Hello!

Today we’re blushingly proud to announce the arrival of Muvizu:Play and, with it, a whole raft of improvements to our revolutionary animation software.

Where do we start?

With the announcement that Muvizu:Play is still free, easy to use and a great tool with which to make animation. But, we’ve been listening to you and watching other Muvizu users as their ambitions with the software have grown.

So, what’s changed? All this:

Let’s start with our watermark and commercial terms. Over the years we’ve received thousands of applications from businesses and individuals who want to remove the Muvizu watermark and earn money from their videos. So, Muvizu:Play now lets you do both. With an easy, in-app purchase you are now able to render watermark-free videos which you can exploit commercially.

Our commercial terms - which you told us were limiting and confusing have been completely rewritten in line with the growing ambitions of our userbase. You can read our new Terms and FAQ sections for more details.

Look, we’ve got a new website! The community, site and focus of Muvizu.com has grown and changed over the years and we’ve been paying attention. The new site has been improved for first-time visitors and existing members.

For newbies we’ve simplified the website, promoted the help section and done a better job of answering the question, ‘What is Muvizu?’

For our respected veterans we’ve made your videos larger and easier to share. We’ve introduced playlists, revisited our ‘Staff-Picks’ category and improved the Content Pack section. The website is also (buzzword alert) ‘responsive’ which means it’ll work well on mobile devices.

Eagle-eyed users will spot several significant improvements to Muvizu:Play’s user interface. The truth is that the whole UI has been completely rewritten. You lucky devils now have resizable camera windows, a brand-new timeline, improved right-click functionality and a bottomless list of improvements best described as “prettier and easier.”

Please welcome the newest member of the Muvizu family - Rosie! Muvizu:Play launches with a brand new character. We’re looking forward to seeing your Rosie animations.

We’ve made a whole suite of character textures that will increase the range and clothing options for your clips. Check them out here.

As ever, we’re hungry for your opinions, feedback and suggestions. We’re also dying to see what you come up with next. Get Muvizu and tell your story!

Warm regards,
The Muvizu team.

Well, have we got exciting news for everyone! We've got a whole bunch of new textures coming soon to a Muvizu near you.

That's right! The art team has been working hard the past couple of weeks and we are very excited to share the great new outfits available very soon for Muvizu characters. There are so many different costume options to choose from - seriously, it's fairly mind boggling (Edit: caveat- we have small minds - they boggle easily). All these new wardrobe choices will make telling a story in Muvizu more exciting - the possibilities are (nearly) endless. 

The variety of new textures for Muvizu characters will really expand your options. They are incredibly flexible too and work with an array of genres and themes. The new selection of textures includes nurses (regular or BLOODY!), goths, zombies, cyclists and loads more.

We can't wait to see what everyone will do with them. Keep your peepers popped and look out for announcements on the site, our Twitter feed and our Facebook page.

From December 1st to 24th 2012, Muvizu had fans racking their brains trying to solve the Christmas Treasure Hunt. The Treasure Hunt appeared on our homepage as an advent calendar with hotspots made live daily. Some hotspots linked to an animation treat, some linked to Muvizu videos containing hidden clues - clues that formed a code that needed to be cracked.

The code pieced together as the 11 digits of a YouTube URL that sent you to a video which gave you a set of instructions.

Code breakers were instructed to create a cartoon version of themselves inside Muvizu 3D waving and wearing something red. The first person to find all the clues, figure out the code the quickest and follow the instructions won an amazing prize - a desktop animation studio.

We are very proud to announce that Trikolad came first place with the quickest email following all of the rules and winning top prize -

* A top spec Alienware laptop.

* Sony Vegas Pro video editing software

* Olympus SZ-31MR digital camera capable of shooting film in 1080p.

* Blue Microphone Yeti to plug into the laptop capable of recording high quality audio.

* Panasonic RP-HC700 headphones in order to hear said high quality audio.

* A Kindle Fire loaded with animation reference books.

* And more!

We also have 2 runners up who were picked by lucky draw - Fman00 and Zerohero have managed to grab second and third place and have won:

* Sony Movie Studio Platinum video editing software.

* Blue Microphone Yeti to plug into laptop capable of recording high quality audio.

* A Kindle Fire also loaded with animation reference books.

*And more!

To everyone who took part and to our 3 very lucky winners thank you for participating in the Treasure Hunt and especially for being part of the Muvizu community. And thanks for making 2012 a great year for us!

I wonder what creative animating minds have in store for us in 2013.

The Muvizu Team

Hello Muvizuers! Have you got your compasses at the ready? We’re challenging everyone to take part in a very unique Christmas competition – the Muvizu Christmas Treasure Hunt. This is a very special treasure hunt which, if you follow all the clues, will lead you to the top prize – a desktop animation studio!

From December 1st until Christmas Eve, the Treasure Hunt video will appear on our homepage. As with an advent calendar, we will be adding a new link, or hotspot, to each door daily. Each link will lead you to some rather lovely content – most of these will be beautiful and sweet animation videos but others will be very special Muvizu clips.

Now pay attention: these Muvizu clips are rather important – in them are hidden clues, ones that will form a code that you will need to crack in order to complete the treasure hunt. The final clue will be revealed on Christmas Eve, so stay sharp, think smart and move quickly.

So what exactly makes up the desktop animation studio? Well, to reward you for your hard work and super intelligence you will receive all the following fancy stuff:

• A top-spec Alienware laptop.
• Sony Vegas Pro video editing software.
• Olympus SZ-31MR digital camera capable of shooting film in 1080p.
• Blue Microphone Yeti to plug into the laptop capable of recording high quality audio.
• Panasonic RP-HC700 headphones in order to hear said high quality audio.
• A Kindle Fire loaded with animation reference books.
• And more!

Phew! Isn’t that wild? But that’s not all! If you miss out on the top prize, we’re giving away more stuff. Everyone who completes the treasure hunt but doesn’t get first place will be automatically entered into a draw for second and third place. So what do you get for second and third place? I’m glad you asked! You’ll be getting:

• Sony Movie Studio Platinum video editing software
• Blue Microphone Yeti to plug into the laptop capable of recording high quality audio.
• Panasonic RP-HC700 headphones in order to hear said high quality audio.
• A Kindle Fire also loaded with animation reference books
• And more!

See? Not too bad, huh? So, all you have to do is think smart, move fast and pay attention for the next 24 days. It’s easy! For more details on exactly how this treasure hunt will work and what you’ll have to do, go to our homepage www.muvizu.com

So remember who loves you (hint: it’s us!) and get ready for the first link on December 1st.

All posted videos to date:

1st December
2nd December
3rd December
4th December
5th December
6th December
7th December
8th December
9th December
10th December
11th December
12th December
13th December 
14th December
15th December
16th December
17th December
18th December
19th December
20th December
21st December
22nd December
23rd December
24th December

Good luck everyone!

The Muvizu team

It's that time again when we release a brand new update to Muvizu and a bunch of new content. There's quite a bit to talk about so I'll just start with the biggest update and move on down. How does that sound?

First off, we're excited to announce that the Muvizu UI is now in German! Hurrah! That's right, we've added a German translation of the UI to the French, Italian and Portuguese versions already available. We hope that this encourages our German-speaking friends to get animating and joining in the fun.

We also have some new toys for everyone to play with in the form of content packs. In a bizarre pairing (I'm reliably informed that there is some method to the madness - Ed), the team has made Trainyard and Prison content packs and they're rather beautiful. Trains and Prisons. Just in time for Christmas! I'm thinking a Muvizu version of the classic Steve Martin & John Candy film, you know the one...

The rather marvellous Dreeko has made some frankly gorgeous pre-lit sets, gathered together in 1 easily downloadable content pack. In simpler terms, Dreeko's taken all the hassle out of getting the lighting just so, in order to make it easier for everyone else to get on with their Muvizu Masterpieces! Or at least, your really funny and often times strange clips.

And finally, we have gone through and fixed many outstanding bugs - things that are far too dull to list just now but nonetheless are quite important and will make Muvizu that much nicer to use.

So what are you waiting for? Head over to the Download page or just click on all the highlighted bits of text in this article and get updating. We are, as ever, looking forward to seeing what insanity you, our users, will wreak.

Regards,

The Muvizu team

The Machinima Expo will screen over 70 films through their Livestream channel. 10 of these films will be selected by the 6-person expo screening team to compete for the Grand Jury prize and 3 Jury prizes, the winners of which will be announced at the awards ceremony on the 18th of November. Selected filmmakers nominated for Jury prizes will also be available for a live Q&A to talk about their submissions. For a complete list of films screening at the expo click here.

The whole shebang will be happening online in Second Life and via the expo's Livestream channel. For more information check out the Machinima Expo site. And don't forget to check out the Expo's trailer below. Hope to see you guys there!

Without further ado, I present the winners of the Spooky challenge.

In first place and winning a brand new Wacom tablet is Artpen and his Trick or Treated video

Second and third place goes to Ziggy72 for Mysteries of science 2

and Woztoons for the very spooky Midnight 

Each winner will receive a copy of Aardman Animation's 'Cracking Animation - The Aardman book of 3D animation', a copy of the excellent 'Masters of cinema - Tim Burton' and a £50 voucher from Amazon - because you guys know what you like to buy better than we do.

Congratulations to the winners but don't forget - in our eyes, you're all winners! Thanks for taking part everyone. This may be a good time to start thinking 'Christmas'......

Most of these models have been made with the free modelling application Sketchup, but many other 3D modelling application can be used with the right kit. However most of them need a plugin or 3rd party piece of kit to go from the native model format to the ASE model format that Muvizu can understand. When it comes to the more serious applications, such as blender, this is all well supported. Sketchup has remained a bit of a grey area.

When we first released this 'feature' the best option was to use an ASE exporter, developed by a chap called HardPCM, which was designed as a generic exporter for the Unreal engine(HSKP2UNR). This works almost perfectly and has been used to export the majority of objects for Muvizu from Sketchup but it does have one drawback. How do you add collision to your model?In the course of testing and using this plugin, it was clear the method of adding collision originally recommended just wasn't up to the task.

http://www.muvizu.com/Video/12851/Importing-from-Sketchup-Part-2-Basic-Collisio

Our users have come up with 2 pretty nifty solutions to this problem. Ziggy72 has made his own match box collision mesh and put it on our forums for everyone to copy and paste into their models, and ukBerty recently did some jiggery pokery with the plugin to automatically include that collision mesh in the outputted ASE file. But, as useful and creative a solution as those are, it still leaves some problems - what if you want a collision mesh that actually lets a character stand on the object?

Well, now it’s plain and simple! We've updated the plugin to allow a custom collision mesh to be created in Sketchup and exported with the model at the same time. All within a nice little drop down user interface :)

Get it here

Here’s a handy little tutorial video to get you started.

Good luck and happy exporting!

One of the aspects of Muvizu that we pride ourselves on is the fact that it's so easy to use, a 6 year old can create a 3D animated video in hours. In fact, we have had an actual 6 year old use it - Scott and his Cops and Robbers clip was created this in a very early version of the software. It's a bit crazy and unusual but there is a story there.

Which brings me back to the original question: can a 6 year old write a complete story? I think so, especially when you see the clip below. Scotty, age 6 and 3 months, wrote the following story for Scholastic which was then animated using his own drawings. It's definitely an interesting story - with a beginning, middle and an end. A hero, a villain and a plot. It's charming, sweet and reminded me of just how fun it is being a kid - something I think a lot of us should remember more often. I really like this project and competition because not only is it encouraging a new generation of storytellers but it allows kids to watch as their imaginations take form in animation. Something a lot of animators, I think, can understand.

Anyway, check out the clip. It made my day.

Kerry Kasim
Marketing

http://thecodeplayer.com/

It’s a set of tutorials for making simple little demos in CSS3 and HTML5. What’s awesome about it though is that it has a “walkthrough” feature where you can actually see the programmer typing out the code and see the intermediate stages ofdevelopment running alongside in real time.

I’m not a web-developer, I know the basics of HTML but feel very out of touch when it comes to cutting edge developments such as HTML5. Spending half an hour watching these (the Snake one is great) and I feel like I could knock up a wee interactive “Google Doodle” or something. Seems to be an incredible way of learning a language for those who are already reasonably competent in other languages or who already know the basics. It’s showing you so much more about the evolving functionality than simply looking at the finished code.

Now I’m not suggesting that I start recording myself writing Muvizu code but I can imagine setting the same thing up for the Unreal Development Kit. Epic have apparently recently introduced some level of play-in-browser/Flash support. With this, and something like The Code Player you could set up a little sandbox level (maybe a simple car on some terrain, or a spaceship and some gun turrets) and create demos to teach people the basics of interactive 3D programming in Unreal. The viewer sees the programmer type some code, hit “compile” and instantly sees the results in the same browser window. It would be much better than the current generation of teaching resources. It would be complicated however by the frequent need to fire up the Unreal Editor when working on UDK projects but if you started out with a defined set of resources, everything else is done in code and it’s not trivial to learn how to write it! Might be a fun project anyway...

David Cumming

Muvizu Team

And who all decided to name their creations with the letter "P".

Weird.

"Paranoloand" by Patrick Boivin

"Pixels" by Patrick Jean

"Parkour motion reel" by Suchablog

Finally, some people who not only rejected convention but also the letter "P" http://www.thehydetube.com/

Barry Sheridan
Muvizu team

I've been following the developments of the new Judge Dredd movie with interest. Back in the 90s, I worked as an artist on 2000AD and Dredd's always been a favourite of mine. I had the pleasure of seeing John Wagner (Dredd's co-creator) give a lecture at Dundee University late last year. He discussed seeing glimpses of the new Dredd film and, although it was being made on a much smaller budget than the 1995 Stallone movie, he thought it was shaping up well. I've noticed that he's now seen the full film and seems delighted:

"I went up to London yesterday to see the completed Dredd film. I've had reservations about certain aspects of it, and made them plain to the team at DNA. All but one of them - a little quibble at the beginning - have been addressed. And what a lot they've added. Music is on the button. SFX are excellent. Filming is impressive. I've not seen a modern 3-D movie before but I like it. I found myself reaching out trying to touch things that were dancing before my eyes. Karl is a great Dredd and Olivia gets Anderson completely. This is Dredd as it should be done - true to character, visceral, unrelentingly violent (but not off-puttingly so). It will open, I believe, sometime in September. No doubt you'll let me know what you think when you've seen it, but this has my recommendation."

Considering he has spent the past 30 years writing most of Dredd's stories and thus defining the character, the above quote is very exciting. 

To top it all off, it sports an 18 certificate which says a lot for how hard core a Dredd movie this must be. I'm looking forward to seeing it this September.

Alex Ronald

Senior Artist on Muvizu