A Few Good G-Men (Half-Life 2 film from 2005)

I created this video in June/July of 2005 using the Half-Life 2 SDK. This entire scene ran as a Half-Life 2 mod. You load the map, the movie plays (along with the end credits). Uses audio from the movie A Few Good Men (1992). Used Valve's Hammer editor for building the courtroom map and placing all the cameras and triggers. Used the Choreography tool (aka Face Poser) to import the audio samples and edit the phoneme mouth shapes for each line of dialog. Animated the body of the characters in 3DS Max. Data exported and compiled using Valve's StudioMDL model compiler. This short won an award at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival for Best Virtual Performance. Another note. I tried to re-render this in HL2 recently. Unfortunately the tools for creating cinematics using the Source SDK are no longer being maintained. In other words, I could not successfully compile the "scenes.image" file, which is necessary for loading choreography scenes into your map. Basically, all the characters just stood there in their T-poses. I wanted to re-render in high res, along with adding dynamic shadows to the characters. Maybe I'll try to convert this into an SFM scene. Ha! Looking back, I would have tried to push the intensity of the performances (particularly during the outbursts) a little more. The body animation also feels a little stiff. I'd also probably take out a minute and shorten the end credits. Then again, I was a hobbyist figuring this stuff out as I went. Thanks for watching! -Randall Glass