Moviestorm Update 1.0.3

It's been a little while since our last update but finally we bring you the first update for 2008: 1.0.3!

Highlights for this release:

The way characters walk has been completely rewritten and should be much faster and more natural. Since this will change the timings of old movies we have preserved the old behaviour in old movies but you can convert to the new walks by going to the Script Editor > Overview > Settings page inside your movie. Customizing the new walks is slightly different as you can now choose to blend two gaits together to get an intermediate style of walk, but the stride slider has been dropped as it usually gave poor results. We will be improving walks even more in the next few months as well.

New support for rendering with DirectShow. This can be activated before rendering a movie by selecting the System Codec tab in the Render Settings dialogue. This will allow you to use any codecs installed on your system, and obviously some will work better than others. For example, certain codecs will force the resolution, ignoring the chosen output resolution, and squashing the aspect ratio. It's worth experimenting to find a codec that works well for you.

The lighting rig (from MusicVideo01) is now completely controllable through Moviestorm's GUI. When you bring up the ring menu for the rig, you now get the option "Play Pattern(s)", which creates a pattern activity. By default, this does nothing, so to get things going, click on the activity in the timeline, and select "Customize". You'll get a dialog box which allows you to trigger a number of patterns at the start. Select the pattern from the drop-down combo, and click the "Add" button. You can also remove patterns from the activity with "Remove", and there's a "Copy" button which copies all the selected patterns in the list, and a "Paste" button which adds the copied ones. Note that duplicates are removed automatically. You can also give the activity a unique name by typing in the text field at the top.

Should there not be a pattern to suit your needs, you now can create your own without having to write any XML. Clicking on the pattern activity on the timeline also gives you an "Edit Patterns" option. Choosing this brings up the "Pattern Editor" panel, which contains a set of sliders and selection buttons. This controls the state of the currently selected lighting rig. First, you need to select the lights which you'll be affecting. This is done by the selection buttons. "F" selects the front wash light only (it de-selects the moving lights). The buttons "1" to "7" select each light in the rig. Choose the lights you want to affect, either through these or the buttons below them which select a variety of preset combinations. Now you can play with the sliders and change the lights to your taste. One thing to beware of: when you have multiple lights selected, the sliders show the average value of the variables. For instance with two lights selected having pan of 10 and 20, the pan slider will show 15. When you move the slider to 17, both lights will now have pan 17.When you're happy, you can save the new pattern - it will be stored along with your movie. Before doing so, notice the tick boxes under the sliders. These allow you to select what aspects of the pattern to save. For instance, if you just wanted to set the colour of the lights and leave everything else alone (which is pretty common), untick everything except the Red/Green/Blue box. Finally, type a name into the box (it mustn't duplicate an existing name) and click "Save Pattern". It will now be available to use in an activity. You can load an existing pattern into the editor by selecting it from the combo and clicking "Load Pattern". (You cannot currently modify and overwrite an existing pattern).

The Dancefloor, Mirrorball and Followspot (in MusicVideo02) all take advantage of new code. These objects will have to be re-added to scenes for this to happen. For such new instances, the Mirrorball should rotate, the Dancefloor can be told to flash (left click from directors view for option), and the Followspot can be told to shine on the active character (again, in the directors view).

Other points of note:
* Use left click instead of right click to bring up a customize panel in the Set Workshop.
* Known Issue: Moviestorm is not yet compatible with ATI display drivers 7.12 or 7.13 or 8.0 onwards; please use the drivers from the 7.11 Catalyst suite if using ATI Radeon display hardware.

You should get the update automatically but if not you can download it (and all the previous patches since 1.0.0) from
http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/download/Moviestorm-update-1.0.3.zip
Unzip this into your Moviestorm application directory and then when you start Moviestorm it should patch itself.

Note: this patch is for both Windows and Intel Macs.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say "WOOOO HOOOO!"

Thank you.

YES.

Great update! Keep up the good work.

ROCK! I seem to be able to run it now! I didn't have any crashes in the Character shop, and I can access the custom gesture menu and all that!

But I can't seem to get teh characters to turn around. That my be me, I'll keep looking.

steelblade,

Do you mean "turn around" as in animation or "turn around" as in facing a direction after you've placed them?

AngriBuddhist wrote:

steelblade,

Do you mean "turn around" as in animation or "turn around" as in facing a direction after you've placed them?

Change direction. I found that I can turn the whole set around THEN place them, but they don't seem to want to turn on their own, either.

Go into Director's view. Below the actor is a circle icon. Holding "shift" and left clicking that allows you to drag the "placement" and holding "ctrl" while left clicking allows you to rotate it. The little feet in the circle show which way they are facing.

AngriBuddhist wrote:

Go into Director's view. Below the actor is a circle icon. Holding "shift" and left clicking that allows you to drag the "placement" and holding "ctrl" while left clicking allows you to rotate it. The little feet in the circle show which way they are facing.

Thanks!

When I have a character use the new walk they seem to accelerate really fast like they were in a old style movie and then they slow down and start to walk more naturally, it seems to happen when they change direction too.
Is it just my characters or do they do it for every body else as well.

Regards
Davidwww

Thank you very much for this update. I have estimated that there haven't been an update for at least two months or so.

I haven't installed it yet, I am replying this post on my laptop, but there is just so much in this update that I'm so excited.

Thanks for the fix in the dance floor and the disco ball. The dance floor was pretty useless when I placed it earlier since it does not light up whatever I do. Also the I thought the mirror ball works like the laser and light show but still it was also a static, simple reflective prop.

I am also very proud of the other fixes such as the walking styles. I mean, walking was pretty rigid, when I place a mark at least 90+ degrees from the start the characters does not move at all, so I have to make a lot of 45 degree marks just to get to that location, it was very tedious and unnatural.

Also, thanks for the easy customization of the lighting rigs. I didn't particularly like the presets in the rig, they all turn my characters green, then yellow, then green, then red, it's a crazy loop. I am proud that I don't have to spend a lot of time working on XML (Yeah, I do know XML, I'm a bit of a web designer and game modder myself), but instead use an easy to use UI that's well...easy to use.

Finally...

I am really glad about the new support for rendering. I have been waiting for this one since my first steps with Moviestorm, thank you very, very much.

davidwww wrote:

When I have a character use the new walk they seem to accelerate really fast like they were in a old style movie and then they slow down and start to walk more naturally, it seems to happen when they change direction too.
Is it just my characters or do they do it for every body else as well.

Regards
Davidwww

Hi,
Which Gait is the character using?
Is this happening when you convert an existing movie, or when you start a new movie?

Thanks,
Ben

great update!

but, i'm having one big problem so far with the codecs -- none of them work or they kinda work but are mostly corrupted in all kindsa neat and wonderfully strange ways.

Hmm, really? And are these codecs that work okay with your video-editing software? I've noticed a few codecs that don't work particularly well, but they're quite old ones, like Cinepak and Indeo. Have you used DivX, XviD and MPEG4? And what about a lossless codec, like Huffyuv?

Ben_S wrote:

Hi,
Which Gait is the character using?
Is this happening when you convert an existing movie, or when you start a new movie?

Thanks,
Ben

I started a fresh movie, created a character and had him walk back and forth across the blank set to test the new walk, so every thing was default, it could be I'm just use to the old style of walk, if you like I can make a small movie up for you to inspect.

Regards
David

I started a fresh movie, created a character and had him walk back and forth across the blank set to test the new walk, so every thing was default, it could be I'm just use to the old style of walk, if you like I can make a small movie up for you to inspect.

That would certainly help; we could then at least see if you are seeing what we see.
Thanks.