Howdy Gideon, all,
Machinima seems to be on the road to becoming a medium (more than just
an artform). A recent posting at New World Notes describes an approach to using the platform of Second Life (SL) for commercial content,
including generating advertising machinima. A recent SL machinima received much attention as a charity effort (generating contributions for cancer research). Massively frequently publishes about the form.
A Second Life (SL) user suggested that I create machinima to
demonstrate/promote the interactive objects I am scripting. The piece mentioned in last post is a "get-your-feet-wet" sort of thing, and I am using
Camtasia 4 to record and edit.
For many, including myself, the most interesting development in the
technology of SL is found in the OpenSim project. Source code for the
SL client-side application (the "viewer") was released last year,
speeding up reverse engineering of the virtual reality simulator (the
server). Result: You can now host your own virtual world, on your own
PC.
***Edit***
Qavimator is an open source animation tool that produces .bvh files that can then be uploaded to SL.