MovieSandbox V1380 Beta for download

This one took a bit longer and is mainly a housekeeping release.
With the introduction of so many new features and paradigms in 1370, it was time to squash some bugs and make a couple of adjustments here and there to make it easier to actually use of all the new stuff.
Unfortunately, the facial mimics and lipsyncing is still something i have to find a good interface solution for. It's just SO many possibilities...

Grab the latest version from the downloads page!



The biggest difference in 1380 is stability - the drawing tool proved to be a pretty unstable thing to use. Hopefully these times are over now.

In addition to that, you are now officially allowed to use your photoshop creations and scanned images in both character creation and painting, as the Trace tool has been reworked to allow for more detailed importing of drawings and now has an extra section to paint bone connections right into your drawing (every color represents the bone accordingly).
The templates used here can be found in your MSBTools directory.

And yes, it works with drawings in the scene editor as well, it just ignores the bone image. Click on Trace, then start, then switch to the tracer window (or open it), click on the appropriate images to load your own (.bmp or .jpg), choose a resolution and click "Send".

Of course, there'll be tutorials, hopefully over the weekend.

Enjoy! And let me know what's good and what's not.

and now for some math...

I am currently working on new ways for people to create sets within moviesandbox, and the general idea of it is to use projection and then draw the actual 3D information right into the level.
The general idea behind this is best described with two screenshots:

on the first screenshot, you see a simple grid image projected onto the standard Moviesandbox creationbox level. nothing special there.


This second image however reveals that, given you are looking at this image from the right point of view with the appropriate projection angle and so on, you see a perfectly fine grid, even though it is projected over a couple of corners.
With this idea in mind, you can now start painting the actual 3D grid and use the projection as reference and texture. Got it?
If not, don't worry, i'll explain soon and you'll see how this can help you.

There are a couple of art projects that use a similar approach - although mixing different media - and i think they explain a bit better what i'm trying to implement.

First, there's the lovely "Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser" from Markus Kison where the live-feed of a couple of webcams is projected onto miniature architecture models of the places they watch. It gives you a good idea on how a simple picture - just by the way it is projected - can create a miniature 3-dimensional scene.

The second one is the "augmented sculpture" by Pablo Valbuena. Here, a static object is being projected on and several different light situations or drawing types are simulated just by the projection. It gives you a good idea of what artistic possibilities you have when you start thinking in ways of projection and 3D.

Now taking off from the airport in Portland - and hopefully seeing you soon at the European Machinima Filmfestival!

Moviesandbox touring around

Just a heads up that i am more or less on tour with moviesandbox for the next couple of weeks. I am currently in Atlanta (which you can read more about on Michael Nitsche's blog) and will be coming to the european Machinima filmfest where i'll be demoing Moviesandbox all day saturday (12th of october). And finally, there will be a live-performance using Moviesandbox on sunday at 4pm. Let me know if you're attending and we can hang out!

Just after the european Machinima Filmfest, i will be giving an extended Workshop for mediamatic at the cinekid festival in Amsterdam.
See you there!