[Cinematic] Project intro, WIP etc, please watch :)

[Svyatoslav]

Starting up on my campaign, I decided to make an intro cinematic and post it here. Stuff is not done, eg loading screen and misc like that.

Comment! Please express confusion etc if you're feeling it. It is supposed to be linked with the rest of the campaign later so I decided not to implement credits btw.

Details on my project will be posted later.

Don't be cruel.

Edit: first thing I've put here.

 

[Septimus]

Why do you import a 8mb worth of image into your cinematic? =.=

 

[Svyatoslav]

I'm afraid of compressing :F

I'll fix that if it's a bummer

 

[Septimus]

I'm afraid of compressing :F

It was a waste of user time to download additional 8mb. Also, it seems to be pointless to have it in tga.

 

[Svyatoslav]

Which formats are supported? I tried with JPEG now but it caused fatal errors.
BMP uses the same compressing as TGA, yes? So why not TGA? :/

Will update the attachment in short, preferrably after receiving an answer

 

[Septimus]

if you want to use the image for the cinematic, change it to blp.

 

[Svyatoslav]

I can't convert it to BLP since the source image is not cubic... Apparently

The best I can do atm is make my TGAs 16 bits/pixel depth, which might lower the files' size by 1MB. Tot 2MB. Shouldn't change the dpi much either, it wouldn't be readable.
WC3II and WC3Viewer can't convert non-cubic images into BLP, and if I were to make my image cubic I'd be sure to lose some heavy amount of quality? Beyond the limits of decipherability...?
TGA<->BLP Converter doesn't work for me at all.

I'm not trying to defend the filesize, just feels like I can't do any much about it atm ~ I've been trying alot of stuff but all hassle for nothing since -nothing- works.

 

[Septimus]

You should have get some user to help you instead of saying you cannot.

 

[Svyatoslav]

Indeed, I did request help in a thread named TGA -> BLP in the Requests forum, no replies as of yet

 

[Septimus]

You only make it after being told about it. =.=

 

[Svyatoslav]

Whaa? ~~ I posted it 11 PM, several hours before

I requested help once I realized I could not do this myself.

Does it matter? Feels like you're bitching just to bitch, and indeed you are bitching :s

I'll update my attachment once I have my files.


Edit: I had some success and converted my files to BLP... But it looks shit, seriously... It barely reduced the filesize and for some reason lagged it down, either I keep the size or I remove the filters and do something different which I'm not so keen on.
If you did download it, and even opened it in the WE... You must have watched the cinematic? If so then are there any constructive comments on the ACTUAL cinematic?

 

[Septimus]

Whaa? ~~ I posted it 11 PM, several hours before

You post it 6-8 hours after I told you about it.

Does it matter? Feels like you're bitching just to bitch, and indeed you are bitching :s

What it should be is compression and efficiency. Nobody interested to d/l something worth 10mb when it could be d/l at the size of 2mb.

Edit: I had some success and converted my files to BLP... But it looks shit, seriously... It barely reduced the filesize and for some reason lagged it down,

The width and height of the image is 1654 * 994. That is why the file size hardly reduce.

Making it that huge is useless, because when you import it to warcraft 3 and display it. The width and height would be automatically adjust to 512 * 512.

If you did download it, and even opened it in the WE... You must have watched the cinematic? If so then are there any constructive comments on the ACTUAL cinematic?

Yes, I do. But read it at your own risk.

Read it at your own risk

Since this is on development, I would just mention 1-2 stuff that are rather obvious.

The camera was horrible, it was choopy when it moves and it contain several terrible angle. Setting a wait between a camera was a terrible thing. It even run through a female village (Referring to the scene where female village walking towards the stair)

Next, the battle scene; it isn't that well develop as well. It was a bad idea to use Wait action to develop a battle cinematic, I notice a waiting syndrome in the battle.

1 advice, NEVER EVER USE WAIT ACTION especially for a cinematic with battle scene.

Either use countdown timer or real variable if you are GUI user. If you want it to be even better, use Anitarf Cinematic System (For JASS user).

 

[Restor]

I really dont care if I download it within 30sec or in 40 sec.


It was interesting, in the first scene the camera movement was original one, later it was worse, but the scene above the forest when one guy killed the second was nice.

Cameras remind me Batman Begins fight scene. It was also chaotic, but good. Worse it is in dialoge scenes.

4/5

 

[Septimus]

I really dont care if I download it within 30sec or in 40 sec.

That is because you have a rather good connection. Not everybody have it.

 

[Svyatoslav]

Thanks for the comments

I didn't know until just recently that Wait is so inaccurate, it's a pain
I won't use it as extensively as I did now ever again, but I'm not in the mood for reworking the entire cinematic today.. It's so depressing :s
Well, as for the "choppy" camera.. If I understand what you mean I'd say it's in the eye of the beholder, I like chopping and the angles in the battle scene. What's a pain is the bad sync and randomness the waits etc are causing.. I'm sure to change the music aswell. And some camera commands have ended up in the wrong order, completely disabling them :s
I'll be sure to rework that... And the camera running through villager thing aswell. I'll try find better fitting music.

Your points about the image formats are inaccurate though, Septimus.
The game does not transform them into 512x512, instead it stretches the picture across the screen (obviously) when I use it as a filter... Making the source pictures 1024x1024 was obligatory for converting them into BLP. With "99" compressing quality the filesizes was reduced to about 2.5MB (x2), but it made them a blurry mess. I'd have to make the canvas size 1024+512 (^2) to attain higher quality, but then the filesize would greatly exceed the source files'.
I won't bother compressing them more, only alternative is removing them entirely.

I'll update it soon.

 

[Septimus]

I didn't know until just recently that Wait is so inaccurate, it's a pain

The min wait for wait is 0.27 and it depends on the computer. The wait are even longer if the map is multiplayer map.

Well, as for the "choppy" camera.. If I understand what you mean I'd say it's in the eye of the beholder, I like chopping and the angles in the battle scene. What's a pain is the bad sync and randomness the waits etc are causing.. I'm sure to change the music aswell. And some camera commands have ended up in the wrong order, completely disabling them :s
I'll be sure to rework that... And the camera running through villager thing aswell. I'll try find better fitting music.

From what I seen in this statement of yours, it clearly show you have no idea what is a choppy camera movement all about.

The game does not transform them into 512x512, instead it stretches the picture across the screen (obviously) when I use it as a filter... Making the source pictures 1024x1024 was obligatory for converting them into BLP. With "99" compressing quality the filesizes was reduced to about 2.5MB (x2), but it made them a blurry mess. I'd have to make the canvas size 1024+512 (^2) to attain higher quality, but then the filesize would greatly exceed the source files'.
I won't bother compressing them more, only alternative is removing them entirely.

Pardon my previous description, that is what I mean.

stretches the picture across the screen

What I mean is.. it would stretches the picture to about 512 * 512.

Also, reducing the quality of the image by changing it to blp and then to 75% of it's actual quality while making it 512 * 512 would not effect it that much.

 

[Svyatoslav]

What I mean is.. it would stretches the picture to about 512 * 512.

Also, reducing the quality of the image by changing it to blp and then to 75% of it's actual quality while making it 512 * 512 would not effect it that much.

It did
I was happy when the conversion worked, but even with 1024x1024 and 99% quality it still ended up undecipherable :s
I might try this again just to make sure, but atm it's looking grim.
If you could give me an example of a good looking compression I'd be very thankful, the could be something wrong with my converting tool..?

From what I seen in this statement of yours, it clearly show you have no idea what is a choppy camera movement all about.

Then what do you mean..?

As it occurs to me "choppy" would refer to the camera chopping into different positions at a high rate, with high velocity and abrupt stops.
This is a style I think I prefer when making action scenes, barely letting the viewer follow. Maybe it's not fast enough though and it might have ended up differently on your comp because of the waits...
Well, I am eager to make something good out of this ~ not really as a single piece though, but still...
Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
Especially such centered around the clarity of the plot, I've a problem with expressing stuff :s

I am not intending to make cinematics my profession, but I will not submit a non-good resource. Since I've been working on this myself I can't see the good about it, instead I spot problems... Too many problems for me to grasp the overall quality of my product, but I don't want to spend too much time on the intro since I want to get on with my campaigning project. :/

The scene where one is told about the marriage etc the camera is supposed to zoom out and lower z and grant vision on the 'firstborns'.. The triggers came in the wrong order and it got messed up in the posted version. Suggestions about alternate scenes are -much- appreciated

Septimus, if I posted this as a map resource in it's current state.. How would you rate it? Curious!
In your posts you make it sound like 1/5 unacceptable but I think I've seen 4/5 resources with apparent lesser quality

 

[Septimus]

As it occurs to me "choppy" would refer to the camera chopping into different positions at a high rate, with high velocity and abrupt stops.
This is a style I think I prefer when making action scenes, barely letting the viewer follow. Maybe it's not fast enough though and it might have ended up differently on your comp because of the waits...
Well, I am eager to make something good out of this ~ not really as a single piece though, but still...
Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
Especially such centered around the clarity of the plot, I've a problem with expressing stuff :s

Not really, it refer to the speed. I would just paste the anitarf cinematic system information at here for you to read it.

Each camera setup is defined by nine parameters: the x, y and z position of the camera target; facing
angle, angle of attack and roll angle; and field of view, drawing distance and distance to target. When
modifying the camera with the usual triggers, the engine changes these values linearly over time until
they reach the desired value, the value set for the camera that's being applied. The problem with linear
transition is that it becomes choppy at "waypoints". Let's say your camera is in position A and you move
it to position B and from there to position C. If position B is above A and C, then the camera will be
climbing up when going from A to B, but the moment it reaches B and starts going towards C, it has to
start falling again, so at that point, it's height-changing speed suddenly changes, and we notice that
as a "chop" in the camera's movement.

Septimus, if I posted this as a map resource in it's current state.. How would you rate it? Curious!
In your posts you make it sound like 1/5 unacceptable but I think I've seen 4/5 resources with apparent lesser quality

My rating would be 2/5 (Lacking). But knowing the map approval standard was being rather high in this recent time, it would be 1/5 and rejected if you does not fix the camera.

Also, the fade filter need to be adjust.

In the future, if you want to make a cinematic with battle scene. Use precise timing like countdown timer or real variable; or even better by using Anitarf cinematic system.

Countdown timer isn't as great as real variable as it have a few minor disadvantage compare to it.

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/spells-569/cinematic-system-129214/?prev=u=Septimus

You can use this precise timing by me, if you know JASS you can use anitarf system.