"Urban Royale": Pretty Cool Example of Second Life Gamer Machinima (Yes, It's Really Second Life)

When I first saw this machinima, called "Urban Royale", I seriously thought it was shot in a Battlefield map, or another high-end FPS game -- but no, this is Second Life, showing itself fairly capable of capturing some visually tricked out, rock 'em sock 'em gamer action at a decent frame rate:

Directed by Eric Boccara, it's not necessarily meant to a linear narrative (I'm largely oblivious on who the hell's supposed to be gunning for who), but it's full of striking visuals I rarely see in SL machinima. (Watch 1:15, 2:50, 3:20, 3:45, and 4:40 for some samples.)

"The idea to do an action over-the-top, weird, but funny type machinima came to my head when my friend Shakeno Tomsen showed me this awesome Animation Override which had all sorts of features for tactical combat," Mr. Boccara explains. (Links to the AOs and props are in the YouTube description.) The actors are friends of his, many from Natural Selection Studios, an SL machinima group founded by Bebop Vox.

Getting such high quality visual footage from Second Life took some extra effort, which Boccara explains after the break:

"I used the latest Phoenix viewer for its shadows. Kirsten viewer's also has amazing shadows, but is a bit more demanding. Phoenix lets me record with shadows at a steady framerate. The WindLight setting I used for this was Morning Glory."

The machinima was shot in a sim called Ganesha, but you won't see the set still there, for a very good reason: "[It's] already been demolished. Whenever I work on a machinima, the set gets built and destroyed as soon as they've filled their role. The more prims you have laying around, the more it will impact the framerate."

Comments

[ColeMarie Soleil]

Yeah that was damn good and entertaining

[samlowry hawks]

awesome use of deph of field, the lucky to have shadows and the angles of cameras are really unique. Bravo!

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Yep. SL looks great when you have the hardware to run it.

[House of Gryphon]

Excellent use of depth of field! Angles and shadows look awesome!