Sirikata for Machinima Production

[DW]

Hi! I've been creating Machinima using World of Warcraft since early
2005. As third party tools became available (Wow Model Viewer, Wow Map
Viewer, My Warcraft Studio, etc.) it became more exciting and flexible
what could be done from a cinematic viewpoint (free moving camera,
special effects, compositing, importing to 3D programs).

But obviously the WoW engine is not open source. Use of Blizzard's
engine on a "private server' is strictly forbidden. I am very excited
that Sirikata may be the answer.

I'm curious how Sirikata could be used from the standpoint of a
Machinima artist. My idea is to create a world based on a script and
film in that world a series of episodes. The world could be expanded
and upgraded as time went on to include new areas, continents, cities,
and so on. Multiple 'actors' could log on and control characters or
they could be easily programmed to move to certain points and emote.

For me the beauty of this is that once the main world was created, I
could manipulate that world and it's characters and creatures in small
ways to film the episodes, rather than having to recreate composites
over and over again. It also gives the flexibility to focus more on
the actual story and production.

Best of all I would own the IP.

These are just a few of my ideas. I would love to hear some feedback!
Sirikata looks very exciting so far.

D.W. Hackleman
www.myndflame.com

[Chris Platz]

Hi all,

Machinima is definitely very high on our Sirikata features list.

D.W., it was nice meeting you and the other artists last week. I'm so sorry I missed the Sat discussion, I caught the flu from the sudden cold weather. I am definitely following up with all the great Machinima artists I met on Friday to get the best, and easiest to use tools made in Sirikata. I have been working on designs for real time interactive film making for a little over 1 year, but previously I hadn't incorporated enough Machinima-specific thought. How Machinima fits into the category of realtime Interactive film making is a question I look forward to answering soon.

Here are a few direct responses and expansions on your comments:

 

I'm curious how Sirikata could be used from the standpoint of a
Machinima artist. My idea is to create a world based on a script and
film in that world a series of episodes. The world could be expanded
and upgraded as time went on to include new areas, continents, cities,
and so on. Multiple 'actors' could log on and control characters or
they could be easily programmed to move to certain points and emote.

I see this as crucial for interactive film making. Taking it a step further you could have live episodic performances and incorporate in-world/movie gaming. We'll release a set of modular city based models for anybody to use, and through many efforts, get other artists to contribute the most liberal Creative Commons assets possible. Pre-packed sets & characters will evolve across genres.

Then you create your own cities, continents, etc and build upon them as your story evolves.

Now take this a step further, and let people PLAY in your movie set (in between or DURING the shoot), and incorporate their actions, good role playing, etc into your script, and then have the next episode air. I like the ideas of the episodes evolving so that they are live, and Sirikata provides real time animators with "puppeteering" tools to make that a part of the performance. Of course post-production effects and the awesome skills of editing make the current process of airing pre-renderded shows is more realistic, but I'm throwing out my original vision here to see how the Machinima community responds to it ;-)

Yes, multiple users will definitely be able to log in an participate. Creating a repository of animation scripts will be another awesome undertaking that will make your job easier. We'll have standard rigs that can accept animations the community creates and shares for that rig. Then new users can upload new rigs, and allow others to create animations for those new models/rigs, etc, etc.

Afters some time, one should have a library of assets, actors, and animations to choose from, while constructing their game, movie, or episodic gaming hybrid I outlined above.
 

For me the beauty of this is that once the main world was created, I
could manipulate that world and it's characters and creatures in small
ways to film the episodes, rather than having to recreate composites
over and over again. It also gives the flexibility to focus more on
the actual story and production.

Yup, you can save your world just how you like it, and make subtle changes as you go forward, and save out different versions.
 

Best of all I would own the IP.

Yes, our code BSD and art assets are under the most liberal creative commons licenses.

These are just a few of my ideas. I would love to hear some feedback!
Sirikata looks very exciting so far.

Great, more ideas please! This is the fun stage where we can dream a little. I think we are already able to offer a great Machinima studio in Sirikata as soon as the new build is stable enough to send out to folks who don't have a hardcore programmer handy to get it running. If you are brave and have enough engineering moxie (or the right friends), please try out our early build available on the Sirikata wiki, and let us know if you get it running?

The simple camera controls built in already make it a perfect movie set environment. You can interactively save camera paths, adjust key frames (ease in/out), and save out & import different camera paths very easy. Once our early release is out, I'll provide the keyboard shortcuts, tutorials, etc for using the in world camera controls. It's ridiculously easy, I'm sure you'll all love it! An early strategy we have at Stanford is to get a few great machinima artists using it early by providing the basic tools they need asap.

Perhaps an early collaborative project with Machinima filmmakers and Stanford would be a good way for us to get the tools made faster?? I'm up for it. We currently have a team of 8 2D and 3D artists in SF working on Sirikata projects and assets. If you have a script and want to talk about making the first film in world, that may be possible.

If you and any of your cohorts could continue to contribute here and start a features list, specific to Machinima, that would be a terrific.

Take care,
Chris

Chris Platz
Creative Director
Stanford Humanities Lab
Stanford University
http://shl.stanford.edu/

leon...@gmail.com

[DW]

Just downloaded all the files. I'll be testing this out as soon as
possible!

[Echelon]

I wrote a article a little while back describing a way to wrangle
Second Life into a better machinima platform, but I suspect some of
the ideas might work far better in Sirikata. Here's the link
http://invisiblemoose.blogspot.com/2009/05/deep-eye-viewer-or-how-to-turn-sl.html

In essence, my main argument is why just capture rendered pixel data
when you can be recording real time metadata that can be used later to
reconstruct the scene and harness the power of non-real time rendering
engines.