Machinima Branching Out Beyond Game Assets

ILL Clinton writes "Animation World Magazine's website has a nice article about the current state of machinima, which is the process of making movies using real-time game technology. The article features a Quicktime movie from what is probably the most beautiful machinima movie so far, 'Anna' (created using Quake 3) by Fountainhead Entertainment. Also featured are quotes and mentions of other Machinima movie-makers and their latest works, including a new piece to be broadcast on Scottish TV by Strange Company, and the latest live performances by The ILL Clan animator/improvisers. (As my name suggests, I'm one of them.) Interestingly, the article focuses on machinima makers who create their own 3D assets, as opposed to re-using those that come with whatever game is being used to make the movie."

Comments

Noticeable In Games, Too.

[FlipmodePlaya]

I was just reading an IGN article that noted RE4 will have all of its cinemas use the in-game engine for rendering, rather than using pre-rendered FMVs. This trend is sweeping through all sorts of games. The FF series, which used pre-rendered backgrounds on all of its PSX games, now uses rendered ones. Now that graphics have advanced to the point where cinemas can be processed in real time as well as they can be premade, this technique will only grow.

Re:Noticeable In Games, Too.

[alphaseven]

I was just reading an IGN article that noted RE4 will have all of its cinemas use the in-game engine for rendering, rather than using pre-rendered FMVs. This trend is sweeping through all sorts of games.

I think Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 was the first game to really popularize doing FMV-style sequences "in engine".

You're right a lot of games are abandoning pre-rendered FMV, though I did like how some of the FF games, like FFVIII, would have near-seamless transistions between FMVs and in-game action.

Red Vs. Blue

[zedpol]

I recently discovered Red Vs. Blue, it is made using the halo engine.

http://www.redvsblue.com

The stories are simple but well done with humor that i would guess most slashdotters would appreciate

Full version of Anna

[nacturation]

You can download it here. Quite the stunning work!

Excellent machinima source

[Nomihn0]

http://machinima.com/ is an excellent repository of machinima created in a number of different game engines. It also contains articles, interviews, and tutorials on the creation of machinima and its current state in the game and art world.

Re:Annoying thing about alot of Machinima

[ILL Clinton]

In the early days of Machinima, most movies were released in-engine, meaning that the movie came in the form of a really huge text file called a demo, which could be played using the game it was created in, usually Quake or Quake 2.

There are a lot of reasons we don't do that anymore, and they have nothing to do with protecting assets. We release our movies in Quicktime so that people can watch them. Not many people have a copy of the Quake 2 mod, "BeefQuake" on their system. Quake 2 is free, but most other games cost $50. We don't want to limit our audience to just the people who happen to own the game we used for our engine. And the game engines tend to be very fickle about how they display the images, different processors and 3D engines deal differently with the graphics.

Another important reason is that we don't do any editing in-engine anymore. Back in 1999, when we were using Quake, it wasn't so easy to edit video on a PC, so using Machinima was actually a better solution. Now, editing video is technically easy, and editing in-engine is a major hassle.

So, we create the movies in-game, we edit them in Premier or Final Cut, and we release them in web-friendly, easily downloadable video formats.

Incidentally, there are still some Machinima movies out there that you can watch in-game. Our first two movies, "Apartment Huntin'" and "Hardly Workin'" can both be viewed in their original formats, Quake and Quake 2 respectively. But how many people still have those games on their system, or want to spend 2 hours downloading them, when they can just watch a Quicktime?