I slogged my way through all those 3DS Max tutorials, meshed and re-meshed and adjusted bone assignments until I was scaling vertex weights in my sleep, and finally. . .voila! A Tom character dressed the way Amanda has described him.

The shirt is a little short on detail for tight shots. But I won’t stress too much over that right now, since I don’t know that I’ll actually film any close-ups of Tom in this outfit anyway. A simple retexturing with a better image and a bump map would do wonders for this shirt. But the graphics card in my laptop doesn’t render bump mapping, so until I can afford more sophisticated equipment, I probably won’t sweat the small stuff as long as the overall texture looks good on screen.

A “bump map” is a monochrome version of the primary texture image. 3D software reads it topographically—as highs and lows on a plane rather than dark and light on a spectrum. This gives the software information it uses when lighting the object in a scene, and the result is a much more detailed, realistic rendering.

Here is a typical texture file:

As you can see, it’s simply a jpeg image of boards like one might see on the side of a barn. I prefer to use actual photographs, but software doesn’t know the difference between a snapshot and a pencil sketch. It only reads the file type and digital information.

This is what the above jpeg image looks like once it has been applied as a texture:

There the jpeg image is, on the walls of that 3D building. A process called “UV mapping” has instructed the software how to place it.

The result looks fine, but programs like 3DS Max offer waaaay more capacity for detail, such as bump mapping. That’s the part my laptop can’t do. But I can show you pictures (rendered by a more powerful computer) of the difference good bump mapping can make.

Below is the monochrome bump map of the planks you just saw:

When this bump map is added to the information 3DS Max (and ultimately iClone) uses to render a scene, the result this:

The change is subtle, but look closely. All those little knotholes in the wood now look like bas relief.

On a final note, one experience I had during this process was an encounter with established content creators in the Reallusion forum. I tend to shy away from forums in general, and after the disheartening lack of response in a Mod The Sims thread last year, I was more wary then ever about asking for help. But I sucked it up and posted a question anyway. To my surprise, within a matter of hours, not one but two seasoned creators offered suggestions about the problem I was having. Hats off to “Animagic” and “Sen” for talking the new girl through a technology crisis without making her feel stupid.

While far from elevating me to award status on any front, my blog stats show an amazing trend. Most of the random hits I receive are from searches related to iClone. A few days ago, while Googling for information about a Reallusion plugin for 3DS Max, I discovered why. This blog ranks very high in search returns, especially with certain keywords. I was astonished to see “Meet Finn” landing fifth in the returns for one search, and “Dem Bones” fifth in the returns for another. Omigosh! This is incredible. . .and a little humbling. People I don’t know are actually finding and reading this blog. So I’m more inspired than ever to keep cranking out the posts, and trusting my subscribers to sort the ones that interest them from the ones that don’t.

For people who find me via iClone search, I want to make it absolutely clear that I DO NOT consider myself an “expert” when it comes to 3D animation or content creation. In fact, that idea is the polar opposite of the one that prompted me to start this blog. I’m teaching myself a hobby that interests me and airing all my goofy beginner mistakes in hopes that A) they will entertain and amuse, and B) they will give others beginners hope, because if a technophobe like me can learn this stuff, surely they can, too.

3DS Max continues to astound me. It’s a scary-powerful tool. Just tonight I learned about the “pelt” UV unwrap feature. It blew my mind. Yes, techies, go ahead and laugh. Doesn’t hurt my feelings one bit. Do I feel like an idiot for not knowing about pelt mapping before now? Uhh. . .nope. I’ve only owned 3DS Max since December. From just the bit of surface I’ve scratched so far, I’m becoming convinced that there’s no way one person can be completely proficient with all of its aspects anyway. It simply does too much.

So if you found me in an iClone-related search, I’m sorry to say I probably won’t qualify as a source for any useful information. But I do welcome you to hang around and watch me stumble through the learning curve. And hopefully, this wave of interest by writers all over the world will continue to build into a tsunami, opening doors for machinima that will mean a bigger audience for you, too. Now wouldn’t that be awesome?

First, though, a quick progress report on my iClone efforts. (Darn commercials, can’t get away from them anywhere.) I’ve successfully mastered the components of 3DS Max that will allow me to mesh unlimited custom clothing for iClone projects. However, the plug-ins provided by Reallusion for Primary Content Developers do not seem to work with my computer. It’s 64-bit, and apparently the plug-ins for G5 characters are designed for 32-bit systems. No other download options are offered. I’ve Googled until my eyes crossed and followed every tip I found on the Web about installing in this folder and that. No joy. The problem seems to be a particular DLE file that came with the plug-in. Maybe it’s corrupted? As of right now, I’m waiting on tech support from Reallusion. Will keep you posted.

Back to our (not so) regularly scheduled broadcast.

While most of my blog posts focus on either machinima or writing, each to the near exclusion of the other, this one is for everyone who ever tried to create a work product for public consumption. And it’s especially for those who’ve poured their heart into a novel, machinima, quilt, painting, photograph, or whatever, only to be met with a lukewarm response by people whose opinions are valued.

It’s our human nature to perceive this as rejection, to think if only we’d written better, filmed better, sewn better, painted better, then that person would be awed and gushing over the genius of our creation. This morning, Adriana Boettcher shared a story via Facebook that shoots gaping holes through that mental process.

At first I regarded the story with skepticism, as I do with all anecdotes circulating indiscriminately around the Web. However, after further investigation, I discovered this story is absolutely true. In 2007, a journalist at the Washington Post conducted an experiment that placed an internationally acclaimed violinist in a metro subway station, playing Bach on a 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius. Almost without exception, he was ignored (or barely acknowledged) by everyone passing through. Read the full story (and Hoax-Slayers’ take on it)  here: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/joshua-bell-subway.shtml

Interesting note: the journalist responsible for this social experiment won the Pulitzer for it in 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040701359_2.html?sid=ST2008040701372

One possible conclusion of the experiment, as widely circulated in email and Facebook forwards, is: “If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?”

This is a little too abstract for me. A little too pie-in-the-sky. The way I see it, this is the best proof anyone could offer that we, as artists, must consider our audience. The subway station crowd was not Joshua Bell’s target audience, and despite the insanely expensive instrument and otherworldly talent, his best efforts went unappreciated. Does this indicate a flaw on the part of the audience? No. Does it mean Joshua Bell needed to revise his method and pick a different instrument, or play a different kind of music? No. At what he does, he is a master. But those subway folk, like me, would not pay $100 a seat to hear him play even if they knew exactly who he was. They were NOT HIS TARGET AUDIENCE.

Whether we are machinima directors, writers, painters, or world-renowned violinists, the same dynamic seems to apply to us all. Know your audience. Understand that not everyone will pause to appreciate your work even if you’re a master at creating it. It’s not our job to stop traffic or interrupt busy schedules. It’s our job to create beauty where others see only mundane, color where the landscape is black and white. And, as the following video demonstrates, those looking for our brand of artistry will recognize it no matter what the circumstance.

http://youtu.be/hnOPu0_YWhw

Watch to the end.

Thank you, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) for penning a catchy title I can borrow for my latest blog post!

Bones. Ah, yes. Currently the bane of my existence. I’m still working on Amanda’s book trailer for Syzygy, but it’s a slow go. With iClone and 3DS Max I’m not exactly starting from scratch–the concepts are all basically the same as Milkshape, but the processes are something else again. Thank God I got a decent understanding of bone assignments when meshing custom content for Stonehaven. If I hadn’t, there’s no way under God’s yellow sun I could grasp anything I need to do now.

Let me show you what I mean.

This is a shirt I made for Amanda’s character Tom, in his scenes before the Hawaiian shirt and pajamas:

I feel rather pleased with the meshing effort here, and although it took me nearly a week to learn my way around 3DS Max without relying on a step-by-step tutorial, I feel I could probably create similar pieces now in the space of a single afternoon.

However, there’s more to it. Muuuuch more.

With Sims 2, a handy-dandy little plug-in called Unimesh allowed the transfer of bone information between similar meshes, therefore I didn’t have to start from scratch every time I tweaked a mesh.

With iClone and its two-mesh-element system (which I will actually prefer, I think. . .once I get used to it) there is a nude torso element plus whatever clothing elements you add combined into one object called RL_Upper. This allows skin tone adjustments within the iClone engine as well as independent color and texture adjustments to the clothing. In other words, within iClone I can move a slider or two to change a red shirt to blue without making my character look like a Smurf.

But I discovered when I pulled a G5 character template into 3DS Max to make aesthetic adjustments to the mesh, I lost the bone assignments connecting the clothing mesh to the G5 skeleton. Below is a picture of what happened when I moved the arm bones to the classic “T” pose. The shirt sleeves should have moved with the bones, as demonstrated by the two nude torso pictures you’ll also see below.

See, here’s where it gets tricky for me. So in case anyone has wondered why it takes me so long to do ANYTHING lately, let me give you a peek into one itty bitty corner of my 3D world.

With Sims 2, there was a single skeleton. It looked like this:

Now, I’m working with an iClone skeleton that looks like this:

To further complicate matters, G5 characters have not one but TWO sets of bones, both of which are visible in the picture above. But both serve different purposes, and now I have to remember which bone to “skin” and which bone will wreck the entire skeleton if I skin it by mistake. Or I might have that backward. It might be which bones will wreck the skeleton if I animate them. Uggh.

Here are the two groupings:

At this point in the process, I’m still with the program. I’ve already committed the bone sets to memory and no longer have to refer to the skinning and rigging chart provided by Reallusion for iClone developers.

But the complications don’t end here. Now comes the tedious, detail-oriented part I wonder if I will ever master.

I managed to connect the shirt mesh to a G5 skeleton rig in 3DS Max. Yay! But here’s the result:

I’m sure you see the problem. The sleeves do indeed move with the arm bones, but there are some very disfiguring artifacts that distort the mesh and make it unusable in its current state. Believe it or not, this is not a mistake or even a disaster. This is simply the result of default bone assignments given automatically by 3DS Max. And this next picture demonstrates exactly what is happening to the mesh, and why.

If you look carefully, you’ll see that the artifact vertices are all red, as are most vertices in the trunk area of the shirt. Also, there is a smattering of blue vertices in the sleeves and trunk as well. 3DS Max assigns colors with the bone weights to visually demonstrate priority. Red vertices come under much greater influence of the individual bone than blue. Non-colored vertices are not influenced at all.

In the little rollout to the right of the shirt you might be able to see that the RL_Pelvis bone is selected. If the picture is too small in your browser and you can’t see that, just take my word for it. This means that every colored vertex you see is influenced by the pelvis. No wonder those pieces of shirt sleeve don’t move with the arm bones. They’re assigned to move with the pelvis, and at the absolute highest priority!

The last picture I’ll show you reflects my up-to-the-minute progress with this issue. Selecting those offending sleeve vertices and setting their pelvis bone weights to zero won me this small victory:

But as you can see, I now have to tackle those incorrect shoulder bone weights and, although I’m not uploading more screenshots to prove it, some extremely wonky weights in the abdomen area that create distortions when the skeleton bends forward at the waist.

*Sigh.* I’m not stumped. I know what to do. I just wish there were shortcuts. Yes, I can refine bone assigments on one side and mirror them on the other. That’s a huge time saver. But still. Even the tutorials say that this stage of the creation process is trial and error–that you just have to keep tweaking those bones until they affect the mesh the way you want.

Til next time,
Your bone-weary friend Rhonda.

Uh. . .no. I have never envisioned myself as a filmmaker. Even with this recent foray into machinima, I’ve always thought of myself as a storyteller first, a writer second, and person who posts little movies on YouTube third. Even the term “machinima director” never really grew on me; I just use it because it’s the commonly accepted catchall phrase for anyone who creates little animated movies and posts them on YouTube.

By repeating the same thing three times in the above two paragraphs, I hope I’ve successfully established that I consider myself nothing more than a person who posts little animated movies on YouTube. This is for the benefit of any “real” filmmakers who might chance upon my work, follow the breadcrumbs to this blog, and wonder what the heck I’m doing. I feel I need a record for posterity, an “official” response to all the animators and moviemakers who realize I am not one of them.

Nor do I strive to be.

However, I am borrowing their tools. And that puts me in a strange conundrum. Kind of like the “uncanny valley” all animators avoid on pain of death. More on that in a minute. But first, I’d like to share some thoughts I’ve had lately about this thing I do: which is create little animated videos and post them on YouTube.

A year ago, I’d never even heard the word “machinima.” In fact, I have a record of the exact day I added it to my vocabulary. Here is the text of an email I sent to my cousin on February 3, 2011:

“Okay, now I’m even more depressed. I can’t have an original idea for shit. It’s even worse than I thought. They have a NAME for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima

I give up.

Rhonda”

See, I thought I’d come up with a really cool new concept. I’d been playing Sims 2 for a while, and by that time had built several legacy families and neighborhoods. So I knew about the video capture options built into the game. But my results were always pixelated and unwatchable, and for that reason, I never gave it much thought. Then, by pure chance, I learned how to change the quality settings of my in-game camera. And just that quickly, Sims 2 became one more storytelling tool in my arsenal.

About that same time, I was enrolled in a college sociology class. One of our assignments was to compile a written portfolio using terms from each chapter. One I chose was “anomic suicide.” I won’t bore you with all the details of how a class assignment turned into an extracurricular machinima project, but out of this circumstance my video “Hello” was born. It was well-received among Sims 2 machinima directors and even stirred a modicum of interest in mainstream viewers.

So the wheels in my head started turning. Here was a tool I could use from the privacy of my own home, without a lot of expensive software or training, to experiment with alternate forms of storytelling and interact with potential readers of my novels. I never labored under the misapprehension that EA Games (owner of all Sims 2 copyrights) would tolerate outright commercial use of their product. But this was just for fun anyway, right?

But the thing snowballed before I knew what was happening. Other writers recognized the marketing potential in animated short films or book trailers about their novels. And suddenly Sims 2 was no longer an option. In order to pursue this new direction, I had to find a commercial platform that would allow me to own the copyrights of any short film I created—whether my video work met professional filmmaking standards or not.

Now here I am, knee deep in tutorials teaching me to use iClone and a professional 3D modeling and animation tool called 3DS Max. Odd, how someone like me arrived in this place. But I do enjoy the work, and the earning potential seems to expand every day.

However, this plunks me down right in the middle of an ongoing 3D animation dilemma–how to avoid the “uncanny valley.”

Wikipedia defines the “uncanny valley” in these terms: “The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s human likeness.”

With Sims 2, this wasn’t an issue because EA Games and Maxis bore all responsibility for the animation. To quote Chrystie Bowie (with her permission, of course): “I don’t have a problem with Sims2 because they’re still so stylized.” Yes, Chrystie. Exactly. And this is what I couldn’t get so many uninitiated viewers to understand.

Now I have the opposite problem. With iClone, much of what is possible is far too “realistic” for most machinima aficionados. Mind you, these are the same aficionados who slammed “The Polar Express” and are now doing the same thing with “TinTin.” Neither of those movies evoke any kind of “revulsion” in me because of their animation. In fact, my husband and I watched “Polar Express” on TV last night, and I found the rendering nothing short of amazing. My husband, while initially unimpressed, eventually said that he “got used to it pretty quick” and saw no problem with the animation at all. So does the uncanny valley actually lie in the eye of the beholder?

Again, I’m going to quote Chrystie. This was correspondence we shared through private email, but I thought her insights were too germane to leave buried in my inbox. I’ve compiled several messages, edited only for continuity. Chrystie, please let me know if this arrangement doesn’t jive with your original intent.

(From Chrystie Bowie:)

For me, it’s all about the eyes. If they aren’t right, I immediately feel like I’m looking at a zombie. Now, I don’t have a problem with Sims2 because they’re still so stylized so I didn’t freak out like [some] did. With your iClone, the look was much more real-life but Finn had a live spark in his eyes so I immediately took to him. I’ll be interested to see if his eyes will track when you get him moving.

I think the Uncanny Valley is also more prevalent with older individuals. My generation is more resistant to the phenomenon and even resents animation that is on the crude side. I believe that as we get better and better at animation and simultaneously get more and more used to seeing it, the uncanny valley will become more shallow. Of course, look at live-action movies and shows that have explored the concept. AI Artificial Intelligence was basically about just that … the orgas discriminated against the mechas because of the Uncanny Valley. Then in Star Trek TNG, there were several episodes where Lt. Commander Data wasn’t taken seriously by other life forms because he was an android. Keep creating, keep making the medium more ubiquitous … because I personally would like to see a day when an author’s books can be translated to the screen with almost 100% faithfulness. Right now, that’s not possible because of the needs of human and animal actors and the cost of props and sets. If CGI characters played them and if there were realistic settings rendered by computers, the possibilities are endless.

You can definitely use my comments. If you want I’ll send you other musings about this subject that I’ve made in the past including how CGI animations would create possibilities for child characters in stories to be better represented because it would negate time restrictions due to child labor laws. Also, how the Uncanny Valley may be linked to the same mindset as racism and other forms of discrimination, that part of the psyche that makes people fear the unknown. It used to be a survival instinct but now it causes problems in modern society.

Well said, Chrystie. In fact, I think I shall adopt this position as my own when it comes to the matter. And because I don’t aspire to be a filmmaker and have no career to jeopardize by getting too close to the edge, I will brave the uncanny valley and risk disdain by “real” animators. To be honest, grousing from the animation community reminds me a bit of the sour grapes spewed by the traditional publishing industry when ebooks threatened to hijack the market. Now with ebooks outselling bound copies in nearly every venue, we’re hearing a completely different tune from New York’s Big 6 publishers. There’s a lesson in that, I think

So here’s my official statement about the uncanny valley: I want my animation lifelike, just as I prefer realistic art over the abstract and prose over poetry. Therefore I will continue to produce little animated films and post them on YouTube, and hopefully a few authors will benefit from a low-budget book trailer that captures the essence of their novel. Sometimes I will get the animation right, sometimes I will miss the mark. Eventually technology will bridge the uncanny valley and moviegoers will grow accustomed to the look and feel of machinima. Until then, all I can do is keep moving forward with this and see where the path may lead.

For the past couple of days I’ve been playing around with a new character. Meet Finn Wilde, star of Amanda Borenstadt’s novel Sygyzy:

Yesterday Amanda gave me the thumbs-up for this “actor”. I learned from making the Stonehaven machinima that casting is critical–the face we choose for the video will become the face of the novel for many people. I’m quite taken with this fellow–I wish he were real. I would definitely be a fan.

The process of character creation begins–at least for me–with a conversation. Amanda and I emailed back and forth a few times discussing her vision for the cast. Months earlier, she mentioned that the role of Finn would ideally be given to a young Russell Crowe. No problem, I thought. . .until I started hunting for high resolution photos of a young Russell Crowe.

It has never been my intention to hijack a real actor’s face for my project. But selecting a real person as a model for a character is the quickest and easiest way for a writer to communicate their ideas to me. I had planned to use a photo of young Russell Crowe to “skin” the iClone puppet, then modify bone structure so it didn’t look enough like Russell Crowe to invite a lawsuit. Alas, no usable photos of this man in his youth seem to exist on the Net. Yes, I did find some early pictures, but nothing of a quality I can work with. Face mapping photos must be high resolution, full face frontal with even lighting (otherwise one side of the puppet’s face will be darker than the other) and no teeth showing. Mug shots would be ideal.

After days of searching, I finally discovered that Russell Crowe has a lookalike. A young actor named Ben McKenzie has often been compared to Crowe, as in the photo below:

So I revised my search and found this one of Ben:

which I altered in my graphics editor to become an iClone texture:

. . .

I imported this texture image into iClone and began the process of creating Finn Wilde.

Below is an embedded link to a 30-second “audition” of this character. Don’t expect to be wowed. . .at least not at first. Once I explain what’s important about the scene, I’m sure my excitement over iClone will make more sense.

Like before, because I rendered this clip from a trial version of iClone, that awful, ugly watermark is stamped all over the video. Also, please note that the bleedthrough (tattering) around the edges of the shirt are related to an improper bone movement I made with the right shoulder. You can’t really see the bad placement in the video, but let’s just say it was another lesson learned.

If you watch carefully, you’ll see that as the camera pans around him, one corner of his mouth twitches upward, then a slow smile spreads across his face. This would be absolutely impossible with Sims 2.

In Finn’s mouth are top teeth (one of the complaints about Sims was that only their bottom teeth showed.) They are dazzling white in this clip, but I can turn them any color I want by simply moving a slider in iClone. The amazing thing, at least to me, is that I had full control over this facial expression. I created it “from scratch” by working with a face key. This allowed me to first move each muscle group that I thought should be involved in a smiling animation, then go back into the “detail” panel and fine tune each feature.

This is where iClone really starts flexing its muscle. In the screenshots below, you’ll see the four-viewport window of Milkshape, where I’ve imported a Sim head as well as an iClone puppet head. The thing I want you to notice is the number of white dots in each mesh. Each white dot is what’s called a “vertice.” Each vertice is assigned to a “bone” that controls its movement when animating.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

With only a glance, you should be able to note that the iClone head has a quite a few more vertices than the Sim head. Why does this matter?

Connected to each dot in the mesh is a line. These lines form tiny triangles that make up the mesh. Each triangle is called a “face,” or a polygon (poly.) If a mesh has lots of faces, or a “high poly count,” it requires much effort for a computer to render that graphic on the screen. Sims 2 is a game, and it’s played in “real time.” In other words, when you click on a character and tell it to go pee, you expect it to go pee immediately. If the Sims 2 bodies had a high poly count, it would take so much time for the computer to render each frame of their movement that you’d get what’s called “lag.” Lag is when the computer seems to freeze and think about what it should do next while the game actually continues at normal speed in the background. Say, for instance, you were playing a hunting game that required you to shoot a moving target. If the objects in the game had such high poly counts that they created lag, you might aim at the target, but by the time you had it in your crosshairs on screen, the game would register it being on the other side of the meadow. You’d miss your shot every time.

Game designers learned long ago that if their product only appeals to people with high-end gaming systems, they’ll exclude most of their market. So to combat the issue of lag and outrageous system requirements, they create most objects in their game as “low poly” items. Yes, you sacrifice detail. But when you aim and shoot at that low-detail deer, he actually falls down.

XBox and similar systems are made specifically for gaming. Therefore polycount is not an issue, and those fantastic, lifelike graphics are possible. For those of us who prefer computer interfaces, we must sacrifice some of the stunning visuals. Unless, of course, we’re fortunate enough to own a very expensive computer with a high-end graphics card and processor. Dear Santa. . . .

Sims 2 machinima directors are notorious for using custom content. Dissatisfied with the cartoonish appearance of the base game, they’ve crammed their “downloads” folder with items created by the community itself, not Maxis. Most of this custom content has a much higher polycount and was never intended for regular gameplay. It was for filmmaking only. As a director, I learned quickly that filming in real time rendered choppy, laggy animation that no video editor could remedy. A trick of the trade? Film in slow motion. Veeeerrrrryyyy slloooooooow motion, as in minus-10X the normal speed.

So if I knew all these workarounds for lag, why couldn’t I just mesh a whole Sim and make it do whatever I want?

To some degree, this has been done. New feet, new bodybuilder types, and fat meshes have all been created by the community. Yet they still use the same skeleton, which has a set number of bones. The game simply will not recognize a different bone hierarchy. So we might retexture faces and heads, but there’s no point designing a new mesh because no matter how many bones we add in Milkshape, the game will only animate the ones Maxis created. This is why I could do absolutely NOTHING about goofy Sim expressions, floating teeth, or half the stuff non-gamers complained about.

iClone is different. There is no “game” anywhere in it. The puppets have zero autonomy. There are no behavior algorithms constantly running in the background. But the visual detail is second to none. Look again at those screenshots of the head meshes. iClone has assigned bones to each and every one of those little dots and given us full control over how they’re used.

Doesn’t this create lag? Damn right it does. My poor laptop can’t even process a full 3D scene plus an avatar. It simply freezes. And yes, I can see this becoming a problem in the future. But iClone saw this coming and built “workarounds” directly into the software. During set creation and script-building, we have the option of turning off pixel shaders (a huge resource hog) and even viewing the set as a wireframe. This eliminates lag altogether during this phase. Then, when it’s time to film the scene, iClone provided this handy-dandy “by frame” option that renders each frame completely before moving to the next. This takes forever, but once it’s done, playback is flawless.

Now. . .I have other characters to create and audition for Amanda. Tom is next. He’s how I will spend my afternoon.

Not likely to happen.

But I have made progress. Because the software as a whole completely overwhelmed me, I decided to focus on just one aspect of it at a time. It’s taken the entire month, but I’m confident now about puppet creation and the face mapping technology unique to this platform. I’ve learned to make and import hair, retexture and alpha-edit clothing using  iClone’s built-in features (as opposed to using Milkshape and SimPe, as I had to do with Sims 2), and tonight I experimented with motion layers. Saving, recording, and filming a scene is still beyond me, but I did succeed in photographing my little puppet family in some very convincing poses. I’ve uploaded a few for your entertainment—or for use as scarecrows when you plant your garden next spring.  :-0

I still have much to learn. Set creation, shadows and lighting. Camera technique. Animation sequences. Soft body and hard body physics. Motion capture. Gaah! Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

But you know, seems like I remember feeling exactly that way when I downloaded the trial version of Milkshape. And when I opened a SimPe package file for the first time. Two things occur to me: first, just as it is today with those programs, so it will be after I’ve spent a little more time with iClone. And secondly, all those hours I spent meshing and recoloring and pulling my hair out trying to learn 3D modeling for the Stonehaven machinima were NOT wasted. That experience is paying off in spades now.

The iClone process is actually much simpler than anything I’ve done before. Retexturing is done within the software itself—there’s even a “launch” feature that opens my graphics editor from the main panel. But for all this ease of use, if I didn’t already know how to alter a texture file or do a clean alpha edit, I would be even farther behind the eightball. Six months of creating custom content for the Stonehaven video put me ahead of the curve and gave me an excellent foundation to build on.

Now for the pictures.

First, the real deal. This is a group shot of my family taken a few days ago while my son Jay was visiting:

Next are screenshots I made of us as iClone puppets. I made the Scott puppet first, and I see such a difference in quality between it and the others that I’ve decided to remake him. That will be my project for tomorrow. I was fairly satisfied with my own likeness, and Jay’s turned out pretty well, too. (He chose this hair for the puppet while he was here, because it looks like his did before he went stupid and buzzed it all off.) But the Laura puppet (my daughter)—holy cow. It looks more like her than the photo up there. How does that happen, I wonder?

So far, I’m loving every aspect of this 3D animation tool. It’s a powerhouse. Comparing it to a game engine like Sims 2 is rouqhly akin to comparing Microsoft Paint to Adobe Photoshop CS5. Or tin cans and a string to a Smartphone.

I’ve found no real disadvantages yet. Of course, I’ve only learned to skin new characters and just yesterday finally figured out how to make them move. So to say I have no issues with the platform is a bit premature. Still, though–I’m getting some pretty impressive results. I’ve included screenshots in this post of characters I designed based on real human actors. I may never be the world’s best at photoaccuracy when it comes to texturing these puppets. However, the improvement over Sims 2 in visual and animation quality–even with my clumsy efforts–is amazing.

One thing I don’t like is the hair currently available for iClone puppets. I’m confident that I can overcome this by creating my own meshes, and I cobbled together one or two for these characters just to see if it could be done. The answer is yes. The trial version of 3DXchange, however, only allows 12 exports. Which means I can’t tweak and tinker with the meshes enough to get them right. For now, it’s a one-shot deal. This will cease to be an issue once I purchase the full version of 3DXchange, which of course has no such limitations. Then I can fully customize props, puppets, and every accessory I can dream up–even legally sell those items to other users. How cool is that?

Another great thing about iClone is the willingness of its creators to facilitate customization. With Sims 2, it took an entire community of hackers several years to provide us with tools to “build our world,” as the SimPe splash screen says. With iClone, all this information is published by the copyright holder. For example, in one of the tutorials offered by Reallusion (the creators of iClone), we learn that iclone puppet bodies take their shading from a 10X10 pixel square located in the top left corner of their texture map. So if you want to alter the skin shading of the puppet, alter the color of the pixels within that 10X10 region. This is from the “horse’s mouth,” the Reallusion animation and graphic artists themselves.

I uploaded a very short video to YouTube so I can show everyone how these characters move. Keep in mind, because this is a trial version, I’m restricted to a certain resolution (size), can’t anti-alias (smooth the edges of puppets and props so they don’t look pixellated), and there’s an ugly iClone watermark all over the rendered video. My camera work is sloppy, the background is a featureless demo, and I didn’t set the facial animations to this puppet’s unique bone structure because I don’t know how yet. So her smile looks a wee bit goofy. Still, though–not as goofy as Sims in their natural state.

Hopefully, in six months I’ll look back at this first rendered video from iClone and laugh at how amateurish it is.

Meet the cast of Stonehaven in this explosive introductory excerpt. Take a journey through their world of teenage angst and adult depravity, where egos clash with blind faith and monsters lurk in the beds of children rather than under them. Travel through time and space with Julian as he taps into the consciousness of an entire town, close your eyes with Romany as she retreats deep into herself to block out the horror her life has become.

Most of all, enjoy the read.

www.sims2machinima.com/downloads/left_on_stonehaven_pdf.zip

http://sims2machinima.com/downloads/left_on_stonehaven_kindle.zip

Even more fascinating, the ad also featured Ann Hite’s novel, Ghost On Black Mountain. Here’s what Rebecca had to say when she sent me the screenshot (quoted with her permission):

“Rhonda– here ya go. Carol sent me the link for your video of her novel, and when I pulled it up I also saw this B&N ad for my book and Ann’s (hers in duplicate, no less!). As you can see from the search bar and my tabs, I had been spending my evening doing some narcissistic Googling of my reviews and watching South Park and Malcolm in the Middle videos. Such is the life of a novelist under deadline and champion procrastinator. Enjoy “

I can’t put my finger on why this thrills me so much. Sure, I’m tickled to death for Rebecca and Ann. But it’s more than that for me. Like walking through the streets after Apocalypse and seeing other living humans rise from the rubble, unscathed and healthy. Most other writers know that the condition of the current publishing industry is apocalyptic at best. But this. . .THIS. . .is thrilling, and I will shamelessly enjoy the moment with Rebecca and Ann and wish them success beyond their wildest dreams.

The photo will enlarge with enough clarity for you to read the Barnes and Noble ad on the right side.