How to make a first-person machinima

This guide is written to help those who want to make machinima like Ross Scott's Freeman's Mind series.

Introduction

Welcome to the guide to make machinima using Gordon Freeman's vision as a camera. This guide will help you get started on making first-person view machinima so that you can tell your own stories through source games such as Black Mesa; make yourself the character.

In the description of this guide, I used Ross Scott's Freeman's Mind machinima series as an example. Purely because it is a really good Machinima series that took the perspective of the protagonist Gordon Freeman and hear what he miust have been really thinking. If you do not know what the series is or what I'm talking about, watch the first episode here and (if you want to) watch the rest of the series. All credit goes to Ross Scott and Accursed Farms.

Getting Ready

Recording

To start recording, you are obviously going to need recording software. I personally recommend using either Bandicam or Open Broadcast Software (OBS) as I have had a trustworthy experience using the software in the past. Bandicam is easy to use and comes in two versions: the first being a free demo version with certain restrictions and added watermark (see their conditions on their website), and then the premium version which is only payed once and cost no more than $30.
OBS is completely free, but you may need to search video tutorials on YouTube in order to optimise the program to fit your computer's specs.

Video Fit Optimisation

Before you record, the game must be optimised to run either between 30 and 60fps and/or beyond. Depending on your computer's specs oyu will need to go to the Source game's advanced video settings, start from the lowest and then work your way to the highest of settings that your computer can manage without framey or laggy gameplay. The faster the framerate, the better.
My video settings are set to:

• Texture Filtering: 16x
  
• Anti-Aliasing: 8xMSAA
  
• Vertical Sync: Disabled
  
• Multicore Rendering: Enabled
  
• Shader Detail: High
  
• Shadow Detail: High
  
• Colour Correction: Enabled
  
• CSM: Low
  
• High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)
  
• Model/Texture Detail: High
  
• Motion Blur: Disabled

You can adjust your settings to however you like, but aim for the higher framerate.

Use of Codes

This part is where some find it tricky. In reality, it is not very hard. There are some codes you must use if you don't want your character to die/take damage, to show the Heds Up Display (HUD), to encounter unrealistic occurances (cannot get equipment out of military ammo boxes), or always have your weapon at the ready.

To deal with these problems, you need to use the developer console to bind keys. First, go to the Keyboard Options in the start menu and click on the Advanced button under the box list. There should be a box that says Enable Developer Console. Tick the box and you should be able to open the console pressing the ~ key that lies underneath the Escape key on your keyboard.

Once the console is open, feel free to put any of these commands in. In any spaces where # is typed in, replace it with a key on your keyboard you want to bind the command to. In any spaces where @ is typed in, replace with any numerical values. If you see the following numbers typed as "0 1" it is a toggle where 0 is off and 1 is on.

God Mode: Character cannot die under any circumstances.

bind # "toggle godmode 0 1"

Buddha: Character will take damage but cannot die unless within map node kill boundaries.

bind # "toggle buddha 0 1"

Give ammunition of the current weapon in hand (will only work for weapons that consume ammo unike the hivehand and the crowbar).

bind # "givecurrentammo"

Impulse 200: Holsters the weapon.

bind # "toggle impulse 200 0 1"

Draw HUD: Toggles the activation of the Heads Up Display.

bind # "cl_drawhud 0 1"

Cheats: Need to enable this if you are to ever use Impulse or Godmode commands.

bind # "toggle sv_cheats 0 1"

Ragdoll Collide: Enables dead bodies to physically interact with other ragdolls and some props instead of phasing through them (should be set to 1 by default).

cl_ragdoll_collide 0 1
Choose either 0 (off) or 1 (on).

Blood pool chance: Increases or decreases the chances of blood pouring in pools out of dead ragdolls.

cl_ragdoll_bloodpool_chance @

There are also some console fixes you can pin into the console or in the cfg file in the game's file cache which you can find in your computer's Program Files (x86). (all credit goes to
Goli ツ.

cl_detailfade 3500 - Stops props from fading out of thin air when you are far away from them. Default = 400
g_ragdoll_lvfadespeed 0 - Determines the speed of ragdolls fading out of existance if ragdolls need to do so for better performance. Default = 600
g_ragdoll_maxcount 50 - Determines how many created ragdolls can exist in a map. Default = 8.

And that's about it! You're ready to make some movies like Hardcore Henry.

Thanks For Reading

I just want to give you huge respect for reading this guide and taking the time to read through it all. If you want to check out my content, see what I have on my profile and also, be sure you join my Discord server: The D-Pad Pub[discord.gg] where you can meet other people who create content and play games like the rest of us. I hope to see the videos you all make.
~BattlefieldBartender

[big liquid bosscelot]

ross scott creator of freeman's mind uses the source engine's demo recording system to record with no lag. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Demo_Recording_Tools

[BattlefieldBartender]

I can look into it. I'll just need to get a list of all the GldSrce console commands.

[Sherman]

Can you make a half life 1 edition?

[SoMudge]

Very good, but not «bind # "toggle impulse 200 0 1"». It's correct: «bind # "impulse 200"», cause it's toggles by itself. :)

[BattlefieldBartender]

If you want to get rid of the HUD the command is cl_drawhud 0.
If you're talking about the motion blur used in Freeman's Mind, that was not in-game, Accursed Farms copied the footage to play on different layers at decreasingly varied opacities and on a time deviation.

[KyoChan34]

i kind of want to have the freemans mind vision on my game

[BattlefieldBartender]

Thank you for spreading your wisdom!

[radiriz]

HUZZAH!
I HAVE RETURNED WITH INFORMATION!
THERE IS A COMMAND TO SLOW DOWN NOCLIP SPEED!
the command is sv_noclipspeed.
that's it
i have it set to 0.4
so there u go

[BattlefieldBartender]

He just tapped W to make the weight of Gordon Freeman's body seem so. If you just want to slow down noclip, I can't help you there, sorry. :(

[radiriz]

Is there any way to slow down noclip speed?
So I can do the climbing and such like Ross did.