Replicate WoW character intro cinematic

[warbucket]

I'm looking to replicate something similar to the World of Warcraft intro cinematic after character creation.

Has anyone had success with that kind of panning? Would the camera follow some kind of path? Can you set multiple regions and pan the camera between them? How about changing Z offset while panning? How would you go about implementing this?

 

[Uncle]

Yeah, there's plenty of Camera and Cinematic actions that will allow you to do whatever you want. The Pan Camera action for example allows you to move the camera over time from it's current position to the target position. There should be a lot of tutorials on Hive that teach how to do this sort of thing. Also, just mess around with the Camera actions yourself to get a good understanding of them, they're all pretty self-explanatory.

Nothing has really changed over the years regarding cinematics so these old threads should still hold up:

Cinematics

Contents Introduction Basics of a Cinematic Cameras Unit Transmissions Fade Filters Filters Terraining a Cinematic Enviroment and Atmosphere Battle Cinematics 1 vs 1 Battle Cinematics Animation Music and Sounds Leaks Credits Demo Cinematic IntroIntroduction This Tutorial...

www.hiveworkshop.com

 

[warbucket]

Thanks for the resources.

I made a basic cinematic.

• Cinematic - Fade out over 0.00 seconds using texture Black Mask and color (100.00%, 100.00%, 100.00%) with 0.00% transparency
• Cinematic - Turn cinematic mode On for (All players)
• Sound - Clear the music list
• Sound - Stop music Immediately
• Sound - Set Ambient Sounds to 0.00%
• Sound - Set Animation and Spell Sounds to 0.00%
• Sound - Set Combat Sounds to 0.00%
• Sound - Set Fire Sounds to 0.00%
• Camera - Apply IntroCinematic <gen> for Player 1 (Red) over 0.00 seconds
• Sound - Play radiant_dawn_intro <gen>
• Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Target of IntroCinematic2 <gen>) over 15.00 seconds
• Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Target of IntroCinematic3 <gen>) over 15.00 seconds
• Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Target of IntroCinematic4 <gen>) over 15.00 seconds
• Cinematic - Turn cinematic mode Off for (All players)
• Cinematic - Fade in over 0.00 seconds using texture Black Mask and color (0.00%, 0.00%, 0.00%) with 0.00% transparency

This seems to do what I want fairly well. The only problem is that cameras definitely don't pan over the 15 seconds I specified. I timed it on a stop watch and it's no longer than 10 seconds. They move super fast. I then tried adding a wait after each pan action but then the cinematic wouldn't even start in that case. So why doesn't it pan over the specified time?

 

[Uncle]

I don't think you can tell it to pan to three separate places at once. I believe you would do it like this:

• Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Target of IntroCinematic2 <gen>) over 15.00 seconds
• Wait 15.00 game-time seconds
• Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Target of IntroCinematic3 <gen>) over 15.00 seconds
• Wait 15.00 game-time seconds
• Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Target of IntroCinematic4 <gen>) over 15.00 seconds

Also, what is the (Target of IntroCinematic)? I'll be honest, I haven't touched this stuff in ages.

 

[Uncle]

I tested this trigger and it works exactly as it should:

• Test
  • Events
    • Time - Elapsed game time is 0.01 seconds
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Visibility - Create an initially Enabled visibility modifier for Player 1 (Red) emitting Visibility across (Playable map area)
    • Cinematic - Turn cinematic mode On for (All players)
    • Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Center of A <gen>) over 5.00 seconds
    • Wait 5.00 game-time seconds
    • Camera - Pan camera for Player 1 (Red) to (Center of B <gen>) over 5.00 seconds
    • Wait 5.00 game-time seconds
    • Cinematic - Turn cinematic mode Off for (All players)

I'm using the Pan Camera (Timed) action. Note that I'm leaking two Points here by using (Center of region).

The Pan Camera With Interpolated Height (Timed) action works fine as well if you wanted to apply Height to the camera.

 

[warbucket]

The target of the camera object should just where it is pointed. I added a Z offset to those cameras as well. But I switched to regions to see if that would help.

My dilemma is that if I use waits the screen is totally black, and if I don't the panning takes a total of 10 seconds instead of the specified 40, which makes no sense.

Edit: I took out the fades and that showed the screen while using waits. The fades are somewhat confusing to use. At the beginning I understand that to say that I'm fading out from an initial black screen, and at the end I'm fading back in but the transparency is 0 so all it should do is disable the mask.

Edit 2: Regions worked a lot better than camera objects. It just seems difficult in general to make the camera do what you want. The option to "Set Camera to Selected View" does not give you that same view in-game. Very confusing.