Last week for IM out at St Albans, Second last week for the New Media Class

Today was the last class for the Adv Dip IM class, I was surprised how prepared everyone was, a few are doing some finishing touches(due date next Wednesday 12th) however most of the class have finished.
If anybody is having hassles please drop me an email.
The Cert IV/New Media class is progressing well, we have one more week which gives everyone a reasonable amount of time to get things done.

PLEASE NOTE - You must upload your video to youtube, and embed this on your blog. If the video is not on YOUR blog, then it doesn't exist. If you did the video as a group, you must still post it on each of your individual blogs....

Videotrace

Worth a look, tracing 3d models from video footage.
http://smart-machines.blogspot.com/2008/01/videotrace-creating-realistic-3d-models.html

Final week for IM Flinders Class

Welcome to the final week, and well done for making it this far.
By now your assignments should be very near completion.

All of your machinima pieces should be exported as .mov or .avi files, then uploaded to youtube and embedded/posted on your blog. I suggest you limit your filesize to under 100 meg, taking into careful account the quality of both the video and the audio.

If you have any problems at all completing the task, please email me at dale (at) oztron.com, I still have several other classes to complete and will be around the university over the coming couple of weeks.

Voice chat demo

For todays class each person was required to make a short clip at least, showing they have voicechat working and understand a lot of the machinima settings.

Shortcut keys for camera control

ADD COMMAND KEY FOR MACS

Second week back - learning how to film in Second Life

This week we will go through the following settings which will help us film our machinima in Second Life. You should spend a little time exploring these techniques to see which will best suit your film, and then it's finally time to start capturing!

CAMERA CONTROLS, PANNING
alt + left click to focus (+ cmd for mac)
ctrl-alt + left arrow to orbit (+ cmd for mac)
alt + down arrow to zoom out (+ cmd for mac)
ctrl-alt-shift+arrow keys to zoom (+ cmd for mac)

EDITING YOUR GRAPHICS SETTINGS
To see your FPS/performance
View>Statistics
To change settings
Edit>Preferences>Graphics
For example - if you are doing close up shots, limit your view distance to increase performance.

SPECIAL SETTINGS FOR MACHINIMA
Edit>Preferences>Input and Camera
DEBUG MENU - ctrl-alt-d (+ cmd for mac)
INTERFACE ON/OFF - ctrl-alt-f1 (+ cmd + function for mac)
Client > Character > Slow Motion Animations
Disable Camera Constraints
Debug Settings>zoomtime

Advanced>Character>Enable Lipsynch

World>Environment Settings>Environment Editor

SOFTWARE
Crazytalk
Fraps
Captureme




Check the links below for a lot more information about all of this, including video tutorials.

Finishing our sets, first week back from holidays

First week back, and into the final stretch.
This week we are finishing up our sets, getting them ready to film in.
We will be using Fraps to capture the video.
A couple of important SL shortcuts are;
DEBUG MENU - crtl-alt-d
INTERFACE ON/OFF - ctrl-alt-f1
Please note you need to have your debug menu on to control the interface.

Links that will help you;

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Machinima
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Movie_help

There are plenty of ways to skin a cat - consider your story carefully and plan your set and film accordingly, and ask for help if you need it.