Massively^™

Reallusion, the company that creates the animated facial expression software, CrazyTalk, embraced Second Life machinima quite some time ago. First, they appeared at real life festivals, then they developed their own plot of land in the virtual world, and now they've created a page on their website that features the works of SL machinimators, as well as a tutorial. In the instructional video, they explain how to use their software to lipsync pictures of avatars, as well as give some tips and tricks.

[Thanks, John!]

If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.

Second Life resident, Juiceof Prunes, started a cute series of machinima tutorials under her "Pink Paw Productions" label. In the first episode, she focuses on how to get started with machinima. I'm particularly impressed with her use of Camtasia to prepare the video, as well as her easy to follow instructional style. She even uses CrazyTalk to lipsync her character's dialogue.

More specifically, episode 1 gets down to the basics. She shows viewers how to log into SL, what program to use to capture, and what settings to use in both Fraps and the SL client. As the series continues, she plans to go more in-depth into the process.

For those that believe that aliens are out there, things just got more complicated. You see, they're also in our virtual worlds! At least, according to Gary Hazlitt they are.

Gary created a music video, Hide and Seek, about their presence in Second Life. In the video, they cruise around in several sims, Planet Mongo, Svarga, and Deakin University, to a soundtrack by Imogen Heap. If you liked the video, check out the medium quality version.

To complete the shots, he used a greenscreened picture version of the avatar and filtered it through CrazyTalk 5, then filmed real shots of movement. He placed the lipsynched picture video over the footage and chromakeyed it in Final Cut Pro.

One of the top questions I'm asked about creating Machinima is how I get my lips to move. Second Life users know all about the struggle to make convincing lipsync dialogue in their movies. The answer to their problem is CrazyTalk, by Reallusion. It doesn't just apply to SLers, though. Any MMO Machinimator can use it, with the help of chromakeying and bezier masks.

CrazyTalk, currently released up to version 4.6, allows you to use a picture or screenshot and map facial regions to animate them when combined with audio. They have been in closed beta testing for a couple of weeks for their newest version, CrazyTalk 5, but they just opened it up to the public! You can download the beta and use it until January 15th, 2008. If you haven't tried CT yet, this is the perfect time.

Sometimes a video provokes so much emotion that you forget it's not real. In the words of Beast creator, Dr. Nemesis, "So far, facial animation has been very limited in Machinima. To get emotion across, most of us have had to rely on good acting, a well chosen sound track, and the viewers imagination, but not facial expression." In his current film, he uses Crazy Talk, Motionbuilder, and Sims 2, to overcome this issue.

When the scene opens, you see two men. One is tied up and the other is yelling at him. As the story unfolds, you learn that the man in captivity has deeply wronged the other man, to the point where he has nothing left to lose. With each facial expression, punch thrown, and gut-wrenching confession, you feel his pain.

While this is not traditional MMO Machinima, you can learn from the tactics he used. In the future, Second Life will be part of a hybrid-Machinima movement. Filmmakers are already using multiple programs to blend their works, such as MovieStorm, Poser, Crazy Talk, and iClone. As merging mediums becomes popular, I believe we'll see a whole new level of quality work coming from the community.