Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Turnsky on January 08, 2006, 10:54:01 pm
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i was just wondering, with the advent of the SCP, and the High poly models, would we soon be seeing revised cinematics to match/surpass the quality models and textures used with the updated models, effects, etc?.
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The cutscenes? :shaking:
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The cutscenes? :shaking:
yes, that's what one generally means when "cinematics" are referred.
'cuz as it stands now, the engine exceeds the look of the cutscenes used
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I dont think we have the models to remake any cutscen in full anyways, but a few are close, like the FS1 endgame and the FS2 intro.
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I dont think we have the models to remake any cutscen in full anyways, but a few are close, like the FS1 endgame and the FS2 intro.
well, judging by the FS2 cutscenes, the original models from the game itself were used, the first freespace, however, is another issue.. them's nice models even now. :nod:
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Err...
I'm going to go with "No".
Making a decent High poly model seems to take most people upwards of one month. I'd suspect remaking most of the cutscenes would take upwards of a year, moreso on some o fthe more complex ones. (Hallfight... :shaking:)
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I dont think we have the models to remake any cutscen in full anyways, but a few are close, like the FS1 endgame and the FS2 intro.
well, judging by the FS2 cutscenes, the original models from the game itself were used, the first freespace, however, is another issue.. them's nice models even now. :nod:
The FS1 endgame used ingame models, except the lucy, but VA's still looks better. NAd the explosion decals are kinda borked on that one.
I dont think thered be any reason to redo hallfight.
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No real reason to in my opinion. They still look good today and I doubt any improvement that could be made on them would be significant enough to justify remaking them.
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Err...
I'm going to go with "No".
Making a decent High poly model seems to take most people upwards of one month. I'd suspect remaking most of the cutscenes would take upwards of a year, moreso on some o fthe more complex ones. (Hallfight... :shaking:)
I remember reading one of the V employees describing the cutscenes as taking 12-18 man-months to do.
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Err...
I'm going to go with "No".
Making a decent High poly model seems to take most people upwards of one month. I'd suspect remaking most of the cutscenes would take upwards of a year, moreso on some o fthe more complex ones. (Hallfight... :shaking:)
I remember reading one of the V employees describing the cutscenes as taking 12-18 man-months to do.
yegad, that throws that idea out the window.
woulda been nice, tho.
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i have to argue for the cinematics, there are only few minor problems with making them.
lets start with the stuff needed for a cinematic.
-models - we've got most of them thanks to all the HTL'ers
-textures - look above
-most effects - look above
-backgrounds - look above
-creating animations- not that hard to do if you have something to base it off...
-creating most of the effects missing for an animation(beams, engines, stuff like that, defining particles and such...) - not really hard to do.
we have most of the things we need. its simply a matter of arranging it all. but, i agree, 6 months at the minimum for getting it all together.
we shall see in the end, if one of the more enthusiastic 3D artists here decide to tackle with it. i'd love to, but my animation skills are 0 :nervous: and when school starts i dont know if i'll even have time for normal doing my normal 3d stuff
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i have to argue for the cinematics, there are only few minor problems with making them.
lets start with the stuff needed for a cinematic.
-models - we've got most of them thanks to all the HTL'ers
-textures - look above
-most effects - look above
-backgrounds - look above
-creating animations- not that hard to do if you have something to base it off...
-creating most of the effects missing for an animation(beams, engines, stuff like that, defining particles and such...) - not really hard to do.
we have most of the things we need. its simply a matter of arranging it all. but, i agree, 6 months at the minimum for getting it all together.
we shall see in the end, if one of the more enthusiastic 3D artists here decide to tackle with it. i'd love to, but my animation skills are 0 :nervous: and when school starts i dont know if i'll even have time for normal doing my normal 3d stuff
Um, no offense or owt, but if your animation skills are zero, how would you know about the difficulty of animating anything, let alone what would have to be a professional quality piece of cgi?
It's not just plonking down a set of left-right movement keyframes, after all. Especially not for when it comes to anything involving rigging models.......
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How about remaking just parts? E.g. the Hallfight doesn't have much ship action in it, but we could remake the beginning and leave the rest. FS1 endgame is a completely different thing, we have all or most of the models, all we'd have to do would be the background and the effects. The hardest part would be redoing all the ship/camera movement.
Then there's Colossus. It'd be cool to see a version with the HTL C. Just have to change the parts where the ship model appears, and possibly the beginning with the fleet (Inferno has a cbanim like that, not hard to do).
Would be cool but a lot of work too
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I thought the beginning of Hallfight was pretty bloody nice, myself. Tres atmospheric.
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none taken aldo :)
i tried to animate a few things myself in cinema 4D, its just the problem that the way i'd try to animate it, it'd take a year at least :p
if we go by cinema 4D, you dont have an excuse to actually animate keyframe by keyframe :P
knn, spot on.
also, as for hallfight, is it me, or is it the cinematic with most detail in the ships that appear there if only for a brief moment
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If it wasn't for the nebula and lightning, Bosch's third monologue wouldn't be so bad for a remake.
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none taken aldo :)
i tried to animate a few things myself in cinema 4D, its just the problem that the way i'd try to animate it, it'd take a year at least :p
if we go by cinema 4D, you dont have an excuse to actually animate keyframe by keyframe :P
knn, spot on.
also, as for hallfight, is it me, or is it the cinematic with most detail in the ships that appear there if only for a brief moment
I think Hallfight has the best lighting rather than detail; IIRC it uses light+dark contrast pretty heavily - combined with the higher resolution bumpmaps et al for the stock models, it has the best effect, although I don't think there are higher poly models there. Albiet I could be wrong; I know at the very least there was a high poly Typhon, which AFAIK only occurs in one of the Silent Threat hidden anis.
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If it wasn't for the nebula and lightning, Bosch's third monologue wouldn't be so bad for a remake.
Actually, remaking it ingame (the ship flying through nebula part) would be easier, now that we have ingame cutscene sexps
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wasnt the third monologue with them being chased by a ravana or?
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To be honest, I wouldn't touch the cinematics with a barge pole. That's one of those projects that would open you up and swallow you whole, even with more modern technology.
If people DID want to take on cinematics, then I'd recommend leaving it till the very very last thing you look at, else other, quite frankly, more important stuff will fall by the wayside. This is from experience ;)
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If we were to remake the cinematics, then I'd rather see them as in-game movies..
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Actually, remaking it ingame (the ship flying through nebula part) would be easier, now that we have ingame cutscene sexps
Making them as in-game cutscenes wouldn't be that hard in some cases. Might be a bit hard to do Hallfight that way though ;)
Personally I don't think there's anything much wrong with the current set though and anyone who has the talent would be better employed making cutscenes for one of the campaigns.
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What I thought of was using the game engine and a video capture tool (Fraps?), get someone with a dual GF 7800 system, turn on 16x AA and all the goodies and record the space parts of the scene
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If we were to remake the cinematics, then I'd rather see them as in-game movies..
Yeah
I think if one movie needed to be redone the most would be the FS2 Intro.
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Err...
I'm going to go with "No".
Making a decent High poly model seems to take most people upwards of one month. I'd suspect remaking most of the cutscenes would take upwards of a year, moreso on some o fthe more complex ones. (Hallfight... :shaking:)
I remember reading one of the V employees describing the cutscenes as taking 12-18 man-months to do.
Nineteen Ninety Six to Seven though.
Computers have come a long way.
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To be honest render times really haven't changed that much. Picture quailty and model quality improved pretty much in line with speed increases.
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Err...
I'm going to go with "No".
Making a decent High poly model seems to take most people upwards of one month. I'd suspect remaking most of the cutscenes would take upwards of a year, moreso on some o fthe more complex ones. (Hallfight... :shaking:)
I remember reading one of the V employees describing the cutscenes as taking 12-18 man-months to do.
Nineteen Ninety Six to Seven though.
Computers have come a long way.
software too :D :)
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Bosch mono 3 is a good cantidate, fairly simple scene, nothing realy fancy happens. Biggest problem would be render time.
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Nineteen Ninety Six to Seven though.
Computers have come a long way.
I don't believe they meant rendering time as being the main or even a factor, though; but rather the rigging, planning, storyboarding, lighting, etc time.
Albeit it's worth noting that we don't have the advantage of being able to send stuff off to a render farm, so we pretty much lose any computational or software advantage.
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I don't believe they meant rendering time as being the main or even a factor, though; but rather the rigging, planning, storyboarding, lighting, etc time.
Albeit it's worth noting that we don't have the advantage of being able to send stuff off to a render farm, so we pretty much lose any computational or software advantage.
well, most of the software have actually quite easy rigging stuff, but planning and storyboarding are still an arse to do, as its... well... human-done :nervous:
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You know why don't you guys do something other video games are doing which is staying away from cg.
You get everything the game could have to offer to make one of these cinematics, but why not just recreate them in the game engine?
unreal tournament never uses cinematics for it's intro or cutscenes.
It just uses game engine, models, and a plan for how things should be scripted.
No render times or multi-cpu action to get going final fantasy cinematics, completely unnecessary.
The only thing i can see being hard is getting all the new models and everything to do exactly what they're counterparts do in the cinematics, fs2 intro would be pretty hard to recreate the battle sequence, but not impossible.
Something doable would be the cinematic where the lucifer half exits subspace and blows up, you know we could put in Dab's shockwaves for that, have some ulysses and hercs fly out before the lucy explodes, then have all the fighters fly straight toward earth while the camera pans that direction.
I mean with using game engine for cutscenes would look a lot nicer too.
Plus when a new model comes out, you could make the game engine cutscene take advantage of that.
But, really, the cutscene where the lucifer explodes is the only one i see possible for a game engine conversion that would be the least difficult and time consuming.
Making actual cutscene in game engine would also be limiting to our abilities, no one has time to make a 3dmodel of bosh to walk around in a game engine cutscene, let alone modelling the rooms of the iceni where he walks also.
But game engine cutscenes would be so much more sweet than cinematic avi or mve or whatever.
Go check out my other thread where i played fs2 on the big hd in my house, i took photo's.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,37775.0.html
3.6.8vp's got what it takes for making good game engine cutscenes. :)
Don't make fun of my photo's, and i meant to say the game has it all if people are even able to make game engine cut scenes...maybe some massive fredding could pipe out something interesting, go play Sync.
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Bosch mono 3 is a good cantidate, fairly simple scene, nothing realy fancy happens. Biggest problem would be render time.
Done in-game already. I even had a setup of the lightning.tbl specially for it. Sadly, lost the table. Other than the lightning, though the mission is identical to a degree. I'll upload it when I get home.
As for the Fs2 intro in-game.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.............................
*goes thinking
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Well, if people are serious about this, I could code up the timescript.tbl (I think this would be really useful for this) and some scripting functions for rendering a model, weapons, nodes, etc so that the physics system could be bypassed, or you could outright just render this stuff on the command briefing screen.
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You cant realy make "indoor" cutscenes ingame though, there are limitations.
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like shadows for one :)
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no ****, it's why the lucifer exploding is the only one that like wouldn't have limitations if you were to use the game engine, but it sure would be nicer than the cinematic.
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I still say we should "render" the outside space parts of the cutscene ingame and insert it into the original cutscene. This way we can do other cutscenes, not just mono3. It would be more difficult, but possible. It would also allow everyone to view the best quality models
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But our effects still aren't at the level of the cinematics. To be honest, aside from the models and textures I think it would be very hard to make it look as good or better.
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Yes, but in mono3 for example, we only need the nebula effect, which is not that bad ingame the last time I saw it
The Lucifer explosion would be trickier with those particles and debris
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But the nebula effect in the cinematic is more elaborate than the ingame version, not to mention the significantly better lightning effects. And until we have a completed HTL Iceni and Ravana there would be no advantage to redoing mono3 anyway.
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Speaking of Cinematics, is it possible to have small FRED-made videos/cutscenes in place of command/Terran/Vasudan.ani.
It would really immerse some campaings, like seeing an installation wasted by the Shivans live, while you are flying missions elsewhere....
For Example, these semi-cutscenes/ingame video feed were used in Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2...
Would it be too hard to implement ?
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You could just script what you want to see, record it with FRAPS or GameCam and turn it into an ani though. :)
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What i also mean to say is that the cinematics aren't all the high quality or clear compared to the game engine. The cinematics are slightly blurry if and more pixelated compared to the game engine.
Besides we really do have better models and textures than the cinematics now anyway.
The thing i see with the lucifer is you'd have to change how the ship breaks apart when it explodes, so it'll have different debris compared to a normal lucifer exploding, which i don't think anyone here has seen an actual lucifer exploding in game.
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You'd still need to do those particles, and hack the game engine, essentially, to prevent the jump point from closing before it's time and keep the Lucy there
And those explosions look quite different than anything ingame
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Oh well, i just mean to say we got something better to offer the cinematics which is better textures and models, stars, suns, maybe even nebula's.
As far as reproducing the explosion goes for the lucy?
You don't need a carbon copy of that explosion, the lucy had a blue shockwave anyway, Dab's shockwaves would work fine (given they had some tweaking for the cutscene also).
As far as anything else being carbon copy, you might as well just say **** it, and toss in the old models into the recreated cutscene, and then recreating the cutscene wouldn't even matter :lol:
The idea of redesigning the cutscenes is so they'll be better, and if not better, impressively different which would be really cool anyway, it would really make the fsu stand out for it's abilities if they wished to do such a grand not conversion, but redesign.
Which is the idea of revised cinematics, the old lucy explosion probably would be different if remade in game engine :nod:
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Also, i don't know **** for giggles about the particle system.
Except hearing that it was extremely limiting until it gets built upon to make it more capable.
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There's a huge flash when the Lucy explodes and a few smaller ones before, that's what I meant, not the shockwaves
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Woweee, a flash before the schockwave, dab's shockwaves do have a flare up affect, just not to the major extent of making your whole screen go white.
Yeah doing a flare up is hard, keeping that aspect of the lucy explosion would be really important, you can't lose it because it's like supposed to be one of those epic moments in the game especially since it's the biggest moment that is the ultimate demise of the lucifer, and the main ending of fs1.
The thing that would be really cool is watching VA's lucifer come out of subspace, and doing all the exploding business.