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Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:37 pm
by Mindi Flyth
OK, so I guess my remaining question would be, if Meshmellow shuts down at some point, will Muvizu continue to work? I'm not sure how much the program relies on Meshmellow's servers, and if it can function independently.

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:54 am
by Doc
Mindi Flyth wrote:
Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:37 pm
OK, so I guess my remaining question would be, if Meshmellow shuts down at some point, will Muvizu continue to work? I'm not sure how much the program relies on Meshmellow's servers, and if it can function independently.
The only thing Meshmellow are currently hosting to make Muvizu work is the activation server. So if they vanish, you won't be able to activate with your licence key. If you have already activated Muvizu, it will stay activated indefinitely until you change your computer or change your computer's internal networking card.

More info is at http://anizu.uk/muvizuactivation

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:59 pm
by Mindi Flyth
Thanks for the info, Doc!

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:55 am
by Mindi Flyth
Inva3D's Steam page now says it's coming out November 29th. I'll be watching...

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 12:48 am
by Mindi Flyth
Well, Inva3D is finally for sale, but the first (and so far only) review is awful. (The person seems to have barely used the program, but they say the performance is terrible and the screenshots were misleading.) It's an $80 program, so I'll definitely wait to see some more reviews before I buy. It's not off to a promising start.

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 10:20 am
by Ikes
Hi Mindi,

I've purchased Inva3d this weekend and my first impression was very disappointing. The viewer control is very nasty and you can't look around (like a head turn), only rotate around a certain point in space and you need Alt and Shift in combination with mouse buttons to move around, which I find very annoying. Imported models that work well in Muvizu and other software, have their textures messed up and you can't change or load any textures in the program itself, only by importing models, very strange. Also it seems that it doesn't support transparency of textures. I messed around with it for an hour or two and my frustration level went up very quickly. There is no documentation or manual, only an entry in their forum with some poor explanation of functions and key shortcuts.

I've requested a refund, because it sadly didn't meet my expectations. Maybe if the program improves in the future I will reconsider to buy it.
For now I say; 'stick with Muvizu, I heard meshmellow is coming with an update in January'.

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 11:43 am
by Mindi Flyth
Thanks for the review, Ikes. That is really disappointing. It continues to boggle my mind that the tech is out there to make a great, consumer-level 3D animation program, but nobody's doing it. There is a serious gap in the market here. Imagine what could be done with Muvizu or Moviestorm today if they'd kept pace with the times and the people selling them hadn't virtually abandoned them! I really hope Meshmellow does a great update in 2020, that they get serious about improving Muvizu, but given their track record I'm not very optimistic.

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 12:19 pm
by Ikes
Hi Mindy,

I too boggle my mind. Everybody is working on their own little islands. If you take a look at twinmotion for instance, very nice graphics and nice controls, very fast loading scene's, weather control, traffic, etc. It's based on unreal engine, but it's more for architectural visualization. If muvizu would work like that, it would be gold! I'm currently combining muvizu for the characters and twinmotion for the backgrounds. You can create something like this:
[edit]
b.t.w. Twinmotion is currently free to download. website: Twinmotion

Video:
Image

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 3:28 pm
by Ziggy72
Nice Ikes. Another option (on another island :) ) that I'm looking at is S2 Engine, a very cheap game engine (on Steam). I wanted to get the procedural building generator and, only after I'd bought it, realized it was a full game engine that you could also make movies with.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/443970/S2ENGINE_HD/

Re: Serious question: Is it worth getting started with Muvizu?

Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 4:15 pm
by Ikes
Thanks Ziggy,
S2 engine looks graphically nice too, but I'm afraid it's, like unity or unreal, too complex to make movies with, because it's focused on game making. Maybe for backgrounds it can work. Did you make an animation with it?