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PatMarrNC - all messages by user

2015/12/2 16:03:15
Muvizu Christmas pack is here! harley1234 wrote:
Hi there,

First time I have purchased a Pack so I am battling a bit. I purchased and downloaded the Cristmas Pack. It's an exe file so I installed it but cannot access it from anywhere. It does not come up in the "new set" gallery at all. Does not come up under characters. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?


any time you install purchased add-ins you have to activate the content as follows:
FILE > LICENSE MANAGER > ACTIVATE (then re-enter your license code)

If you saved your code in a text file and copy it into the clipboard, I think Muvizu can read it from there without you having to type it. (But you still need to follow the 3 steps above to activate.)
2015/12/1 16:59:56
Muvizu Christmas pack is here! Cool! I'll have to check it out as time allows (busy at the moment)

But I'm curious to know: Did the Cyber weekend sale generate much activity?
2015/11/30 17:08:02
for those who like to animate music videos... Coldplay... "Adventure of a Lifetime"

http://ow.ly/VdQPh
edited by PatMarrNC on 30/11/2015
2015/11/30 16:56:41
Anime Studio Pro 11 sale til Dec 1st Clam wrote:
Thanks PatMarrNC. Good timing. I looked at Anime Studio just a couple of days ago but at $299 it was too expensive and the cheaper version didn't have all I wanted. Purchased today at $99.


Awesome! I originally wanted to buy ToonBoom Studio (recently renamed to Harmony)... but check out THEIR prices: https://www.toonboom.com/products/harmony/pricing

I think the features in ASP11 compare favorably to those in HARMONY... at a fraction of the list price... even more so at Cyber Monday prices!

Toon Boom has gone to a subscription concept where you can pay a monthly fee to stay current. The ongoing monthly fee for their lowest-end product is $15 USD... so for the same price that is required to "rent" Harmony's introductory product for one month, one can buy a perpetual full license to MUVIZU on Cyber weekend! No comparison!
2015/11/29 19:38:29
Anime Studio Pro 11 sale til Dec 1st My posts bear witness to the fact that I LOVE Muvizu..... but I also see the craft of animation as a system in which it is advantageous to have many tools in your toolbox, treating each of them as one of many components in a modular system.

Part of what makes MUVIZU such a useful component is its high cost/benefit ratio. There are other cool products out there with their own benefits, but most (if not all of them) are just crazy expensive. But every now and then, even the expensive programs go on sale, and for the next few days, that includes ANIME STUDIO PRO 11

It usually retails for $299 USD, but until Dec 1 they're selling it as a digital DL for $99 USD
http://my.smithmicro.com/anime-studio-pro.html?utm_source=smithmicro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=animecybermonday&hq_e=el&hq_m=2495525&hq_l=5&hq_v=a28cb2cfcb

If you already have a previous version, or the lesser featured Debut 11, you can get it for even less as an upgrade.

Why should somebody who already owns MUVIZU be interested in Anime Studio Pro 11?

1) It can help fill in the blanks when you need that rare something Muvizu can't do

2) It's fairly easy to make screen shots of your characters & scenes and use them in ASPro11

3) I won't say its easy to learn... but I will say it uses a lot of the same principles you already know from MUVIZU, and there is a TON of online tutorials to help you get up to speed.

4) Let's face it, we're all software addicts and we like to buy new software that's on sale
2015/11/28 1:21:50
To the Makers of Muvizu sensesfear wrote:
It's been a while since my last post love muvizu but I think that if we pay for play+ then we should get the add ons for free, The chem lab, and all the new stuff, Do this and I bet you'll get a lot more sales as well. Just a thought

Anyways back to work on my next film


It may be worth noting that at the current prices a brand new customer could get every single thing in the store... (including Muvizu plus and all of the add-on content... both premium and free )
for about the regular price of Muvizu alone
2015/11/28 1:12:56
50% off until midnight Monday 30 November 2015 Anybody here who is a member of an animation forum, youtube channel, Facebook page dedicated to animation, usenet, yahoogroup etc (besides this one) should take a moment and let people know about what Muvizu can do.. and then mention the 50% off sale.

It's an awesome product, worthy of recommendation... ESPECIALLY at the current price!
2015/11/28 0:38:49
To the Makers of Muvizu Farscaper wrote:
Hilarious. I've just spent a grand on other animation and film-making software and someone is complaining about $29. I've never had such a deal at even their full price. Stop complaining about winning the second to top tier of the lottery. Buying Muvizu is a winning bet!


everybody is entitled to their point of view, so I can't bash anybody... but I have to agree wholeheartedly that in the current marketplace of animation products, Muvizu is the best deal in town.. and no other product is even CLOSE to offering this kind of power to price ratio!

At the current 50% off sale price, it's like an intelligence test... with those who don't buy it getting a failing grade...
2015/11/28 0:30:05
50% off until midnight Monday 30 November 2015 MuvizuTeam wrote:
Hi All,

As part of our very own Cyber weekend sale - don't miss the opportunity to own Muvizu Play+ and content packs at half price!

PLEASE NOTE DISCOUNT HAS ALREADY BEEN APPLIED TO MUVIZU PLAY+ AND CONTENT PACKS

Enjoy!
edited by MuvizuTeam on 27/11/2015


awesome! Thanks! Time to buy everything I don't already have whether I need it yet or not! Even at full price, Muvizu and all of its content packs are worth far more than the price tag suggests... but at half price, its a no-brainer!
2015/11/20 20:59:48
"A Dragon called Drac" - My first muvizu movie !! Alquimista,

Like you, I love the rapid development aspect of Muvizu, but sometimes want the ability to present characters that MUVIZU cannot create. There are a couple of things that can be done that manage to salvage at least some of the rapid development benefits:

1) note that this approach requires using multiple software products to create scenes, which get combined in a video editing program such as Adobe Premiere or other similar program

2) First I use Muvizu to rapidly develop everything that it can do well. If you want your own artwork as backgrounds, you can apply them to BG panels which have a lot of interesting capabilities hard-wired into them, such as the ability to simulate movement, or work as a container/display for video

3) you can use built-in Muvizu characters as placeholders to get the timing right for each scene, then remove the characters before the final render. Later you can superimpose a character of your own design over top of the scene by placing it in a higher layer in your editing software. (which makes anything in that layer display in front of lower layers)

4) If you are an animator, you probably already have software that you know how to use. If you are mostly an illustrator, and don't normally use animation software, I recommend Anime Studio Debut. It is very inexpensive (well under $100 USD ) and it can easily handle most animation scenarios that aren't already built into Muvizu. There are tutorials all over Youtube showing how to take original artwork and animate it in Anime studio.

that's a quick overview, the rest is learning curve on your part. Good luck!

PS: sometimes even in a project that works almost completely in the MUVIZU paradigm, I need a scene or two that just can't be animated with the built-in character movements... when that's the case, it is a fairly simple thing to take a screen shot of your Muvizu character, open it in a Paintshop type program and save all of the characters parts as separate files, with transparent backgrounds. Once you have these elements, it is VERY easy to recreate a rigged character in Anime studio that looks just like your Muvizu character, but which can be animated in any way you want.

(same procedure works for animating your own hand-drawn characters)

edited by PatMarrNC on 21/11/2015
2015/11/20 5:37:45
Market place Danimal wrote:
Amidst all the talk of greed and points and money and payments... there would still be free stuff, right?


who said anything about greed? That word hasn't come up once until now.
2015/11/20 0:34:56
Market place primaveranz wrote:
PatMarrNC wrote:


I'm assuming that the monies will be deposited in a UK bank, then withdrawn for each purchase at the current exchange rate. This may be one reason why some people use a point system (it disguises purchasing variance due to changing exchange rates)


If the sales items are priced in points, then currency exchange rate changes between you purchasing points and spending them have no effect.


Seems like that would be problematic when withdrawing the funds to pay the person who made the asset pack. Imagining the simplest scenario in which there is only one buyer and one seller, if I bought $10 USD of points, today that equates to 6.55 GBP.... then If I buy an asset pack priced at 6.55 GBP and the exchange rate has fluctuated, when Muvizu dispenses funds to the creator, they'd either have to:

1) withdraw more GBP than was deposited initially, thereby creating a deficit... or
2) make the designer absorb the difference, paying them the current exchange rate

Multiply that times a bunch of buyers and sellers, and it quickly gets complicated to keep up with. If we're dealing with known rates that can be looked up in a table, I can see pretty quickly if my $10 USD is still enough to buy a 6.55 GBP item... This puts the adjustment in the buyer's realm, so Muvizu doesn't have to deal with any of that.
2015/11/19 22:55:30
key frames fun I'd really like to see copy and paste for all the timeline elements!
2015/11/19 22:51:12
Market place MrDrWho13 wrote:
I agree with the points system - it releases a lot of strain from transaction fees. Also, as you guys have said, it's more appealing to have some credit to spend than having to reach for your credit card every time.
However, I think it needs to be represented in a real currency (as Steam does) rather than a confusing 100points is $1 or whatever; just say it's $1 or £0.50.


I agree. Maybe with a built-in currency calculator to show the balance in a variety of different monetary systems. Especially since exchange rates vary. If I deposit $50 USD today and don't buy anything for a month, it might be worth $45 or $55 USD depending on how the market fluctuates.

I'm assuming that the monies will be deposited in a UK bank, then withdrawn for each purchase at the current exchange rate. This may be one reason why some people use a point system (it disguises purchasing variance due to changing exchange rates)
2015/11/19 20:33:51
Market place regarding "what adds value that I'm willing to pay for"

I would pay more in order to receive the OBJ file so I could adapt purchased models to my needs. Having the OBJ file would make the number of polygons a moot point, because that's just one of many attributes that can be changed if you have an editable file.

There are very few modelling programs (in my price range) that allow opening and editing of the formats used in MUVIZU
2015/11/19 20:11:37
Market place Farscaper wrote:

A lot of the content systems, like Reallusion, use points that reduce the number of micro transactions of cash. You buy points once and spend them in dribs and drabs without processing fees. I've never looked into the mechanics of it but now I see why they use it.


this is an EXCELLENT idea! But it would depend on MUVIZU's website developer to come up with a way of dispensing products without invoking PayPal or some other point of purchase entity.

It would necessitate having two different sales engines: one that goes the conventional route, and one that gets redirected to a custom routine that deducts points from someone's tally, then allows downloading

Another advantage of this approach is that once you know purchases are pre-paid, it is easier to spend because you don't have to overcome the normal process of justifying the purchase. It become pure impulse buying... which tends to be kind of addicting.

Stated differently: It's far easier to deposit money once, then spend it in 50 installments than it is to make 50 separate purchases.

===========================================

It might be an interesting experiment to offer the option of buying MUVIZU at a higher price which includes a certain amount of credit toward the purchase of add-ons in the store. This would accomplish a couple of things:

1) it would raise the perceived price/value of MUVIZU
2) it would get new users accustomed to buying from the store
3) it would keep money flowing for everybody

===========================================
edited by PatMarrNC on 19/11/2015
2015/11/19 20:05:47
Market place regarding pricing:

I seem to recall from my college economics class that you have to experiment to find the "sweet spot"

Price an item too high, and even people who want it won't buy it.
Price it too low, and people think it's poor quality and pass over it.
Reduce the price slightly and some people will buy it, while others won't.

A time honoured marketing trick is to price high, then have periodic sales. The high price sends a message that this is good stuff that you can only afford in your dreams. Then, when it suddenly becomes affordable on sale, nearly everybody who ever wanted it will buy it.

My own threshold is $99 USD... most of the software I've ever bought has been priced at $200 USD or more, but reduced briefly to $99. At that ratio between list price and sale price, I generally feel like I've gotten a valuable item for a desirable price, and I JUMP at the opportunity!

For smaller purchases, $10 USD is a no brainer for me (if I want it). If I don't need it, no price will make me buy... not even free. The trick there is making accessories that a lot of people will want .

The sale approach is less workable if you offer the sale price every day. That just sends the same message as a store with a perpetual "going out of business" sign in the window. It makes people think you are a loser who is going out of business because of poor quality items you can't get rid of at any price.

Ideally, offering the 50% off price once or twice per year at most, works best.... with smaller reductions of 10% or 20% throughout the year (but not perpetually)


Another approach for this site (due to the "per transaction" fee) might be to offer discounts when somebody buys multiple asset packs in one transaction. This rewards the buyer for spending more. And anybody who has ever bought a car knows that once you accept the idea of laying down a large chunk of cash... it is very easy to justify spending more than you originally intended.
2015/11/19 18:38:51
Market place a note to content creators:

It is a generally accepted truth that the people who sold picks and shovels to gold prospectors made more money than most of the prospectors.

Today the people who sell accessories to the arts usually make more money than the artists. The reason is that people who sell accessories are selling tools to actualize a dream of success, whereas the artist is just selling an end product. It is easier to sell dreams than products.

Content creators should put this thought in the back of their minds and fully understand what they are making available. You make it once but sell it many times... so as long as MUVIZU is an active product, every asset pack you create can potentially be a source of recurring income.

Every new MUVIZU customer is also a potential new asset pack customer. I'm not sure how many worldwide customers MUVIZU has now, but I'd bet it's a very large number.... and growing!

A Pack priced at $10 USD would yield about $9 USD after transaction fees. You could potentially sell the same pack thousands of times. With multiple asset packs in the store, you could do quite well. And the flow of cash would never really end, because there will always be new customers who need new content.

But be cautious about infringing on well-known themes like super heroes, Star Wars, TV shows etc... make your content "in the style of" but avoid specific identifiers like logos, trademarks etc or you could be setting yourself up for legal action.
2015/11/19 18:13:40
Market place Hi everybody.. Pat Marr from USA here...

I love the idea of an assets marketplace, both as seller and as buyer. I also like the idea of rules that would standardize such things as quality, the price of an asset pack, the definition of an asset pack (theme, # of assets, type of assets etc) and maybe a standardized purchasing medium, such as PayPal.

If you had to choose only one, PayPal has become the defacto currency for online transactions. But they do take a pretty big chunk of the transaction, plus a minimum charge of about $0.60 USD which basically means that the entire proceeds from the sale of a $0.60 item would go to PayPal, not to the seller. Costs like this are usually "per transaction" which is why it's better to bundle a bunch of assets into a collection (asset pack) to sell as one transaction. If the store continues to offer free content, it should probably be presented as individual items that wouldn't be priced high enough to justify the transaction fee.

Having said all that, I'll regurgitate my standard warning about free content. This position is arguable... but many people feel that by making music available for free, Napster totally undermined the perceived value of music. Whether we like it or not, there is a demonstrated correlation between price and perceived value. Giving stuff away can come back to bite you.

SUMMARY:
I think that asset packs priced in the range of $10 USD that contain a theme, skins for several characters, plus theme based props, vehicles, scenery (and maybe even some audio files for background music) would be useful enough (yet inexpensive enough) to keep the money flowing.... I also think that by focusing on full packs, marginally competent modellers would be less likely to submit, while the really good modellers would have a way to be rewarded for their diligence and talent.
edited by PatMarrNC on 19/11/2015
2015/11/10 0:02:48
can't buy expansion packs without buying muvizu + thanks urbanlamb!
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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.