44 réponses à ce sujet

[datSilencer]

Hello everyone. After approximately 3 or 4 months, I'm back, and happy to give you a new video release

I'm releasing a second Mass Effect Fan art production: "Time Orchid".

At Vimeo
High-bitrate encoded at archive.org
At YouTube

Just like my first production , it was edited in Adobe After Effects; the only difference being that the main soundtrack is a customized production made by myself "Time Orchid", and the intro part features two tracks from Technology of Silences's "The Squad" album.

The guy makes great ambient music, so check out his music.

I have a slight impression that this video may not appeal to everybody as was the case with my previous video; this time, I wanted to see what could be remixed in slow motion to see Shepard's death from "her" perspective. Upon finishing, I realized that not much material was really available in both games to create a "Soul journey and back to life" of sorts.

So I did all I could . I practically don't know where I've been these past four months. I've lost track of time .

A few notes about this production.

1: Audio. For this one, I created the main soundtrack; since I have limited monitoring equipment, I cannot guarantee that the audio has been properly mastered for all sound systems out there. Therefore you may need to do some volume adjustments, and listen with headphones.

2: Also, I'm not Wall, Kates or Hullick, so please try not to be harsh on the music .

3: The main soundtrack: "Time Orchid" is also available if you want to give it a separate listen at archive.org. For the musical folks out there, it is written in B minor (Mixolydian mode if I'm not mistaken). Anyway, use the notes

B, C#, D#, E, F#, G# and A

if you'd like to play along .

4: Additionally, for those viewers going into Vimeo or archive.org, there's a small "surprise" for you . However, if you were offended by the *ahem*... ending in Mass Effect 1, you may want to consider visiting the tube instead . Hopefully this won't be the case.

5: As usual, I'm open to any constructive feedback, and with some luck, next time someone may want to collaborate with me in another production since my storyboarding skills are meager hehehe. Let me know if you'd like to know more about the technical construction details for this video.

I thank you for your time.

P.S. 1: Trivia: what sample from which series was used to reillustrate Shepard's "death"?
P.S. 2: Some screenshots to get you started.

Modifié par datSilencer, 27 mars 2011 - 07:54 .

[timj2011]

wonderful production, that is all

[datSilencer]

Thanks! By the way, judging from the results, this time, Vimeo handled the video encoding better than the Tube.

[Leeroi]

Whoa the quality is amazing, may I ask what capture/rendering settings you used and what software?

And also your PC specs if you don't mind

[grifter024]

Holy cow that was crazy .....when shes flying in space it sounded like she was screaming.

Also what do you mean what series showsher death?

[Goodwood]

That is incredible work.

[datSilencer]

Leeroi wrote...

Whoa the quality is amazing, may I ask what capture/rendering settings you used and what software?

And also your PC specs if you don't mind

Not a problem. However, since the question is a bit general, here's a brief breakdown of the editing process .

1) Shots were captured with Fraps, with modified key bindings for both games, and fixed frame rate at 30fps. This essentially allowed me to freeze the game rendering and tweak the mouse input sensitivity, FOV, and game speed; which for most shots was set at .33. Many extremely weird things happen to both games when you run them in slow motion and they crashed often, which was a bit frustrating .

2) After the shots were captured, I edited the raw footage in VirtualDub (in direct stream copy mode) to get rid of unwanted footage, and keep the interesting shots. In total, I ended up with circ 52GB of Fraps video data .

I then imported the trimmed video clips into Adobe After Effects, at 30fps straight in 32BPC color mode. Inside After Effects, I made heavy use of these plugins:

  - Transitions: Video Copilot twitch.
  - Clip time stretching and synching: Revisionfx twixtor.
  - Color Correction: Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse.
 
After the main composition in After Effects was done, I applied a little motion blur with RSMB.
 
3) The final output from After Effects was essentially an image sequence of PNG files, which I then imported into Vegas, where the final audio mixing was done. The output result was an AVI file, encoded with HuffYuv, which was roughly 19GB in size .

4) The master output AVI file was then encoded down to MP4 with Megui and x264, which is what was finally released to the three sites (vimeo, youtube, and archive.org).
 
The sound part is a little bit more esoteric to explain, but I'll try.
 
5) The audio was produced with Ableton Live 8, with old MOD file samples, choir sample libraries, Native Instrument's Absynth 5, and Sonic Charge's Microtonic for the synthetic drum kick, plus and a TON of mixing and mastering plugins. However, since I mixed with headphones, I can't guarantee that the final mix will translate well to other systems.

6) The final sound track mix "Time Orchid" was then exported at 88KHz; 24 bit; into Vegas, where I then mixed it in with the two tracks from Technology of Silence, and extracted OGG data from both games.

Essentially, Sony Vegas was the final meeting point from the viode ouput of After Effects, and the audio output from Ableton Live and the external sample sources.

7) Finally, Shepard's split body was produced by using certain frames from the video captured with Fraps (mostly face close ups and zoom shots of her body from different angles). These frames were cropped with GIMP, and arranged together with Inkscape. When I mostly got something similar to Gary Mankus' "Schizophrenia" portrait, I then exported the "sliced images" into a 3d composition inside After Effects, which is what you see in certain segments of the video.

All of this with a standard core i5 machine, 8Gb RAM, with a GTX460 card, and a Benchmark DAC-1 audio DAC .

I could keep rambling and rambling about the tiny parts of the production process, but I'll stop here since I think this is in general what was done.

Let me know if you're interested in a particular piece of the production process.

Thank you for your time

[datSilencer]

grifter024 wrote...

Holy cow that was crazy .....when shes flying in space it sounded like she was screaming.

Also what do you mean what series showsher death?

Essentially, where did that screaming sample come from?

Take you best guess. Cheers!

[Leeroi]

want to buy lessons lol... i know a little bit about vegas, but I've never worked with AfterEffects, which is what you mainly used for editing, it seems. Also, I thought you had an insanely powerful computer and captured at 120FPS, but instead you made the game run slower which is a very clever way to capture slowmo.

Amazing job once again!

[Captain Crash]

You know my feelings!  I already posted a couple of times how in awe I am with this in the femshep thread!  Im jaw dropped impressed!! 


Coming into this thread and reading all the technicalities and effort you went through though just adds to how low my jaw is currently at!  :happy: 

[jlb524]

Kudos, that is incredible. I freaking loved it.

[TheMarshal]

This is truly amazing work! I would have thought it would be damn near impossible to top your last video, but you certainly proved me wrong! I love everything about it - the music, the artistic style, the emotions, femShep/Liara!

It makes me very happy to know that there are people as talented as you putting out work like this. Well done!

[Ramirez Wolfen]

Awesome stuff! I like it!

[LTKerr]

Amazing job!! I love it!

[ACC3SS]

Very well done. A bit darker than I was expecting. I'm not entirely sure I liked it as a set of out-of-order plot points. Sets a hell of a mood, though, I'll give you that.

Truth be told, I liked your first video so much I was hoping for more of the same.

Oh, and everything after the 10 minute mark was pure gold

Modifié par ACC3SS, 28 mars 2011 - 12:26 .

[scampermax]

That was wonderfully well done. I really liked the music you used. It worked well in reinforcing the mood of the video. Definitely glad I checked out the Vimeo version.

[datSilencer]

ACC3SS wrote...

I'm not entirely sure I liked it as a set of out-of-order plot points. Set's a hell of a mood, though, I'll give you that.

Good feedback. What I initially looked forward to represent was what Shepard would see and feel while being dead. Turns out I couldn't find a lot of material hehehe.

Here's an interesting bit. If I remember correctly, I started working on this production a few months after the movie Inception was released, though I hadn't seen it at that time, but around November-December instead, when I was well into the half of this video.

And after I saw it, I just bonked my head pretty hard and said "Aawwww maaann, what the hell have I done?". So yeah, there's a *slight possibility* that that movie influenced the out-of-order-but-in-parallel sequences here hahahaha.

Cheers!

Modifié par datSilencer, 27 mars 2011 - 11:29 .

[thespianicism]

Beautiful. Wow. You created a very strong aesthetic sense. At first, I had trouble getting a handle on what was happening but I came to fall in love with the more abstract nature of it. Beautiful work.

[jwalker]

wow !! just wow !!

Excelent music choice ! And the bits and pieces from the Normandy Crash site mission were perfect. Amazing work, again.


Oh, and your version of the night before Illos is much better than the original

[Cyansomnia]

Lovely! I'm still a newb to the whole video editing thing, so it's nice to read about how you went through the process. It was very abstract and visually enthralling.

Makes my stuff feel pretty inadequate. XD

[Tonymac]

Simply put, this is AMAZING! Bravo!

[datSilencer]

Thank you all for the kind words. I might do more in-depth posts in the Mass Effect film makers group about the creation process. But for now I'm hungry and tired .

Gotta reboot

[Shadow_Soul]

I really love this, just wow. Wonderful job on it. It's simply amazing.