Moviestorm Update 1.0.4

It's been a while since the last update to Moviestorm but we've been anything but idle in that time and you should find this a significant step forward since 1.0.3.

To get it, just start Moviestorm while connected to the net, and it will download and install automatically.

Here are the highlights:
* New launcher that handles updates and addon downloads
* New intro sequence that should make it easier to load existing movies or create new movies.
* Movies no longer have to be placed in the USER/Moviestorm folder
* New timeline that presents multiple overlapping events clearly
* Much improved gesturizer that makes it easier to find the gesture you want to use.
* Gestures can now be previewed by clicking on them before committing to using them.
* The mouse controls for set navigation have been changed and should be more natural:
* Left click drag now moves the world around rather than steering an invisible avatar ('grab the ground and drag yourself around').
* Alt+left click or middle click drag now moves the camera in the image plane (aka 'truck')
* Right click drag orbits around the screen centre as before - a red line is now shown to give a visual indication of the rotation axis
* Characters now have tags over their heads to identify them on set. The current subject character is in orange, all others in white.
* Further refinements to walks to make starting and stopping smoother.
* Rendering has been improved and is much smoother. This should be particularly noticeable in closeups of faces.
* We have an improved rendering technique for hair that looks a lot better with semi transparent fringes. Only a few hairpieces use this technique so far, but the rest will be converted soon.
* Ambient shadows for furniture on the floor used to z fight - this has been fixed and they now blend smoothly.
* Animated textures added to support the SciFi pack
* Guns now have muzzle flashes when the "Fire" action is used.
* Mouse hover overs on characters and props are now more indicative of what you can do with them: the hand cursor suggests the character can interact with him/her/it and the cog cursor suggests that the object can do something on its own or be customised.
* Addon packnames added to tagcloud for prop browser, so you can choose to just view props from a specific addon pack.
* New female heads.

Known Issues:
* Moviestorm is not yet compatible with ATI display drivers 7.12 or 8.1; please use the drivers from the 7.11 Catalyst suite if using ATI Radeon display hardware.
* Moviestorm is retiring some of the old female heads, hair, and hats, and replacing them with improved ones. Stock characters you have created, and characters in movies you have already saved, will continue to work, but you will no longer be able to create new characters using the old heads.
* Movies must now be deleted or renamed from a file browser, rather than from within Moviestorm.
* Items with shadows which attach to walls (e.g. the radiator and some pictures) have a transparency issue when attached to wall sections which have a window or door in.
* Cutting and regrouping scenes in the Cutting Room can cause the movie to not play or render correctly. Ungrouping will solve the issue.
* The Hardware Report option in the launcher is still a bit primitive and may give misguiding answers. For example it claims that it won't run on the Mac Mini whereas it will with limited rendering options. We will be working to make this more precise!

Fixed issues:
* Grouping and ungrouping in the cutting room can break functionality
* Held props carryable in both hands
* Hair vanishes through windows
* Unable to walk on rugs
* Foot sliding at end of walk
* Shooting a gun whilst performing a point at can cause irregular animations
* Light brightness changes when clicking on a lamp
* Cancelling the render process on a single camera can cause a crash
* Switching scenes causes a steady increase in memory usage
* Customizer doesn't work on actions which include a walk

Important
* Moviestorm Content Packs (.addon files) will no longer automatically install when double-clicked. The preferred method of installation is now via the "Content Packs" button on the new Moviestorm Launcher. Installing via the AddOns tab of the Settings screen within Moviestorm also still works.

We would appreciate your feedback on the big changes in this release - please head over to this forum topic: http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/forum/posts/list/2133.page

We haven't set a release date for 1.0.5 yet but it will probably be end of May / early June as we've got more big changes coming, including (just as a teaser):
* new male heads to go with the new female heads in this release
* morphing heads so you can design your own faces
* new simplified way of doing camera work

Thanks for your patience in waiting for this release - we know some of you have been on tenterhooks!

PS: If you're having difficulty getting the patches direct, you can download them from:
Windows: http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/download/Moviestorm-update-1.0.4.zip
Mac: http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/download/Moviestorm-update-1.0.4-mac.zip
Unzip this into your Moviestorm application directory and then when you start Moviestorm it should patch itself.

If you haven't updated to 1.0.3 yet, you can find the previous bundle here:
http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/forum/posts/list/1866.page

Oh my god! I am so excited for this!

I'm always so excited for new stuff! I just got done installing 1.04 and am already starting to get excited for 1.05.

I haven't tried installing it yet (since I saw it just after I turned my PC off and hanging out with my notebook), but with the motherlode of changes here and another group of em coming, I'll be sure to install it right away as soon as I get my hands on my desktop.

Sadly, it's nine in the evening...no more access to desktop.

Could I be any more excited?.... I don't think so.
Thank you for all your hard work Short Fuze team.

Now I'm off to look at all the new shiny things, beam me up Scotty.

Regards
Davidwww

SweeeEEEeeet!

Great work! Thank you, ShortFuze team!

Ahem...Is there a .zip archive download somewhere for the update?

I seem to stall everytime I reach 10 - 12 %.

Wow. This is a big update. There are some very appreciated changes here. I did, however, crash several times while working on the new timeline, but maybe it's from using the old stock with the new. I'll also have to study how to craft the walk paths as it wasn't self evident. Many thanks for your obvious hard work.

rocuro: I think the fancy new Walk paths are not part of this update (correct me if I'm wrong anyone), just tweaks to the starting and stopping walking, which are much better/smoother.

While I'm here talking about the walking. I think it was after the 1.0.3 update I could not longer do a walk backwards. I set two positions facing the same direction, walk the character between them, then set it to 'walk backwards'. In an older version, they took a few steps backwards, but now they seem to do an odd turn at the end of the walk. I could send a video if this doesn't make sense.

Spong3y: Sorry you're having difficulty getting the patches directly.

I've built some zips and you can find the link appended to my original post.

forgueuk: The new walk paths didn't quite make it into this release but they will definitely be in the next one. We'll also have walk backwards working again.

forgeuk wrote:

rocuro: I think the fancy new Walk paths are not part of this update (correct me if I'm wrong anyone), just tweaks to the starting and stopping walking, which are much better/smoother.

While I'm here talking about the walking. I think it was after the 1.0.3 update I could not longer do a walk backwards. I set two positions facing the same direction, walk the character between them, then set it to 'walk backwards'. In an older version, they took a few steps backwards, but now they seem to do an odd turn at the end of the walk. I could send a video if this doesn't make sense.

Correct, the new walk path functionality hasn't been finished yet. It hasn't even come to QA yet! We should be getting our hands on it soon, which means it will hopefully be ready for the next release.

And yes, walking backwards has been broken ever since the new walks went in. It's known about, and it's something we hope to have fixed soon.

An important change that we forgot to document in this post, but which some of you might come across: Moviestorm Content Packs (.addon files) will no longer automatically install when double-clicked. The preferred method of installation is now via the "Content Packs" button on the new Moviestorm Launcher. Installing via the AddOns tab of the Settings screen within Moviestorm also still works.

I've updated Dave's original post with this information.

1.0.4 is working great for me... and the items for the next release sound great too... I'm looking forward to it!

Thanks