15 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

[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 ).

[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.

[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

[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!

[John Epler]

Hey folks! Sorry I haven't been online this last week - turns out I needed the time off more than I thought, and I've been trying to avoid the forums as much as possible. Not because of you guys, though! I swear!



Anyways, I have some stuff written that I'm going to edit tomorrow and then post up. I haven't forgotten about you, I swear!

[John Epler]

Hey, I feel like the worst person, but as you can see I wasn't able to post anything yesterday. Was at work fairly late so I apologize! I'm pulling this in at lunch today and will post it right after work while eating dinner. Delicious, delicious crunch food.

[John Epler]

DahliaLynn wrote...

Welcome back and happy new year Glad you're still with us !
I've had a question that's been nagging at me, so I figured I'd ask it here.

For a relatively still shot, what would be the reasoning behind choosing to shoot a medium shot (for example) by using a high camera distance/ low Field of View ratio as opposed to close proximity with high Field of View, with Depth of Field settings adjusted to create the exact same effect for each shot scenario?

Edit: I'm assuming that with an actual camera the same Depth of Field settings could only occur with a proper lens size/distance combo, so is it safe to say that in the CS editor virtual camera, the shot choices would be made on what is realistically possible? (i.e. setting high Field of View with close proximity along with insane settings of Depth of Field simply wouldn't be realistic) Am I in the right direction?

Generally speaking, we do try to keep things at least relatively close to what's possible with a real film camera. There are really two schools of thought here, both of which I consider to be valid. The one school of thought is that, in much of our work, we're trying to emulate cinema, so we should try to at least keep things close to what a real camera could achieve.

The other school of thought, of course, is that we've got certain freedoms that you'll never get with an actual film camera, so why not take advantage of those? And, of course, everyone finds certain comfort zones when they're setting up FoV/lens length.

I apologize if this doesn't answer your question! My brain is kind of fried this week.

[Seb Hanlon]

JohnEpler wrote...

DahliaLynn wrote...

Welcome back and happy new year Glad you're still with us !
I've had a question that's been nagging at me, so I figured I'd ask it here.

For a relatively still shot, what would be the reasoning behind choosing to shoot a medium shot (for example) by using a high camera distance/ low Field of View ratio as opposed to close proximity with high Field of View, with Depth of Field settings adjusted to create the exact same effect for each shot scenario?

Edit: I'm assuming that with an actual camera the same Depth of Field settings could only occur with a proper lens size/distance combo, so is it safe to say that in the CS editor virtual camera, the shot choices would be made on what is realistically possible? (i.e. setting high Field of View with close proximity along with insane settings of Depth of Field simply wouldn't be realistic) Am I in the right direction?

Generally speaking, we do try to keep things at least relatively close to what's possible with a real film camera. There are really two schools of thought here, both of which I consider to be valid. The one school of thought is that, in much of our work, we're trying to emulate cinema, so we should try to at least keep things close to what a real camera could achieve.

The other school of thought, of course, is that we've got certain freedoms that you'll never get with an actual film camera, so why not take advantage of those? And, of course, everyone finds certain comfort zones when they're setting up FoV/lens length.

I apologize if this doesn't answer your question! My brain is kind of fried this week.

As someone completely uninvolved in cinematics, but with a background in photography -- and because you asked about a relatively still shot...

A short camera distance/large FOV will emulate a wide angle lens. DoF settings notwithstanding, the effect this has on the composition is to exaggerate the scale difference between objects nearest to the camera and those further away.

A long camera distance/tight FOV will emulate a telephoto lens, which will have the opposite effect -- it'll tend to flatten the relative perspective scaling between objects.

And when you blend between them on the fly, you get dolly zoom!

[John Epler]

Ahh, the dolly zoom. The greatest of all zooms.

[John Epler]

Hey folks!



So I know it's been a while since I updated this, and while I could spin a tale of woe involving illness, busyness and just a whole lot of stuff coming down the pipe at once, I won't bore you with that. I do, however, have some good news!



Part of my job at the moment involves a lot of documentation work, and I've been able to take this and start compiling some of it into a format I can share with you folks. This involves things such as best practices, things to avoid and general information about the toolset and how to use it (stage editor, cutscene editor and conversation editor).



I'm not going to make any promises as to when this'll end up online (I've learned the folly of making any kind of declarative statement about this!) but it's finally getting into a useable form, so it shouldn't be too much longer.



Hope everyone has a great week!



John

[John Epler]

I've been fairly busy with work lately, and was out-of-country - however, things are winding down again and I'll be giving this another shot.

However, please feel free to send me any questions and I'll respond to them in a timely manner. I've had a few people asking me various things and been trying to get them answers.

[John Epler]

Beerfish wrote...

This is not a technical question John but more along the lines of a 'style' question. Any tips on that? For example I notice in DA2 there are a fair number of cutscenes where the camera very slowly pans diaganol or left to right while actors are talking. I often have a tendency to just find my camera angle and let it sit there as characters do their thing.

Is this just a matter of person style by the cutscene creator of does it talk about this type of technique in the "Grand Codex of Advanced Cutscene Creation and Direction."

Generally speaking, it's an attempt to inject a little organic movement into the scene. Because of the sheer amount of dialogue in DA2 compared to, for example, ME2, we had a lot of ground to cover and we didn't really have the opportunity to get too 'in depth' with making everything as interesting as we wanted to. Minor amounts of drift, push and pull on the cameras make the shot slightly more interesting to the viewer, without significantly increasing the amount of work - since we had to pick our battles, the lengthy 'chat' conversations tended to get that treatment more than extensive gesture work.

We did notice that we used that technique perhaps a little -too- much in DA2, so we've been paring it down a bit for other endeavours. It's a good crutch to lean on, but it really is that - a crutch. Wherever possible, we'd rather make conversations interesting through how the scene is constructed and through the actions of the participants, instead of camera trickery.

[John Epler]

DahliaLynn wrote...

I've got a question or two regarding fighting sequences and the 180 degree rule.

I'm very curious to know what techniques you use regarding fighting between say for example two people (or creatures )
My personal understanding would be closeups on hits and quick moves + reactions, medium and long shots when both are moving during the completion of the particular attack,  while remaining angle-consistent when switching between closeups and medium shots.

Any advice on nice techniques to implement? Does the 180 degree rule remain throughout or is this sometimes broken?

My personal preference is faster cuts editingwise  as the action increases speed, but as far as 180 line maintenance, I'm a bit blurry on that.

So far I can feel that when the actors change their positions and continuity is maintained with the crossing it's alright to cross once, then continue to maintain so long as the actors remain in position. 

You can break the line of action, so long as it's A) motivated and  doesn't obfuscate the scene in a way that you're not intending. This is, of course, different from a multi-actor conversation where you have, by its very nature, mulitple lines of action that you're going to be constantly switching between. However, there are two 'main' ways where you can break the 180 degree rule -

1) Move the camera.

2) Move the actor.

You can, of course, combine the two, and in an action scene, that's most likely to happen. Though minor breaks in continuity are more acceptable when you have fast camera moves because the viewer is less likely to notice it. As for the other side of things, when I'm doing combat scenes I tend to use a lot of fast camera movement, following the action as much as I can. Though I do have a personal grudge against the shakycam style from Robin Hood and Gladiator  It works for them but I feel a lot of movies use it to hide mediocre choreography.

[John Epler]

Right on both counts, Dahlia.

Though when I use the word 'motivated', what I generally mean is - there's a reason for it. This applies to camera moves, camera cuts, animations; if you can't justify why you're doing something in a scene, it probably doesn't need to be there.

One of the most common problems with everyone's early content (including my own) is that they do a lot of stuff for no other reason than - well, then they can. They don't have a reason why the camera is moving the way it is, or why someone's gesturing the way they are. That's the difference between motivated and unmotivated.

[John Epler]

Beerfish wrote...

Bah!  What does Scorcese know!     (Thanks for the link LM, I watched from beginning to end.)

Scorcese's a hack, is what! Does he know who I am? I'm a pretty big deal on the internet!

More seriously - Dahlia is right, and I think I explained that poorly. If there's a reason behind a movement, even if it's just to achieve a particular visual effect - it's a motivated movement. What I'm cautioning against is more the urge to just move a camera because you can. And the very first cinematic design work I did (well, after the ME2 Joker conversations) ended up with a -lot- of the 'oh nothing's happening, TIME TO MOVE A CAMERA' problem. Same thing with gestures.

And BloodsongVengeance is also right in that, if it looks wrong, there's probably a reason. Now, sometimes, you -want- to create a jarring dissonance. This is particularly effective if you're trying to convey a particular emotional state on the part of a character, although this being a game, you want to avoid ascribing emotions to the PC wherever you can. That's the choice of the player, after all..

But if you wanted to set something up as though the PC was being controlled or influenced by an outside force, you could use things like jump cuts, weird movements and the like to give the player the idea that -something- is wrong - without having to be too blatant about it.