10 réponses à ce sujet

[CTN]

Hello everyone! I will be starting a DA machinima project soon but I'm not familiar with the Toolset yet. I'm learning but I'm also writing the script at the same time so I lose as less time possible. So, what I ask of you is to tell me if my ideas in writing can be done in the Toolset. There's no point in writing the whole script only to find out half of the scenes are beyond the Tollsets capabilities.

I have been watching the Warden's Fall series to get an idea of what can be done but I still have a few questions. A simple yes or no answer will be enough for the moment, I will be dealing with "how to do" questions when I'm close to production.

1. I saw that you can cut off an NPC's head. Could you cut off a hand or a foot and at specific places like elbow or shoulder?

2. Can an NPC pick up and hold a cut off head or limb?

3. Can a cut off head be animated so it could roll on the ground?

4. Can I use tears? Can I make a tear drop?

5. Can I have dripping blood?

6. Are there animations for taking off and putting on armor or clothing?

7. Are there baby NPCs?

That's it for now. I'll post more questions as I go along. Thanks!

[Latiro]

Hey there,

I've just started working with the cutscene editor aswell, but I'll try to answer some of your question. If I am wrong, someone else will correct me (or so I hope ).

1.) I don't think thats possible. I suppose if you want to that, you'd have to create a custom placeable which is linked to the actor (who, in return would need to lack that limb, I wouldn't know how to do that) and try to sync that with the sword-slash and some VFX. (I'm not really sure about that, but this is the only way I can imagine)

2.) That should be possible, you'd have to create a placeable for the limb/head though.

3.) (Don't know)

4.) Don't think so.

5.) Yep!

6.) I haven't heard of that, neither. Of course, you could try to use an animation for that, but making that look realistic will be alot of work.

7.) None that I have heard of. Children yes, but babies, no.

Hope I got everything right.

Modifié par Latiro, 06 juin 2011 - 10:33 .

[Beerfish]

CTN wrote...

Hello everyone! I will be starting a DA machinima project soon but I'm not familiar with the Toolset yet. I'm learning but I'm also writing the script at the same time so I lose as less time possible. So, what I ask of you is to tell me if my ideas in writing can be done in the Toolset. There's no point in writing the whole script only to find out half of the scenes are beyond the Tollsets capabilities.

I have been watching the Warden's Fall series to get an idea of what can be done but I still have a few questions. A simple yes or no answer will be enough for the moment, I will be dealing with "how to do" questions when I'm close to production.

1. I saw that you can cut off an NPC's head. Could you cut off a hand or a foot and at specific places like elbow or shoulder?

2. Can an NPC pick up and hold a cut off head or limb?

3. Can a cut off head be animated so it could roll on the ground?

4. Can I use tears? Can I make a tear drop?

5. Can I have dripping blood?

6. Are there animations for taking off and putting on armor or clothing?

7. Are there baby NPCs?

That's it for now. I'll post more questions as I go along. Thanks!

1. Hand or foot perhaps, probably not elbow or shoulder.

2. Yup, takes a bit of trickery but it can be done.  (At least with the head)

3. Yes, it takes a bit of manual work for that but yes it can be done.

4. & 5. Not sure about this, you might be able to make a custom fx for it.

6. Not that I know of, however you can certainly wok around something like this.

7.  Nope, there are children but no babies. 

Depending on how important it is to actually see things up close such as the baby or the act of changing armor in most cases you can get the point across using camera work and such.

This module trailer shows a head being carried

[CTN]

Thanks for the fast replies, guys! The results are encouraging so far.

2. I am relieved that this works. The head part is important. But can I make it look like it's being held by the hair? And for the more complicated part, can I make an NPC pull out the head from a sack?

4. Maybe I can fake it with some water effects or something?

8. This might sound stupid but I haven't seen any NPCs riding horses so far. I hope this is possible.

9. Any chance for custom animations?

@Beerfish
I know I can use camera work to hide what can't be done with animations but this is a compromise I'll make only if it's my last chance.

I see that you put together an extensive animations list. Are there many more that weren't included? The ones that weren't included were not worthy of mention or some important animations got left out? It's gonna be a huge amount of work browsing through thousands of animations to find the right one...

[DahliaLynn]

Custom animations can definitely be imported into the game thanks to Eshme's Model and Animation Import Export tool

For taking a head out of a sack, you will have to create a custom sack model and animate it externally, then import the models and animations in a format that the game can recognize. Currently nothing like this is available in the game

The same goes for horses and associated animations. There are no horses as of now, though Alschemid has a project like that here

Horseback *riding* will probably be even more complicated to add, but not impossible. Special Areas/levels might need to be created for this to match the larger distance cover.

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 07 juin 2011 - 11:35 .

[CTN]

DahliaLynn wrote...

Custom animations can definitely be imported into the game thanks to Eshme's Model and Animation Import Export tool

For taking a head out of a sack, you will have to create a custom sack model and animate it externally, then import the models and animations in a format that the game can recognize. Currently nothing like this is available in the game

The same goes for horses and associated animations. There are no horses as of now, though Alschemid has a project like that here

Horseback *riding* will probably be even more complicated to add, but not impossible. Special Areas/levels might need to be created for this to match the larger distance cover.

Adding custom animations is great! Too bad about the lack of horses, I really need them. Hopefully, you guys will succeed with your project by the time I go into production, of course, if you'd like to share them.

New questions:
10. Weather effects. Can I start a rain, cover the sun with clouds? Maybe some lightnings?

11. Can I stick a blade into a tree trunk? Like an NPC that takes a swing with his sword, strikes the tree and the blade gets stuck and then pull it out.

Modifié par CTN, 07 juin 2011 - 12:59 .

[DahliaLynn]

That project seems to be on hold, so you might want to contact the project leader with regards to any updates.

10. Yes you can start rain and lightening. That would be in a VFX that you would use within the cutscene editor. The weather and cloud effects would depend on how you set them in the actual level I believe, though I don't have any clue if you can make the clouds do what you wish. Also, previewing the cloud movement can only be done by checking the cutscene in the game as far as I know.

11. Yes you can stick a blade into a tree trunk, though, I'm not sure how realistic it will look. If you create an external animation with the actor acting as it her were getting stuck, then it could possibly work.

Edit: A small suggestion:

Some of these aspects may seem a bit overwhelming since every editor in the toolset is a world of it's own.
You might like to consider recruiting a team of members willing to help you in the various aspects in the toolset as well as outside of it. The necessary proficiencies would be:

1. A level designer
2. Model designer
3. Animator
4. VFX designer
5. Sound fx designer /music
6. Some scripting knowledge
7. Character designer
8. VO artists

If you are proficient in most of these fields, then you could succeed, but it may be a very time consuming process. There are many in the community available for such projects. If you post in the recruiting forum you may get some feedback
In my own opinion, the more  help, the better the final output

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 07 juin 2011 - 01:46 .

[Beerfish]

CTN wrote...

@Beerfish
I know I can use camera work to hide what can't be done with animations but this is a compromise I'll make only if it's my last chance.

.

I updated all of my lists not all that long ago.  As far as I know I included all of the stock animations in the game.  To get ones not in that list you will most likely have to make custome animations.  (Something I have not dabbled with.)

In some cases you will have to use camera tricks to cover up things you just can't do but that is really no different than real film making.  Regarding holding a head by the hair, that one I see as being very tricky, they don't really have good hair physics so to speak in the game.

[John Epler]

Beerfish wrote...

CTN wrote...

@Beerfish
I know I can use camera work to hide what can't be done with animations but this is a compromise I'll make only if it's my last chance.

.

I updated all of my lists not all that long ago.  As far as I know I included all of the stock animations in the game.  To get ones not in that list you will most likely have to make custome animations.  (Something I have not dabbled with.)

In some cases you will have to use camera tricks to cover up things you just can't do but that is really no different than real film making.  Regarding holding a head by the hair, that one I see as being very tricky, they don't really have good hair physics so to speak in the game.

It's also no different from what we do here. Certainly, we have access to more resources than the community (mostly because we have significantly larger budgets/teams), but 'more' doesn't mean infinite. There are many, many things in-game that we had to hide because we simply didn't have the animation support we wanted. And beyond that, of course, lies the fact that the engine has limitations. You have to keep those in mind when you're working with it, which is certainly not a bad thing.

If there's ever a toolset released for DA2, I recommend looking at some of the more in-depth cutscenes and seeing just how much of what's done is hacked together by necessity. Sure, you can avoid hiding things with camera cuts and the like, but if doing so produces a better result, visually - why avoid it? If you want to do one big, lengthy shot, that's a valid filmmaking technique, but it's a lot harder to do in the digital realm.

In the end, of course, it's your call, but your ultimate goal as a filmmaker should be to use visual language in combination with dialogue to tell a story, or evoke an experience. If this requires understanding and accepting the limitations of your chosen canvas, then why shy away from it?

[CTN]

DahliaLynn wrote...
If you are proficient in most of these fields, then you could succeed, but it may be a very time consuming process. There are many in the community available for such projects. If you post in the recruiting forum you may get some feedback
In my own opinion, the more  help, the better the final output

I'm already expecting this project to be very time consuming since I don't have a lot of free time but I'm commited to finishing it. I'm also happy to see that this is a helpful community.

Beerfish wrote...
I updated all of my lists not all that long ago. As far as I know I included all of the stock animations in the game. To get ones not in that list you will most likely have to make custome animations. (Something I have not dabbled with.)

Regarding holding a head by the hair, that one I see as being very tricky, they don't really have good hair physics so to speak in the game.

I'm glad to hear you included all of them, it must have been an enormous amount of work. I hope previewing animations is an easy process so I wouldn't spend days choosing the ones I need.

I wasn't necessarily meaning to grab it by the hair, just make it look that way, although it would look more realistic if I could.

JohnEpler wrote...
It's also no different from what we do here. Certainly, we have access to more resources than the community (mostly because we have significantly larger budgets/teams), but 'more' doesn't mean infinite. There are many, many things in-game that we had to hide because we simply didn't have the animation support we wanted. And beyond that, of course, lies the fact that the engine has limitations. You have to keep those in mind when you're working with it, which is certainly not a bad thing.

If there's ever a toolset released for DA2, I recommend looking at some of the more in-depth cutscenes and seeing just how much of what's done is hacked together by necessity. Sure, you can avoid hiding things with camera cuts and the like, but if doing so produces a better result, visually - why avoid it? If you want to do one big, lengthy shot, that's a valid filmmaking technique, but it's a lot harder to do in the digital realm.

In the end, of course, it's your call, but your ultimate goal as a filmmaker should be to use visual language in combination with dialogue to tell a story, or evoke an experience. If this requires understanding and accepting the limitations of your chosen canvas, then why shy away from it?

Actually this is why is opened this discussion, to better understand the limitations of this tool. I find writing for machinima very frustrating due to animation limiting and missing entities and objects, such as horses. This is not to say that writing for live action is not limited but not like this. And it's probably more frustrating because I though I could do with machinima things I could have never afforded to do with live action. I can still do but not to the standards I require, at least not with my current technical knowledge. I prefer to choose my own means of artistic expression from an available variety and not be limited to only one or tow choices. Of course I would prefer to hide things with camera cuts is it looks better but I'd rather it wasn't my only option.

[BloodsongVengeance]

heyas;

just want to jump in regarding cutting off an arm... you might be able to cut off an arm at the elbow, because there are arm animations and you can blend them to get the forearm to shove itself up into the upper arm/body. it will be very limited, however.

first, there's no separate arm model to toss on the ground, for example.

if you try to animate the armless guy, it's probable that the folded up arm will move around, poke out, unfold, etc.

still, camera angles and cuts are your friends!