I did mention ... way back there somewhere ... that I was working on a graphic project in school, and I am relieved to tell you that I have indeed finished one of my projects. My experience with machinima did in fact make this particular effort an easier one. I dread to think about what some of my colleagues are going through.
The two minute video, "The Darkness" is not machinima, though some would argue that point with me since the project required the use of a 3D environment. However, that environment did not exist until I created it. And I created this environment using 3D models and Java scripting. The program which was used for this project is Alice. If anyone is interested, it is a free program and can be downloaded here. If you try your hand at this and want to share your creation with others, you will need a way to create a video file that can be uploaded to the web. The screen recording program recomended by the Alice staff is BSR, and it is what I used to make a recording of my video. This is also a free program and can be downloaded here.
You do not need to know or understand Java in order to use the Alice program. The amount of creativity that can be accomplished with this program is overwhelming. Alot of the models and textures made by other users are rather talented, and if I had not been locked into a two week deadline, I might have created my own models. However, one reason I chose to use the models already created was to show people what can be done with the program in it's current state.
Alice was created by Randy Pausch, who died last year after a long battle with Pancreatic Cancer, and it is an object-oriented programming tool, designed to teach people how to create objects, properties, and methods using a simple visual language.
In 2006, the Alice team entered into a collaboration with Electronic Arts, where EA had agreed to help underwrite the development of Alice 3.0 and provide essential arts assets from "The Sims™". As of at this moment, Alice 2.2 is still in beta, and I was unable to find any updates on the Sims2 version of Alice.
One thing I found a bit disturbing, was that Moviestorm was a bit too similiar to Alice. The major differences are there are a significant amounts of fewer bugs with Alice as compared to Moviestorm, the models are more detailed, and the camera settings are a dream with Alice.
I don't want to mislead anyone ... Alice is designed to be a program to teach programming ... however, if you take a look at my video, I think you might see the potential Alice has as a video creating tool.
One more thing . . . to anyone interested in trying this program . . . I recomend you don't record the audio track from the screen recorder. A lot of sound cards no longer support that type of audio recording, and it's easier to just edit the sound track into the video with an editing program like Sony Vegas. You'll also get a better audio track if you do it that way.
The two minute video, "The Darkness" is not machinima, though some would argue that point with me since the project required the use of a 3D environment. However, that environment did not exist until I created it. And I created this environment using 3D models and Java scripting. The program which was used for this project is Alice. If anyone is interested, it is a free program and can be downloaded here. If you try your hand at this and want to share your creation with others, you will need a way to create a video file that can be uploaded to the web. The screen recording program recomended by the Alice staff is BSR, and it is what I used to make a recording of my video. This is also a free program and can be downloaded here.
You do not need to know or understand Java in order to use the Alice program. The amount of creativity that can be accomplished with this program is overwhelming. Alot of the models and textures made by other users are rather talented, and if I had not been locked into a two week deadline, I might have created my own models. However, one reason I chose to use the models already created was to show people what can be done with the program in it's current state.
Alice was created by Randy Pausch, who died last year after a long battle with Pancreatic Cancer, and it is an object-oriented programming tool, designed to teach people how to create objects, properties, and methods using a simple visual language.
In 2006, the Alice team entered into a collaboration with Electronic Arts, where EA had agreed to help underwrite the development of Alice 3.0 and provide essential arts assets from "The Sims™". As of at this moment, Alice 2.2 is still in beta, and I was unable to find any updates on the Sims2 version of Alice.
One thing I found a bit disturbing, was that Moviestorm was a bit too similiar to Alice. The major differences are there are a significant amounts of fewer bugs with Alice as compared to Moviestorm, the models are more detailed, and the camera settings are a dream with Alice.
I don't want to mislead anyone ... Alice is designed to be a program to teach programming ... however, if you take a look at my video, I think you might see the potential Alice has as a video creating tool.
One more thing . . . to anyone interested in trying this program . . . I recomend you don't record the audio track from the screen recorder. A lot of sound cards no longer support that type of audio recording, and it's easier to just edit the sound track into the video with an editing program like Sony Vegas. You'll also get a better audio track if you do it that way.
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