Dr. of Machinima

Dead Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:25:00 +0000

Well, sods fucking law came into action today and my computer died without any warning only a few days before it's supposed to get packed up to go to Canada. It powers up, but the monitor doesn't turn on, and it doesn't actually boot into Windows. How do I know that? A recurring sound, like the computer is looking for something it can't find. If it was the hard drive I would see a screen that says the primary boot device can't be found and the computer would try and find the alternatives, like the CD drive (thank the lord, cause the hard drive is more valuable to me than all the other hardware three times over). If it was the gfx card it'd boot into windows and eventually stop making noise. I wouldn't be able to see that, but It'd at least stop making the noise! I'm guessing either the CPU is f00ked or something on the motherboard popped it's clogs.
There probably isn't enough time to fix it before it gets picked up and even if there was there'd be no time left to use it so it looks like I'm gonna be hauling a dead computer halfway across the world!
This unfortunately means there'll be no preview pics of Digital Memory before I leave (and once I'm in Canada I think it's gonna take me a while to settle enough to continue) so I'm really pissed off! I'm so angry right now I can't even find the fucking words!!!

Anyway, with luck, it's definitely not the hard drive, and once I get the comp fixed I'll be able to resume work on it. For now I'm lucky Lady Mainframe has a laptop.

Cinema Inspiration in Machinima Technique

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 02:05:00 +0000

There are rare moments when I'm at the cinema and I'm so inspired by what I see, I try to think of ways I can incorporate such ideas in my Machinima.

In Blade 2 we saw the introduction of the L Cam. CGI shots of digital stunt men were seamlessly merged with live action shots, providing more fluid action scenes.

It's a live action shot and Blade gets punched, sending him hurtling into the air. The action slows down and he comes so close to the camera (he's now the CGI Blade) that we can see the sunshades on his head wobble a little. He smacks into the wall, and the live action Blade lands on the ground.

Traditionally this is done by cutting the CGI and live action shots together but the L Cam technique allowed it to be done in just one shot! Apparently the L stands for "liberated" and as far as Machinima goes we've almost ALWAYS had a liberated camera. The problem for me is that my mind wasn't quite this liberated, and for good reason. When I first tried my hand at Machinima I really went to town with the disembodied camera idea. Almost every shot in my first film was a dolly, the camera was weaving through people's legs, pipes, hovering in the sky, I was out of control! I had to learn to reign that camera in and in that, perhaps some of the freedoms afforded by a virtual camera were forgotten. Until I saw Blade 2. Bouncers, had I finished it, would have had some some great action sequences thanks in part to this film (I might still finish it!!).

Despite what people may think from my early films I've always been a bit of a facial animation enthusiast. Back in the Quake 2 days the technical process for facial animation made it so difficult to get a good performance that by the time I came up with the idea used to animate the faces in Beast (an idea which was and is still unique, to my knowledge) I was just happy I could have lips moving at all. The facial animation in Beast made the characters in Bouncers look like stroke victims, however it still wasn't as good as it could have been.
My first gripe is that the characters in Beast don't blink in the whole film. This wasn't impossible in Crazy talk 4.5, it was just difficult to implement while keeping other facial expressions going.
My second gripe is that their eyeballs didn't move much. Other than on one occasion they always faced forward. This is where the cinema inspiration slips in again.

When The Polar Express hit the box office one seemingly persistent criticism of the CGI was that the characters' eyes seemed dead, giving them a very eerie feel. In Beowulf they combated this by using Electrooculography to actually capture the movement of the eyes exactly as the actors moved them, and the result was a much improved virtual performance.
Now, I have no access to this technique, but it made me think of what kind of things I could do to improve on Beast's method, and luckily Crazy Talk 5 accommodated. One thing that makes eyes seem more alive is jitter. The eyeballs never rest perfectly still, a fact that makes control of a computer via eye movement a challenge for interface designers. Again, 4.5 could have done this, but not without difficulty. Due to the live puppeteering in CT5 I'll be able to make the characters blink, roll their eyes around, AND attempt to simulate a small level of retinal jitter - all in one pass.

With my animation muscles nicely flexed the next thing that's really given me a brain itch is sound. As old fans of Binary Picture Show will know, I struggled with sound quality for quite a while. Now that I understand it a bit better things have improved and I can now move on to spending every other waking moment thinking about the actual sound effects. This is even more important in Digital Memory because of the main character, who my faithful blog readers might remember, is a robot. "Should a robot really make some kind of noise every time it moves, or would that just be annoying?", I often ask myself.
Well, Pixar's latest gem, WALL-E tells me yes, yes they do make noise with every movement. However I get the troubling feeling that if this isn't done very well it would indeed descend into an assault on the ears, annoying the same way someone persistently zipping and unzipping their trousers in your face would be annoying.
It's not just the sound work that was inspiring though. I found this film even more visually appealing than Finding Nemo. As the two main characters don't exactly have English as their first and commonly spoken language, their actions (or animations) did the bulk of the talking, and it was done so well, especially since they weren't humanoid in their design.
Just as facial animation helps a character appear more life-like, the sound effects given to Wall-E's every roll forward, or lifting of an arm, or twitch of his eyebrows, added to his presence.

If I can get anywhere near a similar result in Digital Memory I'll be a very happy man. It's not impossible. Phil Rice and Ricky Grove have kindly offered to help (and we all know how good they are), but the amount of sound work seems so staggering I doubt I could let them at it in good conscience. In Beast, most of the sound effects were already in place when it went to Phil. Ricky did some clean-up (there were some clipping problems in the dialogue files, which I now know occurs during the video capture process in Motionbuilder) and Phil added a few sounds and reverb effects, etc, to give it a more engrossing atmosphere. Hopefully I can do something similar for Digital Memory so that it doesn't become a chore at any point in their helping. It's a difficult thought since the sound in this is going to be so much more complex than in Beast. As always a cross my fingers for a good outcome.

Totally off topic I saw a film today, Twaddlers, made in Antics. The viewer comments on Youtube reminded me why I don't like Youtube, and partly why I left Machinima.com. Infantile comments aside, it was fun, but really annoyed me because of it's similarity to an idea I had in University and was really looking forward to producing some day. Twaddlers could have been made a little better, some polish here and there, but the random humor is very funny, I loved it. Give it a look if you can. from the comments, some people get it and some just don't.

Progriss Riport

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:18:00 +0000

Well, it's been a busy time since I found out I got a new job, and although it's going to get a lot busier in the coming weeks as I have to start packing, I might actually have an opportunity to do a fat chunk of work on Digital Memory before I go!

Even if I'm really busy once I start the job I'll hopefully still be able to do it on weekends, and Kane has said he's still willing to do 3d work even though he's gotten pretty involved in a few coding projects.

Right now I'm preparing the main character, Avatar One, (I'll hopefully release some pictures before I go) and I'm stilling pinning down the final technique I'll use for the other characters. One problem I ran into was the fact that even though I can reduce Daz models to a nice smaller polycount, I don't like their faces when the head gets below 4000 polys, and considering what I'm trying to go for, thats a bit too much for a head. This means I'll most likely have to use heads from elsewhere but this becomes a bit of a problem if the character isnt wearing a buttoned up shirt, cause you can then see where their neck was cut. But I'm working on it.

Also I have had a VERY quick tinker with Iclone 3, and am VERY pleased. As with Beast, Digital Memory needs to be made in 2 different environments. Motionbuilder was the first, but for the other I was looking at Iclone, Sims 2, Antics, Or Second Life.
Because of the abundance of assets I really wanted The Sims 2, but having used that briefly before, it's not my favorite Machinima environment. Second Life would have been good for all the readily available outdoor locations, but I'm not very good at working with Second Life and my computer really isn't tough enough to record smoothly in there anyway.

So it's between Antics 4 and Iclone 3. Both tools have made some great improvements lately. Antics has a new lighting system now so it looks way less pre-vissy and more Machinima-ee and I'll be installing that on my computer later this week. Iclone 3 has a mad torrent of new updates, and since it has a bigger range of 3D assets, it really looks like I'll be using that. BOTH tools have Google Sketchup import abilities and that's essential in this project. More details as I get more comfy with both tools.
Right now I'm really impressed with the new things that Iclone 3 has added. Of big use to me will be the improved camera system and more integrated animation system (now with IK, WOOT!)

Before I leave I have to get some voice recording for Digital Memory done. Will be much harder to find Brits over in Canada and I definitely want some home flavor in the film. Unfortunately that means I'll have to finalize some areas of the script slightly earlier than I'm ready, but it's worth it. Just need to multitask.
Cross your fingers for those screenies of Avatar One. He's being reduced (and re-done in places), and then his rigging might be a slightly complex process cause of his wires and hydraulics (yes, he's a robot!). Lets hope I can get it right :-s

Add one more to Bioware

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:40:00 +0000

Yes, earlier today, I received a phone call confirming that.

I've had a lucky time with my Machinima recently. About 7 months ago I was sure that if I couldn't make a reasonable living from Machinima this year I would stop pursuing the possibility.
Not that the situation was looking that grim. Thanks to BEAST I actually managed to become a freelance Machinima artist, and have managed to stay fed on that so far.

However around 2 months ago, paid work took a back seat while I focused on making a cinematic showreel, and then learning the Unreal Tournament 3 engine. The reason for this is, in case you haven't worked it out by now, I had applied for a job at Bioware. One evening at a Machiniplex premiere in Second Life, Michelle had asked me how I'd feel about a job as a cinematic designer. I thought that even taking the time out to try such a thing could be costly if it didn't pay off. I don't think myself much of a risk taker, but I had already gambled 2.5 years of my life for the chance that I'd get a job in Machinima somehow, and I had achieved that at least to some degree. All I needed to do here was stop taking contracts long enough to give this the best whack I possibly could.

At the Beginning of July Lady Mainframe and I got on a plane to Edmonton, Canada. I felt like I had been asked to join the Justice League, or The Avengers, and the Bioware Edmonton office made for a pretty damn cool super hero headquarters. I got to meet a few Machinima community well-knowns like Ken Thain, Paul Marino, who I had met once before, MuNansen, and of course Michelle who I kept in touch with most of the time. If I thought I wanted the job before, by the end of my time at the office I was pretty sure I'd be willing to work there for free!

Anyway the Lady and I had a great time, and we got back to the UK early last week.
And that's why I've been so quiet. I haven't had much time to work on Digital Memory (although I have made some progress on it, which I might blog about later) and as much as this has all been on the tip of my tongue, I made sure to only tell close friends. But it was all a success, and while being a freelancer has had it's moments I'm definitely glad to be joining a team and kicking some ass on the outer reaches of Machinima.

Will I still have time for personal Machinima? Honestly it's impossible to say. I haven't released any personal Machinima since I started freelancing, I doubt it's about to get easier. Whatever happens I do at least hope to remain an active member of the community. Not that I'm that active anyway, but to continue to observe and blog much as I do now. A small part of me does worry that Digital Memory and especially Bouncers, will never be completed now, but we'll see.

Right now I'm still jazzed about the fact that I'll be working on Mass Effect 2.

Machinima vs Anymation: What's in a name?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:38:00 +0000

"My opinion in reading them was that not a single one of the people writing these articles really had any understanding of second life or the whole concept of that type of community.... That being said, some of the viewers aren't going to get it too, so it's not necessarily a bad barometer for measuring that, because not everyone out there that would watch TV is gonna know Second Life."

That's a quote from Phil Rice, in issue #30 of The Overcast. Phil is talking about Molotov Alva's series: Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey, which was recently given some less than favorable reviews by a few industry regulars in the US.

A few weeks ago the debate between Anymation and Machinima was quite interesting, and now that it's calmed down somewhat I feel I can look at it from a slightly different perspective than we've already seen.
I bring this up now because I think the above quote perfectly exemplifies why we are seeing this new separation in Machinima. The art/technique has grown to the point where in reality, it's often not even Machinima any more and we look for new ways (Anymation) to help us understand how this huge art is changing in front of us. That might not make much sense to you right now, but keep reading. As usual I call on the old times to help explain the "why"s.

In the simple beginnings, we had what I often like to call "pure Machinima", Filmed in a real-time environment, edited in a real-time environment, and then later rendered and watched in that same real-time environment (game). there were never really any issues of classification. Now it's the 21st century and we have such a great abundance of different production techniques. Many games weren't conducive to pure Machinima, yet they offered a great wealth of artistic assets that made those environments attractive for filming non the less. A great example of this is the Sims 2. Techniques here involve filming in a real-time environment but not editing or watching it so.

This is because it and many other games rely very heavily on the video editor for their Machinima creation, and I believe it's here that the deviation from pure Machinima really took off. So as far as the whole real-time aspect went, it was much less so than say, Quake 1 and 2 or Unreal but it was so beneficial to Machinima that this really wasn't seen as a problem. Generally if it was at least filmed in a real-time environment, so that the images we looked at in the rendered video were essentially from a game, it's considered Machinima.

The problem that started to appear, even if this may not have been registering in many conscious minds is that the more work you do in video editing, the further you move away from the benefits you were originally given by real-time. Add chroma keying, compositing and various video effects as is common in Machinima, and you soon see that in reality you've left the land of real-time way behind. So if you see 3D and Real-time as the two cornerstones in the definition of Machinima, your video editing environment has neither (or at the very least you aren't using what little 3d capability your editor might have). Now if there was such a thing as a Machinima purist, these would all be bad things for such a person. But the truth is simple.

People don't care. They just want to do what ever is required to get the job done, and it's partly this spirit that has given the rise to adoption of the term Anymation. A term which some have embraced, and others don't really seem to like so much.

But if this is true - people don't care - why make a distinction at all? If people really don't care why don't we just make the Machinima umbrella that little bit bigger so that we don't need any new terms. For that matter, why do we even bother with the term Anymation? Isn't it in some ways re-inventing the wheel? As has been mentioned before, isn't Anymation just plain good old regular ANIMATION?

This is where the criticisms of Molotov Alva's latest work really become relevant. The key is context. Phil Rice believed that many of the critics really didn't understand were the show was coming from. This confusion can regularly be seen in people who don't know what Machinima is. If you put a work of Machinima next to some conventional pre-rendered CGI, average people will generally prefer the CGI. And thats not so surprising. It usually looks better, usually has higher production values and indeed, the very site or mention of Machinima often confuses people who are new to it. "But it looks like a game" "Wait... is it a game?" "Oh so you didn't make the stuff we're looking at, it was made by a game company?" In truth, the limitations that Machinima imposes upon us means that it's often unfair to compare a piece of Machinima to CGI. So you see, actually knowing that a piece is Machinima (of course you must then know what the word means) immediately places it in context. People then understand some of the circumstances under which the film has come to exist. Otherwise there would for example, be little more than the differing budgets to stop someone from smashing something like Bloodspell to bits when compared to say... Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf.

Does this mean that the term is in some ways used as a crutch? People may not like that, but I think maybe it does. Granted, most games, at times even crazy looking stuff like Unreal Tournament 3 aren't quite ready to be compared to CGI. If a CGI film was entered to a Machinima film festival and won, wouldn't the Machinima artists who entered feel robbed?
Anymation by definition can include any process, but the fact that is was created by a Machinima artist (Tom Jantol) and that it's often used to describe pieces we would most likely have otherwise called "Machinima" shows a need to keep these creations in context still, so that they can be understood and judged aptly by the viewers. While some Anymation films may indeed be able to stand up against general animation, I believe on the whole we're not quite ready to have our films judged like this ALL the time.

Now Machinima more and more often goes too far outside it's traditional definition, but we aren't quite ready to leave that term behind and simply call it "Animation". For that may very well incur the full weighted, unfettered, no holds barred criticism of our audience.

A great result at the OMFF and elsewhere

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:08:00 +0000

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!

Oh I miss the simple times!

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:55:00 +0000

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.

Frankenstein Machinima (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:12:00 +0000

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.

In tribute to a fellow artist

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:35:00 +0000

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 Life and The 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.

Frankenstein Machinima (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:55:00 +0000

So anyone who read yesterdays post (maybe about 10 people, then I imagine two of you returned) may have left wondering:

"DAZ3D models in Machinima? Too polygon rich, this fool's finally lost it."

Or

"You fool, you think that's original but it's already been done! FOOOL!!"

Well both schools of thought are correct. Take the very popular Daz 3D model, Victoria 3 for example. She's somewhere in the region of 75,000 polygons if memory serves, with the reduced resolution version somewhere between 32-45,000 polygons and that's without clothes and hair. Way too high to have just for one Machinima character, no matter how hot she's supposed to be.

Then again, it can't be that bad, because my main man Tom Jantol regularly uses Daz3d models in his films, and he seems to get along fine. Well, yes he does use them, and my goodness they look great! Oh those beautiful curves and not a straight line in sight! But as many people will know, more polygons in the scene require more power. This can be one contributing factor to why Tom doesn't have many of these characters on screen at once. What's more if you notice, the characters aren't clothed. They're naked as the day they were born, and have a stone/marble sort of texture on them.

Then it can get even worse if you want to easily implement facial animation. with Mimic you can get your lip syncing done easier but getting your characters to actually emote still isn't as easy as using the CT/MB technique

The reason all this is so important is that both Tom and I are Motionbuilder users. We are part of a very small crowed that uses the tool to actually capture the end result. For me it's the only real-time environment that gives many of the freedoms I had back when I used Quake 2.
Ever since leaving game engines behind (and even before that really) it's been a problem finding where the next model for each film is going to come from. If you use a game all that stuff comes pre-packaged. Break it open and your good to go, but when you leave that it becomes more important to provide for yourself. Daz and poser have huge amounts of content available relatively cheaply so if you wanted you could even sell the resulting film, but how would I get around the problems I mentioned earlier? I want more people in my films, and I want to use the same technique for facial animation as I used in BEAST.

Well, with the help of Tom, I've been theorising loads on a possible solution (sometimes I think that's all I do). It involves reducing the number of polygons in the models down to a point were they are much more manageable, but still retain their quality. Anyone with some experience in this will know that this is a messy job. Usually when you do it the models get real ugly real damn fast and things become unrecognisable.
My research led me to understand that it can indeed be done less destructively. I can't explain the technicals, but DAMN it makes one hell of a difference!

With it, I have been able to reduce a 10,000 polygon head to 3000 polygons and keep most of the juicy goodness. Now that's still a hi count for a face, but hey, it could be worse. Then I have to simplify the eyes and mouth areas so that they will accept the Crazy Talk technique better (I really should give it a name). I found out that the Iclone G2 characters are around 10-14,000 polygons each so I've set that as my quota here. The next challenge is to do the whole body, but because of the detail on heads and the time we spend looking at them, they are much harder, so I believe the difficult part is mostly done.

So here for you today is the head of Victoria 2, at around 3000 polys. Just so she'd look a lot less like an alien I gave her hair for the Sims 2 (2000 polys), from the great site, xmsims.com. I deleted an ear and some of the scalp so in total it came to just around 5000 polygons. There are still many improvements that can be made, through UV manipulation and texture baking but for a test vid, I think the result has been great!

So the hope is that by reducing the polycounts and tinkering here and there I can populate a whole film using this technique, and it's what I hope to do for our next big one.
But that's all for today! On Monday we'll look even closer at the idea of creating these abominations. I've only touched very lightly on the idea of mixing resources from different games into one engine. Obviously this can be taken much further, so stick around and we'll learn more + I didn't even get round to talking about Iclone 3. For now have a fun weekend!

Back from the Front

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:22:00 +0000

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!

Reallusion Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:36:00 +0000

This one came to my attention a little bit late as I've been so busy, but theres a lovely little interview, that John Martin of Reallusion gave me when he was here in London, talking about Reallusion stuff, and Machinima in general. Enjoy!

Roommate Wanted - Iclone

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:17:00 +0000

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.

Youtube Link
Living Room prop (for iclone)

I'd also like to give a big thanks to Phil Rice who very nicely did the voice of "Mr Bilko"!

Beast Production Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:40:00 +0000

As promised, these notes, though written after the films production, will try to explain some of the creative decisions behind Beast. I’ve already made a couple of posts regarding it’s significance in terms of facial animation in Machinima, so I’ll leave out the technical stuff.

As many already know, Beast was made in an attempt to make the audience engage strongly with a Machinima film. I would say it’s designed to evoke an emotional response more so than most Machinima films so was very difficult to make. Many Machinima artists are familiar with making comedy or action whereas is this is something much less practiced for many of us.
First of all the idea behind the film is something many people feel strongly about as revenge is a well visited theme in cinema. Some of you may have watched the film and found that it reminded you very much of certain others and in fact it’s heavily inspired by Park Chan-wook ’s 'Vengeance Trilogy': Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Oldboy, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It may also have reminded you of other films like Reservoir Dogs and maybe Se7en, the list could probably go on and on.

(Read the rest)

While the film is nothing revolutionary in terms of storytelling it was a massive challenge not only because of the limitations often experienced in Machinima, but also because it was meant to exist as a short story and as such needed to be kept concise, potentially compressing a feature length story into a five minute film. This means the film’s objectives had to be laid out clearly and while I didn’t want the audience to understand what was happening immediately, I had to make sure the film wasn’t too confusing at any point.

The script was divided into four sections I called the introduction, the banter, the reveal, and the revenge and it was in these sections the very short growth of the characters was to take place. The opening of the scene is something that is very easy to recognize as borrowed from some of the inspirations that I mentioned above. The beauty of having Skiff tide up is that it placed the man in a position of complete power and control. This automatically makes the viewer start to ask questions, which are further compounded by the man asking a question that must doubtlessly be running through Skiff’s mind. Not “Where am I?” but “Who is this man?” and “Why am I here?”. With the introduction over there was only the ‘banter’ section left for the audience to glean what kind of people these characters where before the film changed. I think this is where the bonds with, or dislike of the characters is best made. Some might think this is something that really happens in the ‘reveal’, but in reality the reveal doesn’t give you much choice as far as emotions go. It set the Man up as the victim and Skiff as the bad guy –period. In the banter there was more room to maneuver and the characters have a chance to judge each other in addition to us deciding who was good or bad at this point. Of course the reveal is where the heartstrings are ultimately pulled yet where the ambiguity many people have expressed feeling also seems to come in.
The Man’s story is obviously a sad one, but it’s afterwards that we seem to see a change in Skiff’s character, and the abrupt move on to the revenge section snatches his ability to show any remorse or verbally express any possible feelings of regret. That’s great if you’re on the man’s side, but for those in the audience who anticipated an option for forgiveness or defiance - that is snatched away. At the film’s release event, at The Machiniplex someone even brought up the possibility that this wasn’t the man who committed the crime and that it may have been a case of mistaken identity. While I think that’s a stretch, it’s none the less one possibility that the viewer might be left exploring due to the sudden change of pace. This isn’t how things were planned originally. My first idea was to make the man gradually decend into a rage during the reveal, but I felt that the energy during the revenge wouldn’t have the same high.
The last aim was to hint at a feeling of emptiness in the man after Skiff had been killed. This is what I thought would ultimately make the story a tragedy: the fact that although the man had now succeeded in his long-term aim, he was at a dead end rather than relieved or satisfied. This in turn could raise further questions for the viewer. What now? Where will he go? Can he rebuild his life? Does he deserve to?
This is why in the end, despite the films burrowed premise, and somewhat familiar scene of the “guy tied to a chair” it was difficult to craft.

If anyone would like to find out even more, Ricky Grove has written quite a bit about the film, over at the Machiniplex blog.

Beast Released

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:23:00 +0000

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.

Facial Animation in Machinima

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:53:00 +0000

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.

Heavy Weapons Guy Knuckles

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:29:00 +0000

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.

Machinima's missing child

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Nemesis) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:27:00 +0000

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".