Steps towards a Promo Video

Anything related to PR, release planning and any other non-technical idea how to move the project forward should be discussed here.
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raevol
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Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by raevol »

I've been thinking about what should be in place to make a real, top-notch promo video for OpenMW. You guys have done a ton of amazing work, and it'd be awesome to really showcase the progress of OpenMW in a quality video. My vision for this would require implementing just a few more visual things:

- NPC Clothing
- NPC Idle animations (see the recent post from pvdk)
- Reasonable player height (my last test with collision turned on still had me at a centimeter tall or so)
- Terrain and terrain collision
- Water
- Sky

Most of these things are partially/mostly implemented. We'd just need to roll them into a non-release release for the videographer. With these significant visual elements in place, it'd be possible to make a really awesome, seamless promo video for the project.

Any thoughts on this? Just something I've been mulling over.
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Zini
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by Zini »

NPC Clothing
Tricky. Can be hacked in, but we don't have the backend yet to support it properly. I am trying to get OpenMW to a state where this is possible for quite a while, but I keep getting sidetracked by other tasks.

I still think this will happen in 0.14.0.
NPC Idle animations (see the recent post from pvdk)
Could be hacked in, but unless we want to throw away the code afterwards, we need a proper framework for AI packages first. Maybe in 0.15.0 or 0.16.0.
Reasonable player height (my last test with collision turned on still had me at a centimeter tall or so)
Again, could be hacked in, but the code would have to be thrown away afterwards. We need to rewrite the whole player controls from scratch.
Terrain
Merging it in (using a special promo video branch) would not be a problem.
terrain collision
Collision handling does not work very well yet. I don't think there is a way to get it working good enough on short notice. The person making the video would have to carefully steer around problematic locations (of these there are probably many, since most terrain is less even than interior structures).
Water
Needs a bit of cleanup and some additions, but will be available in 0.13.0.
Sky
Already in 0.13.0.


Overall I don't like the idea of hacking in throw-away code for the sake of promotion.
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raevol
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by raevol »

Zini wrote:Overall I don't like the idea of hacking in throw-away code for the sake of promotion.
Makes sense, and I agree. It's pretty much wasted effort.

I'll bide my time then, it looks like 0.14 may be "close enough" to make this some kind of reality. But these are just my thoughts if anyone wants to jump on the prerequisite tasks for doing real implementations for these things. :) Of course following a proper development path takes precedence, but maybe there's a little room for bias. ;)
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sirherrbatka
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by sirherrbatka »

Hedghewars makes very cool trailers for every new version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Y_Pw_TtFo
Yacoby
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by Yacoby »

I think it will become easier to make trailers when the game progresses further. When we have magic and combat we should be able to do some well rounded trailers as we will be able to have bits of action and start fitting the video to the music.
Last edited by Yacoby on 18 Mar 2012, 16:00, edited 1 time in total.
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WeirdSexy
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by WeirdSexy »

I can add explosions to the next video in After Effects if you want.
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sirherrbatka
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by sirherrbatka »

not yet
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raevol
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by raevol »

Yacoby wrote:I think it will become easier to make trailers when the game progresses further. When we have magic and combat we should be able to do some well rounded trailers as we will be able to have bits of action and start fitting the video to the music.
I think magic/combat will make a more action-packed trailer, but waiting for these things will also delay the created of the trailer for quite a bit. I wanted to get a trailer out asap to use to attract even more dev support, and community interest.

My idea for this first promo was to show a "seamless" OpenMW. So not everything needs to be working, but there needs to be no gaping visual holes in the world.

And we can always do more trailers later when we have more flash and bang to put in them. :)
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ElderTroll
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by ElderTroll »

I agree with Raevol. It will be very impressive if we can do flybys of terrain, water, buildings and then cut to interiors, animated and fully clothed npcs, then through menu systems. We could have a some text, "Return Nerevarine... Return to Morrowind."

At which version do you think we can call openmw in alpha stage of development?
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raevol
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Re: Steps towards a Promo Video

Post by raevol »

ElderTroll wrote:At which version do you think we can call openmw in alpha stage of development?
If you're using the term the way the game industry does, we are in alpha now. The open source community tends to use it however they want though.
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