Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Source Machinima Wiki

Not happy with Valve's Source SDK wiki? Then try out sourcefilms.org (from machinimad).

Not using Source to make machinima? Then you're using the wrong engine.

4 comments:

johnnie said...

Them's fightin' words!

In all seriousness, I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on the key advantages and disadvantages of Source as a machinima tool.

bllius said...

Off the top of my head I'd say:

pros

Faceposer.
Powerful lighting.
Demosmoother.
Many prebuilt games, mods, models, props.
Built-in audience.
Gmod.
Capability to do both script based or multiplayer (puppeteering) based machinima.

cons

You don't own your work.
Not easy to use.
Real lack of dynamic player models. Hard to create models.
Steam updates can break things.

Johnnie Ingram said...

Yeah, that seems like a pretty fair list to me. For me personally, the three big blocks, which have stopped me ever doing anything of any real merit in Source, are

You don't own your own work (that's a big negative for me)
Steam updates can break things - I hate forced updates, especially when they ship with bugs
Not easy to use - "not easy"? How about "mind-bogglingly difficult"? Actually, it's not the difficulty that bothers me, so much as the speed (or lack thereof) at which you can work. It's just too darned slow for me!

Steam's lighting is just gorgeous, though, and I gaze at it with envious eyes.

bllius said...

Can't wait to see what Valve actually does with this thing.