Start with the screenplay, this gives you the characters the locations and the story. Then instead of hiring a film crew, equipment, actors and a director to tell the rest what to do, you and your friends, can construct the characters in a virtual world of your own creation and then act as puppeteers controlling the characters in the storyline of the screenplay.
Making a Machinima Movie consists of FOUR elements:
SCREENPLAY
Alfred Hitchcock, when asked what you need for making a great movie, said, `You need three things; a great screenplay, a great screenplay and a great screenplay.` No matter how the story is produced, film, CGA or Machinima you still need the screenplay. Spending time getting this right will save lots of blushes when the movie is complete.
And take a tip from another great director, Stevan Spielberg; storyboard the entire screenplay. You will then know what to shoot, where, when and how.
CONSTRUCTION
This comprises THREE attributes:
ENGINEERING
A fast computer with lots of memory is essential.
If you have the money, then the software is either: Director (£1000) or MotionBuilder (£2500}.
If you don`t have the money, it is a matter of choosing the game of your choice. Just remember the choice of game defines the tools and formats you will need.
The Quake series (Quake I is fully Open-Source) is excellent but you need to be able to do some serious C coding and rendering re-writing. It does, however, have very good tools. For example the best free Machinima Editing Tool. Which can be obtained at http://www.planetquake.com/keygrip. Quake III is under development for Machinima use by the Open Demo Project and will eventually be beginner friendly.
Without serious programming skills you have the choice of Unreal Tournament and Half-Life. These both come packaged with all the tools you'll need to make basic films. They also have large communities behind them, making new models, new textures, new tools, and generally very willing to help beginners.
SETS, PROPS & LOCATIONS
From the story-board make lists of Sets, Props & Locations. Then construct them using either the package provided or sourced from the community. They must be recognizable for what they are and playable in the game engine you have chosen.
Sets. Making sets for Machinima uses the same technology that game designers use to make maps. Fortunately, both UT and Half-Life bundle map editors in with the game - UT's editor is called UnrealEd, while Half-Life's is called Worldcraft.
Updates are to be found for Half-Life at Planet Half-Life, while Unreal Tournament has the equivalent Planet Unreal. These are also good locations for game hacking in general.
Making Sets, Props and locations is first a matter of creating the raw geometry, using something similar to a CAD system, then applying `wallpaper` or `textures`, followed by detail and finally adding lighting.
This must then be `compiled` to allow the game to run it. The actual process of creating sets is an art form in its own right. View examples at the Planet sites above.
CHARACTERS
Characters like Sets, Props and Locations have a geometric structure overlayed by a texture or skin. Characters, however, have more sophisticated geometries and skins.
Creating character geometry is a very involved process and not for beginners in Machinima. But if you must, be prepared to spend a while learning 3D animator skills. Poly Count has an excellent site for this purpose.
Making skins for a character is much easier than creating geometry. You'll need a paint package like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop. Simply extract the `skin file` normally a .JPG file or something similar - the Skindom site or Poly Count have all the information on howto apply these to geometries.
Creating the character`s image is technically straight forward and more a matter of artistic skill. However, animating any additions to the character in the setting are much more complex.
Machinima.com does have an overview of how to achieve this process, using the Milkshape shareware. Details at http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/) modeling package.
ANIMATION
With a brilliant screenplay storyboarded and the characters, sets, props and locations constructed, Animation is the next element in producing a Machinima movie.
A combination of puppetry for bodily movements in a scene, just like you would move a character in a game, and pre-created animation for special effects are then recorded through the CPA. Finally, capture your footage to conventional video.
Capturing Game Video at Machinima.com provides you with the necessary info.
EDITING
There are a huge number of video editing packages designed to do just this, from free editors like AviSynth (powerful, but text-based) and MovieXZone, to cheap like Premiere (£350), Final Cut Pro (£500 plus Mac) or expensive like Avid technology (start at £2500) The paid-for ones really are worth the money, but the free ones will do the job.
Importantly, these packages will allow you to import the video captures you've taken chop them down to leave the footage you want, and put them in the order you want for your film.
Sound can be recorded using a microphone and a PC. All of this lot can be mixed together either in your editing package or using a stand-alone sound editor like Cool Edit
You may want titles, credits, and other such fancy post-production effects. Most video packages do these.
NOTE: if you're planning on making money out of your movies then use the Quake engines or investigate a tie-up with Filmbox or MotionBuilder.