What I've been up to...

Since winning a full copy of Unity at the Machinima Expo I've pretty much had my nose buried in Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials. Obviously, my interest in Unity is not actually game development, but harnessing the engine for film making. I'm about half-way through the book, and I've reached the conclusion that I won't be making any films in Unity just yet. The main reason being that while the platform is really powerful and highly controllable, there are no film making tools as such; I'm talking about basic things like a time line, and camera controls - what to look at, when, and how to focus etc. Perhaps someone will develop some scripts which will give us Moviestorm-like controls within the engine. Also, I've no idea if Unity supports things like lip-synching for the avatars (a ruffle through the book doesn't throw up anything.) Perhaps this is something that Moviestorm themselves could develop? After all, the under-development iPad version has been realised within Unity.
I've also had a quick look at iClone 5 Pro (another prize!) Yes, it looks like it should be up for the job, and after spending time in Unity the notorious iClone UI doesn't look half as daunting as it used to. And iClone has some beautiful water effects, and it is really good for creating natural, organic environments (something that Moviestorm is rather poor at). But there's just something about how things are rendered onscreen which doesn't appeal. Part of me sees it as a challenge - after all I spend a lot of time trying to make my Moviestorm stuff look like it didn't come from Moviestorm, so I guess I could do the same with iClone...