Wednesday, July 29, 2009

CityEngine for Machinima

There are some nice examples on how CityEngine, a procedural city modelling software, can be used for game/machinima creation. They have examples for Cryengine2, which is still my favourite high-end engine, and Unity3D. The workflow can be easily adapted to other game engines as well, I guess.
Great to see there is a Windows version for Unity3D out now as well. Don't know if anyone has tried to make Machinima with that engine.

3 comments:

  1. CityEngine looks interesting, but at $3K it's out of my budget. Unity3D is pretty net, but according to smart folks on their forum, the camera system isn't really set up for machinima. Of course, since you can program just about anything in Unity3D, it is a solvable problem. Unity indie is $200, but lacks some capabilities (no real time shadows, etc) that their Unity Pro ($1500) has. Still, it would be interesting if someone would review Unity3D from a machinima perspective.

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  2. I really think Unity can be a great machinima tool. I actually have an indie license! But because my programming chops are sub-par, its taking me a long time to get up and running. I am also so easily distracted by tools that have shorter path to results, even those results might not be as good. I would love to connect with any other machinimists out there working with Unity3d!

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  3. Right, CityEngine has a high pricetag on it, but they have a 30 days trial version available. And if I got it right they offer you a time limited version for free if you come up with an interesting project. I'm sure they might be very interested if someone uses their tool for a machinima movie and will support you.

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