Do you want to make your own machinima videos like Civil Protection? Almost all the videos on this site are created using the Source game engine by Valve software. In addition to making games, it's a powerful tool for creating your own 3D movies like I do here. Unfortunately, it can be very complicated and confusing to use. If you're serious about wanting to make your own movies and want someone to shed light into the maddening depths of the Source engine, I recommend checking out one or both of these guides:

The Source Machinima Choreography guide is all about animating within the game. If you want to know how to get characters to walk, talk, move about, and interact with their environment, this guide will teach you how.

• In depth explanation of how level design pertains to machinima
• Adding prop and character entities
• Detailed overview of FacePoser
• Creating generic actors and using animations
• Optimization techniques
• Setting up triggers between Hammer and FacePoser
• Using gestures and postures
• Layering and mixing animations
• Linking complex scripted sequences
• Using facial expressions
• Lip-synching custom audio

The Source Machinima Cinematography guide covers just about everything else involved with making a machinima movie. It covers topics like camerawork, basic audio and video editing, adding some special effects like slow motion and motion blur, and even some on getting ideas and writing.

• Tips for organizing ideas and scripting
• Detailed overview of voice recording process and specs
• Practical sound editing examples
• In depth explaination of Source Recorder
• In depth explaination of Demo Smoother
• Breakdown of in-game and demo camera tools
• Variable frame rates
• Motion blur and VisualFX
• Basic video editing in Adobe Premiere & Windows Movie Maker
• Video output and web publishing

Both of these guides were written and narrated by myself and contain everything I knew when I made the first episode of Civil Protection and more. I consider them both quite thorough and should definitely be enough to get you started in making your own movie. Also as a risk to my own sanity, I'll try and answer any additional questions about how to accomplish something in the source engine if you go through the related guide (though for general tech support please contact Noesis instead). Please note that while almost all material in both guides is relevant to all versions of the Source engine, it's designed to be used with the game Half-Life 2: Episode 1.

Finally, feel free to check out the video Galaxy Gulp, a short machinima created specifically for the guides in order to illustrate some of the different features of the engine.