Feral Dream

Free 3D animation software

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:43:00 -0800

DAZ makes a couple of amazing and free 3D animation software. DAZ 3D lets you play around with animated figures and settings. You can buy premade elements - like playing house - and piece them together to make your own image. Bryce lets you build entire worlds. Bryce 6 is for sale but Bryce 5.5 is free.

Our very own Cannes guest blogger, Robert Pratton, filmmaker of Mind Flesh, made his own fun video as part of his marketing push for Mind Flesh. He bought a dog from DAZ, then used an alternative program, Poser, to animate it. (See how making these extras gets you publicity?) Check it out.

Cheers,
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Make your own game or world!

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:12:56 -0800

Okay, boys and girls. This stuff is super cool. You can now make your own games and your own worlds even if you don't know how to program. Whoo-hoo! First of all, it's pretty awesome to be able to make your own game or world. But even if your primary focus is on your filmmaking or novels, with all the talk (at least on this blog) of cutting edge marketing for your product, this ought to be a cheap, DIY way to promote your film/book.

With Microsoft's XNA Game Studio, you can make your own games. With this product, you're better off if you know a little programming. They are now live.

With Metaplace, you can build your own virtual world. Just think of the possibilities! I've been watching these guys for about a year. They've had their first beta and have been closed to the public for months. And now, they just opened up their latest beta phase and are accepting applications for early users. Obviously, they're still testing out their system but if you want a taste of the world to come, check it out.

And this little gem is pretty sweet: Little Big Planet. It's a "game" for Playstation 3 that lets you build your own world/game. Check out this demo:

Life in LittleBigPlanet- Ep 3

Have fun!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Make an animated movie for free

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:59:13 -0700

Xtranormal is a startup that just launched a couple of weeks ago. It lets you create little movies for free with either an avatar or Lego-like characters. Fun!!

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Machinima II

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:00:31 -0800

For those of you who've been enticed by my earlier Machinima entry, check out this "how to" pdf from There.com: Creating Machinima in There

There.com and IMVU.com are 3-D worlds where you can create avatars and dress them up and play around in their world for free. I'm not sure you can make machinima films in IMVU but they have great avatars. There are other 3D worlds where you can make machinima but you need to pay for these: Sims, World of Warcraft, Halo, Half Life, among others. If you're curious, you can check out short films made in these worlds at Machinima.com.

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Machinima

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:28:26 -0700

Check out Moviestorm. You can make an animated movie (machinima) for free. I love the idea but it's in beta and I tried to watch some of the resulting movies and had a lot of trouble with it. I'm scared to download it in case it crashes my whole system, especially since my media computer has Vista which is not compatible with anything, I mean, with Moviestorm. Sometimes, it's worth paying for a product after beta. Also, this version seems to have just regular people in regular settings. The great thing about something like this is to get into environments that would be too expensive to make in the real world: science fiction, fantasy, historical, something with epic crowds. I'm sure that's coming. Until, then, I may find myself in a game world that supports machinima because I don't think I can resist playing around with it. If you see a chick in WOW fending off monsters away from her cast and crew, that may be me... :-) Say hi and help me slay that dragon so I can get on with my film!

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