Since I have a fair amount of free time at the moment, I thought I’d get back into Machinima. Machinima is basically short films built with video game engines. Before I try a full project, I’ve been testing various techniques of capturing, compressing and sharing videos. Below is a YouTube clip I have uploaded showing the opening few minutes of Half-Life 2.
You may have noticed that the image is doubled up. This is because it’s been captured in stereoscopic 3d. You may need to click though to the YouTube site as the embedded player doesn’t work with YouTube 3D.
I’m rather fond of playing games in stereoscopic 3D, even with just anaglyph (coloured) glasses. I’m currently using ColorCode glasses, which were given away by Channel4 for it’s ‘3D week’ at the end of last year.
Some games work better than others in stereoscopic 3D, with Source engine games, such as Half-Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead, and the Unreal engine, such as Mirror’s Edge and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Although Crysis looks fantastic in stereoscopic 3D, the framerate takes a massive hit. This is a shame, because I was planning my Machinima project around the CryEngine 2. So I either need to turn down the settings, or invest in a new graphics card. Since I’m unemployed, it’ll be the first one.
Check out my YouTube channel here.
