New Machinima (Video) Demo from Bedazzle!

Foxy Xevious showed me a demo of an upcoming machinima (video) by the Bedazzle team. It's amazing! I asked her if it was public yet, and offered to write about it on my new blog, quittingelectricity.com. She said she needed someone who could write as well as Torley to put something up about it still. I don't think anyone can replace Torley, but I gave it my best shot. You can read it here (there's also a link to the demo).

good entry. fun video. thanks for posting that.

Wow!

what he said!

Thanks, Csven! You're awesome!

Pretty amazing!

Too bad LL doesn't have the dev time to provide us with more tools to do this.

Like, for example - controlling NPC avatars.

I honestly believe that SL would be a magnificant storyboarding environment for films / tv shows. You could do it all in a collaborative environment as well.

You could say something like "Kramer, enter stage right bombastically" and a Kramer av could come blasting through Jerry's door.

But, alas, LL has got gaming on the brain and doesn't see these types of possibilities.

Machima cant be done on SL effectively because none of the AV's have much in the way of facial expressions, let alone moving their mouth when talking instead of typing on their air-keyboards.

I love machinema, can't wait to go home and check out this video.

edit: Watched this - great teaser, heheh

If there's one thing Bedazzle does very very well, it's make a convincing immersive environment - machinema should be right up their alley



Actually, yes. Stay tuned to New World Notes. Hamlet serendipidously came up with a way to do machinema with PosAbility, though I'm not sure if he realized it at the time, and I was fortunately to recognise the idea after agonizing over it for an hour.

In addition, I am working on an "expression layer" to add to existing PoseCubes that would give much greater flexibility to using them with animations.

Well, I can kinda see how you can control other people as well as in-animate objects, however it would seem to me that the key is controlling real avatars that don't need someone logged on behind them.

Hmm... too bad we still don't have primitars around. I bet they'd be interesting NPCs

True, but then again, real cinema uses actors, not robots.

Unless you're talking CGI effects, but even then there's still usually a voice actor.

Did you watch the video? I see enough facial expression there to convey the story easily enough. I agree more facial expressiveness would be even better. Lip-syncing would be interesting, but to what end, really? Lip-syncing is done to audio. We do not have audio voices in SL. The only thing it would be useful for at the moment would be making these videos.

-Ghoti

Yay it's full size! Those AV's are incredible. The faces skins are just wicked. Good luck Bedazzle team. How long is the finished product going to be?

Lip Synch would be awsome. You'd see hundred's of people using it I bet.

And if you want a mirror for when the full length film arrives, I volunteer. Lots of fast bandwidth to spare. ( I think I'm still in the Bedazzle group so I'd love to help in other ways too if you need anyone, I'd especially love to be an actor )

That is wonderful!! Great set and great animations. I loved that gunfighters walk. Can't wait to see more!

The last I heard was about 15 minutes at full length. It won't be a series, but who knows what the future holds?

The word "can't" is so unpalatable to me. Is there nothing in cinematic history which conveyed an emotion effectively without "facial expressions"? I can think of a few right off the top of my head that effectively work for me. The one most people here might know is Pixar's early Luxo Jr. . If you've not seen this, I highly recommend it (it's not famous for nothing).

I'm sorry you felt the need to offer an off-hand review, Jim. Seems to me that a fair number of people here, perhaps including yourself, seem to associate tools with creative results. And skill with imagination. I personally see possibilities open to anyone and everyone who simply stops limiting their options to the kinds of product they've been sold IRL and judging the efforts of others by that same limited standard.

I think this concept is very interesting.

Will someone be hosting this as streaming video that can be shown in SL?

Created entertainment of SL avs, shown in Secondlife, a virtual indie theater. Strikes me as a very impressive thing.

Thank you for the post Jade. And thanks for the positive feedback everyone. Here is a brief summary about this project that we are currently working on. I was motivated to do films inside of SL after working with Eric Linden to make a short and rush video trailer for Chinatown a few months ago. We all had alot of fun making it and I wanted to continue on with this but instead taking our time and putting alot more effort and detail into it since we didn't have that opportunity the first time. I already had an idea and a script for a project that I wanted us to create inside of SL but I decided to put it on hold for a while. After keeping in Contact with Eric Linden, he mention to me that he had a script and wanted to produce this to prove to Linden Lab that SL is a viable tool for film making, and that we need enhancements and modifications to certain features in order to simplify the movie making process. This demo serves Linden Lab with proofs of concept in several areas, like improved cameras and the need for avatar phoneme animations (emulating human speech). Additionally, the movie sets and props where created and designed by Eric Linden and Jimmy Thomson. All avatars were created and design by the talented DarkDharma Daguerre. Animations where created by Web page.

Thanks to all the actors who took the time and effort to help us in making this demo.
Demian Caldera
Frostie Flora
Jolene Jade
Katykiwi Moonflower
Nyna Slate
Sunny Buttercup
Web Page


The final film will be around 15 minutes. 15 minutes is allot of work when you want everything as perfect as possible.
Colette I have a few ideas in mind when the film is complete but not sure at this point if we will use them or not. If you have some suggestions, feel free to IM me.

VERY cool. Let me know if you need spanish guitar fills for the soundtrack. Got plenty of them in my hands!

I personally love the idea of a film filmed in-world with in-world tools and nothing more other than video and music editing in post-production, like you'd do with any film. So, the dialog is chat, and it's "silent" in not having voice. Clunky, true, but SL isn't a CGI tool, it's a place where real people interact through their avatars, and it's very cool to know that it's human actors, not a script, that are behind the avs in a film like this, and that it's filmed in real time.

If SL is enhanced with more functionality, the film should reflect that, and, indeed, this is a good way to try to get LL to recognize the things you can do in SL other than buy and sell land and build stuff.

Of course, I'm REALLY looking forward to the live musical play version of B&S! *polishing up spaghetti western riffs.... *

cute

Nonsense... wait a few weeks.

LF

I was so impressed with NSS that I've hired them. Stay tuned for some collaborations

I see that most of the film is without camara movement except one segment and it is a glaring example of the need to have more smoother camara movements in SL. It is so hard to do with that durn mouse.
Great job on the film. Did you see the video I made? Would love to help on anything you do.

Very nice work indeed.
Any thoughts on publishing it onto a DVD?
I'd love to get a copy.

first of all, awesome work! i look forward to seeing it in it's entirety.

i agree.. having lip-synching is definitely a direction we should go in; however, it's not like you couldn't do voice overs for it either.. anyone remember Portal? i'm not saying it's a satisfactory option, just that it is an option.

(i really can't stand phones.. argh.. now, half an hour later i'll return to my thoughts )

it's projects like this (as well as Chinatown, et al) that get me excited about SL. when i run across these i show them off to whatever friends i can grab at the time. it makes me proud of SL, the world, and of SLers who produce whatever i'm showing off and of SLers as a whole.

keep up the amazing work guys! (maybe someday we'll see these films shown on G4! heck, they should have an SL dedicated program!)

oohh.. wait.. SL, the cable channel! (daytime = "PG", evening = "R"

I'm very proud to be a part of it.
Thanks people.

15 minutes for the full show? I better boot Poser right now!
EEP

This was one of the first collaborative projects I've worked with across the internet and I must say it shows off SL's potential in that area as much as the specific result.
All the other projects collapsed!
It's also interesting to see SL making a product that's viewable/useful/interesting in the "real web".