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PatMarrNC - all messages by user

2016/3/22 2:37:45
Use Mandy for animal heads I went back to the simulated quadraped animation I made with a cow... the one with spindly legs... and I swapped out the old legs in favor of Rosie's legs. That ended up looking almost proportional enough to use. If I didn't have to size the cow's body large enough to encapsulate and hide Rosie's head, I could make it work. I just need a character whose head can be turned off (along with the arms) Then give me a way to put hooves or paws at the end of her feet, and I'll be ready to crank out some walking talking quadrapeds.

I think if Muvizu ever provides an official solution for creating 4 legged creatures, they have enough stuff that works already , with one or two small tweaks to an existing character, we could have a quadraped . The advantage of building quadrapeds from the legs of existing characters is that we'd inherit all the smooth moves that are already built in (as opposed to animating pieces with keyframes)

How about it Dev team? I just want one utility character that can (turn off / make invisible) the whole body except for the legs. I'll take it from there

Better yet, take this idea and run with it and create one or more generic quadraped characters that we can modify with different feet, heads. Man I'd pay whatever you asked for that character pack! (and I bet everybody else would too)
2016/3/22 2:16:55
The 2nd Trailer to Empire tries to Kick their Butt I've been messing around with the ability to keyframe the appendages of models that have been imported in animatable pieces. For anybody who has wished for more low-level control at the sacrifice of Muvizu's usual rapid development system... this may be it!

It's kind of like claymation... move the item, keyframe its new location, repeat. This could be one way to add quadraped movement to a limited number of scenes... but it's awfully time consuming, and the end result doesn't have the Muvuzu "look". ( the muvizu characters built-in moves follow the industry standard of anticipation, movement, follow thru etc so they look far more polished than the clunky step-animations I'm coming up with using keyframes.)

But the starting point is to get something that works... THEN make it work better. Keyframes work for simple step animations, and I think that's a cool starting point.
edited by PatMarrNC on 22/03/2016
2016/3/22 1:50:12
Feb 2016 release feedback/bugs For me the only problematic thing about the latest release is the fact that you can't use AVIs as textures on TVS and backdrops. Hope that gets fixed pretty quickly.
2016/3/19 13:46:42
Importing from Sketchup When saving models in Sketchup (or any other Modelling software) for use in Muvizu, it is important to locate the XYZ origin of the model and orient it in 3D space the way you want it to appear in Muvizu. This is especially critical for attachments, because they will typically attach to your character's attachment point at whatever part of the model is located at coordinates X=0, Y=0, Z=0

Sounds like when you saved your model it was not centered at the axis origins

Having said all that, I've noticed that when importing models that won't be used as attachments, sometimes they appear far away. No idea why this happens... but when it does, you have to click on the object to make it selected, then use the mouse to move it to wherever you want it to be.
2016/3/19 3:47:34
Great expectations, what can be done & what can't for the biology curricula, we'll need quadrapeds. Just sayin'. ;-)

And if one of them happens to be a dragon, all the better
2016/3/19 3:44:46
Great expectations, what can be done & what can't jgourlay wrote:
From muvizueducation.com the following seems fairly recent (i.e. after the Asian character pack was released) and suggests the education market is a big driver of new features.

A few highlights:


  • Now in response to requests from schools, colleges and universities we will be adding carefully designed educational content to it!
  • There will be two themes to the educational packs: Support for curriculum subject areas, and Interesting historical or cultural periods.
  • The first education specific pack has now been released! This is a curriculum support pack for Chemistry.
  • The first Asian set will soon be followed by more Indian, African-American and Caucasian characters.
  • Now these new characters are available we are going to give you all sorts of ways to dress them up with clothing packs. Many Historical and culturan styles will be made available.

edited by jgourlay on 19/03/2016


now that makes sense! Thanks for that post! (I like the part about giving us more ethnic character groups and ways to dress them up!)
That not only gives them an inroad to education-based customers, but the historical emphasis also provides a lot for the storytellers among us to work with!
2016/3/18 20:31:20
Great expectations, what can be done & what can't MrDrWho13 wrote:
There are new features coming soon. (I'm not sure what, but Muvizu seems pretty active right now)


now there's a teaser statement if ever there was one!!

It's been my experience with other software companies that when the users don't bombard the developers with random suggestions and let them develop their plan for the product, what they come up with tends to be better than what people were asking for. (the range of possibility is nearly endless, and spreading focus in too many directions inhibits development of the big picture)

My guess is that the things we've seen lately are hints of what's to come:

1) The store sets the stage for new content... hopefully LOTS of it... something I'm sure would be well received. An influx of high quality new content would generate income for the company, and make the product interesting to a wider audience. Plus, the existing user base also likes new content.

2) Keyframes set the stage for a LOT of new timeline potential, depending on how it is implemented.

3) The 360 view sort of baffles me... in a video paradigm where I want to control the views, I don't understand why it would be desirable to let the viewer scroll away from the scene I want them to see. But they didn't go to that trouble for nothing, so I figure its part of a plan. Since unreal is a game engine, and 360 view makes more sense in a game environment than in a movie environment, maybe they're planning features that make MUVIZU more relevant in the world of game development.

If nothing at all ever changes, I'll be happy with Muvizu for quite a while. One thing is for sure: they have an amazing product, one that merits the attention, time and resources to expand its market.
edited by PatMarrNC on 18/03/2016
2016/3/17 23:20:07
The 2nd Trailer to Empire tries to Kick their Butt Clayster, I think it's cool that you've figured out a way to animate your models in the Muvizu environment using keyframes... if you ever have time to describe what you're doing I'd love to hear the details
2016/3/17 3:32:38
Coming Soon 2016 ziggy72 wrote:
Hope to have it done this year...but said that last year...and the year before that... tell you what, ask ukBerty Big Grin


we need another thread called "COMING SOMEDAY" for you and Berty... ;-)

or maybe "WORTH THE WAIT"

I think there is a phenomenon in the creative realm that works much like the Commitment Anxiety of the relationship realm. "I can't commit because it's not right yet...."

I'm on a song writing forum, and in that environment I never feel like my work is polished enough to release. There's always more that could be done. The amount of detail and polish that can apply to video projects is potentially much more, so I'm impressed that detail freaks like you and Berty can ever stop working on a scene and move on to the next one.
edited by PatMarrNC on 17/03/2016
2016/3/16 20:50:06
Coming Soon 2016 you are a master of your craft, sir! Can't wait to see it! (how much longer do we have to wait?)
2016/3/16 13:06:34
How do I lip-sync to more than one audio file? What some call a "deficiency" I've come to regard as an "efficiency"... part of the reason why MUVIZU is easy to learn is that everything a person needs to understand has been simplified to its most fundamental form... in this case, a single audio file provides the dialog for a single character. I find that very easy to grasp and use.

It has always been true in the computer realm that what starts off as "user friendly" to a novice can become "user hostile" when the user gets more experience and doesn't want the hand-holding any longer.

There are just so many workarounds for this "problem" that I have a hard time seeing it as a problem at all. But since you are working with kids in an educational environment, here's one FUN way to overcome the obstacle:

1) write out your scripted dialog

2) get the kids to role play the dialog... better yet, have auditions and the kids can compete for the voice acting roles

3) record their delivery either on separate tracks, or use Audacity to separate the parts into whatever dialog is unique to each character. Doing it in real time like this virtually guarantees that the timing of the parts transfers directly to the audio file, and therefore to MUVIZU

4) when you load the audio into MUVIZU, name the snippets after the character... that way the kids will visually grasp the relationship between the character and his/her dialog

5) assign the dialog to the character, and MUVIZU does the rest automatically


If that seems too complicated for the kids, consider training them to work in SCENES, recording only segments consisting of whatever dialog they can manage. Since part of using MUVIZU involves learning to combine scenes into one consolidated video, this would reduce the project into bite-sized nuggets they can understand.
2016/3/15 4:15:37
Lion character lion character has been emailed to the address you specified. Please let me know if it opens OK.
2016/3/15 3:26:16
Hamster Character If you Message me your email address I'll send you a set containing a hamster you can save into your favorites so you can bring it into other sets

----update----

hamster has been emailed... please let me know whether the set opens
edited by PatMarrNC on 15/03/2016
2016/3/14 16:22:47
Lion character I'll try to send you (my version of) a lion later this evening (East coast USA time... your time minus 5 hours). Its a beautiful spring day here and I'm working outside at the moment

;-)
edited by PatMarrNC on 03/10/2016
2016/3/14 16:20:54
More camera tracking experimentation well done!

Tell us more about the "invisible set"
2016/3/13 17:31:10
animation fans ziggy72 wrote:
I think it was only for that one day.


ah, bummer!

They'll do it again, I suppose you just gotta look out for it.

yeah, I guess that's what I'll do...

basically everything that everyone always requests for Muvizu is already in iclone.

yeah, reading through their ads, they seem to have all bases covered... it's undoubtedly a good product with a lot of built-in potential!


As an animation hobbyist who just needs a semi-modifiable vehicle for fleshing out ideas, Muvizu is absolutely perfect for me. My productions are mostly intended to be ridiculous, so if I have to create new characters with head attachments instead of morphs, I feel like it adds to the silliness that I'm trying to achieve, and doesn't detract at all. Sure, I would appreciate any new features, and I expect that the new asset store concept will be helping that to happen; but I still have a lot to learn about what's already possible with Muvizu.

When I look at the amazing movies that have been made by the gurus here, it's evident that Muvizu's current potential is quite impressive, and the trend is in a positive direction. I might explore some other software, but I seriously doubt that I will abandon Muvizu. It's just too much fun!
2016/3/13 7:06:04
Feb 2016 release feedback/bugs braj wrote:
There's an issue with using cameras for animating textures: the cameras don't show up in the list when you try to choose them,


confirmed here
2016/3/13 7:04:43
Feb 2016 release feedback/bugs mrmuviz wrote:
Found another bug(for me at least) old .avi's that worked as textures before don't seem to work anymore.
Anyone else find this problem?


Hesh


Confirmed here. I tried several of my AVIs on the widescreen backdrop, and nothing at all appeared on the screen
2016/3/12 22:58:00
animation fans Anybody know if this had to be installed the same day? I downloaded it but didn't have time to install it that day. I'm guessing that installing it now would be treated the same as a demo version... did anybody else install it on a different day than it was offered for free?
2016/3/12 20:32:58
adding motion, making movement Wabby wrote:
Yes, but believe me : creating a credible motion is very very hard... Anyway, having this possibility may be a good thing, I agree.

They could also sell some motion packs...


regarding the difficulty of creating a credible motion:

I agree it is hard if the animator has to do it all, as they do in most animation packages. But the beauty of modular programming is that complex movements can be reduced to single commands.

For example, in Anime Studio, a walk cycle would consist of the following steps:
1) draw character
2) rig character
3) position the character's legs in poses that would occur during walking
4) keyframe each one
5) refine the animation by keyframing arm positions during the walk cycle
6) refine the animation by keyframing head position etc etc

In Muvizu we just click WALK, and a credible walk sequence happens!

Likewise, complex moves can be reduced to a series of smaller moves that can be played in sequence like a macro.

since we're dreaming.... It would be cool to have a series of simple boiler-plate moves that could be linked together to make more complex moves (which is what the current actions are, basically)

such moves/functions along with proposed arguments might be:
GraspHand(left or right)
RaiseForearm(angle)
FingersUp(integer, hand)

etc etc... the ability to manipulate individual body parts would open the door to almost unlimited animation possibilities thru macros
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Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.