The d00ds at this awesome art/clothing shop in SF gave me a bag of free stuff when I saw them at youtube live... one was an art book by Alex Pardee... I was looking at the book last night and decided to look the guy up and found this trailer to an animated series he was developing using the Unreal 3 Engine...
Then I remembered someone sent that to me like last year... anyway when I saw it then I didn't know it was Machinima... but looking at it now and thinking that machinima is looking pretty great...
I know some of you like my pal Ricky out there in LA are deep into Machinima... i don't know much about it myself but I have a feeling it won't be long before I'm using similar tools to make my films... If its easily customizable and already has the physics and environmental stuff built in why wouldn't you want to use it?
Hmmm I'm thinking that in the future I will always make "handmade" 3d films like I am now BUT I could be doing quick machinima series and other random stuff on the side...hmmmmm
So whats the deal with the Unreal 3 engine? Anybody know?
Then I remembered someone sent that to me like last year... anyway when I saw it then I didn't know it was Machinima... but looking at it now and thinking that machinima is looking pretty great...
I know some of you like my pal Ricky out there in LA are deep into Machinima... i don't know much about it myself but I have a feeling it won't be long before I'm using similar tools to make my films... If its easily customizable and already has the physics and environmental stuff built in why wouldn't you want to use it?
Hmmm I'm thinking that in the future I will always make "handmade" 3d films like I am now BUT I could be doing quick machinima series and other random stuff on the side...hmmmmm
So whats the deal with the Unreal 3 engine? Anybody know?
Well, since you told me about the Unity engine, I've been starting to check these things out. As the script I'm writing still has a ways to go, I'd like to work out the environments and character in game form. So I installed the Unreal II game+engine and well... Unity looks way more "instantly usable", something like C4D versus 3DMax (btw, I'll probably stick to Max as my main app for now, Unity will be supporting direct drag and drop and auto update from Maxfiles). The performance differences between the two engines I've yet to learn more about. I am eagerly anticipating the release of the Unity Windows version (end of March 2009). Anyways, the Unreal Developer's Network has some guidelines for mods with a quick intro to the basic tools. A few interesting things, "consider the space a solid from which you carve out the game level", and everything seems to be called an "actor" hmmm... by the way, if you install Unreal II, there's a DRM bug which requires the date to be set to 2008... I'll probably start posting my game engine experimentation on my blog if ya'll want to follow (cyberpuppetbox). I also suggest you check out cgsocieties game artist site: http://www.game-artist.net. They're running a competition entitled "Scene from a movie - A Realtime environment competition". (WATS popped to mind just then). They've got the forum and minicontests and general talk about game-making. I'm definitely getting into the game engine way and will be checking out Machinima (and Rick's site as well), the Torque engine (cause they had it at the place I was teaching at last year) and the Crytek engine if I gots the time (Zbrush and Max have been sucking up all my "free time"). I do tends to go research berzerk when a new set of tools seems interesting to me... Alex's video is pretty rad, the times are a a-changing....
ReplyDeleteD00d- I've been hanging with the Machinimaists for about 3 years now. There's some really good stuff out there and good people working with it. Very innovative peeps too. Lots of experimenting and sharing going on. I think the folks into this are more "real" than a lot of other animators I've dealt with. I think one of your regular contributors is from the Overcast machinima podcast.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your time in machinimaland.
I think machinima can go beyond the limits of being just a tool though and become, as the technology continues to develop, a new avenue for filmmaking that is not just reliant on the novelty value of crazy new things going on in gamespace. Anyway if you have time, take a visit at my Free Games website :)
ReplyDeleteMdot, one possibility would be to use that Zbrush decimation master plugin on models, then import those into Iclone with 3DXchage. It's setup to let you import stuff from Zbrush and a number of other formats. Iclone likes those low poly models. Bingo, low poly models, real time everything.
ReplyDeleteIclone does not have the cool features that C4D does, but it's getting better. I intend to keep my eye on what people do with it.
Here's a "talking head" short of Jim Morrison that was done in 3 hours. 53 seconds done in 3 hours!
Sorry I left out the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYc9yePQUzk
Anyway, it's just useful to see how Iclone is improving technically..