Kenneth Williams

Tips for future Machinima students

First big thing is the camera room:

The most helpful thing in general was our camera room. Once we had the camera room it saved us all of the trouble of having cameras run by triggers. Basically you just build the room, then use the camera room to carefully place lights and cameras. Even if you don’t plan on doing major post processing, you can use the camera room to help decide when and where the cameras should trigger. Also, it helps to decide exactly where the cameras and lights should go. The instructions for the camera stuff are with the camera room I already turned in.

Using train stuff:

Trains can be very useful for doing many of the special effects you may want in half life 2. With trains you can move carriages, move props, and even make someone jump off of a buildingJ. Basically, to use a train, build a block and use the invisible texture. Give the block a name, and hit the toEntity button. Choose the func_tracktrain entity. Now, you can use the entity tool to add a path_track. Give it a name, and then from your invisible brush set the First Stop Target to be this new path_track. At this point you can form a path by selecting the first node, holding shift, and dragging it to the next point. Repeat this to make as long a path as you would like.

Next, set a trigger to tell your train to Stop when the map is started. Finally, set up whatever trigger you use to send the resume command to the train whenever you want it to move.

Moving props:

Essentially, just make a dynamic prop and parent it to the invisible block. It will now follow along. If you want to move characters, you can parent them in as dynamic_prop_override. Next, go to the Model tab and choose an appropriate animation. With triggers and the default animation option, you can set the character to perform the given animation as it moves.

Blocking tips

When blocking, make sure to build the complete room with props first. Now there are a couple problems with blocking. Essentially when a character is given a scripted sequence it will attempt to calculate a path to the sequence. If a brush is slightly blocking the path it may consider it a wall and decided the end position is not pathable. In this case you have a couple of options. First, move the sequence around until the character finds an opening. Your other option is to use info_node. If a character can not find a path but sees a visible info node nearby which is closer to the sequence, it will move to the info node and so on. Thus, you can slowly move the characters along the path towards the destination.

Making walls passable:

Sometimes the blocking is helped by making walls or props passable. For a prop, just select the Collisions option in the Class Info tab. Then, choose the Not Solid option (it will now be passable). For brushes, make sure that you tie it to an entity func_brush. Next, set the Solidity in class Info to be Never Solid. Your character will now pass through (make sure to use camera angles to mask it).

Group organization:

Here is all of the information about everything we did to organize our group and to pipeline our work so that everyone could work at the same time and we could finish things as quickly as possible.

Following is a description of each group we had then a description of the order of completion to properly fit the pipeline.

Room design:

The room design group builds the rooms, places the props, and textures everything.

Model retexturing:

The model retexturing group chooses additional models, and photoshops up textures for existing models.

Prop Design:

This group is in charge of photoshopping or building any additional models needed for the film.

Quality Assurance:

This group is in charge of critiquing each and every other piece of work from room design, to props, to models. They also critique any finished film pieces in order to touch them up.

Filming:

This group films and post processes the actual piece. The filing group chooses from all of the available footage to pace the film and to get appropriate camera angles.

Lighting:

The lighting group places the general lights and works with the camera group to place the shot by shot lights.

Cameras:

The camera group places all of the different cameras for each scene. The filming group later uses these cameras for the shots.

Special effects:

The special effects group tests different effect options and puts the finalized effect designs into the set.

Faceposer:

The face poser group does the different face posing gestures and dialogue for each scene.

Pipeline:

Essentially, there are several groups that can do their tasks independently.

First to finish: Room building, Model Retexturing, and Prop Design, dialogue recording (All of these can run together)

(The following depend upon rooms being built) Blocking (making the characters move properly), camera work, lighting (I recommend making these 3 separate tasks due to the difficulty of merging maps)

(The following depend upon dialogue being recorded)

Faceposer

Finally, the filming is done. Of course, quality control has a hand in everything which is done. So basically, the rooms are built first. Then, the blocking (to make the character movement happen properly), the cameras and lighting, and finally the filming. The face poser can be put in last minute (as long as the blocking includes choreo scenes which run at appropriate times), so face poser can be done separate. The same goes for props, special effects, and the model retexturing. All of the previous tasks can be done independently and then put in later.

I would recommend having different people work on different pieces. Essentially, finish one room and then move on to another while the critiquing takes place. Once a room is done and the scene built, film that room. Basically, the process has filming occurring at every stage so that the critics are constantly at work. Also, when the main work is done, it is a simple matter to take all of the footage, choose specific scenes to re-shoot, and keep what is wanted.

More or less that is our pipeline process.