Machinima: The Research On3D Real-time Animation Production Technology

It is acknowledged that the adoption of the traditional animation productiontechnology to produce animation is most challenging and difficult. A success of ananimation usually demands a large number of professional personnel, several sets ofexpensive electronic devices and long production cycle. The high-threshold andhigh-price animation production calls for a new type of filming art----machinima.Machinima refers to a3D animation real-time rendered through the engine of theelectronic game. It is an art form halfway between electronic game and film,characterized with both the interaction, diversification, liberalization of electronicgame and the narrative expression, nonlinear editing of film. It is acknowledged as themost convenient and civilian-oriented entertainment. A profound research tells us thatthe existing machinima production is preceded through three stages: the preparation,the producing and the editing. What makes the present research different is that byfocusing on the script description mechanism it attempts a new machinima productionmethod, which is putting forward a script description mechanism based on XMLtechnology. In the practice of the machinima production, it is specified to theproduction of each lens, input through the edited XML script by the relevantcomponents provided by the Torque3D game engine, then output the produced scene,and until the complete of the whole scenes and then the record of the film.In the end of the present research, an animation example called “A father and hisson” is created by using the Torque3D game engine. It serves to illustrate the wholeprocess of the machinima production. Compared with the traditional3D animationproduction, the machinima production method raised in this research degrades thethreshold, cuts the investment budget, shortens the producing cycle, and provides awhole new picture for the machinima production.