Introduction Before we begin with what might give birth to a new Coppola, Kubrick or perhaps John Woo I'd like to say that this guide should in no way be taken as the definitive approach on how to make game movies. There are many ways to acomplishing a goal, and this is one such way.
I, like many others, find it entertaining not only to watch movies but also to make movies about what goes on inside our favorite games. I am also the kind of person who will answer any question about something I think I know something about with an as complete answer as I can. This is, I believe, somewhat reflected in this guide. It was originally not written on the request of anybody else, but is rather my attempt to try to share some of the knowledge I've gained about these things. It is also my hope that others will contribute with their knowledge, insights and commentary in order to provide even better conditions for movie making.
In this guide I have chose to use nothing but applications freely available for download via the internet. The reason is that I do not wish anybody to be left out because they either can't afford commercial applications or they do not wish to acquire such applications through doubtful means. This places some limits on what the guide touches upon. Aesthetically speaking no advanced tutorials will be given, since they usually require applications which seldom are free of charge.
Those who are interested in more advanced applications might want to check out the soon to be published basic Adobe Premiere guide I'm writing (or check the links section for tips on other sites offering help and tips) . That guide will build on much of the things described in this guide though. There are other advanced digital video editing applications such as for example Adobe After Effects and Sonic Foundry's Vegas and Apple's Final Cut Pro for the Macintosh users. Links to the sites of these applicatons are found in the links section. Often there is some form of demo which may be tried for free for a limited period of time.
I've chosen to call this guide Q3A-engine based games movie tutorial for basically two reasons. The first being that I originally started writing the english version of this guide before I started with the swedish version. That version, however, was completed before this one, but I decided to keep the name. The other reason is that the guide is usefull for many of the games based on the Quake 3 Arena engine. Like Return to Castle Wolfenstein as well as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Call of Duty.
Finally I will admit that the guide is pretty lenghty, but I figured that when I took the time to write this guide I wanted to do it properly and leave a minimum of questions unanswered. The amount of text might be discouraging, but I want you to recall what your elementary school teacher used to say regarding your homework: "Yes, but there are alot of pictures as well." That might not have been true of your homework, but in this case it's actually true. I promise.
If there should happen to be any questions after having read this guide, and I hope there will be, I can be reached via the Contact / Forum section.
Ok, time to start making movies.
Record a demoThe very first thing we need to do is to record one or several demos, from which we'll later make our movie. There are quite a few steps before you can enjoy the fruits of your labour, but hang in there and I think you will be pleased with the result.
Now then, to record a demo in RTCW you first need to launch the game and then simply bring down the console and type /g_synchronousClients 1 and hit the ENTER-key on your keyboard. Still typing in the console you input /record mydemo press enter and then type /g_synchronousClients 0 and hit ENTER and a demo recording should be in progress. When you're satisfied with your demo you simply bring down the console again and type /stoprecord.
This is all you need to do to record a demo. Before I tell you how to play the demo back, I 'll show you a simpler way of recording a demo. Bring down the console again and input /bind x "g_synchronousClients 1; wait; record; g_synchronousClients 0;", where x is the key you have assigned to this specific command. You could also locate the file wolfconfig_mp.cfg and add the above command on a new line. In order to stop recording a demo without having to pull down the console, you can add another line to wolfconfig_mp.cfg that looks like this: /bind y "stoprecord".
Now you can start and stop the recording of a demo with a simple push of a button.
Provided that you are not playing any modification for RTCW, all your demos will be stored in \main\demos under your root wolfenstein folder. If, for example, you are using the quite popular mod OSP the demos will be saved to \osp\demos instead.
Playing back a demo is a simple matter. Let's say we were playing a standard game. Our demo will then be found in the main/demos/ folder. To play it back we may chose from a few different options. We could simply bring down the console and type /demo mydemo and the game should load the demo and start playing it back.
There is also the option of using an external application to play back demos, and I highly recommend you to take advantage of this possibility. The application I use when playing demos is called Seismovision and it can freely be downloaded from
www.planetquake3.net/seismovision/ Demo till *.tgaThe next step on the road to a movie is to convert the demo to a sequence of screenshots. There are frame grabbing applications capable of capturing on-screen events and outputting them to an AVI directly, without having to go through the step of outputting alot of screenshots first. One such application is Fraps, and a trial version can be downloaded from
www.fraps.com. I will not be using that application in this guide, since I have found that the image quality tend to be lower when using Fraps.
An AVI file basically consists of a number of images sequentially stitched together so as to produce a moving picture. What we will attempt here is to convert our demo to a number of screenshots and then putting all those screenshots together into one AVI file. Luckily for us the Q3A-engine comes with a handy command to do exactly what we want, namely produce screenshots while playing back a demo. The command we are going to use looks like this: /cl_avidemo and is entered into the console once the demo is running. We should also add a number to the command which tells the engine how many frames per each second of the demo it should output. So for example /cl_avidemo 25 will save 25 screenshots for each second of the demo. A word of caution might be in place here. At a resolution of 1024*768 each saved screenshot will have a size of 2305 KB. At a rate of 25 screenshots per second this means that the amount of screenshots equalling one minute will take up 2305*25*60 KB which roughly equals 3.4 GB! In other words, unless you have alot of space available you should lower the resolution. A lower resolution will also mean that the screenshots are saved in less time.
As with the option of binding keys which starts and stops the recording of a demo, we can do the same for the output of screenshots. If you add the below to your config, you can start and stop the output with the press of a button.
//Start and stop screen capture
bind kp_plus "cl_avidemo 25" // plus key on the numerical keyboard
bind kp_minus "cl_avidemo 0" //minus key on the numerical keyboard
When you start saving the screenshots you will probably notice a significant drop in frames per second rendered and, depending on the resolution, a decrease or increase in playback speed. This is normal. The screenshots that are saved during the playback of the demo is found in the folder \screenshots located in the main-folder.
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Topic: Making Video Tips 1 (Read 984 times)