Machinima Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Machinima (a portmanteau word for machine cinema and/or "machine" "animation") is both a film genre and a collection of associated production techniques. The term concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery (CGI) with ordinary PCs and the 3D engines of video games (typically first person shooters) in real-time (on the computer of either the creator or the viewer) rather than offline with huge render farms.The real-time nature of machinima means that established techniques from traditional film-making can be reapplied in a virtual environment. As a result, production tends to be cheaper and more rapid than in keyframed CGI animation.
Although most often used to produce recordings that are later edited as in conventional film, machinima techniques have also occasionally been used for theatre. A New York improvisational comedy group called the ILL Clan voice and puppet their characters before a virtual camera to produce machinima displayed on a screen to a live audience.
Because machinima describes events at a more abstract level than their concrete realization as a sequence of rendered 2D frames, it allows digital films that can be played at very high framerate and resolutions to be stored/transmitted more efficiently than conventional video formats. (Think of 3D animation software Macromedia Flash compression.)
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The earliest roots of machinima can be found in the demoscene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when programmers created elaborate audiovisual displays animated in real-time. In 1992 the game Stunt Island was released, which allowed users to create movies by placing props and cameras, flying stunts, and splicing together takes. Communities emerged on CompuServe and the Internet, where users of the software were able to trade props and movies with each other.
When DOOM was released in 1993, it included support for the recording and playback of gameplay demos. This resulted in the eventual creation of DOOM speedruns, where players recorded rapid traversals of DOOM levels.
Machinima per se arrived with Quake that introduced fully 3D world and made possible a freely moving camera. First movies appeared in 1997, the term was coined at the start of 1998.
With the improvements in 3D game engine technology many developers added in-game cutscenes to their games. This led to improvements in animation capabilities and soon most game engines had the functionality (although often available to the developers only) necessary to produce machinima.
Quake II, Unreal and Battlefield 1942 are examples of video games which are currently used to create machinima; Epic Games, the releasers of Unreal Tournament 2003, included a tool called Matinee with the game, and sponsored a contest for $50,000 to create a machinima film with the video game. As of 2004, the medium has yet to produce a film comparable with mainstream movies in quality and artistic value, but interest is continuing to grow.
The Movies is a game being developed by Lionhead Studios that will put the player in the role of a movie director and allow to create short feature films using the game engine.
Also used is the video game The Sims, which has a "photo album" feature players can use to stage elaborate stories. For example, player nsknight has, over several months, staged a highly-rated photo album telling the story of three sisters whose mother is murdered; other players have staged stories of abusive relationships, drug addiction, and interracial adoptions.
The Sims 2 has a built in movie making feature.
Red vs. Blue is a comedic machinima series filmed within the Xbox game .
The process of putting game tools to unexpected ends is known as emergent play.
The process of putting game tools to artistic use is called "artistic computer game modification".
The technique is used on the television show "Video Mods", in which video game characters reenact popular music videos.
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