







Animata is an open source real-time animation software, designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances.

The peculiarity of the software is that the animation - the movement of the puppets, the changes of the background - is generated in real-time, making continuous interaction possible. This ability also permits that physical sensors, cameras or other environmental variables can be attached to the animation of characters, creating a cartoon reacting to its environment. For example, it is quite simple to create a virtual puppet band reacting to live audio input, or set up a scene of drawn characters controlled by the movement of dancers.

In contrast with the traditional 3D animation programs, creating characters in Animata is quite simple and takes only a few minutes. On the basis of the still images, which serve as the skeleton of the puppets, we produce a network of triangles, some parts of which we link with the bone structure. The movement of the bones is based on a physical model, which allows the characters to be easily moved.