Cool Music Video Machinima Great Showcase for Next Gen Second Life Graphics

This is a pretty cool SL music video machinima of a track by Lovespirals directed by Hiroaki Nirvana. Its best feature is how well it uses next gen graphic features of Second Life, like dynamic lighting and depth of field. Some of the lip sync shots and edits are a bit distracting, but I'm impressed at how visually rich Mr. Nirvana has made Second Life, showing just how spectacular it can be as a machinima tool (if you have a computer and broadband connection as powerful as his.)

Much thanks to Mela Kidd and Salvatore Otoro for the tip!

Comments

[Commizar Janick]

I look forward to the day where, in virtual worlds, hair falls over the shoulders and doesn't go right through them.

[Adeon Writer]

You mean rigged hair? We're getting that with mesh.

Awesome vid. I'm deeply considering upgrading to get back on SL's top end eyecandy again.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

hmmm that is not the article i clicked comments on. sorry. seems an issue with typepad.

[John Jainschigg]

This is a pretty amazing vid. The thing that really gets me is how well the fully-cranked-to-eleven SL graphics (not to mention the avatars' shapes, animations and costume) recapitulate the aesthetics and pacing of high-end anime. Given the Japanese names of the producers, I assume that was deliberate and conscious.

Makes you wonder when the anime community is going to descend on SL-class VWs en masse and start using them as production environments. As the poster says, any problems here aren't about fundamental graphics, but about avatarics and editing, which is something a reasonably well-funded machinimatography team can throw iterations and camera-viewpoints and custom-written gesture software at until it's perfect. So what seems, in places, a little 'off' actually represents no real barrier to efficient commercial production of high-quality content. Certainly it describes no intrinsic failing of the platform by comparison with the agony and vast expense of conventional, frame-by-frame animation.