Machinima is the art of making movies with video game footage and assets, so it's perfect for the creative filmmakers out there who have an interest in games.

Whether you're making something as simple as a gaming music video or as involved as a multiple-hour series, machinima is open-ended and flexible enough for you to make almost anything. Here are some great tools to get you started.

Standalone Tools

While machinima mostly started out as a way to use in-game footage from video games to make narrative movies (eg. Red vs Blue on the Rooster Teeth YouTube channel), the genre's popularity has birthed several dedicated tools. Often these tools are used internally by game development teams to create in-world trailers and cinematics, but not always.

These tools blow traditional machinima techniques out of the water, although they do risk losing some of the medium's character and allure. Still, if you want to produce high-quality game-engine movies, these are the best available options.

1. Source Filmmaker

The Source FIlm Maker program with a project open

Source Filmmaker is a classic machinima-making tool and a highly-rated program within the community. It's nearly as full-featured as the animation software used by DreamWorks and Pixar and you can create some absolutely incredible stuff with it.

In fact, Valve uses it internally to create their trailers (including the famous Meet the Team shorts), so you know it's good.

The visual quality you can achieve is amazing and the interface is both intuitive and easy to use. If the software has one drawback, it's that importing custom assets can be a pain (although the library of assets is vast).

Source Filmmaker is an incredibly comprehensive piece of software, so you shouldn't expect to pick it up straight away. Spend some time on YouTube learning about the software and getting to grips with the UI, and you'll soon be creating machinima projects that you're proud of.

2. Unreal Engine

unreal engine with window menu open

Major game engines usually have their own tools for producing in-engine cinematics, but one of the more powerful choices is the Unreal Engine's Matinee Editor, which is used to produce trailers and cinematics for games.

Unreal Engine is free, and you can download it through the Epic Games Launcher. You can use it to make your own games if game development is something you're interested in, or you can just use the Matinee Editor that's on the program to create machinima of the games you've been playing.

It can be a bit complicated to learn at first, so make sure to spend some time watching YouTube channels and learning.

3. Audacity

An audio recording track on Audacity

Audacity is a completely free audio editing tool that is extremely easy to run and will give you and your team better control over the audio in your machinima films. You can use Audacity to record voice-overs, remove certain elements of an audio file, and add effects to your voices.

This is ideal, particularly if you're a one-person team, in order to make it seem like the characters in your machinima are played by different people.

Audacity's uncomplicated UI, free price, and accessibility with file settings of all types makes it a winning part of your machinima-making toolkit.

4. OBS

A project open in Open Broadcaster Studio

Open Broadcaster Studio (OBS) is completely free and allows you to record your screen while also having a face camera and your voice connected. Many YouTubers and streamers use OBS to capture their gameplay while speaking to an audience.

If you're playing a game that doesn't have an in-built machinima tool and isn't compatible with any other machinima-making programs, then you could try using an action camera mode or checking out mods, and then use OBS to capture your gameplay while acting as the character and providing voice-over lines.

5. DaVinci Resolve

A project open in DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is a completely free and very capable video editor that you can use to bring all the machinima footage together and finalize your videos. It is one of the best free video editing software for YouTube.

You can add effects, animations, correct the coloring of your clips, add motion graphics, and so much more.

You may be able to make your videos exactly the way you want using only game-specific tools on occasion, but for anything longer than a short where there are multiple characters and different scenes, you'll probably want to use a video editor to improve the overall quality.

Mods and Game-Specific Tools

On the other side of the coin, there are a number of machinima tools that exist as features or mods of existing games.

These are way less comprehensive than tools like Source Filmmaker, but they're also much easier to use. If you want to make machinima using a specific game, these are the way to go.

6. Rockstar Editor (Grand Theft Auto 5)

The Rockstar Editor menu on the Xbox One

The Rockstar Editor is primarily a tool for recording your exploits in GTA 5 and its multiplayer mode. However, it also has an impressive suite of movie-making tools, letting you stage interactions between multiple characters using multiple cameras and post-processing filters.

Furthermore, the editor also lets you manipulate the time, weather, location, props, and even physical constants like gravity. It also lets you edit the videos from right inside the editor, although you'll probably want to touch it up in a more specialized post-processing video editor as the final step of production.

7. Forge (Halo)

The Forge main menu on Halo 5 Guardians

Halo's Forge mode is available on multiple titles for the Xbox One such as Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5: Guardians. If you have older consoles and older Halo titles such as Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach, you'll be able to use the Forge mode to create machinima clips.

One of the most famous machinimas is Red vs. Blue, a series that follows two teams of bumbling soldiers in their adventures through a parody of Halo's elaborate universe.

Halo Forge is very popular amongst the fanbase for featuring a map editor and creator, well as allowing you to spawn and place most of the series' assets, adding further opportunity for more stories.

8. Action Camera (World of Warcraft)

World of Warcraft players used to have the Wow Machinima Tool and Free Far Sight programs to create machinima in, but unfortunately, both pieces of software are difficult to find online and don't work with the most recent version of the game.

Instead, you can use the official Action Camera while playing World of Warcraft to try and create footage this way. You'll likely need other software to turn it into something resembling a machinima, but at least you still have an official, easy-to-use tool for creating restricted clips.

You can use OBS or another streaming service to capture your gameplay and essentially film on the fly, just remember to have your team use the best apps to help actors remember their lines so you avoid having too many takes.

9. Blockbuster (Minecraft)

A forum post detailing a Minecraft mod called Blockbuster

Blockbuster is a machinima mod for Minecraft that lets you create richer cinematography in your Minecraft videos and series while being easy to use.

Blockbuster has keying tools, recording and playback of multiple actors, and plenty of other useful features that will allow you to create the stories you want.

10. Garry's Mod

Before Source Film Maker, there was Garry's Mod. Garry's Mod is a mod for Half-Life 2, which turns it into a sandbox game that lets you spawn, manipulate, and script NPCs, props, and cameras.

Though primarily designed for messing around with the physics engine, Garry's Mod eventually became the de facto standard for Source engine machinima, that is until the aforementioned Source Film Maker came along. That being said, Garry's Mod is still viable depending on what you want to make.

One big downside is that Garry's Mod lacks the ability to record and play back animations, which means characters can only be animated through stop-motion and puppetry. This lends a nightmarish, Jan Svankmejer-esque aesthetic to the stuff made for it, though this can be averted with enough skill and effort.

The latest Garry's Mod is technically no longer free, but you can still download the Half-Life 2 version on the Moddb website if you have Half-Life 2.

Get Creative With Your Gameplay

Creating films and comedy shorts with your video games is a great way of expressing your creativity while having fun. There are plenty of tools both standalone and specific available to get you going, but be patient throughout the process as good machinima-making takes time to perfect.

Machinima and virtual photography grow in popularity all the time and can lead to decent opportunities down the line depending on how seriously you take it.