Game engine as a filmmaking/video production tool

#1 Ibis,

TGE has been used for a series called " Hey, Shipwreck". They have multiple episodes available on youtube as well as purchase on DVD. Do some searching here, it should at least give you a decent idea of how the cameras and animation, etc. is setup.
Check out http://www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1262 for starters.

#2 1. Torque can be used for Machima, though you will have to talk to GG about the licensing.
2. You can set up different cameras. If you watch the demo, look at the source, and study the feature demo, you can see it in action.
3. For reliability's sake, I would use FRAPS or some other game recording software. That way you can just let your game/movie run and let the other app do its job. Torque does not render your targets to any video format.
4. It has been done before and could be done again. The camera placement and tweaking is not streamlined for this sort of a project, but it doesn't mean that it is not doable.

#3 TGE/A might be good for low-quality stuff, but unless you want to do real-time rendering I'm not sure why you would want to use it instead of programs that are designed to do what you want. Animation Master is a good inexpensive program, and then there is Lightwave 3d, Max, Maya, and many others. All of which are designed to do exactly what you want with many tools to help make the job easier.

#4 Ibis, I think the use of the game engine for what you want to do would greatly depend on what level of animation your talking about. With a game engine your NOT going to get PIXAR level graphics. So if your thinking a professional quality animation system then your gonna want to avoid a game engine. The best your gonna get is something along the lines of Garry's Mod....a Halflife type of mod kit that allows you to make "mini-movies" using the halflife source engine. If your thinking about serious animation with 3D environments then I would look into a package like Blender (free but steep learning curve) or Like Derry mentioned Animation Master or Maya, 3D max ect. It basically all depends on what level you are trying to accomplish. If your thinking of something just for fun..... Well give it a try and see what you can do! Who knows you could probably prove me completely wrong:-)

#5 Thanks all. Yeah I'm actually looking to do more than basic machima stuff. I use Maya 7 at the moment and the reason i like the idea of using a game engine for such purpose is the ability to prototype and and produce stuff in real time., Al thought getting the results I'm looking for still require additional (non-mealtime rendering which I have no idea how I would accomplish it. Mind you, I'm not looking to do any character stuff in 3d, i hand draw that aspect of the work, even for the inorganic elements (backgrounds and non living stuff) i like painting the textures by hand because it gives it a non-realistic painterly look as opposed to using photo references and trying to get models to look realistic... which often makes them just look plastic-like.

Maya doesn't seem to have any real time rendering abilities for prototyping and stuff, i may be wrong. The idea of capturing game footage using something like Fraps doesn't appeal to me that much either cause of the hardware requirements. I'm looking to export HD footage. I'll keep playing with it and see where it goes. If I can get the type of quality that games like Chicken Little are able to produce in the backgrounds I would be ok with that.

BTW, The backgrounds and environments in UNCHARTED: Drakes Fortune on the PS3 are mind blowing.

#6 If you're looking for more than machima, then a game engine is not for you. Preview in wireframe for animation. Use flat shading for detail work in animation. Get used to the keystroke commands for switching preview modes. Remember that if you stop on a frame and preview, you will get a great idea of lighting, texturing, texture stretching across verts, etc. That will fix most of the common problems with animation. Rendering out previews of exactly what you are looking for such as lighting across surfaces or hotspots will cover most of the rest. Maya's an excellent tool for what you are doing.

I believe Chicken Little's backgrounds were pre-rendered and then setup with collision areas in rought 3D, much the same way that Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII worked on the back-end, without the camera switching. It's been a long, long time since I played it with my nephew, though. But pre-rendering is extremely popular if you need vivid background graphics. The movie itself was rendered on a couple of render farms over a long period of time, like most CG movies. I believe the backgrounds in Drake are also pre-rendered partially (baked in lighting, pre-rendered scenes to generate more realistic textures, etc). It seems there was an interview on Lightwave, Maya, or Max's site with the artistic director. I can't remember which app he used, but he was doing some great work with it and it was being used as a showpiece (as it should).

#7 I've done this in a torque game and so have others. Go to youtube and type blockland. I use fraps to make the videos.

#8 A game engine such as Unity would probably be better for you than Torque for this purpose. Simply because torque's art pipeline is horrible. You'll spend more time just getting your first character working properly in torque than you would recording an entire fraps'd episode in a click->import collada compatible engine.

#9 It sounds like Animation Master or better yet, Caligari TrueSpace would do what you want.
You can get fantastic results from either of these. (I have them both, but prefer TrueSpace.)

#10 Blender....

#11 Blender is ok, but as many have said, the learning curve is steep. Steep enough that I simply
gave up. However, each program has it's own little quirks and interface learning curve. Some
people's brains adapt to Blender better than others.