OK, after many many trillion hours of hesitation, I finally jump in.
So first of: the SL buit-in movie capture tool does not work. It is broken and the Lindens have mentioned that they do not intend to fix it. They are happy that users use 3rd party such as Alt-Zoom, FRAPS, etc. I wish that they’d simply remove the button from the UI.
Yesterday, I tried my hand at the Alt-Zoom camera. I had my screen split in 2: on the right, SL with my av in my office and my inventory open at the Machinima Starter Kit object. On the left, the “How-To: Alt-Zoom camera video.” I paused the video each time a step was explained so that I can replicate in SL. To note: the instructions coming with the Starter are in somewhat different order as the video’s…so I followed the video because I felt that starting with positioning the camera first was more logical than starting with the waypoints.
[switch to present tense] My first /action provides an error. Something to do with time. Odd. I replicated the 3second delay as shown in the video. So I decide to take all the waypoints back in my inventory and start again…except that the waypoints seem to have gone. I cannot see them. So I assume that they disabled themselves and went back to my inventory (really?). So I set up my waypoints again around my office. This time it does not work because the system won’t add the waypoints: Obviously, there are enough in the vicinity. That’s my clue that my first waypoints have not disappeared. Just gone transparent.
So after hunting them down (screen set on midnight and following the pulsating signals), I click eventually on a couple ones. But there is one that keeps not wanting to get caught. So I tp to Info International thinking to replicate my video skills with my Lakhota booth.
I arrive in the middle of a discussion among the librarians. I am greeted by Rolig and before I go toward the map, I throw the question out there: “Anyone knows how to recover waypoints that have gone transparent?” Rolig answers: Ctrl-alt-t. “Really?” I add. “Be right back.” I rush to my office, press ctrl-alt-t and pooffff! everything gets highlighted red and become transparent. Now I see my waypoint -quite clearly- I click, take it in my inventory and fly back to Info Island. “Rolig, this was magic,” I thank her. Now I fly to my booth to repeat setting up my Alt-Zoom camera.
This time, I use only 3 waypoints so that I don’t crowd them. Click on film, type /action, and…… YEAH! It’s working. I see it! I see my av. sitting on the camera, flying along the path I built with the waypoints. Now, I get off the cam, collect all my waypoints (to clean the place….would not want unnecessary clutter in a space already limited in prim number), and ….wait…where do I find my movie?
I read somewhere that it would go directly to my disk….but maybe i was supposed to have set up my UI accordingly. Ah! ok, well. At least, i’ve got the Alt-Zoom screen capture figure out. Now to figuring out the “record and RETRIEVE” next step. No retrieve, no edit. Which everyone agrees, the edit room is where the movie actually happens. [I certainly did not know that I would have gotten myself into learning movie making skills ...and storyboarding...and editing...and...when I started this doc program].
Next step, buying FRAPS and setting it up. mmmmmmm, I think i’ll do the easy stuff first…like getting myself an account with blip.tv (which I’ll keep for my personal use) and jumpcut for the machinima edit. maybe I’ll try both. later. Jumpcut first, since this is what they used in the video tutorial and jumpcut seems to be an all-in-one solution for post-production.
March 9:
Just found a shortcut to the SLmovietest1.avi…But the search tool tells me that the doc was moved or something and so the shortcut is no longer valid. Ah! good one. I can’t find the document anywhere. local disk, my documents….?
