i did some machinimas with 3dgs. it's a nice tool for that but you will certainly have to script a lot (your own tools for recording your player movements, playback, writing out screenshots,...).

changing the aspect ratio of the camera is no problem. getting right timing while writing out numbered screenshots isn't either.

I recommend 3d Gamestudio, Virtual Dub, Photoshop and either fraps or taksi+audacity. 3d Gamestudio is an excellent tool for machinima, the other tools are excellent for recording the scenes and stitching together. You also can have complete control of the camera and you can choose the speed of the scene, ie bullet time to complete stop to ultra fast with an easy command

Hi,
I also have been down the path of trying to do machinima with GS. Heres an idea:
If you're familiar with Quake, then you probably know about quake demos, *.dem
files, where the gameplay is recorded, then when you start Quake, you see the demo running on screen in the background behind the menu. The demo isnt actually recorded, like screenshots or video, rather, the entire state of the game at each interval is recorded in terms of variables, object's positions etc.
This would be ideal for make machinima in GS, coming up with the actual file/ method may be more complex. The method I advise is actually pretty straight forward, but would still require taking screenshots by hand. My method would involve a "transparent layer" of controls, that run during the game in real time, the controls could pause the game, and have a track bar that could move forward or backward in time, and have a button-click or keyboard shortcut to take each picture, and name them sequentialy in the save folder.
There is on the otherhand, a program out there somewhere that converts *.dem files directly into AVI's, so if you could look into the dem format, you may be able to write a similar format, and figure out a way to convert it then to AVI, avoiding all the taking screenshots and putting them together later.
Hope this helps you somewhat, sorry I dont have more to offer.
However, if you and others would find it useful, I will write the scripts for the just described in-game recording controls.--Yung

i just came across "stolen life", a 3dgs machinima from nanoflix (previously they did "killer robot" and "rendezvous" with 3dgs).

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~raz/nima/SL_Tumb/sl_ss.html

they even have stars as voice actors! claudia black from farscape, stargate sg1, pitch black,... and chris jones from "under a killing moon" and its sequels.



@yung: you don't have to take screenshots manually. you could automate that with a script.