3D Movie Maker was a piece of software released in 1995 by Microsoft Studios. It enables users to create 3D movies with easy-to-use tools and pre-created actors, props, and settings. It features a host by the name of McZee, who explains how everything works. An add-on featuring characters, props, and settings from Doraemon was released, but only in Japan. In 1996, a Spin-Off was released featuring elements from then-popular Nicktoons (Rocko's Modern Life, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters). Stick Stickly hosted the program.
Since you can make pretty much anything with it, hilarity, romance, or reality will ensue. But most people prefer hilarity.
Although the series hasn't been continued or rereleased for 25 years and counting, it still has a very active modding community
. Although most of the mods require the v3DMM expansion, Microsoft has released the game's source code on Github under the MIT license.
Works created using this software include:
- The Blue Shell Incident
- Grand Theft Auto: Escanaba
- Pimp Lando
- Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure
This series provides examples of:
- Action Figure Speech: The program was too primitive to move the lips of any of the characters, so more often than not they end up Milking the Giant Cow just to talk. Only partially averted with characters from the Doraemon expansion (the characters' mouths could move, though they weren't synced to any lines and they still gesticulated wildly).
- Cartoon Creature: McZee is a blue... thing.
- Cloud Cuckooland: Imaginopolis, the main setting of the game.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: McZee is a mild case of this.
- You can make any actor one if you so choose.
- Collection Sidequest: Throughout the movie studios, you can click on random objects to retrieve lost pages of the talent book that McZee accidentally drops in the game's intro.
- Cross-Dressing Voices: You can do this yourself by using female voice clips on male actors or vice versa.
- Crossover: Thanks to the Doraemon pack, you can have anime characters going on adventures with random people.
- Someone also made an unofficial add-on that adds all the Nickelodeon stuff to the base game. Now Stimpy and Doraemon can finally square off in an all-out cat fight!
- There are various Game Mods that add characters and props from just about darn near everything, such as Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, and even things introduced years after the original game such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Among Us.
- Dolled-Up Installment: The Nickelodeon version is mostly the same as the original, only with Nicktoons stuff, different aesthetics, and less content.
- Emote Animation: Overacted ones, to be precise.
- Eye Pop: Rocko and Ren have this action in the Nick version.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: One of the actresses has their face reprinted on the backside of her head that is covered up by her hair.
- Game Mod: Mods can be created by directors to add new textures/models/background using the v3DMM tool.
- Limited Wardrobe: Averted. Every human actor has four different costumes.
- Mad Scientist: Willy.
- Mouth Flaps: Averted. None of the actors (save for the Doraemon characters) have animations for moving their lips.
- Though you can at least change the expressions of the Nicktoon characters, including mouths, playing this straight.
- Milking the Giant Cow: Most characters tend to gesticulate wildly in their animations.
- Randomized Title Screen: There's two different openings that are selected at random. There's also a sticky note next to the "Call for Stick" button on the title screen that always has a different message on it.
- The Smurfette Principle: Averted in the main game, but in the Nickelodeon version, Oblina Monster is the only female character available to work with.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: Bitmap backgrounds with a built in depth map are used so that you can place the 3D actors and objects anywhere in the scene and have them appear properly occluded by foreground objects.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: When you're limited only by your imagination (and the stuff the original game and game mods give you), even allowing you to record your own voice, you can make all kinds of vulgar, violent stuff. There's also no word blacklist, so you can write rude things with the 3D word tool. See Grand Theft Auto: Escanaba, Grand Theft Auto Nick Series, and Grandpa Found the Car Keys for examples.
