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S.Y.N.C. is an upcoming machinma shot entirely in VRChat, and it's among the most amazing that I've seen -- along with the professional polish, the many fight scenes (via guns, swords, and full contact kung fu) are impressively fluid and articulated. And as befits most metaverse projects with this level of excellence, it's a fully furry production.
Directed and starring "Legend50210" (let's call him Legend for short), the footage is captured, he tells me, "using the natively supported stream camera function supplied by VRChat. I hold the artificial camera in my hand and move it accordingly like an actual camera minus the weight."
The action scenes are, as they appear, shot with the actor in a full body rig:
"Most people on the platform use the standard form of 6 point tracking which accommodates for head, hands, feet and hips.
Me, I went all out and got added ones that include my chest, knees and elbows, bringing my points of tracking up to 11."
At first I thought the scenes were shot with actors logged onto VRChat from various parts of the world. But the way these scenes are actually shot is perhaps even more painstakingly impressive:
High Threats, Higher Kicks!
— Legend50210 (@legend50210) August 24, 2022
Slowly starting to run out of GIFs for Proof of Concepts, but I’ll still keep my posts daily so that progress on #VRChat short film “S.Y.N.C.” Stays on rails to completion! pic.twitter.com/33152hyrwj
Legend is not only directing the action, but surprisingly, all the actors in it:
"The loops are recorded animations of myself," Legend explains. "The FreezeFrame mod* had a 'Sync' button at the time and it allowed me to line up all animations from the start when I started a new clone."
In another words, he used a modified version of VRChat to record and play back the various action choreography he performed through various avatars, and sync up the results, so it appeared be two or more avatars fighting against each other:
"I have a script that is written for which character does what action and accommodate for what the proper reaction is.
"It’s more trial and error if anything. I do the attacking side first (even if flow changes) and then I record a second clone that is on the opposite side, essentially recording two clones that are moving independently from each other. They would loop endlessly and it allowed me to pull out the camera and break up the little fragments of fights and mesh them into something bigger with editing tricks.
"Sometimes I’d have moments where the defender flinched too early in the loop or a move didn’t connect. In which case, it would just result in needing to redo the animation for the needed side."
Voiceover work is by Legend and friends he met online. Despite the professional polish of S.Y.N.C., Legend has little or no formal training in filmmaking, and is self taught. But creating this video has led to commercial offers, and it might become his profession:
"I like getting people together to work on large projects in unison. I think it’s probably why this new method of filming works so well for me. I’m using other assets like avatars and worlds made by other people and putting them on display with a story to go with it."
S.Y.N.C. is aiming for a mid-September release. Watch for it here!
*Yes, the machinima used a modified VRChat client, and the company's recent banning of mods has been a pretty substantial speedbump to production:
"Because FreezeFrame is an unofficial mod (which was definitely a quality of life function for content creators), it being removed means vanilla issues have to be resolved," Legend tells me. ("Vanilla" referring to the standard default viewer.)
"The key things that the mod in question did so well is that it didn’t require other people at all. Availability only meant if I was ready. It also meant it made combating things like latency, a breeze. So since it’s removal, it’s made me think how to re-approach things. But since my trailer’s release, so many other creators have stepped forward offering their help that I feel it shouldn’t be too hard finding help from the community."
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