Cinematic / Machinima Capabilities

[Wizaerd]

I'm curious about the editor, and would love to see a series of articles from Reverie on the cinematic capabilities of the editor, specifically for making machinama... Has there been any type of information about this released?

[otomotopia]

There's been info released on the editor itself, not specifically cinematics.

This is the general suggestion thread for those Fantasy Friday features you are talking about: http://www.reverieworld.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=1331

[Wizaerd]

Ahhh, I didn;t know that thread existed... Sorry... And Thanx!!

[Swift sword]

Actually, you couldn't possibly be expected to know about that thread. I'd hardly apologize-it's cool. And, in answer:
The editor will certainly have cinema capabilities. The devs said it's fairly simple to use, but they haven't gone into specifics. It's certainly helpful to know that the game is easily moddable and models can actually be replaced (raining cows!) with other models to create some very interesting effects, as mentioned in the paranthesis. One of the Fantasy Fridays gave use general editor info, although it's probably not exactly what you're looking for.

[Alex Walz]

You'll have all the cinematography tools that were used to make the official cinematics. I haven't played around with cinematics much, but you can switch from the editor view controls to cine view controls which give you more flexibility and allow you to choose whatever angles for your shots. Then you just set a marker A (by using your mouse to find a good angle, and then pressing 'm,' at which point a marker will be set and a box will pop up asking for you to name it for further reference.) and move on to your next viewpoint where you set a marker B. Then, through scripting, you can easily link your two camera points to make a camera track as fast or as slow as you would like.

Then we have all the normal cinematic effects, such as: Fade In RGB, Fade Out RGB, and Black Out effects. We also have a camera track loop function which is useful for RPGs where you will give the player a quest but not know how long it will take the player to read and accept - the camera will just keep moving even if it takes hours rather than coming to a stop after you're done setting markers.

Here's a test cinematic provided by Andy if you would like to see the camera tracks and cinematic effects in use:

Trigger.Cinematic=function()
	CurMap:BlackOut()
	Wait(1)
	CurMap:BeginCinematic()
	CurMap:FadeIn(1)
	
	CurMap:SetCameraTrack(true,-13,{Objects.Cam1,80, Objects.Cam2,70, Objects.Cam3,20, Objects.Cam4,100, Objects.Cam5,80})
	
	AddChatText("cinematic is finished!")
	
	CurMap:EndCinematic()
	CurMap:CenterViewOnPoint(100,100)
	DisableSelf()
end

Should be able to understand most of that without any prior knowledge in Lua. The "Objects.CamX"s are the marker names which the track will go through and the numbers following them are the level of zoom experienced as the camera passes through each checkpoint. And the "-13" means the track will last for 13 seconds. For more control, you can split this into several tracks to make the trip from Cam1 to Cam2 last more time than from Cam 2 to Cam 3 to Cam 4, or whatever.

[otomotopia]

...

Thats freakin SICK!!! *Stamps seal of approval* Now THAT is another cool feature.

[Negthareas]

Awesome! This kind of thing takes editing to a new level - I am just used to c=moretraditional, not so redical scenario editing.

[Alex Walz]

Hah, this is all pretty standard, but I'm glad you like it.

[wills370]

Looks good esecially if you combine it with your own scenario edditor. You could happily make a movie with the backgrounds you want and the characters doing what you want also...

Now im just waiting for the LOTR remake lol :P

[Wizaerd]

Thanx for the camera bit... How about animating characters? Moving them along a certain path, playing animations, special effects (such as triggered spells) etc... But since you state you're creating the in-game cinematics with the editor, then it's all there, but how intuitive, how easy to use? Must someone be a rocket scientist to put together such a scene, or will even I be able to do it?