Machinima is a term used to describe the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. Typically, these stories are realized by repurposing video game assets to generate animated films for sharing on the web. Creators have been producing these types of online stories using content from a mix of 3D games, assets, and effects since the 1980s.
The medium gained popularity throughout the 90s with the advent of player-made ‘Quake Movies’, constructed from gameplay sequences in id Software’s hit games Doom and Quake. ‘Machinima’ - stemming from ‘machine’ and ‘cinema’ - exploded to mainstream media, seeing it used in every type of production, from television series to advertising, and hit series such as ‘Red vs Blue’. Almost three decades since its inception, Machinima content has had tens of billions of views.
Creating rich and compelling Machinima content has long been a challenge for creators due to the limitations of the game assets and their animation tools. Adding to that is the difficulty in producing narrative driven animations from this approach because of all the combinations necessary for creating believable movements that play smoothly and in context with the overall story. By bringing NVIDIA AI technology and RTX rendering to this process, Machinima creators will now have a rich set of tools with unprecedented capabilities for creating real-time stories and sharing them with the world.