And yep, the value of $295 is a matter of perspective, of course. I should have said it’s too expensive for me personally to afford, even though it is a reasonable price for a professional piece of software. This is why I’m glad that I can play a lot with the free core of Moviestorm. I don’t know how it compares to Antics but it does the job for experimenting.

I look forward to your review of the 4 products – that will really be helpful to get a side by side comparison.

There is still the big question of the potential audience for non-game machinima and if it is worth the effort to move away from the game audiences that we already have. That question hasn’t being answered properly yet and that’s a whole other topic.

Not sure if I agree with you about the $295, although I’ve just found out that Antics canceled their free program (why?). It’s about the price of a medium/high level graphics
card or 6 PC games. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective, but if I was very impressed with a particular program, I spend $295 for it.

I’m working on a large scale review of the four major non-game machinima programs: iClone, Moviestorm, Antics3D and ZenCub3d using a “creating an entire short film” approach. This will take some time, but I’d like to give it a shot.

We had planned to present a panel at the now defunct (thank you, Mr. Montreal Arcadia Games guy) Montreal Machinima Expo where we’d have them all sit down and comment on each others programs. Competition has led to a lot of innovation in these programs, to my mind. Can’t do it for the Virtual Expo, but possibly for the future.

Ricky

For somone just dabbling in these tools, I’m interested to hear about the features and pricing structure. Even at 295 bucks it is still a big investment for the hobbyists. It makes Moviestorm a lot more attractive for playing with being free for the ulimited core plus one free addon. However, having the ability to import from Google Warehouse is amazing!

Thanks, Ricky and Phil, this type of short interview about different tools is very helpful.

All these interviews are good natured, polite and generally praise the interviewees. Have you thought about, when talking to commercial people trying to sell their products, maybe making the questions a little tougher? Or is that being gay

Or maybe invite someome from each of the main competitors for a commensurate interview?

Just a couple of cents worth. Keep em coming, please, your work is most appreciated.