58 réponses à ce sujet

[John Epler]

Hey folks.

John Epler here. I'm a Cinematic Designer on the Dragon Age 2 team - worked with a little of the DA:O PRC before this and did my submission in the Dragon Age Toolset so I'm familiar with both the original toolset and the slightly modified one we're using for DA2.

I know a lot of questions can come up in regards to the Cutscene editor - it's a powerful tool, but it can often be unwieldy and a lot of the functions aren't very well-documented. To this end, I'm wondering if you folks would find a semi-kinda-bi-weekly (AKA whenever I'm not swamped) 'Tips and Tricks' post where I point out some of the things I do on a daily basis to make my life easier and to make working on cutscenes a smoother and more painless process.

The other side of this is I want to let you guys know that if you have any questions at all in regards to the Cutscene editor, staging editor or Conversation editor, please feel free to give me a shout and I'll be more than happy to answer them. I can't promise I'll get back to you immediately, as I unfortunately have a lot on my plate, but I'd be more than happy to give you the answer you're looking for - or, alternatively, find the person who knows the answer.

Anyways, just figured I'd drop in and see what kind of interest there was! Have a great day.

John Epler
Cinematic Designer
Dragon Age 2

[mousestalker]

Bless you!



Yes, that would be very helpful, delightful even.

[AlanSJF]

Bless you indeed. It's really good of you to take the time.



Personally, when it comes to cutscenes the issue I'm having trouble with is on the audio side of things - but you've posted in the sound thread, so that one you're aware of.



But don't worry, I'm sure you'll be swamped with requests before too long!

[Sunjammer]

You need to ask? Of course we want it!

[DahliaLynn]

The gratitude is clear by now!! Thank you

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 10 novembre 2010 - 09:43 .

[John Epler]

Cool! I'll see if I can get something up next week or the week after (I'm moving at the end of next week and with that and crunch, I'm a little busy ).

[Yara C.]

Very appreciated. Thank you!

[AlanSJF]

Also - might be an idea to add a sticky to this thread.

[DahliaLynn]

A quick question whenever you get the chance:
When creating a cutscene, do they tell you that you must place your creatures in the area? Any specific rules you need to follow during initial setup ?

Edit: definitely make this  sticky

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 11 novembre 2010 - 12:05 .

[John Epler]

DahliaLynn,



Generally speaking, we discuss with the Tech Designers what creatures are available to us in the area - what we can expect to be alive, what positioning they want for the fights, that sort of thing. If there's a conflict, we'll often get them to create 'stunt' actors. Those are versions of the creatures we use in the cutscenes that don't actually show up for combat or the like and who get destroyed at the end of the cutscene.



Of course, that's the ideal. Oftentimes, we just throw in whatever creatures we need and wait for the bugs to come rolling in But ideally, we'd be talking to Tech Design whenever we need something like that set up.

[FergusM]

Just wax philosophical about sound. Getting sound events for animations to play, and at an appropriate volume, etc. I think this is what Dahlia was getting at; there's been some suggestion that sound events will play if the creature is in the area and not just the cutscene, but often they still don't play or it is just too quiet.



Any tips for overhead shots? I feel like often the ground textures really dominate a shot that is pointing down, and if you try and use dof everything is just a blurry mess. Some tips on the application of dof in general would be good.

[Challseus]

Thanks for doing this! I echo other people's sentiments about getting animation sounds to work properly, and at a high enough volume.

[Aryana70]

Thank you, it is extremely thoughtful of you to think of us all. Any tips and tricks would be unbelievingly helpful. With the amount of work that you have its kinda cool that you would take the time for us fans....your a champion...

[AmstradHero]

This would be an extremely valuable resource, as cutscenes are still a challenging prospect but make such a huge difference to having professional presentation within a mod. I am certain that any tips and tricks you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

[Elvhen Veluthil]

That's a great initiative, thanks for your time.

[Jonathan Seagull]

Yes, chiming in to say that any tips would be greatly appreciated, and you are a rockstar for offering. And I agree with AmstradHero -- cutscenes can be one of the most difficult and time-consuming parts of modding, but possibly the most "visible" as well. So thanks again!

[John Epler]

Hey all!



Just wanted to let you know - I haven't forgotten about you guys! Been really, really crazy busy this last little while, though. We're trying to finish this game called Dragon Age 2, perhaps you've heard of it



But on a serious note, when I have some time over Christmas I'll get some stuff together for this. Lots of lessons I've learned and am still learning about the toolset, Cinematic Design and cutscenes in general that I'd love to pass along. Some of them are probably pretty obvious - others, they seem obvious once you know them but if you're anything like me they'll come as a huge revelation

[DahliaLynn]

Thanks, John, eagerly awaiting the new info

[errant_knight]

JohnEpler wrote...

Hey all!

Just wanted to let you know - I haven't forgotten about you guys! Been really, really crazy busy this last little while, though. We're trying to finish this game called Dragon Age 2, perhaps you've heard of it

But on a serious note, when I have some time over Christmas I'll get some stuff together for this. Lots of lessons I've learned and am still learning about the toolset, Cinematic Design and cutscenes in general that I'd love to pass along. Some of them are probably pretty obvious - others, they seem obvious once you know them but if you're anything like me they'll come as a huge revelation

I'm very excited! Yay!

[0x30A88]

Having a vfx like the winter's grasp hit effect would lag up the cutscene editor, even if I am working on a part long before it begins, but only when I drag the slide, not when cutscene is playing. It's kind of hard to work when you have to see through the winters grasp effect buggin up, even when editing a part after or before it's play animation(s).

That's more of a bug. A real request is that you can turn off the caerma following the cutscene, for debugging purposes. Like instead of having to watch the vfx unfold or the creature animation getting right from a distane is not easy when you aim for a great scene. One could of course do it with adding another camera, but a setting in the toolbars to have the camera freed from the cutscene timeline camera actions, and locked back in place when toggled off.

Next comes the animations, having a animation browser, like the inventory browser in a way, where you can see how it looks like before selecting, with the creature you're adding it to. Would save lots of time. Additionally, this would be great for vfx-s, for having the abillity to look how they play out before you spawn it, like in a browser, would save a lot of tedious select-spawn-check-not the one-select-spawn-check....

Saving time is the key in this business, for time is money for companies like Bioware. And it would probably not take a year before the modding community finally gets the hold of the power the provided toolset have to offer.

Thank you for taking your time to listen to all these suggestion. They're only suggestions, in the end, Bioware choose whether to implement those or not, though I would recommend implementing them. Also, there's a hive of Toolset bugs that really should be fixed, in the cutscene editor and other places (exspecially the level exitor...)

Modifié par Gisle Aune, 05 décembre 2010 - 11:19 .

[Yara C.]

Gisle Aune wrote...
Next comes the animations, having a animation browser, like the inventory browser in a way, where you can see how it looks like before selecting, with the creature you're adding it to. Would save lots of time. Additionally, this would be great for vfx-s, for having the abillity to look how they play out before you spawn it, like in a browser, would save a lot of tedious select-spawn-check-not the one-select-spawn-check....

Of course, it is not what you have in mind when you speak about an animation browser. But you are aware of the possibilities the event editor offers, aren´t you?
With the event editor (Menu Tools > Animation Events) you can preview animations in a viewport. You can set - in the object inspector-  the creature rig to the creature which you want to animate. You can preview an animation for a placeable as well and check (and hear) if an animation has sound associated to it.
To my opinion it is time saving if you want to compare especially similiar animations.

[0x30A88]

^Thank you, I did not know about that one, but having the preview option while you're going to insert it into the cutscene would be even better.

[BloodsongVengeance]

oh good; actually i was wondering where you'd gotten to, john



the bane of my existence is faceFX. do you do facefx tips and tricks and help?



i REALLY hate that you can't re-edit a facial animation in the cutscene once you close ffx studio for that session. what i've taken to doing is creating a dummy conversation line and deleting the text and lipsynch and just using it to edit (and re-edit) the facefx. but i can't figure out how to substitute the humanmale texture instead of that blasted clown face it has when you edit from a convo.



that, plus a lot of times the face animation looks a lot different between the cutscene preview in the toolset, and the actual animation in the game. i'm at a loss on that one. no, i'm not using substitution characters. i'm using the actual npcs.







another thing i would like to learn is about camera angles -- i mean when to tilt the camera. i usually only shoot with level cameras. but i noticed some shots in the city elf origin have tilted cameras. i wouldn't have thought to use them there.

[Yara C.]

JohnEpler wrote...

Hey all!

Just wanted to let you know - I haven't forgotten about you guys! Been really, really crazy busy this last little while, though. We're trying to finish this game called Dragon Age 2, perhaps you've heard of it

But on a serious note, when I have some time over Christmas I'll get some stuff together for this. Lots of lessons I've learned and am still learning about the toolset, Cinematic Design and cutscenes in general that I'd love to pass along. Some of them are probably pretty obvious - others, they seem obvious once you know them but if you're anything like me they'll come as a huge revelation

Hi John,

We really hope you will have some time to come back over Christmas and give us some illumination
We are probably looking forward to this like kids to Christmas.

Apropos DA2 - I have read in another thread that for DA2 i.e. 15 animations would be combined and blended to create a 'new' animation because it would be still less time-intensive in the production flow than to create a new one by 3DS.

Beside all other tips which will be highly appreciated, I would like to know if you can give us any tip on this to facilate the combination and blending of several animations.
I find it very time-consuming to combine and blend only 5 animations to create a 'new' smooth animation. Even to find out which animations can be combined well is rather time - consuming.
(Beerfish, your list is an excellent resource to accelerate the search, thanks for this)

And if you have to repeat this again for  a 2p animation...
John, is there a trick you can reveal to make the combination and blending of several animations a bit easier...less time-consuming?

Modifié par Yara Cousland, 24 décembre 2010 - 04:10 .

[John Epler]

So, folks, I am out of the studio for ten days as of today! Though I've got some holiday stuff to do with the family and such, this means I'll have some spare time! I'll be getting some of this stuff going in the next week.



Hope everyone has a great holiday!