Moviesandbox

Moviesandbox OpenGL progress

2009-06-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

It has been quiet the last couple of months but that doesn't mean nothing happened on the moviesandbox front. It turns out programming a realtime animation tool is quite a task and takes its time.
In the recent weeks, a lot of interface and rendering progress has been made and I thought I'd share some of it here.
First off, Moviesandbox now lives in this generation of graphics, making full use of OpenGL 2.1, pixel and vertex shaders and Framebuffer objects (or "rendertargets").
It's obviously a huge improvement from the now 5 year-old UT2004 engine (and there's a lot more functionality when it comes to non-rendering issues, but that's a different post).
One of the most fun things this makes possible is Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.
This was introduced in a paper by Crytek (siggraph pdf from 2007 here , wikipedia page here.
It looks for areas in the picture that are less likely to receive light from occlusion (as the name suggests). Here's a screenshot in Moviesandbox:

No lighting has been calculated in this scene. All shading is done using this Ambient Occlusion shader. Credit goes to this discussion at Gamedev.net.

Next up is Depth of Field. It was one of those Eureka moments when I finally managed to bend UT2004 to rendering DOF by rendering 6 rendertargets spaced evenly around the camera, looking at the same point. A tedious and hardware-hungry process that can be highly optimised with today's shader technology.
I am rendering the scene in a 16bit texture to get the depth information (also useful for the SSAO above) and then fading a blurred picture of the scene (using a 5x5 Kernel Gaussian Blur if you're interested) on top of a regular picture of the scene, blending depending on the 16bit depth map. Result in video form:

Moviesandbox Depth of Field Test from Friedrich Kirschner on Vimeo.

Both of these run well within 30fps on a Nvidia 8800GT.
Feel free to ask about details and expect some more updates on the technical side of development in the coming weeks.

The Inkscanner in Austin

2008-10-17T08:45:00.001-07:00

Just a quick heads up that I will be in Austin this weekend to show the Inkscanner at the MAKER Faire. If you are in the area and wanted to have your body scanner as a 3D dataset - come on over!

Moviesandbox @ Siggraph

2008-08-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

I am part of a panel on Procedural Character Animation at Sandbox (no pun intended), the Siggraph Videogame Symposium together with Ken Perlin, Chris Hecker and Craig Reynolds.
There'll be some puppeteering and animation stuff to see from the new moviesandbox, if all goes well... More info on that here.

If you happen to be in L.A. during that time let me know. I'm all in for hanging out.

A puppet play at NVision08

2008-07-31T12:56:00.000-07:00

If you like Moviesandbox, you can now support it by voting for my film "A puppet play" (Ein kleines Puppenspiel) over at the Nvision 08 Machinima Contest page.

You need to register in order to vote it seems, so if you have a couple of minutes, feel free to vote!

And while you're at it, also check out Egils Mednis "the Ship" - one of the most fantastic films in the competition here.

Thanks for your support!

InkScanViewer now available for download

2008-07-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got some time in between all the interactivos crazyness to upload the InkScanViewer and the new OpenFrameworks based Milkscanner software (complete with sourcecode) over on the milkscanner website.

It's only for PC right now, but it should be portable without too much hassle.
If you have questions about the software or the code, please post them in the moviesandbox forums - I'll be more than happy to make up for the poor documentation :-)

Milk and Inkscanner website now live!

2008-06-17T20:26:00.001-07:00

Just a heads up that the Milk- and Inkscanner now have a website!
It's fluidscanner.moviesandbox.net.

You can find pictures, some explanation and the most recent videos of scanning events plus some new code (as soon as i finished some minor polishing).
For all those who attended saturday's mixer event at eyebeam: THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I uploaded some documentation on vimeo, embedded for your convenience:

Pictures (on flickr) can be seen here.

Ein kleines Puppenspiel website live

2008-06-12T17:35:00.001-07:00

Just a heads up that the final Moviesandbox release for Unreal Tournament (and my last project with that game/engine) is now up for your viewing either on

vimeo

or on the

project website.

All of it is in HD and is played in realtime in-engine.

It is a live-puppetry performance that has been shown twice over the course of the last six months and i am currently converting it to the new moviesandbox format (which is a long and painful process). There's lots of material that describes how it was made and if you really feel like it, you can read a 40 page booklet describing the Why and How.

Let me know what you think!

Machinima Filmfest 08 in New York

2008-06-10T18:57:00.001-07:00

This year's official Machinima Filmfestival will be held on the weekend of November 1st at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York!
An official call for entries will follow soon.

Inkscanning in New York this saturday

2008-06-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

This saturday, during the eyebeam MIXER event, I will set up a life-size 3D scanner for all of you to use - using a pool, some ink, a webcam and some free software.
All you need to do is bring your bathing suit (preferably light colored) and you can get a scan of your whole body... towels and a swim-cap are provided...

More details for the event (there's going to be Live Music, a Robot and an Open Bar!) can be found deep within the eyebeam website.

Eyebeam is located at 540 W21st street between 10th and 11th Ave. The event starts at 9pm.

Tell your friends! It would be wonderful to see you there!

new site design and forums!

2008-04-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Hello there,

as you might have noticed, the site looks a bit more friendly now (and cohesive) and as an additional benefit, i have added a discussion forum where your questions and comments are more than welcome! Please take a few moments to register...

The registration process is now entirely tied to the forums. This means that you need to have a valid forum account in order to be able to edit the wiki.

All of these changes should facilitate the launch of the new Open-Source version of moviesandbox sometime next month. I am currently testing it in production and while the first version will be humble (just like the first UT2004 version was) i encourage you to give it a try, well, when it's out.
Until then, please be patient - i will restore the site to its full content over the coming days.

Friedrich

the marionettes at eyebeam

2008-04-21T16:33:00.001-07:00

"the marionettes" is a networked puppet installation created with the new standalone (and soon opensourced) version of moviesandbox and displayed for the eyebeam reception for the shanghai media art fair symposium in new york

Two networked puppets can be controlled by hardware marionette controllers. Participants can interact with each other through their puppets without seeing each other in person.

The controllers are a bit more sophisticated right now, albeit not really tweaked enough in terms of distances etc... There are some more picture on flickr here.

Blender Milkscan

2008-04-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Jonas over at pixelsix sat down last weekend to scan a self-modeled play-doh face with the milkscanner software and the results are astonishingly accurate - at least for my expectations.
Go read and see for yourself!

UT2004 now on steam!

2008-03-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

Great news! UT2004 has been released together with the complete Unreal catalogue on Valve's Steam download service.
This means that there is, indeed a future for Moviesandbox for UT2004 and that makes me quite happy!

Tool documentation videos

2008-02-07T12:59:00.000-08:00

I uploaded some videos documenting the tools that i used to create the "A Puppet Play" performance. These videos all refer to the current version of Moviesandbox.
In the meantime, the next version of moviesandbox is coming along nicely but is still a month or so out. I can assure you though that it will be worth it.

MovieSandbox V1390 Beta released

2008-01-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

The near final version of the UT2004 Moviesandbox is released and ready for download from the Downloads page.
There are a lot of "under the hood" fixes in this release but it also prepares Moviesandbox for the "Puppeteer" content that i will release very soon as a separate download. I also implemented graphics tablet support (in the System Menu) as requested by some of you guys.
This is basically a final release. The only things the next version will do differently is that it will allow you to export your content to the second iteration of moviesandbox, and maybe fix some bugs.

Thank you all for your input and help in creating this software!

a bit of documentation

2007-11-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

The puppet show is over and all went down quite nicely. In the coming weeks, i'll be tidying up all the files and produce some proper documentation for it. In the meantime, you can check out a short youtube video from the event showing a bit of the last part of the performance (thanks to Christine Elmer and the TMA Hellerau for the documentation!).
I learned a lot from this and it's a great way to finish Moviesandbox (remember? We're moving towards V1400Beta!).
Thanks to everyone who came and to the TMA Hellerau and eyebeam for both of their support!
more to come...

ein kleines Puppenspiel in Dresden tomorrow

2007-11-23T04:38:00.001-08:00

"Ein kleines Puppenspiel" (a little puppet show) will be performed live tomorrow at 8 pm in the Festspielhaus Hellerau as part of the CyNet-Art media art festival 2008. It's a small movie/puppet theater play that's driven by 2 puppeteers, a cameraman and a live-musician using 4 Gametraks, two Wiimotes and a specially designed MoCap-suit.
The complete source material will be made available for download as a free add-on for v1390Beta.
If you happen to be around let me know!
I'll post pictures and video of the play.

MovieSandbox V1380 Beta for download

2007-10-31T18:53:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-10-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

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!

Lipsyncing alpha patch 1375

2007-09-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

I just finished implementing a very quick draft of the lipsyncing feature and realised that it makes sense to push 1380 a bit, so that you'll get all the facial animation stuff in one package.
Instead, i give you 1375 (just unzip to your UT2004 folder as usual)! It's only a patch for those of you who really want to try out stuff with lipsyncing. Again, it's very early, but things are moving, quite literally.
You can find a changelist of the patch on the Wiki - where i also put a very rudimentary tutorial for those interested in lipsyncing.
To those not so early adopters, i'd suggest you just enjoy the clip below (it's a bit off - timewise, but hey):

Requests for V1380

2007-09-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

I thought i'd send an open question to all moviesandboxers asking what you'd like to have implemented next or what bugs seem most annoying to you. I'll finish a new version by the end of the week and so far, the list of implementations include:

- a face with lipsyncing
- fixed attachment functionality
- Node to hide characters and drawings

Let me know if there are things you'd like added/changed/removed. Or leave a note on the Wiki!

MovieSandbox V1370 Beta for download

2007-08-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

You can download the new version of MovieSandbox from here:

www.moviesandbox.net/MovieSandboxV1370Beta.zip

including the new pen feature and greatly increased stability!
This version has been exhibited at the Leipzig Games Convention and thus rather thoroughly tested...
I'll also update this website with new Video Tutorials starting from today all week, so if you'd like to know about a feature, be sure to leave a comment!

Here's the changelist:
Changelist for this version:

* added icons to most buttons
* rewrote the voxeleditor for greatly increased performance
- now using particles instead of actors
* switched mouse buttons for nodes
- left button will grab/release node, right button gets the menu
* fixed save-lists not updating with the new saves unless menu was closed.
* PoseEditor is a separate toolstrip now to make posing a lot easier
* implemented the pen toolstrip to create props
* implemented the puppet list to create Ragdoll-Puppets from all voxelcharacters
- works only with a GameTrak device
* fixed tweens sometimes not resetting properly
* fixed selection boxes still visible when playing
* fixed crash when doing loops
* many smaller fixes

Video updates

2007-08-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Just above the news post is a direct video feed from my youtube Moviesandbox playlist that will be updated from time to time with new feature demonstrations or tutorials, so stay tuned!
the latest video is a demonstration of the new Charactereditor and the Pen feature to be found in version 1370BETA, that will allow you to simply draw your Characters and Props - hopefully in full 3D and with Projections on them...

Proper Icons

2007-08-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quick heads up to tell you about some new icons (and a proper menu art direction) that will make it in the 1370Beta build (thanks hannah). I'm also producing a couple of demonstration videos right now, including one for the new Voxeleditor and the new Pen feature, that will be like drawing, with brushes and colors and stuff, but in 3D.

Plus, the website is slowly being reconstructed to make everything a bit easier to understand. 1370 is moving forward, you know.