"City16" HL2 Machinima coming soon...

[hugepedlar]

I'm working on a machinima project provisionally titled "City16" based around the exploits of a group of security guards coping under a moderate Combine rule.

It's proving rather slow work and I'm only halfway through episode 2. I've decided to complete the series (at least up to a rough production cut) before I start distributing it, because otherwise there'll be month-long gaps between episodes.

Having said that, I'm unable to produce something and keep it entirely to myself, so I've made a 30s clip for pre-release. It's not the most enthralling piece of cinema, but it should provide a laugh or two. I may release one or two more in the coming weeks, depending on the response.

It's 10 megs, you'll need the XviD codec to view it, and you can download it here: http://media.hugepedlar.com/videos/machinima/c16_boobytrap.avi

If anyone knows of any other machinima project being developed (not just music vids or ported scenes from existing films, though they can be quite cool), I'd be glad to know of them.

 

[Ultimape]

its stupid so short, but nice camera work... lol

 

[AJ Rimmer]

That high-pitched guy's voice is annoying. *Really* annoying.

 

[hugepedlar]

Yes. Unfortunately I lack both good jokes and a voice crew. Therefore the jokes are crap and the voices are, more or less, my own.

 

[Wrath]

that was pretty funny...I'll definately watch more

 

[A_Denial]

I liked the smoothness of that, but yeah get a voice crew.

 

[Ennui]

I had assembled a team for Source machinima a while ago, but it petered out because I didn't have time for it (and most of the members didn't either).

 

[B-MAn]

Woah tht first voice there reminds me of a annoying mate of mine.

 

[hugepedlar]

Ennui: One of the reasons I decided to do this entirely myself. Getting a dedicated crew to work together is hard enough, but add the slightest lack of enthusiasm and it all goes to shit. Although I'd love to have other people doing voices (if only for the variety rather than the talent), with the amount of takes I've made myself do, I could not inflict that kind of perfectionist repetition upon anyone else.

 

[hugepedlar]

Woah tht first voice there reminds me of a annoying mate of mine.

In other scenes he sound very much like Boycie from "only Fools and Horses". I'm still not sure whether this is a good thing or not. I had decided he would have an annoying voice though, and this seems so far to be a success.

 

[Ennui]

doing it yourself... must be tough. Do you script the sequences, then?

 

[hugepedlar]

It is indeed tough. That particular clip involved a faceposer scene that consisted solely of dialogue and facial animations, and I set the two characters to follow a set of path_corners while the logic_choreographed_scene was playing. In other clips I often use scripted_sequences to arrange characters before and after playing a l_c_scene.

The hardest part is when I've got 3 or more characters interacting in a scene and I have to set it all up in Faceposer before I even get to see what the hell it looks like. Getting one character to look at another is easy enough, but multiply that by three and then by 30 seconds while they're all moving about and you've got a bitch on your hands and a pain behind the eyes.

 

[Wrath]

keep doing the voices yourself...don't listen to these guys, you're doing great so far.

 

[Pauly]

hugepedlar, you have a instant messenger? me and a few friends were working on a machinima in CS( more of a RvB type) Never got far in to development but we have a pretty solid script and we can right some pretty good jokes and have some great voice actors.

 

[rpgprog]

wow, good, is that all scripted? Yea i too had a machinima team, but it didn't work out

 

[CyberPitz]

you can never go wrong with a voice krew!

 

[oldagerocker]

I thought that was well made considering the lack of resources. Good work

 

[Top Secret]

Shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] , I'd be glad to help out.

 

[Sodabus]

Whenever the actors look at each other, their heads quickly jerk around, like in 0:16 to 0:20, and 0:28 to 0:32. Are you making their heads move with a flex animation, or a lookat event?

 

[Milkman]

That joke was pretty bad.
Here in america we don't refer to someone being fired as "sacked" so some people might not get it.

Not that its bad because of that, its just a lousy joke, and the mouth movement needs to be sorted out.

 

[Latin_Jones]

gotta love lame jokes. Nice work.

 

[GonzoBabbleshit]

haha. that was amazing!

 

[hugepedlar]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and offers of help, though for now I'll see how far I can get on my own, by way of a challenge.

The head movements were indeed LookAt events. Whilst in that particular scene I may have had smoother results with Flex animation, in any other more complex scene manually moving characters' heads in Faceposer to look at other characters would be nigh impossible without knowing their exact relative positions. I haven't been able to find out what exactly the Ramp Tool does or how it works, but maybe that might smooth things out?

 

[Latin_Jones]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and offers of help, though for now I'll see how far I can get on my own, by way of a challenge.

The head movements were indeed LookAt events. Whilst in that particular scene I may have had smoother results with Flex animation, in any other more complex scene manually moving characters' heads in Faceposer to look at other characters would be nigh impossible without knowing their exact relative positions. I haven't been able to find out what exactly the Ramp Tool does or how it works, but maybe that might smooth things out?

If you have luck with the ramp tool, let me know. I'm working on my own machinima as well. I'm looking for help but nobodys biting so far.

 

[Sodabus]

...I haven't been able to find out what exactly the Ramp Tool does or how it works, but maybe that might smooth things out?

The Ramp tool changes the magnitude of the event. If you don't edit an event in the Ramp tool, it will play at full strength. In this case, when the scene approaches the lookat event, it will move the head at full strength, creating that sudden jerk. If you were to Ramp the event so that it would gradually reach to full strength, you'll have a smoother transtition with the head towards the other actor.

You could use the head flexes, but I personally would rather use the appropriate lookat event, since cramming every single movement into flexanimation events gets incredibly messy. Also, you can further organize the choreography by making seperate channels, and making seperate events for each part of the actor; such as one event for the head, another for the face, one more for looking at other actors, etc. Valve sets a good example of choreography organization in all of the .vcd files in HL2; you may want to have a look on how they did everything, and you might be able to pick up a few tricks.

Edit:

...Whilst in that particular scene I may have had smoother results with Flex animation, in any other more complex scene manually moving characters' heads in Faceposer to look at other characters would be nigh impossible without knowing their exact relative positions. ...

Make a lookat event, and specify the target number according to your choreo_scene. Easy.