LL should make Machinima Tools

[Medhue Simoni]

Let me first put my experience into context. I've not made any real "Machinima". I've played around. I've filmed in SL. I've filmed things in other games. I've created cutscenes and stuff like that for MODs. I've played with many different animation related programs. Plus, I've been an animator in SL for 5 years now. And, I've thought about and helped create a number of things in SL, specifically for making machinima, none of which I ever really used, or sold. Why? Cause they were too complicated for any everyday customer to figure out, and support would cost more than the profit, lol.

Recently, I started to seriously consider doing machinima or movie like productions as a promotional tool for projects I have in mind for SL. Any animation I want is the easy part for me, so you'd think that is half the battle. For me tho, I've already used and created things in other programs that have tools for creating animated movies, so trying to do this in SL without any real cutscene tools or movie like tools is just not appealing. Remember, this is also considering that I could make any tool I want using coding. The problem with these coded tools is that you are reliant on the servers and everything else. The end result is not generally something smooth.

So, I started thinking about what are the core things that any decent animated movie creation tool has. In my mind, we really only need 1 thing. We need a TIMELINE creator. I have no idea how this could be done, but let me just explain the concept. You set up a Timeline, and you choose objects, or people to be included in the Timeline. Maybe the people(avatars) would need to be asked permission, much like with LsL to animate some1. I imagine that LL would need to designate an area for the action to take place. Now, we have the area, the actors, the objects in the scene, and the camera, with a Timeline window. It would be nice to have a detached extra camera to use, instead of an avatar, but it's not crucial. You can apply animations to the actors in the Timeline. The Timeline records the placement and movement of all objects, and holds the animation for all the actors. None of the things in the scene would need any physics, so maybe it could be done in a way as not to impact the servers at all. Possibly in a Local viewing, instead of a World view, cause only the camera needs to see all the action. Would be cool too if we could add sound, and facial expressions to the Timeline.

These are just some thoughts I've had on the subject. Hopefully, some people with more Machinima experience can chime in. I really do think that something like this would give us the tools to create some pretty awesome machinima, and make it easier.

[Nimue Mistwalker]

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jjccc Coronet wrote:

When i started sl there was a machinima capture ability in the viewer but it was removed from the viewer arround 5 years ago because it wasnt very good. if you want to capture HD footage use fraps and edit in one of the many video editers, but regardless of what you capture the content with in second life is becoming so limited that unless some thing is done about it soon there will be nothing worth filming in sl appart from for sale signs.

I know if you look hard ennough there are some amazing sims in sl, but if you randomly teleport to 50 sims in sl, i bet you wont find one sim worth filming

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jj, you are dead correct about that! I've spent a whole week .. hours and hours and hours, just scouting locations. I'm seriously thinking about just creating my own backgrounds and adding shots taken from random locations for nuance .. adding special effects in Particle Illusion. Hope that made sense!

[Maryanne Solo]

Yes that's a brilliant Idea. The sooner the better too.

It would go a long way to letting machinima noobs have a lot of fun and provide a standard that everyone could work with..

[Medhue Simoni]

Thanks, but I think I'm just pointing out the obvious, at least to me. Some of the most fun I've had creating was making MODs for the PC game Far Cry. The game editor had a cutscene creator, much like the Timeline Editor, I described here. It was super cool to package my MOD of the game up to include elaborate cutscenes to explain the situation while the next level loaded.

I'll try and create a jira for this, but I wanted to put the idea out here to see what people think.

[Medhue Simoni]

@jjccc and Nimue - Yeah, let's hope that mesh helps creators design more elaborate places to film in. A really good mesh designer could make things much more elaborate than was possible, causing less lag, getting higher framerates, and using less prims on the land. So, I'm optimistic.