The Entertainment Computing Research Group here at IU spent most of this past year trying to understand machinima. My personal interest in machinima is as a video prototyping tool, more than the focus on entertainment that has dominated the genre. But as a group, we were en route to examining how to improve the tools to create computer animated movies.
Elsewhere on the Internet, one author has started a new blog to help shape ideas for a collaborative movie-making tool. She (actually, I don’t see a name or an indication of gender, but I’ll look to break stereotypes and presume female) makes a distinction between conventional computer animation and real-time filmmaking. The difference is primarily in quality, due to the fact that conventional CGI is not time-sensitive — one might think of it as recorded, or asynchronous — and therefore has the luxury of using super-sized servers to render precise representations, instead of fighting obstacles like bandwidth, ISP hosting server specs, and unpredictable usage patterns. Citing a Wikipedia entry on the future of computer animation, the author looks to a future where “the viewer is no longer able to tell if a particular movie sequence is computer-generated, or created using real actors in front of movie cameras.”
In theory, this would pave the way for collaborative movie making. Some of the criteria the author identifies for such a project includes:
- Open source, to stimulate technological advances
- Basic version free, for mass consumption
- Ease of use
- Quality rendering, to make commercial-quality movies
- Productivity, to encourage re-use
She argues that Blender, the computer animation tool Erik worked with last spring, comes closest. The first open source movie was made with Blender.
The author’s idea for collaborative movie making has been posted to Cambrian House, an organization trying to commercialize communal software ideas. Contributors earn royalties and share in the success of the products. (Yet another blog post in the making ….)
4 replies on “Collaborative movie making”
Thx for the comment … ,
I actually thought about the idea doing prestudy myself to make a machinima tool. I strongly believe this idea has potential but a large community is needed to support this happening within a decent timeframe & stay ahead possible competition. This is why I posted the idea at Cambrianhouse because this community can + the idea is also evaluated & further developed there. If you like the idea, feel free to support it, the more people backing it up, the more chance it has to be marketed soon and everyone is free to assist on development … my goal is to keep a basic tool open source & free !
I thank you for the lead to Cambrian House. I’m going to find some time in the next week or so to plug into that community. Once I get the hang of it, I’ll definitely be revisiting the collaborative movie idea.
I have a site at http://www.makemovies.co.uk that might be of interest to readers here.
Also a Blog makemovies
Stan Hayward
Yes, that looks like an interesting blog to explore. Very relevant to both this project and others at the School of Informatics. Thanks for the tip.