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Funny how things happen.
Khalids Surprise was a machinima movie that made me sit up and take notes, well produced, well edited and a crystal clear render. This move among others gave Canuck and I the seed of an idea that a website promoting and encouraging the fairly new art of Machinima, especialy showcasing those coming from FPS engine which by and large were being ignored by other machinima sites.
When Canuck got the site going Khalids Surprise was one of the first (and best) machinima's we highlighted. Even today it stands up well against what's being produced. With the site up and running I took on the task of contacting as many of the movie producers as possible and bringing them to site site.
John-Paul who produced Khalids, was first on my list, his e-mail was on the vid so I sent him his invite to join us, although the mail was never returned, (user not found) nor was it answered, it most likely got stuck in some internet highway one-way street. I waited a few weeks then tried again and again .. in fact several more times. Still no reply was obtained, last time I mailed his was to inform him that we at Gamerztheatre had put forward his movie to the OMFF awards last year. Even that could not pull him out the woodwork as there was still no reply from J-P.
So, fast forward to just a few days ago, when I received a
request from my friend Michelle to view the Facebook page for this
years OMFF
awards. Up until now I had resisted signing up to Facebook,
however to view that or any page you HAVE to become a member. On
signing up I was surprised at the start that 3 people had requested me
as friends already, I guess from their mailing lists, I followed all
the filling in the details, but when it came to add friends from my
mailing list I cancelled that as I didn't want my friends bombarded
with these requests.
So now I am signed up and 24 hours pass, I log into my e-mail to find a
ton of message from Facebook, I thought .. here we go .. the very
reason I resisted in the first place. Two messages however stuck out,
as they were from someone by the name of John-Paul, who by the time I
may add, I had long forgotten, after all the bugger never did reply to
my many mails. His first message says I requested him as a friend, when
I strangely did not, reaching for the delete I read his second message
in which he uses my old clan nic <TFO>Gas, so I read on. He
mentions his interest in machinima, I then accept his invite to become
friends, and lo and behold he answers there and then.
We then through a few text messages back and forth established who we
were and to my utter amazement I find that John-Paul was in fact the
J-P I had mailed so many times before.
John-Paul is firmly established now as a friend and lover of machinima,
I also have him signed up here and at Gamerztheatre, look for Wax1Wax0 and make him a friend.
So now it comes to the real purpose of this blog, how did John-Paul do the chopper trick where it lists up out the water?
If you watched the vid you would have seen this happen.
The chopper raises it’s self up out from the water then
proceeds to fly, something to this day had puzzled me.
John-Paul was very happy to fill in these blank details for me.
So .. how did he get the helicopter in the water? A lot of people have
wanted to know how it was done and, in fact, it was very easy.
You know how when a round ends in Battlefield 2, sometimes see vehicles
doing wacky things? You might, for example, see a jet bounce off the
ground or a helicopter rebound off a wall ....
Well, when you record a bf2demo file using the BattleRecorder, it's
possible to achieve the same thing. All you need to do is continue the
demo playback beyond the natural end point of the demo file. If you do,
the action in the final frame of the demo will be continued /
extrapolated upon by the engine.
When J-P noticed that that was the case, all he had to do was hop in
the Cobra, fly over to the right place on the map (just near the
jetty), and begin recording the bf2demo file. He then gently hovered
down to the surface of the water and [i]just[/i] when I was about to
touch the surface, he would stopp the recording.
This meant, during playback, the bf2demo ended with the helicopter on a
'descent' trajectory. At the end of the demo playback, instead of
restarting, all I had to do was push '2' and the demo "kept going"
When it’s done that way, the usual vehicle damage doesn't apply, just
like at the end of a round, and so, in a very fluid way, the Cobra
slowly descended all the way into the water. Instead of blowing up when
it touches the surface.
Of course, it was then a simple matter of filming the desired shots and
using editing software to [i]reverse[/i] the footage, so that instead
of the Cobra gradually sinking into the water, it rose up to reveal
itself in full.
Simple, really! :)
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