Introduction

Animidi is a plugin for CINEMA 4D Release 12 that allows you animate objects within CINEMA 4D using midi files i.e. a music driven animation. I have to admit that I was really excited about Animidi when I heard about it as I'm a big fan of the Animusic midi driven animations. In fact if it wasn't for the Animusic animations there would be no C4D Cafe. As I explain in my Bio the Cafe came about when Cafe co-founder Crew Reynolds and I became friends because of our interest in midi driven animations. At the time both of us were using trueSpace and both of us starting tinkering with Python scripting to generate animation. Between the two of us we came up with some very simple scripts that generated keyframes from midi data that we had exported out of a midi program as ascii data and which we had processed in a Spreadsheet program to remove unwanted data. I also programmed a Visual C++ plugin for trueSpace that generated the equivalent of Cinema's motions clips that contained midi driven animation. Both of us moved on to CINEMA 4D and we both had high hopes of continuing to make midi powered animations. While Crew managed a couple of simple midi driven animations in CINEMA 4D using the COFFEE scripting language, I couldn't get my head around COFFEE scripting. The biggest problem for me being an almost complete absence of documentation. That's where I left things about 6 years ago. C4D Cafe then followed. Anyway back to the review. I thought people might be interested in a little background to my involvement with midi driven animations. By the way, if you haven't seen the Animusic animations, buy the 2 DVD's. They are awesome and you won't be sorry.

Animidi is developed by well known plugin developer Lazaros going under the on-line name of Nitroman. You can find Nitroman's site here. The plugin costs 20 EUR which is about US $28. The plugin is sold under the concept of Donationware which as Nitroman explains on his website removes some of the contractual obligations he may have if he was selling the plugin as a commercial plugin i.e. there's no after purchase support and the plugin is "Sold as is". That said I have found Nitroman to be very helpful answering my questions and he brought out a new version after I made some suggestions. I encourage you to check out Nitroman's site has he has other cool plugins like the Thrausi plugin, for many of which are free.

What you get

The plugin comes as 144kb zipped file. In addition to the plugin there's 12mb of help files including short video tutorials files. Also on Nitroman's site there are some longer free video tutorials along with a demo version of the plugin. Note that English isn't his native language and you'll probably need to watch the videos a couple of times to figure out what he was saying. Like most plugins it's just a matter of placing the files in your plugin folder and starting C4D.

Video Tutorials / Review

Since the Animidi plugin is an animation plugin, to really do it justice, rather than writing pages about it I think a part written review, part series of videos tutorials will be much more informative. In addition to demonstrating the Animidi plugin I also want to demonstrate briefly how to make a midi file with a simple tune and also generate a wav file from the midi file. Generating a wav file from your midi file is essential otherwise you won't be able to hear anything. I'll use this simple tune and other simple tunes to demonstrate how things work with the Animidi plugin. I think some things are better demonstrated with a simple tune rather than a complex midi file with lots of instruments.

There are 7 tutorial videos totalling 104 minutes in duration with a combined file size of 206mb. Look out for the download links in the review (You do not need to be a member of C4D Cafe to download).

What is a Midi file?

All this talk about Midi files it might be useful to mention what they are. Midi is short for "Musical Instrument Digital Interface". Midi files (.mid) are essentially an event list of data e.g. time a note is played, pitch of note, duration of note and velocity of note plus what instrument is being played. Midi files are freely available in most cases from the Internet plus you can generate your own files either by playing a Midi capable instrument and recording yourself or by using Midi composer software. I will show you shortly how to compose a simple song using a free Midi Composer called Anvil Studio (PC only) and save it as a Midi file.

So once you have a Midi file you can't actually dive straight into using Animidi. Well you can but you won't hear anything. First you need to generate a sound file e.g. a .wav file or .aiff file to load into CINEMA 4D. The program that I use to generate wave files is called Midi2Wave Recorder (PC only).

Click here to download a 5 minute video (13mb mp4 format) on using Anvil Studio and Midi2Wav Recorder. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

Animidi Object & Getting started

 This section shows getting started with the Animidi plugin and how to load and set up a midi file into an Animidi object. The Animidi object is fundamental to using the Animidi plugin. With this object you load in a midi file and link the midi file to objects in your scene. The image below shows a midi file loaded and the first midi channel linked to a Null object that has child objects. (It's the child objects that get animated).

Animidi object settings

The Animidi object is very easy to use and it looks a lot more complicated than it really is. It's best demonstrated and explained in a video.

Click here to download a 12 minute video (22mb mp4 format) on getting started with the Animidi plugin. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

Here's the animation from this review section rendered out.

Simple animation using Animidi. Click here or on image to play video (QT 2.8mb)

Using Correct Musical Notes

In the previous review video I had 15 spheres in a row animated using Animidi playing a C Major scale (white keys) but what happens when you want to animate a real musical instrument and use correct musical notes? The following review video shows how to get the previously used C Major scale midi file being played on a mini Piano keyboard. I then move to a full and correct 88 key piano keyboard being animated to the wonderful George Winston piano solo "Thanksgiving." I probably should mention that being able to play correct musical notes is important to me since I can play classical and steel string guitar a bit. I started off learning to play piano and learning to read music but found finger style guitar playing much more my cup of tea. This explains the occasional musical reference throughout the videos. That said you don't need to be able to read music or to be able to play an instrument to use and have fun with the Animidi plugin but it does help when doing correct musical instrument animations.

Click here to download a 21 minute video (43mb mp4 format) on using correct musical notes with the Animidi plugin. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

Here's the first 30 seconds of the "Thanksgiving" animation from this review section rendered out.

First 30 seconds of Thanksgiving. Click here or on image to play video (QT 13mb)

Animidi Note Tag

 The Animidi Note Tag can be created manually like any other tag but as you have seen already the normal procedure is to create these tags automatically. Most of the time you don't need to do anything with these tags but occasionally as shown in the videos previously you may need to look up the note information. The image below shows the Attributes Manager settings for a Note tag applied to an object. A little disconcerting is it gives the impression that some of the values can be changed. They can't. If you do try and change the value by dragging on the spinners as soon as you refresh the scene the values revert back to what they were before. The only 2 options you have is the Use Debug Color option. This can be disabled on a per note basis but typically you would disable the Debug Color option on a per track basis from the Animidi object. The other option is Start Offset option. This changes when the note begins to play. You often need an Offset when you have something like a hammer striking something and the hammer needs to start moving before the note is played. Again while this can be changed on a per note basis you would usually do it on the Animidi object and apply the offset to all notes of a track. (Note: When you change the Offset on the Animidi Object you need to update the Note tags by pressing the Update button on the Tracks tab of the Animidi object).

Animidi Note Tag Attributes

One thing to be aware of is the information values displayed in the Attributes Manager will change if the note is played more than once. The values are what's coming up the next time that the note is played.

The Animidi Help shows how to write a simple Python Script to access the Animidi Note Tag and how to animate the object it is applied to. This then allows you to program your own animation similar to how the Animidi Effects Tag works. You would do this if and when you needed to do something the Animidi Effects Tag couldn't easily do.

There's an issue when you don't use the correct musical notes option. The note tags are not applied to your objects from lowest not to highest note as you might expect. What occurs is the note tags are applied in the order that they first appear in the midi file. If the first note in a tune is say B followed by an A note the first object gets the B note tag and the second object gets the A note tag. The current work around to resolve this is to manually rearrange the note tags so that they go from lowest to highest pitch. I have spoken to the plugin developer about this and he is going to have a look at fixing this problem in a future version.

Note tags are not applied lowest to highest pitch. Click here or on image to play video (QT 6.5mb)

Animidi Effects Tag

 The Animidi Effects tag as shown already is used to animate your objects. Essentially any parameter that can be animated in CINEMA 4D can be dragged and dropped into the "Effects" field. You then have options for minimum and maximum amounts, speed and some advanced options on setting up offsets and synching.

Animidi Effects Tag Options

Like with other Animidi Tags, things are best explained in a video. The Animidi Effects Tag is the most complex object in the plugin so takes quite a bit of explaining.

Click here to download a 47 minute video (88mb mp4 format) on using the Animidi Generator tag. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

I've done my best in the video to explain the Offset and Synching options. They are a little clunky to use and you need to experiment a lot as results can be unpredictable. As mentioned in the video at this point in time the Cumulative option doesn't appear to working correctly with version Animidi 1.0.8 that I was using in the review. Let's hope this gets fixed in a future version.

Animidi Generator Tag

 The Animidi Generator Tag allows you clone Generator type objects on to objects that have a Note tag applied. Typical usage is to clone a Particle Emitter to make smoke steam effects come out of your objects as notes play. The following video shows how to set this tag up to emit steam.

Click here to download a 7 minute video (13mb mp4 format) on using the Animidi Generator tag. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

Here's the animation from the above tutorial.

Animidi Generator Tag, Particles & Pyrocluster Click here or on image to play video (QT 7.3mb)

This is one powerful tag but it does run into a few issues as I mentioned in the video. One is that particle speed on the generated emitters is usually 120 times faster than the original emitter so you have to compensate by slowing the speed down on the original emitter. Secondly the loop option makes the emitters do funny things like either not working after a certain time and or emitting too many particles. As far as I can tell the loop option works best where the generated on the fly object is something like a cloner object generating some clones. What you have to do is then animate the visibility of the Cloner object. The loop option makes the Cloner and its clones visible for the duration of the note. If you don't animate the visibility then the cloner and its clones once generated remain on screen for the rest of the animation which is not what you want.

Here's a cool animation where a cloner object with cube clones is being generated on the fly use the same Lonely Shepherd midi file as previously. To spice things up I added a Random effector and MoDynamics. I reckon this so cool, you get the entire song and at a higher resolution :)

Animidi Generator Tag, Cloner & MoDynamics Click here or on image to play video (QT 84mb)

Animidi Material Tag

 The Animidi Material Tag is a very simple tag that allows you to change the colour of objects that have a Note tag from an "Off" colour to an "On" colour. The following 5 minute video shows how easy this is to set up.

Click here to download a 5 minute video (11mb mp4 format) on using the Animidi Material Tag. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

Animidi PSR Tag

 The Animidi PSR (Position, Scale and Rotate) tag is used when you want to animate the position, scale and rotation of an object. You can animate just position for example or if you want, you can have all 3 animated. Although all of this can be done using a Animidi Effects tag, using a PSR tag is quicker and tidier e.g. if you want to animate all 3 axes of Position, Scale and Rotation you would need 9 Animidi Effects tags. The same results can be achieved with just one Animidi PSR tag applied to the object. The only caveat is you can't play around with offset as you can when an Effects Tag is used. The following videos demonstrates the Animidi PSR tag.

Click here to download a 7 minute video (14mb mp4 format) on using the Animidi Material Tag. Unzip and play the mp4 file with your video player.

Here's the first 30 seconds of the animation from the PSR tutorial. Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" (although I refer to it as the "The Sting." in the tutorial, it's the theme tune from the movie "The Sting").

PSR Tag in action Click here or on image to play video (QT 12mb)

Baking / Bake Helper Tag

On the Tools tab of an Animidi object there are commands to bake your animation. This allows you bake your animation into keyframes. You could then if you wanted to pass your baked scene on to someone who didn't have the Animidi plugin.

Animidi animations can be baked out to keyframes

The settings are very straight forward and there is no need for me to make a video tutorial. You can define the start and end frames in case you only want to bake a range of your animation. There is an option to delete any Animidi tags (doesn't delete Bake Helper tags) which in almost every case you will want to do because if you don't the combination of keyframed animation and midi driven animation doesn't usually play back correctly.

The Bake Helper option is only used when the mode on an Animidi Effects tag is set to Switch i.e. a checkbox that is either On or Off. Enabling this option is essential when baking when using the Switch mode on an Animidi Effects tag otherwise keyframes are not recorded. Note however that a special Bake Helper  tag is created on your objects that were previously animated with the plugin. The Bake Helper tag then gets a Boolean type keyframe created. One caveat is baked animation with Bake Helper tags can only be used or shared with those having the Animidi plugin.

Documentation / Tutorials (By Nitroman)

The Animidi plugin comes with a basic Help / Documentation system. This system includes a few short videos. Also on Nitroman's site are some free video tutorials on using the plugin. To be honest, the documentation and the free video tutorials aren't that good. The video quality of the tutorials is terrible plus Nitroman is not a native English speaker so following along can be difficult. However the basics of using the plugin are covered and you should be able to start doing some fun animations after working your way through the videos and Help System. Fortunately Nitroman is a lot better at making plugins than he is of making tutorials. That's where I come in with this review and the accompanying videos that hopefully will fill the gap. There were some things I couldn't figure out from the documentation that I had to ask Nitroman about. He kindly obliged with either a written explanation or a short video. But hey, remember the price is only 20 EUR and not sold as commercial software so only having rudimentary documentation could be expected.

Looking Forward

While I was putting the review together I was in regular contact with Nitroman. One of things that I suggested for a future version was the ability for something like a drum stick or hammer to be play multiple notes rather than having to have one drum stick or hammer for each note. Here's a sneak preview of Animidi 1.1 where rather than having 8 hammers there's only 1. This new version has a new tab and a few extra settings on the Animidi Effects tag. In addition, to get this to work a PoseMorph tag (Studio Edition) is required. There's still a bit of work required before this new version can be released. One problem that you may have spotted in the animation is the hammer has no interpolation between the up position and the down position. It's one or the other with no in between states.

Sneak preview of Animidi 1.1 Click here or on image to play video (QT 4mb)

Conclusion

This is an excellent plugin. It's a bit rough around the edges and the documentation is mediocre. But as mentioned in the review the plugin at 20 Eur (Approx US $28) is cheap and you get an incredible amount of bang for buck or bang for Euro as the case may be. If the price had been higher I would have expected far better documentation and things to be a bit more polished.

It goes without saying that I had a lot of fun with this plugin and I feel as though I've only just started to get the hang of using it. As mentioned the documentation isn't the best so to help out I decided that supplementing this review with some tutorials will help many people out as I know I struggled quite a bit trying to figure a few things out. Thanks to Nitroman for answering all of my questions. I should now be able to model some elaborate music instruments and generate some very cool animations. That's the plan anyway.