I’ve finished building and lighting the virtual sets for my up-coming machinima Sci-fi mini-series. Found out about invisible lamps recently, so you can light the set just how you want without having to hide lamps behind scenery, and according to @zsoverman they’ve animatable too! It looks a bit odd having giant lamps all over the set, but they don’t show up when you render the movie out of Moviestorm and really add a lot to the look and feel.

Heres a couple of shots of the sets (no invisible lamps needed on these), I may tweak and add things to them, which I guess is the difference between Machinima and live-action films, the sets can be altered at last minute if needed.

This the external Lighthouse set, and here is an internal set of inside the Lighthouse, I may have a go at trying to make the walls more round.

Next…making the characters, but I may have to reinstall some of the addon packs, as I seem to have duplicate and missing costumes..oh and missing torsos too! (Shame I’m not making a horror flick)

Yesterday evening I carried on building sets for my brand-new Sci-fi mini-series (Machinima), always seem to go too far building the sets, added a runway and extra buildings to a military base set, but glad I did, looks pretty good, one more set to build after this.

I’ve finished watching a “Logic pro studio” tutorial video. “Logic” is a virtual recording studio for the Mac, a bit like Garage band, but professional musicians use it! Very good, but very complicated! So needed some tutorial on it. I’ve installed the full orchestral suite of instruments (2 x DVDs!), and so I now have a full orchestra at my command. I wasn’t planning on doing this at this stage, but started writing an orchestral score for my mini-series, so this evening has been spent at my MIDI keyboard laying down the beginnings of one of the peices.

Anyway, It’s great to be writing music again, and its going to be fun fitting the music to the machinima mini-series!

Just in case I’ve not mentioned it before…. I LOVE CREATING STUFF ! It’s brilliant!

I’ve was working away making sets for my ‘in production’ Sci-fi machinima mini series, when I was struck by inspiration to make a kind of music video/short film for Julianne Regan’s rendition of the traditional Irish folk song “She moved through the fair”. I’d actually made notes about it a year ago, but never got around to making it.

I dropped what I was doing and made it over the course of about 4 days (Been off work on leave this week, which was handy). It’s turned out to be quite lovely, and a vast departure from the usual machinima that I make. I’ve been getting some great responses from the machinima community, could be my most popular peice so far! THANK YOU EVERYONE!

Anyway, here it is, hope you like it too…

I’ve put programming/web site development to one side for a bit to focus on Machinima, not really done a lot recently, not a lack of ideas though, just busy with other things. In a previous blog post I mentioned I dug out an old screenplay I wrote a few years back, originally a 2 hour film, but I’ve split it into 6 parts, done a few little adjustments, and I think part 1 is ready. (BTW…love CELTX, its made the script-work so easy!)

It’s quite a difference doing something serious after making so many silly quick sketches, the first part will run for 15 to 20 minutes, it will require extra CG using Cinema4D and of course lots of green-screen compositing and Adobe after-effects.

Going to start building the 6 sets tonight, then I guess make the characters, I’m hoping Moviestorm’s Hairstyles packs will be available for then, as I find the current hair a bit limiting.

I’ll no doubt post a few pics of the sets when done to hopefully intice you. Anyway, just wanted a record of this in my blog so I can see how long the whole process takes… its SO exiting!

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I’ve closed my “Twitterscape” web site. The two users out there can still use the desktop application, but they’ll be no more updates.

I’ve been playing around making web applications, the whole “Web 2.0″ thing - interactive web sites with lots of wizzy effects and act like a desktop application. Yes, I’m a bit behind, but I’ve realised over the last few days theres great potential for web apps. For instance, I’ve got the basics of Twitterscape (Twitter, RSS and podcast viewing/listening), made into a web app in about 3 days flat, as apposed to 3 months making a desktop app.

The site is amazing, it starts up instantly, the tweets from my friends litterally bounce onto the screen with a nice animation, I can view all my favourite video podcasts right on the page, as new tweets come in, the page automatically updates using AJAX + nice animation, so you don’t have to press F5 like you do on the twitter site. All in all, a vast improvment, both visual and performance wise compared to Twitterscape desktop application.

So, the site is for my own private use right now, when everything is up and running fully, I will look into the implications of opening it to the public so you too can experience a better twitter, not sure how much load it will put on my server. I have a feature in place already that could limit the amount of users allowed to use it at first, just to test the water.

In other news, I want to put this programming to one side and get machinimating, Moviestorm have just released their special effects pack, which I promptly bought 10 minutes after release, I have a short comedy skit in mind, plus a 6 part Sci-fi mini series to make, script is done pending a few tweaks… BIG production, gonna be 6 x 20 minute episodes and for the first time, I’ll be using voice actors! - Really looking forward to starting this project!

My main programming project as you may know is a program called ‘Satscape’, its used mainly by Radio amateurs and star-gazers around the world (3,500 users at last count). Radio amateurs use it to track small, almost ‘home-made’ boxes of electronics that get bundled on-board a commerical space flights. These boxes act as mini relay stations, so ‘Hams’ can talk to each other across continents without the need for short-wave radio. Trouble is these mini satellites have a habit of not staying put in a fixed position in the sky, they in fact orbit the earth every hour and half, so they need software like Satscape to predict when it will pass over their ‘hood. Satscape shows them with amazing accuracy when its overhead and the area of the earth that they could potentially talk to.

Star-gazers also use the software to spot satellites, two in particular are easy to see with the naked eye, even in a built-up area, these are of course the Space shuttle and the International space station, both being quite large, so they reflect a lot of sunshine back down to earth. Satscape will (with the accuracy of a few seconds) tell you when and where to look up at the sky to see them pass over your house. If you have a radio scanner, Satscape will also tell you what frequency to listen to, to hear them chatting.

So, once you’ve downloaded Satscape, fire it up and follow the video tutorial below to see how to track the Space shuttle, currently STS-127, but the procedure is the same for all future shuttle missions.

Finally, here’s a 30 second exposure of the ISS and shuttle going over my house:

For about a year and a half, I’ve been making short machinima comedy skits using Moviestorm and I’ve often wanted to do something serious for a change. The other day I stumbled on an old screenplay I wrote a few years back, written as a 2 hour sci-fi/action/adventure film, not finished, but I was reading through it, and its not bad. It has everything you’d want from this genre… Aliens, time-travel, explosions, evil bad guy, and a touch of comedy.

I’ve decided to split up the movie into 4 or 5 parts to make a mini-series, that way I can get the first chapter out, get some feedback and continue with the rest, also having a mini-cliffhanger at the end of each chapter will hopefully interest the viewer to want to see the next one.

Normally, I’d make machinima comedy skits totally myself, even writing music, and a spot of bad acting. But for this one, I’m going to see if I can find some voice actors on the moviestorm forum site willing to volenteer. I’m quite exited about this!

Anyway, I’ve got the script for the first chapter edited together from the original screenplay, maybe a few tweeks required, and then its time to do some serious set construction in Moviestorm.

If you’d like to see any of my previous Machinima comedy skits, please check out my YouTube channel : http://www.youtube.com/user/SatscapeFilms

(also contains non-machinima videos)

I havn’t made a #moviestorm movie in ages, well about 2 months, been busy making #twitterscape, now officially “Lead Balloon” - Loving that title. Anyhoo… heres a silly little movie: a Parody of the “My movie - part 1″ movies that appear on the moviestorm site so much, made by newbies. Very similar to my first award-loosing machinima movie “A gun and a girl”. So, if you have 2 minutes spare, and are familiar with moviestorm, please check it out…

The people who create and maintain twitter have been hinting via tweets and their blog that they’re not keen on developers using the word ‘twitter’ in their applications, either because it makes it sound like its an offical application or users may be mis-lead in some way, which I can understand, also my own twitter name twitt3rscape has a ‘3′ in it because they don’t allow the word ‘twitter’ in user names, so I cheated, it’s obvious why, I could call myself ‘twitter-admin’ and say “Please give me your password” to lots of users, many of which would gladly hand over the details and credit card number etc

The other week I commented on the fact that My application “Twitterscape” had gone down like a Lead Balloon, so with a big grin on my face, I’ve decided to re-brand Twitterscape as “Lead Balloon” to reflect this, and it’s official too, Doug from the Twitter API team has made the change on their system so that tweets will be shown as ‘via Lead Balloon’ from today.

I probably should say here, that it’s never been my intention to compete with the big, well established twitter clients such as Tweetdeck and Twhurl, they just didn’t work the way I wanted them to work, so I wrote my own, and rather than keep it to myself, I’ve chucked it on to the internet for anyone else who wants to use it.

So, hopefully the two other twitterscape users out there won’t mind the name change. Oh, I’ve changed my twitter user name too, I’m now @SatScape ,which as you may know is another program I wrote, but a little more popular… last time I checked, there were 3,500 users in 60 countries running it on all blends of Windows… Mac OS, Linux, Solaris…Bloody Marvellous! Thanks to everyone running it, I shall endevour to keep improving it.

I shall end this post by paraphrasing the classic Douglas Adams lines from Hitchhiker :

“How many Twitterscape users are there?”

“None”

“Have you counted them?”

“Yes, Twice”

I was thinking about renaming my twitter client “Twitterscape” to “Lead Balloon”, as that’s how it gone down so far

So, I decided to check out what everyone else is using…

I’ve just spent an hour or so looking at the vast amount of twitter clients out there, trying several out, and can honestly say NONE of them do what I want or even come close.

I’m only really looking for two main features : multiple columns and pop up alerts.

Tweetdeck: this has both features, but it just tells you have some new tweets to read, rather than display the content. Usually I’m doing other things, browsing the web, writing an email, watching a video, so this is useless, I have to switch back to tweetdeck to find out its not a very interesting tweet, and then back to what I was doing.

Twhirl: this is the only app that I’ve seen that actually displays the content of the tweet, but it’s a single column app

Seesmic: made by the makers of Twhirl and multiple columns, but they’ve decided to go with the “You’ve got new tweets, but we’re not telling you the content of them, you have stop what you’re doing and switch to seesmic” - sort of pop up alert.

Peoplebrowsr : Tons of features, multiple columns…oh….no pop up alerts.

Tried the Native mac apps too, like Tweetie and nambu.

So, I’m sticking with my Twitterscape app, not only does it pop up the full tweet (for everyone or selected friends), but the mac version will do “Growl” pops up too, which look much nicer as they are transparent. And of course, Multiple columns, it downloads my favourite video podcasts and RSS feeds….I Love it!

if you havn’t tried it, give it a go, its free, no adverts, and it auto updates. If you have tried it, and chucked it, fair enough, there are tons of twitter clients to choose from, and I would sooner you find one that you like, and not winge at me because it doesn’t work the way you want or say its crap

If anyone knows of a twitter client that has multiple columns and pop up tweets that show the content as shown above, please let me know.

Comment below, or tweet me @twitt3rscape