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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)."
http://www.filerush.com/torrents/fewgoodgmen.mov.t orrent
Just finished watching it, an amazing piece of technical expertise. It certainly shows how impressive the HL2 engine is at speech and lip-syncing.
I thought the depiction of the less cortorted emotional reactions was very nice, but I felt that the "angry" faces just weren't angry enough. (The yelling looked like talking, for example).
Perhaps we won't need "pre-rendered" graphics for truly immersive film sequences any more. I know that a lot of games don't use them, but in thing such as Final Fantasy, the gap between the quality of the pre-rendered and real-time sequences is always quite painfully obvious.
I think the creator(s) could probably find a place at one of the game studios though...
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com
http://www.nailbiter.net.nyud.net:8090/gman/fewgoo dgmen.mov
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Sex seen with Serious Sam, Laura Croft, and a DOA Girl.
The RIAA's Spiders are gonna getcha
Yeah, to pay this month's bandwidth bill...
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...)
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.
"The thing you're missing about machinima is that it's another medium for people to express themselves, even if this particular one is just a copy of existing work. If someone draws a painting of a scene from a movie, would you "get" that? Same thing here - in both mediums it's possible to copy existing content and to create your own."
Semaphore is another medium for people to express themselves in, but it doesn't mean that watching A Few Good Men performed in that medium wouldn't be tedious to watch, or that the medium would contribute something to the message instead of detract.
"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."
If there was a free and lightweight viewer for HL2 files, that would be something that would add value to the platform for non-gaming, non-interactive videos. Files would be smaller and easier to distribute and people wouldn't need to own the game or have Quicktime installed to view the movies. Going back to Flash as an example, this is one of the strengths of that platform. (It certainly has weaknesses, as well.)
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!