Welcome to Muvizu 3D beta
Our Muvizu software, a 3D animation application that allows you to create videos from scratch right out of the box (check out the video further down this page for an example), has now moved to its beta phase, having been released in alpha last autumn.
This version of Muvizu 3D is significantly different to the alpha release - we hope that you think it significantly better - and we would urge existing users to take a spin through the tutorials to see where things have changed.
We would urge new users to watch all the tutorials in turn and let us walk you through the whole video-making process. Using Muvizu is easy, but watching the tutorials will save you a lot of time and you'll learn some great tips.
There are still things that we need to fix, so you should check the known issues list at the lower end of this page.
Before you download Muvizu 3D, make sure that your machine is capable of running it. To run the application properly, your PC (sorry Mac and GNU/Linux users, the software is based on the Unreal 3 gaming engine which is PC-only) should be at least equal to these specs:
- 2.4GHz processor
- Nvidia 7800 GTX or ATI 1300 graphics card
- 2.3GB free drive space
Your PC also needs the version of DirectX that was released in August 2008 or later and Microsoft's .NET Framework version 2 or higher. This is included in the installer, but if you already have it, the individual component installers will either tell you or just skip any unnecessary process. You can then continue to the next step in installing the application.
So, back to some information about the Muvizu 3D beta. We've added quite a few features, and thanks for your feedback during our alpha phase which informed our development decisions, some of the key ones being:
- Extra characters
- A more sophisticated timeline
- Far greater control over animations/gestures
- Five extra categories of props
- Fighting animations
- Preview function
- Backdrops with scrolling textures
- Ability to upload from the application to your YouTube account
- We've added a very basic (crude, frankly) tool for joining clips together, but it is having teething problems (see known issues below)
In order to view or listen to this content you will have to upgrade your version of Flash.
Check out the tutorials
Known issues (OK, then, bugs) that we're working on:
The launcher has been changed to check for software changes and, rather than download the whole application again, update only the necessary files. However, this isn't working properly on 32- and 64-bit Vista machines. It'll download the files, but the update fails - which we think is a security-related feature and we're confident of providing a fix.
Uploading directly to Muvizu from within the application may fail occasionally. If this happens, you may still upload the .avi file from your computer via the upload facility on the Muvizu website. Uploads to YouTube directly from the application seem to work fine.
Video Joiner: Well, what can we say. It has a tendency to crash if you're running other programs with an appetite for memory, such as, say, Muvizu 3D. A workaround is to save your work and quit the main Muvizu 3D application before splicing your clips. Increasing your virtual memory setting may also help ... a bit.
Try to keep the size of any audio or video files that you import into Muvizu below 100Mb. That's a very rough guideline and it depends on how powerful your machine is. As with all large applications, it helps to have as few other programs running as possible.
Moving animation blocks beyond the end of the timeline will copy them there.
A locomotion animation may be wiped out on re-record.
In playback or re-record mode, a character's side-step will appear to glide. It's fine in the video output, though.
If you navigate directly towards a character, you may get stuck in its head. If this happens, there are a few solutions. The easiest is to open the scene window and move to an object within. This will unstick your director's view. Or you can delete the character, move back and then hit undo. The character will reappear where it was. Or edit the character, scale it up or down a bit and click OK. Then move the director's view and undo the scale-change if you like.
We have had rare occurrences of error reports on saving files. Try saving with a different file name, but sometimes this will still give the error message.
If the application goes into low-memory mode while recording a video using the Cinepack codec, it tends to record black frames. Other codecs should report any failure in video generation.
Playback of long scenes, especially complex ones with lots of characters, may become sluggish and the timeline unresponsive.
There are likely to be many more bugs of which we are blissfully unaware, but it would help us if you would report these to bugs@muvizu.com.
Thanks for your interest and we look forward to seeing what you create with our little app.
Best wishes,
the Muvizu team
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