Rare's cinematic image dump v11.3 (**SPOILERS**)

Have Dracomet code up some sort of system whereby the loading area music still plays for these new cinematics but not the old ones?

I know it's likely too late for this release but maybe include it in a hotfix or next time you can just add it retrospectively?

Music is magic Rare! =) Hm, I guess I'll have to find some soundtracks off my harddrive while watching these=) Looking good btw! *two thumbs up*

Rarebit wrote:

Can't say I like the look of that guy. Either it's a miss or he's actually that ugly.

Love the static effect, though.

Will these new fangled cinematics be using the "vp6" video codec, by chance?  It seems pretty much impossible to convert swfs lacking that to a format that would lend itself to fan added music versions. *Shrug*

Rarebit wrote:

That so reminds me of the MxO-comics of the player, who got himself banned because of a huge scam.

Also, I like the developement of these. Keep it up Rare!

ZippyTheSquirrel wrote:

Rarebit wrote:

Can't say I like the look of that guy. Either it's a miss or he's actually that ugly.

He's probably not as detailed so as not to draw attention to him. Probably a nobody redpill giving a breifing and what he's saying is more important then who he is.

Just my guess anyway.

Nah, it's an Oligarch.

Mystery Man #3: Defense control? These pathetic little E Pluribus Neo ships have been buzzing round our colony for days. Could you please shoot them down now?

Morpheus: Yes sir.

Procurator wrote:

Nah, it's an Oligarch.

Mystery Man #3: Defense control? These pathetic little E Pluribus Neo ships have been buzzing round our colony for days. Could you please shoot them down now?

Morpheus: Yes sir.

EPN already left the area. nice try though. A for effort.

I'm sure you could get mxo players to help with sound and voices.

CPT_Starschwar wrote:

Will these new fangled cinematics be using the "vp6" video codec, by chance?  It seems pretty much impossible to convert swfs lacking that to a format that would lend itself to fan added music versions. *Shrug*

As I said eh I think in the "New Approach" thread somewhere maybe, they'll be using Flash's 8-bit lossless image format, rather than any sort of video codec. The exporter I'm using calls it "Lossless-8" bitmap format, but I don't know if that's the official type name.

GamiSB wrote:

EPN already left the area. nice try though. A for effort.

Bah. When did they leave? They haven't delivered their report yet, have they? And cinematics can easily depict events from weeks ago.

Procurator wrote:

GamiSB wrote:

EPN already left the area. nice try though. A for effort.

Bah. When did they leave? They haven't delivered their report yet, have they? And cinematics can easily depict events from weeks ago.

It was either last week or the week before. No reports been given since they're still heading back to Old Zion. I also have good news and bad news for Machinist. Popper's ship was damaged and he was injured but he's still alive and it wasn't anything serious.

cloudwolf wrote:

Have Dracomet code up some sort of system whereby the loading area music still plays for these new cinematics but not the old ones?

I know it's likely too late for this release but maybe include it in a hotfix or next time you can just add it retrospectively?

That's what that "hm" of mine meant. Still don't know if it's doable though.

GamiSB wrote:

It was either last week or the week before. No reports been given since they're still heading back to Old Zion. I also have good news and bad news for Machinist. Popper's ship was damaged and he was injured but he's still alive and it wasn't anything serious.

I am of course extremely satisfied to hear he was hurt, but the fact that the entire fleet wasn't obliterated doesn't make much sense.  Hopefully it'll turn out that the Oligarchs weren't too bothered by them or there's a revelation like they invited EPN to pop in for tea or something, maybe have a chinwag with ol' Morpheus.

Rare's artwork in a cinematic.... I am drooling already. 

Really looking forward to it!

SigmaTheta

Threw together pieces from a couple different backgrounds. Almost makes you want to sit down and jack in, hm? (I'd pick the more detailed chair on the left, though. Never know about those other two; they only appear in one shot after all.)

ZippyTheSquirrel wrote:

Rarebit wrote:

Can't say I like the look of that guy. Either it's a miss or he's actually that ugly.

Love the static effect, though.

nice static you got goin on this here slide er whatever

zippy, is that squirrel drinking Duncan Hills or Starbucks coffee?

I seem to remember Cinematics looking something like this before.  For some reason im thinking round about when anome went nuts. 

Hard to remember.. was ages ago.

In any case... looking cool

Lezel wrote:

zippy, is that squirrel drinking Duncan Hills or Starbucks coffee?

It's beer. Guinness, I believe.

Rarebit wrote:

cloudwolf wrote:

Have Dracomet code up some sort of system whereby the loading area music still plays for these new cinematics but not the old ones?

I know it's likely too late for this release but maybe include it in a hotfix or next time you can just add it retrospectively?

That's what that "hm" of mine meant. Still don't know if it's doable though.

*prays it's doable* MUSIC IS MAGIC!! Heh, okay no more of those outbursts, promise.

Looks really neat. ALot better than just the scribbles hehehe. I cant wait to see the new cine!

My beloved Photoshop 4 can do lots of stuff, but saving png files with automatic transparency is not one of them. Had to resort to Photoshop CS to export this element properly. Should show up with the background transparent in Firefox and IE, eh...well not 6, but 8 seems okay with it.

Ooh... who's that? New character or someone we know? Nice pic!!

I like your style Rarebit wantz moar nao plz

Looks like Fenshire without the glasses.

Rarebit wrote:

"Hey Cabloclo, look what I found!" 

Neoteny wrote:

Looks like Fenshire without the glasses.

Looks like Arch if you ask me... >.>

<.<

Transparent PNGs started working in Internet Explorer as of version 7. Well, it could work in IE6, but you had to use some Javascript to set filters and stuff, so in a situation like this (i.e. a forum where you can't add Javascript elements as a mere poster) you can't get transparent PNGs to work in IE6.

Just in case you were wondering.

That's why my signature and avatar serves up a nasty transparent GIF instead of a fancy PNG for users of IE6 and below.

Thought it might be useful to talk through the conversion process for getting the drawings
into the final cinematic--at least, this is the process that's worked so far in test runs. ;)

PSD, large
I draw most of the artwork--just about everything except for large elements that don't fit
in a frame, and will be displayed as scrolling pieces--at double size, saved as separate
layers in one of multiple PSD files (turns out Photoshop 4 limits you to 100 layers per PSD,
so I'm going through more files than I thought I would ;). The resolution is pretty big, and
looks like this:

Usually the layers in the PSDs aren't complete files, just parts that will be combined
together later in the animation program. This image, for instance, is a combination of 8
layers, which are, from top to bottom:

1) the black bar for subtitles at the bottom
2) the eyelashes
3) the left highlight over the pupil
4) the right highlight over the pupil, (others on the right side of the eye that aren't visible
here, but are used in another shot with this eye)
5) the lower eyelid
6) the pupil
7) the white area just left of the pupil (blocking off a black area used in the aforementioned
other shot)
8) the rest of the face and white background

PSD, small
Except for large scrolling pieces, which are kept saved off in a separate file, once all the art
for a scene or half-scene contained in a PSD file is complete, it gets shrunk down by 50%
along both dimensions. Here's that same 8-layer compilation shrunk down to final cinematic
size:

Captions and subtitles will be added to the smaller PSD. These are only added once we're
at the small size so that the edges of the letters (which are added as unaliased bitmaps)
don't get blurred by the shrinking that happened earlier.

The lettered PSD will be loaded up in the animation program, the large scrolling frames that
I didn't want to shrink will be loaded in with them, and the various layer pieces moved
around, toggled on/off, and so forth, to assemble the frames of the animation. (Oh, and the
animation program has its own, project, format, which the art will reside in for a while as
I'm working out the animation.)

PNG files
Once the animation work is done and all the frames for that sequence are rendering
properly, the frames are all spit out as lossless PNG files. This is really just because I'm
importing them into a different program, which isn't as nice for animating, but has better
export functions for the final cinematic. ;)

GIF files
Each of the frames is converted from its 256-color grayscale lossless PNG format into a GIF
file with a perceptually calculated individual 8-color palette, like so:

For the most part these 8-color frames are pretty much indistinguishable from the 256-color
versions, but they make for much smaller files, which will be important for the cinematic's
download size.

SWF file
The GIF frames are all loaded at once, arranged in their final order. This sequence of 900+
frame images is converted into a single tidy lossless 8-bit SWF file (which actually stores
the frames as PNGs again, only now they each have only 8 colors, so they require much less
file space) which is what you'll see in the cinematic viewer when the update goes Live--we
hope. There is no lossy video codec used, so each frame that hovers in front of your eyes
for 1/10th of a second in the final version will look just as sharp as the one you see above.

great work Rare, but Photoshop 4? oldschool?

/update

MatrixRefugee wrote:

Ooh... who's that? New character or someone we know? Nice pic!!

Naturally, it's me.  Rarebit lost a bet with me, and now he has to make me into a storyline character.

Fen wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

Ooh... who's that? New character or someone we know? Nice pic!!

Naturally, it's me.  Rarebit lost a bet with me, and now he has to make me into a storyline character.

You gotta love his modesty.

+1 expectation.

Happy Halloween, everyone. ;D

./impressed

Some good stuff. So is your first animation progressing on schedule, it's due a week on Thursday right?

Vinia wrote:

Some good stuff. So is your first animation progressing on schedule, it's due a week on Thursday right?

According to the Producer's letter, it's due this thursday, November 6. Of course, there's a lot of new stuff going into this one, so I'd rather them take their time and delay it if need be and get it right the first time.

Ah, I lost track of what week we're on. I remember Rarebit said Walrus granted him an extra week to bring 11.3 I just didn't realise we're already in that extra week.

Building a 2D simulation of Wright's code sphere effect that can "spawn" from her and fade out as the "particles" are left behind:

Woah, thats neat! Really cant wait for the new cinematic! keep it up! ^^

Rarebit wrote:

Agent Gray rockin' the piano?

Receding in perspective, in 2D. Actually had a use a calculator to get the scaling progression. >_<

EDIT: Although these layers are layered in reverse order here, and seen before I moved them to their final x/y positions--which I did by "eyeball" rather than try to calculate the...eh...factorial equation or whatever it would have been for their positions. x_x

Playing around with individually drawn (rather than cloned sets of) particles:

OH MAN A CALCULATOR?!?!

Don't hurt yourself busy little bee.

Question for you - if you felt like stopping the support to epn and cypherite orgs because of an inability to do them justice why in the world are you attempting cinematics.

Side note - your drawings albeit stylish and good are effectively if continued at this rate going to burn you out and more then likely as is noteable now become your main focus, a minute and a half of sketches doesn't exactly account for a solid event let alone several of them - that being said those are also things we've not had in ages. So do what you will, i'm just looking forward to:

A new approach version 2.0.

~Darminian

Although you're having to work out some methods now, as with everything, it should become easier in the future. I think most of us realise that the even if the first one or two may not be as good as you'd like them to be, they'll get done quicker and better over time. Mind you, these frames are already looking very nice! Looking forward to the end result Rare.

Hm, Niobe's up next. Not really familiar with drawing her. Threw some reference shots together for myself:

And then took a stab:

Distract them with lighting effects!

I guess drawing her as she appears in the movies still counts as 'use of her likeness'?