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You guys are missing some of the best episodes! Like the whole, "I could tell you what it wasn't doing" skit.

http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=940

I never had much interest in GTA:SA (not a fan of the 90's gang land genre), but a fellow member of the Machinima community had created a movie studio mod for it (Discussion here) and I really, really, wanted to check it out.

Unfortunately I didn't catch wind of this project until after the Hot Coffee mess, and the retailers had already re-stocked with the "fixed" copy of the game. Needless to say I was no longer motivated to spend my money.

The only one you can blame here is R* for not disclosing all the naughty 'bits' (pun intended) when up for ERSB review. The media response was predictable: childish, immature, and embarrassing when overseas. You know, the usual for us Americans.

Anyway, modders are essential for PC games, they keep the game content fresh, (thus keeping the game on store shelves longer) and players get to play game developer and train for that line of work. (Not to mention all the unique new game play modes and art style innovations) To shun modders is the same as shunning your developers. Bad move not matter how you look at it.

For those of you who don't want to deal fileplanet (*shudder*):
http://files.machinima.com/films/quake/

I think if this public service announcement teaches us anything, it's that voice debate on the Internet is a bad thing.

Wait Mr. Lucas, you mean you're just now hearing about Machinima? We've been doing it for 10 years now! Well, with Lucas on board maybe the market for niche pre-vis real time 3D tools will kick up finally. All I can say is, open source Lucas, OPEN SOURCE!

Guess all these people must be mediocre.

Check This great machinima movie, it closes the subject of porn and internet, anyway for normal people :)

THAT sniper won't be making any complaints. ... and why should Skynet care? Accusations identify targets.

It gets very simple once you welcome our new networked shooter overlords.

See the video at http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=118

I love sci fi books, I'm glad someone is doing this. I have a palm m500 (all other palms suck for pure book reading) set up specifically to read books.

Anyway I think the site is /.ed it took about 5 mins to load here so I'm going to paste the direct bit torrent links that are on his site:
RTF text format:
http://files.machinima.com/torrents/accelerando-rt f.zip.torrent
HTML:
http://files.machinima.com/torrents/accelerando-ht ml.zip.torrent

He has like almost a dozen formats (pdf, palm doc, ascii, etc etc), so check out his page for more.

I love sci fi books, I'm glad someone is doing this. I have a palm m500 (all other palms suck for pure book reading) set up specifically to read books.

Anyway I think the site is /.ed it took about 5 mins to load here so I'm going to paste the direct bit torrent links that are on his site:
RTF text format:
http://files.machinima.com/torrents/accelerando-rt f.zip.torrent
HTML:
http://files.machinima.com/torrents/accelerando-ht ml.zip.torrent

He has like almost a dozen formats (pdf, palm doc, ascii, etc etc), so check out his page for more.

This is great news... The rovers have been going on WAAY beyond their intended lifespan...

Why must we always consider this kind of thing "good news"? No one ever talks about the people who are hurt by this kind of "scientific endeavor." Oh, the limanity!

As a Machinima producer in my spare time, and a bittorrent junkie, I find a service/app like this to be ideal! I create video content for shits and giggles and release it for free at festivals and my community site http://www.machinima.com/ anyway. There are a lot of people in the world just like me and my rag-tag group who still make art and film for people to enjoy, not to charge for.

Sometimes we have a message, sometimes a new rendering technique, and sometimes we just want to entertain, but we're not so greedy or proud as to charge 20-30 bucks for DRM disk and downloads. People like us HATE the broadcast flag, DRM, and Hollywood in general making content pushes more difficult. While this won't kill TV, it sure will help indies without corporate agendas find a voice.

sites like Machinima.com use bittorrent to distribute legal files. Legal torrents is a site like suprnova that doesn't tolerate illegal content. A mod team that I'm in in fact uses bit torrent to distribute, and a service like this would be well appreciated. By the way, a file doesn't have to be overly large to justify using bit torrent. I've downloaded *legal* files that are only a few megabytes big. (Firefox comes to my mind quite quickly)

But yes, there are plenty of legal files.

My box is fine, thanks! I think it would probably cope with a real front-page link, as not much is dynamic most of the content is static or could be switched to a static version quickly if not.

I've setup a few webservers like Machinima's which have survived a /. attack before.

My friend, what you are describing is called Machinima - go HERE to find out more and see some great indie game-based animation. Maybe it'll inspire you to make your own movie of Doom 3 to spread round the underground.

ofcourse it's not imposter but "impersonator"
and the right link is:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793
and in WMV format:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=794

ofcourse it's not imposter but "impersonator"
and the right link is:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793
and in WMV format:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=794

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/
http://www.unrealtournament.com/news/view.php?id=2 229/

Well, I think its a really good idea anyway, has there been anything else like this done before?

machinima.com
machinima.org
Machinima FAQ

So here you go so you don't have to look for stuff. Most of the popular machinima films can be found on machinima.com, these awards are from the Halo community so the most popular films are at XboxOttawa, home to Fire Team Charlie Productions, the famous RedvsBlue, and ThatWeasel. Tonnes and tonnes of videos are up for prizes and awards, trick vids, tutorials or documentaries as well, browse through a major list of all halo videos here at Halo.Bungie.Org. And in case you hadnt seen this awards show last year it was huge, and got a few mentions on slashdot here and here

Looking forward to seeing a game engine used for something other than a game. Hey, some day soon I bet Hollywood will be using game engines for their special effects, as it'll all be rendered in real time, which will save time.

It hasn't hit Hollywood yet, but there's a very active scene around "Machinima". Slashdot has posted stories about machinima before, as well, such as the Anachronox movie.

Looking forward to seeing a game engine used for something other than a game. Hey, some day soon I bet Hollywood will be using game engines for their special effects, as it'll all be rendered in real time, which will save time.

It hasn't hit Hollywood yet, but there's a very active scene around "Machinima". Slashdot has posted stories about machinima before, as well, such as the Anachronox movie.

At the same time, for all its grandure, I am not sure that open source techniques are able to reproduce something the likes of a major movie. "Open source" music is certainly possible and profitable and has existed officially or not for thousands of years.

3D animation and digital video editing is becoming a LOT easier as computers get more powerful, and will continue this way as long as they dont bring in their vile "trusted" computing platforms. (more like... "WE" dont "TRUST" you)

I point out these examples:

Animwatch All sorts of indie 3D animated films

This hame made retro star trek episode

Rocketmen vs Robots

Machinima films

lots of other examples... red vs blue, killer bean, rustboy, brickfilms

These films are usually better than some of the that hollywood comes out with. So don't discount the 'opensource' film scene which is still in it's infancy. (and needs another matrix trilogy to fully revolutionize filmmaking ;)

Realtor: Speaking of which, remember. This guy's a little strange. He doesn't like lumberjacks. Whatever you do, don't let on the fact that you're lumberjacks.
Lenny: We're carrying axes though.
Larry: Well, we got them at Taco Bell. They give them away free with every new taco.
Lenny: Mmm, tacos.

Too bad they only offer it as a Quicktime now. The best way to watch any machinima is through a demo file with the custom models, sounds, and maps using the actual game if it's possible. You might be able to get it through machinima.com if you get under their bandwidth limit. The most famous machinima out there right now would be Red vs. Blue. It's nice that the concept it getting a higher profile.

One is Rogue Farm and the other is GAME. Apparently GAME is both for broadcast and console delivery. You can interact with each episode somehow.

agreed

and many talented people are involved in these productions, just slide by machinima.com and check out the list of artists

technolgy inclined people should at the very least acknowledge the innovation that is machinima

Slashdot adds spaces to any unbroken text longer than 'n' characters. Preview is your friend! If you want to make a link, you use the
Which produces: link text here

Slashdot adds spaces to any unbroken text longer than 'n' characters. Preview is your friend! If you want to make a link, you use the
Which produces: link text here

For some possible applications, check out machinima.com - film-making in real time using game engines.

We need some open source movie making

You should check out machinima, the making of movies using 3D game engines. You can have actors, costumes, vehicles, sets, lighting, and special effects for free. Most of it so far has been pretty lame, but Red vs. Blue, made with the Halo engine, is hysterically funny and has become pretty successful. (Season 2 debuts at Lincoln Center soon.)

It's not "open source" exactly, but it does put a lot of tools in the hands of would-be indie filmmakers.

I'm personally rooting for Armadillo Aerospace

Me too, because they're the local boys (and girl). But the SS1 folks are breaking the sound barrier while Armadillo is still working on their fuel mixture. It just doesn't look too good for Carmack & Co, at least not for the X-Prize.

Hopefully, though, they'll still be in the running for future commercial applications. Sometimes, it's better to be second or third...

They were available -- until this article got posted.

Now they're stuck on the server, vainly trying to make their way against a veritable SYN flood.

Navigate to google.com.

Copy and paste Machinima into the search window.

Search.

Read.

Introduction What is machinima?
An introduction to the revolutionary new medium for ultra-low-budget computer-generated animation.

machinima

Actually, that sounds like a cool idea. There is of course the machinima genre, but it would be cool to hava a GNU/Movie tool or development environment rather than using game engines, which seem to be a little too limited to really make advanced movies. Does anyone know of any ongoing projects in this direction?

Some of these are entertaining, but nothing compared to the laughs you'll get from the good old days of quake movies.

Check out the: History of Quake movies

Then procede to download and be amused by:

The original and the best: Operation Bayshield!

And another hugely entertaining classic: Blahbalicious

Paul Marino of the Ill Clan also wrote a piece on this program, which you can find here.

There's a little stuff on RvB there, as well as details on the Ill Clan's Machinima ballet (!) piece.

if you want to define "Machinima" as using Game Engines and their free (sometimes open source) editors as the "tools," then we're in the realm of reason.

I can confirm that when I coined the term, that was what it meant. People were beginning to make stuff in Unreal, Half-Life, etc. as well as pieces that didn't use the original games as the basis for their plots - but they were still describing such things as "Quake movies".

That term was inaccurate, and likely to put off creative people who wanted to make something other than recammed deathmatches. It seemed we needed a new word and I cobbled one together.

Of course semantics evolve with use, and these days the people claiming to make "machinima" do tend to include stuff made in real-time engines that are not game engines.

But the interesting stuff is not the gradual increase in the use of real-time rendering at some (e.g. previewing) stage in a traditional animation process.

The key aspect to contemporary machinima is that one takes well-established techniques (e.g. live performance recordings later edited together) from traditional real-world film-making, and applies them to work in a virtual (and digital) environment. You also skew said techniques to take advantage of things you can do better in that environment - you are less constrained by real-world physics or expenses during filming, and you have more powerful and expressive representations to work with in post-production.

The result is something substantially different than either traditional film or animation. Their illegitimate offspring is a new production technique, and the groups doing machinima claim it can be significantly cheaper and more flexible.

But then to ship the resulting movies as AVI files? That's the biggest cop out I've ever seen in any art form.

Personally I'd love to see more machinima distributed in a way that allows client-side rendering. It offers exciting quality/file-size ratios (framerate and resolution increase with the client's processing power, think 3D Flash) and also interesting story-telling techniques (e.g. allow the viewer limited control over playback without letting them escape the overall narrative.)

But in practice people have found that "native" machinima is as yet difficult to distribute in an easy-to-run manner. It's simpler for the viewer to play an AVI than to install a new playback engine.

I continue to hope we will see more native machinima, but the form of distribution doesn't need to change for film-making in a virtual digital environment to matter as a production technique.

--Anthony.

if you want to define "Machinima" as using Game Engines and their free (sometimes open source) editors as the "tools," then we're in the realm of reason.

I can confirm that when I coined the term, that was what it meant. People were beginning to make stuff in Unreal, Half-Life, etc. as well as pieces that didn't use the original games as the basis for their plots - but they were still describing such things as "Quake movies".

That term was inaccurate, and likely to put off creative people who wanted to make something other than recammed deathmatches. It seemed we needed a new word and I cobbled one together.

Of course semantics evolve with use, and these days the people claiming to make "machinima" do tend to include stuff made in real-time engines that are not game engines.

But the interesting stuff is not the gradual increase in the use of real-time rendering at some (e.g. previewing) stage in a traditional animation process.

The key aspect to contemporary machinima is that one takes well-established techniques (e.g. live performance recordings later edited together) from traditional real-world film-making, and applies them to work in a virtual (and digital) environment. You also skew said techniques to take advantage of things you can do better in that environment - you are less constrained by real-world physics or expenses during filming, and you have more powerful and expressive representations to work with in post-production.

The result is something substantially different than either traditional film or animation. Their illegitimate offspring is a new production technique, and the groups doing machinima claim it can be significantly cheaper and more flexible.

But then to ship the resulting movies as AVI files? That's the biggest cop out I've ever seen in any art form.

Personally I'd love to see more machinima distributed in a way that allows client-side rendering. It offers exciting quality/file-size ratios (framerate and resolution increase with the client's processing power, think 3D Flash) and also interesting story-telling techniques (e.g. allow the viewer limited control over playback without letting them escape the overall narrative.)

But in practice people have found that "native" machinima is as yet difficult to distribute in an easy-to-run manner. It's simpler for the viewer to play an AVI than to install a new playback engine.

I continue to hope we will see more native machinima, but the form of distribution doesn't need to change for film-making in a virtual digital environment to matter as a production technique.

--Anthony.

For those who remember this old article about Quake done Quick, they are also hosted and part of machinima.com.

Bah, I'd rather see more well-done short segments, like the unbelievably funny Apartment hunters short, rendered in Quake.

--

I first thought this was a story about movies made with video games- as seen on Machinima. Not only are there the independant efforts there, but reportedly the Unreal engine was used for 'animatic' storyboarding of Minority Report and maybe a couple of other movies. I can't find a link for that one, so I might have just made it up.

It's already out already out and it's free.

Okay there's no Angelina Jolie and I have no idea if the plot is good, but at least it is faithful to the original game. :-)

I can just see the short film at Machinma now.

"Multi-Player Gaming Arena Morphs Into Theater!"

That sounds a lot like machinima.

I had to ask myself *when*, not *if*, this actually might be the way movie theaters work. ... I can easily see the day when a photorealistic movie could be generated solely by the computer.

There are "movies" being distributed now that work very similar to the way that you have described.
These are not big productions, though, and they are definitely not photorealistic.
If you are interested, there is at least one web site devoted to the movies: Machinima.

The nascent art of machinima, which involves using 3D game engines to make desktop movies, could benefit from a practical way to record game output faster. (It would also be nice to export directly to .AVI format for editing in Premiere or Avid, but that's another wishlist.)

http://www.machinima.com/files.php ...

http://www.planetquake.com/qdq
http://www.machinima.com/qdqfilms

Oh, quick note since the last Machinima-related post on /. attracted some comments - Machinima.com has been redesigned, now with Actually Usable(TM) technology!

Quake had the best mods, ever. Hands down. Threewave CTF absorbed much of my time i should have spent studying and can be directly attributed to my poor ACT scores (I spent the entire night prior engaged in a ferocious clan battle against a german clan. We won, but the price paid was evident on my ACT scores...which I'll refrain from disclosing ;)).

And what about Quake Rally ? Jesus, those were some memories there. Really innovative control scheme that's just now catching on in other games. It did some really fantastic stuff with the Quake engine, but it just didn't seem as off the wall as.... Target Quake !!! God. A side scroller built on the Quake engine.. fucking _golden_ stuff there. Brilliant idea.. kinda reminded me of Abuse but in 3D.. :)

Oh hell, and what about the movies available for Quake? Remember Blahbalicious ? How about Operation Bay Shield ? Apartment Huntin ? Hell, the massive 4 hour Nehahra ?

Seriously, I haven't uninstalled Quake since 1996, i just keep transfering it over to my new hard drives whenever I upgrade. How the hell could I risk losing the ability to play Zerstorer or Scourge of Armagon ?


hehehe, i bet you thought i was going to forget the Quake Done Quick movies, didn't you? ;)