Utopia Animation Editor

Utopia Animation Editor

Default screen of the Utopia Animation Editor.
Name	Utopia Animation Editor
Developer(s)	Microsoft Corporation
Initial release	1993
Latest version	1.80
Latest version release date	October 27th, 1994 (31 years ago)
Written in	Visual Basic 3.0 (charedit.exe), Visual C++ (writeact.dll)
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Successor	Microsoft Agent Character Editor
Discontinued?	Yes

The Utopia Animation Editor is a Microsoft-developed character and animation authoring tool used to build Microsoft Actor-format assets. It imports artwork as .WMF or .BMP "cast members", assembles them into multi-frame actions with timing, sound, and conditional branching, and compiles the result into .ACT files (characters) or .ANI files (animations), depending on the template selected via WRITEACT.DLL.

Microsoft Actor characters were used by products such as Microsoft Bob and by the Office Assistant in Microsoft Office 97, with Utopia Animation Files being a more Microsoft Bob-specific component.

In 2025, the SDK disc containing the Utopia Animation Editor was uploaded to MSBob.org.

Overview

The editor is organized as a "flipbook" workflow, with the main section for characters being:

• Cast - import and manage the reusable artwork pieces (cast members).
• Rest Pose - assemble the global rest pose (the pose all actions return to).
• Animations - build actions as multi-frame animations, with optional sound, per-frame duration, and conditional branches.
• History - define metadata and a snapshot scene (used by character choosers).
• Vocabulary - define text "snippets" used by the character’s speech balloons.

Usage

Creating a character

Upon launch, the Utopia Animation Editor provides several templates, including a Personal Character (designed for Microsoft Bob), a Specialist Character (designed for Bob sub-applications or other Actor programs), various buttons, or a General Animation. Upon a choice being selected, the user can add "pieces" to use in the character, such as a .WMF that contains eyes and another .WMF that contains the mouth. Upon being added, these pieces can be dragged in a frame upon the "Rest Pose" being completed first, as the Rest Pose is what every animation returns to upon completion. These pieces once in the frame, can then be adjusted vertically/horizontally, or scaled to be bigger or smaller, a stark contrast from the pre-rendered characters that Microsoft Agent generates. As such, Utopia characters are rendered in real time by an engine, present in UTOPIA.DLL (Microsoft Bob), GWUTIL97.DLL (Microsoft Greetings Workshop 2.0), CHAR11.DLL (Microsoft Agent Beta), or the modern re-implementation Frontier Actor to name a few.

The History and Vocabulary tabs contain inputs for a Microsoft Actor's metadata, where the user can assign a name, description, birth date, gender, phrases, or any other information necessary for their character. The history section also contains a section for adding a background, which is recommended to be a size of 342 pixels wide and 306 pixels tall.

Animation system

Animations are frame-based:

• The first and last frame are fixed rest-pose frames.
• Per-frame properties include duration and optional sound.
• Frames may include up to three conditional branches, each with a target frame and probability percentage, enabling randomized variation inside a single action.

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 in 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"""                            

Gallery

• 
  Default screen of the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  Cast section of the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  Rest Pose section of the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  Animation section of the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  History section of the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  Vocabulary section of the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  Rover in the Utopia Animation Editor.
• 
  Debug Data Structures window.
• 
  Size scaling window.
• 
  Character preview window.
• 
  Shortcuts window.
• 
  About window.

Trivia

• It was used to create almost every Microsoft Actor character.
• Due to the program's 16-bit architecture, Utopia Animation Editor can no longer run natively on modern versions of Windows.
• Utopia Animation Editor was succeeded by the Microsoft Agent Character Editor.
• The Utopia Animation Editor requires the Visual Basic 3.0 runtime.