The Movies Tutorials und Tipps

Modding The Movies Game.

3D Design and Animation. Its the future. Well, actually, its already here. Movies, presentations, product advertising... more and more 3D modeling and animation is not merely the cheaper way, but sometimes, the only way to accomplish the effect one needs in presenting an idea, a story, an understanding of events or procedures. Everybody has an idea of the space the Chilean miners are trapped in, due to the 3D demonstration presented on the news channels. Its also the way the head of the statue of liberty came crashing down in new York city in the movie Cloverfield.


For those of us who wish to make are own 3D content and produce our own animated movies, there are some options available. Most 3D programs offer the ability to do all we could wish. Yet there are other programs that offer this. Perhaps in an easier format. Like the Movies Game! And iClone. DAZ and Poser have some animating plugins. There were other versions of the movies game idea that did not allow you to export your own movie, and these never produced the following that The Movies Game and iClone and Movie Storm has generated. Making movies is cool. And the internet's wonderful ability to have your work seen by many people, there is good reason to get involved with the Movies Game community. You can go to tmunderground.com and sign up for a free account. You can post your movies there, or on YouTube which has upped its allowable minutes to 15 instead of 10 minutes. YES!!!

We used to be able to upload are movies directly to TheMoviesOnline, but they closed down. Right from the game, we would connect to the website and wait 2 or 3 hours to upload a movie. Movies would get rated by other players who usually gave you 5 stars and say please rate my movie. It didn't matter how bad the movie was. Why? Because the website used to have free downloads depending on how many points you earned. So everybody sought to help each other by maxing out all ratings. And the rating the internet gave you would also adjust your star's ratings. But I was only able to get two items before it closed, and those items came with Stunts & Effects expansion pack anyways. I liked the idea, but you would have to participate an awful lot to get any meaningful results. Also, most people’s complaints were that MoviesOnline used to censor your movies if it had a copyrighted item. Or a simple song. And then there was the movies underground which did not censor your movies. Well, it closed. So we went to movies underground.

The Movies Game is fun to play as well as an ability to make movies. (You have to win the custom movie making script house in order to begin making your own movies. Or just alter the unlocking.ini file) With a variety of sets, costumes, props, backdrops, and scenes to choose from, also with free camera angle, one can make just about any movie they want... to a point. In the end we all wish for a more open ended version of the same program. After some time, it becomes desirable to have your own costumes made, your own scenes and sets, your own content. And many people have done just that. For a large variety of props, sets, and costumes, visit 8 Eyed baby and you can download them for free.

This may pose a question for the beginner (or newbie... sigh, I've become a geek).... How do we mod the Movies Game?

Right now the easiest way is to alter the content already in the movies game. To make an easier game, we open the ini files in note pad, and change some numbers, and watch our game become easier. We win awards faster, our movies, even if cleargreen makes a sucky one, gets great awards. Or, how do we fit all the sets on the studio lot? Especially if we have downloaded extra custom content... we will have to make the studio lot bigger. There is a lot ini file that, once opened in notepad, we can alter some numbers and get a larger lot to place new sets on. This helps an awful lot, particularly for those who would like to bypass the game portion and go straight into making movies for online presence. We are able to have more people lining up for jobs at the janitor line, the crew line and most important the stage school actor line. As many as you want. It is also possible to suspend time in the Movies Game. Movies still get filmed and exported, but actors don't age.

Today, thanx to the folks at Dcmodding, we can do much more. To make simple altercations to content already in the movies game, download the program called "The Movies Editor" at DCMF and begin to expand the options of the game. It will search through the Movies Game Pak files and extract from them all the ini files we need to alter. But it also has the capacity to extract a costume and export it to a workspace folder where we can use out side programs to edit the textures for the costume or edit the 3D mesh file of the costume. It does this for sets and props as well. Then It allows to import back into the movies game our newly altered or custom generated items.

The aim of this web site is to help further the understanding of how to go about modding the movies game. I have had endless fun with modding the game and would like to share what it is that allowed me to make my own mods for the game. Also it is helpful to know the places where we can learn more about 3D modeling and ini file altering. Such as DCMF! There are a lot of helpful people there who would be glad to answer any question you may have about modding the movies game. Also most of the tools we have to mod the Movies game can be downloaded there. So, here is a list of programs you may want to get familiar with:

1)Animation Changer by Gleem. Animation files determine how an actor moves, or a dog or a horse. Or how the flag on the pole moves to the wind. This program changes which animation is to play out in sequence. You can use this with other programs.
2)Casting Couch by Sean W. Quinn. Ability to max out your starmakers settings.
3)Deadsane's Costume Editor by Mark S Andrews. Matches your costume mesh with the accessories you desire it to have. Generates .cos files.
4)Evolchild's Furniture Mover by Vincent Black. Reorganizes your set dressings.
5)Augie64's Movie Filter Mod by Augie64. It reformats your movie. Adds different styles and effects.
6)FLM Reader Zero by Gleem. This awesome program takes existing scene files and allows you to alter. What mesh is to show up in a scene, where the cameras shoot from, where the actors stand and go to "mopath". what extras show up.
7)MED, The Movies Editor by Rob Ashton and Gleem. It's just wonderful. One of the most useful functions is the ability to extract the existing content from the game, which is hidden in the PAK files.
8)MeshManipulater by Reacher. Edits the 3D objects of the movies game, or edits the custom 3D objects you want to make available for the movies game.
9)Rileyman Has made some command line apps: Mesh report utility, extract prop utility, transform prop utility, Set dressing to prop. Room Builder.
10)Reshoot. Able to extract data from the pak files, even download version. I have yet to test it though.
11)Scene Reblocker Utility by Gleem. Another wonderful program. Makes minor adjustments to flm files. relocate what happens where on a set, can run while playing the game so you can watch the results instantly.
12)Blender, open source. A 3D modeling program most us use to mod the Movies Game.


Here following is some tips about the programs listed. Here is not a tutorial, but an idea of what tools are available.

3D Modeling


Each item in a 3D animation is an actual model being moved in front a computer's version of a camera. Therefore it is important to mirror most of what an actual studio does in order to accomplish this feat. Such as lighting, sets, costumes, actors, even looping lines for the scene. So, following will be a really brief description of what you will find in a 3D program, such an Blender.


The 3D Object.


3D Object

In the picture above we can see a 3D object in Blender, that is found in the Movies Game. In edit mode we can see what are commonly call polygons, the little yellow dots that define the dimensions of the object. Each polygon, or in this case, "vertice", is connected by a line, or "edge". Between each edge and vertice is a surface called a "face". You can see a highlighted face in pink above. The collections of faces is like the skin of a body. If a body were a 3D object, the faces would be the skin defining the outline of a body. All of these are alterable. In the next picture we can see some of these altercations.


We can select vertices to be moved.

In Edit Mode


We can move whole sections, including the faces.


In Edit Mode

We can either delete a single vertice, or a single edge or a single face.


deleted vertices, faces, edges

We can also extrude a section outward or inward.


Extrude command E



On top of the objects is an image file. The "Texture". In this case it is a .dds image file. .dds is made by Nvidia, you can go to their site to find out more, but it is not necessary. We know it is an image file, and you can edit this image file in any paint program like photoshop or Paintdotnet (which is free). So long as the paint program supports .dds files. In paintdotnet, you may need to download the .dds plug-in, for I do not know if the latest version already supports it or not. Lets pretend we made gloves on the following costume. This is simply a matter of selecting a ring of vertices on the arm, and then pressing "S" for scaling. And we scale the ring outward. Now it looks like a glove. But it is still the color of skin. So we can look into blender's uvmap window. (If you don't have the uvmap window then create one by dividing the screen). You can see inside the vertices over the texture. Those verts in the uvmap window is called just that, a UVMap. You can change the position of that map here... if you wanted to, but we don't want to, instead we want to simply edit the color the new glove's map is over.


texture is an image file

texture loaded in a paint program

Here we have the texture loaded into a paint program. Now the portion where the glove is, we change it's color. Now load it back into Blender.


With the hand expanded out

Now it looks like the costume has a new glove.


This is all possible due to the great work of the DCModding team for the tools we now have available. First, we have MED (The Movies Editor) which can extract the 3D objects of the movies game. It also extracts the textures belonging to the 3D objects. Next we have the import export python scripts for Blender that allow the 3D objects to be imported into Blender. And after we alter them, or even create new objects from scratch, then we export them back into the movies game, using the python movies game export script.


What wonderful tools these are. Now, using Blender, we can create our own custom content for the movies game. The Movies Game will be the main focus of this site. Yet Blender, being my latest passion, will also be explored. And I will give lots of tutorials on how to use Blender to mod the movies game. I learned most of what I know today from constantly bugging the folks at DCMF. Now that I got a handle on Blender, maybe it could help someone else if I share what it was I learned. For me, openning up blender for the first time was like getting behind the controls of a space shuttle. Blender can do so much. And I was lost as to know where to begin. There were thousands of tutorials out there. They were all doing different things. And were at many differet skill levels.


All I wanted to do was make altercations to movies game costumes, sets and props. I figured later on I could delve into the larger functions of Blender. For the time being, Movies game content was my only concern. Finally, thanx to a simple Tutorial from Shoni88, I figured out how to resize an object. The tutorial, simple as it was, explained to me what was going on in Blender. I knew where to go from there.


First, it is important to know what Blender is doing when you first load it. It has two windows. The 3d space window, which has a grid, and the other below, the buttons window. These two are basic for the most basic functions of blender. You will also see a square already in the 3d space, and most people have it deleted before they start a new project. You can set up Blender to start up under the functions you would like available upon first load. And then save it as a default setting. So that whenever you cleared the scene and started over, it would return to the setting you prefer. Gleem has provided some video tutorials on how to do just that. So you can go over to DCMF and watch the videos for utilizing blender."


Here is a link to his Blender video tutorials:Gleem's Videos

Each window in Blender can be changed to a different window. There is a tiny icon button in the corner of each window allowing one to change what kind a window it should be.






You can also create more windows. Gleem suggest having four windows available at a given time. The 3D space window, the buttons window, the UVMap window, and the Outliner. The outliner window is explaining the whole project. It details what is going on in the scene, and where you can make changes to its reference. This is important for setting up how a new costume, a new set, or a new prop, should appear so that it can be exported to the movies game. When you import an object from another game or from another format, you can see what is happening to the object. What its materials are. What its purpose for being there is. And so on. Its like a blueprint of the project.


Back to creating more windows. If one wanted, one could split the 3D window in two and have two different perspectives of your 3D model, thus giving you a better idea of what to add or alter.


splitting windows

Made two 3D windows

Once you import a 3D object into Blender, you will see it in the 3D window. There are various functions within the 3D window. For instance, the 3d window comes with several different modes for different types of editing. We start in object mode. We can change what mode we are in by clicking on a little box describing what mode you are in. First, click on one of the objects in the 3D window. You may only have one. Then click on the little box.


Changing which mode your in

In edit mode we see the vertices making up the object we have currently selected. Texture mode we can see the image file mapped to the object. Weight paint mode deals with armatures. I'll talk more about that later. Sculpt mode uses brushes (3D sculpting tools).



Some of the objects we import from the Movies Game have more functions then just lookin pretty. Like costumes. Costumes, because they move, come with armatures. Armatures are a collection of bones, which are invisible in games, and in 3D movies, but are viewable in Blender so that we can use them or alter them. Costumes can be posed in any which way the bones will move. If you click on the armature, down below in the buttons window, we can see several options available to the armature. Many times its inside the costume. So we can hit the X-Ray button and now we see the armature through the costume.


Sticks are the bones

Now in the 3D window, in the mode box, lets select pose mode. Now we see the bones. Click on one of them and it will light up with its own selectedness

pose mode

Selecting the arm bone allows you to move the arm. We can move the arm by pressing "R" for rotate, or "G" for grab.


moving the bones moves the costume

moved limbs

Animating the object in Blender is a matter of setting the pose of the costume for each frame of the movie you are making. If you want the costume to walk then you must set the first part at frame one, then the completion of the first step at, say, frame 25, then the completion of the second step at frame 50. Then press ALT+A to watch the walk. You can set how many frames a second to pass by as it animates. 25 frames for two seconds is a slow gate. 25 frames per one second is a brisk walk.


This will be important in the coming months of the movies game, for Gleem is in the process of writing a python animation import export script using Blender, This script will allow animation files to be imported into Blender. Also this script will allow for us to make custom animations for costumes and then export them into the Movies Game. The script has some time to come. There are several factors still to work out in the animation files. They are complex. But one day we can have custom animations in the Movies Game.


Lionhead has given up on developing more for the movies game. So we will not expect any more expansion packs. All we can hope for is custom content created by you and me. On the other hand, many game makers have released the technology that made the games, after they no longer use it for future games. For instance, Grand Theft Auto uses a game engine that was used by the next 3 GTAs as well as Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City. The same engine was used for Scareface The World Is Yours, Red Dead Revolver and the wonderful Red Dead Redemption. Its a wonderful design. One I hope produces many more games, for I find whole world environments with no roaming restrictions to be an enjoyable gaming experience. Yet the game engine that made the Movies Game is still being used for other games. When Lionhead no longer sells games using that engine, they may release the tools and programs used to make the Movies Game and thus we can add all the content we wanted.


Until then we have to figure out all the details ourselves in order to mod the game. At the head of this endeavor is Gleem, who they call the dungeon master...(I'm picturing tacamada in history of the world...Mel Brooks). He is a coder, and also knows Python. So he produces python scripts to use with Blender. Python is a programming language. It must be installed on your computer in order to use the scripts. Blender has a folder where you place these python scripts. When we first install Blender, it will ask you where you want to place this folder, and I never caught that and would end up pulling hairs trying to find it. Now I pick the same location that Blender installs itself, in the program files folder. Where it used to place them was in a hidden folder location. "Some folders are hidden?" What else is my computer doing? It's better to know. So you can tell the installer where to put the folders, if you want in the documents folder.


Then you download the python scripts from DCMF and place them into that folder. Then update the python menus in Blender, save default setting and you're good to go. Another script is the StarMaker import script. What does it do? It imports any starmaker head. And then you can add it to a costume, or export it as a Latex Head. There was talk of making an export script for a starmaker head. That way you could have more starmaker heads to choose from. I think a big YES is required when talking about it. And Stvndysn had a great idea of making a larger script that has many settings and sliders similar to what starmaker does, but with many more options that are only available in Blender. The reasons against making the script is that one can not delete or add any vertice (commonly referred to as polygons). The game requires that all starmaker heads require a specific amount of vertices to function. Or the game will crash, or the head will warp or some bad problem. So it would be nice to have an internal function within Blender that deals with the starmaker head. So that the vertice count always remains the same. Blender can export games, one such game could be another version of starmaker, and then the user would not even need Blender to run the program.


Once I had learned how to do a few simple maneuvers in Blender, it was easier to know where to go to next. If I wanted to make a specific altercation, I knew then how to google search it. I did not know how before because I didn't know what I was doing in Blender. But once I had learned what to do in edit mode, or object mode, I could then realize what else I needed to learn. I began to understand what everyone was talking about, and could then ask the right questions. Or search for the right tutorials. The truth is that Blender, being so powerful, gives you many ways to accomplish the same thing. So, that being a blessing, can also confuse someone trying to learn, when everyone gives a different response to how to go about something. It may be a little harder for me, since I had never used a computer before. I had literally owned a computer about one month before I owned the movies game. The geeky world is something new to me. Who knew it could be so fun? There were no geeks on my block.


One good place to start is to turn the box into something else. Make a table out of it. There are tutorials that describe how to turn that box into just about anything. Doing so will get one familiar with Blender's functions.


Therefor it may be that some of us could use a simple tutorial that will utilize movies game content just to get us going. Show us where to start. So I made a couple and my friends expressed there thanx and verified that I wasn't alone in this thinking. Because I wasn't sure if I was the only one who had that problem. There will be more and my website is undergoing another face lift. Soon, there will be detailed tutorials that are aimed at the beginners who want to get on with using Blender. You can go to my old tutorials page to do just that. I hope it helps.


Modding the movies game begins at providing the right files for a new prop, or a new set, or a new costume. And these files must be placed in the right folders. And these folders are not there at first install, this is because they are hidden in the pak files. But all we need to do is add the folders ourselves, and the movies game will respect them. And we can overwrite a file in the pak file, by placing it in the right folder. But if we delete that file, the Movies Game will go right back to the original found in the pak file. For instance, there is a image file that accounts for the first 60s underwear. It is a dds file. We could create folders that would be needed to get at where the file should be. Programfiles/lionhead ltd/The Movies/data/textures/costumes folder. I believe there is already a data folder. So just create a textures folder inside the data folder. And then create a costumes folder inside the textures folder. The underwear dds file shows what the actress is wearing. If we replace it with a transparent dds image file, then the actress will be naked. Best is the 60s und mesh file for girls, 50s und mesh file for boys. Then when you load the costume in game, the actor or actress will be naked. Simply delete the image file and the original underwear will show up. The underwear files are numbered, so if you find the last number, say _v05 or v06, then make the transparent one _v07 and it will not overwrite anything in the game, and will be the next available underwear upon hitting the slider to the end.


It is possible to replace any file in The Movies Game in this fashion and restoring the original is simply a matter of deleting the one we have made. But it is better to add the right naming to our custom files so that nothing is overwritten and we still have our custom content. I only stress this to let you know what is going on in the folders of the movies game. Some people have made mods that do overwrite movies game files because they preferred it. Like someone made a "get rid of scaffolding on sets" mod. Because the image file for the scaffolding required a partially transparent dds file, if one replaced it with a completely transparent image file, then the scaffolding will disappear in the game. Also, someone had made a holstered pistol mod for all cow boy costumes. He did so by replacing the .cos file of each cowboy costume to include a holstered pistol worn at the belt. Of course he replaced the movies games files simply be adding them in the folders, since the original is locked in the pak files. The Movies Game searches first the folders we made, then looks into its own PAK files for the item its looking for. It finds it in the folder we made, the search is over. If it does not, it goes to its PAK files where it will be. But, it will allow anything we put in the folders that is not found in the pak files, our own custom content, so long as we went through the right naming scheme and put in the right ini files for our new prop, or new set, or new costume. So one such item, for example, is the backdrops. These are image files in the data/textures/backdrops folder. And they all begin with the preface bd_. So the canvas backdrop is found in that folder being called bd_canvas.dds. If we put in that folder a new bd_canvas.dds file, it will replace that original backdrop the game uses for the canvas backdrop. But if we renamed are new file to bd_test.dds, then the original bd_canvas.dds backdrop file will be restored and will be the original one the game used, but we will now have a new backdrop to choose from within the game, one call "test".


The movies game folders are full of different types of files. In the data/meshes folder is where you will find all the 3D objects. They are referred to as .msh files. Mesh files. We are importing a .msh file into blender. And like-wise, we are exporting the items as a .msh file. Once we generate out of blender the finished product, we will have a new .msh file. We then place that .msh file into the programfiles/lionhead ltd/the movies/data/meshes folder. From then on it needs the proper .ini files to make the game see or use this new object. We can see what ini files to provide the game with by practicing on existing movies game content. Using MED we can export a prop to a workspace folder. There you will find all that prop uses to be in the game. You will see a DATA folder. In the data folder you have a collection of more folders: Meshes, props, blueprints, setdressings, textures (and within the textures folder a prop folder and a thumb folder).


The textures folder contains the image files used with the prop. And a thumbnail picture. The meshes folder contains the 3d object file we know as a .msh file. The rest are .ini files. We can open them in notepad and we can change what category they are found in, how much they cost, if they make your stars happy, if they are lot placeable or not. If they are selectable in scenes. Using MED, and with time, we can learn all the ends and outs of the movies game structure.


Ok here is a warning. MED has a bug!!!! Each costume comes with its own folders. A costume folder, a textures folder. (I always delete the "text" folder as it is unnecessary) in the costume folder are several ini files and one more folder, a "datas" folder... not to be confused with the regular "DATA" folder. The datas folder contains all of the .cos files. These files tell the game what accessories and sliders the costume uses. And whenever MED produces a brand new one, it crashes the game. The way around it is to use "Deadsane's Costume Editor", which produces functioning .cos files. I will make a tutorial for using it soon. (look back here later for the tut/or go to the tutorials page for updates). So if you make a brand new 3D object that is to become a Movies Game Costume, use Deadsane's instead of MED to make it available to the movies game. On the other hand MED can still make adjustments to the costume mesh that will work just fine. You don't have to use every file med generates to make a change in a particular file. Sometimes I run meshes through med just to see how it looks as MED provides a 3D window that views the finished result.


Another detail I have found using MED, is that it reveals objects in the 3d window as double sided. So the texture will show up inside the object as well as outside. But this may not be how it shows up in the Movies Game. A "face" can be turned inwards and show a textures inwards instead of outwards. In the Movies Game, if the camera where on the outside of such an object, you would see right through this inward face as if it weren't there at all. Yet in MED it shows textures on both sides of the face and so MED won't reveal this error. In such a case, you will have to go back into blender and flip your normals. In Blender, there is a setting that will reveal which way your normals are facing... inward or outward. In edit mode, after highlighting all verts with "A" key, you can press CTRL+N to recalculate all normals outward.


Yet another detail to consider with med is the ability to scroll textures. Textures can be made to move across the object. And it moves in two directions: upwards or leftwards. It can also be made to rotate, and if you stop the rotation half way, then the texture can continue to scroll rightwards instead. But the speed in which it scrolls in med is not the same speed it scrolls in the movies game. The movies game moves the textures faster. So keep that in mind.


The most tiresome problem MED has is not MED's fault. Downloadable version of the Movies game and Stunts and Effects uses an encryption to prevent redistribution of the product. Thus MED will not read content that has this encryption. It won't generate category ini files that will include S&E content if S&E is a download version. We can get around this by downloading the Movies Game's all .ini files. Go to DCMF to find out where.


Another great program to use is "MESHMANIP". This is also another great tool. This program makes all kinds of adjustments to the mesh files. And it too has a 3D window. I believe it is the program used to make Rysto's animal costumes. He says he made them before we had the Blender scripts, or before the scripts were capable of doing what they can do today. The Blender scripts have many capabilities now, much like meshmanip has. For instance, in blender you can now set an item to be an autoanimated prop. Before we had to use meshmanip to accomplish this.


Another thing to consider is some objects have effects that accompany them in the movies game. Like pistols fire bullets and make sounds when fired. We can set the banana to do this by barrowing from the properties and files the pistol uses. Inside blender we can see the mesh has a pivot that tells the game that it is a bullet firing object. We can transfer this pivot to the banana. Also, inside the meshes folder is yet another folder called "extrainfo" that contains .inf files. Each .msh has a matching .inf file inside the extrainfo folder. Although the game does not require a new mesh to have a matching .inf file, it would require one if the banana where to fire bullets. We would have to copy the pistol .inf file and rename the copy to the banana .inf. And so the Movies Game would know that this new banana object can fire bullets and make the firing sound when it does. So, you use the pistol pivot and you use the pistol .inf file.



Pivots are the green arrows

Many props are used in scenes. Like cars, and horses and guns, and helicopters. And as above, they all need the pivots and .inf files to be used. Yet there is one more item they all need. In the props folder is a list of ini files used to make these props selectable in a scene. Like the "book.ini", if we opened it with notepad, we would see a list of books that are available in any book scene. If you have made a new book, and it uses the book pivots, and has its own book .inf, then you must add its name to this ini file for it to be made available.


A car has several pivots too. 4 pivots are used to turn the wheels. And to steer the front tires. And some pivots will open doors. So instead of an armature moving the door, a pivot will tell the object to move. So when we make new cars, they will need these pivots to be functioning vehicles in the movies game. I did see a couple cars that did have an armature, and I believe the game actually barrows from that one armature to effect all the rest of the cars. Maybe. Maybe not.


In the meshes folder were found several objects that were never used in the game. A lot of games have these, which are commonly referred to as Easter eggs. Either as undeveloped items that the creators ran out of time or funds for. Or that are planned to be brought out later with expansion packs.


Still we find other items, some of which are not fully understood, but were nice to find. There were not many heads available in the mesh folder for use in Blender. Star maker head had an .hd extension and were not mesh files. Gleem has since made an import script for them all. But before that we had to be satisfied with only 6 or 7 heads. And only two was female. One of these was called generichead.msh. This mesh contained an armature responsible for all the face emoting. And for talking as well. It was believed that the game barrowed from this mesh to make all heads talk and emote. Gleem went on to use this same mesh to provide us with the armature and face weights for all the starmaker heads that finally were able to be imported into Blender.



If one wanted to make an auto-animated actor prop. You would first pick the costume and import in into blender. Then import a starmaker head. Then merge the two objects. Only one detail to worry about when we use the starmaker heads for autoanimated props, autoanimated props do not emote or use emoting because emoting and talking happens as a different pass in the movies game, it can't be found when we just place a prop on the set. There for, the vertice groups on the face, which belong to the talking armature, will not work as a prop. So we would have to delete all the vertice groups of the starmaker head that have a face bone reference. (I will give tutorials later about what vertice groups are). What I would do is, as soon as one imports a starmaker head, go into edit mode and then down in the buttons window, delete all vertice groups, but keep only two. Keep the head and keep the neck. Now select the neck vertice group and press the "select" button and all the verts assigned to it will light up. Now select the head vertice group and again press the "select" button. Now also the head verts are selected in the 3d window. The rest of the verts that are not selected have no vertice group for them. They need one. We deleted them has they used to be face vertex groups. So, at bottom of 3D window is a button called 'select'. Press it and a popup window appears. From it select "inverse". Now only those verts we need to deal with are selected. Go back down in buttons window. Now press under it the 'add' button. Now these unassigned verts were added to that vertice group. Problem solved. Next, we should join the costume object with the head object. (A tutorial on how to make autoanimated props is coming soon). When they are joined, we must provide the prop texture to them both. Now it’s extra work doing it that way. It is not nessessary to join the head to the body. I find this way convenient, as I like to turn them later into costumes.


All you have to do is import a starmaker head, fix the face verts to the head vertice group as I said before. Import a costume mesh. Unparent the starmaker head, it's eyes and teeth from its face armature, alt+p, delete the face armature. Then parent the starmaker head, teeth and eyes to the other armature that came with the costume we imported. Add the head to the blend group the costume uses. Delete the empty the starmaker head had before (it now being unused) Finally, all you would have left is, the costume's empty object (looks like a pivot or 3 little green arrows), the costume's armature, and the starmaker head, eyes and teeth. The starmaker's head, eyes and teeth and the costume should be parented to the armature, and the armature should be parented to the empty. Then costume mesh and the starmaker's eyes, teeth and head should be added to the same blend group, and the empty should also be added to the blend group. The blend group should have the same name as the empty. In the help menu is an id property function. Click on it and get to the auto animated flag. 0 is no, 1 is yes. Now your ready for export. Once in the game, it needs ini files to be made into a prop. And it needs an animation file to move it. Stay tuned for the tutorial.


We also have Rileyman's applications. These use command line to accomplish custom content. They do have one draw back which is not at all their fault. Downloadable version of The Movies game and Stunts&Effects uses an encryption to prevent redistributing of the product. This makes the programs incapable of being read by these apps. And what a shame for they are wonderful. I can use a couple of them still. One of his apps can deconstruct all of the items of a set and we can extract a portion and make it a single prop. It can also take a set dressing and make it into a prop. It can also reorganize items into a new set. And other apps too. But probably the most anticipated one, which has yet to be released, is Rileyman's Auto-Animated prop maker. He had stalled on its production due to him wanting to add other capabilities to it, since some actor props would be wearing hats, or have latex heads. I even heard that it will have a 3D viewable window for the animations to be used but I could be wrong.


http://movies.riley-man.com/

One of rileyman's app, the set dressing to prop maker, can build a set for you. I have yet to use the reconstruction utility since I have download version of S&E and his apps sometimes miss the content of my game. But the setdressing to prop works wonders. If you use his set deconstruction tool, then you can have a collection walls and doors, and tables and all kinds of items found on a set as separate objects. Then you can turn all the set objects into props. Then in the Movies Game, you can place a wall here, and a door there and a window here, a backdrop there, a floor below. And set up a brand new set. Save it as a set dressing. Then quit the game and run his set dressing to prop app. It will take the set dressing you made and turn it into a .msh file. Rename it to set_(whatever).msh. And now its a set mesh. Give it a set ini file and the game will know you have a new set.


Some recent and wonderful news is that Gleem has uncovered the details of the extrainfo files for sets. Soon we will be able to import details like what kind of sound feet make when walking across a custom set. Will it be walking on wood, or gravel sound. Also some sets have armatures. Some sets have animations to them. This raises set building to a new hight. Can't wait for that one.


Another tool is Casting Couch. This one alters the StarMaker settings. In StarMaker we have so many points to add to an actor's ability. But we quickly run out of points and have to then earn more points in the game. But Casting Couch allows us to max out all the settings so that are starmakers are always top notch actors.


Scene editing is what will put the movies game into orbit. Gleem has already made two or three programs that deal with scenes and animations.


First, we have the animation changer. It loads flm files, and allows us to change what happens next in the file, and then saves it as a new custom flm file. Flm files gather up different animations for an actor to perform in a scene. With animation changer, we can change what the actor does next. Lets say its the flm for a phone call. First it walks up to the phone(1) then picks up the phone(2) the talks into the phone(3) then hangs up the phone(4). Instead of answering the phone, we can have the actor jump up and down next. But then the very next thing that would happen would be a snapping into holding the phone as the actor spoke into it. So not all animations will match up with each other and so it requires a lot of trial and error. One would have to do some experimenting and take notes to see how to edit these files. A lot of Mad Science. The resident Mad Scientist at the DCMF is Rysto. We know him for the giant Mona Lisa head. He has his own digital science lab with thousands of notes. He has done a lot of research with these programs.


The other program is FLM Reader Zero. It list all the stuff taking place in a scene. And its all numbers. If we alter their values then we get different results, different placements. We can move actors across the set, we can change the extras. We can set up cameras to do different angles. Its a great program because, some of the sets I have made could not utilize the existing scenes found in the game, I had to add new ones to accommodate the set. I made a basketball court set that I will release soon. There are no basketball scenes, but actors and crew members play basketball on the studio lot. So I had to transfer the basketball activity to the scenes and added more basketball stuff. And it was only possible with FLM Reader Zero.


Watch the demo of the basketball scenes

Reshoot is also a good program. Whenever I edit scenes, I use both FLM reader and Reshoot at the same time. Reshoot does simple and quick modifications to FLM files. You could probably do the same changes in FLM Reader Zero, yet reshoot makes it easy and direct. An invaluable program.


Just made a tutorial for using Scene Reblocker.


Watch the Video

So in the data folder is another folder (might have to create it if you don't have it but observe these details with MED as MED shows what’s actually in these folders), this other folder is called "scene" These are the scene files. The scenes we select for our sets are located in the scene folder. Makes since right? Yet inside the folder is a lot of other folders. All numbered. 001 and 002 and 003 and on up to 044. Each number represents a collection of all the scenes that take place on a particular set. Folder 001 is all the landscape sets (they all share the same scenes), 002 is the ally set, 003 is the bar set, 004 the rooftop set. And so on. So if we wanted to add a new scene we would have to pick only one set the new scene is to be added to (unless it is shared with another like all the landscape sets). Each new scene we make is added to only one set.


There is yet another folder, called interactions, inside interactions is yet another long collection of folders all numbered. They match the original ones we just mentioned. Those contain the actual flm files for the game to read. Those are what we alter with the scene edit programs. So, a new scene needs two files to be placed in the proper folders. A new flm file inside the data/scene/interactions/001 or 002 or 012 or whatever. And the game needs to know its there by having one more file, the ini file. And that goes in the firstly numbered folders. data/scene/001 or 002 or 012 or whatever. That’s the ini file and the flm file. Both together will now make the new scene available.


Making a custom set. Some people have taken an existing set and have made a new set out of it. Like frass's Hell Beach set. It looks like a fantastic lake of fire. its really a nice set. Looks like hell. And it uses the scenes that already are found in the tropical beach set. When we extract a set using MED, from the movies game, and look at the folders it generated in the workspace area, we find three folders inside the data folder. We have the meshes folder (for the object of the set), a set folder (which has an ini file telling the game the set exist), and a textures (for the image files the set object uses). Go into the set folder and look at the set ini file. If it was the stage you extracted it would be called "set_stage.ini" file. If we open it in notepad we can see several settings. We can tell it what backdrop shows up on default when the set is selected. But here we are concerned with the following:


example of set ini

The set scene id number tells the game what list of scene folders to select scenes from. If you wanted to, you could alter the bathroom sets ini file to have those scenes that show up on the tropical beach. Just change the number from 014 (the bathroom number) to 021 (for the tropical beach scenes) and save it. Only problem is, the bathroom is much smaller then tropical beach so most of the scene won't even show up in the bathroom but way out in blackness. So, it is better to make our own custom scenes when we have a new set that won't match up with existing scenes.



All we need to do is make a new folder in the data/scene folder. and name it something like 074 or 123 or any three digit number. Now it is a new folder for a new set, and anything you put in that new folder will not show up on any other set, but yours. Once you have a new numbered folder, edit the set_(whatever).ini file in the data/set folder to match the new folder of scenes you just made. Edit the set id number to be the same as the new numbered folder. Once that is done you need to go into the data/scene/interactions folder, and create one more folder with the same number you just created. So if you made a 056 folder, make another 056 folder inside the interactions folder. This next folder is where you will place new flm files for your new set. The other being for ini files. You can use MED to look over what I am talking about. Use MED's action wizard and select extract files for external editing. You don't really need to extract but you can view the files and folders I'm speaking of. Just to give you an idea.


You don't have to understand everything I'm saying now. Just wanted to give you an idea of what is possible and what’s on the horizon for the Movies Game. These are only small details. Tutorials have been made for them at DCMF, some are found at TMUnderground, and still others on YouTube. And I will definitely give some tutorials for the beginner in my new tutorials page. I will keep my old tutorials page around in case you want to take a peek, but a new design is coming to this site.


This has been an introduction to modding the movies game. Had this been an actual tutorial you would have been given a cookie and a glass of milk.

http://tinyurl.com/9o5dtho