Machinima for Dummies

A potentially astonishing new machinima tool for World of Warcraft

Johnnie Ingram — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:27:00 +0100

If you make machinima using World of Warcraft, or even if you’ve ever thought about doing so, this post is for you. Your life just got a whole lot easier.

Over at WowInsider, moo Money posts about a new WoW machinima tool from Mads ‘Malu05’ Lund. This is the most feature-rich WoW machinima tool in existence, to the best of my knowledge, and it’s going to blow your mind. It’s not yet clear whether this tool requires you to run a private World of Warcraft server or whether it operates client-side only on the official WoW servers.

moo describes it as

The tool that will change WoW machinima forever

and I think she might be right. The tool allows multiple cameras (through clever use of saved viewpoint positions), speeding up of the WoW day/night cycle, bullet time (yes, really), automatic smooth camera panning, automatic tracking of player avatars and even resizing of avatars. You can trigger almost any animation, in realtime, by simply picking your animation of choice from a drop-down list. You can even detach the camera from the player model and wander all over the map if you like – we would have committed almost any act to get hold of that functionality when we were making BloodSpell.

At the time of writing, the tool is still in a closed beta state, but Malu05, the insane genius who knocked this baby together, is openly inviting participation from other coders. He’s released a lengthy demonstration video, showing the tool in action. If he can deliver on his promises in the video, then it’s going to be hard to see Malu05’s tool as anything less than the Holy Grail for WoW machinimators.

Thanks to moo Money for giving us an early tip-off here.

The Part Of Tens: Ten machinima resources of which you may not be aware

Johnnie Ingram — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:46:00 +0100

Books in the For Dummies … series traditionally end with a section called The Part Of Tens, which consists of lists of ten related items, points or tips. Some of them are amusing, some of them are useful, and the best of the bunch are both at once.

For Machinima For Dummies, our “Tens” included Ten Machinima Sites To Bookmark, Ten Machinima Films You Must Watch and Ten Ways To Ruin Your Machinima Movie.

Here’s another list of ten: in this case, ten online machinima resources that might have passed you by. A list like this seems more suited to the web than printed text anyway, and I’ll try to keep it reasonably up-to-date. These are in no particular order, by the way. As always, if you have any suggestions of your own, make a comment at the end of the post.

MachinimaNation on Veoh

Lucinda McNary (lucindamc123 from the Moviestorm and The Movies communities) has started this group for machinima creators and fans. Veoh shows serious signs of becoming the new cool kid on the block, so head over there now and join for free.

Machinima IRC Channels

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a tool from the good ol’ days of the early internet, but it’s still used today. You can think of it as an instant messaging application crossed with a chatroom. There are quite a few very useful machinima-related channels in existence. The most active is the #machinima channel on irc.quakenet.org. Although the channel tends to be populated mainly by World of Warcraft machinimators, it’s enormously friendly, and you’re likely to find someone happy to chat about almost any aspect of machinima here. You might also want to try #machinima on irc.freenode.net, which – while less active than its quakenet cousin – often plays host to the most complex technical discussions. Moviestorm also has an unofficial irc channel, #moviestorm on freenode.

Unfamiliar with IRC? It’s not nearly as complicated as you might think. This is a good beginner’s tutorial .

The Machinima Calendar on Google Calendars

We’ve “already mentioned” the Machinima Google Calendar, but it’s worth including in this list nonetheless. The calendar includes upcoming events of interest to machinimators, and you don’t have to be a Google Calendar user to subscribe.

Talk The Machinima Talk Audio Conference

Overman’s audio conferences have rapidly become the place to meet your fellow machinimators, to network and chat, and to have a fun and interesting discussion about any topic that arises. For the past few months, the talk has taken place within Second Life. You don’t need a paid Second Life account to join in – just sign up for free and get in touch with Overman (Sol Bartz in-world) once you’re up and running.

TekBreeze

A brand new entry on the playing field, tekbreeze is a project from digital_phil, the host of the ill-fated Machinima Live! podcast. Phil says that tekbreeze

was created with the simple notion of building an online community to support blogs, forums, portfolios and interactive publications focused on gaming, Machinima and technology in general.

And yes, it’s free to join.

The Forums at Zarathustra Studios

As well as hosting forums for Z-Studios, the Machinifeed and the Overcast, the Z-studios forums serve as a point of discussion for

All Things Anymation: Machinima, Animation, Motion Graphics, Filmmaking

Often some of the best machinima- and anymation-related discussion on the ‘net takes places here. If you’re not a regular visitor yet, you’re missing out.

The Voice-Acting Alliance

Sometimes, getting your friend Dan to do all the voices for your epic machinima series just won’t cut it. You need to find some real actors. If you can’t drag your entire cast round to your custom-built sound studio, this might be the next best thing. This popular forum is full of people who are only too happy to provide vocal talent for whatever project you might have in mind. They’re pretty good, too.

The Elite Radio podcast

Adam and Derby, previously known for The Movies On Air podcast, have started a new podcast, this time aiming to cover all aspects of machinima rather than just The Movies. It’s called Elite Radio and the guys have a few episodes in the can already.

Machinimators on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a hugely popular networking site for what are rather euphemistically termed “professionals”. The Machinimators group is intended as a network for professional machinima creators throughout the world. If you’re a professional or semi-professional machinima creator (or you’d like to be!) contact me on LinkedIn and request an invitation to the group.

Machinima on Last.fm

Ever wondered what your fellow machinimators like to listen to? The machinima group on last.fm will tell you. If you haven’t discovered last.fm yet, you’re missing out on the revolution. The website will track the music you listen to, either through it’s own software or through one of the many plugins for popular music players on all platforms. You can then ask last.fm for music similar to the stuff you normally listen to. If you join the Machinima group, you can also ask the site to stream you a random selection from everything we’ve been playing over the last few days, which can lead to some pretty eclectic offerings.

Shadows in Second Life!

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:35:11 +0100

As many people may know, I’m not a huge fan of Second Life’s graphical capabilities, despite its advantages for Machinima creators. However, slowly, slowly its faults are getting fixed, and today another one has (sort of) fallen - shadows.

Normally, nothing in Second Life casts shadows, making it look, well, kinda flat. But apparently, there’s a new ultra-experimental renderer for Second Life which enables dynamic shadows.

It might b0rk your PC, of course. But it might also help you get shadows into your SL films, which are stunningly important for mood. Hurrah!

Machinima Film Festival (North America) date announced!

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:41:55 +0100

Yep, it’s coming!

To be precise, it’s coming on the

1st November 2008

At Eyebeam in New York City.

More details as soon as.

Celtx 1.0

Johnnie Ingram — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:05:00 +0100

It’s already been blogged by Mike Jones and by Bllius too, so our apologies for the duplication to anyone reading this through the machinifeed, but Celtx hit version 1.0 only a few short hours ago.

Celtx, for those who’ve somehow missed it, is one of those astonishing free tools that beats the competition into a bloody pulp, even when the competition is a rather expensive industry-standard tool. Celtx is a scriptwriting tool – a sort of word processor for screenwriters – but it’s so much more than that. You can use a Celtx project to manage almost any aspect of the production process. It’s also got a fantastic online collaborative element, as well as version control and online backup baked in.

If, like us, you’ve been using Celtx for a while now, go and grab the upgrade (Celtx will automatically prompt you to do so the next time you run it). If you haven’t tried Celtx yet … what the heck is wrong with you? “Go get it right now”. Go on. It’s cross-platform and it’s free. Install it, love it, and we’ll say no more about this embarrassing gap in your toolset.

Overman rules

Johnnie Ingram — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:59:00 +0100

Rarely has the category Machinima For Dummies Recommends been so appropriate. Phil “Overman” Rice’s music video for Radiohead’s Bodysnatchers is a brilliant example of the power of machinima and anymation.

It’s hard to imagine any other technique that would have allowed a film like this to have been made, and Phil has taken full advantage of Second Life, Moviestorm and a whole pallete-full of other packages to produce what is, for my money, one of the best pieces of pure, sensuous the-sky-is-no-longer-the-limit machinima that’s ever been released.

Bodysnatchers proves once and for all that Overman is one of the greatest assets this community possesses, and it’s a perfect example of why the man is – well, heck, I’ll say it – a bone fide genius.

Anyone interested in seeing just how flexible machinima can be should go watch Bodysnatchers right now. If you liked the video even a tenth as much as I did, do remember to vote for Overman in the AniBoom Radiohead Music Video Contest.

Gnomic Utterances - Everything Must Go

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:09:40 +0100

Well, it’s the end of Gnomic Utterance Week, but I’ve got too many left. So, three for the price of one today. Agree? Disagree? Giraffes? Comment below.

The difference between a Hollywood production and a Strange Company production is that on the latter, there’s no-one the director can’t ignore. Oh, and the budget.

Do you know best? Do you have better ideas for your film than anyone else? Really?

A friend of mine describes the creative life as “throwing a lot of lemmings at a cliff, and waiting to see which one you find looking smug on a sunlounger at the bottom.”

The Machinima calendar

Johnnie Ingram — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:04:00 +0100

As Overman has already mentioned, I’ve set up a Google Calendar which is intended to be specific to Machinima (and Anymation). You can subscribe to the feed for the calendar using any compatible calendaring tool, or just do a search on public calendars for “machinima” if you use Google Calendar.

You can also embed the calendar on your website or in a blog post if you’d like to. I’ve added it to the sidebar on this site.

The exact purpose and scope of the calendar is still up for debate, so if you’ve any suggestions for events or additions to the calendar, or you just want to tell me why you think it’s a good plan or a terrible plan, send an email to calendar at machinimafordummies dot com.

Pure Controversy

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:59:50 +0100

Gaining an audience is a craft, not a crapshoot.

But Is It Art?

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:57:36 +0100

Films don’t spread because people love them. Films spread because people talk about them.