Best Tools for Machinima? 149
wrinkledshirt asks: "As a former Creative Writing major with a huge interest in film, I've been thinking about trying to get into Machinima (com, org, and wiki sites -- basically, using game engines to make movies). Probably the most famous use of it for the Slashdot crowd right now is Red vs Blue, which makes use of Halo, but up until recently, most of the other options have involved FPS game engines, which would require a huge investment in time so as to create non-FPS-genre content for non-FPS-genre movies. Now that Sims 2 is here with its video-recording feature (and the promise of more contemporary realism in the expansion packs) and with Pete Molnyeux's The Movies coming out in 2005, is it possible that an amateur writer could make the Machinimatic movies of his or her dreams? Plus, what would the best tools be? What machine would you need? Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?"
Film & Vids (Score:5, Insightful)
Not right now, but I'm sure this is a direction the video games creators are contemplating because it's an area of expected growth. It would certainly make the creation of cinematics much easier for dev teams if machinima was considered part of the engine.
The problem is that in games like Doom 3 for example, the creation of cinematics is scripted heavily and designed into the levels. Models take weeks to build correctly and integrate, and you have to have strong modelling skills to achieve that. There is no separation of set and action or actors, for the most part. I understand that Half Life 2 has changed this kind of static nature, but it's still very early.
The games would have to have quick modelling system built in, or methods for generating random characters and skins, and voices.
I'm sure that in the next twenty years, this is the direction of video games. It would be a smart approach, IMHO.
You also have to consider the comparison between video game sales and box office/rental sales. Video games are beating the movie industry to a pulp, so film as a medium of expression is likely on the way out, unless the business makes some changes and continues to grow and support new vision. Indy film will always be of a higher quality than blockbusters, IMHO.
Look at the reviews for Alexander [imdb.com]. Ebert said the film was crap. That's a film they spent $150mil to create [post-gazette.com]!
With games like Halo 2 grosing $100 mil on the first day, for a much smaller budget compared to Alexander, the bottom line is clear. The age of movies is waning.
Quality of film has declined heavily as far as dramatic content, with the exception of films like LotR. I'm seeing the film expression as being played out for the most part.
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Film & Vids (Score:3, Informative)
Not from personal experience ; but afaik, UnrealEd (the editor for Unreal) supports setting up scenes as you would in 3d-modeling software (eg. Lightwave) ; and assigns controllers to objects/models etc in scenes, thus making it a bit easier to create a movie-like scene (without or with human 'actors').
As the Parent said ; Doom 3 is really -lacking- those features ; and I think that id is hoping for the community to come up with some dece
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2, Interesting)
Certainly Carmack has been devoting a lot of his time to rocketry, and it's probably also fair to say that he's sometimes been narrow-minded in his approach to everything that isn't bread-and-butter first person shooter stuff (fast gra
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
How do you figure? The two are different kinds of entertainment. Movies are passive, video games are active, and while there's lots of overlap in people who enjoy them, some people don't care for one or the other.
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
Compare $100 million in the first day from an item that costs around $50, to $100 in the first weekend that costs $15. I'm not denying $100 in a single day isn't amazing (how much of this income is generated from pre-ordering though?). What I am saying, is that movies are experienced by a much larger audience than video games.
That's not to say that the "struggling" movie industry should raise ticket price
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
as for using a game engine I'm not convinced that its not overly limiting, unless you use it pretty much "as is" wouldn't the time spent modding be better spent in 3D studiomax or something?
if its a cost, or learning curve thing, I would have thought the Neverwinter Nights package might be a good tool, the editor is very
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
to be honest, i think if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well and you much better taking the time to use a proper tool for the job. I'd use
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
Re:Film & Vids (Score:4, Informative)
And in the end that's actually a reasonably large part of where all the real profit comes from. Take a read of this [hollywoodnetwork.com] and just look at all the amazing money shuffling methods they have to sweep any semblance of profit under the carpet. Just look at how the account for video and DVD sales for gods sake! Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy.
Jedidiah.
Re:Film & Vids (Score:5, Insightful)
The other interesting thing is that in the 2003 E3 demo, Valve demonstrated that the models would lip sync with audio in a fairly convincing manner - even in other languages. I can't speak for how easy/automatic this is, but we should know soon as Valve announced today that the full SDK would be available next week. Other little details like specular highlights on a characters eyes giving them that gleam of life really add to the overall effect.
I think it'd probably take a little more work, but HL2 seems very well suited to this type of work. It may not be the absolute best a everything, but least as far as the character animation goes, I don't think anything else can really compare right now.
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
;)
Re:Film & Vids (Score:4, Interesting)
With games like Halo 2 grosing $100 mil on the first day, for a much smaller budget compared to Alexander, the bottom line is clear. The age of movies is waning.
I agree with you general comment, although I need to be picky -- the age of the overblown Bruckheimer-esque piece of crap Hollywood epic, is waning. There are lots of films, usually 'indie', that have very modest budgets but do quite well. Of the top of my head, "Dancer in the Dark" was done with a few digital video cameras that were under $10k. Hollywood needs to decide what is a better use of its money... $150 million on a movie that might break $160 gross? Or a series of 10-20 $5 million movies that make $10 million?
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
Level design and set design (Score:2)
I don't really think that these are mutually independant however. Movies themselves are "scripted," so you don't really need a truly dynamic environment.
Effects like the hellish voices and the moving/glowing/changing walls could be very useful in a horror movie...
The end result really would be a combination of good modelling, good model scripting (many realistic actions and
Environmental physics, open-source libraries? (Score:2)
Game cinematics (the little cut-scenes, etc) I would actually consider to be on-par with some of the best in some cases.
Look at the world-of-Warcraft trailer... my first thought was "Screw the game! When are they going to make a movie?" Of course, that's not what things look like
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2, Interesting)
Couldn't disagree more. The big difference is the sales drop-off. Sure, Halo 2 took in that. In three months time, sales will be through the floor and getting lower and lower. Halo 2 shot it's load, and that's it. Alexander has the following in it's future after it supposedly tanks (and bear in mind the bums on seats around the world will be many
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
So "Alexander" got panned by the critics? Exactly what does that have to do with anything? Do you think the investors who paid for the movie invested their dollars so that they could hear Ebert say how good the movie is? Mov
The Problem (Score:2)
Ahh perhaps you found the problem with both industries?
~mfh
Reality Factory (Score:3, Informative)
Reality Factory is the ONLY freely available open-source engine that is capable of producing quality machinima.
Anything you see in Deus Ex or Max Payne is possible in RF, plus you get the entire source code.
Come join the community & contribute to an engine that benefits us ALL not a single proprietary corporation.
Re:Reality Factory (Score:2)
with that said, I'm not sure if the commercial licenses apply to machinima now that i think about it - since you aren't technically distributing the engine code, just 'using it' to render the movies...
Re:Film & Vids (Score:2)
To me there's no difference between movies and games - both do what they can to entertain or express author's message.
With movies you can't make it interactive (well they could shoot a gazillion possible scenarios so that you could "tip the scales" and take the movie in some particular direction, but for all practical purposes it's there to be shown while people watch).
With games it's interactive but still quite primitive and non-realistic compared to real actors/movies.
Each of them i
Vaguely off-topic drifting back to on-topic reply (Score:5, Interesting)
The sims? Realism? You're kidding right?
We're talking here about simulated "people" who will quite happily beat the crap out of someone one second and talk about the weather to them the next. "people" who will moan and whinge when the bathroom is in use when there are three other free ones in the house. "people" who will happily stuff their faces whilst their kid is crying it's eyes out after shattin itself. "people" who, when they see a fire, go as close to it as they can manage and burn themselves to death instead of calling the fire brigade as any sensible person would do. "people" who play *exactly* the same game of chess every time (technical limitations, I know)
The actual actions they do are vaguely convincing but overall the sims is *not* realistic!
You were right though, it does have a video recording dooby which the strangerhood [strangerhood.com] has used and with some fiddly work you could create a story.
To create any movie you'd need to know what the engine(s) can do inside and out, and if you're using existing characters, you'd need to know their capabilities inside and out too. So to answer, I think anyone could create something half decent but you're looking at a lot of studying and some very careful planning to get it just right.
Oh, just as a complete sidenote and to make this post as worthwhile (debatably) as possible, for anyone who's interested fraps [fraps.com] lets you record pretty much anything happening on your screen such as games etc. so you're not limited to in-game recording to capture footage.
Re:Vaguely off-topic drifting back to on-topic rep (Score:1)
Also, do such hardware capture cards provide benifits with software like fraps?
Re:Vaguely off-topic drifting back to on-topic rep (Score:1)
Fraps is most probably designed for software > hard drive writing.
"contemporary realism" != "realistic" (Score:1)
let's stay off-topic: chess (Score:2)
Re:Vaguely off-topic drifting back to on-topic rep (Score:1)
Voices? (Score:2, Interesting)
just curious.
Re:Voices? (Score:1)
Re:Voices? (Score:1)
Instead of getting your mates round for voice overs or having to do however many yourself it would be nice to do the voices digitaly aswell..
Re:Voices? (Score:1)
so, yes there is but I know little about it
Re:Voices? (Score:5, Funny)
People.
KFG
Re:Voices? (Score:1)
Re:Voices? (Score:5, Funny)
No, but I play one on TV.
KFG
Joey! (Score:2)
Re:Voices? (Score:1)
Although it's purpose it to sing a song, you could use it for dialog.
However, there would be a tremendous amount of work to figure out the proper pitch and rhythm of the dialog. Also, there are only two "vocalists" supported, a male and a female.
If one were to go through all this trouble, the results would most likely be a lot better than the automated solutions that sound like bad 60's robots. {Windows}-U anyone?
Re:Voices? (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you got the rough layout, you can start tweaking for more realism.
The funniest (real-time) use of voice-to-animation I have seen till now, is in (the original) Counter-Strike.
Counter-Strike has voice-support built-in ; and when one speaks, the mouth is (roughly) syncing on it.
THe first time i saw this (they introduced it , i think, two version ago, 1.4) , i laughed my arse off :)
Haven't checked yet if they left it in Counter-Strike: Source.
Oh, god. (Score:3, Funny)
As if the millions of "cartoonists" taking screen shots of video games and adding moronic thought bubbles wasn't enough of a waste of bandwidth... Now we get to have millions of retards creating movies. *sigh*
Atleast out of the 1,030,205 dopes, we'll probably get a few, clever gems.
Re:Oh, god. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like Slashdot comments.
Re:Oh, god. (Score:1)
Re:Oh, god. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh, god. (Score:2)
What we need is central commitee to decide what should be read and watched. That way we will only get the quality stuff.
Bad news is that the current commitee decided that you are not qualified to be on the new commitee, sorry...
Re:Oh, god. (Score:2)
The missing piece (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Find game engine
2.Become Orson Welles
3.Profit!
KFG
Re:The missing piece (Score:1)
Re:The missing piece (Score:1)
1. Find game engine
2. Become Charles Foster Kane
3. Rosebud!
I started using the Doom 3 engine... (Score:2, Funny)
Best Tools (Score:1)
An actor?
New Art Form (Score:3, Insightful)
- Will the game engine show the expressions necessary in your 'actors'?
- Will you be able to adequately time the sound effects and voice-overs? (I do NOT recommend using a synth, unless you are making a comedy)
- Do you have a strong understanding of programming? Because that's what you will need to do to correctly move characters/wireframes/objects/timing/etc
Although the engine will most definitely cut out quite a bit of production time, the best advice is to 'play'... learning how the physics work, and how the engine reacts to commands, etc are key to making something worth watching.
Why not blender? (Score:1)
Would it be suitable for what you want?
Anime!!! ^_^ (Score:2)
Who knows, we could make offspins of popular anime shows... ah, the fandom dream.
OK, count me in! ^_^
Militia 2 (Score:1)
Re:Militia 2 (Score:1)
Currently, it is available to only FilePlanet premium members, but on Monday it will go public. It uses a combination of modified maps and post-production special effects.
http://www.gwfilms.com/ [gwfilms.com]
http://www.chipmunkninjas.com/ [chipmunkninjas.com]
Best game idea ever! Make it a movie! (Score:1)
And imagine the film feature when your sims are cooking dinner as a raging maniac with a chaingun walks through the door and levels everything in the room.
You may even be able to capture some very 'Pulp Fiction'esque scenes, and a lot of M
Re:Best game idea ever! Make it a movie! (Score:1)
All nice and funny until some group of morons decide that computer characters should have civil/social/political rights, organize a "society for abused game characters", get the constitution
Re:Best game idea ever! Make it a movie! (Score:1)
Of course, then we may awaken the beast and there will be billboards on the side of the road protesting people who restart or delete thier characters 'Your sims felt pain 21 days before they were delet6ed'
'I have a dream, that oneday computer characters will rise up and join together, hand in hand, to fight the tyranny of evil gamers, and
Re:Best game idea ever! Make it a movie! (Score:1)
Nah, the cops will never find them after they get thier cars sprayed.
Hmmm... maybe I should open a Pay'N'Spray now and get in on some of this action.
Not at the moment, no (Score:4, Interesting)
The best way I could see to do it (though it was far too much work for the returns) was to hire someone to write a huge number of Python add-ons for Blender, but even that was a bit wishy-washy from a practical standpoint.
If anyone out there who DOES do Blender scripting/hacking wants to give it a shot, drop me a line (mcm at my website above) and maybe we can do something neat.
But really, Machinima isn't really a viable medium for "new" filmmaking until someone puts those peices together for us.
Quake 2 video? (Score:1)
QuakeMovie (Score:3, Interesting)
QuakeMovie and Nehahra (Score:3, Interesting)
That full-length machinima is Nehahra, and is renderered in real-time using the engine. Apart from being the first (well-known, at least) full length machinima, its all displayed by the Quake engine in real-time.
This is unlike the majority of the genre, which is typically distributed only in pre-edited video formats. Of course, THAT has the advantage that the movie will look the same on all video cards *g*
Of course, all these newer engines are far
The tools are there, it's the art content (Score:5, Informative)
Think about it; for a long "movie" you would need an incredible amount of motions, sounds and voices, even when you modularize them as much as possible (walking, looking left/right, radio chatter, ambient nature noises, blahblah). The beauty is in the subtleties, a quick glance, a raised eyebrow, a certain cock to the shoulders when someone starts to talk about a subject that changes the characters mood, etc. Plus, since voice acting is just as important as how cool the models look, you pretty much need a cast, even though it's "ghosts in the machine"
UT2004 (UnrealEngine2.5) (Score:3, Interesting)
Some examples:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793/ [machinima.com]
http://www.unrealtournament.com/news/view.php?id=
Re:UT2004 (UnrealEngine2.5) - corrections (Score:1)
and the right link is:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793 [machinima.com]
and in WMV format:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=794 [machinima.com]
Red vs Blue (Score:2, Insightful)
-Oh you f'cking camping bitch
-It's a legitimate strategy!
I lauged a bit, but somehow I don't see the consept of making a movie out of a PC-game ever becoming a big hit for the average people...
Re:Red vs Blue (Score:1)
Tools (Score:3, Informative)
This means that if Battlechess 3000 does what you want, then use it! It's just that FPS engines are usually designed with flexibility in mind and so are often the easiest games to manipulate into what one wants.
Machinimation (Score:1, Informative)
create another citizen kane? probably not (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft 3D Movie Maker. (Score:2, Informative)
I have YET to find anything simpler. You have actors, props, and text-boxes, and you place them, pick animations and costumes, then animate them manually (where you select animation frames) or automaticly (where they play out their pre-made animations at a preset speed).
You can record dialog right into the movie, and it's saved into the final movie file. (a
Please stop it, or change if you are serious. (Score:1)
Re:Please stop it, or change if you are serious. (Score:1)
If you're as good an animator as you seem to think you are, then why would this ever be a concern for you?
If those same "inane works" have more general appeal than your own creations, wouldn't this just challenge you to pick up your game?
Or is establishing basic skills in a domain enough to claim some kind of territorial hold over it?
I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
I know most people have computers, but game engines can be fussy and platform-specific. This method seems to be more of an idle curiosity than anything. I don't get why people use a format that limits the audience.
Why not go for the most common and stable formats out there - video, streaming video or flash? Make it easy for everyone to see your creation.
Besides, if you don't have animation or art skills, creating your film in a game engine won't make it look all that great. Dragging and dropping motions into game levels just won't cut it. Your characters need to act and emote, which ain't going to happen unless you have acting and animation skills, along with a good set of tools to truly control all aspects of your 3D characters down to the keyframe. Good looking 3D is expensive for a reason.
Just my 2 cents... sorry for the rant.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)
Let me help you out. You are WAY WAY WAY off-base with your assumptions.
The "movies" are created using a game engine. The "movies" are distributed in a video format such as MPEG or WMV.
I don't think anyone's ever created a Machinima "movie" that actually requires a viewer to own the game or platform.
Hope this helps!
Re:I don't get it (Score:2)
Now this just confuses me more, because if your final output is video, why even bother to author in a game engine when there are much, much, better tools to create 3D such as Maya, Softimage, Max, Motionbuilder, etc...
I watched the Red vs Blue stuff. It was funny and the animation looked OK, but it's nothing to write home about.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2)
Well, from my understanding one aspect is the ease with which you can make the animation. RvB was made (as far as I understand) by having 'actors' control the on screen figures in real time, using multi player mode. Once the scene is recorded you can add camera angles etc. Think 'pupeteering
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong. Quake movies are/were pretty popular. See link: http://www.quaketerminus.com/movies.htm
Basically, a ton of content (as well as a palpable universe) is available for an author to work with, without much more than some tinkering (i.e. Quake demo editing). So you can put out something creative and engaging without needing a huge amount of content creation background. No, it's not Pixar
Anyone else played Stunt Island? (Score:1)
Re:Anyone else played Stunt Island? (Score:2)
Good quality Machinima? Tricky in practice... (Score:1)
All the same, machinima quality (just as in films) is neither about engine pixel fill rates, nor coloured shadows, nor even
citizen kane? no problem! (Score:1)
sure. create a sim. name it "kane".
PAT
Machinima toolsets (Score:1)
In answer to the question - currently no-one, and I mean no-one, has a really good idea what the best Machinima engine to choose is. There's just been too much happening in the Machinima world lately - with The Sims 2, Half-Life 2, Rome Total War, Doom 3 and all the rest coming out in quick succession, not even we've had a chance to really give all the available engines a workout.
Plus, with the Half-Life 2 SDK due next week, the Rome Tot
What Would Shakespeare Do? (Score:2, Interesting)
Blender (Score:3, Informative)
Use Blender (blender.org). It's free.
Easy is another matter. You will need to create your enviornments and characters by hand, otherwise risk having your machinima look like it's from the sims or some other game. It works for red vs. blue because of the nature of the jokes. If you were making something else, like "It's a wonderful life" or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" then then stock game models from some game engine might not be appropriate.
Thats a tradeoff you risk in any filmmaking venture though. Are you willing to risk a generic look for a lower budget, or are you willing to find or create the perfect set, character, etc, at the expense of a higher budget and longer production time.
Re:Blender (Score:2, Interesting)
Why Blender probably is the best choice. (Score:2)
Anything you'd want to do with, f.e., the Unreal Editor to make Machinima Clips you'll probably be better of doing with Blender. And maybe even you'll choose to use acutally CGI rendering. The award
The Nethack Engine? (Score:5, Funny)
Heck, there's no way it could possibly be worse than Dungeons & Dragons: the Movie [imdb.com]!
Re:The Nethack Engine? (Score:2)
Re:The Nethack Engine? (Score:2)
Now that would be fun. It would require someone with not life whatsoever, but then, this is
Anyone? Anyone?
It the story that matters (Score:1)
The good book of machinima. (Score:1)
Just pick something and work with it (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a professional level designer, and I can tell you right now, you do NOT need to be a programmer to get the most out of the tools.
you aint gonna CGI citizen cane real soon now (Score:2)
Spraying particles around is great if you want to remake the opening scene of saving private ryan but lacks a certain je ne sais quois when it comes to more intimate moments.
secondly remember that a vast amount of the actors craft is going to be massively expensive (not impossible) to reproduce via cgi.
all the little tics, mannerisms, postures and motions that come naturally would need to be manually reproduced.
Weta could only make Gollum work by mot
Re:you aint gonna CGI citizen cane real soon now (Score:3, Insightful)
Try Open Source Panda3D (Score:3, Informative)
There's an exporter for Maya and 3ds Max models and animation, which makes it quite easy to do a world in Maya, then dump it straight into a realtime engine and add basic or complex interactivity. Scripting is done in python so it's easy do create and expand.
It's pretty versatile too - we've used it for motion-tracked virtual reality, dome projection, 3D polarized projection, desktop pets, and integrated things like MIDI, all sorts of physical interfaces, show control, etc...
A bit of a history lesson (Score:3, Interesting)
http://machinima.com/qml/quake/rgb.htm
As far as I know, this was the earliest example of this mode of entertainment. Of course, it was really weak compared to its sequel:
http://machinima.com/qml/quake/rgb2.htm
The Rangers were one of the most well-recognized clans following the release of the original Quake, mostly for their contributions of fiction pieces and, eventually, these two movies. A cool bunch of guys. I joined up with them a little after their heyday, just in time to spend a little time working on the filming of Ranger Gone Bad 3. In spite of being a really neat effort with a lot of custom Quake content, it was so ambitious for its time that it just never got completed.
While I'm at it, I'll give a little footnote to how great the original Quake was. People sometimes deride it as being nothing drastically innovative from a gameplay standpoint, which was a little bit true in the single player game. However, the multiplayer component forged pretty much all of online multiplayer gaming as we know it. It was the moment of critical mass for the formation of long distance social gaming, and the multiplayer model was good enough that virtually every first person shooter since then is based on it (although these days they tend to incorporate a built-in server browsing utility, which was an independent addition called QuakeSpy back then).
In closing, a little write-up that I happened to enjoy reading: http://www.muppetclan.com/history/
Film making apps: the next killer app. (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be amazing if we could 'direct' a movie with the help of the computer. We should be able to tell the computer 'place this object here', 'place this character here', etc, at a level above 3d object design.
It could be the next killer app.