This video was done entirely in the Cinematic Editor.
There was nothing else involved BUT the module itself. No triggers, no units placed in map, no camera layer, nothing hell, the video itself was rendered within the CE itself.
It has a "record video" that outputs into some obscure split audio-video y4m format that it took longer to find a converter for it than actually making the cinematic itself.
You most likely can achieve everything I've made in here with just triggers, or maybe not, I wouldn't know. But it was so easy in the cinematic editor that took roughly 10 minutes to create.
It proves some concepts I wanted to show. At the beggining I change the "depth of field" of the camera which is why you can see the zealots going out of focus, then I play around with moving the camera and using the autokeying feature to move around the camera so it created the cinematic by itself without me doing any manual value changes.
I'll be posting more videos as I discover new stuff. hopefully some tutorials as well.
That kind of stuff...I wouldnt imagine it taking longer than 10 minutes to make with triggers either...
But for handling longer cinematics and timings im sure the cinematic editor is great.
Also Im sure its much much more easier to see the results (thus speeding up the process).
I am more dissapointed than impressed in the video you show. Doesnt seem any super important features or anything that couldnt be done with triggers. But from what blizz showed in their demos, Im sure its better than that video leads to believe.
I would also be interested how does triggers work with the cinematic editor. Or do they at all?!
I played around a bit with the trigger side of cutscenes, and there's some cool stuff here. There's two sides of it - triggers that let you control the cutscene and events that let you respond to the cutscene.
Create Cutscene: This will make the cutscene and can auto play immediately. Use Last Created Cutscene to get the index for future use.
Play/Pause Cutscene: Standard playback control.
Set Cutscene Time: Standard "go to time". Useful for restarting the cutscene.
Stop Cutscene: Kills the cutscene. After it's stopped, it no longer exists.
Go To Cutscene Bookmark: Go to a bookmark in your cutscene. Bookmarks are added to the Director in the Cutscene Editor.
Go To Next Bookmark: Go to whatever bookmark is the next one in time.
Set Cutscene Filter: This one is neat. Each object in the cutscene can have a filter set. If there's a filter on the cutscene, it needs to match in order for that object to play back. I tried it with two lights on a marine - one green and one blue. I then gave the two a filter named after the color. When there's no filter, they both light up. When the filter is "green" only the green one shows, etc.. It seems like you can do some cool stuff here.
Set Global Cutscene Filter: Same as above, but for all cutscenes.
Wait for Cutscene to End: Standard Wait, but for cutscenes.
Then there are the events. I didn't realize they were there at first because there's no cutscene label (bug?). You can find them by searching, though:
Cutscene Bookmark Fired: This event fires when you pass a specific bookmark. So let's say you have a bookmark named "test" (via the property Bookmark Name in the Cutscene Editor). If you have this event that fires on the bookmark "test", and you have it spit out a debug message, it will display as soon as that bookmark is passed.
Cutscene EndScene Fired: Odd name, but it fires when the cutscene finishes.
It seems to me that there's some neat things you can do with the bookmark event. Let's say you wanted a cutscene to loop during an idle period while waiting for the user to press a button. When bookmark "loop end" is fired, you can tell it to go to bookmark "loop start", causing a loop, whenever the variable "loop" is true. Then when a button is pressed, you can switch the "loop" variable to false, so the next time the bookmark is passed, it won't go to "loop start" and will instead just play through. Heck, you can probably extend this all the way out to some kind of choose your own adventure system if you went crazy.
There's no triggers there's object properties. Which you modify, it is kinda like working with after effects.
All actions are based on objects properties which you can change in 3d space.
For example, you could easily make a marine flying in mid air shooting while doing a 360 backflip rotation.
MORE:
LOL. Seriously Corbo, wtf ='). I'm dying here. First that Marine does the haters gonna hate walk, then he fistpumps as something explodes behind him and then he jumps headfirst into a nexus hole in an epic manner. That shit is genius.
Either way, it sounds ridiculously awesome in terms of possibilities. We could really start to create in-game fights here that resemble FPS trailers moreso than the already epic huge battles we've got now. Think a standoff between Terran and Zerg that's not just a bunch of units spawning and attacking the zerg, but the camera being able to zoom in on specific 1v1 fights where for example a Zergling jumps at a Marine and he ducks and shoots it in the belly. INSIDE A FREAKING MAP.
LOL. Seriously Corbo, wtf ='). I'm dying here. First that Marine does the haters gonna hate walk, then he fistpumps as something explodes behind him and then he jumps headfirst into a nexus hole in an epic manner. That shit is genius.
And so clumsy too <3
If you watch carefully you can see him stop in midair before he starts shooting badassly
In all seriousness I don't have have an idea of all the things we could make with this :P. All I can say is that it should be awesome to make a whole length movie with this.
The first thing I'm thinking about is awesome in-game stuff. Imagine you're playing the Blizzard campaign, that third mission where you have to hold off the Zerg for 30 minutes. Once the timer hits zero, instead of the Hyperion coming to kill ALL THE THINGS, you get an additional 10 second cutscene. Camera zooms in on one of your bunkers, as it starts burning to Zergling fire a marine jumps out. A Zergling leaps at him, he catches it on his bayonet and rolls through on his back so the ling flies off behind him. Camera zooms to a Hydra's face. Hydra takes a shot at the earlier marine, camera follows the spine as it misses the marine by an inch. Marine aims at the Hydra as it suddenly turns into a splashy pile of goo, Saving Private Ryan style. Marine looks up, camera follows his vision, Hyperion comes rolling in, sending lasers everywhere.
LOL. Seriously Corbo, wtf ='). I'm dying here. First that Marine does the haters gonna hate walk, then he fistpumps as something explodes behind him and then he jumps headfirst into a nexus hole in an epic manner. That shit is genius.
Either way, it sounds ridiculously awesome in terms of possibilities. We could really start to create in-game fights here that resemble FPS trailers moreso than the already epic huge battles we've got now. Think a standoff between Terran and Zerg that's not just a bunch of units spawning and attacking the zerg, but the camera being able to zoom in on specific 1v1 fights where for example a Zergling jumps at a Marine and he ducks and shoots it in the belly. INSIDE A FREAKING MAP.
You better do that. I do not like people who say what you can do instead of doing it, especially since its not yet clear how much time/reward factor is in the cinematics/cinematic editor.
You better do that. I do not like people who say what you can do instead of doing it, especially since its not yet clear how much time/reward factor is in the cinematics/cinematic editor.
YOU BETTER PROVE YOURSELF NOW!
To be frank, I can't be arsed. I haven't done a lot of in-depth mapping lately and I probably won't fiddle with the cinematics editor until HOTS comes out. I'm not sure what exactly I've got to prove, though; I'm just speculating on the cinematic corbo said he made with relative ease. If you can do stuff like what's in there, then you should also be able to play with the animations of units to create the scene I described. Try it yourself?
This looks promising. You can do a lot with camera and triggers, but being able to fiddle with specific units is amazing. My question is: Can you somehow import trigger editor cutscenes and use this to add specific animations to a giant battle or do you have to animate the entire war from scratch.
Example: You use triggers and special pathing to make zealots and zerglings clash around two heroes while they have an epic battle of street fighter or something.
Otherwise i'm just gonna be stuck with 2 or 3 actors at a time.
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This video was done entirely in the Cinematic Editor.
There was nothing else involved BUT the module itself. No triggers, no units placed in map, no camera layer, nothing hell, the video itself was rendered within the CE itself. It has a "record video" that outputs into some obscure split audio-video y4m format that it took longer to find a converter for it than actually making the cinematic itself.
You most likely can achieve everything I've made in here with just triggers, or maybe not, I wouldn't know. But it was so easy in the cinematic editor that took roughly 10 minutes to create.
It proves some concepts I wanted to show. At the beggining I change the "depth of field" of the camera which is why you can see the zealots going out of focus, then I play around with moving the camera and using the autokeying feature to move around the camera so it created the cinematic by itself without me doing any manual value changes.
I'll be posting more videos as I discover new stuff. hopefully some tutorials as well.
That kind of stuff...I wouldnt imagine it taking longer than 10 minutes to make with triggers either...
But for handling longer cinematics and timings im sure the cinematic editor is great.
Also Im sure its much much more easier to see the results (thus speeding up the process).
I am more dissapointed than impressed in the video you show. Doesnt seem any super important features or anything that couldnt be done with triggers. But from what blizz showed in their demos, Im sure its better than that video leads to believe.
I would also be interested how does triggers work with the cinematic editor. Or do they at all?!
@zenx1: Go
There's no triggers there's object properties. Which you modify, it is kinda like working with after effects.
All actions are based on objects properties which you can change in 3d space.
For example, you could easily make a marine flying in mid air shooting while doing a 360 backflip rotation.
MORE:
Triggers do work with the Cut Scene Editor, you have to create a bookmark within the Director track and then edit the Bookmark name.
I played around a bit with the trigger side of cutscenes, and there's some cool stuff here. There's two sides of it - triggers that let you control the cutscene and events that let you respond to the cutscene.
Create Cutscene: This will make the cutscene and can auto play immediately. Use Last Created Cutscene to get the index for future use.
Play/Pause Cutscene: Standard playback control.
Set Cutscene Time: Standard "go to time". Useful for restarting the cutscene.
Stop Cutscene: Kills the cutscene. After it's stopped, it no longer exists.
Go To Cutscene Bookmark: Go to a bookmark in your cutscene. Bookmarks are added to the Director in the Cutscene Editor.
Go To Next Bookmark: Go to whatever bookmark is the next one in time.
Set Cutscene Filter: This one is neat. Each object in the cutscene can have a filter set. If there's a filter on the cutscene, it needs to match in order for that object to play back. I tried it with two lights on a marine - one green and one blue. I then gave the two a filter named after the color. When there's no filter, they both light up. When the filter is "green" only the green one shows, etc.. It seems like you can do some cool stuff here.
Set Global Cutscene Filter: Same as above, but for all cutscenes.
Wait for Cutscene to End: Standard Wait, but for cutscenes.
Then there are the events. I didn't realize they were there at first because there's no cutscene label (bug?). You can find them by searching, though:
Cutscene Bookmark Fired: This event fires when you pass a specific bookmark. So let's say you have a bookmark named "test" (via the property Bookmark Name in the Cutscene Editor). If you have this event that fires on the bookmark "test", and you have it spit out a debug message, it will display as soon as that bookmark is passed.
Cutscene EndScene Fired: Odd name, but it fires when the cutscene finishes.
It seems to me that there's some neat things you can do with the bookmark event. Let's say you wanted a cutscene to loop during an idle period while waiting for the user to press a button. When bookmark "loop end" is fired, you can tell it to go to bookmark "loop start", causing a loop, whenever the variable "loop" is true. Then when a button is pressed, you can switch the "loop" variable to false, so the next time the bookmark is passed, it won't go to "loop start" and will instead just play through. Heck, you can probably extend this all the way out to some kind of choose your own adventure system if you went crazy.
Well Im going to aspire to be one of the pros of this piece of the editior, I can be good at the data editor, but I know I will never master it.
where did you find the converter and is it free or inexpensive? i need a converter for y4m as well.
@vailreth: Go
http://www.mediacoderhq.com/
LOL. Seriously Corbo, wtf ='). I'm dying here. First that Marine does the haters gonna hate walk, then he fistpumps as something explodes behind him and then he jumps headfirst into a nexus hole in an epic manner. That shit is genius.
Either way, it sounds ridiculously awesome in terms of possibilities. We could really start to create in-game fights here that resemble FPS trailers moreso than the already epic huge battles we've got now. Think a standoff between Terran and Zerg that's not just a bunch of units spawning and attacking the zerg, but the camera being able to zoom in on specific 1v1 fights where for example a Zergling jumps at a Marine and he ducks and shoots it in the belly. INSIDE A FREAKING MAP.
And so clumsy too <3
If you watch carefully you can see him stop in midair before he starts shooting badassly
In all seriousness I don't have have an idea of all the things we could make with this :P. All I can say is that it should be awesome to make a whole length movie with this.
@xcorbo: Go
The first thing I'm thinking about is awesome in-game stuff. Imagine you're playing the Blizzard campaign, that third mission where you have to hold off the Zerg for 30 minutes. Once the timer hits zero, instead of the Hyperion coming to kill ALL THE THINGS, you get an additional 10 second cutscene. Camera zooms in on one of your bunkers, as it starts burning to Zergling fire a marine jumps out. A Zergling leaps at him, he catches it on his bayonet and rolls through on his back so the ling flies off behind him. Camera zooms to a Hydra's face. Hydra takes a shot at the earlier marine, camera follows the spine as it misses the marine by an inch. Marine aims at the Hydra as it suddenly turns into a splashy pile of goo, Saving Private Ryan style. Marine looks up, camera follows his vision, Hyperion comes rolling in, sending lasers everywhere.
How SICK would that be?
Should I just recreate every single blizzard cinematic and ADD to them, is that what you're saying? :P
You're reading my mind.
You better do that. I do not like people who say what you can do instead of doing it, especially since its not yet clear how much time/reward factor is in the cinematics/cinematic editor.
YOU BETTER PROVE YOURSELF NOW!
First time trying to do something in the CE, lol.
Also it appears youtube just accepts .y4m files.
To be frank, I can't be arsed. I haven't done a lot of in-depth mapping lately and I probably won't fiddle with the cinematics editor until HOTS comes out. I'm not sure what exactly I've got to prove, though; I'm just speculating on the cinematic corbo said he made with relative ease. If you can do stuff like what's in there, then you should also be able to play with the animations of units to create the scene I described. Try it yourself?
This looks promising. You can do a lot with camera and triggers, but being able to fiddle with specific units is amazing. My question is: Can you somehow import trigger editor cutscenes and use this to add specific animations to a giant battle or do you have to animate the entire war from scratch.
Example: You use triggers and special pathing to make zealots and zerglings clash around two heroes while they have an epic battle of street fighter or something.
Otherwise i'm just gonna be stuck with 2 or 3 actors at a time.