Introduction to Digital Sound Design

Want to improve your skills in Sound Design? This week starts an interesting free online course on Digital Sound Design by Steve Everett from Emory University at Coursera.

CALL FOR ENTRIES: 20th Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart

The Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart (ITFS) will take place for the 20th time! ITFS is regarded as one of the biggest and most important festivals for animated film around the world. Around 80,000 viewers and approximately 2,500 accredited people attended the festival last year. This year they are open for Machinima Movies as well!!
Places are in the category Cartoons for Teens (Competition for short films, series, animes, machinimas and cut scenes from computer games). This category focuses on youths aged between 12 and 18 and shows the best animated series, animes and cut scenes from computer games.
Competitions is still open for submission until January 15, 2013 (EXTENDED DEADLINE!)
ITFS-Submissions

2012 Machinima Expo

The 2012 Machinima Expo will take place this weekend
November 16.-18. online and in Second Life.
Detailed Program Schedule and List of Screeners
at the Machinima Expo Website

Second Life Festival site:
Midnight Manhattan Reverie in Second Life 

Machinima Expo livestream: The Machinima Expo

Dragon Age: Bladedancers

Philipp Schiefelbein, winner of last year's Bitfilm Machinima Award with his movie Tales of Crusade , just released the first two parts of his new series "Bladedancers".

Made with the Dragon Age:Origins Toolset this new movies again show his amazing skills making Machinima with this toolset. 

"The web series „Bladedancers" is about the life and rise of the kidnapped assassin siblings, Jaldan and Aluria. Over the time they regain their memories of their previous life's and seal the downfall of the ruthless clan."

Dragon Age: Bladedancers Episode 1

Dragon Age: Bladedancers Episode 2

Valve's Source Filmmaker Now in Open Beta

Source Filmmaker is now available for everyone. Found a link to download it in my Source Games list on Steam today. Now downloading.
Just found this was announced officially yesterday. "July 10, 2012 – Valve, creator of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the open beta release of Source Filmmaker (SFM), for free, to everyone."
Download, infos,tutorials etc. on sourcefilmmaker.com

Kinect Real-time 3D Model Reconstruction

I just came across a interesting article in the German computer magazine c't. Just a while ago Microsoft Research Lab showed how to get a 3D scan from an object or scenery with the Kinect. Now the Austrian company PROFACTOR released their software ReconstructMe which allows us to play around with that technology as well. With this software now Real-time 3D Model Reconstruction is in our hands. Having a decent graphics card it even allows 3D capturing in real-time. And it is free for non-commercial use. Export formats include .obj and .3ds. I made a short test and scan of one of my favourite objects and then imported the scan into Blender. It's still some work to use this in a machinima movie project. The model data has a high polygon count, which has to be reduced and so far there in no texturing data grabbed.

ReconstructMe capturing the object:




Captured object imported into Blender:

Blender and Kinect again

In my previous post I introduced my first experiments with Blender and Kinect using Blender Game Engine. I've revisited the project and added some parts I have researched a while ago. So this time I have added a softbody mesh which is controlled by the Kinect as well (hand movements) and added live video/webcam.
I think Blender is the only (free) tool out that allows us having a softbody mesh to be rendered in real-time with live video/webcam feed and now with Kinect support.
This opens a whole new world for Machinima puppetry. Now it just need's some code for networking. It would be nice to be able to control multiple characters/objects by different users (Kinects) and to stream the webcam/video over the net.

Blender and Kinect

Having played around with the Kinect already for some time and using it as an input device to control some of my favourite tools (Processing, vvvv, and Supercollider), I was excited to see NI Mate released .
NI Mate is a small but powerful software that takes real-time motion capture data from a Kinect or other supported device and turns it into two industry standard protocols: OSC (Open Sound Control) and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). And they have showed already how to use it to control characters in Blender.
I joined their Beta program, but unfortunately it didn't work with the drivers I have installed (SensorKinect, OpenNI or NITE). Uninstalling and updating it with their versions of the drivers was not an option since I fear of some of my other applications might no longer work. So I looked at their Blender examples and after a weekend of Python coding and testing I finally got my own Kinect Blender setup to work. It uses OSCeleton as middleware to convert the Kinect sceleton to OSC data which are then sent to Blender. Although NI Mate is more advanced, OSCeleton is simple and Open Source. I've read that NI Mate maybe will become a commercial product after the Beta.
Now lets welcome the "Kinect Blender Bunny". This example was rendered in realtime using the Blender Game Engine.



It's still a long way to use this for a machinima movie project, but I'm excited to have this technology ready to be used. Controlling a 3D character in realtime with markerless motion capture is amazing.

Bitfilm Festival 2011 Winners

These are the machinima winners of the Bitfilm Festival 2011:

MACHINIMA

1st place:
"Tales of Crusade" by Philipp Schiefelbein (Frankfurt, Germany)
2nd place:
"Clockwork" by spyvspyaeon (Lisbon, Portugal)
3rd place:
"Stop, Rewind" by Harrison Heller (New York City, USA)

Congratulations!!

Machinima Expo 2011 News

The Expo Screening Reels have begun already. The films selected for the festival will run continuously 24/7 at the main Expo site:

www.machinima-expo.com

The main Expo events will start on Friday 18th with a screening in Second Life of the movies made in Second Life and a Master Class on 'How to create Second Life Machinima'.

Second Life UCSVille - The Expo Hub

On Saturday 19th all the jury nominated films will be screened which is followed by the Expo Awards Ceremony where the winners will be announced. Sunday 2oth is packed with a lot of interesting sessions on Machinima. From Monday 21th on screening reels continue to run through the week at the Expohub until Sunday, November 27th at midnight.

2011 Machinima Expo Schedule

Complete list of films Screening at the Expo

2011 Machinima Expo Trailer from Ricky Grove

My own promo trailer made for Machinima Expo:

2011 Machinima Expo Promo Video from CD Schulz on Vimeo.

'Order in Chaos' in at MachinExpo and Bitfilm

I'm happy to announce that my recent machinima movie 'Order in Chaos' made it in the finals at this years MachinExpo and Bitfilm.

The Official 2011 Machinima Expo Jury Nominations

The 2011 Machinima Expo will take place November 19th & 20th on the internet and in the virtual world of Second Life.

Bifilm Festival Machinima Award short list

Bitfilm Festival 2011 will take place in Hamburg, Germany and Bagalore, India.
If you like the movie please vote for Order in Chaos at Bifilm (until 17.11).

Login 2 Life: Where real life meets virtual.

An interesting documentary film on virtual worlds just premiered on German TV. (And it has Machinima in it)

Login 2 Life is a feature documentary about life online and what fascinates people about it so much. The documentary was on location in real life as well as in the virtual worlds the protagonists reside in.

It is available FREE for viewing online till Sunday 23rd Oct 2011:

Login 2 Life ZDF Mediathek

Only a small part is in German only. Most of the film is English language with German subtitles.

The films focus is on Second Life and World of Warcraft and a variety of people using it. It features disabled people using these worlds, virtual sex in SL, WoW machinimator Olibith, chinese WoW gold farmers and others.

Machinima Expo open for submission

Machimima Expo 2011 is now accepting film submissions. Submission period runs from July 1st to Sept 30th. Machinima films of all kinds and any length are eligible. The only restriction is that you can’t have already submitted the film to the Expo previously.

2011 Machinima Expo Submission Requirements
2011 MachinExpo Film Submission Form

Machinima Expo will take place the weekend of November 19th & 20th (Saturday & Sunday) 2011 on the internet and in the virtual world of Second Life.

MaMachinima International Festival MMIF2011

This years MaMachinima International Festival MMIF will run this weekend on Friday June 17 and Saturday June 18, 2011. The opening speech at 01.00 pm PDT/SL time. During the weekend machinima movies will be screen in Real Life and Second Life at the following locations:

RL Location: Club Karlsson, Keizersgracht 264, Amsterdam
SL Location: LEA Theater, Secondlife.com
http://slurl.com/secondlife/LEA1/218/43/21

I'm proud to see my SL movie 'Order in Chaos' screened at this festival. It will play in Block: 3 (starts 11.30 am PDT/SL- saturday) and I'll be interviewed and answering your questions as well, after the film is played on the big screens. I look forward meeting you at MMIF Second Life.
Please go to http://MMIF.org for news, times, updates, and help us spread the news in any way you can.

E.V.A. - Experimental Video Art , Spring Screening

The full program and schedule for the E.V.A. - Experimental Video Art , Spring Screening is now online. It presents a selection of experimental videos from emerging artists. 11 artists from various countries participate the organisation with their last term works. Video screenings will take place in Bashimi Art House in 12 different sessions between 25th March and 7th May 2011 . Free entrance screenings will be open for all video art lovers in Salzburg . Organisation will end with a finissage on 7th May 2011. My recent movie 'Saltlight' will be part of the screening.
Participating Artists:
Claus-Dieter Schulz / Cristina Moreno Berlanga / Ilhami Tunc Gencer / Iva Radivojevic / Tuncay Yuce / Niek Pulles / Selcuk Artut / Ozlem Yilmaz / Otto Schlindwein / Ugur Gunay / Eimhin Hawes

Ko.yaa.nis.qatsi - An FSX Film

A very interesting Machinima movie inspired by Godfrey Reggio's film 'Koyaanisqatsi' appeared as video response to my GTA4 machinima 'Liberty City'. This movie was made by PrivateCustard with Microsoft Flight Simulater X (FSX). I really enjoyed watching it. It has some amazing scenes and editing.

Ko.yaa.nis.qatsi - An FSX Film

MachinUWA III: Journeys (3rd UWA Machinima Challenge - 2011)

The 3rd Machinima Challenge put forth by the University of Western Australia (UWA) has just been announced.
The theme is simply 'Journeys'. What the journey is, will be left to the Machinimatographer. A journey through Second Life. A journey of self discovery. A journey within. A journey from SL too RL, or vice-versa. A journey through space, through time, a journey of hope, a journey of despair. Your own journey, or a journey by someone else seen through your eyes... or... through Second Life in 80 Days, whatever you can imagine.

More informations on their Blog:
MachinimUWA III: Journeys - It Begins!!

DEADLINE: Submissions are open between NOW (Feb 2011) till 1st May 2011

Celebrating 2011

I hope you all had a good start in 2011 as well. This year it's time to celebrate 5 years of my Machinima movie production. Although early work can be traced back til '99 it took several more year until my serious work on Machinima started. So what is planned for 2011?
Besides the usual 1-2 movie releases (don't know yet which one will get actually finished so far) I'll re-release some of my early movies, which so far were only published at strange places, to my YouTube and Viemo channels. As well it is planned to release some footage of movies that never made it to a finial movie but maybe are interesting to watch. Thank you all for your interest in reading and commenting on my movies and blog and good luck and success with your own movie productions in 2011.

E.V.A. - Experimental Video Art , Spring Screening

Just got informed that my first non-machinima experimental movie 'Saltlight' will be screened at E.V.A. - Experimental Video Art Spring Screening in Salzburg, Austria. Experimental videos in all genres are screened there - animation, abstract, narrative, documentary, found footage etc.
The video screenings will take place in 12 different sessions during March and April 2011 and participating works will be presented in The Visual ARTBEAT Magazine's 7th Issue ( July 2011). If you have an interesting experimental movie, deadline for submissioms is 4th February 2011.

How to Screencast Live

You have plans to run your own Live Machinima workshops or tutorials, or want to Live review Machinima movies? There are many applications for Live Screencasts. My favourite Starcraft Live caster Sean "Day[9]" Plott just released this wonderful article on pcworld.com with video tutorials about setting up your own Live Screencast.
Screencast Live: How To Make Your Own Web TV Show