Machinima for Dummies

I’ve just noticed that Moviestorm have announced content rental options for their content packs, for subscribers. In short, rather than buying a content pack outright and being able to use it forever, you’re able to rent it for a day or a month to make your movie, for significantly less money.

That’s a very interesting idea. Most Moviestorm movies won’t take years to make. Being able to rent props for a day or a month, particularly if you’re planning your film well, will significantly reduce your outlay on any given movie.

Obviously, though, again it will result in movies sitting on your hard drive that you can’t play the 3D assets back from. But how much of a problem is that? I’m uncertain - I know I’ve not looked at the 3D assets for BloodSpell since I completed the film, for example.

It’s also interesting I haven’t heard much noise about this feature, and that it’s being dropped in just before Christmas. This is a pretty significant new option, we’ve never seen it before in a Machinima tool, and it represents another modification to the MS biz plan. But there’s not a lot of shouting going on, either from within or outside the MS camp.

What do you think?

OK, this falls into the “very big news” category - Epic have just announced that the Unreal Engine is now free to use for indie developers - presumably including Machinima creators. That’s very big indeed, since it’s been used for commercial Machinima already.

Anyone know how much modding the engine requires before it’s Machinima-ready, if any?

Very interesting news from the guys at Pixel Eyes Productions - they’ve been trying to enable revenue sharing through ads on YouTube, and they’ve found the following:

• YouTube won’t let them revenue share until they can prove rights to the video (not too surprising)
• Valve won’t even respond to emails from them (slightly more surprising, but we’ve seen this before from several games companies - Microsoft being the big exception.)
• Machinima.com DOES have revenue sharing enabled.

I’d be really interested to hear more on this topic from someone at the Machinima.com team - anyone?

Also, has anyone had more luck talking to Valve?

We’re always interested - nay, fascinated - to hear about new Machinima-capable engines here.

So:

• Baron Soosden’s been experimenting with Aion Machinima and has posted a piece about his work so far.
• We hear from Murray of BloodSpell fame that Uncharted 2 has a Machinima mode, which looks quite complete, although still no word on whether it’s possible to render movies out…

Just in case you’re not thoroughly sick of the sound of our voices by now, machinima blogger and creator Iceaxe (creator of Clockwork and Cloud Angel) interviewed both Johnnie and Hugh at this year’s Cambridge Film Festival. You can listen for free online:

• Johnnie talks about Moviestorm, machinima.com and the dozens of movies he’s never finished making.
• Hugh talks about machinima, molecular gastronomy and why all-over bodysuits are the way of the future.

Keep an eye on Iceaxe’s blog for more interviews, from machinima luminaries such as Roger Burlong-Strange and Dave Lloyd.

Dopefish links to this fantastic video of direct facial tracking in the Half-Life 2 engine:

Looks to me a lot like proper facial capture using nothing more than a webcam, which admittedly we’ve seen before - but we’ve not seen it in real-time. VERY interesting.

Interesting - John August reveals that he and the rest of the Prince of Persia movie team used a trailer made mostly of Machinima footage from the game to pitch to the studio execs - the pitch that got the movie made.

We’ve been saying this is possible for ages - but here’s proof.

(Also interesting that a lot of what we’ve talked about in the past has been creating the entire movie in Machinima first. Perhaps you just need a trailer?)

Having now sold enough copies of Machinima For Dummies to pay for a cup of coffee a day for a week – each! – Hugh and I were delighted to see that the book has become part of the ever-growing library of Google Books. That means you can read Machinima For Dummies for free, online. Well, most of it – as is usually the case with Google Books, a few pages have been deleted seemingly at random. Nonetheless, the majority of the book is now online, and ready for you to read legally and for free. And if you really find yourself missing those few elusive pages that didn’t make it to Google Books, Machinima For Dummies is still available to buy in old skool dead tree format – we can always use more coffee.

A couple of exciting developments in WoW Machinima:

First up, a new WoW Machinima tool, MachinimaDev has been released in beta. This is pretty exciting stuff - its capabilities go well beyond those of Modelviewer, including export to various 3D packages, limited mouth control, timeline-based shooting, cameras, loading of sets and multiple characters at the same time, and other very cool stuff. I’ve not tested it, but I’ve had an online demo, and it represents a significant advance in WoW Machinima creation. More news on it soon, because Strange Company will be using it in an upcoming production.

Secondly, I’ve just had a conversation with Simon Bradshaw on the subject of the legalities of the Machinima Agreement from Blizzard, and we’ve had a very careful look at the wording of the agreement as relates to festivals.

Previously, as you may know, the reading of the agreement was that you couldn’t submit to a film festival without asking Blizzard’s permission. However, we’ve just looked at it, and that appears to not be what it’s saying. In actual fact, the wording says that

In the event that you are required to prove to the contest organizer, festival committee, or television broadcaster that you have Blizzard Entertainment’s permission to use the images or video from World of Warcraft that appear in your Production, a content use license is provided

If you’re NOT required to prove that, it looks a lot like you are allowed to enter the festival. The wording’s a bit unclear, but it’s definitely not a “you need to ask before submitting to any festival” as we previously thought.

Obviously, this is exciting news for me and anyone else who makes WoW Machinima.

If anyone knows more on either of these points, has tried out MachinimaDev, has submitted WoW Machinima to festivals, or whatever else, please do comment!

On the “who knew?” list, it turns out that EA game Skate 2 has a remarkably sophisticated Machinima toolset for recamming (by which I mean adding camerawork to recordings of gameplay).

Given the huge “Skate Movie” culture that’s already out there (see Skateperception , it’s an interesting new angle for Machinima. I’d be interested to hear what real skate video creators thought of it. And good to see recamming making a comeback too!