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Machinima is the art of making real movies in virtual worlds.
Movies made in Second Life use the world's building, scripting, and avatar customization tools, working in real-time collaboration with people around the globe. You can use Second Life as your own virtual back lot, soundstage, choreography studio, costume and prop repository, and special effects house.
HOW TO CAPTURE VIDEO IN SECOND LIFE
Second Life has built-in video capture capability, enabling Residents to set frame size, codec, and to start/stop the capture process saving footage onto their hard drive. Second Life's built in video capture is easy to use, simply use your view of the world as your camera and follow the below directions:
- High resolution video capture takes a lot of hard drive memory, so you should shoot at a lower resolution than you usually play at. You can do this by choosing a new resolution from Set Window Size. The better your computer is, the higher resolution you can choose. 640x480 is probably a good resolution to start at.
- To start recording, press Ctrl-Shift-A, which will bring up a save dialog. There is a bug that won't let you save it to the desktop, so create a new folder under your C: drive where you can save your footage. Give it a helpful name, and click Save.
- A new dialog will pop up that lets you choose how you want to compress the video. You can choose any option you want to, but the easiest is to choose Full Frames (Uncompressed). This will mean your movie files are bigger, but you will not lose any quality. Hit OK.
- Press Ctrl-Alt-1 to turn the UI off (removes all of the menus/etc).
- After you are done recording, simply hit Ctrl-Shift-A to stop. Be sure to turn the UI back on with Ctrl-Alt-1 as well!
After you have captured all the footage you need, you need to edit into the finished movie. There are a lot of different editing programs out there, but if you have never edited a movie before, you might want to use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie for the Mac. These are easy to learn and have all the features you need to make a simple movie, and even better, they are free!
TEN TIPS ON CREATING MACHINIMA IN SECOND LIFE
Below, Eric Linden, Linden Lab's machinima extraordinaire gives ten tips for creating machinima in Second Life.
- Set up your screen capture software. I recommend downloading FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com/) to capture your footage. FRAPS captures very clean footage while maintaining the best possible frame rates.
- For dolly shots, contact Alt-Zoom Studios (http://alt-zoom.com/) to get their free, scripted camera object. This is currently the best scripted camera in Second Life, and will give you the ability to capture smooth camera moves.
- Try to isolate your action in a way that prevents extraneous background objects and scripts from coming into view. This will help you maintain a more consistent frame rate - especially if there is a lot of action in the scene.
- Try capturing in Mouselook Mode. You can get smoother camera movements this way. (Read more about Camera Controls.)
- Try to capture footage in a larger format than what you plan to deliver it in. For example, I always capture at 640x480 when I know my output is going to be 320x240. You'll maintain higher quality throughout the editing process this way.
- Try to limit the number of actors in any given scene. Having a lot of avatars within a scene - especially if they are all using unique animations or have a lot of attachments - will reduce your frame rate.
- Always capture several frames in front of- and at the end of your action. This helps greatly when you're editing scenes together.
- Try not to move the camera too fast; this can be confusing for the audience and disrupts continuity.
- Try several views of the same action sequence. Capture more than you think you'll need. You can always delete. This will allow you to make more creative decisions when you're editing.
- Hide the Second Life UI (Ctrl+Alt+1) when capturing.
Have fun making movies!