The next Machinima Audio Conference will take place on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 2:00pm PST (that’s 5:00pm EST and 10:00pm GMT). While this is a bit early for the California people, I’m hoping this ends up being a time where we can get a good representation of participants on both sides of the pond. We’ll continue to keep the time fluid for future meetings until we find just the right pocket.
Speaking of the right pocket, there’s been some lively discussion of the choice of Second Life as a venue for Conference #05 which we’re trying again for this next one. At both this forum thread and at this comment thread (feel free to join in at either), those most vocal about the subject appear to be those unenthusiastic about SL. The jump in actual conference turnout, however, seems to suggest that at least some are okay with the decision.
I’d set out to respond to the most recent comment on the Conference #05 notes, and it turned out a bit longer than I’d anticipated, so I’m going to lay out that defense / explanation of the decision for you here: (more…)
Joe Rigby of Mellanium (previously talked about here) gave me a guided tour of their product recently. There are many things to be excited about with this technology, but one of the most significant breakthroughs is with regard to the quality of 3d models. Since its inception, real-time 3d rendering’s trade-off has been low poly models - a necessary evil which is ever so slowly becoming less of an issue. (See Mass Effect, UT3). Finding ways around this limitation has been a bit of a holy grail for machinima in some circles.
Mellanium’s modification of the game environment allows the introduction of Autocad-quality (very high detail) 3d models into the UT2004 engine, while still keeping performance speeds / client machine specs very reasonable (i.e. close to the specs already required to run that game).
During the walkthrough, I got to see highly detailed player models, exquisite Autocad props, and all within the kind of large open environments Unreal has always been so good at rendering; I noticed no lag. The video below shows the kind of detail I’m talking about. If they can do this in UT2004… imagine what they’ll be able to do in UT3 if they port their tools over there?
Overcast #025 features a brief interview with Matt Kelland and Dave Lloyd of Short Fuze / Moviestorm, conducted by Hugh Hancock and Johnnie Ingram. If you, like many, felt #024 with the BloodSpell crew was painfully too short in duration, you’ll likely feel the same about this one… but fear not. A full length interview with Matt and Dave has already been recorded and will be released in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
Friday night (Saturday at midnight) saw the third incarnation of the monthly audio conferences for machinima makers. You can read over the link list and notes for Conference #03, though there’s really no capturing the experience of being there. You and your friends are invited any time you can make it, and we’d love to have you there. We’re taking the month of December off because of year end holidays, but we’ll resume the conferences again at the end of January. Stay tuned to this page for the date/time of the next conference, or look me up on Facebook and I’ll send you a calendar invite (event) through there.
