New Machinima - What Is Scion City?

Please check out this 6 episode machinima project that I worked on (I directed ep 1 and 1.5) - http://whatisscioncity.com

There is a whole backlot open with sets, props and avatars that you can play with - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Scion%20Cinema/98/126/155

Wow.... first I was grabbed by the website.. then rivited by the episodes.. couldn't turn it off lol.. I kept thinking, hmmm surely some of this isn't pure SL, maybe some iClone, or CrazyTalk... then every now and again I was brought into SL although not fully.

I guess you have some speech animators inworld and some clever animators for the avatars as well I'd guess. In any event, its very well done. The storyboard, concept and execution, all excellent.

I'm glad you liked it.
Most everything was done in SL. The mouth movements though were all done with crazy talk and then composited back over the moving video.

The biggest thing we had going though was the team. Hamlet <http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/> wrote the script and we had 3 other great directors - Douglas Gayeton, Trace Sanderson and PG Provenzano. Plus, there was lots of great work on sets, animations and avatars.

Darn, lol.. I was hoping you were going to say 'we just used a inworld device' for the lip sync... I can appreciate the work involved compositing that.

Have you used the new Beta version 5 of CrazyTalk yet? I have a copy after being invited by Realusions to test it. It has more control over the mechanics of the facial components, linked to the emotives.

yeah I used the new beta of crazy talk for this. I found it to be better than v 4.6 but still I think the way I use it doesn't quite fit the intended workflow. I end up not using most of the features. I animate the mouth only and composite just that small area over the video.

These films are IMO the best I've seen so far in quality. The mouths were done using crazytalk and then superimposed over the moving video? How was this done, After Effects? Can you divulge the secret? It was VERY impressive.

Thanks Robustus. The mouths are not technically rocket science but they are super time consuming. 3 of us used Final Cut Pro and one used Vegas. The idea is to place the video of the mouth on a layer above the video and then keyframe it to move along with the avatar. You have to soften the edges and correct the color to get them to match well. I find it helpful the reduce the opacity of the mouth to about 60% while I keyframe it (so I have more points to line up) and then turn it back up to 100% when I'm done. It usually needs a bit of tweaking after that to get it right.

I was kind of hoping CrazyTalk would allow the use of movie formats, that it could track its own facial movements... I know they have the technology because they produce iClone which I also use.
Our 3DMax guy in our group, is going to create renditions of SL avatars using hi-rez 2D for the face mask and some of the sets used to look like SL, for those times when you just want to get the job done and not spend hours keyframing overlays.

This movie just proves that with a lot of effort, you can elevate SL to look even better.

WOW...this makes me want to go to Scion City right now even though I haven't been in months, so I guess it does it's job huh?

This has to be one of the best Machinimas of any kind I have ever seen anywhere, let alone using SL