Probably the last person to announce their result, I was very pleased to find out when I returned home on the weekend, that BEAST had won best drama in the Online Machinima Film Festival held in Second Life. It was only in the running for that one award, so I feel very lucky indeed. This is also the first festival (albeit virtual) that a Binary Picture Show film has recieved an award in and that has been a big boost to us. Thanks to everyone who contributed to our win.
In addition to that, BEAST has also been nominated for the Machinima award in this years Bitfilm festival! The real honour here is that there has been a GREAT selection of films for that category, so while it makes it much tougher for us to win it's really great for BEAST just to be standing along side the others. Any BPS fans please give us that helping hand and rate the film if you can, it's an audience decided award.
Thirdly as some of you might have read elsewhere, 3D Wolrd Magazine issue 104 had a six (or so) page feature on Machinima, and BEAST was a big part. It's most definately our best appearance in a magazine to date we're really proud of it!
I miss the simple times when everything was easier.
When Machinima first started, things were simpler because the games were simpler. Modding was easier and the audience generally understood that a lot of imagination was required from them for the film to make any kind of sense. If a gun looked more like a baguette, or if a tree looked more like a brown trident with green safety tips, it didn't matter. You got a pass. Granted, the technical side of Machinima was shaky ground and for almost all of us there was a big learning curve in that respect, but creatively we got away with murder.
Custom animations were so rare even after a while, that bobbing characters' bodies backwards and forwards was an acceptable substitute for emoting. If the camera was on a character while you heard a voice, your imagination did the lip sync.
The reason I'm taking you back in time is because of my own feelings of distance from the naive 18 year old boy I was when Machinima began changing me. Back then the sky truly was the limit. There was no such thing as "start small" dammit, if I could imagine the film I could create it - such is Machinima's power - all hail the new king!! To me there was no difference between what we were doing and what the guys at Pixar were doing (yeah, I know). What they did was CGI, and as far as I was concerned we had the same. I didn't take into account any of the many things we ignored as game players. Foot sliding, frame skipping, bad quality sound, cuboid heads, awkward poses (really, removing the gun from the character's hand and leaving him in that weird pose made him look even weirder) were all absorbed by our blind spot, and since only players of the games would watch the stuff, the majority of us were ignorant to this whole galaxy of omissions and short cuts.
Computer games went from 1 man projects to multi million dollar ventures, and since it's birth Machinima too has moved on in great leaps. Not only technically, but creatively. In order for the larger world to accept out creations we had to construct our films using a more universal (often cinematic) language, not just the visual colloquialisms of Quake, Half-life, or Unreal tournament (or any of the many other games engines for that matter).
As a result we now have a much better ability to tell those stories. BEAST, for example, could simply not have been told in Quake 1 or 2 with the original conventions of Machinima (so much so that it just wouldnt be the same film). What really frightens me now is the idea that this increased ability to visually present ideas might be vastly greater than my ability to actually TELL a richer and more complex story. When I wrote short shorts, it was so simple. I would have an aim, come up with a scenario, and present the ideas and thoughts that proceeded, all in one scene. That's the hook. Simple ideas, one (or at least only few) scenes. There were no grand arcs to consider, no deliberations over scene order, much less worry about pace and lasting cohesion, the list goes on.
Last night I finished writing the story for Digital Memory, the Science Fiction film we will hopefully begin producing soon. I looked at the page and thought "Man, this is gonna be one hard film to make". I suddenly felt much like I did all those years ago, just after realising for the first time that simply having an idea and lots of enthusiasm just isn't enough. It was when an old friend and I wanted to make our first Machinima film, which unsurprisingly turned into a feature length story. Young dumb and full of cum, we somehow thought we could magically get through production of all the scenes and still have time in our young lives to get girlfriends. "All hail the new king" right? WRONG!!!
Along with imaginative ideas we need tenacity, self confidence, a work ethic, time (lots of it), money (a better computer can let you have the number of characters you need!), and a nice little bag of skills. I hate how the lovely song this siren sings often makes me forget some of the hard learned lessons from my (simpler) early days. Or is it that I CAN'T forget the short comings I had back then, and they live on strong and vibrant in the form of my current insecurities?
Back in the simpler times these kind of thoughts couldn't slow me down because they didn't exist. And I can't even be angry about it. The ambition to make the next film better than the last is how we improve.
By comparison, formulating new plans for the technical execution of this film has been much easier than creating the story. I could choose to make a different, simpler film, or I can choose to stay with the harder story that constantly swims in my mind and refuses to be left untold. Let's hope it all works out.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 10:12 AM | 2 Comments
Last time we saw that a great way of populating films is to look at multiple sources. Sometimes a game has an adequate online community like in the case of The Sims 2, but of course there can be so much more. A long time ago now a site called Polycount, part of the Gamespy Network hosted custom models made for various FPS games (doesn't quite offer that same diversity today).
Programs like Milkshape 3D make it possible to bring models from different games together in one environment. I believe the reason most Machinima artists never do such things is because of the sometimes very stringent rules that the models must adhere to. There can be bad limits on the number of polygons (especially in older games), there maybe be a specific skeletal structure and naming system, complicated texturing systems, tags for separate parts of the models and then you'd almost always need to animate the model again from scratch... in short, it can be a nightmare.
But what I've always found to be worse is when I need a model, and I know I wont get it cause I just can't model. I'm no good at it, and it's really no time for me to start learning. As any kind of artist there should always be a limit to how many hats you wear anyway. When people new to Machinima often ask "What game is best for Machinima?", the answer is usually "depends on what kind of film you want to make", which is a good answer as theres not much sense in making a film about interstellar travel full of futuristic technology in a game like World Of Warcraft. However the plain fact of the matter is that some games have more Machinima friendly features than others.
So imagine being able to mix as many of the communities together as you wanted. Not via limited techniques like chroma key, but actually combining 3D assets. Using Sims 2 furniture to lavishly decorate a house in Half Life 2, or some futuristic weapons from Quake 3 going into the hands of a Sim. On the large scale it would offer an almost limitless supply of resources, provided they could be exported in 3D form. For characters, the possibilities are more limited, but for props, weapons, furniture, textures it can often be done with much less effort. As I said in part one this can become even more valuable when you move outside of the game engine as you may still be able to use resources for other games (and as nicely pointed out by Gtoon in a comment, there are already pipelines geared towards a similar way of thinking, like Reallusions 3DXchange tool). Provided you obtain permission from authors and have no intention to sell your film, it really does open up the possibilities.
As a very limited example of this, I have a short film made using models from the Freedom Force community. Freedom Force would be a great game for Superhero Machinima but finer control of the models can be difficult. So (with permission of the models authors) I have a bunch of Freedom Force custom-made models in Motionbuilder, and have recreated a page from a Marvel Civil War comic. Maybe I could have placed them all in a Sims 2 house. Now THAT would have been interesting. It was just a little piece for fun so in great Leo Lucien-Bay style, the sound is F'd up but the film is watchable.
I hope that we can really benefit from a larger amount of remixing for future projects. We have done it to small extents, but never really taken it very far. Imagine the possibilities. Of course there is a question of opposing styles, but considering the large amount of content available It can definitely be made to work. Digital Memory (a sci-fi film we hope to begin work on soon) will most definitely be made from the arms and legs of different bodies. Lets hope it works.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 11:35 AM | 0 Comments
Today I hoped to continue from my previous blog post but received the very sad news that Peter Rasmussen, most well known to us in the community for the films Stolen LifeandThe Killer Robot, has died. I was very shocked to hear this and truth be told I'm still hoping someone says theres been some miscommunication, but I fear that is not the case. I had only spoken to Peter a few times, and while many of us never new him personally, I have no doubt that many others share the same respect I had for him, and will miss him and the further contributions he was to make to our art.
It's been extremely hectic here at The Show over the last few months but finally things have cooled down and I can get back to updating this blog and working on our next big film.
Some of the work we've done recently, you will know about, whereas others have been kept fairly quiet. Shortly after finishing Roommate Wanted I started another commissioned project for Antics Technologies. Very much like RW, the aim was to make a film that showed some of the strengths of the tool and show how accessible it can be. For anyone who has used Antics (there's a free version now, so you really have no excuse if not) it has some great benefits such as simple set construction and the great way the characters can interact with objects and scenery. Everytime I use it I end up thinking it's very much like The Sims 2 without all the annoying things you have to do to get the characters to behave.
One thing that was very difficult to get around though, was the basic lip sync and lack of facial animation, and of course using one of my favorite Reallusion products to fix that was not a big option in this case. Regardless, I think it turned out quite nicely. It's actually been out for a few weeks now, but because I've been so deep in another commission and recently moved house, I could only announce it now. It's called Anonymous Coward and you can catch it in the Antics Cinema (where you will also notice a film by CJ Ambrosia). The guys at Antics seemed quite pleased with it, so hopefully you guys will enjoy it too.
The third project was a big one. Unlike the previous two which I was easily able to do alone, this project had a much bigger budget so really needed the team and as always, Dreaded Kane emerged from the bat cave and rolled up his sleeves (for any1 who doesn't know, Kane is a long standing member of the Justice Lea - er.. Binary Picture Show). The film was called Peter's Story, and was unlike anything I ever imagined us doing. This was a 6 minute information video and as the title suggests, it's a narrative film and I worked very closely with Professor Paul Foley of De Montfort University (going to last years UK Machinima festival was very worth it).
It was great to do (first 'useful' thing we've done) and everyone loves money, but now that's over I can get back to writing films with lots of swearing, angst, and possibly some nudity until the next such project comes along. For ages I've been meaning to fix up our website, so that's a big priority too.
I'm resuming work on the project I started shortly after BEAST. It's a Sci-Fi film in which I hope to use Daz 3D character models . Yes, they're way too high in polycount, but tomorrow I hope to shed some light on it all (should be very interesting), along with the part the recently released Craytalk 5 will play in the film. What's more, I was given a sneak peak at Iclone 3 and it's got me very excited! But enough for today. check back later for more happenings at Binary Picture Show and my thoughts on IC3!
Since doing BEAST I've been so busy I haven't even had time to blog about the new things I've learned, or the new plans that I have for the next big Binary Picture piece. I haven't had chance to talk with many of my close online friends, and the research I was doing for our next big film has been on pause for about a month now (when I finally unveil that it'll be so cool though!).
But it's not all bad news! One of the things I have been able to do recently is a little comedy short for Reallusion, using Iclone 2.5 It's a fun little piece fit for the family (no need to cover your kid's eyes while a man bashes the crap out of another man who's tied up in the chair this time) and it's called "Roommate Wanted". Although not yet at it's peak, I've always liked Iclone, and thought it has potential to contribute very nicely to Machinima. For various reasons most of the things made in it seem to be music videos so I was quite happy to do a film. Hope you all Enjoy it. You can find the youtube link below and a Stage 6 version should follow shortly.
For any of you Icloners I've also made available the living room set that I made for the film. You can import it to Iclone as a prop. Has transparent windows, and you can edit the texture.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:23 AM | 0 Comments
Well, Beast is finally out and from the response it received at its premiere all its aims where met. For those who haven't yet seen it, here's the youtube upload.
The time spent working on the story was worth it, and it has indeed turned out to be an emotional film. As such the facial animation played a key role and as someone who's watched it without, it makes a big difference. Of course the time spent trying to get it done in time for the Europe Machinima fest wasn't worth it, as it didn't get nominated but I'm hoping this flic is of a level that will see a Binary Picture Show film doing alright at other festivals. Thanks a lot to the guys at Machiniplex.com for organising the release event, and you can see a high quality stream of it over there, or at Stage6. Stay tuned cause I should soon be posting some notes on the film's production for those interested in how the creation process went.
The last test video (Meet the heavy Spoof) went well. I definitely intend to use this method on the new 'Bouncers' series, but before I commit to it entirely we'll actually be making a short film that will rely heavily on the technique, to see just how far we can push it and if it's really feasible to do it for a runtime above 1 minute. So this test project is called 'Beast' and it's heavy on the dialogue. One problem Machinima has almost always been plagued by since inception is the lack of emotional expression available. Facial animation was always difficult to implement and on the whole emotional Machinima has had to rely solely on audio. Great actors and a few choice tunes were really all you could do, and you don't need to be a veteran to know that great acting is rare.
Thankfully now, there is Half-Life 2 and UT2K4. However many of the popular engines still have no lip syncing tools. The Sims 2 is a great example. The film dialogue has to be laid over characters who are actually moving their lips to something else (ie lines from the game). Because of this I've always thought the technique relied too much on luck, or accidents. Facial expression's are do-able using a few tricks, but it's not really possible to get a range of emotions to be as fluid as in an engine with a dedicated tool. Another great example is Second Life. Highly popular for Machinima, but unlike it's counterpart, There.com, it doesn't come with lip sync abilities. And this is where it get's interesting. It's becoming popular, not just in Second Life but also other lip sync lacking engines, to use Crazy Talk. This way you could potentially lip synch any engine, although some video editing is often required, and it can be extensive.
In Machinima's progress, not only are we seeing better graphics as the engines improve, but also a greater ability to connect with the audience. It's from this 'fight for emotion' that 'Beast' will be born. With any luck the facial animation will do what the voice acting cannot, as we are one of the many groups who don't have easy access to great actors. 'Beast' is designed in such a way that the facial animation is not a nice extra, but rather an absolute necessity. Simply having lips move is not enough anymore, and not having them move at all.... So hopefully in a week, we'll have some interesting results. We've been working on it for almost 3 weeks now so it's very close.
It's been ages since I posted any progress on Bouncers, so this 1 is massive. I finally got round to trying an idea I had for Lip syncing in the new Bouncers series and here's a demonstration. Those of you who have seen the "Meet the Heavy" video for Team Fortress 2 should get an extra laugh from this.
I never imagined I'd have that kinda control. The facial animation is done in Iclone's Crazytalk, then brought into Motionbuilder. I did a few animations to make sure he wasn't standing still, and perfecto. This is a great improvement from the old method I used when in Quake 2. And to think I had the idea when waking up one morning.
For anyone wondering why the blog is so sparse: due to an unfortunate event all the old posts are gone. This is technically a new blog. I was able to salvage the html file, so my old article "Machinima's Missing Child" was re-posted. I may bring back other semi important ones later.
This week I've somewhat bombarded my brain with the details of many potential new Machinima engines/environments that Binary Picture Show could be using in the future. This weekend I decided to chill out, but I've taken a short break from downloading porn to write something I've been meaning to write for almost three years now. No, I'm not listing all the people I would like to kill with my bare hands, thats for another day. I'm talking about a certain great potential that Machinima has always had, but has never really been explored; 3D.
I see some of you scratching your heads with an imaginary finger, but yes, I said 3D. Not exactly the kind of 3D that comes to mind when you think "First Person Shooter" but TRUE 3D.
The Science/History: Indeed as many of you smart people should already know, while most modern computer games are played in a virtual 3 dimensional space, we the audience still see a 2D representation of these 3D worlds via our monitors. For an example of what I mean compare your experience in a traditional cinema or watching TV , with an experience in an IMAX cinema (when you wear the goofy glasses). Naturally we view the world from two slightly different positions since most of us have two eyes which sit next to each other. Our brain composites the two flat images into one 3D image with which we can better judge depth: how far or near one object is behind or infront of another. This is important because when you normally watch TV, or play a 3D game, you are seeing an image that literally came from just one 'eye'.
For donkey's years now, people have been able to experience true 3D from the comfort of their own homes. I don't think theres anyone in the modern world who doesn't know of anaglyph 3D glasses, the red and green suckas that were popular in the 60's (actually I read that the 'two colour' 3D technique is over 140 years old :-0). In the real world, when you want to make a film for true 3D viewing you need to film each shot with TWO cameras, placed next to eachother somewhat similar to a pair of eyes. As you can imagine this is not always practical in terms of finance and logistics so the normal way of shooting films is using one camera per shot. It's also sometimes possible to fake it, and use various tricks to split a 2D picture and make it look 3D, though the results are often not very good. Now if you have anaglyph glasses at home heres the part where you get to join in!
In this picture the sense of depth can only come from the fact that Mona is sitting infront of the landscape, occluding it from our vision, and of course shadow and highlight help suggest perspective. But if you view the picture with anaglyph glasses you will see that there now appears to be a litteral 'space' between her and the landscape in the background, a space that couldn't be seen previously. This can also be seen in the 'tea party' picture. Try and look at the layers of people and it feels like you are much more aware of all the space between them (more images available here).
Of course this way of looking at 3D is crap. It's tedious, and everything is in a wierd red-blue/green colour. Surely I'm not suggesting that we all get our anaglyph glasses out so we can take this supposedly deeper look at Machinima! You're right. For some time now there have been techniques to view 3D images in colour, like in the IMAX but not everyone knows that 3D images can be seen in colour using devives such as e-dimensional's 3d shutter glasses made for the PC and TV. With these you can view 3D images in colour (not anaglyph images, thats a different technique) and it looks amazing. Now, How does this apply to Machinima, dammit? You should atleast have some idea of that already.
This is important in Machinima You say?
Hell yes! In the real world to make a genuine 3D image you need to film in stereo, with two cameras placed next to eachother like I stated eariler, or with a special stereo camera. If you know anyone who has this I think you're in the minority, but of course in Machinima the cameras are virtual.
One of the biggest uses of these shutter glasses is to play 3D games since all the information needed to make the composite 3D image is available. Typically what you do is download stereo drivers for your graphics card (they work alongside the card's normal drivers so are usually provided in your card manufacturer's driver downloads section). Then when activated the fun begins. The players perspective now has information from two 'eyes'. This is flickered onto the monitor and the glasses help your brain combine it into a picture that makes genuine 3D sense, and like the Matrix you really can't be told about it. You have to see it for yourself.
Of course without the glasses you just see two overlapped perspectives, like this: (link to the image's source)
I first bought my glasses on ebay for £30 almost three years ago. Certain games where simply breathtaking. Being the big fan of Startopia that I am, it was too good to be true, and probably as close to standing on the deck of my space station as I'll ever get. Meanwhile in Battlefield 1942 I kept getting the living hell blown out of me cause I was too busy gazing at the beautiful trees instead of looking out for those pesky Nazis... and then of course it hit me... what of Machinima in true 3D?
E-dimensional sells 3D films from their site that are used in conjunction with the glasses to give a sort of IMAX experience at home. However these films don't generally seem very good, are few and far bewtween, and of course they aren't free. Moreover, the average Joe has either a very limited, or no real means of making a true 3D film of his own - however in Machinima it's as simple as the click of a mouse. Games can easily be put into stereo mode during capture, or if your film is captured from a demo format, you could even easily have 2 versions of the film: monovision (normal) for those without glasses, and a stereo version for those with.
With the Nvidia stero drivers it's supposedly even possible to play 3D games in anaglyph mode (I've never tried this) so the power of true 3D Machinima is available even to those who don't want to shell out the £££.
A few questions run through my mind.
1. How many people have already thought of, or are thinking along these lines?
2. As the technology in the glasses becomes cheaper and more available could this sort of Machinima become a future reality?
3. With digital cinema projection becoming more common it's no longer as expensive to screen 3D films since the old, costly celluloid is going out the window. Could Machinima perhaps become an even cheaper way of producing 3D cinema and 3D home entertainment?
4. Could true 3D Machinima infact bring something entirely new to the whole medium of Machinima? could it perhaps make us think in new and unique ways about cinematography?
5. Could 3D Machinima, with its simple creation process even end up being the boost that the technology (the glasses) needs to become more popular and more common?
As you can see there's potential for quite a bit. A lot of people have often said Machinima is still young, but honestly I expected this sort of thing to have come about a long time ago. I even had plans to experiment with it myself, but frequent readers of this blog will know why that never happens.
Perhaps the title of this post is harsh, and 3D Machinima isn't the missing, but the unborn child, and is still to come. Perhaps not. But you gotta see the "What if?" value.
Something to think about when you're gone, the tagline at Machinima.com is "Making Movies in Virtual Reality".
