can make it so that when the club hits something it changes the animation like he actually hit something. Or you could modify the animation so that he would actually try and hit a specific point with the club, all from using a single club swinging animation.