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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Making Intro Movies

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CompuWiz
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Posted: 6th May 2003 17:34
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For my game, after the splash screens appear, there will be an intro movie that plays, like in and RTS game such as Starcraft or Age of Empires. However, I don't want to hard code it, as that itself would be like 10,000 lines of code. Also, we do have Maya installed on all of our computers here in the studio, but no one to use it. :-s Does anyone know of an alternative program that isn't hard to use that can import boned 3D models, animate them and the scene in the program, and export to a convienent format?
The only way to prevent all lag in a game is not to make the game.
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Andy Igoe
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Posted: 6th May 2003 17:53
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Maya / 3ds Max are the tools to use. Just render to an .avi. There's some shannigans with codecs normally but I shouldn't worry too much about that at this stage.

As for ease-of-use, you want it animated right? It's sad but animation is one of the hardest aspects of making a model - I rate it as the hardest. Particularly bone-based or mesh-deformation animation.

Even I can make a mesh no problem and i'm not really an artist, and any half-decent artist can scribble down some textures if they have a texture wrap/unwrapping tool. Doing limb-based rotation is not too hard for primitive animation, but...

Mesh-deformation animation however, it took me 2 months to find someone for my NFP project and the whole time I tried to learn it myself - after all that time I can only report that I totally failed.

It's a tough skill to master and quality animators are few and far between. It's not enough to know what buttons to click, knowing 'how' to click them is an art-form that transcends conventional 3d modelling and for me it defines the difference between an amateur modeller and a professional.

Pneumatic Dryll
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BatVink
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Posted: 6th May 2003 19:44
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If you're looking for character animation, there's a copy of LifeForms on the front of magazines from time to time. There's hundreds of preanimated movements that you can attach to any model that has the basic bones required.

Thanks in advance.
All the Best,
StevieVee
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CompuWiz
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Posted: 7th May 2003 00:05
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Yes, I am very aware of the difficutly level of animation. I am not nescicarrily wanting something really easy to use, just easy to learn. And like I said we already have close to 50 copies of Maya and 3DS Max 5 here at the office

Stevie, what magazine?

The only way to prevent all lag in a game is not to make the game.
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Armeggadon
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Posted: 7th May 2003 00:10
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50 copies of maya. what version(maya is EXPENSIVE) oh well. as for your problem i dont really know other than maybe animate the entire thing elsewhere and then show the animation in your game.

Current Status: learning MORE about dbpro
I consider myself: newb
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Andy Igoe
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Posted: 7th May 2003 00:57
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heh, Maya is nothing in price when compared to Max!...

Maya is what, roughly £650 now isn't it? And Max about £4000 or so at the moment I think.

What puzzles me though is that 50 copies of each comes too £232,500. Surely it would have been wise to invest in slightly fewer copies and slightly more people who know how to use it, perhaps something akin to a 1-1 ratio of each..?

Pneumatic Dryll
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Chenak
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Posted: 7th May 2003 01:24
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maya can be up to £9000 depending on what version you get

Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny...
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CompuWiz
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Posted: 7th May 2003 02:32
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Ha, both Maya and Max are quite expensive. We are running a slightly older version of Maya Complete. We bought in bulk and got a really REALLY good deal, as long as we only used one copy per machine. It didn't come out much more then $2000 anyways, and it's more lawful. Also, we used to have a staff close to 150, so we needed a lot of copies of Maya and Max, but now a lot of em either quit or got fired

The only way to prevent all lag in a game is not to make the game.
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Andy Igoe
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Posted: 7th May 2003 05:31
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Quote: "as long as we only used one copy per machine"


Is that not just the strangest license agreement that you've ever heard?

Anyway I think you fired too many people, I meen... 150 down to 50 and not a single modeller left to use quarter of a million quids worth of software. I just gotta say this sorry but, "DOH!"

Fire someone else and hire a modeller with his wages.

Pneumatic Dryll
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otakucg
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Posted: 9th May 2003 12:45
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Well all of you guys are lucky you dont work in the VFX biz then.

Most houses I know have Maya in house and they usually get about 10 to a couple hundred licenses. When purchasing in large volume you usually get a discount. Now thats just the animation software. Maya is rather good at doing FX work and animating. For modeling we use (and other houses) use Lightwave. Thats usually a one seat per modeler. Then you go with a renderer. Its either go with Renderman or Mental Ray. Now when you buy renderers you usually pay a license thats per processor. So if you have a dual proc machine and want to use both to render with thats two lics you have to buy. Then on top of that after I am done rendering you have to composite things or use a compositing program to process frames for different things. So there goes 1 license of Shake... BUT you can usually have like 2 or so Shake sessions going at once so thats one license per instance running on your machine.

So if I am running 2 copies of Maya, 2 licenses of Shake, I am rendering a test on one license of Mental Ray, and I have a copy of photoshop running lets estimate that I am running like 35k worth of software at once.

Well as far as creating a intro movie you should set it up and pre-render it then play it back OR if you want to go with the real-time route you might want to export characters out of Maya and then export some text files to describe a scene. Always try to make things like this data driven so you just point your engine to it and watch it play. Either way since you have seats of Maya you should use them in either case.

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