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28/09/2012 11:03:54

DyllyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dylly
Posts: 555 		artpen wrote:
Hi team, muvizuers!

Ok, just a little one to think about over the week end.
Firstly, the new characters are great, but I really think they lack a fourth character
In the shape of a normal, Male, slender type body hero, ok I know you have the original
Characters, but their head shape and slouchy standing pose does not cut it.
What I think is something like beefy, but half the shoulder width?



I agree! We need as Freezo to go with Mr Incredible!
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28/09/2012 12:13:11

hugmyster
hugmyster
Posts: 107 		I was going to ask for a more modifyably (?) face. I love the brows but you are stuck with the one nose and one set of ears, or have I just not looked hard enough?

Amazing characters though.

How about an evil lady just to balance the odds - a Queen Zelda.
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12/10/2012 21:33:43

EEFilmzExperimental user
EEFilmz
Posts: 397 		Not to poop on your request, but ONE evil woman far exceeds a balance of MANY evil men. By the way you did not hear that from me! LOL
hugmyster wrote:
I was going to ask for a more modifyably (?) face. I love the brows but you are stuck with the one nose and one set of ears, or have I just not looked hard enough?

Amazing characters though.

How about an evil lady just to balance the odds - a Queen Zelda.

edited by EEFilmz on 12/10/2012
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15/10/2012 10:18:52

hugmyster
hugmyster
Posts: 107 		EEFilmz wrote:
Not to poop on your request, but ONE evil woman far exceeds a balance of MANY evil men. By the way you did not hear that from me! LOL

It depends what kind of mood they're in.
Look, mate, you've got me into it now!!!shake head
Could we have a mega-doodle alien then?
Or - PLEEEEEEASE - a quadruped? The head is irrelevant as you can change them but think of the possibilities. Yes indeed, the tap-dancing elephant lives on...
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15/10/2012 11:44:11

hallo
hallo
Posts: 17 		Anything what lives round the world?!?
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31/01/2013 04:46:46

AuroraMoon
AuroraMoon
Posts: 30 		I would like cartoon characters that looks sorta similar to the Japanese style animations...basically, anime characters. and I'd kind of like to have them set up like the default muv characters, with swappable eyes and stuff like that. Because you see, even though a lot of the Japanese cartoons look alike to those who aren't familiar with it, they still have highly distinct eye shapes.


I was kinda dispointed with the heroine in that dept. :P



The best part about those models that I'm suggesting is that they could easily be scaled down or up to resemble children to adults, because anime characters tend to be very versatile that way, espeically if you go with different eye styles like I suggested up above.
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31/01/2013 11:54:52

mos6507
mos6507
Posts: 34 		Muvizu has never made a character with normal proportions. They are basically muppets. They have skinny floppy limbs, big cylindrical heads, and cucumber-type noses. The superhero characters are better, but still on the comedic end of the spectrum. And since they've never come up with a way for 3rd parties to make their own characters, it really limits animators to doing comedy and satire. I've seen a few brave attempts at a serious clip with muvizu, but they simply aren't credible, because the instant association of comedy that one has when one sees the character designs. So you always are thinking that it's tongue-in-cheek or for kids. I wish machinima software wasn't so closely linked to the style of the software company's internal assets and it could be judged purely on the merits of the engine itself. Moviestorm has a similar problem, because all of its characters are some variation of a store mannequin with cold, dead eyes. The reason I gravitated towards Xtranormal is they had more diverse assets. I think Muvizu hasn't really acknowledged that its art-style has limited how many people decide to use it. The software's been around long enough that they probably should start to ask some tough questions about what is holding it back from hitting critical-mass. I thought that thing they stuck on the homepage a while back was meant for gathering that sort of feedback. To me, the character designs are at the top of the list.
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31/01/2013 14:22:42

AuroraMoon
AuroraMoon
Posts: 30 		mos6507 wrote:
I wish machinima software wasn't so closely linked to the style of the software company's internal assets and it could be judged purely on the merits of the engine itself. Moviestorm has a similar problem, because all of its characters are some variation of a store mannequin with cold, dead eyes. The reason I gravitated towards Xtranormal is they had more diverse assets. I think Muvizu hasn't really acknowledged that its art-style has limited how many people decide to use it. The software's been around long enough that they probably should start to ask some tough questions about what is holding it back from hitting critical-mass. I thought that thing they stuck on the homepage a while back was meant for gathering that sort of feedback. To me, the character designs are at the top of the list.


True. the one thing that Muv really has going for it is the fact that you can litterally customize the characters any way you want, such as putting textures on the characters in the program itself! not to mention being able to change eye shapes, sizes, etc. from what I've seen not many other animator/3d movie makers is able to do that. in fact, not many of those programs actually allows for customization of characters... all you can do is just download the characters they made for you and play around with them.

in this way Muvizu is more powerful than the other programs in terms of customablity. this could really be their selling point if they started expanding to cartoon characters with "realistic" portions for those who aren't a big fan of the "muppet look" but could still retain the Muv feeling somehow. then they would really have nothing stopping them.
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31/01/2013 14:54:33

mos6507
mos6507
Posts: 34 		"True. the one thing that Muv really has going for it is the fact that you can litterally customize the characters any way you want"
Customization is a broad term. I can't get them to look the way I want them. I want them to look like this:
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31/01/2013 15:21:54

hugmyster
hugmyster
Posts: 107 		Wasn't the bald one on the left the one from the first film?

Not healthy, I shouldn't know this kind of thing...
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31/01/2013 16:08:18

mos6507
mos6507
Posts: 34 		The bald one is a Deltan. Ilia was the character in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. My character's name is Ilsa and she's the ship's counselor, like Troi, rather than a navigator.
Sorry for the topic-drift.
I've added a bunch of extensions to Xtranormal State and I would have helped Muvizu be able to get their characters to emote better if they were interested in any of this sort of thing, but apparently they aren't as they didn't even see fit to reply to my emails.
Now Xtranormal is dying and there are more options available like Source Filmmaker so Muvizu doesn't seem as attractive to me to eventually migrate into the way it used to be.
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31/01/2013 16:14:01

AuroraMoon
AuroraMoon
Posts: 30 		They kinda look like the heroine character. it's just a shame that the heroine doesn't have different eye shapes and more hairstyles... I imagine you'd be able to make them then?
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31/01/2013 16:33:45

mos6507
mos6507
Posts: 34 		The Heroes and Villains stuff definitely is a step in the right direction. I should spend some time with that.
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31/01/2013 17:40:44

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		for character design since each company has its own vision etc the assets they produce are going to be in keeping with their art direction. Muvizu has made it possible for us to make any world we have in our minds eye. What is difficult and always will be a point of contention is characters because of the complexity and riging needed. Muvizu has its own patented emote system which they built themselves from the ground up again with its own art direction behind style of animation. What they can or might do or what we can ask them to do is open up the back end so we can import our own rigging which is complicated and its no small task. Creating a new character with new dimensions and have all the emotes/animations fit them its a manual and massive task to go through every animation and try to get them to work with a new structure so you then often have to make new sets of animations which is what has happened with the hero character set.

At the moment if you want your own completely new characters the best route is iclone because its not really considered a machinima tool its an animation tool. I am not a fan of xtranormal and never have been and their system was much more limited then muvizu and source film maker has the same limitations character wise as muvizu with their own brand and look that go with the games that run off the engine however you can if you have the time and are a bit on the masochistic side bring in your own characters but.. its not easy (no that is an understatement actually lol)

Anyhow if i want a more serious look or to make something that looks like something else characterwise i go take out my iclone where its a total open end and play with my storm troopers and micheal jackson and ET and any other character I can dream up.

There should be another female heroine for sure but if you look at what they are doing they have made their own characatures based on certain concepts. Everything else is possible if you go to their digimania site. Will they add it to their free version? I think what they will eventually add to their free version is a way for us to bring in what we feel is the right character as they have with the other 3D assets. Everyone knows they have something planned no one is completely sure of exactly what it is. I think at the moment one of their big issues is hand held props which would bring muvizu to an entirely new place . Big Grin

There is a point at which I expect them to put a price tag on this software although i am sure they are watching source film maker but again that tool is much harder to use then muvizu is and I dont actually use it i prefer if I insist on animating at that level move to iclone which is easier to work with then source filmmaker. Although I will admit that I just at the moment dont have the will to learn an entire system of that level of complexity from the ground up. I have enough things to play with and blender is free
edited by urbanlamb on 31/01/2013
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31/01/2013 22:40:02

AuroraMoon
AuroraMoon
Posts: 30 		Yeah, most 3d movie-making programs seem to be awfully limited or WAY TOO complex for mere hobbyists like myself.

I guess it's why we kind of take for granted that if MUV is so easy to use, then it might be easy for the creators to make characters for us. ^^;; so if we seem greedy, I hope that the creators can forgive us our ignorance on this matter.

the only things I've seen that came close to MUVIZU's easy modding, was the Movies PC game (a sims game that is geared around making movies, and even then it has it's own limits)...... and this free program called Miku Miku Dance.

The downside with that MMD program though, even though it comes in both Japanese and English, is that even though it's easy to use once you learn how to set things up, the UI makes it seem more complex than it is....which can easily confuse a lot of people new to it. plus it's default language is Japanese so you have to switch it to English mode before you can do anything with it.
here's a example of what MMD can do:

(adventure time parody)

as you can see, it's sorta like MUVIZU although the setup with that program is way different.
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31/01/2013 22:52:29

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		haha no i dont think your greedy I was more responding to the basics of the thread in one giant post. In each case each of these engines has its own uniqueness. Muvizu is pretty powerful and versatile in its own right so you can make it do more then say the xtranormal system which is a complete closed system and extremely limited. Its not nearly as complicated as the other one suggested here which is source film maker which limits the hobbyist to a very few characters unless you want to start modding in their engine which I dont haha I have engines I can make my own little characters in and not have to worry about the propriatary unreal engine stuff.

I would like to see a characters customization system with sliders and all sorts of things

Their heros characters function completely differently to the original sets and its apparent in the uv maps for the clothing as well. It is more likely they could build on that set to add anime but I always wonder when people make requests (Including my own requests) if what they are doing is trying to make a piece of software into something they already use and have access to. For some reason I totally latched onto the original muvizu characters I just love them and their goofyness. This is probably because I already do "serious" in other softwares and so have no need of that other stuff here.
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31/01/2013 23:05:32

mos6507
mos6507
Posts: 34 		I don't want to be disrespectful in this thread, since I definitely am an interloper and naturally here is where Muvizu fans congregate. However, I think there's been a little too much uninformed Xtranormal-bashing here. I don't blame anyone for having a negative opinion about it, since the company really sabotaged itself, but the original desktop software (State) was capable of a lot, and I have spent over two years expanding it. Barely anyone besides myself uses the expanded system, and State has since been replaced by the inferior XD (not that I can't help anyone curious enough about this stuff get it on their system if asked.)
This is the kind of work I want to do in Muvizu.

I don't think it's capable of those sorts of nuances. I am taking some time to try to recreate this scene on my own, but since it's really the first true Muvizu clip I've done, it's slow going.
I'd be glad to supply the audio for this if anyone wanted to prove they could do this. I mean, it's only a few lines of dialogue and a ton of body language.
As far as it being closed, the current system is, but State isn't entirely closed. I know how to import props and sets. Characters are doable but you have to really know Maya to prepare a proper rig.

I think you would agree that this bridge is better than Muvizu's.
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31/01/2013 23:11:04

AuroraMoon
AuroraMoon
Posts: 30 		well, we can't help it... MUV has a very nice-looking and easy to understand UI/layout, and plus what it does tends to cut down time on editing, etc. all we have to do besides setting up scenes is just direct.

in other programs we would basically have to spend hours setting up everything and animating everything before we could get to the final product. It would be sorta ridiculous to spend 8 hours on a 3d movie clip that only last 5 minutes. when you think about it like that... is it any wonder why we would like to take some of our favorite stuff from other programs and stuff it into another program that's easier and faster to use?
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31/01/2013 23:22:00

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I have state. yes their bridge looks better in this case. however everything is glued down and non-moveable and you can't change anything. This is the point, but I can build a bridge just like that one if I so choose or a bridge from a star wars movie. I can't do that with state .. well unless I hack it maybe then I can but state is a totally different beast in that respect all the rooms are confined I can't walk down a hallways or open a door because state is very limited in that respect.

I can't make that bridge purple and I can't copy that chair and put another one beside it and I can't get my character t walk off the bridge with a camera pan opening a door and follow him down the hallways. State does what is called "talking heads" very well. One room at a time.

Anyhow I am not interested in any holy software wars but aside from the graphical textures which I can do something about in muvizu there is no comparison. However if you want a bridge exactly like that one you just showed me I can in fact build it just like that or someone else with those skills and inclanation can.

my plate is full but if this is your desire give me a couple of months and you can have that exact bridge in muvizu.

I think I actually might make that bridge .... well there are a few things which i would leave out because I worry about copyright
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31/01/2013 23:22:38

mos6507
mos6507
Posts: 34 		"in other programs we would basically have to spend hours setting up everything and animating everything before we could get to the final product."
That clip I did with the robot took me, I dunno, 3 hours start to finish maybe? It wasn't mean to be that much of a big deal, and I even forgot to turn the Orion's eye blinks back on. It's just not a big time-investment to work at this level. Most of it spent on getting the body language right, none of it requiring the sort of keyframing you see in SFM, for instance. I'm not going to argue that Muvizu can't be fast doing the things it is good at, or that other software can be time-consuming, but XN is really fast. And XN is designed specifically for dialogue scenes. I am not enjoying the way you're supposed to enter dialogue wav files in through Muvizu. It is a slow process with tons of clicks, and no TTS supports. Plus, they apparently changed the UI in the last update and I don't see a new tutorial on how it's currently supposed to be done. You can not click to import the WAV directly in the dialogue section. You have to make an audio track and then link to it through the dialogue, which just adds an extra layer of complexity. The tutorials only feature a single speaker so it's not really showing me how to do a typical one on one scene like this. If anyone has a good dialogue tutorial for the most recent build, let me know. I do want to see how far I can go with it.
This is my first attempt to duplicate the look. I know it won't come close, but I am more interested in the virtual-acting capabilities than the look right now.
http://i.imgur.com/YieRnIr.jpg
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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.