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A Few Good G-Men - HL2 Machinima
Alamar3 writes "Just to give an idea of how awesome Half-Life 2 is for Machinima, R. Glass has produced a 6-minute clip of a well-known scene from A Few Good Men." From the article: "All of the camera cuts were done in the game (at least 15 point_viewcontrol entities). When you launched the level it went right into the movie and didn't stop until the end credits. I used Cannonfodder's tools to create the animations (with 3DS Max). There were a few glitches along the way (I'll go into detail later... you may notice that there isn't hand animation in some shots). I plan on doing at least one more cut of this movie with some of the missing details put in (for one, a Marine uniform for the G-Man)."
It would have been cool if he posted the engine files and it turned out to be way smaller than the scene in a FMV(full motion video) format, but no he posted a FMV that's just as big as any FMV for an animation this size. I've long been waiting for the day where I could pan around scenes, download character models and sets and then all stories would be simply animation and sound instructions, and this is not it.
What this video shows is that, given compelling voice acting, video game tools are getting pretty close to enabling stand-alone content. Okay, it's still a dancing bear, but I was moved enough watching this that I could easily see myself sitting through a feature-length presentation in this format. (Of course, the quality is low enough that I'd probably wait to rent it for $.99, but still...)
The answer is yes, the more expressive animations were limited by the game. More the model than the engine, though. Valve has an interest in not letting their characters look too odd or crazy, so the models were built with some limitations to how much their faces could contort. The models are very good at subtle emotions, but not so great at more expressive stuff. The engine itself is capable of much more, though.
Where are the red, furious faces? Wheres the expression? Where's the spittle? This is a scene of conflict and anger played out to its best. Sadly this machinima captures none of that. The basic movements have been mapped to follow the script, but that's it. Hands move and portray basic gestures, but you never see shoulders hunch or the gman do anything other than sit there. It has a long, long way to go yet. For a slightly better example of machinima, check out a game called HalfLife 2. The original, not the cheesy movie re-enactments. Even HalfLife 2 falls well short of the mark, and tends to rely on good voice acting and first-person camera angles for a sense of realism.
"Okay, it's still a dancing bear, but I was moved enough watching this that I could easily see myself sitting through a feature-length presentation in this format. (Of course, the quality is low enough that I'd probably wait to rent it for $.99, but still...)"
I would imagine that Aaron Sorkin's dialogue and the performances of the actors is what moved you. And if you've seen the movie, the context of the scene within the larger story. I think you're moved by it despite the medium, not because of it, based on your comment about not wanting to pay as much to see it as if it was in its original non-machinima form.
No, it doesn't have to be handmade animation, motion-caputured animation in-game looks often equally bad. The throuble is that motion-caputre animation only looks really good when it coveres anything from start to finish, in-game however you have seperate animations for everything 'run-animation', a 'walk-animation' and a 'turn-animation' and the engine then more or less brutally blends between all of them when the player runs around and this 'blending' is pretty awefull and noticable. Thats why I called it generated/blended, its not 100% handmade or motion caputured, but generated or blended out of multiple premade segments.
Cutscenes of big games (RE4, MGS3) these days always look pretty good, gameplay however seldomly comes anywhere near that in terms of animation. Its still a virtual puppet that plays a given set of animation, instead of a life-like thing that acts in its environment. Feed drifting on the ground are just one of the many things that make this pretty obvious.
The GP to this post mentioned Red vs Blue but doesn't mention what machinima genuinely adds to video fiction that nothing else can: gaming in-jokes.
Other than that it is a bit pointless, especially to someone who isn't impressed with interesting hacks (which it was when it started out) or giving the public wider access to creating entertainment.
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(FWIW, my major was 3d art/design/multimedia)
The artist has potential, but it's not *wow* yet. A lot of the technical stuff (95%) is there (basic phonemes, synching, tracking, camera work, etc), but the stuff that really makes the wow factor isn't there - the remaining 5% (all the subtle stuff - characters shouldn't be rigid, breatching, musculuture, etc etc). Naturalism vs. realism.
But for a first attempt and maybe a demo piece, good job. Best of luck w/ finding a job!