User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2009-10-15

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Topic

User Experience Interest Group Discussion for October 15, 2009.

Topic: Machinima Features.

Summary

We discussed new features that would improve SL as a platform for making machinima. This topic attracted a lot of people, with a lot of ideas about useful machinima features.

The overall theme of the suggestions was to give machinists greater control, especially control of the camera and avatar poses and facial expressions. An important part of that is a "timeline", like those found in 3D animation apps like Truespace and Blender, to allow things (camera moves, etc.) to be recorded, played back, and adjusted to the creator's liking.

Please edit this page and help add more detail to this summary.

We will be discussing machinima features again next week, October 22.

Links

Transcript

[15:07] McCabe Maxsted: ahoy toxic!
[15:07] Toxic Menges: hiyas :)
[15:07] Dimitrio Lewis: hi Toxic
[15:07] Toxic Menges: hey :)
[15:07] McCabe Maxsted: pull up a circle :)
[15:07] Toxic Menges: pooky and chantal and rosco are on their way
[15:08] Toxic Menges: Thanks for posting this to the machinima listserv Jacek, I let a few people know :)
[15:08] Chantal Harvey: hey hey
[15:08] Geneko Nemeth: So that's why we have more people than usual~
[15:08] Mm Alder: Actually, it was I who took that liberty. (blush)
[15:08] Jacek Antonelli: Thanks, Mm :)
[15:08] McCabe Maxsted: ahoy aimee!
[15:08] Toxic Menges: welll ty :)
[15:08] Aimee Trescothick: lo
[15:09] Chantal Harvey: yes ty
[15:09] Toxic Menges: oop soz Mm :)
[15:09] McCabe Maxsted loves how you stop by right as I'm panning iwth the minimap
[15:09] Dimitrio Lewis: hi Pooky :)
[15:09] Pooky Amsterdam: Ahoy Dinitrio
[15:09] Pooky Amsterdam: S;-D et al!
[15:09] Mm Alder: I got started with virtual worlds because of machinima.
[15:09] Geneko Nemeth: Well, if we used mushrooms some people would be forced to stand by now. <g>
[15:09] Toxic Menges: :O
[15:09] Chantal Harvey: i am still here because of machinima
[15:09] Toxic Menges: me too LOL
[15:09] Chantal Harvey: hey morgaine
[15:09] Dimitrio Lewis: I once saw a machinima
[15:10] Jacek Antonelli: Hey all, welcome
[15:10] Morgaine Dinova: Hi all :-)
[15:10] Pooky Amsterdam: My name is Pooky Amsterdam and Im a machinaholic
[15:10] Jacek Antonelli: hehehe
[15:10] Pooky Amsterdam: I cant stop making films
[15:10] McCabe Maxsted: :)
[15:10] Mm Alder: I got stuck on the coding part, I never really got to making the machinima. :-)
[15:10] Toxic Menges: lol
[15:10] Pooky Amsterdam: will snowglobe Linden be joining us?
[15:11] Geneko Nemeth doesn't watch machinimas, ... but it seems to be a good idea.
[15:11] Jacek Antonelli: Probably not. :-\
[15:11] Morgaine Dinova: Snowy Linden would be a nice name
[15:11] Chantal Harvey: hello saijanai
[15:11] Toxic Menges: hiyas :)
[15:11] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Sai
[15:11] Saijanai Kuhn: hilo
[15:12] Morgaine Dinova: Rob let us out early today Jacek, as you see :-)
[15:12] Jacek Antonelli: :D
[15:12] Jacek Antonelli: Yay!
[15:12] Geneko Nemeth: Probably would have been earlier if I didn't derail the topic for 30 minutes...
[15:12] Chantal Harvey: spot on time
[15:12] Jacek Antonelli: Alright, shall we start?
[15:12] Geneko Nemeth: >_<
[15:12] Morgaine Dinova: Hehe Gen
[15:12] Chantal Harvey: rysan is coming too
[15:12] Geneko Nemeth: Jacek! Get the shrooms!
[15:12] Saijanai Kuhn: what is today's topic?
[15:13] Jacek Antonelli shouts: Machinima features discussion starting up soon!
[15:13] Geneko Nemeth: We have not enough seats! >_<
[15:13] Mm Alder: There's one to my left.
[15:13] Chantal Harvey: i ll take lappers
[15:13] Rosco Teardrop: does this group have any representation with LL?
[15:13] Rysan Fall: hello
[15:13] Geneko Nemeth: Not anymore.
[15:13] Chantal Harvey: aimee, where did u get that 3dconnection seat
[15:13] Chantal Harvey: omg
[15:13] Morgaine Dinova: Oh, features to support Machinima, is that the topic?
[15:13] Penumbra Carter: hello :)
[15:14] Chantal Harvey: hey there
[15:14] Jacek Antonelli: Rosco: No. It used to be a Linden office hours, but they abandoned it so we took over.
[15:14] Toxic Menges: aimee gotta say i love mine .. ty :)
[15:14] Aimee Trescothick: It's on xstreet :) as the "WorldNavigator"
[15:14] Pooky Amsterdam: I thought there was going ot be a presnttion by LL
[15:14] Aimee Trescothick: :)
[15:14] Pooky Amsterdam: on new viewer and puppeteering
[15:14] Morgaine Dinova: Pooky: LL has only one thing to say these days: "No comment"
[15:14] Rosco Teardrop: ta Jacek, so where does the feedback go to?
[15:14] Pooky Amsterdam: what was the place we wer eat?
[15:14] Pooky Amsterdam: with the snowglobe lindens
[15:15] Pooky Amsterdam: sorry sonfused
[15:15] Saijanai Kuhn: sadly, with their interest in plugins, puppeteering should be high on the list
[15:15] Chantal Harvey: that was snowglobe meeting
[15:15] Morgaine Dinova: That's Snowglobe
[15:15] Chantal Harvey: hi twstd
[15:15] Jacek Antonelli: Today's just a discussion about possible machinima features and improvements -- LL isn't involved in this at all, although they might read about it later.
[15:15] Twstd Ruggles: aloha Chantal
[15:15] Chantal Harvey: rob, pye, welcome
[15:15] Twstd Ruggles: good to see you
[15:15] Mm Alder: Merov Linden is the one who wrote the puppeteering code for the viewer.
[15:15] Morgaine Dinova: Someone's AO is generating errors: [15:15] ::: ED ::: Kunoichi AO (Wear Me): Could not find animation '-=Swim Down=-'.
[15:15] Toxic Menges: its a good start to make
[15:15] Rosco Teardrop: oh, I see
[15:15] McCabe Maxsted nods. The transcripts are posted on the SL™ wiki
[15:15] Twstd Ruggles: oops can't see yet
[15:16] Saijanai Kuhn: Is he? I thought that LInden had quit. Or did he come back?
[15:16] Mm Alder: Now Merov is Mr. Snowglobe.
[15:16] Chantal Harvey: yes i was sorry to see him leave
[15:16] Toxic Menges: good forum to talk about issues so we can pool knowledge
[15:16] Chantal Harvey: he did camera apllications too
[15:16] Jacek Antonelli: Let's get started. We've got a lot of people here today, so let's all try to stay on topic or it'll get all chaotic.
[15:16] Jacek Antonelli: If you haven't heard, today's discussion topic is new features or improvements that would improve SL as a platform for making machinima.
[15:17] Morgaine Dinova: Nice topic
[15:17] Chantal Harvey: agree
[15:17] Jacek Antonelli: Mostly just brainstorming, coming up with ideas, and getting insight (hopefully) from machinimists about what needs to be improved.
[15:17] Techwolf Lupindo: No seats left?
[15:17] Morgaine Dinova: Someone want to define Machinima, beyond just "in-virtual world film making"?
[15:18] Charlette Proto: animated camera independent of the avatar comes to mind besides real-time camera parameter control
[15:18] Geneko Nemeth: Well, we still have our "normal" seats but Jacek isn't taking 'em out.
[15:18] Pooky Amsterdam: cinema done on machine
[15:18] Pooky Amsterdam: made by a computer not computerized
[15:18] Rosco Teardrop: making animations with a game engine, cost efefctively
[15:19] Morgaine Dinova: Pooky, if you use your Genie voice here I'll go nuts :-)))
[15:19] Aimee Trescothick accepted your inventory offer.
[15:19] Charlette Proto: Snowglobe has some good camera controls eg View Angle, but hard to reach them in real-time
[15:19] Chantal Harvey: hey panther!
[15:19] Pooky Amsterdam: heh S'-p
[15:19] Geneko Nemeth: Yay! More seats!
[15:19] Geneko Nemeth: ... wait...
[15:19] Chantal Harvey: i remeber the inworld camera, the one in the viewer
[15:19] Mm Alder: Snowglobe has new camera controls?
[15:19] Chantal Harvey: unreliable
[15:20] Chantal Harvey: but i often get questions, about good software to film
[15:20] Charlette Proto: well Sonw has View Angle Mm - I love it
[15:20] Charlette Proto: the wide view is horrid for pics and movies
[15:20] Morgaine Dinova: Nice, Pyewacket :-)
[15:20] Pyewacket Bellman: :)
[15:21] Geneko Nemeth: FoV actually have been in the viewer for long.
[15:21] Geneko Nemeth: (As zoom in/ zoom out)
[15:21] Jacek Antonelli: So, is field of view something that would be good to control for machinima?
[15:21] Rosco Teardrop: it already is controllable, like geneko says
[15:22] Rosco Teardrop: and crucual for good cine,matorgapy
[15:22] Toxic Menges: I'd love a little dock app you can use outside the viewer for camera angles
[15:22] Chantal Harvey: shadows
[15:22] Chantal Harvey: without crashing
[15:22] Toxic Menges: sort of a tear off
[15:22] Charlette Proto: my point however that a good UI is needed for the camera (add elevation etc) and it should be available beyond joystick control etc
[15:22] Morgaine Dinova: Presumably camera control is done with joysticks and shuttles and scripting for Machinima, and not by using the regular viewer UI controls.
[15:22] Jacek Antonelli: I mean, more fine-grained or smooth control, like a slider or some other sort of control?
[15:22] Geneko Nemeth: With not much granuality and can't be animated (without use of joystick).
[15:22] Chantal Harvey: i use zoomtime a lot
[15:22] Chantal Harvey: but it is restricted
[15:23] Mm Alder: What is zoomtime?
[15:23] Jacek Antonelli: Can you describe zoomtime briefly, for people who don't know it?
[15:23] Penumbra Carter: if I may what is zoomtime?
[15:23] Chantal Harvey: in advanced
[15:23] Toxic Menges: perhaps something a little less complicated in the way of settings for the spacenav/joystick setup
[15:23] Chantal Harvey: debug settings
[15:23] Chantal Harvey: if you type in zoomtime, it can be set
[15:23] Garn Conover: holy crap!
[15:23] Chantal Harvey: hi garn
[15:23] Rosco Teardrop: +1 Toxic
[15:23] Penumbra Carter: cool ty
[15:23] Morgaine Dinova: Chantal, could you describe Zoomtime pls?
[15:23] Toxic Menges: lol
[15:24] Chantal Harvey: i think machinima is a hot topic, hehe
[15:24] Garn Conover woofs a greeting
[15:24] Chantal Harvey: yes
[15:24] McCabe Maxsted: ahoy garn :)
[15:24] Morgaine Dinova gives Garn a biccie
[15:24] Garn Conover: whats the special occasion?
[15:24] Charlette Proto: Toxic there is joystic support, but the cameraman in machinima would benefoit from mouse control
[15:24] Chantal Harvey: open advanced, debug settings, zoomtime in type, and then you see 0,400 (in mine, anyway)
[15:24] Rosco Teardrop: machinima is getting hotter, more games are recognising it's value, not just SL
[15:24] Pooky Amsterdam: how about stylus?
[15:24] Charlette Proto: Chantal I'm talking UI not advanced
[15:24] Toxic Menges: yes ... but what I mean is this .. the setup away from the default .. is very complicated .. simpler UI on that setup screen would be very useful
[15:24] Chantal Harvey: i set it as high as 20,000...and then a wonderful zoom in can be made
[15:25] Charlette Proto: debug is not UI sorry
[15:25] CodeBastard Redgrave: *sits on Jacek
[15:25] Geneko Nemeth: Second Life is lacking in stylus support, yes, but I don't see much use of it in Machinima... prove me wrong?
[15:25] Jacek Antonelli: Let's focus on zoomtime for now, please. We can get to other topics in a bit
[15:25] Pooky Amsterdam: movement perhaps of avatar- pupeteering is a bit of a challenge
[15:25] Chantal Harvey: hm do i go on, or off...hehe
[15:25] Charlette Proto: reatl time and programable camera parameters is the issu - especially camera paths
[15:26] Jacek Antonelli: Zoomtime controls how long it takes for the camera to change positions/focus, right? So it's one way to make camera moves smoother?
[15:26] Morgaine Dinova: OK, I'm set zoomtime to 20, now what?
[15:26] Chantal Harvey: yes, very
[15:26] Chantal Harvey: and available for all inworld residents, filmers
[15:26] Chantal Harvey: well, use your mouse and alt to zoom out
[15:26] Chantal Harvey: then hit escape
[15:27] Morgaine Dinova: Oh Isee. Yep, Nice and slow. But it's only a linear path.
[15:27] Geneko Nemeth: Wow!
[15:27] Chantal Harvey: yep
[15:27] Chantal Harvey: true
[15:27] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, so zoomtime is a good example of a feature that's already available, but is hidden away and not very easy to access.
[15:27] Pyewacket Bellman: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/tnt/blog/2009/06/29/tip-where-did-those-camera-sliders-go-in-123
[15:27] Charlette Proto: smoothed point to point animation with pathway movement smoothing
[15:27] Morgaine Dinova: It works on camm'ing too
[15:27] Chantal Harvey: woo pye
[15:27] Rosco Teardrop: thanks pye
[15:27] Jacek Antonelli: And it's useful because it makes camera moves smoother, which is good for making professional-looking machinima.
[15:28] Chantal Harvey: moves are the hardest
[15:28] Rosco Teardrop: yes, even at smaller values.
[15:28] Chantal Harvey: something to make moves smother
[15:28] Chantal Harvey: oh and improvement of the slow motion function...much wanted
[15:28] Rosco Teardrop: but you can;t beat the SN or other analogue cvontroller for that (eg xbox controller)
[15:28] Jacek Antonelli: I've heard some ideas for other ways to improve camera movement. Scripted paths, for instance. Are there any more comments about zoomtime before we move on?
[15:29] Rosco Teardrop: I've tried scripted paths, too jerky
[15:29] Geneko Nemeth hates joystick support....
[15:29] Charlette Proto: I've used Wii with camera - kind of OK but the fun wears off and real UI is still desired
[15:29] Chantal Harvey: i sometimes use the geius dassin one
[15:29] Geneko Nemeth: Rosco: But if it's client-side scripted path?
[15:29] Chantal Harvey: filmpath
[15:30] Chantal Harvey: its timeconsuming
[15:30] Penumbra Carter: I have used that alot the filmpath
[15:30] Chantal Harvey: but ok
[15:30] Rosco Teardrop: it was filmpath I used, yes ta Chantal, too jerky and client side
[15:30] Penumbra Carter: yes, and must have permission to use it on land and such
[15:30] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, let's talk about camera paths right now. Think about scripted ones, but also about possible ways that camera paths could be integrated into the SL client
[15:30] CodeBastard Redgrave: actually scripted paths are sim side
[15:30] Charlette Proto: joystick (if it can be mapped to your controller ) can be very usefull but not so much for machinima - where programability is more the issue
[15:30] Chantal Harvey: wouldnt that be great
[15:30] Morgaine Dinova: One comment about zoomtime. It smooths only the zooming towards the pivot, but doesn't smooth orbit nor translation speed.
[15:31] Chantal Harvey: yes
[15:31] Chantal Harvey: but i reverse in edit
[15:31] Chantal Harvey: so, out is good too
[15:31] Charlette Proto: one should be able to do 'point to point' pathways which get smoothed (parameter) and speed controlled on playback
[15:31] Rosco Teardrop: ta code, so if we got a client side scripted path it would be smooth?
[15:31] Jacek Antonelli: Yes, a camera path in the client could be made very smooth
[15:31] Rosco Teardrop: cool, yes please :)
[15:32] Chantal Harvey: woo
[15:32] Chantal Harvey: yes
[15:32] Charlette Proto: Trespace (SL's 3D UI inspiration) and it's camera timelines come to mind here
[15:32] Mm Alder: What is the best way to set the scripted path?
[15:32] Reed Steamroller: howdy
[15:32] Jacek Antonelli: So camera paths are something that would be useful? What sort of interface would be easy to use for creating the path?
[15:32] Pyewacket Bellman: Boo!
[15:32] Charlette Proto: NOT SCRIPTED - get real
[15:32] Geneko Nemeth: Well, I don't really think there's one good way.
[15:32] CodeBastard Redgrave: *coughs
[15:33] Charlette Proto: one needs a timeline tool in UI not script functions
[15:33] Rosco Teardrop: is there ANY way to get it cleint side?
[15:33] Geneko Nemeth: One is you can record paths. Another would be eidting them in-world.
[15:33] Charlette Proto: yes Gen - timeline
[15:33] Mm Alder: OK, Charlette, not necessaily scripted, but preset.
[15:33] Garn Conover smells a Malbers!
[15:33] Charlette Proto: actually a timeline would be hot for all avatar movement recording!!!
[15:33] Geneko Nemeth: :p
[15:33] Jacek Antonelli: Let me put out a few ideas. One would be to edit 3D points, almost like editing objects in SL. Another way might be to record the current position of the camera, so you'd move your cam to point A, hit save, move to point B, hit save, etc.
[15:34] Geneko Nemeth: Mweh Mweh! :O
[15:34] Malbers Linden: Hola!
[15:34] Rysan Fall: amen
[15:34] Charlette Proto: NOT PRESET - timeline editing of waypoints
[15:34] Geneko Nemeth: Another would be recording the camera in real time...
[15:34] Rosco Teardrop: I'd buy that
[15:34] Techwolf Lupindo: With the new plugin system in snowglobe, one could write up a client side camera record/playback plugin.
[15:34] Toxic Menges: Kind of the way that you can record the day settings in environmnt settings? That would be sweet
[15:34] Geneko Nemeth: Too bad, no seats for you squirrel!
[15:34] Squirrel Wood: ^^
[15:35] Geneko Nemeth: Yes... but it should be way more convienent than that.
[15:35] Mm Alder: No, Tech, the plugincan't do that.
[15:35] Charlette Proto: like point to point navigation but with chronological control and playback of those defined and saved
[15:35] Morgaine Dinova: Client-side scripting doesn't mean that Machinima filmers have to write code. They can just set camera end points and points on the curve, and the scripting them creates the smooth path for camera.
[15:35] Toxic Menges: that would be the icing
[15:35] CodeBastard Redgrave: that's what i have been working on for the last 9 months.
[15:35] Pooky Amsterdam: nice
[15:35] Jacek Antonelli: I'm hearing that a timeline is important, and a way to go back and edit the path to improve it, right?
[15:35] Charlette Proto: OK think - Truespace (download it if need be) or Maya
[15:35] Geneko Nemeth: Yes, and play it at different speeds.
[15:36] Saijanai Kuhn: a timeline for the entire skeleton, or just for the path?
[15:36] Rosco Teardrop: yes jacek, YES
[15:36] Charlette Proto: yes TIMELINE is absolutely necessary to do anything good with camera and great for many other things too
[15:36] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm. What do you mean by "the entire skeleton"?
[15:36] Rosco Teardrop: cos you have to reshoot shotss many times
[15:36] Toxic Menges: or if you wanted to reshoot to layer an effect
[15:36] Charlette Proto: timeline for camera (avie) positions and orientation at first
[15:37] Rysan Fall: oh man that would be sweet
[15:37] Rosco Teardrop: its what you can do in Moviestorm
[15:37] Saijanai Kuhn: Genko, the avie skeleton as in what you can do with Poser and the like
[15:37] Toxic Menges: as good as the spacenav is .. you cant get that unless you pfutz deeply into the settings for it
[15:37] Jacek Antonelli: Saijanai: We're just talking about camera movements right now
[15:37] Reed Steamroller: if you could define curves in SL.... and keyframe the camera's position along said curve... that would be neat.
[15:37] Saijanai Kuhn: KK (always looking 20 steps ahed)
[15:37] Morgaine Dinova: So do we need a timecode master, to which everything including camera pathing is sync'd?
[15:37] Toxic Menges: yups
[15:37] Rosco Teardrop: neat, yes, and fantastic
[15:37] Geneko Nemeth: Reed: That's what a timeline is, no?
[15:37] Chantal Harvey: yes
[15:38] Pooky Amsterdam: storyboard out the whole shoot that way
[15:38] Charlette Proto: one would point/click positions inworld and record them then edit the timeline parameters add FX etc - a bit like animating the av
[15:38] Toxic Menges: and it would remove lag from the equation for a lot of shots
[15:38] Reed Steamroller: well i don't know of anyway to define a curve in SL outside of doing so in a script via some mathematical function... hardly user friendly
[15:38] Geneko Nemeth: We're all about user friendliness here!
[15:38] Saijanai Kuhn: thing is, you probably don't want to do everything from within the client. have a way to access the puppeteering controls from a plugin, and do everything from the plugin. If you want a UI "in world" use html
[15:38] Reed Steamroller: let alone snapping the camera to it
[15:39] Charlette Proto: no scripts - UI floater
[15:39] Jacek Antonelli: What sort of things would you want to be able to keyframe in the path? Position and rotation of the camera are obvious ones. What about zoom? Or windlight settings? Are those useful to record and playback?
[15:39] Reed Steamroller: well i don't care where the UI is, so long as there is a UI
[15:39] Geneko Nemeth: EVERYTHING.
[15:39] Charlette Proto: yes Jacek
[15:39] Chantal Harvey: a pan
[15:39] Mm Alder: You cant use a floater while you're filming.
[15:39] Chantal Harvey: panning is the hardest
[15:39] Reed Steamroller: yeah, the more functions you could keyframe the merrier
[15:39] Chantal Harvey: well yes
[15:39] Charlette Proto: zoom and view angle are critical jacek
[15:39] Toxic Menges: thats why a tear off that sits outside the client would be fab
[15:39] Toxic Menges: when you lose the UI to film ... its very difficult unless you know where the buttons are
[15:40] Reed Steamroller: how about a film/resolution gate
[15:40] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, but what are some specific ones? "Everything" is nice, but it's hard to imagine
[15:40] Reed Steamroller: only whats inside the gate is recorded
[15:40] Reed Steamroller: or some function to auto ignore the UI, even though its still being drawn
[15:40] Charlette Proto: all camera controls Jacek plus orientation
[15:40] Reed Steamroller: i know there are ways to do that with some programs
[15:41] Chantal Harvey: ui off, and cellotape on your monitor?
[15:41] Toxic Menges: easier when we had capture in the client .. more difficult now we use capture progs
[15:41] Reed Steamroller: ha yeah
[15:41] Saijanai Kuhn: Jacek, if we can access puppeteering packets from a plugin and access camera controls from a (the same?) plugin, you can add as many UI elements as you want
[15:41] Rosco Teardrop: all the camera controll in flycam settings for example
[15:41] Charlette Proto: also the chronology and FX like smoothing should be the visible/editable parameters
[15:42] Charlette Proto: additionally live recording of pathways 'walking' (besides point to point) for later use by camera
[15:42] Chantal Harvey: now that is a good idea
[15:42] Morgaine Dinova: There is no general control API for the plugins currently, but I guess in time that would be the right place for alternative non-GUI controls.
[15:42] Saijanai Kuhn: Morgain, the media plugin API has QT like control streams and keyboard/mouse control streams
[15:43] Rosco Teardrop: there are tools that currently record camera presets, though no patch between them
[15:43] Mm Alder: Charlett, you can record avatar motion.
[15:43] Morgaine Dinova: Sai: that's media player control
[15:43] Rosco Teardrop: *path
[15:43] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, we've been talking about the camera a lot. Let's move on to something else. I've heard a few comments about puppeteering and moving avatars around. I presume that would be useful?
[15:43] Pooky Amsterdam: very
[15:43] Morgaine Dinova: So ... choreography
[15:43] Saijanai Kuhn: well, if you can do VNC, you can do any kind of keyboard i/o
[15:43] Rosco Teardrop: yes, yes, yes
[15:44] Rosco Teardrop: but with more control than cyurrently available
[15:44] Chantal Harvey: facial expressions
[15:44] Charlette Proto: Media API is just the first plug-in but everything (not in the viewer UI) can be seen as a candidate for a plugin
[15:44] Rosco Teardrop: omg yes
[15:44] Chantal Harvey: my nr one on a wishing list
[15:44] Saijanai Kuhn: Charlette sure it can
[15:44] Chantal Harvey: hardest thing is emotion, in machinima
[15:44] Saijanai Kuhn: ah misparsed that "not"
[15:44] Charlette Proto: first I would consider the controls we have (plus View Angle from Snow) on a timeline
[15:45] Rosco Teardrop: subtle facial expressions please
[15:45] Morgaine Dinova: Chantal: is the current anim system up to it?
[15:45] Chantal Harvey: no
[15:45] Chantal Harvey: i combine them
[15:45] Chantal Harvey: i try
[15:45] Charlette Proto: Rosco that is in the pipeline already (facial expressions)
[15:45] Chantal Harvey: but suggestion still workls best, lol
[15:45] Pooky Amsterdam: you can get some differenc in the face by fooling with the degrees of eye upturn mouth/ eyebrow height etc but its not afluid movement
[15:45] Jacek Antonelli: The facial expressions (and hand poses) are pretty crude at the moment, I know.
[15:45] Chantal Harvey: yea pooky, that s what i meant
[15:45] Charlette Proto: Blue Mars has attitude/mood settings on avie - the only good thing there
[15:45] Chantal Harvey: they are horrid
[15:45] Rosco Teardrop: and a major obstacle to emotional filmmaking
[15:46] Mm Alder: I've written code to allow new morphs to be added, but I need to get it up to the current release level.
[15:46] Chantal Harvey: i do have one hud that s not too bad
[15:46] Rysan Fall: we would benfit from being able to control our own facial expression...in the viewer
[15:46] Pooky Amsterdam: we use voice for the emotion
[15:46] Charlette Proto: but please lets stick to camera tools for now
[15:46] Chantal Harvey: but nowhere near what i d want
[15:46] Morgaine Dinova: Do realXtend avs have better expression control?
[15:46] Rysan Fall: without buying tool
[15:46] Jacek Antonelli: Charlette, we've moved on from camera controls
[15:46] Charlette Proto: WOW Malbers (welcome back)
[15:46] Jacek Antonelli: Now we're talking about avatar control
[15:46] McCabe Maxsted: use voice for the emotion?
[15:46] Charlette Proto: OK
[15:47] Chantal Harvey: sure we use whatever we can
[15:47] Geneko Nemeth: 35 agents in sim, we might not be able to teleport more people in soon.
[15:47] Saijanai Kuhn: has any coder looked at the puppeteering patch? How hard would it be to bring into snowglobe
[15:47] Charlette Proto: the timeline would be the same for predefined 'actor' pathways in my view
[15:47] Mm Alder: Sai, that's on my ToDo List.
[15:47] Charlette Proto: animation of actors would be essential too
[15:47] Rysan Fall: yes
[15:48] McCabe Maxsted: ah you mean sound, was thinking some mixup of different voice gestures, haha
[15:48] Saijanai Kuhn: http://avatarpuppeteering.com/
[15:48] Mm Alder: Are the motion recorders in the viewer now useful for machinima?
[15:48] Saijanai Kuhn: is Ventrilla Merov?
[15:48] Rysan Fall: and a little bump in graphcis would be great
[15:48] Chantal Harvey: they are bare
[15:48] Aimee Trescothick: no Sai
[15:49] Pyewacket Bellman: I'd like a more complex av mesh - even if it's only client side
[15:49] Charlette Proto: yes Mm the Timeline for camera would be pretty much the same as sctor timelines
[15:49] Geneko Nemeth: I'm thinking, if you could use avatar puppeteering as a built-in avatar animation editor... would be pretty cool.
[15:49] Saijanai Kuhn: The realXtend code might be transplantable into snowglobe, even if you can't show the avies sim side
[15:50] Pooky Amsterdam: yes built in woudl be great
[15:50] Charlette Proto: eg one would edit animations used at a given point in time (FX) in addition to position and ORIENTATION (critical)
[15:50] Chantal Harvey: as long as it s not the crazy talk lookalike
[15:50] Pooky Amsterdam: turning a doorknob would be heaven
[15:50] Charlette Proto: pretty much same stuff as camera timeline
[15:50] Reed Steamroller: Ok, gotta go bye :D
[15:51] Toxic Menges: seeyas Reed :)
[15:51] Rysan Fall: bye Reed
[15:51] Charlette Proto: byee Reed
[15:51] McCabe Maxsted: take care reed
[15:51] Chantal Harvey: can it be done, that is my question
[15:51] Pooky Amsterdam: bye Reed!
[15:51] Chantal Harvey: hey pia
[15:51] Saijanai Kuhn: if you can patch the puppeter code into SNowglboe, and expose the packet to an external plugin, you can do literally anything
[15:51] Morgaine Dinova: There's no real need for sim-side presence for machinima. It's not as if anything can interact realistically through the sim-side bounding boxes. We're far away from that.
[15:51] Pia Klaar: hi
[15:51] Toxic Menges: Hey Pia :)
[15:51] Chantal Harvey: ty morgaine
[15:52] Charlette Proto: hehe Morgaine - but you are right - machinima would give great grifing opportunities
[15:52] Pia Klaar: can I ask someone for the chat log to read later on for I just got on sl and missed a lot of this meeting
[15:52] Rysan Fall: Currently, there is a new system being developed by 3DV systems that extract body positions in real time through geometry. When they move, the webcam tracks the movements and the avatar repeats it.
[15:52] Mm Alder: The multi slider might be useful for building a timeline.
[15:53] Geneko Nemeth: We probably need a new control for timelines.
[15:53] Jacek Antonelli: I think this would require a lot of new UI control types, heh
[15:53] Charlette Proto: moving in Real Life™ is not really what we need - but has some relevance same as other motion capture systems
[15:53] Pooky Amsterdam: having some facial animations like iClone would be great
[15:53] Geneko Nemeth: Now where did I put that gesture editor mockup?
[15:53] Rysan Fall: yes pooky
[15:53] Pooky Amsterdam: that woudl ive what we do a whole range a whole dimesnsion
[15:53] Chantal Harvey: it doesnt have to be like rl? i dont agree
[15:54] Chantal Harvey: that would be fantastic for machinima
[15:54] Pooky Amsterdam: we are still human ver 1.0
[15:54] Charlette Proto: gesture editing on a timeline (PLUS)
[15:54] Rysan Fall: want it as real as possible
[15:54] Chantal Harvey: i would do that movie i am planning
[15:54] Chantal Harvey: straight away
[15:54] Rosco Teardrop: is lip sync in this agenda item? or later
[15:54] Chantal Harvey: hair tru bodies, pft
[15:54] Pooky Amsterdam: I want it a s real so we can write for the character too-
[15:54] Rysan Fall: exactly
[15:54] Morgaine Dinova: One of the most important aspects of the plugin-api is that it's done over sockets. This makes it really trivial to have all these controls for cam & expression on a different host to the scene viewer, for smooth capture.
[15:54] Pooky Amsterdam: not aroudn the limitations of movement
[15:54] Pooky Amsterdam: and expression
[15:54] Rysan Fall: we can only imply so much
[15:54] Charlette Proto: including the ability of embeding saved timelines (gestures) into other timelines
[15:55] Saijanai Kuhn: Jacek, no need to have SL UI elements. Keep teh UI outside the SL view space and provide either HTML or native UIs in a window
[15:55] Morgaine Dinova: Sai++
[15:55] Pooky Amsterdam: not eveyone wants to build but the tools are there for that and all are welcoem to become builders
[15:56] Charlette Proto: anyone who's done 3D work eg in Truespace would know what the Timeline for camera metaphor is like
[15:56] Pooky Amsterdam: if Sl wishes to be a platform for machinimators ther should be tools for us too
[15:56] Chantal Harvey: there
[15:56] Toxic Menges: wb mm
[15:56] Geneko Nemeth: Speaking of timelines, it might be possible to have the rendering not done in real time but in a fixed frame rate (say 60) and have the viewer send out screenshots to a video encoder.
[15:56] Geneko Nemeth: (... say VLC?)
[15:56] Charlette Proto: actually Truespace (free download) is a great example one could use to define what and how to implement
[15:57] Morgaine Dinova: Pooky: yes, but not all built into a monolithic viewer. Separate tools are much more flexible, just need integration. And in principle the plugin-api will allow that.
[15:57] Charlette Proto: plugins
[15:57] Saijanai Kuhn: the best tool is just to provide a plugin interface for puppeteering and camera controls. That way, you can connect it to just about anything from an external mocap package to an iphone accelerometer used as a puppet cross
[15:57] Pooky Amsterdam: all right just as builders and scripters use plug in too sure
[15:57] Charlette Proto: this is a great example of a Plg-in
[15:57] Toxic Menges: then the biggest thing that will help us is ui outside the client before even anything else
[15:57] Charlette Proto: hehe plug-in
[15:58] Pooky Amsterdam: that shoudl have a theme song
[15:58] Chantal Harvey: hm i m thinking aloud. would it be possible to import that, like the windlightsettings that torley did.
[15:58] Saijanai Kuhn: toxic its already here in the form of the webkit plugin
[15:58] Jacek Antonelli: Sai: a plugin interface isn't usable without something on the other end to control it. The controls are within the scope of this discussion
[15:58] Mm Alder: World->Environment Settings->Environment Editor->Advanced Sky->Day Cycle Editor How's that for a start as a timeline?
[15:58] Toxic Menges: :O
[15:58] Geneko Nemeth: Mm: Terrible.
[15:58] Charlette Proto: a floater would be the usual way in Second Life™ UI but a separate 'window' with it's own menus would be a great plugin
[15:58] Toxic Menges: yes deffo
[15:59] Mm Alder: Why Geneko?
[15:59] Saijanai Kuhn: sure, but aside from making sure that we can pass the right data to/from SL, we don't need to worry about UI at this level
[15:59] Charlette Proto: Windlight animation (timelines) would be another isse as well as lightsource timelines
[15:59] Charlette Proto: again - Truespace
[15:59] Saijanai Kuhn: Charlette, the webkit plugin allows you to use any safari-like UI elements on a prim besides flash
[15:59] Geneko Nemeth: No concurrency.
[15:59] Toxic Menges: yes but you cant fiom and access a prim :)
[15:59] Toxic Menges: film
[16:00] Rosco Teardrop: Sorry everyone, I have to go, very interesting dicussion thanks
[16:00] Toxic Menges: seeyas rosco
[16:00] Charlette Proto: these paradigms can be readily sourced from 3D software like Truespace - no need to re-invent
[16:00] Chantal Harvey: ty rosco
[16:00] Chantal Harvey: see u soon
[16:00] Rosco Teardrop: bye
[16:00] Charlette Proto: byee Rosco
[16:00] Mm Alder: What do you mean Geneko?
[16:00] Charlette Proto: BTW interesting every thursday
[16:00] Morgaine Dinova: More interesting than UI at this stage is deciding on useful API functions. UI is just presentation --- important, but largely limited by the API underneath.
[16:00] Charlette Proto: UXIG rocks
[16:00] Geneko Nemeth: Well, currently the embedded Mozilla browser allows you to use many kinds of UI widgets as well!
[16:00] Saijanai Kuhn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtHO4AtVSwc this is the limit of what can be done with the SL user interface
[16:00] Jacek Antonelli: This has been a great brainstorming session. We're at the end of the hour, if anyone has to be someplace. I think we'll stay and discuss this some more. Transcript will be up on the wiki later, at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User_Experience_Interest_Group/Transcripts
[16:01] Penumbra Carter: ty cool!
[16:01] Geneko Nemeth: Mm: I mean that you can only schedule one thing on the timeline at once.
[16:01] Chantal Harvey: now, i d come any time for this
[16:01] Rysan Fall: Nice Gathering
[16:01] Chantal Harvey: very useful
[16:01] Saijanai Kuhn: Genkko, yeah, but its not quite at the same level as the webkit. They've enabled full keyboard/mouse handling for webkit
[16:01] Penumbra Carter: me too
[16:01] Charlette Proto: any opinions on taking the Timeline UI out of the main Second Life™ UI window????
[16:01] Mm Alder: Maybe we should have follow on sessions that address parts of what we talked about.
[16:01] Morgaine Dinova: Seeing as Malbers is with us --- Malbers, is there anything in Linden's timeline that Machinima people can look forward to?
[16:01] Rysan Fall: will lindens hear these suggestions?
[16:02] Pyewacket Bellman: Yeah - like shadows for Macs?
[16:02] Charlette Proto: a separate window instead of a floated (movie people always work on multiple screens)
[16:02] Toxic Menges: <-- has multiple monitors for machinima
[16:02] Mm Alder: Rysan, Malbers IS a Linden.
[16:02] Geneko Nemeth: For timelines I'm thinking of something like http://img243.imageshack.us/i/200909gesturemockup.jpg/
[16:02] Rysan Fall: oh Im sorry.
[16:02] Rysan Fall: smiles
[16:02] Chantal Harvey: when i use shadows, my framerate goes down the drain
[16:02] Malbers Linden: I do not personally follow internal discussions around machinima or puppetering
[16:02] Charlette Proto: yes Toxic - absolutely critical to be able to see the 'movie' without UI ontop of it
[16:03] Malbers Linden: it's interesting but not in my main focus
[16:03] Saijanai Kuhn: we really only need 3. The puppetteering rendering code things: a packet for puppeteering. Clientside access tot he packet via an events handler service
[16:03] Rysan Fall: I didnt see you my apologies
[16:03] Chantal Harvey: who does, malbers?
[16:03] Pooky Amsterdam: machinima represents one fo the best ways for people to see Second Life - no firewall to breach - no learning curve and they dont even need to download the client
[16:03] Chantal Harvey: hey i have 142 machinima s online, some with over 65,000 hits
[16:03] Pooky Amsterdam: its I woudl think and hope very important for Linden Labs
[16:03] Malbers Linden: but the advanced use case here is incredibly interesting
[16:03] Charlette Proto: the Timeline UI has many other possibilities - eg creation of animation files inworld
[16:03] Chantal Harvey: thats ll advertising, lol
[16:04] Toxic Menges: there is a steep learning curve to machinima in SL... BUT as you can seeit is popular
[16:04] Pooky Amsterdam: it sure is and the shows as well
[16:04] Charlette Proto: agree Toxic
[16:04] Malbers Linden: and we love machinima (or any kind of SL video) for seeing what all of you are doing and to provide extra info -- ask Torley
[16:04] Saijanai Kuhn: Charlette, you could also have p2p communmication between 2 or more clients and do multi-person mechanima
[16:04] Chantal Harvey: many came to sl because of the machinima s, they contact me inworld, after newspaper articles, or now, the 48 hour film project has come to sl again
[16:04] Rysan Fall: Thank yyou Malbers
[16:04] Pooky Amsterdam: it will bring people to Second Life and does!
[16:04] Chantal Harvey: ty
[16:04] Pooky Amsterdam: its the best ambassador you have
[16:05] Pooky Amsterdam: S;-D
[16:05] Chantal Harvey: i must agree
[16:05] Morgaine Dinova: Chantal: which is the best in-world group for this topic?
[16:05] Toxic Menges: "Machinimatographers group"
[16:05] Chantal Harvey: hm
[16:05] Toxic Menges: to be found in groups
[16:05] Chantal Harvey: machinimatographers group
[16:05] Dimitrio Lewis: I don't know if this would be considered camera control or post processing, but top of my wishlist for machinima features, but even photography and general immersion, in the viewer is aperture control for depth of focus effects, for example to have your foreground avatars in sharp focus while the background terrain and objects become progressively more blurred (or vice versa!). This is one of the key things which most significantly differentiates videography from cinematography in the real world. I've a feeling it's something which could be implemented without too many technical hurdles. It's a major realism flaw which cannot be easily faked in editing, particularly for action scenes.
[16:06] Chantal Harvey: not the one without group, there are 2
[16:06] Saijanai Kuhn: I've played with GUIs in a browser window that send messages to a prim. jradford uses a browser window as the GUI for his estate management plugin. The UI aspect is a done deal. We just need rendering and access to the movement commands from an external plugin
[16:06] Charlette Proto: p2p ??? usually multiple cameras are under the director's control San rather than independent parties
[16:06] Toxic Menges: but Sai.. that's great if you can touch the prim .. but you can't touch anything generally in world whilst filming :)
[16:06] Saijanai Kuhn: Charlette, p2p could between 2 or more clients, whether or not you have 2 or more people controlling them
[16:06] Morgaine Dinova: Dimitrio: I've seen GPU shaders that do DoF, so it might be possible without too much slowdown
[16:06] Toxic Menges: if the prim can effect control
[16:07] Pia Klaar: Dimitrio---would that not be found in the "camera" that is being used. Such as Fraps, or Snapz pro?
[16:07] Charlette Proto: there should be a single machine - 'director' control to make the paradigm suit machinima directors
[16:07] Toxic Menges: without noticeably effecting the screen that would be good .. I would prefer a tear off so I didnt have to deal with two types of lag
[16:07] Toxic Menges: ie browser to SL and also cam in SL
[16:07] Saijanai Kuhn: Toxic, the point is that we can send messages to the SL sim via a webpage. if we have a direct link tothe client, we can send messages to the client from local host via a webpage
[16:07] Dimitrio Lewis: Not to my knowledge, Pia
[16:07] Mm Alder: Dimitrio, that would be in the OpenGL shaders. Difficult stuff.
[16:08] Saijanai Kuhn: or via a standalone app, but you can program almost any GUI via html, at least for prototyping
[16:08] Charlette Proto: irrelevant how you record it Pia, inworld stuff is what we need to define unless we bring back the recording function like it once was in the viewer (it was hopeless)
[16:08] Jacek Antonelli: Sai: Pardon me, but a plugin interface isn't the end solution. There still has to be a UI on the other end, and it seems to be that "Just make a plugin interface" is a cop-out to avoid thinking about what the UI should be like.
[16:08] Charlette Proto: yes agree with Jacek
[16:08] Chantal Harvey: it was unreliable, that viewer
[16:09] Chantal Harvey: the cam, i mean
[16:09] Saijanai Kuhn: Jace, all we need to know is what data is passing to/from the client
[16:09] Morgaine Dinova: HTML is a red herring for this, just an implementation details, like using GTtk+ or whatever.
[16:09] Toxic Menges: if i had to rely on a web inteface on a busy sim attached to a prim ... i couldnt be sure it would work
[16:09] Charlette Proto: UI paradigm must be defined first - not tech but USER domain issues
[16:09] Saijanai Kuhn: Morgaine, I was just pointing out that we can mock one up
[16:09] Jacek Antonelli: Sai: If your interest is making a plugin interface, that's all you need to know. If your interest is in actually making machinima, you need a UI.
[16:09] Charlette Proto: too much of Second Life™ UI comes from the tech side
[16:09] Toxic Menges: it's an interesting concept for sure Sai
[16:09] Rysan Fall: unfortunately I have a job to film in a few moments.... I really enjoyed this. Hate to leave. Have a good evening all.....smiles
[16:09] Geneko Nemeth: Yes, we should consider what to do first, then how to do it.
[16:09] Jacek Antonelli: Take care, Rysan! Thanks for coming
[16:10] Toxic Menges: but sometimes for filming you need to be able to time things very carefully
[16:10] Chantal Harvey: ty rysan
[16:10] Rysan Fall: thank you
[16:10] Saijanai Kuhn: What needs to be known is what data is being passed to/from the client from the UI. The UI itself is secondary
[16:10] Toxic Menges: Seeyas Rysan :)
[16:10] Rysan Fall: smiles at everyone.
[16:10] Pooky Amsterdam: Rysan!
[16:10] Charlette Proto: if you look at the prooblem from the tech side you end up with hundreds of individual UI additions and not a tool for users
[16:10] Geneko Nemeth: The UI itself is primary. The implementation details is secondary.
[16:10] Pooky Amsterdam: great to see you
[16:10] Mm Alder: Sai, a lot goes on *inside* the client.
[16:10] Charlette Proto: agree with Gen and Jacek
[16:10] Geneko Nemeth: Plugin interfaces are nice... but what do you want to do with them?
[16:10] Saijanai Kuhn: we have, thus far, 2 types of data: avatar path, avatar animation...
[16:11] Chantal Harvey: yes
[16:11] Saijanai Kuhn: if you have a stream or streams that pass that info to/from the client, then the UI to control that data can be anything
[16:11] Charlette Proto: design = problem domain, not the tech solution
[16:11] Geneko Nemeth: We've got more than that. Camera path, windlight data,
[16:11] Saijanai Kuhn: we just need to know what the DATA llooks like
[16:11] Saijanai Kuhn: 3 things: windlight data
[16:11] Malbers Linden: Glad I had time to stop by today but gotta get back to work. Good seeing everyone. Bye.
[16:11] Toxic Menges: Thanks Malbers :)
[16:11] Chantal Harvey: bye malbers
[16:11] Chantal Harvey: and ty
[16:11] Pyewacket Bellman: Bye
[16:11] Mm Alder: The animations are done in the client. The format is on the wiki.
[16:11] Charlette Proto: byee Malbers
[16:11] Ataro Asbrink: bye
[16:11] Jacek Antonelli: Sai: I keep hearing you say "The UI can be anything". We're here to talk about what a useful UI would be like. Specifically.
[16:11] Pooky Amsterdam: ty Malbers
[16:11] Morgaine Dinova: You're mixing up two things folks, 1) implementation of the UI, and 2) implementation of the API through which the UI gains control. 1) is largely irrelevant. 2) is of maximum importance, or else your UI controls are screwed.
[16:12] Saijanai Kuhn: Morgaine +1
[16:12] Chantal Harvey: well, enlighten us ;o)
[16:12] Saijanai Kuhn: If se get the interface to the data correctly, we can make a professional level UI
[16:12] Geneko Nemeth: Morgaine: 0) What the UI should *do*.
[16:12] Charlette Proto: agree with Jacek - we are a UI not a platform forum - don't care what the protocols are underneath
[16:12] Jacek Antonelli: Whether it's a plugin with an external window, or a built in window, the point of this discussion is to think about the UI
[16:12] Geneko Nemeth: Without that, it doesn't matter what kind of API you would need to implement.
[16:12] Charlette Proto: Second Life™ was made by tech approach - so it is a messed up UI
[16:13] Pyewacket Bellman: Gotta run - thanks all.
[16:13] Charlette Proto: forget the under the hood stuff when designing the UI
[16:13] Chantal Harvey: ty pye
[16:13] Jacek Antonelli: Bye Pyewacket, take care!
[16:13] Mm Alder: bye pye
[16:13] Morgaine Dinova: Well good luck trying to create a good UI if you don't have the control pathways to allow it. Whatcha gonna use, ESP?
[16:13] Saijanai Kuhn: ah, well its two interrelated topics. But we can spe ify 3 categories: avatar path, avatar gesture, windlight settings (emotional settings?)
[16:13] Geneko Nemeth: Features first, experience second, protocol third and implementation last.
[16:13] Pooky Amsterdam: Night Pye!
[16:13] Geneko Nemeth: (Although I prefer to have no protocol and just hack everything into the client.)
[16:13] Toxic Menges: bye Pye xxx
[16:13] Morgaine Dinova: lol
[16:13] Charlette Proto: yeah Morgaine - ESP will be a nice platform for comms
[16:14] Charlette Proto: absolutely Gen - UXIG is in the problem domain not protocols
[16:14] Saijanai Kuhn: Ganeko we laready have a demo of what can be done with the current rendering engine (puppeteering). Once we have 2-way communication with the viewer, we can test any GUI we like.
[16:14] Geneko Nemeth: Charlette: well...
[16:15] Charlette Proto: protocols should be defined/chosen when the problem (user) issues are defined
[16:15] Jacek Antonelli: Morgaine, Sai: This is UXIG. It's about the user experience. Perhaps you thought you wandered into Plugin Interface Interest Group by mistake? ;)
[16:15] Jacek Antonelli: Now then, let's get back to the topic.
[16:15] Saijanai Kuhn: LOL
[16:15] Geneko Nemeth: Saijanai, we don't have timeline yet, we don't have scripted avatars yet, we don't have scriptable cameras yet, we don't have lots of stuff.
[16:15] Charlette Proto: absolutely agree with Jacek and Gen - USER not TECH now
[16:15] Saijanai Kuhn: we have code that can control avatars clientside though its not in snowglobe.
[16:16] Charlette Proto: you can Snaj but would I want to use it - NO is likely answer
[16:16] Morgaine Dinova: Well this is the way it's done in practice: 1) decide on types of controls needed (functions). 2) Define the control API and pathways that would allow such functions to be created. 3) Get the stuff from 2) implemented. And 4) Get various groups to create the GUIs that implement those features in diverse ways. For 4). no single party will ever create the perfect GUI, because one doesn't exist.
[16:16] Jacek Antonelli: I have a question for the machinimists -- I've heard a lot of wishes for features that are available in professional 3D packages. I'm curious what would be better about SL plus these new controls, than using a professional 3D app?
[16:16] Chantal Harvey: i heard that s possible in another client
[16:16] Saijanai Kuhn: we already have an idea of what we want: poser/maya-level animation controls
[16:16] Chantal Harvey: (not calling names, lol)
[16:16] Dimitrio Lewis: What are some examples, Jacek?
[16:17] Chantal Harvey: oww jacek
[16:17] Charlette Proto: yes jacek - 3D apps are a great start here
[16:17] Chantal Harvey: machinima is totally different
[16:17] Charlette Proto: Truespace/Maya etc
[16:17] Chantal Harvey: its directed in real time
[16:17] Chantal Harvey: different genre
[16:17] Mm Alder: 3D apps are very tedious.
[16:17] Geneko Nemeth: But your requests seems to be wanting to turn SL into Second Maya.
[16:17] Toxic Menges: 3d spaces are a diff ballgame
[16:17] Jacek Antonelli: For example, Truespace has come up a lot. I'm not trying to belittle machinima or anything, I'm just curious, so we can consider the different UI needs
[16:18] Toxic Menges: no we just want control over our cameras more :)
[16:18] Charlette Proto: actually MS Movie Director was the best approach I've seen to machnima in one package - not sure what happened to iit
[16:18] Chantal Harvey: and, puppeteering
[16:18] Chantal Harvey: but it was mentioned, not the sims look, the crazy talk puppets
[16:18] Saijanai Kuhn: puppeteering has 2 aspects. 1) the ability to control the avi in realtime. 2) the puppet-like controller that lets you dangle the avie from its chest and mimic a puppet
[16:18] Geneko Nemeth: MS Movie director... was that the one...
[16:18] Toxic Menges: programming computer gen characters doesnt interest me the same way machinima in sl does
[16:18] Mm Alder: What would you use puppeteering for? Creating animations or live motion?
[16:19] Geneko Nemeth: that has a "undo" button with a picture of a borken egg?
[16:19] Saijanai Kuhn: all we need from the puppeteer project is the first part. Then you add any interface you want on top of it
[16:19] Charlette Proto: if you include the avatar/animation context on top of Truespace timelines you have what we need in Second Life™ for machinima
[16:19] Chantal Harvey: i will check out truespace
[16:19] Pooky Amsterdam: I have to go all
[16:19] Pooky Amsterdam: thank you and this is wonderful
[16:19] Charlette Proto: I'll mute you Sanj if you keep carrying on about the underside picture of this problem
[16:19] Saijanai Kuhn: Theres probably widgit sets for time line controllers already available
[16:19] Chantal Harvey: pooky talk soon, bye and ty
[16:19] Jacek Antonelli: So, Second Life is a good foundation already, but it's just missing a few things?
[16:19] Morgaine Dinova: Cyu Pooky
[16:20] Chantal Harvey: yes
[16:20] Pooky Amsterdam: thank you to those who organized it and to all of us for putting our hearts souls and eyes into this
[16:20] Toxic Menges: machinima in sl means i can share my experiences of a shared space ith others... 3d apps mean I create a solitary space I cant share with anyone else apart frommy vision of it
[16:20] Pooky Amsterdam: appreciated
[16:20] Jacek Antonelli: Take care Pooky, thanks for your insights!
[16:20] Chantal Harvey: i miss facial expressions most
[16:20] Pooky Amsterdam: <3 to all
[16:20] Pooky Amsterdam: thank you!
[16:20] Toxic Menges: seeyas Pooky :)
[16:20] Chantal Harvey: the subtile kind
[16:20] Mm Alder: Chantal, can you make the morphs for expressions?
[16:21] Charlette Proto: yes Toxic but the director role is quite appart from that of the actor's (shared part) and the needs of the director is what the UI is all about in making Second Life™ machinima
[16:21] Mm Alder: I can get them in the code if you can.
[16:21] Chantal Harvey: excuse me, as a dutchie, the word morphs is unknown
[16:21] Morgaine Dinova: It's amazing what a hint of facial expression can do. Even the silly random smilers help enormously to create life.
[16:21] Dimitrio Lewis: Absolutely
[16:22] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, so SL is more collaborative. What's the relationship like between director and actors? Are there any tools that would help with that collaboration/relationship?
[16:22] Charlette Proto: morphs are the avie parameters used to make us all unique from one mesh
[16:22] Chantal Harvey: right
[16:22] Charlette Proto: agree Morg
[16:22] Mm Alder: Morphs are teh meshes that modify the base mesh to make small changes in appearance or movement.
[16:22] Toxic Menges: no I mean from the end result Charlette... I take my vision of a space and share that finished product with others who have been to that space or go to it ...
[16:22] Toxic Menges: I enjoy the collaborative nature of our shared space here is wht I think I mean :)
[16:23] Toxic Menges: 3d apps are too solitary for me
[16:23] Charlette Proto: ??? and this is a UI issue Toxic (sry not going any further on this path now)
[16:23] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, that's a good point about machinima -- you're recording things that other people can go visit and see for themselves!
[16:23] Saijanai Kuhn: This is the kind of interface everyone wants, right? http://www.adobe.com/devnet/captivate/articles/captivatetoflash_04.html
[16:23] Toxic Menges: wellyou were asking about 3d apps :)
[16:24] Charlette Proto: UI tools are enough of a problem to solve for now
[16:24] Morgaine Dinova: It's not quite right that SL machinima is sharing your space with others through video. It's more about telling a STORY, and sharing that.
[16:24] Charlette Proto: agree Morg
[16:24] Toxic Menges: not all machinimas tell a story
[16:24] Jacek Antonelli: I think that depends on the machinima itself. There are more than one genre
[16:24] Toxic Menges: but again my viewpoint :)
[16:24] Chantal Harvey: the good thing about machinima is, that like vr, we all use and behold it different
[16:24] Saijanai Kuhn: so is that the kind of interface people are talking about?
[16:25] Toxic Menges: that would work for me for a timeline yes Sai
[16:25] Saijanai Kuhn: thing is, that part is easy. Making a useable itnerface will require countless hours of testing. But until you can send/recieve the data from/to the client, you can't test the interface
[16:26] Charlette Proto: Timeline UI tools Sanj - you were tech dreaming while we discussed it
[16:26] Chantal Harvey: how ould you test, then?
[16:26] Morgaine Dinova: Toxic: not all writers, nor all cinematographers, tell a story ... some see it as a vehicle for showing splicing prowess, and the audience be damned. But most tell stories :-)
[16:26] Toxic Menges: I'll remember that one next time I get a film into a festival :)
[16:26] Saijanai Kuhn: Such controls exist in several different widget sets. Deciding which ones to use is a GUI design issue
[16:27] Morgaine Dinova: Heh
[16:27] Mm Alder: Morgaine: Documenting events in world is also machinima.
[16:27] Charlette Proto: don't tell me what making a UI is Sanj, I'm a Master of Design Computing - have some idea about UI design issues and process
[16:27] Morgaine Dinova: That's still storytelling
[16:27] Morgaine Dinova: Current events == story
[16:27] Chantal Harvey: of course
[16:27] Geneko Nemeth: But it's a different kind of storytelling.
[16:27] Chantal Harvey: i covered election night in sl
[16:27] Morgaine Dinova: I didn't say "fiction"
[16:27] Chantal Harvey: mixed rl and sl
[16:27] Chantal Harvey: and drax despres does his share there
[16:28] Toxic Menges: i think SL is a rich vein for any kind of machinima .. it certainly suits the more abstract type of machinima more thanother types of game engine due to the freedom it offers :)
[16:28] Charlette Proto: Adobe Premiere (and other apps) don't deal with fiction/doco issues else they would still be on the drawing board
[16:29] Saijanai Kuhn: deciding what needs to be controlled by them is a protocol design issue. I've heard several types of data that need controlling. COntrol of windlight settings already exists via the existing GUI, so redirecting it outside the client shouldn't be too hard. The puppeteering controls are too clunking for use, but the lower level stuff that the puppeteering patch works with should be.
[16:29] Chantal Harvey: they provide the tools, yes
[16:29] Jacek Antonelli: In what ways are the UI needs different for, say, recording an event as it's happening, versus carefully setting up a shot to create a story?
[16:29] Charlette Proto: OMG are you butthurt Sanj - this is a UI forum and tech comes later - sorry but that is how 'good' UI are born
[16:30] Saijanai Kuhn: yeah, ALan Kay and Douglas Englhart never touched any techie stuff
[16:30] Mm Alder: jacek, you get one take live. No ned for timelines.
[16:30] Charlette Proto: absolutely Jacek - the 'what you are thinking of your machinima' is just as irrelevent to Ui as the protocols
[16:30] Geneko Nemeth: No use for timelines either.
[16:30] Toxic Menges: Question, has anyone ever approached the Lindens with a suggestion for using a ui control outside of the viewer? Is this something alien to them?
[16:31] Charlette Proto: FFS Sanj get over it
[16:31] McCabe Maxsted: it's a recurring theme toxic
[16:31] Dimitrio Lewis: When you're recording a live event, it's useful to have camera angles you can switch to. I guess people are using huds designed for that function.
[16:31] Chantal Harvey: or 2 computers, hehe
[16:31] Toxic Menges: so it's not something they havent been asked to think about for quite some time
[16:31] Morgaine Dinova: I've got a technical question. Does any machinima generate SOURCE? By this I mean in contrast to the VIDEO output, which is a kind of BINARY. To allow cooperative storytelling and collective culture + mashup along Creative Commons lines, it would be good to generate Machinima works as source, not only as binary.
[16:31] McCabe Maxsted: if they don't know about it by now, I'd eat my hat
[16:32] Jacek Antonelli: Good point, Dimitrio. I bet it would be useful for recording, say, Metanomics or something, to be able to switch back and forth between speakers
[16:32] Mm Alder: Toxic, all of the UI components are rendered just like the world, but in 2D. Having a separate window for controls would mean two renderings.
[16:32] Saijanai Kuhn: Toxic, the puppeteering code could be tweeked for outside use. The interface with the client isn't hard. Its been done in many different ways. What is hard is having something that seamlessly works with the client
[16:32] Charlette Proto: Edit Decission Lists (plus) is what machinima should be recording
[16:32] Toxic Menges: is there a way to view source?
[16:32] Geneko Nemeth: An extensible viewer... I don't think that would ever be on Lindens' roadmap...
[16:33] Charlette Proto: plug-ins approach - yes gen
[16:33] Morgaine Dinova: Charlette: but EDLs are still only ways of cutting a binary result
[16:33] Toxic Menges: i'd love to capture the source of sl ..it would be matrix like
[16:33] Geneko Nemeth: Yes, but not -that- extensible yet. I want an extensible like Firefox.
[16:33] Geneko Nemeth: Even the dialogs are made of JavaScript!
[16:34] Jacek Antonelli: Morgaine: What do you mean by "source" in the context of machinima? I don't understand
[16:34] Charlette Proto: yes Morg but the user doesn't care
[16:34] Geneko Nemeth: Source, like object updates, camera paths and assets used in shooting?
[16:34] Saijanai Kuhn: do you mean the state info? You can do that with gridproxy. The internal state info could be gotten to as well, but would be incomprehensible I suspect
[16:34] Charlette Proto: user thinks of the gestures etc used - not the joint offsets in the animation code
[16:34] Geneko Nemeth: Like a packaged world through a period in time.
[16:34] Morgaine Dinova: Jacek: the elements of the scene, so that they can be altered at will later. Everything in the scenegraph, plus all movements. etc
[16:34] Toxic Menges: state info sounds like wht I would want to see
[16:35] Geneko Nemeth: That's how I understand it, because this allows the "source" to be rendered in non-realtime later.
[16:35] Morgaine Dinova: Yep
[16:35] Toxic Menges: so the relative positions of things? no for that you would need to use moviestorm or somethign
[16:35] Charlette Proto: state info? like state of mind - hehe
[16:35] Jacek Antonelli: Ah. So capturing the scene and events and saving them as a file that could be viewed later, and maybe rendered from a different angle
[16:35] Toxic Menges: ithink as a genre sl machinima wouldnt be into that
[16:35] Geneko Nemeth: With different visual qualities and effects.
[16:35] Jacek Antonelli: Or tweaked
[16:36] Toxic Menges: againthe shared experience of everyone filming a scene real time would be the closest you can come to that
[16:36] Jacek Antonelli: That would be interesting
[16:36] Chantal Harvey: thats all possible in post
[16:36] Toxic Menges: we have done that on ocasion
[16:36] Chantal Harvey: hm dont take my exessive post away
[16:36] Jacek Antonelli: hehe
[16:36] Charlette Proto: great meeting but we are having 3 discussions here; UI, approach and tech issues
[16:37] Morgaine Dinova: If any of you play MMOs such as Guild Wars, you'll know the Observer Mode, in which you can replay live tournaments and battles after the event. And you don't have to follow the default automatic camera, but can freely navigate around in the battle scene even though your av is not there.
[16:37] Chantal Harvey: well, there should be more meetings like this
[16:37] Charlette Proto: more to the point UI tools should be the scope of this forum
[16:37] Jacek Antonelli: I think we could continue discussing machinima next week
[16:37] Dimitrio Lewis: That would be great
[16:37] Toxic Menges: well to an extent we do that .. wejust capture as we go then adjust it in edit
[16:37] Charlette Proto: good idea jacek
[16:37] Chantal Harvey: great
[16:37] Geneko Nemeth: I've never seen any MMOs that have that function except Lineage II, but it's something that would be nice for any MMO.
[16:37] Jacek Antonelli: What are some aspects we haven't touched on yet?
[16:37] Morgaine Dinova: So Observer Mode in MMOs would be a kind of source-based machinima capturing a live event
[16:38] Toxic Menges: yes it is
[16:38] Charlette Proto: text only hallucinations would be one of the angles we haven't covered today Jacek
[16:38] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm... actually before coming I wanted to talk how shoody LL's joystick support is, jerks when there's a framerate change, can't bind buttons, and flycam mode doesn't make sense.
[16:39] Saijanai Kuhn: Thing is, i'm not sure how hard it would be to record all of the SL state, Morgaine. I would THINK that if there's online pipeline for events, you could record that as a stream and inject it back into the client to play back a session, but there may be gotchas to that
[16:39] Toxic Menges: flycam adjustments are anightmarein the current ui setup
[16:39] Charlette Proto: agree gen - I had same problems with Wii used as joystick
[16:39] Geneko Nemeth: Unlike in normal modes where the camera rotates with respect to an imaginary focal point, in flycam mode it rotates with respect to itself.
[16:39] Saijanai Kuhn: oneline(?) meant something along the liens of single pipeline
[16:39] Morgaine Dinova: Back at the start of the AWG, we projected that Observer Mode in VWs could be a use case for a TV replacement ... imagine Reality TV, in which everyone could control where their own camera goes ...
[16:40] Charlette Proto: that is orientation Gen but we need waypoint control intergated as well
[16:40] Mm Alder: Jacek, there's animations, AI, audio, (and I'm only on the "a"s) :-)
[16:40] Jacek Antonelli: hehehe
[16:40] Chantal Harvey: machinima should be 3d....
[16:40] Chantal Harvey: not 2d
[16:40] Dimitrio Lewis: Is audio a big factor in machinima? I tend not to use the soundtrack from recordings.
[16:40] Chantal Harvey: in an imaginairy world
[16:40] Jacek Antonelli: Hrm. I bet lifting the 6-light limit would be a simple thing to improve machinima, eh?
[16:41] Toxic Menges: depends on what you are filming
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: the inworld audio is a horror
[16:41] Toxic Menges: post comes into its own with foley
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: that s a topic
[16:41] Mm Alder: Audio is important for capturing live events that use voice.
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: but
[16:41] Dimitrio Lewis: Very true, Mm
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: i did a live filming in languaglab
[16:41] Charlette Proto: yes the light controls (similar to camera) could be a good point for next week
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: what a hard job that is
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: yes
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: controls
[16:41] Chantal Harvey: audio, light, camera
[16:42] Mm Alder: Jacek, I thin the 6-light limit is lifted with the shaders.
[16:42] Toxic Menges: lighting is a nightmare for machinima at times
[16:42] Geneko Nemeth: But shaders slow everything down...
[16:42] Chantal Harvey: but also joy
[16:42] Chantal Harvey: hey to be able to move the sun and the moon on command
[16:42] Charlette Proto: NO camera, light and audio - hehe (audio can be dubbed)
[16:42] Chantal Harvey: lol, i love it
[16:42] Chantal Harvey: not all audio can be dubbed
[16:42] Geneko Nemeth: There's a way to fake it without using shaders by only turning on the lights closest to the object. It makes things slower but Second Life is already slow enough.
[16:43] Toxic Menges: we generally need to work in as little lag as possible
[16:43] Dimitrio Lewis: If you're going to be mixing your audio in the editor, output it in 5.1 >:P
[16:43] Jacek Antonelli: Am I right in assuming that dedicated machinists tend to have very high-end computers?
[16:43] Toxic Menges: but not at the detriment of the DD
[16:43] Charlette Proto: shader (light) timelines are just as important as a part of the 'movie' timeline (all need to embed in the main timeline
[16:43] Mm Alder: Windlight had a lot promised for lighting, but never delivered.
[16:43] Chantal Harvey: yea it helps
[16:43] Toxic Menges: <-- imac ati2600 4 gig ram ... 1.5 tb ext HD
[16:43] Chantal Harvey: but as in rl, a filmmaker makes the film, not the camera
[16:44] Geneko Nemeth: I never remembered WindLight promised lightning... what was that about?
[16:44] Jacek Antonelli: Mmkay
[16:44] Charlette Proto: yes Mm because Windlight shaders Ui is presets only as it stands
[16:44] Toxic Menges: with cleveruseof particles you can get good lightning
[16:44] Mm Alder: The land owner was supposed to be able to set the lighting for his sim so others would see it as set.
[16:44] Geneko Nemeth: That wasn't about lightning though.
[16:45] Geneko Nemeth: But yeah, that was disappointing... think about the lot of different atmosphered places we could have!
[16:45] Mm Alder: lighting, not lightning.
[16:45] Charlette Proto: lighting vs lightsources
[16:45] Techwolf Lupindo: See you all later. Andrew OH comming up.
[16:45] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, I think we'll wrap it up for this week, and discuss machinima more next week
[16:45] Charlette Proto: good point Jacek
[16:45] Toxic Menges: thanks for this :) was great :)
[16:45] Mm Alder: Thanks Jacek.
[16:46] Chantal Harvey: yes it was
[16:46] Chantal Harvey: thanks a lot
[16:46] Morgaine Dinova: SL's only artificially slow, owing to the silly design that couples everything. In a more sensible design, the renderer would run on an in-core scenegraph without any networking at all, populated from separate spider processs that update a local cached world.
[16:46] Morgaine Dinova: Cheers Jacek
[16:46] Jacek Antonelli: Could I ask the machinists to maybe think about different aspects of machinima that we could focus on next week? Sort of that "Audio; Lighting; Camera; Avatars; ..." sort of list
[16:46] Pia Klaar: thanks
[16:46] Charlette Proto: wow Morg - hallucinations too
[16:46] Morgaine Dinova: Charlette: aye, the LL client is really retro
[16:47] Charlette Proto: I love to hallucinate - especially in context of the shared space
[16:47] Toxic Menges: its why we are here :)
[16:47] Geneko Nemeth: Not to mention that lack of effecient geometery and people piling up prims without regards to frame rate.
[16:47] Toxic Menges: and not in WOW :)
[16:47] Charlette Proto: we are retro?
[16:47] Jacek Antonelli: hehe
[16:47] Chantal Harvey: there, well put
[16:47] Chantal Harvey: ;o)
[16:47] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, thanks for coming everyone! Hope to see you next week. Take care!
[16:47] Toxic Menges: seeyas :(
[16:47] Chantal Harvey: i tried wow tho, and like some of the landscapes
[16:47] Toxic Menges: :)
[16:47] Dimitrio Lewis: This was a great topic, Jacek :)
[16:47] Charlette Proto: hehe FPS in machinima next
[16:47] Chantal Harvey: eeek
[16:47] Toxic Menges: LOL 15 at least !
[16:47] Morgaine Dinova: Cool, more next week :-)
[16:48] Chantal Harvey: duh 30, to make 25
[16:48] Chantal Harvey: yes!
[16:48] Charlette Proto: especially for those wanting to shoot 1920 x 1080 frames
[16:48] Jacek Antonelli: Phew. This was an epic discussion. It's gonna take me the whole week to summarize it, hehehe
[16:48] Chantal Harvey: of course
[16:48] Geneko Nemeth: Sigh.
[16:48] Morgaine Dinova: Jacek, we don't usually keep transcripts, do we?
[16:48] Chantal Harvey: i made a notecard of the chat, was asked in im all the time, for that
[16:48] Geneko Nemeth: We do.
[16:48] Charlette Proto: see it all the time - movie people don't understand the 3D load in context of resolution
[16:48] Morgaine Dinova: Oh cool!
[16:49] Jacek Antonelli: Yep, transcripts go up on the wiki every week
[16:49] Morgaine Dinova: Jacek++
[16:49] Jacek Antonelli: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User_Experience_Interest_Group/Transcripts
[16:49] Chantal Harvey: is there an url?
[16:49] Chantal Harvey: is therre a group i can join inworld?
[16:49] Chantal Harvey: ha
[16:49] Jacek Antonelli: I try to make a summary if I can, but sometimes I don't have time for it. :\
[16:49] Chantal Harvey: hey ty
[16:49] Morgaine Dinova: Yes, the User Experience Interest Group
[16:50] Charlette Proto: divide it into three streams Jacek - UI, context and tech
[16:50] Geneko Nemeth: Context?
[16:51] Chantal Harvey: again, thanks a lot for this
[16:51] Jacek Antonelli: I'm gonna run and get some dinner. *tummy rumbles* Take care, all! See you next week!
[16:51] Chantal Harvey: enough food for thought, hehe
[16:51] Charlette Proto: the director approach = context Gen (here in this discussion)
[16:51] Chantal Harvey: ty, and bye!
[16:51] McCabe Maxsted: take care jacek :)
[16:51] Charlette Proto: byee Jacek
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