Movies, with AI

Since the game engine also requires nice visuals, let's focus on creating a movie. A big part of a movie is getting the visuals right, isn't it?

First movie experiment [WIP]

I'm lucky we need a company movie too. So this was actually a good reason for diving into this direction. Due to many youtube movies, I'm starting with a Claude-Blender experiment. In this case there was already a pre-written movie script. This took quite some effort, since I'm not used how Blender is working.

The result is a movie following the script, still need to add voice over. I did finalize this first animation in +40 hours, but not yet happy. So let's move deeper in the subject: how do I get more control over the output?

L'Edifice - The Mystery Box

This week, I did not have time spending my personal AI credits, so just need to try something Friday evening... This became the second movie experiment, again Claude-Blender combination, now with one week experience.

The minimal goal: flying through a l'Edifice city...

Necessities:

• Having many buildings already using LeoCAD and converted to GLB.
• Let Claude solve all issue's, importing these in Blender: simplify & update colors of all panels and changed all panels into database type again.
  (So no duplicates and fixing color conversion errors.)
• I told Claude the minimal requirements (prompt) and then all buildings were placed automatically, with a 'backup' for manual needed changes.
• Roads, rail track, props (trees, people, animals, cars etc) where automatically created too.
• I wanted a customized flying profile, that took a lot of time. (And which is still lacking a little, sorry...)
• And finally Claude connected all pieces together.

The result:

Overall it still took 18 hours building this complete animation, but I'm quite pleased with this.

Side step: convert into race game

Now basically having a 'complete 3d environment', why not use it as 'game asset'. So with a bit of rework, this complete city was made ready for Godot game engine. And with Godot you could transform this into a game, walking/flying through this city yourselves! (That took less then half an hour.)

And spending an other evening (~3 hours), I was able to step inside a car -with suspension- and drive it around. Which was also hosted on this webhost server, so it was a first 'online' game trail too. Also included a simplified damage control & the car will explode when driving against a building. (Although the collision boxes are not yet completely right.) Anyway, it's amazing what is possible these days!

Just choose the car you want to drive, they all having a different properties.

Side note: Of course this works right out of the box inside a web browser: both on pc (windows/mac) and mobile phones. That's what you expect right?!

Mobaco - Magical manual [WIP]

Next weekend, new movie experiment: This time converrting a Mobaco manual into 3D popup houses.

Let's say: work in progress...

Well, the idea is working, but this is not amazing at all. Still took quite some time (+12h).

Mobaco - Build by gnomes

Two weeks later: Why not, the real Mobaco manual consists of gnomes, building/playing around with these Mobaco example buildings. Let's let some gnomes build buildings in 3D!

Software used:

• LeoCAD + Mobaco library → Create building(s).
• Python code → Transform this building into GLB.
• Scan gnomes from manual → ChatGPT.com → tripo3d.ai → Getting rigged gnomes.
• Claude Code + Godot → Make the 3D animation happen.

The gnomes having a state-machine. It's basically a method used for robots working inside an automated warehouse.
So I did not need to tell, which part should be moved where, these robots just following a list which part to take up next and where to place it. Another element is adding some collisions, which is partly solved. Gnomes are not walking through each other or placed parts. Moving a part around is a different story, which I did not want to solve. Next to that, I only needed to tell, how it should hold different parts and an add some variation, since gnomes are not machines!

Took 13 hours to complete, but I'm quite pleased with the result.

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I'm not planning to be a AI movie generator, but it's fun exploring.
So let's move to the next topic: game assets.