Minecraft is one of the most popular games of all time, not just due to the gameplay, but also due to its creative potential. It’s limitless. If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’d know many creators of Minecraft content have ventured into dramatic storytelling in one form or another. From SMPs to roleplays, this format has become incredibly successful over the past few years… But one in particular is quite a standout… Machinimas. If you haven’t heard of Machinimas, they are essentially movies, or TV shows, shot within the boundaries of a video game. In the Case of Minecraft, this can be done without the use of mods by just setting up a scene and pointing your camera at whatever is happening. With the use of mods however, a vast ocean of possibilities emerge. Minecraft is one of the most flexible games of all time, not just for modding, But for applying your own aesthetic and style. But just how deep does this rabbit hole go? Can cinematic creations made purely within Minecraft rival the flexibility of full-scale 3D animation? Well, we’re certainly closer than we’ve ever been before. So let’s go ahead and dive on in. All of my videos include cinematics at this point. In fact, it’s what you’re looking at right now. It involves movements that aren’t possible by normal players, and are performed by having precise control over the camera and the subject. In fact, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between A shot that’s been taken by a player and a shot that’s been programmed and played back. A player’s camera isn’t smooth, as it’s being controlled by the hand of a player, and things like blocks and view bobbing cause it to feel like distinctly organic movement. On the other side, a camera With programmed keyframes completes its trip from point A to point B with predictable behavior. If you want to know how hard it would be to do that as a regular player without modifications, think about it this way: If you wanted to draw a straight line, there are two ways you Could do it. One, likely the inferior method for people with shaky hands, is to do it freehand. This is obviously hard to do, and the result will end up looking distinctly human-made. The line isn’t straight. However, if you were to use a ruler or the line tool to guide your hand, You can make a perfectly straight line, giving you more control. This is why shots like this look so flawless in movement. The camera is able to infinitely replicate the same movements over and over, and it can be changed in any way that you desire. Many mods utilize this concept in very unique ways. The most popular example of this is called Replay Mod. Compared to other video editing software, Replay Mod allows you to place position keyframes within the game itself, using recordings taken directly from Minecraft gameplay That starts when you click “Start Recording” and ends when you leave the server or click “Stop Recording”. It captures everything that happens around your player, including block data, particles, entities, and items, exactly as they had occurred in real-time. In fact, You can even play these recordings in slow motion, by extending the time keyframes so it doesn’t occur on this second timeline in real-time. It causes everything to change in speed, all at the same time. You can slow down the swing of a sword, jumping, falling, running, and more. It’s so integrated that even the movements of the players and mobs are slowed down in kind, without any sort of visual distortion or glitching. This time keyframe is used by quite a lot of YouTubers, especially PVP YouTubers, who use slow motion to accentuate their fights, Often set to music and edited with lots of transitions and visual elements. Honestly, I really have to commend the developers for making this mod work in the way it does. The custom GUI, the video exporting, and the keyframing all have a level of customization That is exactly what Minecraft filmmakers need. Actually, I even use ReplayMod for my own content. All the shots I’ve shown up to now are pre-recorded gameplay that is then run through ReplayMod, keyframed, and rendered. It does wonders to grab people’s Attention and is a very useful visual tool, especially when no regular footage, or A-roll, applies to a section of my commentary. I don’t know about you, but I find creating and watching this style of footage really quite fun. However, as is the nature of Minecraft mods, Some things are destined to go wrong, or bug out. Regardless, in its class, it’s simply unrivaled… Unless, of course, we look back to September 18, 2017. Confused yet? Let me explain. For those who are unaware, that’s the date Minecraft 1.12.2 released. Since then, that dated Version has been a hidden powerhouse for Minecraft creators, and the modding community as a whole. The mod Blockbuster by McHorse is supported only up to 1.12.2, but it’s made up for by the features it brings to the table. If you thought Replay Mod was the be-all and end-all to recording, This takes it to a whole other level. From posing any entity you want to puppeteering players as if your world was a multiplayer server, Blockbuster provides a level of options never before seen. With its extensive menus and camera/recording editor tab, you get to be the Cameraman, the actor, and the set artist. Infinite granularity. You may be sold on the concept, but you may be wondering: “Why would you use 1.12.2 when all the blocks and items of 1.18 are completely missing from the game?” Luckily, backporting has been a massively popular phenomenon in modding communities, Especially for Minecraft. The FutureMC mod, for one, restores most, if not every single item that exists in future versions up to 1.18. You can see here, how I have Netherite armor and tools in 1.12. A simple workaround for a seemingly difficult problem. With all the mods and technology aside, let’s delve a bit deeper… Namely, into how the capabilities of these programs can be fully realized… with a little research and elbow grease. Blockbuster isn’t just one mod, it’s actually an entire suite of mods, each with their own uses, That all work together as a single tool. Each one is designed to work with each other, but they can be used individually as well. The ones we’ll be focusing on right now are Blockbuster, Aperture, and Metamorph. These three allow you to become any entity in the game, Act out entire scenes by yourself, and even program the camera to work alongside those scenes after recording the movements of those entities. There is also an entity editor to not only pose/animate the characters, but also add items and objects to them in unconventional ways. And I haven’t even told you the best part yet. When you’re using traditional body actors to do a scene for a Minecraft machinima, you would need all the different players to synchronize their head bobbing for each line, or do jump cuts to mask the timing issues. With Blockbuster, There is no such problem. In the scenes, you can add an audio track in a .wav format, allowing you to have the backing track of the scene in the game itself. For “lipsyncing” recordings this is possibly one of the most underrated features of this mod. However, it also has its uses for b-roll. On the Aperture side of things, there are modifiers on top of the pre-existing camera modes, that allow you to snap to entities, make a perfect circle around a defined point, and even add natural amounts of shake to the camera on Top of the movements you programmed in. Together, these allow you to be the ultimate cameraman. But it doesn’t end there, because there’s another feature in the accompanying mod, Metamorph, which makes all of this even more flexible. With this mod included with all the others, you can Morph into any entity you want, including items, blocks, players, and every single mob, including ones you modded into the game. The possibilities are endless, and allow you to manipulate the game in a way that transforms your movies from simple camera motion to Hollywood-level Minecraft productions with absolutely no cost besides it having a bit of a learning curve. It’s even compatible with OptiFine, so you can run expensive shaders beside it to change the look and feel to whatever you want. Secretly, YouTubers have been using this tool for years, And I wanted to bring some recognition to it for what it has been able to accomplish. In fact, it’s even been popular amongst Shorts creators, who use the Letterboxing feature to show a 9:16 preview of the shots so nothing is missed outside of a phone screen. Frankly, this mod is so Extra to the point where you might not even use 90% of the features that it has under the hood as a casual user, but when someone really needs it, they’ll have limitless amounts of opportunity. Some other quality of life features the mod has added include this handy play button to preview Scenes irrespective of chroma key blocks, so you can use a pixel-perfect green-screened image of your player in your editing software. Needless to say, it’s a great mod, and you should try it out if you’re ever in the position to make cinematic content in Minecraft. Because of The tools that exist today, I’m excited for the Minecraft cinematics of tomorrow. So yeah. That just about wraps things up for now! This video was entirely written, captured, and edited by Burssty, so if you’d like, her social links will be in the description down below. Either way, I hope you all enjoyed this video, subscribe if you did, and thanks for watching! Video Information
This video, titled ‘The Best Minecraft Cinematic Mods’, was uploaded by AntVenom on 2022-02-13 18:27:00. It has garnered 296870 views and 20773 likes. The duration of the video is 00:10:58 or 658 seconds.
Minecraft cinema mods have come a LONG way… » Facts & Lists Playlist – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR50dP3MW9ZUjf6oq6l9DOOhkUMc3DBIO » Get 25% Off a Minecraft Server – http://mcph.to/AntVenom
VIDEO LINKS » McHorse Github: https://github.com/mchorse/ » Blockbuster CurseForge: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/blockbuster » Aperture: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/aperture » Metamorph: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/metamorph » FutureMC: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/future-mc
WRITER & EDITOR – Burssty » YouTube: @Burssty » Twitter: https://twitter.com/Burssty
PRODUCER & VOICE » AntVenom
CREATIVE DIRECTOR » Furx
0:00 Intro 1:22 Inhuman Movements 2:56 Replay Mod 4:51 Blockbuster & Aperture Mod 8:34 Metamorph Mod
MUSIC » Epidemic Sound (Day One, Confidential Reports, The Twisted Apple, Solarflares, Tracker, Melted Mind)