Site Search
Join Muvizu

Neil - all messages by user

2011/2/21 13:11:21
bleeding edge beta and things that made me go hmmn Dreeko wrote:
But I have animated previously by performing three passes i.e. head, lids and pupils without overwriting occuring

I'll hazard a guess at what's happening here. When you hit the record button, it doesn't immediately start overwriting anything until you change something such as move the pupil, or drag the eye width slider, etc. From that point on until you press stop, it's overwriting your previous pass. Does that help explain it? Or have you *actually* broken it somehow? Again.

Something we've wanted to add for a while now is the ability to see events on the time bars while you're recording, so you can see what you're overwriting. We haven't been able to with the current UI, but it's something we can add to the new upcoming one.

Dreeko wrote:
has my version of muvizu been fitted with a flux capacitor?

We have considered making a special version just for you, Dreeko. But believe me, it's not a flux capacitor we'd add.

Dreeko wrote:
For the versions of Muvizu that dont have in built time travel, three separate passes for head, lids and pupils are as much a necessity as the separation of character actions and character movement from each other are in my opinion.

I'll take that as a vote for separating eye width and pupil direction then. If we do this (and we probably will, it seems to make sense) it'll probably make it into the release after next, with the new UI.

Dreeko wrote:
PPS: Can we have signatures in our posts please. It would be great for plugging our Muvies!

I'll forward that to the web team. I think he's in today.
2011/2/21 11:32:55
bleeding edge beta and things that made me go hmmn Dreeko wrote:
In the scenes I have been working on lately, I have been encountering some very strange behaviour. When I animate a characters head movements and I then try to animate the eyes (lids and pupils)the head movements disappear from the timeline. This is also the case for the reverse.


Hmmmm... I'm not seeing that. Are there a particular set of steps I need to follow to reproduce it?

Ziggy's issue is slightly different...

ziggy72 wrote:
I've had a similar issue with the eyelid animations sometimes disappearing if I do them before I animate the eyes, and then sometimes the eye animations disappear if I do the lids first - never worked it out, and could never repeat it.

I've been chatting with the other devs about this today and it seems the behaviour is intentional. I apologise for any technobabble while I try to explain.


Recording in Muvizu is based around a concept of recording in passes, with each pass recording just one single "track". This track could be character movement, sound effects, character talk/shush, etc. But the concept is that you record just a single track. If you re-record another pass on the same track, you overwrite anything that you recorded on that track previously.
The tricky thing here is that eye size and eye direction are part of the same track, and are recorded in the same pass. Recording on the eye size track will overwrite the pupil direction and vice versa.

We can change this behaviour in a future version if you want us to, but it'll mean recording eye width and pupil direction in separate passes. Let us know which you'd prefer.
2011/2/21 11:06:55
Staundoone Episode ! Excellent, loved it. Thumbs Up

Is episode #3 done yet? How about now? Now? How about now? Gavel
2011/2/17 14:12:46
Will not Create Video The start and end markers will both be at the same point. Move them apart. Hope that helps.
2011/2/17 14:00:08
Multiple Sounds Actually, it's currently setup with one dialogue track, three background audio tracks, and one sound effects track. Characters will only lipsynch to the dialogue track, but you can tell individual characters to "talk or shush" for a period of time. The key thing here is that there's only one set of lipsynched audio, so you can't have one character's mouth saying one thing while another character's mouth says something else, so I don't think what you're after is currently possible.

However, a future version of Muvizu will have a separate dialogue track for each character.
2011/2/16 16:08:25
Switch instruments Quoling wrote:
Well if you know the "too good to be true offer fairy" can you send them in my direction!!

Hey! There's a queue!
2011/2/14 21:10:20
Ziggys new animation ziggy72 wrote:
Gotta sprinkle some fairydust over the b*stards!


I fixed that for you.
2011/2/14 0:19:03
Interface & Timeline Hmmm... I dunno about hiding cameras when you can't see their viewport. That'll really confuse a lot of people. I was initially thinking of showing just a single viewport by default. If a camera is selected, it'll render that camera, otherwise it'll show the currently recording camera. I'd also include buttons and whatnot for locking the view to a particular camera. But this way, we're only ever rendering a single camera and I can't think of a reason why we'd need to limit the number of cameras at all.

Anywho, I'll chat with the other devs and see if we can come up with something.
2011/2/13 20:56:22
Interface & Timeline Dreeko wrote:
This new UI sounds great cant wait to get my hands on it! On the subject of cameras any chance of having more of them possibly on a tabbed window as below to save on screen size

That's a great idea. The problem with adding more cameras is that they're slow to render and make Muvizu crawl, but this way we wouldn't need to render any more than we currently do. I was planning to talk to the other devs next week about ways to add more cameras without having to render their viewports, and you may have hit the nail on the head. Nice one. Applause

Incidentally, I was prototyping the new camera window on Friday and I added three tabs to it. Mine were for changing the layout into a horizontal strip, a vertical strip, or a grid, but it looks just like your mockup. Spooky! Whaaaaa?

Dreeko wrote:
PS: my movies have been postponed at the moment due to my home decorating duties which have been ignored for far too long.....Dang!



Buggrit. I was looking forward to Staundoone II. Oh, well. Seeing as you're busying yourself, do you want to do my neglected housework too?
2011/2/13 12:58:52
Object Inspector and Object lock I've used Delphi in the dim and distant past, but I know the sort of thing you're talking about. It's a great idea and would make a great addition to Muvizu. I'll try and get an object inspector added in along with the new UI.
2011/2/12 12:02:54
Object Inspector and Object lock Quoling,

Does the scene window under the view menu do the "tabbing" that you want, or is it missing something? Admittedly you can't actually use the tab key in the current version, but if you could, would it fit the bill?

Also, let me check if I've got this right... In addition to the object editor windows which are always attached to the same object, you'd like an "object inspector" window that updates to show the currently selected object? That should be quite doable.

With regard to the object locking, there is a lock feature already there but as I'm sure you're aware, it doesn't actually stop the object from being knocked around, it simply stops you moving it yourself. It's my personal opinion that a locked object shouldn't move at all, so I'll have a chat with the developer responsible for it. I think his opinion differs, as well as there being a technical hurdle, but I'll see what we can do.
2011/2/11 21:57:12
Intel HD graphics good enough? From what little I can find about that machine and its graphics, it *should* run ok. Of course, the best way to find out is to download Muvizu and try it. It's free.
2011/2/11 8:37:27
Interface & Timeline ukBerty wrote:
The camera windows and "make video" windows are way too small for me. Whilst you're under the bonnet making them "undockable", can you make them scalable ?

Yup. There might be performance problems if you make these windows too large, but that's the plan.
The camera windows also have yesterday's drag-and-drop functionality so you can drag a camera texture straight out of the camera window and onto a texture property in an edit dialog.
2011/2/10 23:03:10
Interface & Timeline Since I've been chatting a little about the new UI that's in development, I just wanted to take a moment to go over Ziggy's points here. Please bear in mind that I'm discussing work that's still very much in progress, and I reserve the right to completely change my mind if it looks like hard work.

ziggy72 wrote:
The option to turn off the mouse prompts (I get it! Honestly! RMB and everything! No need to take up the bottom of the screen anymore!)

Okay, I get it! You want more screen real estate! In the new UI, dialogs won't be constrained to the main Muvizu window so you'll be able to drag them anywhere you like, even onto another monitor if you have one. In that case, would you still want the option to turn them off?

ziggy72 wrote:
Numbers on the scales. Please. Even if it's just a single number for each scale to tell you what value it reads, I need to be able to repeat the rescaling (especially now that we can rescale in other directions).

Annoying, isn't it. The new sliders will have text boxes next to them where you can see the actual numbers, or even type them in. And little up-down arrows. And they'll work with the mouse wheel too.

ziggy72 wrote:
A customisable Timeline - I don't need every track on there for every character, and the Timeline takes up a lot of screen space, so being able to disable a few lines would help a lot. There could be a row of checkboxes along the top to allow you to re-enable tracks as and when needed. Obviously the tracks wouldn't be deleted when disabled, just hidden.

I haven't really done much with the new timeline yet, but I expect much of it to be collapsible. With the click of a button you'll be able to hide/show an entire set of tracks.

ziggy72 wrote:
Assuming we can turn off the mouse prompts, the timeline could be shown lower on the screen.

Again, this window will be divorced from the main window, so you can drag it anywhere you like.

ziggy72 wrote:
The cue points prevent you from selecting the start/end markers of the Timeline when they're on top of them. Any way we can make the start/end markers bigger or something?

I'll bear that in mind.

ziggy72 wrote:
Would love to have a graphical representation of the waveform on the audio tracks. Works great in Premiere...

This is something I absolutely want to do. It might not make it in at first, but it's definitely high on my priority list.

ziggy72 wrote:
The ability to zoom in further to show distinct frames for precision (read : Pedantic) control.

Noted.

ziggy72 wrote:
Guns. Nothing to do with the interface or Timeline, I know, but I'm going to keep asking anyway.

Ummm... not my department, I'll leave that for Vince and Barry.

ziggy72 wrote:
An option to turn off the auto drop down menu behaviour - I'd prefer to have to click on them to drop them down, so I don't trigger them by accident (which I do a lot).

I have a prototype of a new nav-bar that works as you describe. There's a small technical hitch with it, so you may have to live with it a while longer, but I'm working on it.

ziggy72 wrote:
In the Make Video screen, it would be nice to have the left side (currently empty) showing the name of the video, the path/filename it's being saved as, and the codec information.

I'll bear that in mind. If I can add it without cluttering up the interface with confusing, technical gobbledygook, I'll do it. Let me know if you can think of any other improvements to this area.

ziggy72 wrote:
I'll be back with more...

Please do. If you do, I may even post a couple of screenshots to whet your appetite.
2011/2/10 13:52:29
Colour picker/eyedropper Dreeko wrote:
...was it something you said Emily? dunno

I was going to say that she didn't say please, but as it turns out, neither did you. :p

I should probably poiint out that these new UI features are extremely unlikely to make it into the next release of Muvizu, unfortunately. The UI work is a complete rewrite and as such won't be finished and tested until after the engine upgrade is complete.

Sorry about that, but I promise* it'll be worth the wait.



* - Look, an actual promise. Weird, huh?
2011/2/9 18:22:45
Colour picker/eyedropper Neil wrote:
I've been thinking about what I can do to make colour selection and re-selection easier in the new UI and I've got a couple of ideas. Leave it with me.

You'll be pleased to hear I've just got drag-and-drop working with colours in the new UI.

So you'll be able to use the mouse to literally drag the colour property off of one edit dialog and drop it onto a colour property of another. I'll add this same functionality to the texture properties.
2011/2/9 1:25:28
Colour picker/eyedropper ziggy72 wrote:
Sure - you select a block of text, click on the Format Painter button, and whatever you click on next has the same font, colour, size, etc applied to it as the first block of text. I could see something similiar in Muvizu, where the 'format' of one object could be applied to another (and not just colour, perhaps).

I see, thanks. I'll have a look at that and see if anything similar can be adopted for Muvizu.

ziggy72 wrote:
Oh right, you can drag the colour off the top and down onto the swatches. I did not know you could do that. Nice. Is that what you mean by using the custom colours?

Yup, that's the fella. Hopefully that'll help you along in the meantime.

I've been thinking about what I can do to make colour selection and re-selection easier in the new UI and I've got a couple of ideas. Leave it with me.
2011/2/8 20:56:35
Colour picker/eyedropper ziggy72 wrote:
@ Neil Thanks for the (in-depth!) reply, and I see what you mean about the difficulty of how to do it.

No worries. Sorry if it sounded snappy, it wasn't meant to be but I was in a rush for my train home. I just wanted to try and get across why some things that seem simple and have been consistently asked for (to quote Emily, "for over a year") haven't been done. We're a small team and although some things sound really simple and a great addition, we always have to balance them against our available resources and other priorities.


Keep the suggestions coming, please. I'm currently overhauling the UI and I'm very interested to hear how people think it can be improved. Many of your suggestions have been great.

ziggy72 wrote:
Personally, I usually just want to make one object the same colour as another, like the Format Painter in Word and the like, so I can clone the colour scheme from, say, one guitar to another. Is that more do-able, you think?


I'm unfamiliar with Word's Format Painter, could you please describe it? Ta.


Have you used the custom colours in the colour picker? I understand that it's not what you're looking for, but would allow you to copy colours from one object to another without having to write down RGB values.
2011/2/8 18:58:52
Colour picker/eyedropper Emily wrote:
Hey Ziggy & Dreeko - this is a feature I have been requesting for over a year!

Come over here and write it then, Em.

We've discussed it a few times in the office and the trouble is we have two ways of detecting the colour where you click:

1) Take the actual RGB value of the pixel you clicked on. This will likely not be the colour you were looking for because it's been affected by lights, shadows, etc.

2) The colour of the *thing* you clicked on. E.g. if you click on a table leg, and that table leg has been coloured brown, you select the same brown. To get this, we have to cast a ray through the scene to find that you clicked the table leg, then work out what material is on that table leg, and extract the colour.

I'm assuming what you want is #2, which is harder (although not impossible) to implement. We haven't done it yet because you can already copy colours from objects using the custom entries in the colour picker. Textures are even easier since there's an 'in use' category in the texture picker.

Sorry if that sounds lazy, but with the sheer number of feature requests we get, we tend to focus on: 1) fixing things that are broken then 2) adding things that you can't already do before 3) making more ways of doing something that can already be done. Don't take that to mean we'll never add a colour picker, though. Instead, take it to mean "we'll probably do it eventually, but what do you want first?"
2011/2/8 11:06:44
Interface & Timeline Dreeko wrote:
have to take my hat off to your feature requesting abilities ziggy.
you don't miss a trick

Shhhhhh, he'll want a "taking hat off" animation.
pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

About

Media

Legal

Muvizu

Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.