How many times have you simulated something and thought “well if i could just change that one little thing right there”? ChronoSculpt will allow you to do that, allowing you to sculpt and make changes to animation cache files from any application.

The LightWave Group announced a stand-alone application that they say will revolutionize working with dynamics and aniamtion chache files from any other 3D Application in CronoSculpt.

ChronoSculpt will allow you to modify and essentially sculpt, industry standard vertex cache files in the Alembic, LightWave MDD, or Autodesk Geometry Cache formats. You can “paint” out any errors in dynamic simulations, or completely change the look over a model which layered sculpted changes, that are time based – So its basically like using ZBrush or Mudbox across the entire animation cache, allowing you to affect every frame in the animation globally.

ChronoSculpt also introduces a radical new geometry engine based on our “Hydra” technology which allows the deformation and manipulation of 8 to 10 million polygon objects with ease

You will also be able to export any frame from the sculpt or deformation to LightWave, or OBJ formats. Simply being able to change how a simulation looks, or fix errors, almost on the fly without the need to re-simulate is an interesting premise. ChronoSculpt will offer:

  • Revolutionary Time Sculpting: allowing you to quickly and easily remove dynamics simulation errors, and jitters to sculpt deformations on cache files from most 3D software programs
  • Sculpting Tools: Use tools like sculpt, drag, pinch and erase to deform and manipulate geometry over time
  • Transform Tools: Edit individual geometry over time within a dynamics simulation cache, using tools like Transform, Pin, and Bulge to complete projects quickly
  • Enhanced Geometry Engine: Handle massive geometry files, 8 to 10 million polygon objects can be edited with ease.
  • Universal File Support: ChronoSculpt supports LWO, OBJ, LightWave MDD, Autodesk Geometry Cache, and Alembic for easy integration into all software pipelines
  • OBJ Blend Shape and Endomorph Export: Easily save any frame from the ChronoSculpt timeline as an OBJ for Maya Blend Shapes or as an Endomorph directly to LightWave object files to create facial morph targets and deformation effects
  • Clip Timeline: Quickly reposition and adjust the length of your ‘sculpts’ anywhere in the timeline to get the perfect effect on your cache animations or make global changes that apply to the whole animation

ChronoSculpt is priced at $399 and right now you can get it for $299, with the final version shipping some time in Q4 of 2013.