The Machinima approach to creating movies promises to revolutionize the computer animation industry and this book will serve as the industry bible for emerging filmmakers. It expertly covers the very latest technology in filmmaking, from the history of Machinima, who the major players are, and where the Machinima movement is going. Conventional filmmakers are quickly adopting this medium as a much easier and economical way to produce animation films. This book contains a wealth of tips, tricks, and solid techniques to creating your own Machinima films from some of the best creative minds in the industry. Numerous hands-on projects are provided to show readers how to expertly create, edit, and view their own films. Some of the hot topics covered include developing actors, preparing sets, incorporating audio, adding special audio and visual effects, using the best post production techniques, using the best game engines, and much more.

Good book for the details

This is a good book for getting started with Machinima. It has a lot of detail on creating Machinima with Machinimation and Unreal. This will get you started with two of the popular machinima game engines and get you familiar with the basics and quite a bit of the detail work.
This really is a how to book. If you just want to learn more about Machinima then look at some of the other titles before settling on this book, though it’s introduction to Machinima will give you a good overview.

Unique and informative

This is well written walkthrough of filmmaking with game engines like Quake and Unreal. It starts with a basic introduction to the field. He then goes into installing and using the Machinimation application that you will use to choreograph your film.

The book then follows the path of increasing complexity, starting with moving lights around, then adding actors, animating the actors, controlling the characters and adding visual effects. He then continues all the way through to capturing the video and audio and completing the filmmaking process.

One of the best chapters is the section of cinematography where the author strays from the introductory form to give practical advice about how to make a better film. The chapter on character development is also excellent, showing the development of a character from rough sketches to a full three dimensional model.

I enjoyed this book. It was a well written introduction to a whole new field of artistic expression. Definitely a must buy for those interested in the field. Those who are curious may want to browse it, but won’t find enough outside of the strict walkthrough to make it worth the price.

All Aboard!!

Marino does a superb job of detailing Machinima’s short history, hitting on the high points in its growth from a spark to a major media storm banging down on mainstream media’s door.

3D Game-Based Film Making covers most of the basics in the creation of a machinima film while at the same time informing the reader of the many ways that machinima and conventional filming share some of the same techniques and history but also showing the power that machinima welds that sets it apart.

The tutorials in the book are geared for people just getting their feet wet in this vast new medium. Marino takes a slow but meaningful pace so that readers can "walk through" the lessons and have a chance to review the steps they have just taken without getting lost in the process.

The book does have it’s shortfalls but I guess this is due to the world of machinima being so vast. Having some of the tutorials examples on the disc would have been nice to have something to compare you work to. Also having some machinima films to watch so there can be some visual reinforcement of what you are trying to create but I suspect it was due to legal issues that they could not be included.

Overall well worth the price for the beginner who is just getting into the medium. The amount of information is staggering but when you go through it, it enriches the journey of discovery into this brave new world.

Will save beginners from countless Google searches

I heard of machinima about a week ago in the Economist magazine which also featured comments from Paul Marino, this book’s author. A week later and I’ve got the book, but I’m a little let down but what the book has added to my knowledge.
I’d say someone who has only heard of machinima and hasn’t designed their own level in a 3D game would get tons of gems from this book. Whereas poor me with a week’s worth of Google searches looking for tutorials on UnrealEd 3.0 and so forth - well I only got enough information to round out my status as a serious machinima beginner.
In fairness, however, after a couple of hours with the book I was able to get the finishing touches I was looking for and successfully burned my first machinima movie to DVD. So it was a small boost I got but a very welcome one (the boost included my spending $29 for the full version of Fraps). So, yeah it will give you the tools in one place to get a finished product.
I am disappointed that Marino ends the book with a tutorial on character modeling. The tutorial is well-written but by its end you’ll be looking at a cute character cast in concrete (no words on skinning or rigging, etc). Worse this character will be stranded in a program called Silo (by the way blender from blender.org seems just as good and is cross-platform and a free download) with no hint of the challenge of getting this spaceman into a 3D level designer.
The machinima community would be better served with a tutorial on how to get custom sounds and meshes into UnrealEd et al, and how to do lipsynching.
In short too much time spent teaching you how to use tools (tools generally come with their own instructions and tutorials anyway).
I was also disappointed to find no samples of machinima movies on the cd. These are such a pig to download after all. How about including one and then some kind of analysis about what makes that one sample special.
The book is called the Art of Machinima but it seems more like the Activity of Futzing with Tools.

A guidebook for anyone who wants to make a 3D animated film

3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art Of Machinima by Machinima and animation film director and designer Paul Marino is a guidebook for anyone who wants to make a 3D animated film on their PC but isn’t sure where to start. Step-by-step instructions teach the reader how to apply tools from best selling games such as Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake III Arena to create Machinima, a new term coined to describe animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3D world. Everything from virtual sets to memorable character design, fluid cinematography, tips on editing and distributing Machinima productions, and much more pack this informative guide especially for anyone seeking to fullfill their drive creative expression at extremely low cost.

Get an early start

Did any of you go to various Internet World conventions in the 1990s? Where VRML companies extolled its virtues and described how it was the future. Well, VRML was ahead of its hardware. Its successor appears to be Machinima.

Marino gives a nice explanation of its merits. The convergence of 3 approaches. Traditional filmmaking. Animation. And the 3D game techniques spawned by Quake. The text has enough examples to let you get started as your own film director, given a typical PC made in 2004 as your hardware platform.

It may indeed be as Marino suggests. That we are lucky to be present at the start of an entirely new era of artistic creativity. One that is very democratic. For a minimal outlay of capital, you can script and play out your own film. Essentially limited only by your own ability. The equivalent of music synthesisers that let anyone be a composer.

The illustrations in this book also suggest that these are early years. The relatively low resolution of the images points to room for further advances in resolution and rendering. Also, while the book shows a panoply of things you can do in Machinima, undoubtedly more powerful editing capabilities will emerge later. Which may be all to the good for you. Plenty of room for you to help bring about these advances.