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HEAT Bridge still active?

brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,276
in Daz Studio Discussion

Is the HEAT Bridge still an active add-on for DAZ Studio? When I run the Bridge in Windows, access to the server app-bridge.heat.tech does not work. The documentation at https://docs.heat.tech/ is avaiable, but the Bridge is not. Has it been updated and must be redownloaded?

 

Comments

  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,276

    The answer is HEAT Tech is no more and has been shut down. There website announcement is here:

    https://heat.tech/

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,940
    edited December 2025

    I just received an email from them announcing the shutdown.

    The only thing surprising about it is that it took this long for them to fail. I mean, they were nothing more than an attempt to set up a subscription service providing prefab mocap animations that were qualitatively no better than what you could get for free from mixamo.
    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,940
    edited December 2025

    There's still a viable commercial market for motion capture systems as long as they include an essentially universal translation feature built-in that makes them viable for people needing to output to their specific character rig ecosystems. Rokkoko is a prime example.

    The HEAT system, however, was trying to charge you a monthly fee for access to their generic mocap files and essentially left it up to the buyer to figure out how he was going to retarget to his specific rigs.

    Now most game development companies or professional animation studios do have a retargeting system such as the one already built into Maya or Iclone or some proprietary solution.

    But they are also using their own bespoke, motion capture systems in-house.

    However, for people who cannot afford such solutions, there was the free mixamo libraries,which still left you with the task of figuring out how to translate the mixamo motions to whatever character rig system you were using but at least the motion files are free 

    IMHO HEAT was doomed from the very beginning.cool

    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,276

    Yeah, it was an off business model and I had better luck retargeting import animations in Blender than Studio. Now I gotta remember how to apply FBX animations to the Mixamo G9 rig I have for Studio. Been too long. 

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,398

  • brainmuffinbrainmuffin Posts: 1,276

    I'll never forget my Discord call with one of their developers correcting his scripts to work in Linux.

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 3,270

    I never understood what they thought they were offering. If I, who doesn't even do Python very well, can write a script to essentially retarget any animation to a DAZ armature, how hard can it be? And I suspect that nowadays, an LLM could write the whole thing in a matter of seconds.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,940
    edited January 4

    The actual text from their announcement email:
    "Dear HEAT Community,

    It is with a heavy heart that we share that HEAT has officially wound down operations.

    We built HEAT to make motion data a true asset class so performance artists could earn recurring revenue from their movements, and so animators and 3D creators could build faster, better, and with more expressive tools. In some ways we were early, and in other ways we were simply too late. Ultimately, we are unable to sustain the platform, so we are shutting down our services.

    Last week we closed our platform and cancelled all existing subscriptions.

    As part of our farewell, we will release our in-house animation library to the public for free. Details will follow on our X and Discord.

    Thank you for believing in and using HEAT. We are proud to have helped thousands of artists bring their projects to life. Your support, encouragement, and curiosity over these last few years meant the world to us. We wish you all the best in your creative 3D endeavors.

    Signing off,
    Josh, John, Brady, Jake, Jeff, Alfredo, Curtis, and Roberto"

     

    I never understood what they thought they were offering.

     

     

    The simple fact is, there's only one demographic that truly needs a large library of prefabbed mocap, and that is game developers.
    And even then, there's actually a finite number of basic human biped motionsone would need to produce any type of character animation that you're going to see in a video game.

    And finally if you factor in the introduction of a software such as Cascadeur that gives you enough unique variety with its autophysics system. 
    There really is no commercial market left for a canned library of  biped motions, particularly on a monthly subscription model.  

    Post edited by wolf359 on
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