- by John Luxford
This week's update is focused on bringing you bug fixes and quality of life improvements.
We've made a big upgrade to the slideshow video playback, and now you can link to YouTube videos, and a wider list of video formats are supported now too.
That's our Flipside Studio trailer, playing in Flipside via YouTube!
In the last few releases, your real hands and your character's hands weren't completely aligned. This caused noticeable issues when interacting with props that feel like they're not quite in your hand. We're happy to say we've solved this by adding a little stretchiness to the arms, which works more closely to how our arm system worked in the past.
For characters with really long arms, we've also found that you can run your body calibration sitting down and without fully extending your arms. Then you can act that part while sitting, and your arms will stretch to feel more natural for your character. This is one of the techniques actors use when embodying puppets that don't match their own dimensions, and it's pretty fun too!
There was a bug that caused props that were being held at the start of a recording to be reset to their original positions on the set. That's been fixed, and now you can grab a prop and have it ready in hand when recording starts.
Photos weren't showing up in Twitter photo shares, but that's now been fixed. Share on, Wayne!
- by John Luxford
It's time for another Flipside Studio update!
First, we've added a Discord chat server to our list of ways you can reach us for help, as well as meet other creators in the Flipside Creator Community. We're also active on our Steam Discussion page as well, so feel free to reach out in whatever way work best for you!
Flipside Studio now supports Mixed Reality filming via an HTC Vive Tracker attached to a real-world camera. The coolest part is that it also works with our existing Vive Tracker support for tracking your lower body! The second coolest part is that you can still switch back and forth between Mixed Reality and any other cameras you have on your set, without exiting Mixed Reality mode.
We're calling this a feature preview since it's a big change and may have introduced new bugs we didn't catch yet. And of course, you can find the complete info on using Flipside's new Mixed Reality mode in our documentation.
Special thanks to Raktor and LIV for their help in getting this feature built.
Vikings are cool. Because vikings are so cool, we've started adding viking-related things into Flipside, starting with some new viking props. More viking-related things will follow.
Why yes, you may see my battle axe. Would you care for another flagon of ale?
1. We fixed an issue that caused Flipside Studio to fail to load in some cases. Apologies to everyone that was affected by this bug!
2. Oculus Touch controllers now work the same through SteamVR as they do through Oculus Home, including the ability to control the slideshow and teleprompter in VR (HTC Vive users will be able to do this soon too, we promise!).
3. Camera previews in the Set Builder now show a 1:1 preview of the real camera output, so now you have an accurate reference when setting up your cameras.
4. We've made a big improvement to the feel and accuracy of throwing props away in the Set Builder. For reference, you can delete objects by throwing them over your shoulder or with the Delete button in the Prop Settings panel.
5. We've added a scale reference and automatic fixes for scale when your imported character is way too small or too large. Click here to go download the latest version of the Flipside Creator Tools. A big thanks to Bruno Pato for working through these issues with us!
That's it for this week. Stay tuned, we've got tons more exciting things to share in the coming weeks!
- by John Luxford
Flipside update time! This week we have a small update with some really cool things for you.
We've added two stickman-style characters for you to play with. Making your own stickman shows in Flipside is ridiculous fun!
Last week we showed you that you could press Play in the Unity editor to preview your characters in VR before importing them into Flipside. Now when you press A/X on Oculus Touch, the Application Menu buttons on HTC Vive, or hit the space bar on your keyboard, your character will do a little dance for you that shows you how your character moves from all angles, helping identify issues in your model's rigging, weighting, textures, etc.
Here's a little video of our stickman dancing in the Flipside Creator Tools.
We've also improved our texture handling, particularly for Adobe Fuse & Mixamo character importing. This should make everyone's lives a little easier importing custom characters. No extra steps, just make sure you're on the latest version of the Flipside Creator Tools.
Visit the Creator Tools page to download the latest update (v0.6).
That's it for this week. Stay tuned, we've got tons more exciting things to share in the coming weeks!
- by John Luxford
Flipside Studio is now available on Steam Early Access, and we couldn't be more excited to welcome more creators into the Flipside Creator Community.
This has been a long time in the making. When we first set out to create Flipside, we had trouble even conveying what a piece of software that helped people make "shows" using VR was or did. We called it things like a "social performance platform" that often left people scratching their heads.
Now we can just show you.
Our message has become much clearer too. Flipside Studio is real-time animation software that lets you be inside of your animated shows like a TV or movie set. Press record and act your parts by being your characters.
In working with actors, we've found that we can often reduce the time it takes to produce animated content from around 1 minute produced per week, to 1 minute produced per hour, including editing and post. That's a 40x efficiency boost. That's an order of magnitude in time savings that is going to change the way people make animated shows.
And it's only just the beginning.
We have so many ideas, many from talking directly to creators like yourself, that Flipside Studio is going to also become not just the fastest but also the most powerful way to make animated shows. Our priorities are to give you the most creative agency by bringing in your character to make your shows your way, and to provide the right tools to make the best shows you can, in both 2D and 3D.
Flipside Studio captures your movements, just like a motion capture suit, so you can replay and record as many takes and new camera angles as you want. We also capture them this way so your YouTube shows today can one day be shared in 3D too. One show for all screens.
We're still on the road to 1.0 and there are lots of bugs and features that aren't perfect, or even complete yet. But Flipside is improving rapidly, and becoming something really special for us. It's a privilege to help people make their art, something we take very seriously inside of all the ridiculous fun we have making this app for you.
We hope you love it too. We hope you make lots of great things with it, and we can't wait to see those things.
Click here to download Flipside Studio on Steam.
Sincerely,
The Flipside Team
- by Lesley Klassen
At the end of each year, YouTube creates their Rewind video that celebrates the videos, people, music, and memes that hit big. For the first time, YouTube featured animators in their Rewind video.
In fact, animation is really growing on YouTube and you can see this at conferences like VidCon, that are seeing more programming devoted to animation.
You may be saying to yourself, “What’s the big deal? Animations are becoming more popular on YouTube, so what.” It all comes down to the YouTube algorithm and the added challenges that animators face over live-action content creators.
If you have an hour or more to spare watch this enlightening video on the YouTube algorithm by the Fine Brothers and MatPat from Game Theorist. There are some great insights to take from this video. Primarily, creators need to post regularly and have videos with longer watch times, preferably over 10 minutes long.
Creating 10 minutes of live-action video is challenging enough, but it’s not nearly as tough as it is to create 10 minutes of animated content on a regular basis. It’s actually damn near impossible. Animation takes a long time.
YouTube made it even harder for animators with the new changes to their monetization policy. Now you need 1000 subscribers and at least 4000 hours of viewership over the last 12 months in order to qualify for their YouTube Partner Program. This means that animators need to create 10 minutes of content or longer on a frequent basis, preferably 2 - 3 times a week, and build a subscriber base of 1000 before even turning on monetization. For many animators, why bother?
Channel Frederator represents over 3000 animators on YouTube and provide services that help YouTubers market their animations. They felt the need to respond to the new YouTube monetization policy. "Channel Frederator Network has decided to allow members of the network, who have been kicked out of YouTube's Partnership Program, to stay and use our tools & resources to help them reach new audiences," states Director of Networks Kenneth Ash.
Animators really do have a dilemma. Especially those up and coming channels who haven't reached monetization. That's the thing about animators, they are so passionate about animating that they will persist for the love of the art. But persistence won’t change the YouTube algorithm, however technology can help.
Flipside Studio is a real-time animation studio. We simulate a film set or TV studio inside virtual reality to allow an animator to use filmmaking techniques along with real-time motion capture to make animated content. Because it’s real-time, it takes about the same amount of time to make a Flipside animation as it takes to record a live-action video. We make it easier to make longer animations more frequently so animators can start competing against live-action creators for subscribers and watch time.
There are multiple strategies animators are using to currently keep pace with the demands of the YouTube algorithm, and we know Flipside can help.
We believe that real-time animation technology will play a big role in the future of animation. This is especially true on competitive platforms like YouTube that have algorithms that play a role in surfacing content. Animators have it tough but new technologies like Flipside are emerging to level the playing field. Sign up for our private Alpha to give Flipside a try.
- by John Luxford
This weeks' update has a number of features we're really excited to share, so I'll jump right in!
Jess, Phillip, and Meg round out our set of default human characters, and they couldn't be happier to join the others in Flipside to help you make your shows.
We were having issues with textures loading properly on the custom props being imported, which hampered the usefulness of our custom prop importer. We've made some big improvements that should make this much more useful.
The Flipside Creator Tools got a massive overhaul with this update that we've been working on for the past few weeks. In addition to fixing some issues with shader importing, there are three big areas of improvement:
1. The workflow has been made much simpler, with a new panel placed front and center that walks you through each step in the process.
2. You no longer have to match Flipside's exact list of blend shapes for facial expressions and lip syncing, because the Creator Tools now let you map our list to yours, including skipping missing blend shapes and mapping one of ours to multiple blend shapes on your characters. This means less time tweaking your characters in Blender before bringing them into the Creator Tools.
3. You can now hit Play in the Unity editor with your character's scene loaded and then you can hop into VR to see your character standing in front of you to check for scale and other issues.
This is just the start, and we have lots more planned to make character creation faster and more fun.
I mentioned we were working on a public roadmap in the last update post, and that's ready now too! Head over to our Roadmap page to see what we're currently working on, what's already completed, and what is coming up on the road to Flipside Studio 1.0. There's also a Roadmap link in the Creator Community so it's always just a click away from the discussions.
Try it out, then head over to the Creator Community and let us know what you think!
- by John Luxford
Starting with last week's update, we decided to try for weekly updates as we approach Flipside Studio 1.0.
With that in mind, each update will be smaller and mainly focused on these areas:
We're also working on a public roadmap that we can share with the community to better understand where we're going, not just for 1.0 but for future versions as well.
Ruth and Steve (internal names only, since Flipside characters don't have visible names) are the newest members of our built-in character set. They're an elderly couple who just don't understand what all the fuss is about with this new technology.
One big usability change with this update are objects that you hover over will highlight if they're grabbable. We notice a lot of newcomers to VR don't reach out far enough to grab things, so this is meant to provide a visual cue to show that you're within reach. This should also help to know which object you're grabbing when several objects are close together.
As always, the updates should happen automatically via Oculus Home or Steam. Looking forward to seeing your feedback and creations in the Flipside Creator Community!
- by John Luxford
Hot on the heels of update #2, we have a fresh batch of bug fixes for our Flipside creators. You should see the latest version automatically updated on Steam or Oculus Home.
The slideshow had some issues playing video files, which should now be fixed. For users that still have issues, see our Installing Flipside help page for a link to download additional video codecs from Microsoft.
In the process of getting our Flipside Creator Tools ready for everyone to import their own characters, we ran into some snags that left our eyes less expressive than they used to be. Eyes should once again be naturally looking at points of interest, which we call eye targets. This includes other characters as well as things like the coffee mug, which the eyes will focus on briefly as the cup is picked up.
It used to be white. Now it's black. Watching how people are using Flipside, this was a small change that should have a big positive impact :)
There were several other behind-the-scenes fixes, including updating the project and Creator Tools to Unity version 2017.3.1p1. If you're using the Creator Tools to import your own characters, you'll need to ensure that you're using that version of Unity or you may run into issues like your character's textures showing up wrong. You can find the correct version of Unity on their Patch Releases page.
As always, please post any fixes, feature suggestions, or things you create over on the Creator Community.
- by John Luxford
We're excited to share our second big update to the Flipside Alpha! Existing users should see the latest version automatically updated on Steam or Oculus Home.
This update features too many little improvements to name them all, but here are the highlights:
We spent a lot of time designing an in-app tutorial system to help new users get started and to make sure existing users have a clear overview of Flipside's controls and interface.
A performance optimization we made in the last update caused audio playback to be off by a small but noticeable amount. We're happy to say this is now completely fixed.
When you have lots of green on a set or in your characters, it can be hard to key them out correctly using a green screen. We added a blue screen option to the skies so you now have a choice of green or blue for keying out your backgrounds.
Dropbox links are now automatically converted to the direct photo or video link, so you can paste Dropbox links into the slideshow and everything will just work.
We completely redesigned your hands so it's easier to press the right button and interact with objects.
Some bug fix highlights:
- by Lesley Klassen
Today we posted an article on Medium about the making of the interface for Flipside. The process was a team effort. We explored many idea and now as we ready Flipside for public release on early access for both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift we wanted to share the process and give people a sneak peak at our palette interface.
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