While the cat's away ...

Most of the Moviestorm team are taking a well-deserved break at the moment, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are sitting on our laurels. Everyone's favourite hard-working art guy, Chris Ollis, has this to share with you all:

Now that the dust has settled on the early access release of version 1.4 I'm taking the liberty to let slip some other stuff that we've been doin

g that should be with you shortly, and some even more exciting things from the future!

First up we've got a new and incredibly useful content pack nearing release. It may not seem like the most exciting thing we've done when you first set eyes on it, but I can guarantee every serious Moviestorm film maker will want it and it should make character driven dialogue sequences all the more impressive.

Looking further in to the future we're tackling some stuff that we've wanted to do since day one. It should also make a fair few users happy, and save a few from having to struggle with their own mods of existing animations.

Yes that's right - we've finally had some fun with swords. While Dave would like us to break this down in to all the different sword types, weights, rules and other professional standards, I'm more keen on just whipping them out and hacking away a bit :D

While on the subject of violent acts, I've also been messing around with similarly unpleasant animations in my spare time, and given a good wind I should start handing out handy little packets of jumps, falls, punches and stabbings to help Moviestorm step up a gear. I know people have been shouting for this for a while, but believe me the video footage I recorded as a template was in the can so long ago I've had to get a cinefilm converter to play it back on :D

Don't bother asking for dates, you should know by now ;P

Chris

More from the logs

Watching the commit logs is a fascinating way to see what's actually going on in the development team.

The last couple of days has seen a lot of commits of the form:

• Revision 24513 Committed by ben_sanders: - Deleting and moving female gestures

Basically, this means that there's some reorganisation of the underlying data structure going on. Things are going into different directories, which won't affect what Moviestorm does, but is usually preparation for some other change. It's one of those godawful tricky jobs, because if you get it wrong, you end up shipping something that's missing a file, or which has two copies of the same thing. And when I say a lot of commits, I mean a few days' worth. I don't envy them that job.

• Revision 24503 Committed by ben_sanders: - This has the reverted version of calloader.java, and the changes to animationremapper.java
• Committed by julian_gold: - New vidits.jar built for altered openapi.
• Revision 24479 Committed by dave: - Ignore .svn folders

More underlying tech stuff. Fiddly. Nasty. Probably necessary.

There are loads of updates on the new dressing room and the new light controls, of course. Most of it consists of entries like this:

• Revision 24501 Committed by chris_ollis: - Female dressing room anims again

However, here are a few juicy bits that give you an idea of the less glamorous side of it all:

• Revision 24471 Committed by ben_sanders: - saving wrong verb instance to library was causing all sorts of havoc.
• Revision 24493 Committed by ben_sanders: - More remaps; these anims were submitted after the first remap but still needed remapping.
• Revision 24495 Committed by alex_gowland: - Changed name of female decal so its recognised by the .bodypart
• Revision 24500 Committed by ben_sanders: - Republished (without neckbodyweld's which break publishing)
• Revision 24530 Committed by dave: - Possible fix for modshop crash on windows

However, let me leave you with just one last tantalising hint:

• Revision 24429 Committed by chris_ollis: - Specular fix for female wet/sweat/rain

Your face looks different

Last week, we showed you some of the more extreme heads we could make with the new face creator. This week, we've got some more normal looking male and female faces, the sort of thing you're more likely to use for most of your movies.

Bear in mind that this is still in development, and we're still adding new things and chipping away at the rough edges, so these aren't final. However, it's clear that we've got vastly more variation in these characters than we've had before, even without going for pointy ears, hooked noses, or oversize chins.

And now for the new heads

So you've seen what sort of controls the new face morpher has. Now let's see what it can do when you push those sliders around a bit.

You may not actually want characters this extreme, of course, but this demonstrates that Moviestorm 1.3.1 will offer a lot more flexibility and customisation than the current version.

New character workshop - first glimpse

I promised you a look at the new character shop as soon as I got something from the team in Cambridge. I found this waiting for me when I got up this morning, so here you go. I haven't even had breakfast yet!

Moviestorm Dave

Note: This is still work in progress and quite rough in places, so you'll see some broken icons on these shots. There's also a noticeable neck seam on these characters: Dave's fixed this, but the new neck code hasn't been integrated with the character workshop code yet. However, this will give you an idea of what the new face creator and character workshop will look like, and how much more you'll be able to do with Moviestorm 1.3.1 compared to the current version.

These don't show the more extreme characters we can do - this is just to illustrate the user interface and the range of controls. See shots of the new heads here!

First off, we've replaced the old grey background with a dressing room. The set isn't final, but already it feels much more friendly and fun to use. You also get a sense of what these characters will look like in context, which makes an enormous difference.

Now, this is the bit most of you have been waiting for. Check out the new face morph controls. (Click on the images to see them full size.) You get a huge array of sliders to play with, allowing you to control:

• Ethnicity - this allows you to mix between different basic ethnic head shapes
• Head Variant - several different face shapes
• Nose shape & size
• Ear shape and size
• Mouth shape
• Lip shape
• Eyebrows shape & size
• Eye depth, size and shape
• Eyelashes

Let's take a closer look at the eyebrows, and see the range of variants available. Twelve different shapes, all of which can be tinted.

Next there's the new make-up. Add a design and colour it. We'll have some more conventional make-up, of course, but we can also do some more extreme things.

So there you go.

Now, where's my coffee and a cinnamon bun?

More tantalizing hints

You can glean a lot about what's going on from the feed of the updates committed to the main Moviestorm codebase: here's just a few entries from today:

• Revision 23995 Committed by amos_willbond: - Updated icons for morph regions (character shop).
• Revision 23996 Committed by amos_willbond: - Further changes to morph area icons (character shop)
• Revision 24001 Committed by chris_ollis: - Extra face textures for morph male
• Revision 24012 Committed by ben_sanders: - Mouth height separated, and full morphs added
• Revision 24013 Committed by ben_sanders: - Added blood and blemishes to the skin detail
• Revision 24014 Committed by ben_sanders: - Beards added
• Revision 24015 Committed by ben_sanders: - Copied beard thumbs from core

The new character workshop is definitely taking shape!

That's not fair!

I just had my regular weekly catch-up session with Johnnie, where I get to find out about what's being worked on this week. We were talking about the face morphs, and he told me "I really should send you a video of the faces being morphed in the character shop in real time. You're going to love it."

So I made the appropriate excited noises, and then he said, "I could actually have sent you something last week, but we all know that as soon as you see what we're doing, you're going to put it on the dev blog, and we won't be able to stop you. And it's not ready yet, so we're going to hold off for a few more days."

So there you go. You can all share my pain.

You'll see the new stuff about 15 minutes after I do.

But apparently you're going to love it.

Getting sorted

Once you've made a lot of Moviestorm movies, it's easy to lose track of which is which. Yes, they've all got unique names, but usually when you load up a movie, you want to go to the one you were last working on. It's buried somewhere in there, but you have to scroll through and find it. It's even more annoying when you can't quite remember what you called it - was it Jim and Joe's fight test or Jim fist fight? At least, that's the sort of thing we're always faced with.

We're currently in the process of making two small changes to the load movie screen. In the bottom left, you now have the option to order movies by date, so your most recent movie will always be at the top.

Also, you'll notice some movies have yellow blobs on. This temporary icon indicates that there are backups of the movie available. You now have the option to load the most recent version with the tick (check mark) as normal, or else you can use the recycle button to bring up a list of backups and you can load one of those instead.

Drawing on the walls

We here at Moviestorm are responsible citizens. We would like to make it clear that in no way do we condone the defacing of public property. We believe that Banksy is nothing more than a common hoodlum, not an artist, and should be locked up for his crimes. However, we do understand that it may be necessary from time to time to depict anti-social or illegal activity in films, purely for educational and moral purposes, of course. Like this.

Work in progress: art by Chris Ollis, images by Andrew Kennedy. 100% Moviestorm.

You know the answer. When it's ready.

Thank you, Pioneers!

We're very close to releasing the long-awaited version 1.1.7 of Moviestorm. As part of our development process, for the first time we've let the members of our exclusive Pioneer group get early access to the new Moviestorm. We've asked for honest feedback, bugs, and criticism of both the positive and negative kind. The feedback thus far has been extensive and enthusiastic.

We're busily logging every one of your comments and issues in our database. It's been really useful to get reports on some of the more obscure aspects of Moviestorm, particularly where it relates to user-created content packs or your existing movies, as those are areas where we really can't test very much at all.

We may not have time to reply to every one of your comments, but they're all much appreciated. Please keep 'em coming!

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.

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.)

Moviestorm visual effects: making it wet

While we've been showing you some of the visual effects filters Julian's been working on, he's been experimenting with combining them to produce some strange, interesting and unusual results.

This is what happens when you make your movie black and white, add in some noise, throw in some rain, and put some ripple distortion on. It looks like an old movie, shot outdoors, and there's water all over the lens. Or looking out through a wet window onto a rain-soaked world. Or something. I'm sure you'll think of a way to use this kind of effect.

The possibilities for weird and wonderful visual styles from combining the different filters is huge. I can't wait to get these off Julian's desk and into a version I can play with, but it looks like that'll be quite a few weeks yet. Until then, I'll be as impatient as you!

Oh, wait, did we say rain? Yeah, there's rain too.

Moviestorm effects 11: Night

You may remember, how in the dim and distant past, the first filter we showed you was night vision? Well, here's the companion to it, the night filter. Many night shots aren't actually shot at night, for all sorts of reasons. They're shot in daylight and then tweaked to look like night. This gives everything a blue tinge, and then changes the luminosity to match human night perception. You can adjust the intensity to go from really dark to post twilight or full moon.

Anyway, here's a recap of the visual effects filters we've shown you so far:

1. Night vision
2. Sepia toning
3. Black and white
4. Greyscale with red boost
5. Halftone
   
6. Negative
7. Glow
8. Bloom
9. Camera shake
10. Ripple distortion
    
11. Night
    

Moviestorm effects 10: ripple

After that brief interruption yesterday for customisable held props, let's return to visual effects filters.

This one is a distortion effect similar to looking at someone through rippled glass or through water. It's the sort of thing you could use in dream sequences, for alien vision, or for looking out through the windows of a space suit. There are parameters that allow you to control the degree of distortion - turned up high, you get a strange fuzzy mess, or turned down low, you get something more like heat haze. Here it is with two different settings.

Usual disclaimers apply: this is really early dev code, not representative of final quality, and we don't have a release date for it.

1.1.6 update - and a little tease

Well, there's good news, and there's more good news. As we told you at the beginning of June, Moviestorm 1.1.6 went into testing at the start of the month, we've bashed away at it for 2-3 weeks, and we're looking good for a release before the end of the month, just like we planned.

Of course, all the usual disclaimers apply. We can't guarantee that Dave won't find a horrible bug somewhere in Dave's code, or that cyber-terrorist ninja gibbons won't sneak into our Moviestorm Towers over the weekend and replace every thirty-third bit in jogl.jar with a random number. These things do happen.


But the good news is that we managed to sneak an extra little feature into 1.1.6. It's neat, and you'll like it. However, you'll have to wait till next week to find out what it is, cos I can't grab a picture of it right now,* and it just doesn't look good without a picture. Suffice it to say that there's one more thing in mainstream Moviestorm that previously required modding to achieve.

*It's technical and complicated. Oh, alright, the rest of the team are too busy testing to make screenshots for me, and I'm only partway through installing the latest build on this PC, and it takes hours. Or maybe that's all a lie, and I'm just being unnecessarily mysterious in an effort to get you coming back next week. You decide.

Moviestorm effects 9: camera shake

Camera shake is one of the most requested effects. It's ideal for earthquakes, explosions, big stompy monster footsteps, and all sorts of other action sequences.

This doesn't actually move the camera - that would be a nightmare to edit with. What it does is to take the camera's nominal position and apply an offset to it. This has a whole bunch of controls, so you can change the amount of movement in either direction, the frequency of movement, and how juddery or smooth it is. This is one effect that you almost certainly don't want to apply across a whole scene (or across a whole movie), so this will also need start and end keyframes, which is going to require some additional user interface on the camera view.

Usual disclaimers apply: this is really early dev code, not representative of final quality, and we don't have a release date for it.

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain

I use Moviestorm every day, often running through the same few test sequences each time. Although I love it, it's sometimes hard to get excited or inspired when I'm so familiar with Moviestorm that I regularly dream about it and see the interface swimming in front of my eyes when I wake up in the morning. Nonetheless, every once in a while something I've thrown haphazardly together to test a bit of functionality will remind me that, actually, Moviestorm is a storytelling tool above all else.

Here's a bit of silliness that started as a test of the Pyro pack and ended up as quite a cool short sequence.

I know it doesn't fit on the page, but dagnamit, it's so pretty I don't want to butcher it into a smaller size. Watch the full version on my Moviestorm page.

I've no idea who the hooded pyromancer might be, or why he's attacking the cameraman in an art gallery, but that doesn't matter: from such initial fragments are big stories woven.

Now then. The disclaimers. I know we always throw in the usual "when it's ready", "development code", "your mileage may vary" disclaimers, but in this case I really do have to emphasise: the mobile fireballs are something that we're trying out at the moment and they still have some bugs. You - hopefully - won't see any in this video, but that's more by good luck than good management. Rolling balls of fiery flaming death might not make it into the Pyro pack at all. Certainly, I wouldn't be surprised if they were only static objects by the time the pack is released, with mobile fireballs scheduled for a future update. We'll try and get them ready, but I can't promise that we'll manage it.

Don't worry. They'll still be balls, they'll still be great, and they'll still be - most emphatically - of fire.

Moviestorm effects 8: bloom

Bloom is a lot like glow, except that it's keyed to brightness, which produces an effect a bit like using HDR (High Dynamic Range). It adds blur and brightens the bright bits of the shot. Bloom is one of the most versatile filters so far, with various parameters to create a number of different looks. It's great for dream sequences, flashbacks, or other surreal shots, and works well in music videos.

Usual disclaimers apply: this is really early dev code, not representative of final quality, and we don't have a release date for it.

Moviestorm effects 7: glow

Glow is one of those subtle filters that adds softness to a shot. It adds a gentle blur to a scene, and is often used for romantic sequences. A standard cameraman's trick was to smear vaseline over the lens, or stretch a very fine mesh over the camera, in order to diffract the light and create this well-known soft focus effect.

If you really push the glow, you end up with something that's quite stylish, but it can easily be overdone.

Usual disclaimers apply: this is really early dev code, not representative of final quality, and we don't have a release date for it.