TF2 - Meet the Videos

[JediPhreaK]

Greetings,

I was just wondering about the various "Meet the" videos of the character classes in TF2, the videos are so smooth that I was curious how Valve recorded them. In professional movie studios etc including places like ILM they give the computer all the time it wants to compile a scene so it could be max everything, I was wondering if Valve did something similar or what. Does anyone know?

 

[soulslicer]

They do it in their motion capture studio I guess, and well, use their own built in source recorder to record the vids I presume..

thread must be moved.

 

[Mc Bane]

They do it in their motion capture studio I guess, and well, use their own built in source recorder to record the vids I presume..

thread must be moved.

Farking rofl. You think in-game gameplay footage is recorded with motion capture? You have no idea what you're talking about (or what the OP is asking), do you. You have chosen two random techniques for putting something onto a computer screen, and assumed they're the same thing. Now that it has been brought to your attention, please explain exactly how you thought that someone would use motion capture to record the images being displayed on a stationary screen. I'd love to hear this.

OP - usually people use things like fraps, but as you said sometimes that hits the framerate. Sometimes the engine has a built-in recorder that makes a small file of what happened, and you type in the record command, play for a bit, then you can go back and let the PC take all the time it needs to render the footage to an avi file in whatever quality you want. Another trick is to hook the video output to another PC, and simply record it that way. I'd suspect that they did it in a simliar way to how most CGI movies are made these days - no-one "played" the game, it was all scripted etc, and rendered frame by frame to a digital video file.

 

[soulslicer]

looks like I have no idea what he was talking about, I thought he was asking how they actually made those "meet the" videos.

 

[Mc Bane]

looks like I have no idea what he was talking about, I thought he was asking how they actually made those "meet the" videos.

He was - specifically how they render the action without getting a stuttering framerate, and maintaining graphical quality, even possibly how they get the camera angles etc. YOU however were talking about how they get the realistic animations/movements of the video game characters and build them into the models. Like I said, you don't know what you're talking about, and have confused two completely different tasks and techniques. Stop now, before more slow people are swallowed by your web of using terms they don't actually know much about.

 

[Lucid]

He was - specifically how they render the action without getting a stuttering framerate, and maintaining graphical quality, even possibly how they get the camera angles etc. YOU however were talking about how they get the realistic animations/movements of the video game characters and build them into the models. Like I said, you don't know what you're talking about, and have confused two completely different tasks and techniques. Stop now, before more slow people are swallowed by your web of using terms they don't actually know much about.

Wow, lay off the guy...he was merely just trying to comprehend what the OP was asking.
No need to penalize the hell out of him for getting it mixed up.

 

[SgtSpamBoy]

Yeah, really. A bit harsh McBane, no need to be so mean. The OP was a bit vague anyway.

As for how to make a smooth Machinima movie, the people at LitFuse have a nice FAQ:
http://forums.litfusefilms.com/showthread.php?t=1455

 

[Omnomnick]

Valve use a new section of the SDK (in faceposer) which allows them to create an entire scene which looks awesome. It is slightly different from the traditional face poser as it uses real developer styled movements, not just limited to what is in the game.

They will be releasing it sometime soon. Possibly after the last Meet the Someone.

 

[Iron_cube]

Not mentionning how they're using different playermodels than the ones ingame

 

[Para]

Not mentionning how they're using different playermodels than the ones ingame

By replacing models with high resolution ones, how else? Mind you they're the people who created all those naggers in the first place.

 

[Iron_cube]

I did not mean my post to sound like a rant.

Can barely play the game and wouldn't like getting even worse FPS to a point of non-existence.

 

[JediPhreaK]

I might try emailing someone in valve to get some answers.

 

[el Chi]

Farking rofl. You think in-game gameplay footage is recorded with motion capture? You have no idea what you're talking about (or what the OP is asking), do you. You have chosen two random techniques for putting something onto a computer screen, and assumed they're the same thing. Now that it has been brought to your attention, please explain exactly how you thought that someone would use motion capture to record the images being displayed on a stationary screen. I'd love to hear this.

OP - usually people use things like fraps, but as you said sometimes that hits the framerate. Sometimes the engine has a built-in recorder that makes a small file of what happened, and you type in the record command, play for a bit, then you can go back and let the PC take all the time it needs to render the footage to an avi file in whatever quality you want. Another trick is to hook the video output to another PC, and simply record it that way. I'd suspect that they did it in a simliar way to how most CGI movies are made these days - no-one "played" the game, it was all scripted etc, and rendered frame by frame to a digital video file.

What in the f*ck is wrong with you? He said something which was incorrect. Big deal.
Don't get up on your high horse and start condescending him just because you know more than he does about something.
You weren't born with the knowledge - you had to find it out too, so don't have a go at him for not knowing at this point. You're acting like a vindictive f*cking child and should be very ashamed of yourself.

It's also glaringly obvious that you're one of those people who uses the anonymity and safety of the internet to speak like this to other people.
People like you make my blood boil.

 

[huntingbear]

Farking rofl. You think in-game gameplay footage is recorded with motion capture? You have no idea what you're talking about (or what the OP is asking), do you. You have chosen two random techniques for putting something onto a computer screen, and assumed they're the same thing. Now that it has been brought to your attention, please explain exactly how you thought that someone would use motion capture to record the images being displayed on a stationary screen. I'd love to hear this.

OP - usually people use things like fraps, but as you said sometimes that hits the framerate. Sometimes the engine has a built-in recorder that makes a small file of what happened, and you type in the record command, play for a bit, then you can go back and let the PC take all the time it needs to render the footage to an avi file in whatever quality you want. Another trick is to hook the video output to another PC, and simply record it that way. I'd suspect that they did it in a simliar way to how most CGI movies are made these days - no-one "played" the game, it was all scripted etc, and rendered frame by frame to a digital video file.

anger managment.....your response was WAAY too harsh
you owe him an apology

 

[McGooTheWise]

He was - specifically how they render the action without getting a stuttering framerate, and maintaining graphical quality, even possibly how they get the camera angles etc. YOU however were talking about how they get the realistic animations/movements of the video game characters and build them into the models. Like I said, you don't know what you're talking about, and have confused two completely different tasks and techniques. Stop now, before more slow people are swallowed by your web of using terms they don't actually know much about.

Steroids: This is what they do to people! (Don't do drugs, kids.)

Seriously, no need to get so riled up when he hardly did anything. Take a break from the computer and darkness, go outside, do some sit-ups, get a guitar, do something... Don't waste time on something so useless.

 

[el Chi]

Sterling advice, Van_Halen.
But you know what that means...

"You know you've failed when..." #273
You know you've failed when you need life-coaching from the members of an internet gaming forum.

Bear that in mind, McBane. Bear that in mind.

 

[CyberPitz]

Mc Bane ruined this thread. I was actually wanting to know what they did.

Can't you record videos using the source engine with jpgs and such, and then compile them into a video...then do what you need?

Though, I'm sure they have their own custom way of doing it.

 

[Sam]

I think I remember something about the models being the same as the ingame ones with higher poly hands or something.

 

[Para]

Can't you record videos using the source engine with jpgs and such, and then compile them into a video...then do what you need?

Yes. If you render something at, say, 2500FPS with full settings (mind you, when doing this you don't have to render the thing a real time, it's just playbacking a demo step by step) and merge the frames you get one damn smooth video.

 

[Plug]

Mcbane you are a complete f()ckwit. You are ruining the internet.

I think the funniest thing here is that soulslicer only misinterpreted the question (which is easy to do), whereas Mcbane misinterpreted his answer AND THEN FLAMED HIM FOR IT.

I'm sure soulslicer knows what motion capture is - and was referring to the model animation and not the fps of the render that the OP asked about.

Get a life.


And yeah back to the topic - the models look higher poly, and a little smoother and less plastic looking. So perhaps they use higher quality shaders and textures too.

Did anybody else notice the great sounding reverb on the characters voices and movements? It's most noticable in the meet the scout and heavy movies.

The post production quality is very high!

Can't wait for medic and pyro

 

[SgtSpamBoy]

Yes. If you render something at, say, 2500FPS with full settings (mind you, when doing this you don't have to render the thing a real time, it's just playbacking a demo step by step) and merge the frames you get one damn smooth video.

I'm not sure if you were exaggerating or not, but 2500 FPS seems like it is way overkill - for 60 secs that would be 150,000 frames! Traditionally animation is done at 24 or 30 FPS.

(If recording w/ Fraps works completely different, then excuse my ignorance, I have not used it).

 

[Plug]

It sounds like overkill - but I would be willing to bet using more frames than necessary is common practice. So when the final processing down to 30/24fps happens each frame is perfectly accurate as it was sampled from the higher fps source.

At least this is what happens in audio (samerate/bitdepth) so i'm assuming it would be the something similar for video...

 

[kineaesth]

I thought the eye couldn't tell the difference above 30 frames? Correct me if I'm wrong...

 

[Plug]

It can't tell the difference above 60fps, i'm not sure why cinema/tv chose the frame rates they did. Perhaps someone could clarify?

 

[kineaesth]

Yeah, there's some number. Can't remember completely.

 

[Para]

2500FPS means 100 subsamples for every pixel at 25FPS. That means if for example motion blur isn't implemented by the game itself in some way all the movement that moves faster than 100 pixels/second looks banded. With TF2 thankfully we do have post-processed motion blur in the game itself so I wouldn't render at more than 100...200FPS if I were making a movie.

Also eye can't see any faster than around 30 fps (depends on the individual, varies from 24 to 32 or so) but eye updates partially what it sees based on interesting things like sudden brightness changes (think things like flashes) which can make the "update" of eye to be less than 6 milliseconds (that's around 170FPS). Eyes also are the biggest post-processing monsters ever, the resolution of eye is something laughably small but thanks to our brain it gets processed to what we see.

 

[SgtSpamBoy]

It can't tell the difference above 60fps, i'm not sure why cinema/tv chose the frame rates they did. Perhaps someone could clarify?

When TV was introduced, due to technical limitations, they based the framerate off of the AC frequency - 60Hz in the US, 50Hz in Europe. The electron gun in the TV sweeps the screen 50/60 times per second, but it alternates between the "even" and "odd" lines of the image (creating interlacing fields). This makes a full frame displayed half of the time (even field + odd field = full frame), making 30* FPS in the US (NTSC) and 25 FPS in Europe (PAL).


*which is actually 29.97 FPS


Films are 24 FPS because when they added sound to cinema, 24 FPS was the slowest speed (and thus cheapest) that provided sufficient sound quality.