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Best Tools for Machinima? 149

Posted by Cliff from the motion-pictures-on-PCs dept.
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?"
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Best Tools for Machinima? More

Best Tools for Machinima?

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  • Film & Vids (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:30PM (#10920013) Homepage Journal
    Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?
    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)

      by bairy ( 755347 ) *
      you bastard I thought I had the first 'long-ass reply' post :P

    • Re:Film & Vids (Score:3, Informative)

      by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 )
      You're missing out one engine though : The Unreal Tournament engine.

      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)

        by davew2040 ( 300953 )
        The Unreal engine does look like it has some pretty amazing stuff up its sleave, but you may wish to keep in mind that the basic Doom 3 rendering engine has been finalized for a good three or four years now, with the exception of what constituted minor tweaking along the way.

        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
    • 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.

      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.

      • Not to mention the ONE REASON video games make so much more money: THEY COST MORE MONEY TO SEE (play).

        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
    • I would be facinated to know what sort of budgets were available for Blizzard's intro movies (I'm thinking of Diablo and Starcraft especially) as well as the obvious final fantasy epics.

      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
    • And then another blockbuster comes along and rakes in hundreds of millions (maybe even billions before copyright expiration which will probably continue to be extended by Congress until it's in the 100s of years). If a movie can cost $100 million and then make $200 million or more, that's huge...and a movie can be a huge hit WITHOUT costing that kind of money. Not many businesses where you can potentially make double (or triple or more) your investment in a year or less after the product is released. As

      • Re:Film & Vids (Score:4, Informative)

        by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:16PM (#10920301) Homepage Journal
        Of course the reality is that there are practically no films at all that make a profit. Certainly every big budget film is guaranteed to make a loss. At least, according to the movie studio accountants.

        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)

      by Slack3r78 ( 596506 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:51PM (#10920163) Homepage
      You know, it's interesting that you mention HL2, because I was about to bring up the Source engine as a suggestion for this. While I feel there are better looking engines out there already (Far Cry) in terms of raw visuals, as far as the character animation goes, nothing touches it right now. The facial animations are based on modeling the muscles of the face, making for an incredibly life-like result in comparison to other systems that are out there at the moment.

      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:4, Interesting)

      by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:12PM (#10920276) Journal
      Look at the reviews for Alexander. Ebert said the film was crap. That's a film they spent $150mil to create!

      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?

      • I think you hit it right on the head there. We actually live in a great age for film. The sheer number of giant multiplexes has lead to theaters with tons and tons of extra screens that they can put films on that a smaller audience might enjoy along side the giant blockbusters. Film isn't going anywhere, and I doubt the summer popcorn films are either. Saying the failure of "Alexander" predicts a trend discounts every other giant hit this year (Spiderman 2, Incredibles, etc)
    • The problem is that in games like Doom 3 for example, the creation of cinematics is scripted heavily and designed into the levels

      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
    • 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.

      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
    • Your comments might have some merit if movies and video games were in competition with each other. They're not. Sure, there's a peripheral competition in that they're both competing for a limited pool of "entertainment dollars." But for the most part, they're two different things.

      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)

        by mfh ( 56 )
        Chances are, by the time it plays world wide and then gets released to DVD, it'll make a ton of money. And the investors won't even be thinking about Ebert when they deposit their profits at the bank.

        Ahh perhaps you found the problem with both industries?
        ~mfh

    • Reality Factory (Score:3, Informative)

      by abandonment ( 739466 )
      http://www.realityfactory.ca

      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.
    • Very interesting post!

      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)

    by bairy ( 755347 ) * on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:31PM (#10920020) Homepage
    Now that Sims 2 is here with its video-recording feature (and the promise of more contemporary realism in the expansion packs)

    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.

    • Is there a piece of hardware that will take the CPU (and possibly memmory?) strain from encoding video live?

      Also, do such hardware capture cards provide benifits with software like fraps?

      • I should imagine there's some sort of tv card or similar that will do it although generally it's the speed of the hard drive that takes the strain, not the cpu. An external dvd recorded would if you had it linked to the tv too.

        Fraps is most probably designed for software > hard drive writing.

    • Contemporary realism isn't talking about how realistic something is. It means the story or film takes place in a setting recognizable by our contemporary societal surroundings. It differentiates between stories that take place in a regular, everyday setting versus those that are allowed to have supernatural or speculative elements (such as fantasy/sci-fi/superhero), have distant historical motifs (westerns/medieval), or involve larger-than-life action (spy, war, etc.).
    • "people" who play *exactly* the same game of chess every time (technical limitations, I know)
      Huh? That's one thing a computer can easily solve. No-one said it has to beat SimKasparov.
    • you're looking at a lot of studying and some very careful planning to get it just right.
      Hollywood notwithstanding, one would hope some studying and planning goes into any kind of filmmaking...

  • Voices? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by odyrithm ( 461343 )
    Theres plenty of game engines out there doing the visuals but what about the voices? sound effects? is there even anything out there that can do voice simulation?

    just curious.
    • In the case of red vs blue, the voice is overlayed but with the vast amount of different sounds/voices etc written into games, movies, tv programs etc. these days, and with the power of sound editing software I shouldn't think it too hard to manipulate and accurately time the exact sound you're after.
      • I know about overlaying, what I was trying to ask was; is there any advances in actualy generating voice from what the amiga came with?

        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..
        • I know that fark-rausch [farb-rausch.com] have created such a thing, particularly fr-025 which I *think* has a computer generated voice which sounds pretty good. I'm 99% sure there's a 64k demo with a computer generated yet surprisingly realistic voice but I can't remember which it is.

          so, yes there is but I know little about it

    • Re:Voices? (Score:5, Funny)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:39PM (#10920078)
      is there even anything out there that can do voice simulation?

      People.

      KFG
    • Yes there is [yamaha.co.jp].

      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)

      by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:55PM (#10920184)
      Both Half-Life 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004/2 come with sofware that auto-tweaks skeletal animation (mouth/jaws/lips etc) to sound (speech) files.
      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)

    by eeg3 ( 785382 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:35PM (#10920046) Homepage
    Now that Sims 2 is here with its video-recording feature (and the promise of more contemporary realism in the expansion packs)

    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.

  • The missing piece (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:35PM (#10920049)
    Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?

    1. Find game engine
    2.Become Orson Welles
    3.Profit!

    KFG

  • I started using the Doom 3 engine... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...but everyone who saw my movie said "Hey! You forgot to remove the lens cap!"
  • Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?

    An actor?

  • New Art Form (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Egonis ( 155154 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:36PM (#10920060)
    Although using a game engine to do most of the work, you need to consider quite a bit:

    - 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.
  • I've only just dabbled with blender, but it's supposed to be useable for creating games isn't it.
    Would it be suitable for what you want?
  • If they can make an easily-programmable engine that renders good quality cel-shaded characters, what else can we ask? :)

    Who knows, we could make offspins of popular anime shows... ah, the fandom dream.

    OK, count me in! ^_^
  • You could go the way of the CS movie "Militia 2" and use modding and map making editing to change the game to suit your needs. http://www.fileplanet.com/files/110000/111529.shtm l [fileplanet.com]
  • Take the Sims, get a whole sims community built up, and then open it up for online Grand Theft Auto gaming. You would have to make the sims able to defend themselves, somehow, and I m sure that a lot of sims would get slaughtered on the first day, but it would be funny!
    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

    • You would have to make the sims able to defend themselves, somehow, and I m sure that a lot of sims would get slaughtered on the first day, but it would be funny! 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.

      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

      • I am not sure if it would be murder or genocide, afterall we are talking about a semi-organized effort to rid the entire online community of whatnot of all sim lifeforms.
        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
      • and throw thousands of gamers in jail on charges of murder. ;)

        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)

    by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) <mcm@NOSpaM.1889.ca> on Thursday November 25, 2004 @04:41PM (#10920101) Homepage
    I invested a relatively massive amount of time trying to figure a way to do this kind of thing myself, tho not so much for the purpose of a no-budget movie... I was aiming to be able to rapidly create episodes of a show to blend into an ARG. The problem is there's no good way to do this kind of thing now without a massive investment in a gaming engine (with strings attached, of course). You have to go the old-fashioned route, one way or another...
    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.
  • Long time ago i saw a quake 2 demo/movie that was a jerry springer show set in "the edge" (q2dm1).. It obviously required a lot of efford, but it showed that you dont need top class engines or movie maker tools if you got creativity...

  • QuakeMovie (Score:3, Interesting)

    by uem-Tux ( 682053 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:02PM (#10920227) Homepage
    Me and a few friends once created a Quake1 mod that was specifically designed to help with making movies. To my knowledge it was only used one or two times, but we had a lot of fun making it. It used to reside here: http://www.inside3d.com/qmovie/ but the page has since been taken down. You can still see it in the various internet archives though, I'd imagine. I still have the source and all if anyone's interested in it... As an aside, one of the other programmers on the project went on to create a fell remake of the Quake engine with a feature-length movie and TC to go with it. He also created ScummVM which some of us use to play old LucasArts games on various platforms...
    • Ah, QuakeMovie. Those were the good ol' days, huh Tux? :)

      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)

    by SsShane ( 754647 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:14PM (#10920290)
    The unreal engine has wonderful abilities to create machinima pieces (I'm sure other engines do as well). I created some cinematics for a video game using the engine and I can tell you that the hard part is not having the animations and sounds that you need. Setting up the scenes is not difficult (relatively) once you know the tools and if you have all this stuff handy, or have the time or a person to do quick animations: "Hey Jon, I need an animation of Captain Zer0 scratching his butt...".

    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" :P

  • UT2004 (UnrealEngine2.5) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:14PM (#10920295) Homepage
    Machima isn't all about a game type. You can do it without it. UT2004 offers great tools, using it's "Matinee" system you can create complete movies and together with oc3 entertainment's "imposter" tool you can create great things.
    Some examples:
    http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793/ [machinima.com]
    http://www.unrealtournament.com/news/view.php?id=2 229/ [unrealtournament.com]

  • Red vs Blue (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Andreas(R) ( 448328 )
    I just watched an episode of Red vs Blue, quote:

    -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...
    • odd because everyone that i show red vs blue to has enjoyed it. whether they totally understood what was going on or not, with a little bit of explaining they thought it was rather funny (mostly my parents and non-gaming type in this case)... you just need to have a story that will capture a wider audience

  • Tools (Score:3, Informative)

    by ndogg ( 158021 ) <the@rhorn.gmail@com> on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:22PM (#10920329) Homepage Journal
    As far as Machinima goes, treat games as you would any tool in any other field. If it accomplishes the end you have in mind, then you should use that tool. Never treat the games as ends in and of themselves.

    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)

    by TekMonkey ( 649444 )
    Try this program called Machinimation: http://www.fountainheadent.com/n.x/fe/Home/Product ions/Machinimation It's not free, but I've heard its good.

  • create another citizen kane? probably not (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cinemabaroque ( 783205 ) <sophist112358@yahoo.com> on Thursday November 25, 2004 @05:36PM (#10920382) Journal
    instead of actually creating a movie this might end up being a damn good way to storyboard (and pre-production is the most important part of successful movie making).
  • 3D Movie Maker is an old (1995) game MS made, it's aimed at kids, but you can do some very nice simple movie making with it.

    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 .3mm file, which contains
  • I suspect that others here who are animators or who do something with motion graphics are about as discontent as I am about this emerging field. With the onset of tools like this to create "movies", the market will now be flooded with inane work by people who have no concept of film making. Similarily to flash being used by people who should have their right hand cut off, we will eventually see endless episodes of swill. I have a suggestion, instead of piggy backing off someones video game creation, why don
    • With the onset of tools like this to create "movies", the market will now be flooded with inane work by people who have no concept of film making.

      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)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @06:02PM (#10920482)
    I'm an animator and I've made my share of films. Like most filmmakers, I'm interested in getting people to see my work. That usually involves distributing it in the more ubiquitous formats.

    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.
    • I doubt anyone would leave this in the game format when it comes to distribution. After setting up the sequence you want use a progam to capture it to mpeg I'm assuming that doing everything in one shot using something like the halflife engine would be brutally hard to pull off. Instead make all your small clips, capture and edit like you want.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't get it

      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!
      • OK... I see...

        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.

        • For the same reason someone installs Linux on a cash register. Because it's there.

        • 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...

          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)

        by davew2040 ( 300953 )
        I don't think anyone's ever created a Machinima "movie" that actually requires a viewer to own the game or platform.

        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
  • That game was about making machinima, way ahead of it's time, and still has yet to be superceded.
    • For true... the thing had tons of built-in models, a HUGE seamless outdoor location (remarkable for the '286 era), and a nifty editing system with multiple cameras. Oh, and flight simulation with about 15 planes :) Customization was a pain, and character animation was non-existent, but I think the limitations bred more creative filmmaking. I still run it in Dosbox.
  • To make good-looking machinima, you need both to direct and to do: that is, to script, conceptualise, build, design, light, animate, texture, audition, record, lipsync, direct, choreograph, programme, customise, optimise, and tweak like crazy - and then keep at it for months on end. And if that sounds like making a whole game or CG movie yourself, then you're starting to get the idea.

    All the same, machinima quality (just as in films) is neither about engine pixel fill rates, nor coloured shadows, nor even
  • Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?

    sure. create a sim. name it "kane".

    PAT

  • Yikes, another Slashdotting! Ok, everyone, batten down the hatches...

    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
  • I recently saw a review for Stephen Greenblat's "Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare". While I was in school, it was a cliche that S. would have worked in television if he lived in the 20th century. But I wonder what would he would be doing in the 21st. Maybe it would be this?

  • Blender (Score:3, Informative)

    by gorehog ( 534288 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @07:53PM (#10920936)
    If you're looking to get out cheap and easy I can only help with cheap.

    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)

      by SubtleNuance ( 184325 )
      Is there not a repository of 3d models somewhere on the net? Surely animators/modelers share their work , isnt there a standard model format and tonnes just 'out there'?
  • Blender [blender3d.org] is an industry strength 3D package, has a full fledged game engine and even has it's own Video NLE built in. It's been used for the animatics during the Spiderman Movies preproduction. It's newest release (just 3 weeks ago) has a large amount of new features that move it to a new, very professional level.
    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)

    by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Thursday November 25, 2004 @08:17PM (#10921024) Homepage
    I really want to see the movie about the intrepid '@' and his adventures in a world of dangerous 'D's, obnoxious 'o's and ravening 'r's. The scene where he's backed into a dead-end '#' by a swarm of killer 'b's, with nothing but a ')' to defend himself, and then his faithful 'f' saves the day, should have audiences laughing and cheering.

    Heck, there's no way it could possibly be worse than Dungeons & Dragons: the Movie [imdb.com]! :)
  • We use the Star Wars Battlefront engine, and for our purposes works fine. Granted this is all a great experiment, but the story is what needs to come first. http://www.galaxyfaraway.net/ [galaxyfaraway.net]
  • While it doesn't cover all the latest game engines, I found The Art of Machinima [machinima.org] by machinima pioneer Paul Marino to be a great read and suitable for someone just getting involved with machinima. The book includes a demo version of Fountainhead Entertainment's Machinimation (based on the Quake III game) and covers machinima-making using Unreal Tournament 2004 as well. It even covers capturing your favorite vid game into your PC (ala Red Vs. Blue) for machinima purposes. I do wish the book covered some of
  • Making a scene or a movie using videogame tools isn't meant to be a replacement for real actors, or Pixar quality animation. It is just another tool, a different palette to get your ideas across with. One of the appealing things about using a game engine as a movie making tool is, it is DIRT CHEAP. Try the Doom3 engine, if it isn't doing what you want, you blew $55. Move on.

    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.
  • Firstly remember game engines are built around action.

    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
    • I think it's a totally different thing to attempt to add Gollum to Jackson's LOTR then to make a gollum which would fit into a totally cgi environment. Also I think Jackson milked Gollum for all he was worth. If you couldn't do him quite as well, you'ld just have to keep the camera moving more and generally further back, not 6 inches from his face, everything still for a few seconds! I think machinima will be an artform with limited success, and the people who do have success will probably go on to bec

  • Try Open Source Panda3D (Score:3, Informative)

    by mistermund ( 605799 ) on Friday November 26, 2004 @01:23AM (#10922294)
    Developed originally by Disney VR Studio for Toontown Online [toontown.com], we use the Panda3D [cmu.edu] game engine at the Entertainment Technology Center [cmu.edu] at Carnegie Mellon University [cmu.edu] for our Building Virtual Worlds class. A lot of the projects result in machinima-like content.

    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)

    by davew2040 ( 300953 ) on Friday November 26, 2004 @04:51AM (#10922920) Journal
    ...as well as a plug for my old Quake clan.

    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 ...which was actually pretty entertaining, and in that day in age, pretty revolutionary. They even went ahead and created some QuakeC mods to help them through the "filming" process (which was all done over the Internet, I think with a number of latency-challenged modem users).

    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)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Friday November 26, 2004 @09:15AM (#10923752)
    I know a lot of folks that want to do their own animes, but they simply can't, because it takes too much time, effort and talent. So instead they write fan fiction.

    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.

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