Using Mixamo To Speed Up Art Development and Lower Art Costs in Games

Louis, from Mixamo, talks about ways to speed up and lower your art development costs

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-mixamo.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]RW5BD-vuBMg[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect in Seattle, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Luis: Hello, my name is Luis Lundgren and I’m Technical Sales Manager at Mixamo.

Interviewer: And what’s Mixamo about?

Luis: Mixamo is an animation service online, and we provide high quality character animation for a fraction of the price and time.

Interviewer: And what are the services that people can use their game for?

Luis: Mainly, we offer a quick plan for animation in the sense that you can upload your character, choose a motion, it’s looped and clean. And then, you’re able to bring it back to your Unity project or your indie project, and it works flawlessly.

Interviewer: I interviewed you guys at Austin GDC a while back. So, what’s changed since then? You were talking about offering 3D support. You were about to offer 3D support. Can you talk about what people can do on your site?

Luis: Now, we have full on, all the separate packages are fully integrated, fully supported [?]. We also have now character creator and you can match character creator pro. You match facial features. It has levels of detail, and you can download directly from our site.

Interviewer: So, people can make their own character then using your tools.

Luis: Exactly, yeah. It’s a character creation tool, and it’s pretty advanced so we’re pretty proud of it.

Interviewer: What’s the cost now for models and rendering? So, how does that work?

Luis: So, we have two types of models. We have the free ones which are kind of more for prototyping or rapid previewing. And then, we have the pro characters there. They’re like $40, but they come with all, like, texture, rigged and levels of details, and they’re ready to play.

Interviewer: Now, what are the environments that people use this in? Is it just in Unity, or are people using it in Flash and other things? Where do people use this? Is this for more hard core games, or can it be used for casual games?

Luis: Well, no, actually we tailor it from the indie to the AAA. But, mainly our core customers are indie game developers, and they mainly use Unity and they use Shiva. We have some people that sometimes they used it in Flash and Yogurt 3D. So, now it’s starting to get some traction on the flash side.

Interviewer: What are some games for applications that have successfully used your service?

Luis: They’re the number one app on iPhone. It’s called Touch KO. That was published by Chillingo, and we worked with them directly. It was quoted from the developer that it took him six months the first time to make animation on that, and with us, with our service it took him two weeks.

Interviewer: Any other things? I see the list of stuff here. So, you have Buddy Poke which is a flash.

Luis: Exactly. Buddy Poke is a flash. It’s pretty big in Brazil. We did over 300 motions for them, dance motions and two people captures. And then, also, we have gamers who we’re working with. We’re developing an MMO yet unreleased but a Unity-based MMO. We’re going to give them the motions. We’re going to provide the motions for it.

Interviewer: So, the main benefit then is pretty much accelerated development time and accelerated time for the art assets.

Luis: Yeah, it’s accelerated, very accelerated from model creation to animation. And then, we are spending that time budget onto finessing and then polishing the overall product. So, indie games can start to look like a finished game, like a AAA game.

Interviewer: The pricing is pretty reasonable, then.

Luis: Yes. Our pricing ala carte is from $10 to $60 for motion and then with subscription prices it goes down to an average of $6 per motion.

Interviewer: Now, these games, do they have to work directly with you or can they use your tools? Do they just go online and find the pre-made?

Luis: Yes, they can work with us directly, if they would like to. But, actually we have a lot of customers that just come on the site, purchase things, download without any involvement with us.

Interviewer: Where then can people start using your service?

Luis: It’s online. So, if you have an Internet access, you just go onto Mixamo.com. You start and set up your account, upload your rig and start developing.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.