Help:Character Making Resources

This article is meant to serve as a guide about some character tools and resources to make your own Microsoft Agent characters.

Image software

• Photoshop (recommended)
• GIMP (also recommended)
• Paint.NET (a bit limited but still pretty good)
• Microsoft Paint (limited, and will not turn out great)
• Macromedia or Adobe Flash (good start)
• Scratch (highly not recommended)
• Aviutl
• Tux Paint (limited)
• Kid Pix (limited)

3D characters

• Blender
• 3ds Max/Autodesk Maya
• Cinema 4D
• Source Filmmaker (pretty recommended for beginners and even works out for advanced animators)
• Anim8or
• Microsoft 3D Movie Maker (limited)
• MikuMikuDance
• Poser 3-7
• Hash Animation Master
• 3D Choreographer
• Reallusion iClones
• Xtranormal or Nawmal (limited)

2D characters

• Reallusion CrazyTalk Animator (also for 3D characters)
  • 1.2
  • 5
  • 6
• Anything mentioned on image software.

Effects

• Adobe Premiere or After Effects
• Vegas or Vegas Pro

Audio software

• Audacity (great for compressing sound effects)
• Wavosaur
• Ocenaudio

Character images (also known as VFX)

• Animation Factory
  • 3D Animated Clipart

• • Animation Factory - Essential Collection 3

• • Animation Factory - Essential Collection 2

• Gifcities

• DiscMaster Textfiles Image Search

Sound effects

• Sound Effects Wiki

• Perfect Scrapbook Maker

• MSAgent Sound Packs

• DiscMaster Textfiles Waveform Audios

• Sound Ideas 1000 (classical sound library used during the 1980's and 1990's)

Agent making tools

• Microsoft Agent Character Editor (recommended)
• Agent Magic (a pretty good alternative)

Miscellaneous

• ICO Converter
• Audio Converter
• MP3 Cutter
• JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler

Helpful tutorials

• Pre-Rendered SNES Sprites Tutorial (it does not have to be SNES-styled, you can make it whatever you want with this.)
• Looping Animation Tutorial

Recommended things to take notes of

1. Make sure your character is at least no bigger than 256px in size.
   1. Though if your agent does exceed 256px, make sure it at least does not acceed the size of Big Zap.
2. Make sure your character at minimum, has at least the Show, Hide, RestPose, Move, and Gesture animations.
3. It is recommended to make your animations multiple frames. Though, it will not have a major affect on your agent, as long as you follow the first two instructions.
4. You are allowed to use SOME Windows sound effects for some of your animations. You can also use a lot more if your agent is based on any version of Windows. Though, it is recommended to have at least a few sounds that are not from Windows, so that way your agents do not get dry fast.
5. If your agent consists of a mouth, it is recommended to have lip syncing in your agent.
   1. Though, if your agent lacks any sort of mouth, then this step can be skipped entirely.
6. OSC-styled characters are fine, and will always be fine, as long as they follow the first 5 things which are recommended when making a Microsoft Agent character.
7. It does not matter whenever your agent is 2D or 3D, as there are many good 2D and 3D agents, as well as many generic or mediocre 2D and 3D agents.