Just after releasing 1.1.6 , we found a couple of nasty bugs: some of the stock sets don't load properly, and saving animation transitions in the modder's workshop stops other animations from working. Ooops.
There's now an update that fixes this.
Friday, 10 July 2009
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Burning Streets Remix: working with cel shading
Yesterday I posted Burning Streets, a movie showing what you could do with lighting using the burning objects in the new Special Effects pack. Just to see what would happen, I tried it with the cel shading switched on. Some bits worked really well, but others, as you might expect, didn't. I then tried some experiments to see what I had to do to make the scene work properly. Here's the cel-shaded version - watch and see if you can figure out what the differences are. Some of them are quite subtle.
To start with, I had to add in some global light. Without it, the whole scene was too dark. I had an orange ambient light on 11%, and a straw-coloured directional light at about 13%, shining down the street to put extra light on the fronts of the characters. Because of the vagaries of the lighting system and cel-shading, dropping these by even 1% made a lot of things go almost black, so it took a little bit of tweaking to get it where I wanted it.
Next, I moved the fire at the back a bit further away from the walls. The light it cast created strange circular rainbows on the walls when it was close up, and although interesting, they weren't what I wanted. Moving them about two feet reduced this considerably.
And finally, I changed the smoke on the vents from black to white. Black smoke just didn't show up against the background, so I opted for a more contrasting colour.
I'm not 100% pleased with the outcome, but still, it was an interesting experiment, and useful to help understand what you have to shoot differently if you're working with the cel shader. I like some shots, but others don't work as well as I'd hoped. I suspect that the only way to get the results I want would be to light each shot separately, and then edit them together later. Just like a real film, I guess. Fortunately, when you're working with Moviestorm and similar machinima tools, you can see all the visual effects as you shoot - what you see is what you're going to get in your final footage. Now that, my friends, is a luxury other film techniques don't give you!
To start with, I had to add in some global light. Without it, the whole scene was too dark. I had an orange ambient light on 11%, and a straw-coloured directional light at about 13%, shining down the street to put extra light on the fronts of the characters. Because of the vagaries of the lighting system and cel-shading, dropping these by even 1% made a lot of things go almost black, so it took a little bit of tweaking to get it where I wanted it.
Next, I moved the fire at the back a bit further away from the walls. The light it cast created strange circular rainbows on the walls when it was close up, and although interesting, they weren't what I wanted. Moving them about two feet reduced this considerably.
And finally, I changed the smoke on the vents from black to white. Black smoke just didn't show up against the background, so I opted for a more contrasting colour.
I'm not 100% pleased with the outcome, but still, it was an interesting experiment, and useful to help understand what you have to shoot differently if you're working with the cel shader. I like some shots, but others don't work as well as I'd hoped. I suspect that the only way to get the results I want would be to light each shot separately, and then edit them together later. Just like a real film, I guess. Fortunately, when you're working with Moviestorm and similar machinima tools, you can see all the visual effects as you shoot - what you see is what you're going to get in your final footage. Now that, my friends, is a luxury other film techniques don't give you!
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
A block of flats... no,a flock of bats!
We hinted yesterday that the upcoming Special Effects pack is for doing more than just explosions. You can use it to do this, for example...
It's just your everyday story of a woman innocently walking along, and then SHAZAM! Happens all the time. Well, doesn't it? No? Well, obviously it does to Ben...
Anyway, moving swiftly on, this is made completely in Moviestorm. No third party editing, no reshoots, no fancy post-processing. Just create two scenes, and cut between them using the smoke as a cover.
Having seen this, we're all kicking around ideas for weird and wonderful ways to use this pack. Testing this one should be a hell of a lot of fun!
Give us your suggestions for test movies we can get our work experience students to make, and we'll see what they can do.
It's just your everyday story of a woman innocently walking along, and then SHAZAM! Happens all the time. Well, doesn't it? No? Well, obviously it does to Ben...
Anyway, moving swiftly on, this is made completely in Moviestorm. No third party editing, no reshoots, no fancy post-processing. Just create two scenes, and cut between them using the smoke as a cover.
Having seen this, we're all kicking around ideas for weird and wonderful ways to use this pack. Testing this one should be a hell of a lot of fun!
Give us your suggestions for test movies we can get our work experience students to make, and we'll see what they can do.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Firework show
We really should have done this at the end of last week in time for the Fourth of July, but hey, we didn't. This is Ben testing the Special Effects pack (what we used to call the pyros pack, but it's been renamed because it contains more than just things that go bang).
OK, you all know the chorus. Sing along...
"When's it released?"
"When it's ready!"
Soon, my friends, soon you too will be able to blow things up! (In a safely controlled environment, of course, with no danger to children, pets or property.)
OK, you all know the chorus. Sing along...
"When's it released?"
"When it's ready!"
Soon, my friends, soon you too will be able to blow things up! (In a safely controlled environment, of course, with no danger to children, pets or property.)
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Moviestorm memory problems - workaround
If your computer is above the minimum spec, you may want to increase the memory available to Moviestorm, so that it is less likely to run out of memory.
Possible symptoms of Moviestorm running out of memory include:
- Significant slowdown after using Moviestorm for a while, or when going to the Cutting Room or the Dressing room.
- 'Error switching scene' messages when loading or changing scenes.
PC:
- Find the install directory for Moviestorm (C:/Program Files/Moviestorm General Release, if you went with the default).
- From that folder, browse to boot, and open boot.properties in a text editor (such as Notepad).
- Edit the following line (or create it, if it does not exist):
- heapsize=256M
or
heapsize=300M - Change the default of 256M to a larger number (we recommend that you dont increase it above 1/2 your system RAM - e.g. 512M on a 1 gig memory, or 1024M on a 2 gig memory).
Mac:
- Use Finder to find Applications/Moviestorm 1.1
- Right click (or control click) the application and select 'Browse Contents', and look in the Contents folder
- Open info.plist in the Properties List Editor
- Expand the java tab
- In the VMOptions property, find the bit that says -Xmx256M
- Change the default of 256M (or 300M) to a larger number (we recommend that you don't increase it above 1/2 your system RAM - e.g. 512M on a 1 gig memory, or 1024M on a 2 gig memory)
Of course, if you only have 512Mb RAM to start with, you're going to have problems regardless. Sorry, but there's not a lot we can do about that.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Fingers crossed
Finally, Moviestorm 1.1.6 is on its way up to the servers. We had our fair share of last-minute irritations and silly mistakes, but now we can all go home while it uploads.
Tomorrow morning, we give the downloads a final check to make sure they arrived safely, and then, assuming there are no last-minute problems, it'll go live.
But now, beer!
Tomorrow morning, we give the downloads a final check to make sure they arrived safely, and then, assuming there are no last-minute problems, it'll go live.
But now, beer!
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