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On-line Documentary on Machinima
Hugh "Nomad" Hancock writes "Over at Machinima.com we've released "Artery: Machinima", a 22-minute broadcast TV program on the Machinima movement- film-making in real-time 3D. Originally broadcast on Scottish TV station STV, this documentary includes interviews with Uwe Girlich, the guy who got the whole thing started, sci-fi writer Charlie Stross, who is working with the Machinima group Strange Company, award-winning film director Peter Rasmussen, and Machinima makers including the Ill Clan (Hardly Workin'), Strange Company (Eschaton) and Nanoflix. Plus, lots of swords!" There's also a BitTorrent link to the documentary, courtesy GameTab.
I am a writer of alternative worlds, a sculptor of different realities and narratives taking place in such realities. I also do music that helps to describe these environments. However, I've always thought that the next logical step is film, and after that whatever comes beyond--immersive virtual environments. And yet, it is very difficult to get ahold of the technology and creative teams who would want to do this purely for the love of art, for the drive to create something new.
Are there any resources for the "imagineers" out there, like myself? Where we can contact those who are more technically oriented and feed them ideas, worlds, concepts, and general feelings and allow them to aid us realizing such visions? I've often seen that very good computer animators/modelers, etc. are without GREAT ideas at the core, and thus while technically adept, their creations are more pale than they could be.
In other words, where do animators looking for material and starting points "hang out" on the internet? Where can I start proposing my ideas to turn into realities?
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
Machinima is (as I understand it) the creation of film or movies through the use of game engines, such as the Quake III engine, or Unreal Tournament engine.
the blood has stopped pumping, and he's left to decay
the me that you know is now made up of wires
This guy is posting to several boards now, hyping this up. I don't have a problem with claiming machinima is cool, but words like "new art form" and "the first real-time 3D movies" are definitely over the top.
If you define "machinima" as using real-time 3D to make movies, it's been done since 1994 (at least) and even done professionally. There was a project at Disney that used 3D graphics hardware to play movies in real-time, with characters, dialog, and everything. It was even interactive if you wanted (or automatic, if you did nothing). You could watch on a monitor if you didn't like the VR gear that went along with the official ride. But it was not a game and the "engine," called the "player," was custom-built. Disney had other examples of movies rendered using real-time, like the Cyberspace Mountain ride. The 3D hardware was essentially a big decompressor and video-mixer, giving better compression ratios using polygons than any block encoder ever did.
A third example, from the game community itself, is Dungeon Keeper II, which used its own 3D engine to animate the ends of the levels with some semblance of story. I don't even expect it was the first or the best, but it was the first I remember.
Now, 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. As an art form, it is essentially defined by the styles and restrictions the game engines impose, just as any art form is shaped by the tools it uses. But lose the game engine and it's just a relatively poor (compared to pixar) animated movie.
But then to ship the resulting movies as AVI files? That's the biggest cop out I've ever seen in any art form. If no one was allowed to see a great painting except as a photograph, we'd call it photography, not painting.
Ultimately, for machinima to be a real art-form, it needs to deliver the goods in the form they're created. Otherwise, who cares whether you used Maya or Quake to make your animation and who can even prove it was rendered in real-time and not frame-by-frame?
"...traditional CGI (Computer Ganerated Imagery) techniques... productions can be dsitributed over the internet..."
Sadly, due to the mind-blowing resources needed to do this, we had to leave something out of our PCs. We 86'd the spel-chekur.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As an early Quake movie maker, I have to say, I really hate the word "Machinema". I mean, I really hate that word. It's such a lame word, I won't touch game-engine movies because my work would be classified as "Machinema".
To put it another way, would Steven Speilburg make movies if they were called dingleberries? He can get a Grammy for Best Drama Dingleberry. He'll be featured in documentaries called Dingleberry Magic.
I really hate that word.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
But hey, what is this!?
/home/joebob/artery-machinima.zip
saving: artery-machinima.zip (150.5 MB)
percent done: 2.0
time left: 12 hour 15 min 20 sec
download to:
download rate: 6 kB/s
upload rate: 20 kB/s
I'm giving more than I'm getting! Has the entire world gone mad?
Because you can't open a zip file if the end of the file is not present. Its a built in safeguard to make sure you ("you" in this case is you average idiot trying to download something off of the "interweb") get the entire file.
And pardon me for saying, but until you work out a less offensive manner in which to approach the 'labor' on a project, you probably also need to work further on your writing skills. Understanding the why's and wherefore's of social graces is to understand the human condition. And if writers don't understand the human condition, they're no place.
But anyway. .
Unfortunately, most of the labour will never get the opportunity, nor will they be able to raise their own energy level to a point where they can begin to realize their ambitions. They usually end up by default, working for others. And this is where the media industry comes from.
Enter Machinima. Dirt cheep. Fast. Low quality.
Three things can happen;
1. The technically able people will FINALLY be able to work on their own projects.
2. The technically able people will see the low quality and say, "Pass."
3. The technically able will be faced again with having to come up with new excuses for their lack of motivation.
Now finally. .
If your work is amazing and provocative enough, then you should be able draw to you people who will be willing to set aside their own goals and who will want to work on yours; to make your goals their own. --But make no mistake; your work has to be big and bright, or you will only draw to you the lower-end of craftspeople. So get some of your stuff published. Get it out there. There are millions of ways. --Build a browsable webpage version of your world/s. Heck, if it's really that important to you, you might even consider learning some of the technical craft yourself.
There now. --Aren't you sorry you solicited advice from a legion of keyboard jockies?
-FL
What if game engines and machinima are the first step in this 'do it yourself' movie? Now all someone needs to release is software that makes the directing and editing of such a movie very simple, and BAM! new generation of home movie making. I wonder what kind of software can be used to simplify this work and enable Joe Everybody to get their hands dirty in the wonderful world of home video production.
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Is it just me, or are these Strange Company characters more than a little full of themselves? Other than the Ill Clan, I can't think of any Machinima I've seen that has been worth half a damn. Plus, for such a "fast" system of filmmaking, most of these machinima producers seem to take their own sweet time actually coming out with any real product. When they do, its a victim of its own hype. For example, look at the Matrix series. "You have to see it for yourself", the banner declares. Well, I did, and here's what I thought: Amazing. Trinity runs across a room, and a computer explodes. That's just about the most innovative thing ever. Whoop. I don't think Hollywood has anything to worry about in the near future.
Actually, I think the simplest answer is that, amazing as it sounds, they can be compressed further by using zip. For example, I just downloaded the Militia 2 movie that people have been mentioning, and it looks like they reduced the WMV file size another 10% by zipping it. I have noticed this before with other formats too. Makes you wonder why these formats don't have this final compression built into them.
I'll turn the corner when CG porn turns me on, and not a second sooner!
Current CG chicks leave me limp.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Arguably the most professional and widely viewed machinima so far is the music video for Zero 7's "In the Waiting Line", produced by my wife's company,
Fountainhead Entertainment. This was a real, commercial production using machinima tools.
It was neat to see the Q3 engine playing on MTV, but it made me greatly regret the quantized normals in Q3 models, which resulted in a noticeable popping on the environment maps. This was largely my motivation for adding per-pixel environment map calculation to the new Doom engine (under the ARB2 path, at least).
John Carmack