Machinima for Dummies

It’s CHRIIIIISTMAS! (or it will be soon)

And there are new and exciting engines crawling out of the woodwork left, right and center.

First up, Ricky Grove has written a piece on persuading the Unreal Engine 3 editor to work, both with Gears of War (fail) and Unreal Tournament 3 (pass). It’s an interesting read, and includes links to some great resources too. I’ve had a look at the U3 editor myself, and there’s some real power in there.

Secondly, Cinemassively points us to this Machinima trailer for Pirates of the Burning Sea. Very impressive stuff - nice swashbuckling swordfighting animation, some truly awesome ship combat, and what looks a lot like a lipsynched character. I forsee a lot of pirate Machinima coming out, probably starting with the PotBS open beta, which will open on December 7th.

So that’s four engines at least we need to cover: Halo 3, Source, Unreal 3 and PotBS, plus the updated Moviestorm tutorial. We’ll be getting into those in the new year.

Of course, time is always an issue. Just out of interest - would any of our noble readers be interested in a subscription-based service, where we promise to deliver MfD-the-book-quality content every month or so, in exchange for a small number of your pennies? It’s no more than an idea at this point, but it would potentially allow us to spend more time developing quality Machinima tutorials.