Blahbalicious on Stage6 - A timeless classic from the earliest days of machinima, as good as it has ever looked (since it was watched in the Quake engine itself). *You may have to be logged in to Stage6 to even see the vid; contains adult language.
This demo shows just some of the possibilities for bringing outside models into the world of iClone, using their extremely powerful tool 3DXchange2. While Sketchup isn’t the sole input path, it’s one of the more appealing ones for quick results because of the mind boggling volume of freely available models in Google’s 3D Warehouse.
What’s most impressive to me about this isn’t just the ability to import while preserving textures, but the features like auto smoothing and specularity adjustment - extremely difficult feats for beginners to do via other methods.
Keep an eye out for more 3DXchange videos on Reallusion’s YouTube channel, which is already loaded with fantastic iClone2 tutorials by James Martin.
For some reason, whenever the question of “monetizing” machinima is raised, inevitably the discussion turns to business models built around the idea of selling the machinima videos themselves. And rightfully, concerns are raised about whether the viewing public is ready for a pay-per-episode machinima release. After all, TV episodes are available on iTunes, and we all know at least a little bit about Rooster Teeth.
But upon closer inspection, it turns out that in both the case of network television on iTunes and Red vs. Blue on DVD, the episodes themselves are all available for free in some venue or another… and as such, I would argue that it’s not actually the videos themselves which are the product being sold here, and to assume in a world where YouTube exists that people would pay solely to watch videos is, well, it’s just not realistic. What to do, then?
By a strange coincidence, it all started in Cambridge… again. Founded as Kelseus Ltd., the company which became Antics Technologies in 2004 has been interested and involved in a market they helped create: previz. And for the first couple years, their Antics product was priced as such - something extremely affordable for pro studios looking for a previz solution, but something considered a bit steep for the average hobbyist.
But some interesting things have happened in the past year. iClone’s John Martin fired a shot across the bow of the machinima world at the 2006 Machinima Film Festival when it stepped forward into a growing awareness of intellectual property rights issues surrounding machinima, and provided a solution: a rights-free creation platform. Moviestorm, the brainchild of Kelland and Lloyd, broke through the topsoil very soon thereafter, pursuing a different business model.
Antics had been around all this time, having led for at least some of that time in terms of innovation, but viewed as largely inaccessible for the unfunded hobbyist. That view, if it was ever accurate, just doesn’t hold true anymore. Let me explain.
I made such a loud statement when I departed from Machinima.com earlier in 2007, it seems only right that I also make public my reasons for returning. And I’d also like to share something I discovered after I returned… something very pleasantly surprising.
That’s right, all of my films are once again available at Machinima.com. And there is but one reason I took steps to make that happen, and that reason is the one I indicated at the time of my departure. Receiving an apology was a plus, but I had to see for myself that the circumstances which made me want to leave were, in fact, an isolated incident - not the beginning of a pattern of behavior. To be specific, a moderator over there had handled a disagreement in a way I found inappropriate. So naturally, I was on the lookout for subsequent “crises” to see how they were handled.
