what's the best way to shoot VDO with many avatars(by one person) ?

[SusieReid]

I'd like to get suggestions from pro here. I don't have much experience of making a VDO in sl. Anyway, I am trying to make one to promote my clothes store in the new land. Planing to use my script agents (model bots and greeter) to make VDO. I want my bots to look alive. Not just standing like statues. I have prepared animation.

I am trying to figure it out how to run my VDO recording with them smoothly. If I run bots on my computer, it will slow down my VDO shooting performance(since it already does slow down my computer) If I ask people to help, they get to access my bots with passwords. It also can be a mess to work with a lot of people. I am not sure if I want to do that.

If anyone or pro vdo makers here can give me suggestions how to do this, I'd be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Chic Aeon]

You need a powerful machine to run a lot of avatars or bots. If you don't have that you need to be tricky. Take a long shot with the avatars (as many as you can get) no moving. Then let them animate and take close shots that merge into one another and create the EFFECT of a crowd.   OR buy a $2000 computer LOL.  There are always choices .

 

Note that you can also take still shots and use your video software to pan etc giving the effect of a video.   

 

Since I have NO idea what a "VDO" is, I may be very off the mark here. 

Have fun. Good luck. 

[SusieReid]

Thank you, Chic   I am also testing animations with my bots but they don't really move(walk) One of the scenes, I'd love to be able to see them walk around in the shop. Yes powerful computer can be that expensive as you just mentioned lol  That's why I wonder if anyone knows how to run them all without investing that much money.

I'll keep looking for more option

p.s. Sorry if I am not using the right word here. When I say 'VDO' I meant the movie, intro, music vdo, machinima, etc. that most of you are making here in SL. I am amazed everytime I see you guys create amazing clips here. 

[Chic Aeon]

OK.  I am pretty sure you can use NPCs in Second Life (so like bots without real people behind the avatars). I haven't done that in SL but I did use them for a crowd scene in a bar in the OpenSim film.    Scene you want starts right before 2 minutes in. 

This was almost two years ago and in Opensim so production values were great for there and then but not so much here and now - LOL. But you can see it worked well. Each avatar besides the leading lady was on a NPC poseball.   So you might want to check into that. This was on an old computer and nothing was running on my machine except the video capture and one sesssion of Firestorm. 

 

 

[RuRu Macbain]

Rather than log in multiple avatars on your viewer, there are text based viewers out there that don't use much pc resources.  I am not sure of the names of them or if they are even legal to use .... so you might want to investigate that... Google is your friend!