The worst Moviestorm crash we've ever seen

We want Moviestorm to be easy to use. We try not to dazzle you with an enormously complicated interface, with hundreds of buttons and menus. In some cases, this means that you can't get the level of precision you need for a certain task. We're always trying to find ways to let you do that, without transforming the Moviestorm interface into the control panel for a supersonic jet.

One of things that can sometimes prove difficult is precise positioning of objects in the Set Workshop View. Thankfully, we've got some new functionality currently in development which will help.



This gizmo is called the, er ... well, it's actually called The Gizmo right now, because we haven't come up with a more sensible name for it. It allows you to "nudge" an object by very small amounts, until you get it exactly where you want it. As well as allowing linear movement, the Gizmo (somehow I think that name is here to stay) also allows you to apply rotation to an object, in any direction.

We let Ben take the Gizmo for a test drive, and he got a little carried away:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

Height is important. More precisely, differences in height. You can use height to create drama, contrast, emotion, interest, beauty, menace - a clever director can do almost anything with a good, varied set. Up until now, Moviestorm didn't handle height very well. Characters could only really move around on a single level plain, which meant it was very hard to get shots like this:



Woo-hoo! There's no cheating in that shot. It's just plain ol' Moviestorm. That tower really is as tall as it seems to be.



We're using some brand new development code, which Mark has been quietly working on for the past few months, allowing characters to walk on surfaces at different heights. The tower is Amos's work (and, incidentally, his first official art asset for us).

Just in case you don't believe that it really works, here's a clip from the movie Alex is working on at the moment. He's asked me to stress that this is a really, really rough first draft, but it is all rendered directly from Moviestorm in one single scene.



Coming soon. As always: When It's Ready.

Skeleton vs Bins: a walk on the smooth side

We've been dropping hints about Mark's new walk code for months, and we can finally show you what it actually does.

QA chappie Dave#6, who made this little movie, says:

In the old days, this poor skeleton would tackle these bins like a tank. Stopping to align himself, needing strict user supervision, pondering the lack of flesh on bones. Not especially like a tank then, but he felt like one.

These days, he's just pointed where he needs to go and he... just goes. Any obstacles he faces can be swiftly and most importantly, smoothly navigated. He's still concerned about the lack of flesh but feels less like a tank.

But really, this marks a big leap in visual quality and intuitive user accessibility. Less time spent navigating bins means more time thinking up clever stuff, and there's still more to come in this regard.

Sweet, huh? Combined with the rest of the animation improvements, this takes Moviestorm another huge leap forward from clunky old game style machinima to something much more natural and realistic.

Smoothly does it

One of the most irritating things when making a movie - to my eyes, at least - is the unwanted animation "pops" when a character suddenly snaps from one pose to another. And then you get limbs going through each other, characters going through the floor, and so on. Glitches like these can ruin an otherwise perfect shot, it's disconcerting, and, well, dammit, it just doesn't look good. Sure, there are ways to shoot or edit around it, and it's a common problem with videogame characters, but it's still bloody annoying.

The problem is caused by layering animations one on top of each other, and linking them together. If we knew exactly what you were going to do, we could ensure that everything just worked fine. However, because this is a movie tool, the range of possibilities is, quite literally, infinite. We can find ourselves blending together the animations for walking (mixing two gaits and the speed customised), using a prop (with each individual activity customised), gesturing (customised), facial expression and improvisation (yes, also customised), talking (you get the idea now?), looking at something (possibly a moving object), breathing, and blinking. Each of those is a separate mathematical transform that has to be applied to the skeleton, and then checked to make sure it's anatomically possible. Blending them all together involves taking all the different transformations and working out how they all go together. So one activity may tell the character to put her hand behind her head (improvised scratch), another tells her to lift it straight up (dance gesture), and a third tells her to swing it by her side (walk) - you try doing all three at once and see how far you get. It's no wonder our Moviestorm characters get confused.

Here's an example movie made in Moviestorm 1.1.5.

Yeuch, huh? All he's doing there is walking, playing the trumpet, and sitting down (and breathing and blinking and improvising). The existing animation blending just can't cope. His feet go through the floor, his right arm goes through his torso, his left arm pops - oh, it's just horrible.

And here's the same again using Mark's new blended animation code. You really, really don't want an explanation of the complexity of the mathematics that go into this. Even Dave runs away screaming when Mark starts explaining things like this. (Actually, even if you do want an explanation, we're not going to tell you. This is really hairy stuff, and we ain't giving it away.)

It's not quite perfect yet, that's true, but it's much, much better. The bad news is that you won't get to see this till 1.1.7, and we don't yet have a release date for that. It'll be a couple of months at least. Sorry.

The adventures of Moviestorm in the 3rd dimension

Created in Moviestorm

You may have noticed this little gem from Chris over on the Web site. Yes, those are steps and stairs and balconies. And yes, one day soon, my machinimating friends, your little Moviestorm people will be able to walk up and down them, gaze down on their minions below, or recite poetry to their beloved up above.




Not only does this mean you can make many more different types of sets, but it completely changes the options for more interesting visual composition.

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold

Here at Moviestorm Towers, we get requests every day from users who desperately want a particular bit of functionality that we haven't yet implemented. We don't rest on our collective laurels when these requests arrive. There's a big database full of feature requests, to which each and every user request is diligently added. We're only a small team, so we can't do them all at once, however much we might want to.

There's always a list of Secret Things We're Working On And Are Not Allowed To Talk About. Sometimes, the upcoming secret stuff is just too cool, and one of us will drop a teasingly ambiguous hint or two in the forums. We love torturing you.

A lot of the things that are on your collective "I want this NOW" list are also on mine. One of the things that's been in the top three on my personal wishlist for several months is the ability for characters to walk up and down stairs.

I'm sure you've guessed what this blog post is about now. Take a look at this:

Those are stairs all right, and that's world-famous Moviestorm stock character Stu walking up them with the casual grace of a born catwalk superstar.

It's better than that, though. Mark's über coding skills mean that Stu's movement up the stairs is just a standard Moviestorm walk command. That means you can change the speed and watch Stu adapt his footfalls automatically:

You can even change the gait to make him limp up the stairs, or tip-toe, or any of the other standard walk gaits. He can even walk up the stairs backwards:

It's not limited to that one set of stairs, either. It works equally well if the stairs are curved. What's that you say? Spiral stairs? Sure.

Backwards? Erm, okay.

Whilst playing a guitar? If you absolutely insist:

All together now: "And she's buying a stairway to heaven ...[1]"

Now, before you all starting sending me private messages, the answer is "when it's good and ready and not before", and that won't be for a wee while yet. You'll just have to wait patiently like all the other boys and girls.

[1] For legal reasons, I'll have to ask you to hum along yourself. I'd hate to be accused of infringing copyright by reproducing the mighty Stairway, in any of its 100+ forms.

books!

I had the sudden realization that I'm the only person on the dev/doc team that hasn't written a book. It makes me feel humble to be in the presence of such great minds as the authors of:

Machinima - Dave Lloyd & Matt Kelland

Machinima for Dummies -Johnnie Ingram & Hugh Hancock (send us your pic Hugh!)

Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques - Mark Watt & his Dad

Object "oriented" Game Development - Julian Gold

3D world (regular contributions) - Chris Ollis

Actually looking at that lot, I'm quite glad I havn't written a book. I think I might even stop writing my diary - just in case ;)