An Unreal Space Opera (singing aliens and all)

Just got notice of an amazing machinima movie project. Composer Richard deCosta and his team have started to create a Machinima space opera called "K'ai, Death of Dreams".
They plan to use Unreal 3 for main character and indoor real-time renderer, CryEngine 3 for main exterior real-time renderer and Processing.org for 2D displays/various 2D elements.
Curious that since a while ago I have in mind to bring opera and machinima together as well. Since I'm not able to write my own opera like they've done, I've had planned to use some well known opera and staging them with machinima. My favourites so far would be a German language opera either from Wagner or Mozart. And like them I had planned to put it in either a Sci-Fi 'Space' setting or a more minimalistic staging like the performances at Amato Opera.

They are now doing a fundraiser at KickStarter for it. The initial round will get the financial ball rolling and get their production crew operating full-time. I hope they'll find enough support and wish them good luck with this very interesting opera project

New Movie: Order in Chaos

Just finished a new Abstract Machinima Movie, which I made for the MachinimUWA II: Art of the Artists challenge in Second Life.
Machinima makers in SL were asked to create a Machinima of between 2 and 5 minutes in length that featured some of the winning artworks from the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge. They had more than 35 artworks spread across 4 floors, from which to choose.

This movie is featuring December 2009 Winner of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge: CHAOS IN ORDER by Igor Ballyhoo
Filmed and edited by Rohan Fermi
Music by Kirsty Hawkshaw
Creative Commons by-nc-sa v1.0
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Call for Machinima by Atopic Festival

Last year, the first edition of Atopic Festival, international art festival dedicted to virtual realities, allowed a wide audience to discover Machinima : movie realized by filming inside a virtual world or inside a video game. This year the festival will take place 5th to 20th november.

*The contest*
A selection committee will choose best movies according to one of the following categories : narrative, creative and alternative. Three films will be rewarded : “the audience award » and “first and second prizes of the jury”. The call for entries is intended to Machinima films and creation by allowing winners to see their film screened during the festival and in the prestigious setting of the Geode .

*Conditions and contacts*
The contest is open to all. Machinimas already produced will be accepted. Quality must be of the highest possible, that it can be projected in the big screen.

To participate, contact : machinima@atopicfestival.com
Deadline: 27th of September, 2010, at noon.

Machinima Expo 2010 Trailer

While playing around with the new Muvizu features, I thought why not make something useful, so created this short trailer for Machinima Expo 2010.

New features for Muvizu

Just recently Muvizu has been improved by adding some very interesting new features. Besides their are now more sets available the new highlights are:

1. Camera animations
2. Importing 3D models

Import is done through Unreal Engines .ase format. There are importers available for most 3D tools including Maya, 3dsMax, Sketchup and Blender. Unfortunately I did not get the exporter for Blender 2.53 to work, but Blender 2.49 worked fine. See below my imported Suzanne in Muvizu.