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Best Tools for Machinima?
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?"
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. 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.
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.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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 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 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.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
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.
moo
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.
Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?
1. Find game engine
2.Become Orson Welles
3.Profit!
KFG
...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?
--
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 got the perfect game for you if you want to recreate a realistic stutter for one of the charecters.
http://www.fraps.com/
-nt-
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?
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
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
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 Mexican standoffs like in 'True Romance'
And think of how much fun it would be!
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
If you have dreams of making movies, then what's stopping you from writing a script? It's not like "machinima" is suddenly the only way to making movies or animation.
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.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Second Life is a non-free ( as in speech ) but nevertheless very open, general, and powerful virtual world platform. You can build your sets and dress your characters in-game, and have real people control the characters. You'll need to dub in your own voice work, but that's true of virtually every other game engine. You might even be able to cut a deal with Linden Labs, the principal developer, to use some of their resources for free or at a discount rate if your project is interesting enough to attract publicity.
http://secondlife.com
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...
I'm producing a sitcom in http://www.secondlife.com/ which seems like the perfect environment for machinema considering that the world is BUILT on user-created content -- even animations!
:)
True we're thinking of using post-production sfx to move mouths, but there are ways to animate and use camera tricks to get the sense of voice->actor tied together. For now we can use the plethora of pre-made facial expressions creatively.
Look for Icon Serpentine in-world or send an email to [info]{at}simpleninja(dot}[com)
cheers.
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...
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills
You could start with an idea. And, quite preferrably, a talent.
The tools will be obvious, then. Believe me.
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 ammended, and throw thousands of gamers in jail on charges of murder. ;)
Anton Markov
*** Linux - May the source be with you! ***
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...".
:P
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"
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.2 229/
Some examples:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793/
http://www.unrealtournament.com/news/view.php?id=
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...
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
Satisfied?!
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.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
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.
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).
00010111 always try everything twice
Also, do such hardware capture cards provide benifits with software like fraps?
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 bring peace and happiness to a hard drive near you'
And the next president will win the election with simulated moral values using simulated votes, ah shit, its already happening!
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
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.
.3mm file, which contains only the sound files and the animation details, so they are TINY. You can get an hour long movie with dialog and music in 20mb)
.AVI/.MPG (You can use other tools to do this though)
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
It comes with 45 built in actors, 21 props, and 11 pre-built backgrounds. (Each of them with multiple camera angles)
They only drawbacks are:
1. No easy way to group objects or move more than one at a time.
2. Can't save to
3. No way to import your own backgrounds,actors, props, or textures. (This is changing though. We've just recently figured out the model format, and I've written a program that lets you import quake 2 models. It's still pretty early-beta quality software however.)
4. Annoying barney-like host. You can skip his intro movies and shut him up after that, you you never see him. He's still annoying though.
Another nice thing is there are PLENTY of movies made with it. I've got a 3DMM movie archive site, and I currently have 1344 movies, all in about 2 gigs of space. (That's the largest 3dmm site, but still far from all movies released).
So I suggest you check it out, if you're looking for something to make fun movies in, quickly.
You can often grab a copy on Ebay for under 10$.
A quick search shows only one copy on right now: 5 days to go (I'm not connected to the seller, BTW. I just did a search.)
You can download it on a few sites (google for "3dmm"), since MS seems to no longer care about it. (They don't even mention it on their site anymore). It's about a 200mb download.
Have fun!
I respond to your sigs
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't you try something else. I say try blender 3d, (1)its open source, (2)you could create original content and learn something a lot about the process.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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.
That game was about making machinima, way ahead of it's time, and still has yet to be superceded.
Fraps is most probably designed for software > hard drive writing.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
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.
:^o http://www.sparknotes.com/film/citizenkane/context .html
:^o
.....Nick Pelling.....
All the same, machinima quality (just as in films) is neither about engine pixel fill rates, nor coloured shadows, nor even about funky middleware - it's about having a vision, and the determination, imagination & resources to bring it to life. I say this because I and my "ragtag band of internet misfits" [(c)M.Rein] tried to do just this for the Unreal/PSOne cutscenes/game we were writing, and (all in all) I think we came pretty close... until Infogrames bought GT & pulled the plug on the whole development, nearly bankrupting me in the process. *sigh*
Remember, though Orson Welles undeniably had vision, determination & imagination, he also had a $500,000+ budget from RKO for Citizen Kane... and it still tanked at the box-office!
All of which is to say: although film-making can look easy in the classroom, it really isn't - and (for most people) machinima probably won't help make it significantly easier. Sorry to break the bad news, don't shoot the messenger, good luck with your sparkling career, etc.
Cheers,
Take a look at genres like The Simpsons and Southpark. A good movie is about **content** rather than quality of graphics or special effects.
So go with something that is pretty well fixed in its graphics and style so you can focus on the content. For this I would recommend Warcraft III!
Most people use the Warcraft III World Editor to make new games that they play online, but some people (like myself) have used the Warcraft III World Editor to make movies - some feature length. It's easy to use, you've got loads of different characters, and *everything* is considered an object and is totally interchangeable.
e.g. you can take a basic fighter which can attack things, follow objects, move around, etc and you can give it the graphics of, say, a cannon tower! You can then scale it down to half the normal size, make it bright green and write a script that tells it to always follow the main character and always shoot at any sheep that come within range. Warcraft III handles the fiddly stuff. You can then have the main character walking and talking his way through a field of sheep about how he always wanted a dog as a pet instead of a maniac midget green cannon tower that kills sheep all day long!
There are a staggering number of custom games that people have made for Warcraft III that will give you some brilliant examples of the scripting that can be achieved. There is even a first person shoot'em up style script that looks good.
There are also loads of forums with people who will help you write your custom scripts or triggers (as they are called). These forums also have maps that can be downloaded and modified.
sure. create a sim. name it "kane".
PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
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 other things).
I haven't played with HL2 much (seen it, going to LAN party to play this weekend, but haven't played it), so I'll stick with doom3 engines as an example.
The first thing we're going to need is a better physics engine. Sure you can bump some things around, but I want to be able to blow chunks in a wall - not sure have a burned texture from weapons hits. I want more realistic explosions. I want more realistic character motion. Blood should drip and create little pools which then flow downhill.
I want bridges that sway, metal that warps realistically, and objects that are more interactive in general.
Beyond that, other things are really good. Ambient sound in games is doing very well. You can hear demons coming towards you, fires crackling around the corner, and the change in your footsteps as you walk on different terrain.
Lighting is also good, and combined with better graphics cards lighting and texture, and shadow play a big part in making an environment realistic.
So once we beat the physics, then what? Well, we already have actors attached to machines which read body movement (Gollum in LOTR, etc)... how about more interactive environments. Strap the actor with body sensors and a VR suit. Maybe throw some semi-random AI into the zombies just to may the thing a bit more realistic (really surprise the actors). Have them see their own interaction with the characters of a fantasy world, and perhaps with the above such a world may become "real" on film...
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 Total War patch coming soon, and people still learning how to make Machinima in half these engines, everything's still moving too fast.
If you want to create non-FPS style Machinima, you could do worse than check out some of the RTS and RPG games around. Dawn of War looks great for Machinima purposes, and obviously with Discovery and the BBC the Rome Total War engine is an old hand at Machinima already. My own company, Strange Company, is currently using the Neverwinter Nights engine, which is really powerful too if you're used to getting around engine limitations.
The Sims 2 appears to be powerful but limited, particularly in terms of controlling characters to follow your direction. I believe even the Rooster Teeth team are finding creating "The Strangerhood" in Sims 2 quite challenging, and we've had a lively discussion of how best to use the engine on the Machinima.com forums.
The Movies obviously isn't out yet. Looks good, but there's some major questions over how controllable the movie-making will be.
Honestly, currently, my best bet for an all-round Machinima engine would be Half-Life 2. Everything we've heard and seen says that it's got all the features you need, Half-Life 1 was one of the best Machinima engines ever, and whilst obviously you need a story that's appropriate to the content, our experience has always been that the HL content is remarkably adaptable to tell whatever story you want.
However, I should stress that, particularly until the SDK arrives, that's just a guess. We just don't know - perhaps there will be a key bug making it unusuable.
There's a whole host of Machinima possibilities out there, and the fact that even the pros (like me) don't know which way to jump means there's never been a better time to get started!
-
Hugh "Nomad" Hancock, Editor, Machinima.com
"My name was Mike. His name is Bob."
I just watched Red Vs. Blue and Strangerhood. You people are insane. It was torture to watch the crappy visuals, and now I am nauseous/dizzy. Maybe you have to be a gamer to enjoy such a thing. Even with an awesome story, if it hurts to watch then I'm not watching it. For this to work there needs to be high-polygon models, and they shouldn't mimic reality. Why bother mimicking a human when even if it's a little off it will distract me? Why not instead make an original creature so that my brain fully accepts it as is?
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.).
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I had a play around with the tools that were part of the source leak a while back. They have a bunch of tools for creating scripted sequences, including tools for generating lipsynching, and I remember playing with a tool where you could give it a sound file from the game and a model and it would play back the sound while lipsynching to the model and allow you to tweak which phonemes it uses.
Since large parts of HL2 are scripted sequences, the tools are pretty good. They were a little buggy in the leaked copy, but perhaps they worked on them a bit since then.
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?
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.
Blender 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 winning industry strength Blender-Plugin Makehuman has all you need to go for "real" CGI in the first place. And there are other Plugins such as Topixcloth that can do a lot more.
I strongly recommend that you give Blender a try.
If it's not your thing you can allways switch to something else such as the Unreal Editor. But as I said, I wouldn't recommend it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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!
Sorry, but a machinima movie is not going to be the next "Citizen Kane". It's too fringe and even if the technology catches on it's currently in its infancy. Almost nobody today can name many films from the 50s and 60s, let alone before that or silent movies.
The story is the hard part. Get that "Citizen Kane" concept first before dwelling on tools and implementation. The vast majority of the great creative works of our time were made with simple writing or painting utensils. Machinima is a gimmick, nothing more.
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/
While it doesn't cover all the latest game engines, I found The Art of Machinima 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 the later engines (Far Cry, Doom 3, Half Life 2), but it was a good place to start, IMHO. Hopefully Marino will update in the near future as these newer engines are clearly where its at.
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. Certainly the scale of your project may require a team of talented people, but you can squeeze a lot out of just yourself and your own ingenuity.
So you CAN be "MacGyver", and write your own stuff, build your own "sets", animate your own "actors", and control your own cameras.
First thing, you pick a game that already has a look similar to what you want to make, that way at least at the start you have access to assets (textures, props, models, environments) that have the look (realistic, historical, sci fi, etc) that you're planning on. If you eventually want your finished film to make you some $coin$, then you'll have to remake all of the models and props and textures borrowed from the game, to keep the copyright nazis off your back.
Then also you'll want to pick a game that's "mod friendly", that either uses an engine that's easily modified or even better, includes the tools WITH the game. Most games using the Quake3, Unreal, or Half Life engines do that. Also now you have newer tech like Far Cry, Doom3, and Half Life 2 to consider (and Unreal 3 right around the corner), and that's all just with FPS games.
Personally, and I've used the Quake3, Unreal, and Far Cry engines extensively, I'd say I'm most interested in the Half Life 2 engine as a tool for making movies with. I know next to nothing about the tools right now, but I'm going to learn. The facial animations are the most lifelike and deep yet seen in a game, with many elements automatic (like the lip syncing with sound files). Also the lighting and materials offer some very realistic, real world settings.
But that's my bent. Lots of options out there now, just pick one, dig into the community, see what the tutorials say, and start making stuff.
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.
For the amount of investment (time) in a game engine, you might as well use a proper package such as Maya or Max to do animation. The tools to do character animation are very powerful.
Also, quite a few people know these packages, and IF you have a good story/script, you CAN find people interested in contributing models and helping with animation.
Check out Timothy Albee's book http://timothy.artistnation.com/main/Books/ "CGI Filmmaking" about how he created "Ghost Warrior". Very inspirational, not to mention informative.
"This is totally insecure, but very convenient."
you had me at #!
you had me at #!
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 prettier than Quake, but still, check it out: http://www.planetquake.com/nehahra/
- Ender. One of the "other" programmers
We can do better. I've been looking into creating a new up-to-date program capable of easily creating movies. After some initial exploration, i've decided that either NeoEngine or Ogre would be a good start for the creation of an open source movie creation program. An additional help is Matthew Casperson's program to run scripted sequences in either Ogre or NeoEngine (see the OgreScript development site).
If you're interested in helping out with this endeavour (or to flame me on my choice of game engines), send me an e-mail (in my profile).
*(The Socrates Project was subsequently bought up by Microsoft, who eventually stopped development on 3dmm.)
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
You know what? All this talk of game engines for movie making, and the most obvious use is glaringly missing. 3D, interactive, educational material. The book "How Computers Work" comes with a virtual, interactive tour of the innards of a computer. This idea could apply to any subject, and it is easier than making a movie. Yes some creativity is required, but not as much as freeform subjects might require.
I've been dabbling away at trying to make stuff with SIMS 2 engine. I made a couple of videos, and am working on a lengthy movie project. http://www.bangorbrewerbowl.com/therevenge.wmv It can be a little trickly working with this engine, but things have started to beome a little easier.
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 motion capturing Serkis, and it sill needed voice acting on top of it.
Machina is going to be great for storyboards, great for some types of movie stories. I can see it being a huge festival circuit.
But i wouldn't be too concerned if I was an actor right now.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
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.
Gekido's Lair
Developed originally by Disney VR Studio for Toontown Online, we use the Panda3D game engine at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University 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...
Your new show sucks, buddy! ;)
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Movie ticket price ($10) / Movie length (120') ~ 12 min/$
Game cost ($50) / Average Singleplayer Finishtime (2400') ~ 0.021 min/$
(taking longer than 40 hrs only increases cost efficiency of video games)
Hell, what about games that people never stop playing? (but not subscription service games, that's a different equation altogether) I didn't pay for Enemy Territory but I love it because I'm poor and it's the most cost-effective time-waster ever.
Of course, you may argue that these big-budget simgle-player games have story and meaning, etc. (at least on par with Hollywood (as in very little (suddenly this has become like a LISP program (sorry)))) but who can really measure the unit price of cultural value?
Sure, you have your visionary directors and video game honchos of the same artistic bent, but Hollywood and the video game industry usually subsumes those efforts with its endless tide of committee-written, market-driven, eye-candy deliverin', blood-splatterin', highly entertaining drivel purely for the sake of the bottom line (profit).
[pink beam of light]
...as well as a plug for my old Quake clan.
...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).
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/
The latest episode (44) in the Red vs Blue series is 'filmed' in Halo 2, not Halo anymore. Makes no real difference to the humour, which is what it's all about, but it does look slightly shinier :) Onwards with progress!
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
Shldn't that be
12 min/$ or 0.083 $/min for movies
48 min/$ or 0.021 $/min for games?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Second Life is the way to go. They've had vid cap since version 1.0, which works quite well, at any screen resolution. Its also only $10 for a LIFE TIME account. Due to having almost entirely user created content, the set possibilities are also endless. Avatar customization and custom animations (using Poser) really open up a ton of possibilities.
I found it kinda boring and I've never been able to finish it. Even though the conventional wisdom is that it's a must-see because it's the best movie "ever made".
Or is it simply now a (mis-guided?) synonym for the perfect movie?
Though I do like Rose Bud ... (sorry, couldn't resist)
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.
i think you missed Project Entropia...
realistic, cool, easy to use!
Ex-act-ly. While characters in movies change, environmental factors and physics are often fairly consistent. Realtime in-game graphics (with recent video card models) are fast approaching where CGI movies were several years ago.
:-)
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 in-game, but it could be in the future...
And the best part is, as you mention these things can build up libraries. Especially with open-source. Once somebody gets a realistic swaying bridge, another person can import "bridge_sway.c" into their project as well. Once walls start showing realistic nicks and cuts, we can have "wall_damage.c"
In fact, to some extent many of these effects aren't very difficult to reproduce. It's when you collaberate them all together that you get a bridge-swaying, wall pummeling masterpiece of automagic.
Which also makes me greatful for DVD burners, and larger media coming out. Because with more realism also tends to come a lot more overheard
yes. ;D
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
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Been traveling a bit (just finishing up a Machinima workshop in Vienna at the Top Talent Festival), but came across this thread and thought to throw in some cents (Euro or US, you decide)...
Machinima development has come a long way in the last few years - fulfilling upon its expected promise - though it still has lots of room for maturing.
Fountainhead Entertainment's Machinimation program (which uses the Quake III Arena engine) is the definitive make-machinima-quick tool. Its the first real program for machinima production. In addition, it comes in Demo, Academic and Professional flavors depending on the projects you may have in mind (those interested should check out the Machinimation version differences and the Machinimation FAQ. Machinima filmmakers should stay tuned to the continual development of this program.
In the "promise on the horizon" dept., the afore-mentioned Half-Life2 has a number of tools that could make it the standout machinima production engine. With its internal character facial/gesture animation tool, Face Poser, the ever-so-missing dramatic expression of faces and lip-sync finally gets its due. While the Hammer editor doesn't get as much of an overhaul as I would have liked, this machinima filmmaker hopes there's scripting support in the full SDK to be released next week.
One of the most satisfying of current machinima production-ready engines is probably Unreal Tournament 2004. While even the Epic Games tech can use some help in the machinima department (its internal camera system, Matinee, only goes so far), it does have a large community for support as well as Epic's own Unreal Developer Network (which should be a model for any game developer looking to support their engine post-purchase). That said, the UT2004 tech has room for development and could be the platform for further Machinima development in the future (without spilling too many beans, interested parties should stay tuned). The Unreal 3 tech looks great too!
Other engines: The Sims2 is a good Machinima contender (and the engine behind Rooster Teeth's The Strangerhood) - one hopes that Maxis/EA will build up its Machinima use, either through internally developed tools, or supporting third-party/end-user development of such programs. Linden Lab's Second Life is also a good Machinima platform, although the control of characters and events through a remotely located server can impact production. Still, it allows the end-user to upload their own gestures as well as givens them IP ownership (big deal for those looking to profitize their work). A Machinima filmmaker may also want to consider the Torque engine from Garage Games with its low-cost ownership model and large community as well.
As mentioned in the original posting, Lionhead's The Movies looks promising - an application that blurs the line between game and productivity tool (as least from the Machinima filmmakers perspective). Lionhead unfortunately hasn't looked to the Machinima community for recommendations (which could have been a valuable resource, IMHO), but hopefully they will post-release.
Finally, I will do a selfish plug and make the recommendation to my book, The Art of Machinima, which I created with the beginning Machinima filmmaker in mind. The book covers using Fountainhead's Machinimation (a demo of which is included in the book's CD) as well as more advanced Machinima using UT2004.
The upcoming Machinima Film Festival (Spring 2005) will be showcasing the majority of these engines and developments - people should st
I think that any of the engines can easily create stuff that ends up looking not too much different from the game itself. The problem is creating the textures, models, animations, environments, sounds, etc. to make it look like them movie you want, rather than the game, and sometimes having the types of behaviors with the look you want, as opposed to behaving like a game. And once you've done all that, really you probably might as well have worked in a more standard 3D modelling/animation setup, which is more flexible.
If you want to do something quick and dirty in a look that the game already provides, great, but if you want it to look much different from the game itself, you may want to avoid a game engine for movie making.
I think all the talk about facial animation etc blah blah blah is overstating the case for what is needed.
Story first...and that can be told through many methods.
eg to rest my case : South Park (sorry, I'm a fanboy) and "Team America" put paid to the theory that a good film needs human like behaviour to make its point...though as has been pointed out "Team America" manages to enter the uncanny valley once or twice with a thunderbirds revival.
Standout elements (in order):
Story (a clique fest, but that's the point)
Staging
Camera work
Lighting
I'd put "realistic lip synching" and "emoting facial animation" way down on the list of things needed to make a good product.
The engine is a cheap enabler (a story machine), is all. Look for the real tools that are needed to tell the story and be creative.
Now I better get off my arse and do it!