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ATS Video Releases / Re: Momentum [A Dannye Solo]
« Last post by Dannye on March 10, 2024, 12:57:09 AM »Thanks for all the feedback and reactions guys, much appreciated!
I thought I'd write up some misc behind-the-scenes comments/notes on the video:
The Packer Spins:
These were something I'd be wanting to incorporate for quite a while, building on the very basic spin to knock the caddie off the bridge in The Fantabulous 4. The baseball super-spin was done by shooting the front two tires. For the airport one, since I needed to actually drive it, I went with just having it rain (overridden in capture), hence the spin not being as fast. I found with the baseball one that if I had the two vehicles as close as possible without contact then there was a good chance that after a while of spinning they would collide, and that's what happened here (my earlier plan was to stop the spin in just the right way that the packer would move a bit and I'd get the hit that way, but it didn't work as well). I wasn't sure if I'd even use the silly dugout/homerun stuff with the baseball one, but included it in every attempt just in case - once I settled on the songs it became clear that the whole thing would indeed fit well as an opening.
The Hunter-Boat Flings:
The idea seemed simple enough, but I never really had much luck with it to begin with, at best simply flipping a boat over or flinging it a tiny bit. Changing to this specific location really helped - it was still rare that I got a big fling but all of a sudden it seemed possible - so I've wondered whether it's something like a shallow water depth here that assists my leaning forward to quickly bring the tail up, like putting more force into that movement, I'm not sure. The credits one was the furthest distance attempt I had, and I tried to have the camera really show whats going on there with the fling for anyone curious.
Bailing on Camera:
In addition to the many other reasons why Replay Manager is awesome, being able to do a freecam/cinematic-style camera that isn't forced to include a sudden cut/snap as the target changes on get-in/out animations was especially important for this video. The first stunt I worked on here where this was relevant was the boat billboard bike one, where my Freeplay'd mockup camerawork was similar to the final but it had to suffer those awkward camera movements (and my unstable hand for attempting the rotation around the BB). Getting to create a perfectly smooth version of it in Replay Manager was super satisfying.
SAiVC and VA:
For the SA map in the VC engine, I've always done my stunting in VA, mostly just as a force of habit as I had VA first. I do choose to capture footage in SAiVC however, which can bring with it some unexpected surprises (not always good ones). The SF hamburger rotates fine in VA, which I assumed that was normal and I got used to it, so once I got to the final capture in SAiVC where it didn't rotate I just decided to capture the stunt in both maps and composite the hamburger section of VA's footage over the top of the rest (note that I didn't bother to do this in the credits stunt here as it was only briefly in frame). There were a couple other stunts where I did some minor compositing between the two again to try and get the best of both worlds with similar cosmetic stuff. Eg: The donut holes, where I was disappointed to discover denser tree coverage behind the donut in SAiVC, as it distracted from the stunt so I tried to merge it with the VA version I was used to. I didn't go overboard with this concept though as it thankfully wasn't often necessary, and also it was kinda problematic as I hadn't gotten their colouring to match perfectly (a single timecyc file will look different in SAiVC vs VA in regards to the ambient colours setting, not sure why, so I tried to fiddle with the numbers in SAiVC to get them looking the same, but it wasn't perfect).
The Bus Balance:
I wanted to stall a bus on its nose, and this spot seemed worthy in being a good high starting point that the bus could legit get to, and having a nice target with that ledge. I hoped that with the small speed involved, and drop-off, that the collision would be enough to halt the bus so it wouldn't slide off. It was a fools hope I suspect, as I'm pretty sure it was instead just some quirk of the map objects that made the bus stop there the way it did (especially given the weird nudge that happens as it settles there, plus the wacky attempt that I included in the credits), but it got me the result I wanted so I was happy! (NB: I did confirm that this also works in SAiVC, so it wasn't a VA-specific quirk). After I had done it I was curious if I could add any extra flair to it or something, and thus the silly pizzaboy landing was born.
"BB Fest 2023":
This took some serious time, but once I got the first two I knew I had to keep at it to complete the set (I also landed the chicken heads but figured it'd be a bit much to include them in the vid too). I also knew this would be the real test for me with Replay Manager, whether or not I could actually pull off some decent camerawork to capture them all in one motion, and I was quite happy with the result. The biggest aspect of the SAiVC vs VA differences with respect to this video comes into play here, and it was a frustrating discovery: those last two billboards don't seem to be present in the SAiVC map (at least in the versions I have). Only realising this after who knows much time I spent landing them all (and specifically those two took the longest), and after I'd finally nailed the camerawork and timings for the edit, I just couldn't bring myself to give them up. (Also I gather that their absence in SAiVC is just an oversight, since they exist in SA-proper, in VA, and even their poster/textures exist in SAiVC, just not the boards themselves) So yes to capture these stunts in SAiVC I chose to add a single ipl line for each of them so they'd be present for the footage.
Freeplay and the Camera Roll:
Once again working on an edit for a video led to me coming up with a bunch of new things I wanted/needed Freeplay to do and as such many new additions and changes were made to the mod during this project. I'm working still on polishing all that rushed work and adding more stuff I flagged as ideas, so its not quite ready yet, but perhaps soon I'll make a post in the Freeplay topic listing out the changes thus far and offering to send out potentially-incomplete versions to anyone wanting the features prior to official release. A specific one worth mentioning here is the feature that allowed me to do the camera roll in that credits stunt without revealing the void - yeah its a new feature that essentially does just that... BUT despite my best efforts it only does so with some significant limitations - essentially you need to give up your ability for a gradient in the sky as instead it'll only use the single sky-top colour. I have tried to get a more proper solution that wouldn't have these issues but no luck yet; I've had to settle for at least being able to make it work reasonably okay with clouds (it didn't initially, and still I'd recommend only using the fluffy clouds and having the line clouds disabled - also possible now).
I might post some more of my thoughts like this later but that'll do for now.
Thanks again for watching guys.
I thought I'd write up some misc behind-the-scenes comments/notes on the video:
The Packer Spins:
These were something I'd be wanting to incorporate for quite a while, building on the very basic spin to knock the caddie off the bridge in The Fantabulous 4. The baseball super-spin was done by shooting the front two tires. For the airport one, since I needed to actually drive it, I went with just having it rain (overridden in capture), hence the spin not being as fast. I found with the baseball one that if I had the two vehicles as close as possible without contact then there was a good chance that after a while of spinning they would collide, and that's what happened here (my earlier plan was to stop the spin in just the right way that the packer would move a bit and I'd get the hit that way, but it didn't work as well). I wasn't sure if I'd even use the silly dugout/homerun stuff with the baseball one, but included it in every attempt just in case - once I settled on the songs it became clear that the whole thing would indeed fit well as an opening.
The Hunter-Boat Flings:
The idea seemed simple enough, but I never really had much luck with it to begin with, at best simply flipping a boat over or flinging it a tiny bit. Changing to this specific location really helped - it was still rare that I got a big fling but all of a sudden it seemed possible - so I've wondered whether it's something like a shallow water depth here that assists my leaning forward to quickly bring the tail up, like putting more force into that movement, I'm not sure. The credits one was the furthest distance attempt I had, and I tried to have the camera really show whats going on there with the fling for anyone curious.
Bailing on Camera:
In addition to the many other reasons why Replay Manager is awesome, being able to do a freecam/cinematic-style camera that isn't forced to include a sudden cut/snap as the target changes on get-in/out animations was especially important for this video. The first stunt I worked on here where this was relevant was the boat billboard bike one, where my Freeplay'd mockup camerawork was similar to the final but it had to suffer those awkward camera movements (and my unstable hand for attempting the rotation around the BB). Getting to create a perfectly smooth version of it in Replay Manager was super satisfying.
SAiVC and VA:
For the SA map in the VC engine, I've always done my stunting in VA, mostly just as a force of habit as I had VA first. I do choose to capture footage in SAiVC however, which can bring with it some unexpected surprises (not always good ones). The SF hamburger rotates fine in VA, which I assumed that was normal and I got used to it, so once I got to the final capture in SAiVC where it didn't rotate I just decided to capture the stunt in both maps and composite the hamburger section of VA's footage over the top of the rest (note that I didn't bother to do this in the credits stunt here as it was only briefly in frame). There were a couple other stunts where I did some minor compositing between the two again to try and get the best of both worlds with similar cosmetic stuff. Eg: The donut holes, where I was disappointed to discover denser tree coverage behind the donut in SAiVC, as it distracted from the stunt so I tried to merge it with the VA version I was used to. I didn't go overboard with this concept though as it thankfully wasn't often necessary, and also it was kinda problematic as I hadn't gotten their colouring to match perfectly (a single timecyc file will look different in SAiVC vs VA in regards to the ambient colours setting, not sure why, so I tried to fiddle with the numbers in SAiVC to get them looking the same, but it wasn't perfect).
The Bus Balance:
I wanted to stall a bus on its nose, and this spot seemed worthy in being a good high starting point that the bus could legit get to, and having a nice target with that ledge. I hoped that with the small speed involved, and drop-off, that the collision would be enough to halt the bus so it wouldn't slide off. It was a fools hope I suspect, as I'm pretty sure it was instead just some quirk of the map objects that made the bus stop there the way it did (especially given the weird nudge that happens as it settles there, plus the wacky attempt that I included in the credits), but it got me the result I wanted so I was happy! (NB: I did confirm that this also works in SAiVC, so it wasn't a VA-specific quirk). After I had done it I was curious if I could add any extra flair to it or something, and thus the silly pizzaboy landing was born.
"BB Fest 2023":
This took some serious time, but once I got the first two I knew I had to keep at it to complete the set (I also landed the chicken heads but figured it'd be a bit much to include them in the vid too). I also knew this would be the real test for me with Replay Manager, whether or not I could actually pull off some decent camerawork to capture them all in one motion, and I was quite happy with the result. The biggest aspect of the SAiVC vs VA differences with respect to this video comes into play here, and it was a frustrating discovery: those last two billboards don't seem to be present in the SAiVC map (at least in the versions I have). Only realising this after who knows much time I spent landing them all (and specifically those two took the longest), and after I'd finally nailed the camerawork and timings for the edit, I just couldn't bring myself to give them up. (Also I gather that their absence in SAiVC is just an oversight, since they exist in SA-proper, in VA, and even their poster/textures exist in SAiVC, just not the boards themselves) So yes to capture these stunts in SAiVC I chose to add a single ipl line for each of them so they'd be present for the footage.
Freeplay and the Camera Roll:
Once again working on an edit for a video led to me coming up with a bunch of new things I wanted/needed Freeplay to do and as such many new additions and changes were made to the mod during this project. I'm working still on polishing all that rushed work and adding more stuff I flagged as ideas, so its not quite ready yet, but perhaps soon I'll make a post in the Freeplay topic listing out the changes thus far and offering to send out potentially-incomplete versions to anyone wanting the features prior to official release. A specific one worth mentioning here is the feature that allowed me to do the camera roll in that credits stunt without revealing the void - yeah its a new feature that essentially does just that... BUT despite my best efforts it only does so with some significant limitations - essentially you need to give up your ability for a gradient in the sky as instead it'll only use the single sky-top colour. I have tried to get a more proper solution that wouldn't have these issues but no luck yet; I've had to settle for at least being able to make it work reasonably okay with clouds (it didn't initially, and still I'd recommend only using the fluffy clouds and having the line clouds disabled - also possible now).
I might post some more of my thoughts like this later but that'll do for now.
Thanks again for watching guys.