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05/07/2016 15:20:49

MuvizuTeam
MuvizuTeam
Posts: 25
Hello

We have just launched the latest character pack to Muvizu! You'll find it in the store now.

http://muvizu.com/Store

It follows the usual format - man, woman, boy and girl plus clothing options.

Enjoy!
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05/07/2016 17:06:36

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988
Is it just me or do they look Mexican?
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05/07/2016 17:15:15

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975
I think it's the mustache. "We don't need no stinking badges...."
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05/07/2016 17:16:29

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988
LOL but I just noticed as well - they're mutants! FIVE Fingers?! What kind of self respecting cartoon character has more than 4 fingers?!
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05/07/2016 18:11:08

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
ziggy72 wrote:
LOL but I just noticed as well - they're mutants! FIVE Fingers?! What kind of self respecting cartoon character has more than 4 fingers?!


how can we use 5 finger characters in the same story with 3 finger characters???

;-)
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05/07/2016 19:20:57

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988
Hang on, are we counting thumbs here...? Big Grin
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05/07/2016 21:55:07

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
ziggy72 wrote:
Hang on, are we counting thumbs here...? Big Grin


let's just call them "digits", and the semantics get a lot easier... ;-)


On a different note:
If we're going to have to activate every time we buy something, Muvizu is going to have to rethink the idea of "Maximum number of activations" or poor Jamie will spend all of his time helping people get their latest purchase installed after they run out of "max activations allowed"

On yet another different note:
I wonder how long it will be before we get UV maps for the new characters.. to my knowledge we still don't have any for the 1st set of Asian characters
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06/07/2016 08:33:08

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220
On closer inspection it looks like they have 4 digits, one of them being some sort of conjoined digit.
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06/07/2016 09:45:33

mindiflyth
mindiflyth
Posts: 77
Not to be ungrateful, but I hope Muvizu will move away from packs where we get a few characters with rather limited options, and get back into giving us characters with lots of flexibility. Please give us characters with more options, or give us more options for the characters we have! (I REALLY want to see more costume options for the superhero character pack!)

With characters we can't change much, there are only so many stories we can tell. I still haven't seen a single movie made with the Asian characters from the previous pack! If we had more options for their outfits, hair, etc., I bet people would get a lot more use out of them.

(Again, I don't want to be ungrateful. It's good news when Muvizu puts out a new character pack. But it seems like they're shifting over to this model of characters with locked-down looks, and I feel like that's the wrong direction.)
edited by mindiflyth on 06/07/2016
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06/07/2016 10:28:01

ikesMuvizu mogul
ikes
Posts: 282
I totally agree Mindiflyth, in my eyes those Asian figures are not adding anything to muvizu. I think it's better to develop the keyframes further with rotation, keyframes for the eye and head movement and more things allready writen in the other forum entry (http://www.muvizu.com/Forum/topic5731-things-id-like-to-see-in-muvizu.aspx). Please add more actions instead of wasting time on characters nobody uses. I still have to see the first movie that uses them...
edited by ikes on 06/07/2016
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06/07/2016 13:12:09

fazz68
fazz68
(Account inactive)
Posts: 763
mindiflyth wrote:
Not to be ungrateful, but I hope Muvizu will move away from packs where we get a few characters with rather limited options, and get back into giving us characters with lots of flexibility. Please give us characters with more options, or give us more options for the characters we have! (I REALLY want to see more costume options for the superhero character pack!)

With characters we can't change much, there are only so many stories we can tell. I still haven't seen a single movie made with the Asian characters from the previous pack! If we had more options for their outfits, hair, etc., I bet people would get a lot more use out of them.

(Again, I don't want to be ungrateful. It's good news when Muvizu puts out a new character pack. But it seems like they're shifting over to this model of characters with locked-down looks, and I feel like that's the wrong direction.)
edited by mindiflyth on 06/07/2016


its probably because muvizu is expanding its market into the Asian areas of the world and are catering for them. hence all the expansion packs being Asian orientated. that market is probably huge for them so they are going to do whatever they can to increase their revenue. more revenue means muvizu stays alive longer and have more cash for development in other areas? i prefer the old potato head characters anyway. to me even the superhero characters dont fit muvizu's style but thats just down to my preference in character styles. the potato heads characters are why i started using muvizu (and it was easy to use lol) im not really a fan of the too human looking characters and have very rarely used them.
More clothing attachments for the potato heads would be my choice, like they have in the chemistry and Chinese pack. but it looks like they are moving away from that look, which is a shame. so i doubt that will ever happen.
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06/07/2016 15:16:23

Rocque
Rocque
Posts: 359
Helpful criticism is beneficial when we are always looking for ways to make our animations stand out from the cookie cutter character look. I like to be able to have choices even though I am not ready to use them all, it is still nice knowing that there are more options then just the "same old thing", or looking like I am copying something from someone else.

I, too, appreciate all that Muvizu keeps adding, and that there are others here who are able to create so many new things for us to have access to. I have no intention of purchasing the South Asian pack at this time because there are no ideas that come to mind when I see them. Perhaps it is because I know little of that culture right now. I love anime, and was thinking, about how I could use the characters in some anime styled videos, and right away I felt I would need to design some clothes because the choices are limited. I also would want different hair styles available.

Having more Asian animators, as well as animators from other countries here would be beneficial to us, especially if they voiced what they would like to see in the studio for their styles of animation. Hopefully, more people voicing what they would like to see will get more user friendly results, and I am sure there are people who do not mind purchasing sets, or characters they will use in place of monthly fees to have access to Muvizu.
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06/07/2016 15:23:44

Rocque
Rocque
Posts: 359
ukBerty wrote:
I think it's the mustache. "We don't need no stinking badges...."


Very few people know where that line came from. I stumbled across that movie one time, and it remains one of my all time favorites. Blazing Saddles renewed the phrase in a funny way, but to see the original movie (and I am not telling the name on purpose, so people who do not know, have to find it...haha...I wish I could give a prize) will set a ground work for every villain in modern day films, and make the line in Blazing Saddles even more funny.

Let me know if you agree...but then maybe this is a detour from the main topic. Thanks for your humor ukBerty!!!
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06/07/2016 15:24:07

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
My guess is that it's all driven by the economics of staying in business. Any actions that get added will become part of the core program unless they figure out a way to sell them separately. They could potentially spend a lot of time and effort creating stuff that can't be monetized.

Characters and accessories can be sold as add-on packs which generate income... So that's what I expect to see going forward.

I like the new character packs... I think they are very well made, and they address complaints from the past about realism. And I have to believe that the plan is to continue adding accessories and outfits for the new characters as asset packs. They needed to develop the characters before they know proportions for the accessories. We now have 8 characters in the new style. That's the equivalent of many more once they add accessories that let us mix & match to create new looks

And I'm betting that whatever accessories they eventually provide will work for all of the new characters. If that happens, we'll have enough characters in that style to build whole stories around them.

Or not. But I'm hoping....
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06/07/2016 15:37:04

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988
I also agree that they should devote more time to improving the program than adding new characters. When I use Muvizu my first thought isn't "I wish there were more types of bodies", it's always "when are they going to fix this f*@king thing?" (fbx rotation, fbx textures being reassigned on load, the ties going nuts, dialogue default wrong, last eye animation not working on render, compatibility with Nvidia's latest driver, etc, etc).
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06/07/2016 15:38:04

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220
ziggy72 wrote:
I also agree that they should devote more time to improving the program than adding new characters. When I use Muvizu my first thought isn't "I wish there were more types of bodies", it's always "when are they going to fix this f*@king thing?" (fbx rotation, fbx textures being reassigned on load, the ties going nuts, dialogue default wrong, last eye animation not working on render, compatibility with Nvidia's latest driver, etc, etc).

What He Said
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06/07/2016 17:21:25

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
now that Jamie has increased my number of allowed activations (Thanks Jamie! You da man!) I've opened the characters and played around with them. I'm guessing that the absence of attachment points means that all of the future accessories and clothes will have to be bought as asset packs.

The obvious disadvantage is that many of us LOVE creating our own accessories, and it's looking like the future direction of Muvizu is going away from user customization. Hope I'm wrong about that. It looks like the new characters can hold and use models as tools... it's mostly clothing that will have to be selected from a menu once the items are available.

The good news is that whoever is designing the new stuff is an excellent designer! If new characters continue in the current style (translation: if we don't end up with a hodgepodge of mismatched character styles that can't be used together) it will make Muvizu more useful for business, advertising and other applications where the potato heads are not a good match.

If the soft cloth outfits provided are an accurate example of what's to come, we'll have some great things in store <-pun intended

The Indian outfits are particularly good examples of what's possible clothing-wise when a professional designer is making the outfits! Kudos to whoever is designing this stuff... in my opinion it is very VERY well done!

The low price of Muvizu is starting to make sense. Give people an initial set of options that lets them do quite a bit immediately, then to generate ongoing revenue offer asset packs of characters and accessories. That is a solid business plan.

Now I wonder if we'll see more characters next... or if we'll start seeing asset packs introduced with more clothing for the existing new characters.
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06/07/2016 17:44:03

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975
ziggy72 wrote:
When I use Muvizu my first thought isn't "I wish there were more types of bodies", it's always "when are they going to fix this f*@king thing?"


The sad truth is.... we get round it and soldier on, but I know that some users have walked away from Muvizu because it's just too damn finicky ("like juggling eels" was a recent description) - so maybe tidying a few things up would reap financial benefits although they'd be difficult to quantify.

I would like to see action packs. 10 actions on a theme for $5 or whatever. First pack could be "shuffling around" - two steps forward / turn round, but the other way/lean forward etc. OK - it's not exciting but boy would it be useful. The trouble is that you need to individually crate each action Maya for each character - so for the potato heads that's what 8 or 9 per action. It's a lot of work.

A better solution... and I may have mentioned this before.... is to open up the interface so people can create their own action packs to sell through the store. Then once it's done, Muvizu can take a cut whilst others do all the work. Now that's my kind of business model....
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06/07/2016 17:50:32

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
More clothing attachments for the potato heads would be my choice, like they have in the chemistry and Chinese pack. but it looks like they are moving away from that look, which is a shame. so i doubt that will ever happen.


it's hard to say at this point exactly what the Muvizu team has in store for the future... but it does look like selling new asset packs is a big part of that plan. If that is in fact the case, it would make sense to include more assets for the potato head characters, since they are by far the most used and useful characters in the set. It's a simple matter of supply and demand... there's already a large demand for ANY assets that work with the potato heads.

I'm glad you mentioned the chemistry and Chinese packs, because they offer proof that such assets have already been produced recently. I predict we'll see more professionally designed assets for all the characters. And I think that's a good thing. Long overdue, in fact.


When I joined this forum about a year ago, there was widespread speculation that Muvizu was a dying product. In the past year we've seen the release of 8 new characters, several new asset packs including the Chinese history and chemistry packs, keyframes, 360 rotation etc... so it's good to know that development is alive and well at Muvizu. I see all of this as being extremely positive, even though the benefits won't be fully realized until we have more assets to use with the new characters.

I think it's significant that the new characters in the store don't say "FREE with Muvizu +". That indicates a commitment to generate enough revenue to keep Muvizu alive for a long time to come.

Regarding the stability issues, surely they realize that they'll have to keep refining the engine and addressing bugs...
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06/07/2016 18:22:06

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
ukBerty wrote:
ziggy72 wrote:
When I use Muvizu my first thought isn't "I wish there were more types of bodies", it's always "when are they going to fix this f*@king thing?"


The sad truth is.... we get round it and soldier on, but I know that some users have walked away from Muvizu because it's just too damn finicky ("like juggling eels" was a recent description) - so maybe tidying a few things up would reap financial benefits although they'd be difficult to quantify.

I would like to see action packs. 10 actions on a theme for $5 or whatever. First pack could be "shuffling around" - two steps forward / turn round, but the other way/lean forward etc. OK - it's not exciting but boy would it be useful. The trouble is that you need to individually crate each action Maya for each character - so for the potato heads that's what 8 or 9 per action. It's a lot of work.

A better solution... and I may have mentioned this before.... is to open up the interface so people can create their own action packs to sell through the store. Then once it's done, Muvizu can take a cut whilst others do all the work. Now that's my kind of business model....


^^^^^^^^ I agree! Would love to see either of those things happen!
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