Machinima for Dummies

I’m sure I’m late to the party here, and a lot of you will already know about and regularly use the freeware video encoder Super, but just in case there are people who, like me until very recently, have no knowledge of its existence, I’m blogging about it here.

Super is basically a GUI wrapper around the free and open-source ffmpeg codec and encoding library. Although there’s theoretically nothing that Super can do that clever command-line use of ffmpeg couldn’t also achieve, Super makes it oh-so-very-much easier. As regular readers will know, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Linux fanboy, used to working on reasonably complicated tasks using the shell or command line. Unadulterated ffmpeg still makes my head spin.

The reason that I’m bringing Super to your attention specifically is that the latest version of ffmpeg can encode magnificently to Quicktime. We strongly recommend purchasing Quicktime Pro in the book, and I’ll stick by that recommendation as an excellent encoding solution, but ffmpeg wrapped in Super is definately worth considering before you get your credit card out – it’s freeware!

(Windows-only, I’m afraid, * nix fans, although ffmpeg itself is cross-platform.)

Second Life has just had a major graphics upgrade, in the form of the new “Windlight” client. Whilst this doesn’t solve all the problems that we discuss in the book connected to Second Life, it certainly does massively increase its usability for some projects - if you’re doing a primarily landscape-based piece (like Robbie Dingo’s awesome “Watch the Worlds”), you should definitely check this out.

Even if you’re not, the technology is worth a look for compositing purposes - you could, for example, use this to generate an landscape to composite in outside a MovieStorm set.

Here’s a short film highlighting some of the visuals now available in SL, made by the inimitable Fleef of Fling Films.

Moviestorm, which features pretty heavily in the book, officially left Beta status a few hours ago. Moviestorm 1.0 is a brand new release, featuring new base assets, a new interactive tutorial, and – best of all – the long-awaited return of the Modders Workshop! And about darned time too, as Moviestorm Beta users will attest.

Moviestorm 1.0 and the new Base pack are completely free to download and use, and any machinima you create is yours to exploit, so take a look if you haven’t already.

Moviestorm has moved on so much since we wrote Machinima For Dummies that I really wouldn’t recommend trying to follow on with the book using this new version of the software. Not to worry, though – you can safely install and run this new version and the version we supplied on our cover DVD simultaneously. Just resist the urge to click “Yes” when you’re asked if you want to do an automatic update.

If you’re already a Moviestorm user, note that Moviestorm’s automatic update process won’t update to this new release. There’s a fat goody bag of new content, so you’ll have to visit your Downloads page on the Moviestorm site to grab the new gear.

We’ll try to get an updated version of the Moviestorm sections from the book up on the blog soon – both Hugh and I are up to our necks in busy-ness at the moment!

(Disclosure: I’m employed by Short Fuze as Moviestorm’s Technical Author)

Ricky Grove has written an extensive and thoughtful review of MfD over at the CG super-site Renderosity - a good read!

We recommend focus-grouping your work a bunch of times in Machinima for Dummies - where by “focus-grouping”, we mean “getting people who aren’t you to watch your film before it’s released”.

It’s one of the most valuable processes you can go through. Ideally, it’s most valuable when you can cross-question your audience, but any eyeballs that aren’t yours or your team’s on your work will help pick up the problems that you’re too close to what you’re doing to be aware of.

The problem, of course, is finding people to focus-group on - particularly people you don’t know! By definition, you can’t just call them. Or at least, you couldn’t.

Amazon.com’s new ”Mechanical Turk” technology looks to be perfect for doing low-cost “mall tests” of your film. Essentially, it allows you to hire as many people as you want for a very small task - like, say, watching a short movie and commenting on it. In terms of costs, it’s very cheap indeed - this Slashdot poster paid $1.45 for people to come up with rebuttals to an argument he was making online, for example.

So it would be trivial to set aside a budget of $30 or so - well within reach if you’ve spent a month or two on a film - and use Mechanical Turk to find out what Real People think of your film before release, allowing you to correct any mistakes, make clearer anything that isn’t, polish the bits that clunk, and generally get you closer to that 4,500,000 hit YouTube smash!

Ok, so I’m going to be in Vancouver between the 13th and the 17th of November. I’m mostly on holiday, but wouldn’t object to meeting Machinima people whilst I’m there!

(I’m also going to be in Montreal and Edmonton on that trip, but I’ll put a seperate post up about that.)

So - any Machinima enthusiasts out there in the cold north, and if so, care to show a tired author your friendly local beer establishments?

I tend to watch music videos for a good sense of the state of the art in FX and editing - what you see there will get to feature films about two years later.

If you want the same kind of insight into Machinima right now, I recommend you watch the world of Baron Soosden, combining World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life 2 and some truly spectacular editing using Sony Vegas and After Effects.

Seriously, this stuff (particularly his latest videos, I’m So Sick and Unlimited Escapism vol. 0 ,) is just amazing. Incredibly high-quality work for video editing as a whole, never mind just Machinima. Not particularly narrative, but technically stunning. He’s one of not a lot of Machinima creators whose new work I immediately watch.

Check it out.

We spend some time on Page 362 enthusing about the brilliant World of Warcraft-made Edge of Remorse. We also generally sing the praises of the equally brilliant (but totally different) Return. Unfortunately, it seems that we got so carried away writing about these two films that we accidentally referred to Edge of Remorse as Edge of Return at the bottom of page 362.

Oops. Sorry Jason! (Thanks to Simon Taylor for bringing this one to our attention)

We interrupt your regular MfD for this news…

The feature-length cut of BloodSpell is now available for viewing. This is a full feature film, made in Machinima using Neverwinter Nights, that took us (by which I mean me and a crew of about 25 other people coming in and out) four years to make. It has been featured on the BBC, Suicide Girls, Boingboing, USA Today’s blogging site, in the Guardian, the Telegraph, SFX magazine, and more.

It’s a “punk fantasy” adventure story - see here for the full scoop.

We’re really proud of it, and we think that it shows the full power of Machinima to enable people to make movies they couldn’t make any other way.

Enjoy.

I’ve just learned that I’m quoted in a recent magazine (I’m not going to go into more details until I’ve tracked down what happened) being less than enthusiastic about Microsoft’s Machinima rules, after the meeting that Fred and I had with them.

I don’t recall the interview, and I don’t recall the context in which I might have said things, but I’m rather surprised that I was quoted as anything other than enthusiastic about Microsoft’s response to Machinima after that initial meeting. I think it was pretty clear that I was enthusiastic.

However, let me just state for the record: with the exception of not-exactly-games people like Linden Labs, Microsoft’s recent moves make them absolutely the most responsive and intelligent, not to say just generally cool, games company in their approach to Machinima by a country mile. I wish more games companies were following suit not just in releasing Machinima rules, but in then being open to discussion and negotiation with the community they’re supporting. Microsoft are really leading the way on this one, and I’m very impressed by them, and particularly by the work of Don McGowan, who is leading the effort.