Update to Bonus Content: Toothbrush & Electric-razor.

For this update to the Bonus Content pack we’re adding a toothbrush and electric-razor for your domestic scenarios.
As always, the download is free if you are a paying customer of Moviestorm Complete or Moviestorm Themes – you just need to register for the license at the bottom of the following page and then all the bonus content will be installed the next time you use Moviestorm.
http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/hub/marketplace/freeasset
(p.s. Bonus content is not currently available for Moviestorm Education users due to the lack of internet connectivity needed to regularly update the pack. However, we will be updating Moviestorm Education’s content to include all appropriate Bonus Content for a future upgrade).

New Content Pack: Classroom.

Here's a great pack for any scenarios that you need to create that have classrooms, students or education in general.

There's a sizeable selection of school uniforms, school furniture and teaching stock in this new pack (such as books, an interactive whiteboard, stationary and other props). We’ve also included some useful animations to allow your characters to play out their roles as teachers and students, and you can portray any subject or topic by simply changing the whiteboard’s main image.

For more details, please visit the Marketplace

New update: Moviestorm 1.5.1

It’s usual for us to launch a patch soon after a major release, but this one is slightly different . . .
In addition to the usual bug fixes that inevitably need resolving when the software is exposed to an ever-increasing combination of hard ware and software, we have had time to get a couple of very useful feature requests implemented, that we hope will really help your workflow and improve stability.
Firstly, we now have a working Google SketchUp wizard for the Mac version of the Modder’s Workshop. This means that users of both Mac and PCs will no-longer have to change workstations to import a Google Warehouse model, as they can now bring the asset into Moviestorm on both platforms.
In addition to this, we have added a single level undo to the Terrain Editor, so that you can’t ruin an otherwise perfectly sculpted terrain with an accidental brush stroke.
Many of the costumes have been tweaked so that their foot-fall sounds (footstep audio), so that characters will now sound correct when walking on a variety of floor types. The WebM importer has been altered so that videos that contain no sound can be successfully imported and improvements have been made to the way Moviestorm handles navmeshes (especially with the Extra Large Set), so you shouldn’t experience any crashes, and you should now be able to navigate from one navmesh to another.
Lastly, copying scenes in your movie works correctly again, and we’ve updated the printable cheat sheets so that they are up to date with the latest UI changes.
We hope you all enjoy the new version (which is an optional update, so that you can choose to update or not), and we’ll soon have news of some new content to add to your libraries!

There's also an updated user manual available here.

More on editing

Editing on Volume 4 is going well, and we're very hopeful it'll be out before Christmas. Here's what the 18 exercises in the book cover:

Controlled Scene Length

Establishing Shots           

Fast Cuts vs Slow Cuts   

Matching Eyelines

Assembly

Fade Through Black        

Fade Through White      

L Cut     

Cutting On Action           

Cutting On Shape            

Superimposition              

Cutting On Theme          

Cut Through Sky              

Walking Into Camera     

Photo To Scene

Intercutting       

Montage            

Visual Metaphor             

Coming soon - another free book

I'm aiming to get this out by Christmas if I don't find too many typos and errors. Otherwise, it'll be available in the last week of December. As before, it'll be a free download.

Indian Culture

Here’s a great pack for adding a bit of Indian Culture to your movies in the form of a traditional Indian taxi, road signs and textures, props for your interiors and some authentic Indian costumes. There’s an intricate fireplace, privacy screen and ceiling fan for your house interiors, a road and pavement texture (along with kerbstones to separate them), plus a selection of market stalls and telephone/ power cables to dress your streets.
Both costumes (a pajami for your female characters and a kurta for the males) have pattern variations and, as usual, there’s a version of each that you can tint to any colour.

Moviestorm 1.5 is LIVE!

Moviestorm 1.5 is now available!

We promised we’d get it to you by the end of the year, and here it is. Moviestorm 1.5 - shinier, faster, and with all-new added goodness. It’ll make your hair more lustrous, help you lose weight, and wash your clothes even whiter than before. Okay, maybe not, but it will help you make films faster and better.

What's new
Moviestorm 1.5 includes a lot of new features. You can find full details in the patch notes here, along with the main bug fixes. Here are just some of the highlights:
Terrain editor: change the default mountains around the edge of the set.
Import video into the cutting room: you can now mix scenes from several different movies, or mix in external video files.
Save gestures to stock: once you’ve created a gesture for a character, you can easily use it again in other scenes or movies.
Tint the sky: gives you much more variation in the feel of your exterior sets.
Timeline grouping: group several activities together on the timeline and move them all together.
Text to speech allows you to create basic dialog without an audio file or microphone.
WebM video format gives better performance and quality on a wider range of hardware.
Dressing room user interface makes it easier to find costumes.
Screenshot button in Camera view makes it easy to create storyboards or stills.
Timeline user interface has been made clearer and easier to use.
Some Cutting Room filters now have options for different strengths of the filter.
Extra Large Set is a new stock set with the floor grid at 100m square instead of the normal 50m square.
You can now render stereoscopic 3D left and right eye views as separate renders, allowing you to re-combine them in the 3D software of you choice.
New audio filters give you better control over your sound.


Installation
Just start up Moviestorm as normal. It will automatically update the launcher (not the main program). Then when you're ready, you can update Moviestorm from the launcher when it's convenient. Be patient, it could take a while, especially if you're on a slow connection.
If you have repeated problems downloading the file, you may need to temporarily disable your virus checker.


Compatibility
As far as we can tell, your existing movies should work fine with 1.5. There are however, a few things to watch out for.
Mods: we've tested some mods, and we haven't found any problems, but we can't 100% guarantee that your mods will continue to work.
Video: If your movies have video files playing back on props, you should convert those videos to the WebM format; they will then play back faster and with audio. More info about WebM.
Lighting: we fixed a bug with ambient lighting which meant that it was extra bright under some circumstances. You may need to adjust the ambient lighting to compensate.
Doors: we changed the pathfinding for going through doors. In some cases, your characters may take a different route, and will walk through walls instead of being stuck..
Dance floor: the dance floor works differently and you may need to tell each dance floor to flash instead of them all flashing at the same time.
If you have problems, please check the support forums http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/forums/ or contact support via the Web site http://support.moviestorm.co.uk/dashboard.