Utopia Animation Editor

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Utopia Animation Editor

Rover in Utopia Animation Editor.
Name	Utopia Animation Editor
Developer(s)	Microsoft Corporation
Initial release	1995
Latest version	Unknown
Operating system	Windows 3.1 and newer
Successor	Microsoft Agent Character Editor
Discontinued?	Yes

The Utopia Animation Editor is an unreleased freeware software developed by Microsoft Corporation to allow businesses to edit and compile their own Microsoft Actor character. It allows users to create new characters for Microsoft Bob and Office 97. Users can add animations to their character from static WMF frames; they can also add sounds to the animation or assign the state that triggers the animation. Utopia Animation Editor saves character definitions as UCH files and builds the finished characters as ACT files. It is unknown how this software worked or if it is similar to the Microsoft Agent Character Editor, as the program is not publicly available and is currently still lost as of 2025.

Alternate name

Inside of UTOPIA.STF on Microsoft Bob 1.00a's install disc, the Utopia Animation Editor has an alternate name: the Microsoft Bob Character Editor. It also shows that at some point the character builder for Microsoft Actor was previously included with Microsoft Bob as an optional SDK before being removed before the final retail release.

78    yes    Want to remove for retail    SDK    Group    79 80 82                            
79    yes    Want to remove for retail    SDK FILES    CopySection    """SDK"""                            
80    yes    Want to remove for retail    SDK TOOLS    CopySection    """SDKTOOLS"""                            
81    yes                                            
82    yes    Want to remove for retail    SDKICONS    Group    83 84                            
83    yes    Want to remove for retail        AddProgmanItem    """Microsoft Bob"", ""Microsoft Bob Character Editor"",""%s\sdktools\charedit.exe"""                            
84    yes    Want to remove for retail        AddProgmanItem    """Microsoft Bob"", ""Microsoft Bob Tip Editor"",""%s\sdktools\tipedit.exe"""                            

Trivia

• It was used to create almost every Microsoft Actor character.
• Not much is known about this software.
• Utopia Animation Editor was succeeded by the Microsoft Agent Character Editor.