Yeah, xtranormal is what got me interested in this. It was a web-based animation system that worked from a text script.

It was free, but the output of video is rather large, and they were hosting all the stored video (which cost them money)

Can you see what might go wrong with the business model? And of course, it did. The original free site went down, and they are now reinventing the idea, but this time it won't be free.

my all-time favorite xtranormal video: