Progress!

Since I've come back on late Sunday morning, I didn't have much time to work on my personal project. Monday was taken up by a chemistry write-up, and during the four day weekend I had no access to a computer or anything I've done so far. But today was spent straight on working on personal project, and I'm actually quite pleased with how much worked out!
I have the first 20 seconds of the video 80% DONE! All the animations are in place, one or two of them need a bit of editing (very easy, which is why I focused on other things) and I think they will fit quite nicely with my voice acting!
Right now I only have the characters moving to a black background, and the scenes are literally just chunks (shows one guy talking, then 4 people casting a spell, then some characters dying, etc, etc) but using movie transitions (lighting, speed of movie) it will look fantastic when done with it!
I will then add backgrounds and sounds (plus of course voice acting!)
I am now sure I can finish this before christmas!
For the past 30 minutes I have also been working on notes for my report.
Now notes because I hate writing things twice (I barely ever edit any of my work.... even essays and such) This is why I'm making notes which will be a huge help to me in writing my final report!
Maybe not everyone would say the same, but when I have simple and general notes based on a subject I know a lot about, it's very easy for me to hugely expand on them, add detail, refer to my knowledge and research, etc.
Therefore, notes.
Right now I have the goal and the AoI done, meaning I still have some work before uploading the notes on here on Thursday!
With this small entry, back to work it is!

Aaaaaand here's the video

(Once again sorry for the backwards playback!)

Short video showing what creating machinima is all about!

I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to film this... Fraps wouldn't exactly do the magic since it always recorded WoW Model Viewer in full screen, thus making the other applications... not show.
Quitting it wasn't an option FYI.
Finally after many youtube videos (which didnt really help) I decided to just take my macbook and record my pc's screen.... which worked... except the video is backwards. Meaning everything on the screen is the other way around. *sigh*
Ah well it was the best one I've done from the 5 different tries, and I think it explains everything very simply. (Mr. Rawson if you advise me to film it again properly, I will figure out a way)
The video is currently extracting and ill upload it here as soon as it's done.
I also have all the animations finished (as mentioned before) They are all added to the "project library" awaiting editing.
To be honest though, I think I'll record the sound first (Just 2 minutes of me speaking basically) and then over that add the animations... This because I will be able to focus more on what the characters are meant to do, Ill be able to make them move during what I say, and instead of having to fit in the whole story component (talking) to the video, I think it's better to have the whole story told, and on that add video footage... Simply easier!
I guess this means my task for now is write a monologue... Well off I go to do just that!

Small checklist:

• Animations [x]
• Sounds [x]
• Background []
• Voice-over (story) []
• All programs working [x]
• Research [x] <-- most likely done, I keep adding new links to my bibliography but yeah.

I think that's pretty much it except for

• PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER []

Well, off to write the monologue!

(I'll upload the video upon completion!)

sounds -> success!

I got the sounds! They work! You can listen to them and they work!
Downloaded two different programs till it worked, but at least its all good now. I looked through the sounds and they all seem to be there! So that's a success for sure!
WoW map viewer still isn't working however and that makes me very angry.
Jacek smash!

hair pulling.

Im about to do what it says in the title.
For no reason now, WoW map viewer won't start.
sweet jesus have mercy,

Technology, Y U NO WORK?
grrrrrr.
Right. Erm. sounds. that's it.
Ignore the backgrounds atm.

more on the map viewer story

Since the last post been looking for ways to get map viewer to work.
I also have a list of all the *small* maps that work:

• Stormwind Jail - a jail
• Wailing Cavers - large caves
• Uldaman - an old "egyptian" like ruined city
• Gnomeregan - a very techy, lots of cogs and mechanisms, etc place
• Sunken Temple - fairly obvious, a temple underwater
• Blackrockspire/blackrockdepths - a huge underground scary dungeon place... yeah.
• Onyxia - another large underground cave
• Mauradon - underwater and underground caves and tunnels
• Deeprun tram - similar to gnomeregan-> a very techy tram station
• Orgrimmar instance - a fiery cave connected to the lower, underground part of orgrimmar (the horde's main city) has a few small huts and houses MIGHT could MAYBE be useful
• Diremaul - a large jungle arena with a few tunnels -> could be useful
• Alliance PVP barracks - a part of a human town -> could be very useful, but has a lot of "black holes" i.e. the map is incomplete.
• Horde PVP barracks - just like the one above except in more of huts, desert style. If I use orgrimmar instance this could be useful. More likely to stick to alliance pvp barracks though.

Here is what I found on the official map viewer forum as a response on how to get it to work:

Map viewer isn't usable with 4.x content, and it wasn't great with the 3.x content... It's really buggy, and hard to use. You'd be better off going in-game to get your backgrounds.

And this was posted on friday. 2 days ago.

^**#&!%)@%..1!!

Rage.

Right so unless I can make my machinima using these few background (which aren't exactly great for my script but they could work...) I will have to use the WoW machinima tool. Which means that when you open up WoW, the machinima tool allows you to control all the background, characters, fog, flying, etc. inside the game. The only weak point is you have to physically be there with your character, then you can fly around the area. I however only have one character I really play and if he tries to go to the place that I need for filming, I would get *pwned* by the other side.

I could always make a second character and walk him there (won't take more then 15 minutes) and from there film, except that I would have to do this on my mac as my windows internet still doesn't work and you can't play WoW offline. The issue with that is I have no clue how to record on mac without spending money.....

WAIT! no! 

Ahh the joy! WoW on mac has built in recording for machinima!

This could be a way to do it....

*joy joy joy happy tears*

And the WoW machinima tool DOES work, 100% and is constantly updated with new features!

...but does it work on mac?

Let's check...

No. Seems not.

Oh my god.

*rage*

I swear I'll get this to work.

/log off

*sigh*

After a lot of googling, forum searching and downloads I managed to get a version of WoW Map Viewer that actually opens up.
Now the first map I clicked on opened immediately and I was really happy that I managed to get it to work.
I exited that map and tried a different zone, unfortunately the only thing that showed up was the skybox and a vague outline of the mountains.
My excitement died out and I started looking for ways to fix this issue.
On the official issue forum for the program I found that a lot of users are having this problem since October. And that it hasn't been fixed *stabs self* There are a few maps that work and that I could use, so if I can't get it to work, and it doesn't suddenly, magically get updated, I can still do the film (thank the lord!) However this is a huge pain you know where.
Argh.
I hope Im more lucky with the sound program....