If someone wants to turn this into a tutorial, go ahead, but...
I need someone who could tell me how to make a basic cinematic. I've been aiming to put a couple in my custom map, figuring it couldn't be *that* hard. How wrong I was. Apparently there's a new cinematic maker tool that you may or may not use, portraits only talk if you add game sounds from their respective characters to the carefully customized transitions (which won't play, by the way) and all that's before we've even touched on more complicated stuff, like adding an overlay as done in the campaign's secret mission.
I watched both tutorials on this in the tutorial section, but they don't really help - I know how to turn on cinematic mode and pan cameras, what I need is a conversation between one or two characters. I copied a trigger straight from a Blizzard map, but had to fix a gazillion bugs before it even remotely started to look like working.
Long story short; would someone be willing to make a really basic trigger/cinematic of one or two guys having a conversation, after which the camera fades out and the UI is enabled again? If I could just copy the basics from someone who knows how this works, I could get pretty far, but I really don't feel like fiddling five more hours with the retardedly complicated Blizzard triggers.
Otherwise, could you point me to a map that has this that I can open an look at? I haven't seen any maps with proper cinematics around yet...
I'm going to bump this just once, just because someone is bound to know at least something about this. Transmissions aren't such a rare breed now are they?
I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, but I've watched that, and I mentioned so in the OP. The problem with both tutorials we have is that they only handle cinematic mode, fading and camera movements - those are like the only three things I can already do. What I need to know is how mainly transmisions work, but any info past that is appreciated as well.
I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but what the hell :P I made this cinematic to test if voice files from the high quality cinematics would animate lips on a normal portrait, they don't :]
Transmissions are easy. The ones in the map are mostly based on existing voice files, so the duration is automatically set, the subtitles are retrieved from voice files, etc. Normally you'd have to do that manually.
There are 3 transmission functions: Send Transmission - this is the core one, you can specify all the details of the transmission (I'd say this is the most used by mapmakers, or at least they use it to build a custom transmission function) Send Transmission (Simple) - this one takes the subtitles/speaker name from voice files in the data editor; not very useful, since you can't put in subtitles into voice files now (bug) Send Transmission (Campaign) - the one blizz uses for their campaigns, it has even less options than the last one, everything is automated the way blizz wants it to, but that's not usually the way mapmakers want it :P Useful when you want to quickly play the original voice files (like in the attached map)
The worst thing about making cinematics is getting the timing right by replaying the thing hundreds of times... :[
Almost as bad as making a UI...
Thanks Tolk, that's basically exactly what I'm looking for! It made me lol too =P
I've just got one question; I actually see subtitles when I run the cinematic in the game, but none of these show in your triggers. This is the subtitle-into-voice-file thing that you talked about?
Looks like I'll have to do without my portraits talking in my cinematics then. Would've been handy if there was a generic 'talk' animation for portraits, though >.>
And yeah, the subtitles and name of speaker are stored in the sound object (the speaker and subtitle fields), but it only works with blizzard sounds, custom ones are bugged and whatever you put in there just wont save :/
Bump for this thread =) I'm also intrested to try to do some kind of super simple cinematic. Do you know any good new tutorials? Some kind of map would be great to understand basics.
Ok. I learned to do some kind of simple cinematic. There is no talking on it but helps to understand how camera works. Hope this helps someone =) And remember to right click and save attachment file.
I learned everything I really needed about triggers needed for cinematics from Blizzard's maps, they're also a good example of some best practices. (Using action queues, cleanup triggers, dealing with cinematic skipping etc.) The only thing you really need to do is handle transmissions differently... (Unless you're actually making your own lip sync data for your Voice Acting)
Here's what I've been doing for my campaign, I created a simple action event:
CampaignCinematicTransmissionOptions:ActionReturnType:(None)ParametersFirstTransmission?=false<Boolean>TalkIcon?=true<Boolean>Speaker=NoUnit<Unit>Name=NoText<Text>Message=NoText<Text>WrappedMessage=NoText<Text>SoundLink=EditorDefaultSound<SoundLink>Buffer=0.0<Real>GrammarText:CampaignCinematicTransmission(FirstTransmission?,TalkIcon?,Speaker,Name,Message,WrappedMessage,SoundLink,Buffer)HintText:(None)CustomScriptCodeLocalVariablesActionsSound-MuteMissionchannelfor(Allplayers)Sound-MuteVoicechannelfor(Allplayers)General-If(Conditions)thendo(Actions)elsedo(Actions)IfFirstTransmission?==trueThenSound-PlayUI_TransmissionStart(1)for(Allplayers)(at100.0%volume,skipthefirst0.0seconds)ElseSound-PlayUI_TransmissionText(1)for(Allplayers)(at100.0%volume,skipthefirst0.0seconds)General-If(Conditions)thendo(Actions)elsedo(Actions)If(TextWrappedMessagehasbeenset)==trueThenUI-DisplayWrappedMessagefor(Allplayers)toCinematicareaElseUI-DisplayMessagefor(Allplayers)toCinematicareaTransmission-Sendtransmissionto(Allplayers)from(SpeakerwithFlash(DoNotoverrideportrait)playingTalk)playingSoundLinkwithnameNameandmessageMessageusing(CinematicportraitatBottomLeft)playingTalk(AddBufferseconds,Don't Wait until it finishes) General - If (Conditions) then do (Actions) else do (Actions) If Talk Icon? == true Then Actor - Attach TalkIcon (Unnamed) to Origin on Speaker Else General - Wait 1.5 Real Time seconds Sound - Stop (Last played sound) After Fading Transmission - Wait until (Last sent transmission) is 0.0 seconds from being finished UI - Clear All Messages for (All players) Sound - Unmute Voice channel for (All players) Sound - Unmute Mission channel for (All players)
This is for cinematics, it prints cinematic style dialog on the screen, using the wrapped text string. It only uses the wrapped text if you include it, and it only needs to be included if your dialog is going to go for more than one line. I don't use return in the original dialog string because that will be sent to the subtitle, which auto-wraps. This is largely optional, but I felt that it gave a better feel when there was no voice acting, as opposed to the normal subtitles, you shouldn't include this for non-cinematic transmissions.
"First Transmission" is simply a boolean dictating whether the "Begin Transmission" sound effect plays, and is unnecessary if you don't want it. "TalkIcon?" determines whether the dialog actor appears over the unit when they talk.
The big thing here is muting the voice and mission channel, this trigger is for when you don't have VO but want the character to animate. In this case, you pass a sound link that works for that character, which animates their lips. You can spend as much or as little time as you want making it look appropriate. Generally, I simply find a sound link for that character that is the closest # of seconds to the dialog (read at the pace it would be VO'd at) I'm including. Your player is not going to be reading and watching their lips to see if they sync.
This method could be used for included VO as well! How? Mute the audio channel of the VO you're using the lip sync from, and make sure the VO you're adding is in a different audio channel. Keep in mind that the player will be much more sensitive to discrepancies in the lip syncing with VO, because they'll be watching instead of reading. For scenes where something interesting is going on in the background, you won't have to worry as much, but for exposition spend extra effort finding a close match perhaps, if you don't want to keep having to go in and out of game, try finding dialog that has a similar syllable structure, that should do the trick.
I also have a few recommendations for anyone who is using a similar script or will use this one. You should also include a boolean to shift between left and right side of the screen portraits. I currently have two action definitions (one for left and one for right) because I haven't gotten to a final re-factoring pass on my map yet, but it's something I'll definitely be doing. Additionally, you may want to include a boolean to determine whether the action waits for the dialog to complete or not. Most of the time you'll want to wait, but not having as way to not wait can make it difficult to create cutscenes where something begins or stops happening during a character speaking. (It's possible, but messy as it would require you calling another trigger with a wait before you have them talk.) Just be careful that you set the default values for these booleans to the most common setting you will use to save yourself some time.
If someone wants to turn this into a tutorial, go ahead, but...
I need someone who could tell me how to make a basic cinematic. I've been aiming to put a couple in my custom map, figuring it couldn't be *that* hard. How wrong I was. Apparently there's a new cinematic maker tool that you may or may not use, portraits only talk if you add game sounds from their respective characters to the carefully customized transitions (which won't play, by the way) and all that's before we've even touched on more complicated stuff, like adding an overlay as done in the campaign's secret mission.
I watched both tutorials on this in the tutorial section, but they don't really help - I know how to turn on cinematic mode and pan cameras, what I need is a conversation between one or two characters. I copied a trigger straight from a Blizzard map, but had to fix a gazillion bugs before it even remotely started to look like working.
Long story short; would someone be willing to make a really basic trigger/cinematic of one or two guys having a conversation, after which the camera fades out and the UI is enabled again? If I could just copy the basics from someone who knows how this works, I could get pretty far, but I really don't feel like fiddling five more hours with the retardedly complicated Blizzard triggers.
Otherwise, could you point me to a map that has this that I can open an look at? I haven't seen any maps with proper cinematics around yet...
I'm going to bump this just once, just because someone is bound to know at least something about this. Transmissions aren't such a rare breed now are they?
^^
I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, but I've watched that, and I mentioned so in the OP. The problem with both tutorials we have is that they only handle cinematic mode, fading and camera movements - those are like the only three things I can already do. What I need to know is how mainly transmisions work, but any info past that is appreciated as well.
I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but what the hell :P I made this cinematic to test if voice files from the high quality cinematics would animate lips on a normal portrait, they don't :]
Transmissions are easy. The ones in the map are mostly based on existing voice files, so the duration is automatically set, the subtitles are retrieved from voice files, etc. Normally you'd have to do that manually.
There are 3 transmission functions:
Send Transmission - this is the core one, you can specify all the details of the transmission (I'd say this is the most used by mapmakers, or at least they use it to build a custom transmission function)
Send Transmission (Simple) - this one takes the subtitles/speaker name from voice files in the data editor; not very useful, since you can't put in subtitles into voice files now (bug)
Send Transmission (Campaign) - the one blizz uses for their campaigns, it has even less options than the last one, everything is automated the way blizz wants it to, but that's not usually the way mapmakers want it :P Useful when you want to quickly play the original voice files (like in the attached map)
The worst thing about making cinematics is getting the timing right by replaying the thing hundreds of times... :[
Almost as bad as making a UI...
Thanks Tolk, that's basically exactly what I'm looking for! It made me lol too =P
I've just got one question; I actually see subtitles when I run the cinematic in the game, but none of these show in your triggers. This is the subtitle-into-voice-file thing that you talked about?
Looks like I'll have to do without my portraits talking in my cinematics then. Would've been handy if there was a generic 'talk' animation for portraits, though >.>
@Mozared: Go
To make the lips move, you can try this: http://forums.sc2mapster.com/development/map-development/9297-can-you-make-a-portraits-mouth-move-in-a-transmission/
Doesn't look too good, the lips don't sync with the voice, but at least they're moving :]
And yeah, the subtitles and name of speaker are stored in the sound object (the speaker and subtitle fields), but it only works with blizzard sounds, custom ones are bugged and whatever you put in there just wont save :/
Bump for this thread =) I'm also intrested to try to do some kind of super simple cinematic. Do you know any good new tutorials? Some kind of map would be great to understand basics.
Ok. I learned to do some kind of simple cinematic. There is no talking on it but helps to understand how camera works. Hope this helps someone =) And remember to right click and save attachment file.
I learned everything I really needed about triggers needed for cinematics from Blizzard's maps, they're also a good example of some best practices. (Using action queues, cleanup triggers, dealing with cinematic skipping etc.) The only thing you really need to do is handle transmissions differently... (Unless you're actually making your own lip sync data for your Voice Acting)
Here's what I've been doing for my campaign, I created a simple action event:
This is for cinematics, it prints cinematic style dialog on the screen, using the wrapped text string. It only uses the wrapped text if you include it, and it only needs to be included if your dialog is going to go for more than one line. I don't use return in the original dialog string because that will be sent to the subtitle, which auto-wraps. This is largely optional, but I felt that it gave a better feel when there was no voice acting, as opposed to the normal subtitles, you shouldn't include this for non-cinematic transmissions.
"First Transmission" is simply a boolean dictating whether the "Begin Transmission" sound effect plays, and is unnecessary if you don't want it. "TalkIcon?" determines whether the dialog actor appears over the unit when they talk.
The big thing here is muting the voice and mission channel, this trigger is for when you don't have VO but want the character to animate. In this case, you pass a sound link that works for that character, which animates their lips. You can spend as much or as little time as you want making it look appropriate. Generally, I simply find a sound link for that character that is the closest # of seconds to the dialog (read at the pace it would be VO'd at) I'm including. Your player is not going to be reading and watching their lips to see if they sync.
This method could be used for included VO as well! How? Mute the audio channel of the VO you're using the lip sync from, and make sure the VO you're adding is in a different audio channel. Keep in mind that the player will be much more sensitive to discrepancies in the lip syncing with VO, because they'll be watching instead of reading. For scenes where something interesting is going on in the background, you won't have to worry as much, but for exposition spend extra effort finding a close match perhaps, if you don't want to keep having to go in and out of game, try finding dialog that has a similar syllable structure, that should do the trick.
I also have a few recommendations for anyone who is using a similar script or will use this one. You should also include a boolean to shift between left and right side of the screen portraits. I currently have two action definitions (one for left and one for right) because I haven't gotten to a final re-factoring pass on my map yet, but it's something I'll definitely be doing. Additionally, you may want to include a boolean to determine whether the action waits for the dialog to complete or not. Most of the time you'll want to wait, but not having as way to not wait can make it difficult to create cutscenes where something begins or stops happening during a character speaking. (It's possible, but messy as it would require you calling another trigger with a wait before you have them talk.) Just be careful that you set the default values for these booleans to the most common setting you will use to save yourself some time.
designerdougm, Can you attach that trigger as a file to this thread, please.
I think this thread is solved at least partly. How about adding [SOLVED+File] tag?