Dragon Age Toolset Wiki - User contributions [en]

VFX Tutorial

2012-05-22T02:21:19Z

Lord Methrid: Typo

{{Infobox vfx}}

PDF Version Part 1 [[File:VFX_Tut_p1.pdf]]

PDF Version Part 2 [[File:VFX_Tut_p2.pdf]]

PDF Version Part 3 [[File:VFX_Tut_p3.pdf]]

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== VFX Tutorial Part 1 ==

This tutorial is to get you started in creating your own visual effects to be used in the DA toolset. Tutorial #1 will cover the basics of creating, editing, and implementing the visual effect.

=== Creating a new visual effect ===

To create a new VFX, right click on the palette window and select “NEW > VFX”

[[File:new VFX.jpg|250px]]

The VFX Editor will open up showing a square grid and a “Select VFX” window in the middle. For this tutorial we will be doing a Placeable effect, so select “Placeable” and click “OK”.

On the top left, you should see a little globe called “VFXRoot” and in the Object Inspector you should see the properties of VFXRoot.
At this point, save your work by selecting “File > Save As” or clicking the Save Icon in the upper left. You will be prompted for a file name. I like to keep all of my VFX files in one place so in My Documents/Bioware/Dragon Age folder I created a VFX folder to save my files.

For this tutorial we will be creating a bonfire type of effect and to stay with Dragon Age [[Naming conventions]], we will use a 3 letter prefix, underscore, and then the file name. Name the file “fxp_bonfire_jp”
The “fxp” is for “Visual Effect Placeable” (all VFX files start with fx*) “bonfire” tells me what the effect is, and the “jp” on the end lets me know that it is my effect and not someone else’s, you can add whatever suffix you want. Click “Save” when done.

You can close the toolset at any time and return to this tutorial. You can open your effect again later by selecting “File > Open” and navigate to and select the file you just saved.

=== VFX root properties ===

[[File:t1_root_obj_inspector.jpg|250px]]

'''VFXRoot Properties:'''
I’ll just cover the ones that we will be using.

'''Name:''' This is the resource name and is what will be used when we Post to Local. Change it to match the file name.

'''Impact Length:''' Time in seconds for the stating phase of the effect. Example, a Runner starting off from the start line reaching max speed.

'''Duration Length:''' Time in seconds for the duration of the effect. Example, the time it takes the runner to reach the finish line after reaching max speed.

'''Cessation Length:''' Time in seconds for the ending of the effect. Example, the runner slowing down after crossing the finish line.

We are making a bonfire effect, so we want the fire to start off small, grow in size, then burn itself out. So set the Impact Length to 3 seconds, this will start the fire and grown to its max size. Set the Duration Length to 3 seconds. This will allow us plenty of time to vary the coloration of the flames. Set the Cessation time to 3 seconds as well, as the fire burns out.

You may be thinking that 9 seconds is a very short fire. When the effect is set in a script, the duration time is set within the function ApplyEffect*. This duration time causes the duration time of the animation to loop over and over. So for example, if this bon fire effect is applied to an object for 6 min, the duration part of the effect will loop 120 times, 3 second duration * 120 loops = 360 seconds = 6 minutes. Then the Cessation time plays and the effect is done.

After setting these times, you should now see a time line something like this, More on this in part 2.

[[File:T1_time_line.jpg|640px]]

=== Adding an emitter ===

Next we need an emitter. Right click on the window and select “Insert > Insert Emitter”. You should get a pulsating white capsule in the center of the grid and a “NewEmitter” object added to the list on the left.

[[File:T1_emitter.jpg|640px]]

Select the NewEmitter object and you will see the properties in the Object inspector window.

[[File:T1_op_properties.jpg|250px]]

'''Properties Window:'''

'''Name:''' Change the name of the emitter to “Base” this will be the main base of the fire. Naming the emitter will help sort them out when building an effect with several emitters.

'''Material Library:''' This is the library that we will be selecting our particle material from. The DA Effect Libraries start with the prefix fx_*Click on the Material Library box to open the resource window. Select the fx_firelibrary and click OK.

'''Material Object:''' This is the martial that we will use from the above selected Library. For this select “FireFlipbook”.
Before we continue, save your work and let’s talk about Flipbooks.

A flipbook is a particle that consists of columns and rows of varying images. The animation is created by the effect rapidly flipping through each image, much like a cartoon animation. At this point you should see 4 columns of flickering flames. Note that not all particles are in flipbook form, some are a static image. A simple way to see if the particle is a flipbook, and to see how many columns and rows there are is to set the Birth Rate to 1. Click on the “Emission” tab in the Object Properties and change the top parameter “Birth Rate” to 1. You should now see an image that consists of 4 rows and 4 columns of small flame images. This is a single particle, 4x4 flipbook. Set the Birth Rate back to 10, and return to the “Properties” tab of the Object Inspector, more on Birth Rate later.

[[File:T1_flip.jpg]]

'''Flipbook Type:''' Select “ContactSheet”.

'''Flipbook Random Start Frame:''' This selects a random frame within the flipbook to start with on each emission. Set this to TRUE. This will help give us diversity and make the flame look more “real”.

'''Flipbook Rows:''' This is how many Rows there are in the flipbook, set this number to 4.

'''Flipbook Columns:''' This is the number of Columns in the flipbook, set this to 4 also.

'''Flipbook Frames per Second:''' The particle image has 4 rows and 4 colunms, there are 16 total images to flip through. This value should be a factor of Rows and Columns, so 4 x 4 = 16. Set this value to at least 16 flips per second.

You should now see a single column of what nearly looks like fire.
Right now the flames flicker a bit too slow for me, so set the Flipbook Frames per Second to 32. This makes the flames flicker twice as fast because it is now flipping through all 16 images twice per second instead of once.
Save your work.

[[File:T1_fire.jpg]]

'''Age Map:'''

[[File:T1_agemap.jpg]]

In the Object Inspector click the “Age Map” Tab.

Here we can manipulate the color and the scale of the effect.

Color values are in percentage of 0 to 100% on a scale of 0 to 1, so 50% Blue would be 0.5.

Most normal fires aren’t white, so set Color B (blue) to 0. Your flame should now be yellow. Set Color G (green) to 0.4. We now have a orangey-red color.

Color A (alph) is the flames color intensity setting this to 0.5, the fire is half as intense. Set it where you like.

The scale X and Y values can be any number from 0 to infinity. Setting the scale to 1 is the particles normal size. Because the particle image is a 2d image, there is no Z scale. Changing Scale X will affect the X (width) direction of the flame and Scale Y will affect the Y (Height) direction of the particle. For now we will leave them alone.

The corresponding multipliers simply multiply the values in the general section. For example, if you set Color G back to 1, then set Green Color Multiplier to 0.4 you will have the same result. 1 * 0.4 = 0.4

There is a notable difference between the 2 however, the General settings affect the particles over the lifetime of each particle while the Multipliers affect all the particles over the length of the animation. This will be explored further in Part 2. Go ahead and play with the color settings until you have it the way you want it, and then save your work.

'''Emissions'''

[[File:T1_emissions.jpg]]

Now click on the “Emission” tab these settings control the particle emissions.

'''Birth Rate:''' This is how many particle emit per second. The default is 10, which works out for the fire pretty good. However the flicker is pretty static. So we will change that in a minute.

'''Birth Rate +/-:''' This setting will cause the particle Birth Rate to randomly vary by a positive number or a negative number. If we set this value to 1, the Birth Rate then will vary between 9 and 11 particles per second. Since a 10 Birth Rate seems to be a good number for the most particles per second, set the +/- value to 2, and change the Birth Rate to 8. This will make the max 10 and the min 6 particles per second.

'''Initial Speed:''' This is how fast the particles travel when emitted from the emitter. Changing this value appears to change how long the particles last. However this is not the case, they simple move further before the particle life has expired.

'''Initial Speed +/-:''' This setting works the same as the Birth Rate +/- setting but instead affects the Initial Speed. Set this value to 0.5 which will now give the particles a varying speed between 0.5 and 1.5.

'''Life Expectancy (s):''' This is how long each particle last, in seconds, before vanishing.

'''Life Expectancy +/-''': Again is a random variance to the value set in Life Expectancy. Set this value to 0.5, making the particle last longer and shorter as the fire burns.

'''Scale Range:''' This adds a random variance to the size of the particle much like the other +/- settings. Set this to 0. 6. You should now see the flame vary in size as it emits from the base emitter.

Play with these settings a bit to get familiar with them. In the end you should have a raging fire animation. When you are happy, save your work.

[[File:T1_fire_1.jpg]]

'''Getting the effect in game:''' Right click on the Root and select “Post to Local”. You'll find the new VFX under the model palette. It can be placed directly in the level editor or the cutscene editor but not the area editor. You can also add the effect dynamically to an area using a script.

'''Notes:''' Because an effect is Art work, at present will not be included with a Builder to Builder Create and must be sent separately. Scripting examples to come later once there is a client to test for accuracy.

[[File:T1_ptl.jpg]]

So now you have a raging fire. In part 2 of this tutorial, we will make this fire dance and sing. Part 2 will introduce using the time line settings to vary coloration, scale, size and other more advanced settings as well as explore some of the settings introduced here a bit deeper. Keep the bonfire effect you created with this tutorial, we will need it in the second part. The bonfire effect can also be downloaded from the social site.

== VFX Tutorial Part 2 ==

In tutorial #1 we created a good bonfire as a base and up until now we only changed the values directly in the properties on the effect. As we can see this works well for simple effects. Changing the values in this manner alters the effect over its entire life time.
We have seen how to change the color and scale of the effect by changing the values in the properties age map. This is great for a basic flame but we want to add more life to it by making the flame vary in color and size over the length of the effect. To start, set all the Values back to default as shown in the 2 pictures below.
Note: This tutorial assumes you have read Tutorial #1 or are familiar with the basics of the VFX editor.

[[File:T2_agemap_01.jpg]][[File:T2_emission_01.jpg]]

Setting any of these values directly will affect the visual over the entire length of the effect. Instead we want to vary these values so the flame will change from reds, yellows, and orange. We also want to change its size during the impact, duration, and cessation phases of the effect. To do this, we will use the time line to set colors and scale so they change over the course of the effect.

Before we continue, we need to make a small change. Select the Root of the effect and in the Object Inspector, change the Impact time to 5 sec and the Cessation time to 8 sec. The 5 sec impact will allow us enough time to see the changes in the flame as it grows and the longer cessation time is for the smoke we will be adding later on.

[[File:T2_root_01.png]]

Select the “Base” object, at the top right corner there is a drop down window, select “Color” from the list. Note, when using the time lines, make sure you have the correct emitter object selected. In this case it is the Base emitter. You should then see a time line like the one below.

[[File:T2_color_01.jpg|680px]]

Notice at the top of the time line it reads “Particle Lifetime”. This means that the changes we make here will affect each partial over the lifetime of each particle. The lifetime of the particle is directly related to the “Lifetime” value setting in the Emissions Tab, which currently is set to 1 sec.

=== Parts of the Time line ===

[[File:T2_timeparts_01.jpg|680px]]

'''Control Point:''' The round dots allow you move the value up, down, left, or right within the time line.

'''Value Rang:''' The left side of the time line shows the value range. At this current control point, the value is 1, which is the current value for all 4 colors in the Age map.

'''Current Value:''' The dotted line shows the current value any place on the time line. Currently it is set to 1 over the entire length of the particle lifetime. When a control point is added, the line between the 2 control points will become solid.

'''Visible:''' This box shows which time lines are visible, the dotted or solid line. You can select or unselect these time lines. Currently all 4 are selected and visible. All 4 also are set at the same value so you only see one control point as all 4 are stacked from top to bottom, Color A being the one on top.

Click inside the time line and you will get a vertical bar. Drag the bar to the far right until the end of the timeline is reached. This bar represents that point in time and I will refer to this bar as the Point bar. Clicking anywhere on the time line will move the point bar to that point in time.

[[File:T1_v_bar.jpg]]

Right click on the time line and select “Add Control Point”. This adds a node at the point in which the point bar and the time line intersects. Also note that the Colors in the age map turn red, this indicates that the values are now controlled by the time line and can vary in value depending on the point in time. Also note that this adds a Control Point to each time line that is visible, so all 4 colors get an added node.
Before we continue, save your work. Next turn the Loop Animation Off by clicking on it at the top right so it is no longer highlighted.

[[File:T2_timeparts_02.jpg]]

There are 2 ways that we can set the values on the time line, directly in the value box of the Age Map, or by dragging the control points on the time line. To see how it affects the animation, first make sure the point bar is to the far right at 100. Change the value Color B to 0 directly in the Age Map properties, just as we did in Tutorial 1. You should now see a blue line starting at 1 and dropping to 0 at the end of the time line. By changing the value on the Age Map, you affect the control point that intersects with the Point Bar. The Flame should now be white at the bottom and Yellow at the top.

[[File:T2_cb.jpg|680px]]

To see what happens to each particle, go to the Emission tab and change the birth rate to 1. You will see the particle start from the emitter as white, and then gradually change to yellow. Set the Birth rate back to 10 and return to the Age Map.

Now move the point bar to the far left on 0. Notice that the value in Color B on the Age Map is again 1. Change this to 0 also and the left most control point will drop to 0 and you time line should now look like this.

[[File:T2_cb_2.jpg|680px]]

The small box in the lower right corner in the above image indicates which time lines are visible. Right now all 4 colors are visible on the time line. Next we will affect the green color by dragging the control points instead of changing the value directly in the Age Map. However the green time line in underneath the Alpha time line. So to make it visible, click the check mark to unselect the Alpha Color. The Alpha line goes away and we can now see the Green time line. Also uncheck the Red and Blue color time lines so only the Green is visible.

Next Click and hold on the far left (0) control point of the Green time line and drag it down a bit, about half way between 1 and 0, you should see the flame change colors as you drag it down. Grab the right most control point and drag it down to 0. You should now have a flame that is brighter red at the bottom and darker at the top.

[[File:T2_cg.jpg|680px]]

Now we are going to add 2 more control points to the Green time line. Move the Point Bar to 5 on the Particle Lifetime line, right click and select “Add Control Point”. Now move the Point Bar to 10 on the timeline and add a second control point. Grab the first control point we just added, the one at 5, and drag it up to about 0.7. This will create a bright flicker at the base of the fire.

[[File:T2_cg_2.jpg|680px]]

Now we just need to fade out the top of the flame a bit so the bottom is more intense than the top. Uncheck the green timeline and check the Color A (Alpha). Color A is a transparency color and can be use to alter the intensity of the particle. Grab the Right most control point and drag it down to about 40% (0.4). You will see that the top is less visible than the bottom of the flame. Save your work.

=== Changing its size ===

Right now the flame is a single column that is the same size at the top as it is at the base, this is not very realistic so we will remedy that by changing the scale of the particle.

In the drop down menu at the top right, select “Scale”. Again you will see a time line labeled “Particle Lifetime” a Control point, and a box showing the “Scale Y” and “Scale X” time lines. As we did before, move the Point Bar to the far right at 100 and right click and select “Add Control Point”. Now uncheck the Scale X time line so only the Scale Y line is visible. Move the Left control point to about 1.5 and the right control point to about 1.75. Check the Scale X timeline to make it visible and move the left control point to about 1.5 and the right control point to 0.5. This will widen the base and stretch the top to a point much like a real fire.

[[File:T2_scale.jpg|680px]]

Now the fun begins. Up until now we have been changing values over the lifetime of the particles. Now we will start changing values over the Impact, Duration, and Cessation time of the effect, but first save your work.

Select the “Emissions” Tab in the Object Properties. In the drop down menu, select “Birth Rate”. This time you will see a bit different looking time line. At the top you will see 3 sections, Impact which starts at 0 and ends at 5000, Duration starting at 5001 and ending at 8000, and the Cessation which starts at 8001 and ends at 1600. These times correlate to the 5 sec Impact, 3 second Duration, and the 8 second Cessation times specified in the VFX root.

'''TIP:''' You can Zoom Extents by double clicking inside the time graph, or zoom in/out by using the mouse scroll wheel.

When an effect is used in game, the Impact time plays, then the Duration time is looped for the length of the applied effect, then the Cessation time plays. For example, if the fire effect is applied to a wood pile for 3 min, the Impact time plays then the 2 second duration is looped for 3 min then the cessation time plays. With this in mind, we want the fire to build up to the a full blown fire, then taper off and go out.

In the Birth Rate time line, add 3 more control points, one at the Duration start, one at the duration end, and one at about 12000. Starting from the left move the left most control point to 0, move the second Control Point to 10, the third Control Point to 10 and the fourth to 0.

[[File:T2_br_2.jpg|680px]]

Notice that the flame stops burning like it was before. This is because now the total effect length is a factor. Slide the Point Bar back and forth on the time line, you can see what happens to the fire at any point in time. Now to view the animation of the effect, you must click the Play button in the upper right corner. The Point Bar will scroll across the time line and the results can be viewed in the effect window.

The fire should now start out slow and build up then taper off and go out at around 12 seconds. You can click on the Loop Animation if you want and the effect will continue to loop until paused by the Pause Animation button or by clicking in the time line.

Now select Life in the drop down menu. Right now each point in time the flame last 1 second. We want to change this so the flame when first starting out or ending doesn’t last that long. Keep the tip I gave above in mind, and make the Life time line look like the one in the picture. The Control Point times from left to right are 0, 1, 1.4, 1, 0 then save your work.

[[File:T2_life.jpg|680px]]

'''Let’s Dance:'''

Right now we have our fire looking pretty good, but there is one element still missing, the wavering and dancing of a real fire. On the Emission table item 12 and 13 are “Spawn Spread X (Deg)” and “Spawn Spread Y (Deg)”. These settings affect the spread of the particles in the X and Y directions, that is the particles can emit in varying directions in degrees from the emitter. Set both of these to 20 degrees.

Now our fire dances. Note that these settings could be set using the time line “Spawn Spread” as well, feel free to play with that if you wish.

We can get a better Idea of what our effect will look like in game by adding a reference model. Right click on the Root and select “Insert > Insert Reference Model”. In the Resource window Name field we can filter the list to make it easier to find what we are looking for, so enter *fire* and press enter. Now your resource list will only show those items with the word fire in it.

[[File:T2_resource.jpg]]

Choose the resource “plc_firepit_01_1”. Turn Bounding box Off by clicking it at the top to un-highlight it. This gets rid of the yellow square around the objects. Turn the Collision Plane on by clicking on it to highlight it. This will simulate a stone floor at the walk mesh level.

Now play you animation. You can also select the Base object and click anywhere in the time line, for example if you place the Point Bar anyplace in the Duration time you can watch your fire burn at it’s full potential.

'''Challenge:''' Replace the plc_firepit_01_1 with the plc_bonfire01_1 reference model. Scale your fire up, and increase it’s life time to engulf the wood pile in flames.
Don’t forget to save your work.

[[File:T2_fin.jpg|680px]]

This concludes Part 2 of the tutorial. In Part 3 we will be adding smoke and lighting to the flame and make the flickering flame reflect off of surrounding objects.

== VFX Tutorial Part 3 ==

This tutorial assumes you have read Tutorial #1 and #2 and are now familiar with using the time lines to adjust values over time. You can down load the final effect from Tutorial #2 from the social site if you need it to continue with Tutorial #3.

'''Where there’s smoke:'''

Our fire is missing 2 more elements to be complete, smoke and lighting.

First we will add the smoke.
Right click on the effect Root and select “Insert > Insert Emitter”. You will see a second emitter appear on top of the first one.
Select the new emitter and in the Object Inspector properties, change its name to Smoke. For Material Library, select fx_smoke_vol. For Material Object select fx_smoke_vol_blend.

In the First tutorial we talked about the Flipbook Type: Contact Sheet. For this effect we will be using the Flipbook Type: Volume. This works similar to the Contact Sheet type except that the Flipbook Rows is the number of layers, usually 2 or 4. The Flipbook Columns should always be 1 and the Frame per second is a factor of the 2, i.e. Rows x Columns. Set these to 2, 1, and 2 respectively.

In the Age map, set the colors R, G, B to 0.5 and Color A to 0.7. Our smoke should now look more like smoke, but we have a ways to go yet.
Smoke usually bellows upwards and spreads out as it rises. We can simulate this with a combination of the Scale and Scale Multiplier time lines.
Select the smoke emitter and the Scale time line from the top right drop down menu. We want the smoke to grow in size both in the X and Y directions, but more so in the X direction.

[[File:T3_scale.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Both X and Y should start at 1 and X should end around 5.5 and Y should end around 3.5 over the life of the particle. This will give us a funnel shape.

Now select the Scale Multiplier time line. We can use this line to make the smoke grow in proportion to the flame during it’s impact, duration, and cessation times.

Start out at a 0 multiplier and raise it to 1 at the start and during the duration time, then taper it back down to 0 during the Cessation time. Notice that at around 12000, the flame is gone and we are only left with smoke for the last 4 seconds of the effect.

[[File:T3_scale_mult.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Now we need to change a few of the Emissions. Set the Birth rate to 3, Life Expectancy to 2.5 and Life Expectancy +/- to 0.5. If you recall from previous tutorials the +/- will give us a variance on how long the particle last. As we did with the flame, we want the smoke to also waver from left to right and forward and back, set the Spawn Spread X (Deg) and Spawn Spread Y (Deg) to 10.

'''Changing Position:'''

By now you may have noticed that when you play the effect in full, the smoke stays at ground level. Smoke naturally rises from the top of the flame, not from the base. This is OK during the Impact and cessation phase as the fire is small and near the ground level. However, we need the smoke to rise to the top of the flame during the Duration phase. To do this we will use the position time line to make the smoke rise, and lower as the flame grows.

With the smoke emitter selected, select the Position Time Line. Unselect the X and Y position time lines so only the Z line is visible. Add a control point at the start and end of the Duration time. Also add a control point at around 12000 and one at the end of the effect time.

Raise the control points at the start and end of the duration to about 1.2, so it looks like the pic below.

[[File:T3_position.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Now when you play the effect, the smoke should rise and lower with the flame. Feel free to play with any of these settings to get the look you like best.

'''Fade it out:'''

If you zoom out and look at the Animation as a whole you will notice that the smoke just suddenly disappears at the top, looks a bit odd. Instead we will fade it out so this isn’t seen.

Select the Smoke emitter and then select the Color time line. Uncheck all the colors except the Alpha color. Add 2 or 3 control points towards the end of the time line and tapper the alpha down to 0 at the end of the particle life time. This makes the smoke fade out naturally. Save your work.

[[File:T3_colora.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

'''Light My Fire:'''

Before we continue, let’s put our fire into a game scene. Select the VFX Root and in the Object Inspector, under “Layout Settings”. You can select a area and see what your effect will look like in game. In Layout, select the area resource. Your effect should be near the upper right corner.

[[File:T3_arena.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Play the VFX a few times, notice there is no light given off by the fire.

Right click the VFX root and select Insert > Insert Light. A new light object will be inserted on top of the fire emitter. It’s right where we need it to be, by default.

[[File:T3_light_2.jpg]]

Light Properties:
Affects Characters: Set this to true. This setting specifies if the light should reflect off nearby creatures and characters.
Affects Level: same as above but it applies to the surrounding terrain.
Name: Name your light, I called mine “Flicker”

First we need to give the light some color, a good yellowish – red should do. Set Color G to 0.5 and Color B 0. To make the fire flicker, we will change the intensity of the color to coincide with the flame.

Select the Flame object and then select the “Color Intensity” time line from the drop down list. Add several control points and adjust the intensity up and down so it climaxes during the duration, similar to the image shown.

[[File:T3_intens.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Be sure to drop the intensity to 0 at around 12000 as this is where the flame goes out.

TIP: You can manually slide the time bar left and right on the time line to get a visual check of the intensity control points.

Now we have a nice bon fire complete with smoke and lighting.

[[File:T3_flame.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

'''Challenge:''' Using the Material Library “fx_distortionmatlib” add a third emitter and give your fire distortion.

This concludes the basic VFX Tutorials, Thanks for reading.
Author: Jassper

{{Languages}}
[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:VFX]]

VFX Tutorial

2012-05-22T02:18:33Z

Lord Methrid: Minor typos.

{{Infobox vfx}}

PDF Version Part 1 [[File:VFX_Tut_p1.pdf]]

PDF Version Part 2 [[File:VFX_Tut_p2.pdf]]

PDF Version Part 3 [[File:VFX_Tut_p3.pdf]]

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== VFX Tutorial Part 1 ==

This tutorial is to get you started in creating your own visual effects to be used in the DA toolset. Tutorial #1 will cover the basics of creating, editing, and implementing the visual effect.

=== Creating a new visual effect ===

To create a new VFX, right click on the palette window and select “NEW > VFX”

[[File:new VFX.jpg|250px]]

The VFX Editor will open up showing a square grid and a “Select VFX” window in the middle. For this tutorial we will be doing a Placeable effect, so select “Placeable” and click “OK”.

On the top left, you should see a little globe called “VFXRoot” and in the Object Inspector you should see the properties of VFXRoot.
At this point, save your work by selecting “File > Save As” or clicking the Save Icon in the upper left. You will be prompted for a file name. I like to keep all of my VFX files in one place so in My Documents/Bioware/Dragon Age folder I created a VFX folder to save my files.

For this tutorial we will be creating a bonfire type of effect and to stay with Dragon Age [[Naming conventions]], we will use a 3 letter prefix, underscore, and then the file name. Name the file “fxp_bonfire_jp”
The “fxp” is for “Visual Effect Placeable” (all VFX files start with fx*) “bonfire” tells me what the effect is, and the “jp” on the end lets me know that it is my effect and not someone else’s, you can add whatever suffix you want. Click “Save” when done.

You can close the toolset at any time and return to this tutorial. You can open your effect again later by selecting “File > Open” and navigate to and select the file you just saved.

=== VFX root properties ===

[[File:t1_root_obj_inspector.jpg|250px]]

'''VFXRoot Properties:'''
I’ll just cover the ones that we will be using.

'''Name:''' This is the resource name and is what will be used when we Post to Local. Change it to match the file name.

'''Impact Length:''' Time in seconds for the stating phase of the effect. Example, a Runner starting off from the start line reaching max speed.

'''Duration Length:''' Time in seconds for the duration of the effect. Example, the time it takes the runner to reach the finish line after reaching max speed.

'''Cessation Length:''' Time in seconds for the ending of the effect. Example, the runner slowing down after crossing the finish line.

We are making a bonfire effect, so we want the fire to start off small, grow in size, then burn itself out. So set the Impact Length to 3 seconds, this will start the fire and grown to its max size. Set the Duration Length to 3 seconds. This will allow us plenty of time to vary the coloration of the flames. Set the Cessation time to 3 seconds as well, as the fire burns out.

You may be thinking that 9 seconds is a very short fire. When the effect is set in a script, the duration time is set within the function ApplyEffect*. This duration time causes the duration time of the animation to loop over and over. So for example, if this bon fire effect is applied to an object for 6 min, the duration part of the effect will loop 120 times, 3 second duration * 120 loops = 360 seconds = 6 minutes. Then the Cessation time plays and the effect is done.

After setting these times, you should now see a time line something like this, More on this in part 2.

[[File:T1_time_line.jpg|640px]]

=== Adding an emitter ===

Next we need an emitter. Right click on the window and select “Insert > Insert Emitter”. You should get a pulsating white capsule in the center of the grid and a “NewEmitter” object added to the list on the left.

[[File:T1_emitter.jpg|640px]]

Select the NewEmitter object and you will see the properties in the Object inspector window.

[[File:T1_op_properties.jpg|250px]]

'''Properties Window:'''

'''Name:''' Change the name of the emitter to “Base” this will be the main base of the fire. Naming the emitter will help sort them out when building an effect with several emitters.

'''Material Library:''' This is the library that we will be selecting our particle material from. The DA Effect Libraries start with the prefix fx_*Click on the Material Library box to open the resource window. Select the fx_firelibrary and click OK.

'''Material Object:''' This is the martial that we will use from the above selected Library. For this select “FireFlipbook”.
Before we continue, save your work and let’s talk about Flipbooks.

A flipbook is a particle that consists of columns and rows of varying images. The animation is created by the effect rapidly flipping through each image, much like a cartoon animation. At this point you should see 4 columns of flickering flames. Note that not all particles are in flipbook form, some are a static image. A simple way to see if the particle is a flipbook, and to see how many columns and rows there are is to set the Birth Rate to 1. Click on the “Emission” tab in the Object Properties and change the top parameter “Birth Rate” to 1. You should now see an image that consists of 4 rows and 4 columns of small flame images. This is a single particle, 4x4 flipbook. Set the Birth Rate back to 10, and return to the “Properties” tab of the Object Inspector, more on Birth Rate later.

[[File:T1_flip.jpg]]

'''Flipbook Type:''' Select “ContactSheet”.

'''Flipbook Random Start Frame:''' This selects a random frame within the flipbook to start with on each emission. Set this to TRUE. This will help give us diversity and make the flame look more “real”.

'''Flipbook Rows:''' This is how many Rows there are in the flipbook, set this number to 4.

'''Flipbook Columns:''' This is the number of Columns in the flipbook, set this to 4 also.

'''Flipbook Frames per Second:''' The particle image has 4 rows and 4 colunms, there are 16 total images to flip through. This value should be a factor of Rows and Columns, so 4 x 4 = 16. Set this value to at least 16 flips per second.

You should now see a single column of what nearly looks like fire.
Right now the flames flicker a bit too slow for me, so set the Flipbook Frames per Second to 32. This makes the flames flicker twice as fast because it is now flipping through all 16 images twice per second instead of once.
Save your work.

[[File:T1_fire.jpg]]

'''Age Map:'''

[[File:T1_agemap.jpg]]

In the Object Inspector click the “Age Map” Tab.

Here we can manipulate the color and the scale of the effect.

Color values are in percentage of 0 to 100% on a scale of 0 to 1, so 50% Blue would be 0.5.

Most normal fires aren’t white, so set Color B (blue) to 0. Your flame should now be yellow. Set Color G (green) to 0.4. We now have a orangey-red color.

Color A (alph) is the flames color intensity setting this to 0.5, the fire is half as intense. Set it where you like.

The scale X and Y values can be any number from 0 to infinity. Setting the scale to 1 is the particles normal size. Because the particle image is a 2d image, there is no Z scale. Changing Scale X will affect the X (width) direction of the flame and Scale Y will affect the Y (Height) direction of the particle. For now we will leave them alone.

The corresponding multipliers simply multiply the values in the general section. For example, if you set Color G back to 1, then set Green Color Multiplier to 0.4 you will have the same result. 1 * 0.4 = 0.4

There is a notable difference between the 2 however, the General settings affect the particles over the lifetime of each particle while the Multipliers affect all the particles over the length of the animation. This will be explored further in Part 2. Go ahead and play with the color settings until you have it the way you want it, and then save your work.

'''Emissions'''

[[File:T1_emissions.jpg]]

Now click on the “Emission” tab these settings control the particle emissions.

'''Birth Rate:''' This is how many particle emit per second. The default is 10, which works out for the fire pretty good. However the flicker is pretty static. So we will change that in a minute.

'''Birth Rate +/-:''' This setting will cause the particle Birth Rate to randomly vary by a positive number or a negative number. If we set this value to 1, the Birth Rate then will vary between 9 and 11 particles per second. Since a 10 Birth Rate seems to be a good number for the most particles per second, set the +/- value to 2, and change the Birth Rate to 8. This will make the max 10 and the min 6 particles per second.

'''Initial Speed:''' This is how fast the particles travel when emitted from the emitter. Changing this value appears to change how long the particles last. However this is not the case, they simple move further before the particle life has expired.

'''Initial Speed +/-:''' This setting works the same as the Birth Rate +/- setting but instead affects the Initial Speed. Set this value to 0.5 which will now give the particles a varying speed between 0.5 and 1.5.

'''Life Expectancy (s):''' This is how long each particle last, in seconds, before vanishing.

'''Life Expectancy +/-''': Again is a random variance to the value set in Life Expectancy. Set this value to 0.5, making the particle last longer and shorter as the fire burns.

'''Scale Range:''' This adds a random variance to the size of the particle much like the other +/- settings. Set this to 0. 6. You should now see the flame vary in size as it emits from the base emitter.

Play with these settings a bit to get familiar with them. In the end you should have a raging fire animation. When you are happy, save your work.

[[File:T1_fire_1.jpg]]

'''Getting the effect in game:''' Right click on the Root and select “Post to Local”. You'll find the new VFX under the model palette. It can be placed directly in the level editor or the cutscene editor but not the area editor. You can also add the effect dynamically to an area using a script.

'''Notes:''' Because an effect is Art work, at present will not be included with a Builder to Builder Create and must be sent separately. Scripting examples to come later once there is a client to test for accuracy.

[[File:T1_ptl.jpg]]

So now you have a raging fire. In part 2 of this tutorial, we will make this fire dance and sing. Part 2 will introduce using the time line settings to vary coloration, scale, size and other more advanced settings as well as explore some of the settings introduced here a bit deeper. Keep the bonfire effect you created with this tutorial, we will need it in the second part. The bonfire effect can also be downloaded from the social site.

== VFX Tutorial Part 2 ==

In tutorial #1 we created a good bonfire as a base and up until now we only changed the values directly in the properties on the effect. As we can see this works well for simple effects. Changing the values in this manner alters the effect over its entire life time.
We have seen how to change the color and scale of the effect by changing the values in the properties age map. This is great for a basic flame but we want to add more life to it by making the flame vary in color and size over the length of the effect. To start, set all the Values back to default as shown in the 2 pictures below.
Note: This tutorial assumes you have read Tutorial #1 or are familiar with the basics of the VFX editor.

[[File:T2_agemap_01.jpg]][[File:T2_emission_01.jpg]]

Setting any of these values directly will affect the visual over the entire length of the effect. Instead we want to vary these values so the flame will change from reds, yellows, and orange. We also want to change its size during the impact, duration, and cessation phases of the effect. To do this, we will use the time line to set colors and scale so they change over the course of the effect.

Before we continue, we need to make a small change. Select the Root of the effect and in the Object Inspector, change the Impact time to 5 sec and the Cessation time to 8 sec. The 5 sec impact will allow us enough time to see the changes in the flame as it grows and the longer cessation time is for the smoke we will be adding later on.

[[File:T2_root_01.png]]

Select the “Base” object, at the top right corner there is a drop down window, select “Color” from the list. Note, when using the time lines, make sure you have the correct emitter object selected. In this case it is the Base emitter. You should then see a time line like the one below.

[[File:T2_color_01.jpg|680px]]

Notice at the top of the time line is reads “Particle Lifetime”. This means that the changes we make here will affect each partial over the lifetime of each particle. The lifetime of the particle is directly related to the “Lifetime” value setting in the Emissions Tab, which currently is set to 1 sec.

=== Parts of the Time line ===

[[File:T2_timeparts_01.jpg|680px]]

'''Control Point:''' The round dots allow you move the value up, down, left, or right within the time line.

'''Value Rang:''' The left side of the time line shows the value range. At this current control point, the value is 1, which is the current value for all 4 colors in the Age map.

'''Current Value:''' The dotted line shows the current value any place on the time line. Currently it is set to 1 over the entire length of the particle lifetime. When a control point is added, the line between the 2 control points will become solid.

'''Visible:''' This box shows which time lines are visible, the dotted or solid line. You can select or unselect these time lines. Currently all 4 are selected and visible. All 4 also are set at the same value so you only see one control point as all 4 are stacked from top to bottom, Color A being the one on top.

Click inside the time line and you will get a vertical bar. Drag the bar to the far right until the end of the timeline is reached. This bar represents that point in time and I will refer to this bar as the Point bar. Clicking anywhere on the time line will move the point bar to that point in time.

[[File:T1_v_bar.jpg]]

Right click on the time line and select “Add Control Point”. This adds a node at the point in which the point bar and the time line intersects. Also note that the Colors in the age map turn red, this indicates that the values are now controlled by the time line and can vary in value depending on the point in time. Also note that this adds a Control Point to each time line that is visible, so all 4 colors get an added node.
Before we continue, save your work. Next turn the Loop Animation Off by clicking on it at the top right so it is no longer highlighted.

[[File:T2_timeparts_02.jpg]]

There are 2 ways that we can set the values on the time line, directly in the value box of the Age Map, or by dragging the control points on the time line. To see how it affects the animation, first make sure the point bar is to the far right at 100. Change the value Color B to 0 directly in the Age Map properties, just as we did in Tutorial 1. You should now see a blue line starting at 1 and dropping to 0 at the end of the time line. By changing the value on the Age Map, you affect the control point that intersects with the Point Bar. The Flame should now be white at the bottom and Yellow at the top.

[[File:T2_cb.jpg|680px]]

To see what happens to each particle, go to the Emission tab and change the birth rate to 1. You will see the particle start from the emitter as white, and then gradually change to yellow. Set the Birth rate back to 10 and return to the Age Map.

Now move the point bar to the far left on 0. Notice that the value in Color B on the Age Map is again 1. Change this to 0 also and the left most control point will drop to 0 and you time line should now look like this.

[[File:T2_cb_2.jpg|680px]]

The small box in the lower right corner in the above image indicates which time lines are visible. Right now all 4 colors are visible on the time line. Next we will affect the green color by dragging the control points instead of changing the value directly in the Age Map. However the green time line in underneath the Alpha time line. So to make it visible, click the check mark to unselect the Alpha Color. The Alpha line goes away and we can now see the Green time line. Also uncheck the Red and Blue color time lines so only the Green is visible.

Next Click and hold on the far left (0) control point of the Green time line and drag it down a bit, about half way between 1 and 0, you should see the flame change colors as you drag it down. Grab the right most control point and drag it down to 0. You should now have a flame that is brighter red at the bottom and darker at the top.

[[File:T2_cg.jpg|680px]]

Now we are going to add 2 more control points to the Green time line. Move the Point Bar to 5 on the Particle Lifetime line, right click and select “Add Control Point”. Now move the Point Bar to 10 on the timeline and add a second control point. Grab the first control point we just added, the one at 5, and drag it up to about 0.7. This will create a bright flicker at the base of the fire.

[[File:T2_cg_2.jpg|680px]]

Now we just need to fade out the top of the flame a bit so the bottom is more intense than the top. Uncheck the green timeline and check the Color A (Alpha). Color A is a transparency color and can be use to alter the intensity of the particle. Grab the Right most control point and drag it down to about 40% (0.4). You will see that the top is less visible than the bottom of the flame. Save your work.

=== Changing its size ===

Right now the flame is a single column that is the same size at the top as it is at the base, this is not very realistic so we will remedy that by changing the scale of the particle.

In the drop down menu at the top right, select “Scale”. Again you will see a time line labeled “Particle Lifetime” a Control point, and a box showing the “Scale Y” and “Scale X” time lines. As we did before, move the Point Bar to the far right at 100 and right click and select “Add Control Point”. Now uncheck the Scale X time line so only the Scale Y line is visible. Move the Left control point to about 1.5 and the right control point to about 1.75. Check the Scale X timeline to make it visible and move the left control point to about 1.5 and the right control point to 0.5. This will widen the base and stretch the top to a point much like a real fire.

[[File:T2_scale.jpg|680px]]

Now the fun begins. Up until now we have been changing values over the lifetime of the particles. Now we will start changing values over the Impact, Duration, and Cessation time of the effect, but first save your work.

Select the “Emissions” Tab in the Object Properties. In the drop down menu, select “Birth Rate”. This time you will see a bit different looking time line. At the top you will see 3 sections, Impact which starts at 0 and ends at 5000, Duration starting at 5001 and ending at 8000, and the Cessation which starts at 8001 and ends at 1600. These times correlate to the 5 sec Impact, 3 second Duration, and the 8 second Cessation times specified in the VFX root.

'''TIP:''' You can Zoom Extents by double clicking inside the time graph, or zoom in/out by using the mouse scroll wheel.

When an effect is used in game, the Impact time plays, then the Duration time is looped for the length of the applied effect, then the Cessation time plays. For example, if the fire effect is applied to a wood pile for 3 min, the Impact time plays then the 2 second duration is looped for 3 min then the cessation time plays. With this in mind, we want the fire to build up to the a full blown fire, then taper off and go out.

In the Birth Rate time line, add 3 more control points, one at the Duration start, one at the duration end, and one at about 12000. Starting from the left move the left most control point to 0, move the second Control Point to 10, the third Control Point to 10 and the fourth to 0.

[[File:T2_br_2.jpg|680px]]

Notice that the flame stops burning like it was before. This is because now the total effect length is a factor. Slide the Point Bar back and forth on the time line, you can see what happens to the fire at any point in time. Now to view the animation of the effect, you must click the Play button in the upper right corner. The Point Bar will scroll across the time line and the results can be viewed in the effect window.

The fire should now start out slow and build up then taper off and go out at around 12 seconds. You can click on the Loop Animation if you want and the effect will continue to loop until paused by the Pause Animation button or by clicking in the time line.

Now select Life in the drop down menu. Right now each point in time the flame last 1 second. We want to change this so the flame when first starting out or ending doesn’t last that long. Keep the tip I gave above in mind, and make the Life time line look like the one in the picture. The Control Point times from left to right are 0, 1, 1.4, 1, 0 then save your work.

[[File:T2_life.jpg|680px]]

'''Let’s Dance:'''

Right now we have our fire looking pretty good, but there is one element still missing, the wavering and dancing of a real fire. On the Emission table item 12 and 13 are “Spawn Spread X (Deg)” and “Spawn Spread Y (Deg)”. These settings affect the spread of the particles in the X and Y directions, that is the particles can emit in varying directions in degrees from the emitter. Set both of these to 20 degrees.

Now our fire dances. Note that these settings could be set using the time line “Spawn Spread” as well, feel free to play with that if you wish.

We can get a better Idea of what our effect will look like in game by adding a reference model. Right click on the Root and select “Insert > Insert Reference Model”. In the Resource window Name field we can filter the list to make it easier to find what we are looking for, so enter *fire* and press enter. Now your resource list will only show those items with the word fire in it.

[[File:T2_resource.jpg]]

Choose the resource “plc_firepit_01_1”. Turn Bounding box Off by clicking it at the top to un-highlight it. This gets rid of the yellow square around the objects. Turn the Collision Plane on by clicking on it to highlight it. This will simulate a stone floor at the walk mesh level.

Now play you animation. You can also select the Base object and click anywhere in the time line, for example if you place the Point Bar anyplace in the Duration time you can watch your fire burn at it’s full potential.

'''Challenge:''' Replace the plc_firepit_01_1 with the plc_bonfire01_1 reference model. Scale your fire up, and increase it’s life time to engulf the wood pile in flames.
Don’t forget to save your work.

[[File:T2_fin.jpg|680px]]

This concludes Part 2 of the tutorial. In Part 3 we will be adding smoke and lighting to the flame and make the flickering flame reflect off of surrounding objects.

== VFX Tutorial Part 3 ==

This tutorial assumes you have read Tutorial #1 and #2 and are now familiar with using the time lines to adjust values over time. You can down load the final effect from Tutorial #2 from the social site if you need it to continue with Tutorial #3.

'''Where there’s smoke:'''

Our fire is missing 2 more elements to be complete, smoke and lighting.

First we will add the smoke.
Right click on the effect Root and select “Insert > Insert Emitter”. You will see a second emitter appear on top of the first one.
Select the new emitter and in the Object Inspector properties, change its name to Smoke. For Material Library, select fx_smoke_vol. For Material Object select fx_smoke_vol_blend.

In the First tutorial we talked about the Flipbook Type: Contact Sheet. For this effect we will be using the Flipbook Type: Volume. This works similar to the Contact Sheet type except that the Flipbook Rows is the number of layers, usually 2 or 4. The Flipbook Columns should always be 1 and the Frame per second is a factor of the 2, i.e. Rows x Columns. Set these to 2, 1, and 2 respectively.

In the Age map, set the colors R, G, B to 0.5 and Color A to 0.7. Our smoke should now look more like smoke, but we have a ways to go yet.
Smoke usually bellows upwards and spreads out as it rises. We can simulate this with a combination of the Scale and Scale Multiplier time lines.
Select the smoke emitter and the Scale time line from the top right drop down menu. We want the smoke to grow in size both in the X and Y directions, but more so in the X direction.

[[File:T3_scale.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Both X and Y should start at 1 and X should end around 5.5 and Y should end around 3.5 over the life of the particle. This will give us a funnel shape.

Now select the Scale Multiplier time line. We can use this line to make the smoke grow in proportion to the flame during it’s impact, duration, and cessation times.

Start out at a 0 multiplier and raise it to 1 at the start and during the duration time, then taper it back down to 0 during the Cessation time. Notice that at around 12000, the flame is gone and we are only left with smoke for the last 4 seconds of the effect.

[[File:T3_scale_mult.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Now we need to change a few of the Emissions. Set the Birth rate to 3, Life Expectancy to 2.5 and Life Expectancy +/- to 0.5. If you recall from previous tutorials the +/- will give us a variance on how long the particle last. As we did with the flame, we want the smoke to also waver from left to right and forward and back, set the Spawn Spread X (Deg) and Spawn Spread Y (Deg) to 10.

'''Changing Position:'''

By now you may have noticed that when you play the effect in full, the smoke stays at ground level. Smoke naturally rises from the top of the flame, not from the base. This is OK during the Impact and cessation phase as the fire is small and near the ground level. However, we need the smoke to rise to the top of the flame during the Duration phase. To do this we will use the position time line to make the smoke rise, and lower as the flame grows.

With the smoke emitter selected, select the Position Time Line. Unselect the X and Y position time lines so only the Z line is visible. Add a control point at the start and end of the Duration time. Also add a control point at around 12000 and one at the end of the effect time.

Raise the control points at the start and end of the duration to about 1.2, so it looks like the pic below.

[[File:T3_position.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Now when you play the effect, the smoke should rise and lower with the flame. Feel free to play with any of these settings to get the look you like best.

'''Fade it out:'''

If you zoom out and look at the Animation as a whole you will notice that the smoke just suddenly disappears at the top, looks a bit odd. Instead we will fade it out so this isn’t seen.

Select the Smoke emitter and then select the Color time line. Uncheck all the colors except the Alpha color. Add 2 or 3 control points towards the end of the time line and tapper the alpha down to 0 at the end of the particle life time. This makes the smoke fade out naturally. Save your work.

[[File:T3_colora.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

'''Light My Fire:'''

Before we continue, let’s put our fire into a game scene. Select the VFX Root and in the Object Inspector, under “Layout Settings”. You can select a area and see what your effect will look like in game. In Layout, select the area resource. Your effect should be near the upper right corner.

[[File:T3_arena.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Play the VFX a few times, notice there is no light given off by the fire.

Right click the VFX root and select Insert > Insert Light. A new light object will be inserted on top of the fire emitter. It’s right where we need it to be, by default.

[[File:T3_light_2.jpg]]

Light Properties:
Affects Characters: Set this to true. This setting specifies if the light should reflect off nearby creatures and characters.
Affects Level: same as above but it applies to the surrounding terrain.
Name: Name your light, I called mine “Flicker”

First we need to give the light some color, a good yellowish – red should do. Set Color G to 0.5 and Color B 0. To make the fire flicker, we will change the intensity of the color to coincide with the flame.

Select the Flame object and then select the “Color Intensity” time line from the drop down list. Add several control points and adjust the intensity up and down so it climaxes during the duration, similar to the image shown.

[[File:T3_intens.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

Be sure to drop the intensity to 0 at around 12000 as this is where the flame goes out.

TIP: You can manually slide the time bar left and right on the time line to get a visual check of the intensity control points.

Now we have a nice bon fire complete with smoke and lighting.

[[File:T3_flame.jpg|thumb|680px|center]]

'''Challenge:''' Using the Material Library “fx_distortionmatlib” add a third emitter and give your fire distortion.

This concludes the basic VFX Tutorials, Thanks for reading.
Author: Jassper

{{Languages}}
[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:VFX]]

Cutscene tutorial

2012-05-15T05:52:23Z

Lord Methrid: /* Using GAD */

{{Infobox cutscenes}}

[[Cutscene]]s can be stand-alone cinematic sequences that are triggered by scripts in the course of the game, or they can be inserted into [[conversation]]s in place of the simplified cinematics that conversations can automatically generate.

Our example situation in this tutorial will serve as the beginning of a conversation between the player and two NPCs. The player has just arrived at the campsite where these two NPCs are staying. He walks up to the fire. One of the NPCs is happy to see the player and greets him, but the other is distrustful. The two share a brief exchange to establish this before the interactive part of the conversation begins.

== Creating a new cutscene ==

To create a brand new blank cutscene resource, create a new resource in the usual way:

[[Image:New resource.png|border]]

The result is opened in the cutscene editor.

[[Image:Cutscene new.png|border]]

There are two basic sections to the cutscene editor; the viewports (top) and the timeline (bottom).

=== Viewports ===

{{sidebox|
* Viewports can be attached to various cameras to preview what they can see
* Add a "Safe Frame" to camera viewports to ensure the correct aspect ratio
* Set a viewport to "User" to see where cameras are positioned from another perspective. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar
}}

The camera viewports in the cutscene editor work similarly to the viewports in the stage editor. You can set the number and layout of viewports under the "View" menu:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport layout.png|border]]

And for each individual viewport you can select which camera it's showing and set other display options by right-clicking on the title bar of the viewport:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport properties.png|border]]

When you set a viewport to show the view through one of the cutscene's cameras, it's a good idea to turn on that viewport's "Safe Frame" option as well. This will put a border on the viewport showing what will be visible when the cutscene plays.

Note that when you play the cutscene in the cutscene editor, only the currently selected viewport (the one with the blue title bar) will show the cutscene "live" - the others won't update the view displayed in them until they're selected. To preview the cutscene as the player would see it in the game, you will need to set one of the viewports to "Active Camera" and ensure that this viewport is selected when you play the cutscene in the editor. If the "Active Camera" viewport turns gray, try setting the cutscene property "Enable Level Effects" to false.

=== Timeline ===

{{sidebox|
* There is always exactly one MASTER object in a cutscene.
* Each active object is listed on the timeline, with multiple "tracks" for each.
* All objects have position tracks (divided into X, Y and Z tracks). Some objects have additional built-in tracks.
* Other actions and effects can be added to generic tracks. Objects can have as many generic tracks as you want.
}}

Below the viewport is the timeline. Along the top of the timeline is a time scale; it can be set to show in frames (at 30 frames per second) or milliseconds by changing the "Time Scale" property of the cutscene in the object inspector. A marker indicates what point in the timeline the viewports are currently showing.

Below is a set of rows containing the various actors, cameras, and other objects active in the cutscene. This is where most of the editing is going to take place. Each object will have a number of "tracks", which will contain commands that are sent to the actors at particular times in the course of the cutscene.

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial timeline.png|border]]

The first object in the track list is the "MASTER" object. This is a special object that every cutscene has exactly one of. The MASTER object is the cutscene equivalent to the root node of a conversation tree, a repository for global settings and effects. For example, the MASTER object contains the track that determines which camera is active at any given time. The MASTER object cannot be deleted. By default, a MASTER object appears in the cutscene editor as a small greenish sphere; you can change the MASTER object's appearance in the cutscene option settings.

A new cutscene also has a camera, called Camera 1. This camera can be deleted or renamed if you like; we can add new cameras as needed later on.

Every object has "Position" and "Orientation" tracks that control their locations in space. Cameras also have a FOV (field of view) track.

Objects can have other "generic" tracks added by the editor as needed. These generic tracks contain all the other commands and directions we can give.

== The setting of the cutscene ==

{{sidebox|
* The MASTER object should be moved somewhere near the center of your cutscene.
* You can optionally set a stage for your cutscene, enabling stage-related actions for objects.
}}

Establishing the setting of a cutscene is done in the object inspector in the group of properties labeled "Setting". The most important of these is the "Area" property, which allows you to set the cutscene in an existing [[area]]. We already have a suitable area that was created in an earlier tutorial; the area "great_outdoors".

By default the MASTER object and Camera 1 will be located at the coordinates 0,0,0 in the area. You'll want to move the camera to the appropriate location within the area using standard [[3D control]]s for movement and view management. The MASTER object is invisible when the cutscene is played in-game so it usually doesn't matter where you put it. However, there are some settings that depend on the MASTER object's location - for example, you can set level-of-detail for models so that the model's LOD varies depending on how close it is to the MASTER object - so it's probably a good idea to put MASTER somewhere near the middle of where you'll be having the cutscene's action take place.

You can also set a stage for the cutscene. This is optional, but setting a stage enables "Jump to Stage Place" and "Jump to Stage Camera" actions that could help make setting the cutscene up easier if you already have a good stage defined in the area.

=== Adding objects and creatures ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects already present in the area the cutscene is set in are inactive by default. You need to activate them to control them.
* Other objects can be added from the resource palette as normal.
}}

All of the objects that are normally present in the area (such as creatures and placeables) will be visible in the cutscene editor, but they'll all initially be marked as "inactive". This means that, although they'll be visible in the cutscene when it plays, they won't be controllable; they'll just do whatever ambient activities they would be doing normally. In the case of our campsite area there are two creatures that were placed here in the area editor; the happy camper, named camp_happy, and the angry camper, named camp_angry. We need to seize control of them to make them active participants in the cutscene's activities. To make them active, right-click on them and select "activate objects":

[[Image:Cutscene activate object.png|border]]

The object will then become an active object in the cutscene, getting its own entry in the timeline that will allow you to control its actions.

[[Image:Cutscene object activated.png|border]]

We'll activate both of these campers since they'll both be taking part in the cutscene's dialogue.

You can also add objects that aren't normally a part of the area. Simply open the object palette, select the creature or placeable you wish to use in the cutscene, and then click in the viewport to add the object to that location. It will automatically be made active and get an entry in the timeline. The player won't see these objects during regular play, since they're not a part of the area - they're only in the cutscene.

If you want to make an area object disappear during the cutscene you'll need to activate it (allowing you to control it) and then add a track with an action that makes it invisible in the first frame. It will go back to normal again when the cutscene ends and the game resumes, cutscenes are run entirely separate from the main action of the game and have no direct effects on it.

=== Adding the player ===

{{sidebox|
* Use the "Mapping Tag" property on an actor to make the game replace it with another object (such as PLAYER) at run-time.
}}

Normally we don't have to worry about placing the player in an area since the player controls his own movements and actions. But when we're doing a cutscene we can control the player just like any other actor, so we'll need a way to insert the player as an active object. Furthermore, since we'll have no idea what the player is going to look like at any given moment, we'll need to have a way to insert the player as he appears in the game when the cutscene begins.

This is done by inserting a "dummy" virtual actor and then setting the actor's "Mapping Tag" property to the special "PLAYER" tag.

[[Image:Cutscene dummy player.png|border]]

It doesn't matter what the dummy actor looks like now, it will be replaced with the player's character later on, so we'll just use a default male human model to make it both simple and obvious.

There are ways to tweak the way the cutscene plays based on other characteristics of the player, for example by modifying the position of the camera to account for the player's height or by adding additional dummies to represent followers. We won't go into these more advanced topics in this tutorial.

=== Adding cameras ===

{{sidebox|
* Remember to enable Safe Frame when attaching a viewport to a camera.
* Use an "Active Camera" viewport to preview the cutscene.
* Use a "User" viewport to see camera positions from the outside. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar.
}}

We could film a cutscene entirely from one camera if we liked, either as a single static shot or by moving the camera around to new positions as needed. It's easier and more convenient in most cases just to add several different cameras, however, and use the "Active Camera" track on the MASTER object to switch between them.

For our cutscene we're going to want three different cameras; one camera that's a wide shot showing the player arriving at the campfire, one camera focused on the angry camper, and one focused on the happy camper. We could add more than just these three to make the scene even more dynamic but for simplicity we'll stick to just those for now. We can add more later.

Cameras are added by right-clicking in the viewport and selecting "Insert → Camera".

[[Image:Cutscene insert camera.png|border]]

You can then position them using standard [[3D control]]s. To make it easier to get the camera set up with the correct view, a good technique is to set one of the viewports to display the camera's feed; you can then reorient and reposition the camera using that viewport's camera controls while getting immediate feedback as to what the camera will see in its new state.

We're also going to rename the three cameras at this point with names intended to remind us of what their purposes are. We'll name them "Arrival Camera", "Happy Camera", and "Angry Camera". We'll want "Arrival Camera" to be active initially, so we may as well use the original camera for this role; it's already set active by default. We'll see how to switch which camera is active later in this tutorial.

We now have all the basic props we need to get the cutscene going.

== Adding an animation to an actor ==

{{sidebox|
* Set the "Pose" property for actors to make them breathe and fidget naturally when not doing other animations.
* Other animations are set by adding "Play Animation" actions to a generic track.
* Animation filenames are often arcane and hard to find.
}}

If you play the cutscene now the first thing you'll probably notice is that the actors are all standing perfectly motionless. Normally someone who's standing still isn't really standing ''perfectly'' still; they breathe, they shift their weight from foot to foot, and so forth. Since almost every actor we use is going to need to do this we don't want to have to spend a lot of effort setting it up, and fortunately we don't have to. Every actor has a "Pose" property in the object inspector. Simply set this pose to "Standing Neutral" and the actors will display this default subtle movement whenever no other animations are being explicitly imposed on them.

[[Image:Cutscene set pose.png|border]]

Our next task is somewhat less trivial; we want to show the player walking up to the fire. We're going to have to add a walking animation to the player's actor that runs for a short period of time and then stops.

To do this we'll need to add a new track to the actor's timeline. Right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "Add Track" from the resulting menu:

[[Image:Cutscene add track.png|border]]

The new track will be named "New Track" by default and will start out empty. Actors in cutscenes will sometimes have dozens of tracks directing their actions so we'll want to rename the track to something a little more informative. In this case we'll name it "Walk to fire". To have it actually cause the player's actor to walk to the fire we'll need to add a "[[Play animation]]" action to it. Right-click on the track and select "Add Action" to get the menu to select this.

[[Image:Cutscene add action.png|border]]

The action will be added starting at the point you're currently viewing in the timeline, so you may wish to move the timeline's time slider back to the beginning before adding this animation. You can reposition an action along the timeline simply by dragging it with the mouse.

Initially the action has no animation associated with it. To set the animation, select the action in the timeline and then in the Object Inspector go to the "Animation" property and click on the ellipsis ([[Image:ellipsis.png|link=]]) button.

Unfortunately this is where things turn a bit arcane since the names of the various animation files are often very unclear and not all will appear in the default list. You may need to resort to trial and error to find one you like, but there are many hundreds of animations available in the game's resources so this could take some time. See [[animation list]] and [http://social.bioware.com/project/30/#files Beerfish Excel Utilities] for a list of many of them.

Note that only a single animation can play at any time on a given track. However, it is possible to have multiple animations for a character, each of which must be on a different track. This is essential in order to be able to blend animations together as detailed in [[Play_animation#Blending_Animations]]. Animation blending is necessary in order to have your characters transition seamlessly from one animation to another, which is essential to making character movement look natural.

In this case the animation we want, "mh.dg_f_5p" ("male human dialog forward five paces"), doesn't appear in the default list of animations available in the animation picker. You'll need to click the ellipsis button next to the "Custom Animation" field and find it in the complete list of all animation resources.

[[Image:Cutscene finding an animation.png|border]]

If you try playing the cutscene now you'll see that the player's actor will spend a little over five seconds walking and then come to a natural stop - about as long as we needed. But the actor will be animated in place, his legs taking steps but not actually moving him anywhere. This is where position keys and GAD comes in.

== Moving an actor ==

=== Position and orientation keys ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects can be moved over time by setting "key frames" on their position and orientation tracks.
* Intermediate frames are interpolated between key frames.
* You can set the curve type between key frames with the "transition out" property for each key.
}}

Every object in a cutscene has a pre-defined "Position" track with three sub-tracks for its X, Y and Z coordinates. Most objects also have a pre-defined "Orientation" track with three subtracks for roll, pitch, and yaw. These tracks can be used to cause an object to move around within the area over the course of the cutscene.

Movement is handled by setting the position and orientation of objects at specific points in time, called key frames, and then interpolating intermediate positions and orientations. To set a key frame, right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "key position". This will set a key for the current position and orientation at the current time in the timeline. You can set position and orientation keys separately if you like. Since this operation is so common there's a very convenient shortcut for it; "k" inserts a key for the currently selected object's position and orientation, "p" inserts a key for its position, and "o" inserts a key for its orientation. Alternately, select the object and click the key command in the toolbar: [[Image:IconKey.png|link=]]

[[Image:Cutscene key selection.png|border]]

For our purposes right now all we'll need to do is set a key frame at the beginning of the timeline. Move the pointer to the beginning, select the player actor, and set a key. Small boxes will appear on the position and orientation tracks to mark the key frame.

[[Image:Cutscene key marker.png|border]]

These markers essentially mean "at this particular point in time, dummy_player will be in this particular place and facing in this particular direction."

To get an actor to move over time you could set two key frames - one at the beginning of the movement, with the actor in his starting position, and one at the end of the movement, with the actor at his end position. You can set how the cutscene engine interpolates between the two positions by setting the "Transition Out" property of the starting keyframe to either Bezier (a smooth curve), Linear (a straight line), or Step (a sudden jump from the starting position to the end position). See the [[curve editor]] page for more detail.

We're not going to actually do this in this case, however; we'll try it at a later point in this tutorial to move a camera around. For this particular actor it would be difficult to manually match the actor's walking action with his motion over the ground. If the animation and the movement don't match the actor's feet will "skate" unrealistically along the surface.

There's an easier way to match an animation such as this one with movement through the scene; a mechanism called GAD.

=== Using GAD ===

{{sidebox|
* GAD is a mechanism by which an animation applies a built-in displacement to the object it's animating.
* You need to set at least one key frame for an object to use GAD, even if you don't otherwise use key frames to move it.
}}

GAD is a displacement that is automatically added to the actor's current position as the animation plays. Each animation has its own GAD information built into it, custom-designed to make the actor move in a manner appropriate to its actions. If we enable it the actor will be moved forward as the animation plays.

Not all animations have GAD associated with them. For example, having an actor wave his hand wouldn't displace him, so there would be no GAD associated with that animation. We only need to worry about GAD in cases like this one where the animation should accompany movement.

To enable GAD select the animation action and set "Play Gad" to true in the object inspector. If no key frames have been defined for the actor the cutscene editor will pop up a warning at this point suggesting that we add position and orientation keys before we add GAD:

[[Image:Cutscene gad warning.png|border]]

It's important to set at least one set of keys for an object using GAD. The animation's GAD may seem to work correctly without it at first, but unexpected and unpredictable errors could occur later that will send the actor careening off into the distance.

Once we've set a key frame and have set the action's "Play Gad" option to true you'll see that the actor now moves forward as he walks. This is good, but since we started him off in the position he's meant to end in it results in the actor walking straight through the campfire. You'll need to move the actor back so that he starts farther away from the fire.

Note: If you have already set a keyframe as described in the previous section, you will need to set an additional one for the actor's new location (or alternately set the "update keys" mode with the [[Image:IconUpdateKeys.png|link=]] tool), otherwise the moment the animation starts, the actor will instantly jump back to the place he was before when you set the first keyframe. Once you set a keyframe for an actor, moving the actor around in the cutscene editor does not really change the actor's position unless you re-set the keyframe to the new position that your actor is in. Keyframes and the curves interpolating between them always take precedence.

{{sidebox|
* An animation's "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property makes Gad's displacement persist after the animation ends.
}}

The other GAD properties are set to the most appropriate defaults automatically when you select an animation but one particular property bears mention here in case you run into trouble with it later on; the "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property. In the case of this walking animation it defaults to true. That means that once the animation ends, the displacement that the actor has undergone as a result of it will remain in effect - he will stay in the final position he walked to. If this were set to false, once the animation ended all of the displacement the actor had gained as a result would be undone and he'd instantly jump back to where he started walking from again. If at some point in the future you find your actors doing this, this property is the first place to look for the answer.

There's one final detail we'll tweak here. The walking animation begins with the player starting from a standstill, which is not the impression we want to convey; the player has supposedly been walking for some time before the camera started rolling. We could set the animation to begin playing partway through by changing the animation action's "Start Offset" property, but since this is happening at the beginning of the cutscene's timeline an easier approach is to simply select the animation action and drag it so that it begins a half second before the cutscene does. The cutscene will only begin displaying at the 0 mark and anything that falls before this point in time will never be shown so the initial half second of the actor's walk animation will go unseen.

== Moving a camera ==

The scene now has some of the dynamic action we wanted, showing the player walking up to the campfire and stopping at its edge. But it's still a rather dull introduction and we can do better. Instead of a static camera shot we can set the camera so that it pans across the scene to follow the player's arrival.

Select the Arrival Camera and open up its track list. It has Position and Orientation tracks just like the other actors, and can have keyframes set just the same. With the time marker set to 0, move the Arrival Camera so that its view shows how you want the shot framed at the beginning of the cutscene. In our example we're going to set it so that it shows the player in the center of the frame. With the camera still selected, press "k" to set a key frame for the camera.

[[Image:Cutscene camera start position.png|border]]

(You may notice that the Field of View (FOV) track also gets a key marker. We won't be changing the camera's FOV so you can ignore that.)

Next move the timeline scrubber to the end of the walking animation at the 5 second mark. The player's actor will now be at the final position where he'll be standing for the conversation. Change the camera's orientation, panning to the right so that all of the actors can be seen in its field of view. In our case the camera's too close to encompass everyone so we'll also move its position to allow it to see them all.

Once you have the shot lined up correctly, press "k" to set a second keyframe.

[[Image:Cutscene camera end position.png|border]]

You may notice that the User viewports now show a red line tracing out the selected object's trajectory through space (if not, you may need to click the "show trajectories" [[Image:IconShowTrajectory.png|link=]] button in the toolbar). As the first five seconds of the cutscene plays, the Arrival Camera should slide smoothly along the red line and rotate smoothly on its axes to transition from the first keyframe to the second keyframe (If it suddenly jumps from one position to the other instead you may need to click the "default curve mode" tool [[Image:IconDefaultCurveMode.png|link=]] and try setting the keys again, or change the "transition out" property of the keyframe to Bezier).

You can fine-tune the trajectory of the camera by adding additional keyframes between the starting and ending ones. In our case we see that when the time marker is set to the middle of the camera's movement the player slips slightly out of frame.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position unadjusted.png|border]]

We can fix this by changing the camera's position and orientation as needed, and then adding a new keyframe with "k". In this case we'll pull the camera back slightly so that its motion through space becomes a curve instead of a straight line.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position adjusted.png|border]]

We now have a nice, dynamic establishing shot. The scene begins with the player alone and in the center of the camera's shot, and as he walks toward the fire the camera moves and pans around him to show him arriving in the presence of our two campers.

== Switching cameras ==

{{sidebox|
* A track on the MASTER object defines which camera is currently "active."
}}

Once the player arrives he is going to be greeted by the camper who is happy to see him. To give a clear shot of who's doing the talking, we'll want to switch the active camera from Arrival Camera to Happy Camera.

The track where the active camera gets changed is attached to the MASTER object. Move the timeline's time indicator to the point in time where you wish to switch active cameras, in this case 5.5 seconds (giving the scene a half-second view of the player after he's come to a halt). Right-click on the Active Camera track and select Add Action. The only option available for this track is the "Switch Camera" action so go ahead and add one. In the new Switch Camera action's properties set it to switch the active camera to Happy Camera.

Now when the cutscene is played we'll get an establishing shot showing the player walking up to the fire and then switch to a closeup of the happy camper so that he can deliver his greeting.

[[Image:Cutscene switch active camera.png|border]]

== Adding dialogue ==

{{sidebox|
* Lines of dialog can be inserted from an existing [[conversation]] resource. For convenience, create a new conversation to hold the dialog for a cutscene.
* Caption text, voice over, and facial performance are all included with each line.
* If you edit the conversation later, the changes will be reflected in the cutscene. Remember to generate new VO and FaceFX in the conversation editor.
}}

There are three major components to dialog in Dragon Age; the text of the line being spoken (which is displayed as a caption at the top of the screen), the voice-over for the line being spoken, and the facial performance that makes the virtual actor lip-synch and display appropriate emotions.

There's already a tool in the toolset that is designed for handling all of these things; the conversation editor. Actors in a cutscene can be given "Speak Line" actions that cause them to deliver lines from an existing dialog, with all three components added together into the actor's performance automatically.

Here we are going to add dialogue to a cutscene (though sometimes it is better to take a [[Conversation#Conversation-centred_approach | conversation-centred approach]]).

To create the dialog for this cutscene we'll now create a new conversation resource. This conversation is not going to be used in the game directly so we'll be able to ignore many of the more advanced features and settings covered in the conversation tutorial; its only purpose is to serve as a repository of dialog lines for use in this cutscene.

The following screenshot shows our intended conversation. The only things that we need to define for it is the text of the dialog and optionally the emotion settings for RoboBrad to use when generating facial performance. As with our previous conversation we'll generate synthesized placeholder voice-over and generate FaceFX based on that; when we record real voice over later on we can simply update this conversation with it and the cutscene's performance will change to match.

[[Image:Cutscene conversation.png|border]]

To help keep track of which lines are spoken by which actors you could also optionally set the speaker tag on each line to identify who's doing the talking. This particular conversation has only two speakers so we won't bother with that. The cutscene engine won't need speaker tags, we'll be explicitly telling it who is saying each line. You'll only need to set those things if you wish to preview the conversation before using its lines in the cutscene.

Once you've created your dialogue go back to the cutscene editor and add a new track to the camp_happy actor. Rename it to something informative, such as "Dialogue". Move the timeline marker to the spot where you want the actor to start speaking and add a new "Speak Line" action.

In the Speak Line action's properties, set the "Source Conversation" property to the conversation resource we just created. Then, select the specific line you want the actor to speak in the "Source Line" property (it will have a drop-down menu with all of the lines from the source conversation in it).

That's all you need to do to get the actors to talk. You may wish to add one other detail at this point; head tracking. This is the action that causes actors to turn their heads toward a specific target, usually the person they're talking to or who is talking to them. It's added as its own action, so create another track and add a headtracking action to it with the player as the target. In this case we want the happy camper to turn his head toward the player right before he starts speaking.

== Adding other details ==

{{sidebox|
* Headtracking actions make actors look at other objects in the cutscene.
* You can have more than one action on a track provided they don't overlap.
}}

We've now gone through all the basics, so we'll just finish fleshing out the conversation with a few other details that are done the same way as the examples above.

To add a little more animation to the scene, we add another track for camp_happy with an animation action (mh.dg_hnd_salute_01, a salute) to play during his spoken line. This animation is simpler to deal with than the walking animation because it doesn't displace the actor; there's no need to define position keys or worry about enabling GAD.

We'll set camp_angry's headlook so that she turns toward camp_happy while he's speaking; when we subsequently switch cameras to show her line of dialog she'll already be looking in his direction.

For camp_happy's next line, however, we'll make the headtracking change visible during his shot so the player will see how his attention has switched to camp_angry. Note that we can reuse the existing "Dialogue" and "Headtracking" tracks for this actor; we don't need to create a new track for every single action that an actor performs. So long as the durations of the actions on a track don't overlap they can coexist peacefully.

Finally, after camp_angry's last line we'll set her headtracking to look back toward the player. He's going to get the next word in when we integrate this cutscene into a conversation so this is a good way to indicate that the conversation's focus has gone to the player now.

Once we've finished crafting the cutscene we now know how long its duration needs to be. You can now go to the conversation's properties in the Object Inspector and set the cutscene's duration to the desired length.

The finished timeline of our cutscene:

[[Image:Cutscene finished timeline.png|border]]

[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:Cutscenes]]

=== Cutscene Tips and Tricks ===

Here are a few tips and tricks that might save the cutscene creator some time and perhaps hair pulling.

- Head tracking is often used to look at another actor or a visible item in the cutscene. However you can further manipulate the head of the actor by having the actor look at invisible objects. You can have the actor look from one invisible object to another or move the invisible object around in the cutscene to get the actor to look at things independent of visible actors or items.

- You may find it useful to give meaningful names to your cameras if you are using more than one or two. (You might name a camera after the actor or placeable that it follows or name one camera ‘close-up’ and another ‘wide-angle’ for example.)

- If you are panning a camera around a room following a series of actors or placeables and you find that the camera suddenly decides to rotate in the other direction you can force it to stay moving in the direction you desire by adding or subtracting 360 degrees from the position/orientation you are using to move the camera.

- Feel free to experiment with animations. Try using animations that are not normally meant for your actor type, you might find some interesting or bizarre movements for your actor.

- You can put multiple actions along one track as long as they do not overlap rather than using many different tracks.

- Pay attention to what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to when moving your cameras. Step will jump the camera from position to position while Bezier and Linear will move the camera in a smoother motion. If you are not getting the desired effect when moving cameras check what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to.

- If you have a longer more detailed cutscene you can keep the number of cameras you use to a reasonable number by just moving one (or more) around while another camera is the ‘active’ camera.

- For testing purposes change the length of the cutscene in the cutscenes properties to a smaller value and enlarge that number as you add on to the cutscene. In this way you won’t need to wait for a long period of time for the cutscene to end.

- After placing an animation on a track you can speed up the animation by left clicking on the small circular arrows on one end and dragging it shorter or make the animation play slower by dragging the animation longer on the track.

- You can make the content of your scene seem to change by placing invisible objects in the cutsence, using an fx to obscure the view and making the object visible while the fx is playing. (For example you might have some invisible rock debris. Use a cave in fx with clouds of dust to obscure the screen. While the fx is playing make the debris visible. When the fx is finished your debris will be in place.)

- If you find that your actor is walking across surfaces (such as water for instance) when they should be following the ground you can set ‘items follow surface’ in the area that your cutscene is based on. The actor should then walk on the ground and thus wade into the water. Conversely if you want a character or placeable to not follow the surface of the ground (for instance if you want a placeable or actor to be near or on the surface of water) move the actor or placeable higher by adjusting the Z axis of the boat or actor. (An example of using a placeable partly submerged in water might be something like a boat.)

- In a cutscene you can only activate things that are unique. As in if you plopped down three identical chests in an area, when trying to activate them all in a cutscene it will not allow this and gives you a warning message. In the example above you would have to make three different chests (though they could look the same) to be able to activate them all in the cutscene.
{{Languages}}

Cutscene tutorial

2012-05-15T05:36:57Z

Lord Methrid: /* Position and orientation keys */

{{Infobox cutscenes}}

[[Cutscene]]s can be stand-alone cinematic sequences that are triggered by scripts in the course of the game, or they can be inserted into [[conversation]]s in place of the simplified cinematics that conversations can automatically generate.

Our example situation in this tutorial will serve as the beginning of a conversation between the player and two NPCs. The player has just arrived at the campsite where these two NPCs are staying. He walks up to the fire. One of the NPCs is happy to see the player and greets him, but the other is distrustful. The two share a brief exchange to establish this before the interactive part of the conversation begins.

== Creating a new cutscene ==

To create a brand new blank cutscene resource, create a new resource in the usual way:

[[Image:New resource.png|border]]

The result is opened in the cutscene editor.

[[Image:Cutscene new.png|border]]

There are two basic sections to the cutscene editor; the viewports (top) and the timeline (bottom).

=== Viewports ===

{{sidebox|
* Viewports can be attached to various cameras to preview what they can see
* Add a "Safe Frame" to camera viewports to ensure the correct aspect ratio
* Set a viewport to "User" to see where cameras are positioned from another perspective. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar
}}

The camera viewports in the cutscene editor work similarly to the viewports in the stage editor. You can set the number and layout of viewports under the "View" menu:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport layout.png|border]]

And for each individual viewport you can select which camera it's showing and set other display options by right-clicking on the title bar of the viewport:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport properties.png|border]]

When you set a viewport to show the view through one of the cutscene's cameras, it's a good idea to turn on that viewport's "Safe Frame" option as well. This will put a border on the viewport showing what will be visible when the cutscene plays.

Note that when you play the cutscene in the cutscene editor, only the currently selected viewport (the one with the blue title bar) will show the cutscene "live" - the others won't update the view displayed in them until they're selected. To preview the cutscene as the player would see it in the game, you will need to set one of the viewports to "Active Camera" and ensure that this viewport is selected when you play the cutscene in the editor. If the "Active Camera" viewport turns gray, try setting the cutscene property "Enable Level Effects" to false.

=== Timeline ===

{{sidebox|
* There is always exactly one MASTER object in a cutscene.
* Each active object is listed on the timeline, with multiple "tracks" for each.
* All objects have position tracks (divided into X, Y and Z tracks). Some objects have additional built-in tracks.
* Other actions and effects can be added to generic tracks. Objects can have as many generic tracks as you want.
}}

Below the viewport is the timeline. Along the top of the timeline is a time scale; it can be set to show in frames (at 30 frames per second) or milliseconds by changing the "Time Scale" property of the cutscene in the object inspector. A marker indicates what point in the timeline the viewports are currently showing.

Below is a set of rows containing the various actors, cameras, and other objects active in the cutscene. This is where most of the editing is going to take place. Each object will have a number of "tracks", which will contain commands that are sent to the actors at particular times in the course of the cutscene.

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial timeline.png|border]]

The first object in the track list is the "MASTER" object. This is a special object that every cutscene has exactly one of. The MASTER object is the cutscene equivalent to the root node of a conversation tree, a repository for global settings and effects. For example, the MASTER object contains the track that determines which camera is active at any given time. The MASTER object cannot be deleted. By default, a MASTER object appears in the cutscene editor as a small greenish sphere; you can change the MASTER object's appearance in the cutscene option settings.

A new cutscene also has a camera, called Camera 1. This camera can be deleted or renamed if you like; we can add new cameras as needed later on.

Every object has "Position" and "Orientation" tracks that control their locations in space. Cameras also have a FOV (field of view) track.

Objects can have other "generic" tracks added by the editor as needed. These generic tracks contain all the other commands and directions we can give.

== The setting of the cutscene ==

{{sidebox|
* The MASTER object should be moved somewhere near the center of your cutscene.
* You can optionally set a stage for your cutscene, enabling stage-related actions for objects.
}}

Establishing the setting of a cutscene is done in the object inspector in the group of properties labeled "Setting". The most important of these is the "Area" property, which allows you to set the cutscene in an existing [[area]]. We already have a suitable area that was created in an earlier tutorial; the area "great_outdoors".

By default the MASTER object and Camera 1 will be located at the coordinates 0,0,0 in the area. You'll want to move the camera to the appropriate location within the area using standard [[3D control]]s for movement and view management. The MASTER object is invisible when the cutscene is played in-game so it usually doesn't matter where you put it. However, there are some settings that depend on the MASTER object's location - for example, you can set level-of-detail for models so that the model's LOD varies depending on how close it is to the MASTER object - so it's probably a good idea to put MASTER somewhere near the middle of where you'll be having the cutscene's action take place.

You can also set a stage for the cutscene. This is optional, but setting a stage enables "Jump to Stage Place" and "Jump to Stage Camera" actions that could help make setting the cutscene up easier if you already have a good stage defined in the area.

=== Adding objects and creatures ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects already present in the area the cutscene is set in are inactive by default. You need to activate them to control them.
* Other objects can be added from the resource palette as normal.
}}

All of the objects that are normally present in the area (such as creatures and placeables) will be visible in the cutscene editor, but they'll all initially be marked as "inactive". This means that, although they'll be visible in the cutscene when it plays, they won't be controllable; they'll just do whatever ambient activities they would be doing normally. In the case of our campsite area there are two creatures that were placed here in the area editor; the happy camper, named camp_happy, and the angry camper, named camp_angry. We need to seize control of them to make them active participants in the cutscene's activities. To make them active, right-click on them and select "activate objects":

[[Image:Cutscene activate object.png|border]]

The object will then become an active object in the cutscene, getting its own entry in the timeline that will allow you to control its actions.

[[Image:Cutscene object activated.png|border]]

We'll activate both of these campers since they'll both be taking part in the cutscene's dialogue.

You can also add objects that aren't normally a part of the area. Simply open the object palette, select the creature or placeable you wish to use in the cutscene, and then click in the viewport to add the object to that location. It will automatically be made active and get an entry in the timeline. The player won't see these objects during regular play, since they're not a part of the area - they're only in the cutscene.

If you want to make an area object disappear during the cutscene you'll need to activate it (allowing you to control it) and then add a track with an action that makes it invisible in the first frame. It will go back to normal again when the cutscene ends and the game resumes, cutscenes are run entirely separate from the main action of the game and have no direct effects on it.

=== Adding the player ===

{{sidebox|
* Use the "Mapping Tag" property on an actor to make the game replace it with another object (such as PLAYER) at run-time.
}}

Normally we don't have to worry about placing the player in an area since the player controls his own movements and actions. But when we're doing a cutscene we can control the player just like any other actor, so we'll need a way to insert the player as an active object. Furthermore, since we'll have no idea what the player is going to look like at any given moment, we'll need to have a way to insert the player as he appears in the game when the cutscene begins.

This is done by inserting a "dummy" virtual actor and then setting the actor's "Mapping Tag" property to the special "PLAYER" tag.

[[Image:Cutscene dummy player.png|border]]

It doesn't matter what the dummy actor looks like now, it will be replaced with the player's character later on, so we'll just use a default male human model to make it both simple and obvious.

There are ways to tweak the way the cutscene plays based on other characteristics of the player, for example by modifying the position of the camera to account for the player's height or by adding additional dummies to represent followers. We won't go into these more advanced topics in this tutorial.

=== Adding cameras ===

{{sidebox|
* Remember to enable Safe Frame when attaching a viewport to a camera.
* Use an "Active Camera" viewport to preview the cutscene.
* Use a "User" viewport to see camera positions from the outside. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar.
}}

We could film a cutscene entirely from one camera if we liked, either as a single static shot or by moving the camera around to new positions as needed. It's easier and more convenient in most cases just to add several different cameras, however, and use the "Active Camera" track on the MASTER object to switch between them.

For our cutscene we're going to want three different cameras; one camera that's a wide shot showing the player arriving at the campfire, one camera focused on the angry camper, and one focused on the happy camper. We could add more than just these three to make the scene even more dynamic but for simplicity we'll stick to just those for now. We can add more later.

Cameras are added by right-clicking in the viewport and selecting "Insert → Camera".

[[Image:Cutscene insert camera.png|border]]

You can then position them using standard [[3D control]]s. To make it easier to get the camera set up with the correct view, a good technique is to set one of the viewports to display the camera's feed; you can then reorient and reposition the camera using that viewport's camera controls while getting immediate feedback as to what the camera will see in its new state.

We're also going to rename the three cameras at this point with names intended to remind us of what their purposes are. We'll name them "Arrival Camera", "Happy Camera", and "Angry Camera". We'll want "Arrival Camera" to be active initially, so we may as well use the original camera for this role; it's already set active by default. We'll see how to switch which camera is active later in this tutorial.

We now have all the basic props we need to get the cutscene going.

== Adding an animation to an actor ==

{{sidebox|
* Set the "Pose" property for actors to make them breathe and fidget naturally when not doing other animations.
* Other animations are set by adding "Play Animation" actions to a generic track.
* Animation filenames are often arcane and hard to find.
}}

If you play the cutscene now the first thing you'll probably notice is that the actors are all standing perfectly motionless. Normally someone who's standing still isn't really standing ''perfectly'' still; they breathe, they shift their weight from foot to foot, and so forth. Since almost every actor we use is going to need to do this we don't want to have to spend a lot of effort setting it up, and fortunately we don't have to. Every actor has a "Pose" property in the object inspector. Simply set this pose to "Standing Neutral" and the actors will display this default subtle movement whenever no other animations are being explicitly imposed on them.

[[Image:Cutscene set pose.png|border]]

Our next task is somewhat less trivial; we want to show the player walking up to the fire. We're going to have to add a walking animation to the player's actor that runs for a short period of time and then stops.

To do this we'll need to add a new track to the actor's timeline. Right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "Add Track" from the resulting menu:

[[Image:Cutscene add track.png|border]]

The new track will be named "New Track" by default and will start out empty. Actors in cutscenes will sometimes have dozens of tracks directing their actions so we'll want to rename the track to something a little more informative. In this case we'll name it "Walk to fire". To have it actually cause the player's actor to walk to the fire we'll need to add a "[[Play animation]]" action to it. Right-click on the track and select "Add Action" to get the menu to select this.

[[Image:Cutscene add action.png|border]]

The action will be added starting at the point you're currently viewing in the timeline, so you may wish to move the timeline's time slider back to the beginning before adding this animation. You can reposition an action along the timeline simply by dragging it with the mouse.

Initially the action has no animation associated with it. To set the animation, select the action in the timeline and then in the Object Inspector go to the "Animation" property and click on the ellipsis ([[Image:ellipsis.png|link=]]) button.

Unfortunately this is where things turn a bit arcane since the names of the various animation files are often very unclear and not all will appear in the default list. You may need to resort to trial and error to find one you like, but there are many hundreds of animations available in the game's resources so this could take some time. See [[animation list]] and [http://social.bioware.com/project/30/#files Beerfish Excel Utilities] for a list of many of them.

Note that only a single animation can play at any time on a given track. However, it is possible to have multiple animations for a character, each of which must be on a different track. This is essential in order to be able to blend animations together as detailed in [[Play_animation#Blending_Animations]]. Animation blending is necessary in order to have your characters transition seamlessly from one animation to another, which is essential to making character movement look natural.

In this case the animation we want, "mh.dg_f_5p" ("male human dialog forward five paces"), doesn't appear in the default list of animations available in the animation picker. You'll need to click the ellipsis button next to the "Custom Animation" field and find it in the complete list of all animation resources.

[[Image:Cutscene finding an animation.png|border]]

If you try playing the cutscene now you'll see that the player's actor will spend a little over five seconds walking and then come to a natural stop - about as long as we needed. But the actor will be animated in place, his legs taking steps but not actually moving him anywhere. This is where position keys and GAD comes in.

== Moving an actor ==

=== Position and orientation keys ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects can be moved over time by setting "key frames" on their position and orientation tracks.
* Intermediate frames are interpolated between key frames.
* You can set the curve type between key frames with the "transition out" property for each key.
}}

Every object in a cutscene has a pre-defined "Position" track with three sub-tracks for its X, Y and Z coordinates. Most objects also have a pre-defined "Orientation" track with three subtracks for roll, pitch, and yaw. These tracks can be used to cause an object to move around within the area over the course of the cutscene.

Movement is handled by setting the position and orientation of objects at specific points in time, called key frames, and then interpolating intermediate positions and orientations. To set a key frame, right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "key position". This will set a key for the current position and orientation at the current time in the timeline. You can set position and orientation keys separately if you like. Since this operation is so common there's a very convenient shortcut for it; "k" inserts a key for the currently selected object's position and orientation, "p" inserts a key for its position, and "o" inserts a key for its orientation. Alternately, select the object and click the key command in the toolbar: [[Image:IconKey.png|link=]]

[[Image:Cutscene key selection.png|border]]

For our purposes right now all we'll need to do is set a key frame at the beginning of the timeline. Move the pointer to the beginning, select the player actor, and set a key. Small boxes will appear on the position and orientation tracks to mark the key frame.

[[Image:Cutscene key marker.png|border]]

These markers essentially mean "at this particular point in time, dummy_player will be in this particular place and facing in this particular direction."

To get an actor to move over time you could set two key frames - one at the beginning of the movement, with the actor in his starting position, and one at the end of the movement, with the actor at his end position. You can set how the cutscene engine interpolates between the two positions by setting the "Transition Out" property of the starting keyframe to either Bezier (a smooth curve), Linear (a straight line), or Step (a sudden jump from the starting position to the end position). See the [[curve editor]] page for more detail.

We're not going to actually do this in this case, however; we'll try it at a later point in this tutorial to move a camera around. For this particular actor it would be difficult to manually match the actor's walking action with his motion over the ground. If the animation and the movement don't match the actor's feet will "skate" unrealistically along the surface.

There's an easier way to match an animation such as this one with movement through the scene; a mechanism called GAD.

=== Using GAD ===

{{sidebox|
* GAD is a mechanism by which an animation applies a built-in displacement to the object it's animating.
* You need to set at least one key frame for an object to use GAD, even if you don't otherwise use key frames to move it.
}}

GAD is a displacement that is automatically added to the actor's current position as the animation plays. Each animation has its own GAD information built into it, custom-designed to make the actor move in a manner appropriate to its actions. If we enable it the actor will be moved forward as the animation plays.

Not all animations have GAD associated with them. For example, having an actor wave his hand wouldn't displace him, so there would be no GAD associated with that animation. We only need to worry about GAD in cases like this one where the animation should accompany movement.

To enable GAD select the animation action and set "Play Gad" to true in the object inspector. If no key frames have been defined for the actor the cutscene editor will pop up a warning at this point suggesting that we add position and orientation keys before we add GAD:

[[Image:Cutscene gad warning.png|border]]

It's important to set at least one set of keys for an object using GAD. The animation's GAD may seem to work correctly without it at first, but unexpected and unpredictable errors could occur later that will send the actor careening off into the distance.

Once we've set a key frame and have set the action's "Play Gad" option to true you'll see that the actor now moves forward as he walks. This is good, but since we started him off in the position he's meant to end in it results in the actor walking straight through the campfire. You'll need to move the actor back so that he starts farther away from the fire.

Note that if you've already set a keyframe as described in the previous section you'll need to re-set it for the actor's new location (or alternately set the "update keys" mode with the [[Image:IconUpdateKeys.png|link=]] tool), otherwise the moment the animation starts the actor will instantly jump back to the place he was where you set the keyframe. Once you set a keyframe for an actor, moving the actor around in the cutscene editor doesn't really change its position unless you re-set the keyframe to the new position. Keyframes and the curves interpolating between them always take precedence.
^
|
(ED: This need extreme explanation by someone that knows how to do this properly because this paragraph is obtuse!!)

{{sidebox|
* An animation's "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property makes Gad's displacement persist after the animation ends.
}}

The other GAD properties are set to the most appropriate defaults automatically when you select an animation but one particular property bears mention here in case you run into trouble with it later on; the "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property. In the case of this walking animation it defaults to true. That means that once the animation ends, the displacement that the actor has undergone as a result of it will remain in effect - he will stay in the final position he walked to. If this were set to false, once the animation ended all of the displacement the actor had gained as a result would be undone and he'd instantly jump back to where he started walking from again. If at some point in the future you find your actors doing this, this property is the first place to look for the answer.

There's one final detail we'll tweak here. The walking animation begins with the player starting from a standstill, which is not the impression we want to convey; the player has supposedly been walking for some time before the camera started rolling. We could set the animation to begin playing partway through by changing the animation action's "Start Offset" property, but since this is happening at the beginning of the cutscene's timeline an easier approach is to simply select the animation action and drag it so that it begins a half second before the cutscene does. The cutscene will only begin displaying at the 0 mark and anything that falls before this point in time will never be shown so the initial half second of the actor's walk animation will go unseen.

== Moving a camera ==

The scene now has some of the dynamic action we wanted, showing the player walking up to the campfire and stopping at its edge. But it's still a rather dull introduction and we can do better. Instead of a static camera shot we can set the camera so that it pans across the scene to follow the player's arrival.

Select the Arrival Camera and open up its track list. It has Position and Orientation tracks just like the other actors, and can have keyframes set just the same. With the time marker set to 0, move the Arrival Camera so that its view shows how you want the shot framed at the beginning of the cutscene. In our example we're going to set it so that it shows the player in the center of the frame. With the camera still selected, press "k" to set a key frame for the camera.

[[Image:Cutscene camera start position.png|border]]

(You may notice that the Field of View (FOV) track also gets a key marker. We won't be changing the camera's FOV so you can ignore that.)

Next move the timeline scrubber to the end of the walking animation at the 5 second mark. The player's actor will now be at the final position where he'll be standing for the conversation. Change the camera's orientation, panning to the right so that all of the actors can be seen in its field of view. In our case the camera's too close to encompass everyone so we'll also move its position to allow it to see them all.

Once you have the shot lined up correctly, press "k" to set a second keyframe.

[[Image:Cutscene camera end position.png|border]]

You may notice that the User viewports now show a red line tracing out the selected object's trajectory through space (if not, you may need to click the "show trajectories" [[Image:IconShowTrajectory.png|link=]] button in the toolbar). As the first five seconds of the cutscene plays, the Arrival Camera should slide smoothly along the red line and rotate smoothly on its axes to transition from the first keyframe to the second keyframe (If it suddenly jumps from one position to the other instead you may need to click the "default curve mode" tool [[Image:IconDefaultCurveMode.png|link=]] and try setting the keys again, or change the "transition out" property of the keyframe to Bezier).

You can fine-tune the trajectory of the camera by adding additional keyframes between the starting and ending ones. In our case we see that when the time marker is set to the middle of the camera's movement the player slips slightly out of frame.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position unadjusted.png|border]]

We can fix this by changing the camera's position and orientation as needed, and then adding a new keyframe with "k". In this case we'll pull the camera back slightly so that its motion through space becomes a curve instead of a straight line.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position adjusted.png|border]]

We now have a nice, dynamic establishing shot. The scene begins with the player alone and in the center of the camera's shot, and as he walks toward the fire the camera moves and pans around him to show him arriving in the presence of our two campers.

== Switching cameras ==

{{sidebox|
* A track on the MASTER object defines which camera is currently "active."
}}

Once the player arrives he is going to be greeted by the camper who is happy to see him. To give a clear shot of who's doing the talking, we'll want to switch the active camera from Arrival Camera to Happy Camera.

The track where the active camera gets changed is attached to the MASTER object. Move the timeline's time indicator to the point in time where you wish to switch active cameras, in this case 5.5 seconds (giving the scene a half-second view of the player after he's come to a halt). Right-click on the Active Camera track and select Add Action. The only option available for this track is the "Switch Camera" action so go ahead and add one. In the new Switch Camera action's properties set it to switch the active camera to Happy Camera.

Now when the cutscene is played we'll get an establishing shot showing the player walking up to the fire and then switch to a closeup of the happy camper so that he can deliver his greeting.

[[Image:Cutscene switch active camera.png|border]]

== Adding dialogue ==

{{sidebox|
* Lines of dialog can be inserted from an existing [[conversation]] resource. For convenience, create a new conversation to hold the dialog for a cutscene.
* Caption text, voice over, and facial performance are all included with each line.
* If you edit the conversation later, the changes will be reflected in the cutscene. Remember to generate new VO and FaceFX in the conversation editor.
}}

There are three major components to dialog in Dragon Age; the text of the line being spoken (which is displayed as a caption at the top of the screen), the voice-over for the line being spoken, and the facial performance that makes the virtual actor lip-synch and display appropriate emotions.

There's already a tool in the toolset that is designed for handling all of these things; the conversation editor. Actors in a cutscene can be given "Speak Line" actions that cause them to deliver lines from an existing dialog, with all three components added together into the actor's performance automatically.

Here we are going to add dialogue to a cutscene (though sometimes it is better to take a [[Conversation#Conversation-centred_approach | conversation-centred approach]]).

To create the dialog for this cutscene we'll now create a new conversation resource. This conversation is not going to be used in the game directly so we'll be able to ignore many of the more advanced features and settings covered in the conversation tutorial; its only purpose is to serve as a repository of dialog lines for use in this cutscene.

The following screenshot shows our intended conversation. The only things that we need to define for it is the text of the dialog and optionally the emotion settings for RoboBrad to use when generating facial performance. As with our previous conversation we'll generate synthesized placeholder voice-over and generate FaceFX based on that; when we record real voice over later on we can simply update this conversation with it and the cutscene's performance will change to match.

[[Image:Cutscene conversation.png|border]]

To help keep track of which lines are spoken by which actors you could also optionally set the speaker tag on each line to identify who's doing the talking. This particular conversation has only two speakers so we won't bother with that. The cutscene engine won't need speaker tags, we'll be explicitly telling it who is saying each line. You'll only need to set those things if you wish to preview the conversation before using its lines in the cutscene.

Once you've created your dialogue go back to the cutscene editor and add a new track to the camp_happy actor. Rename it to something informative, such as "Dialogue". Move the timeline marker to the spot where you want the actor to start speaking and add a new "Speak Line" action.

In the Speak Line action's properties, set the "Source Conversation" property to the conversation resource we just created. Then, select the specific line you want the actor to speak in the "Source Line" property (it will have a drop-down menu with all of the lines from the source conversation in it).

That's all you need to do to get the actors to talk. You may wish to add one other detail at this point; head tracking. This is the action that causes actors to turn their heads toward a specific target, usually the person they're talking to or who is talking to them. It's added as its own action, so create another track and add a headtracking action to it with the player as the target. In this case we want the happy camper to turn his head toward the player right before he starts speaking.

== Adding other details ==

{{sidebox|
* Headtracking actions make actors look at other objects in the cutscene.
* You can have more than one action on a track provided they don't overlap.
}}

We've now gone through all the basics, so we'll just finish fleshing out the conversation with a few other details that are done the same way as the examples above.

To add a little more animation to the scene, we add another track for camp_happy with an animation action (mh.dg_hnd_salute_01, a salute) to play during his spoken line. This animation is simpler to deal with than the walking animation because it doesn't displace the actor; there's no need to define position keys or worry about enabling GAD.

We'll set camp_angry's headlook so that she turns toward camp_happy while he's speaking; when we subsequently switch cameras to show her line of dialog she'll already be looking in his direction.

For camp_happy's next line, however, we'll make the headtracking change visible during his shot so the player will see how his attention has switched to camp_angry. Note that we can reuse the existing "Dialogue" and "Headtracking" tracks for this actor; we don't need to create a new track for every single action that an actor performs. So long as the durations of the actions on a track don't overlap they can coexist peacefully.

Finally, after camp_angry's last line we'll set her headtracking to look back toward the player. He's going to get the next word in when we integrate this cutscene into a conversation so this is a good way to indicate that the conversation's focus has gone to the player now.

Once we've finished crafting the cutscene we now know how long its duration needs to be. You can now go to the conversation's properties in the Object Inspector and set the cutscene's duration to the desired length.

The finished timeline of our cutscene:

[[Image:Cutscene finished timeline.png|border]]

[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:Cutscenes]]

=== Cutscene Tips and Tricks ===

Here are a few tips and tricks that might save the cutscene creator some time and perhaps hair pulling.

- Head tracking is often used to look at another actor or a visible item in the cutscene. However you can further manipulate the head of the actor by having the actor look at invisible objects. You can have the actor look from one invisible object to another or move the invisible object around in the cutscene to get the actor to look at things independent of visible actors or items.

- You may find it useful to give meaningful names to your cameras if you are using more than one or two. (You might name a camera after the actor or placeable that it follows or name one camera ‘close-up’ and another ‘wide-angle’ for example.)

- If you are panning a camera around a room following a series of actors or placeables and you find that the camera suddenly decides to rotate in the other direction you can force it to stay moving in the direction you desire by adding or subtracting 360 degrees from the position/orientation you are using to move the camera.

- Feel free to experiment with animations. Try using animations that are not normally meant for your actor type, you might find some interesting or bizarre movements for your actor.

- You can put multiple actions along one track as long as they do not overlap rather than using many different tracks.

- Pay attention to what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to when moving your cameras. Step will jump the camera from position to position while Bezier and Linear will move the camera in a smoother motion. If you are not getting the desired effect when moving cameras check what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to.

- If you have a longer more detailed cutscene you can keep the number of cameras you use to a reasonable number by just moving one (or more) around while another camera is the ‘active’ camera.

- For testing purposes change the length of the cutscene in the cutscenes properties to a smaller value and enlarge that number as you add on to the cutscene. In this way you won’t need to wait for a long period of time for the cutscene to end.

- After placing an animation on a track you can speed up the animation by left clicking on the small circular arrows on one end and dragging it shorter or make the animation play slower by dragging the animation longer on the track.

- You can make the content of your scene seem to change by placing invisible objects in the cutsence, using an fx to obscure the view and making the object visible while the fx is playing. (For example you might have some invisible rock debris. Use a cave in fx with clouds of dust to obscure the screen. While the fx is playing make the debris visible. When the fx is finished your debris will be in place.)

- If you find that your actor is walking across surfaces (such as water for instance) when they should be following the ground you can set ‘items follow surface’ in the area that your cutscene is based on. The actor should then walk on the ground and thus wade into the water. Conversely if you want a character or placeable to not follow the surface of the ground (for instance if you want a placeable or actor to be near or on the surface of water) move the actor or placeable higher by adjusting the Z axis of the boat or actor. (An example of using a placeable partly submerged in water might be something like a boat.)

- In a cutscene you can only activate things that are unique. As in if you plopped down three identical chests in an area, when trying to activate them all in a cutscene it will not allow this and gives you a warning message. In the example above you would have to make three different chests (though they could look the same) to be able to activate them all in the cutscene.
{{Languages}}

Cutscene tutorial

2012-05-15T05:13:26Z

Lord Methrid: /* Timeline */

{{Infobox cutscenes}}

[[Cutscene]]s can be stand-alone cinematic sequences that are triggered by scripts in the course of the game, or they can be inserted into [[conversation]]s in place of the simplified cinematics that conversations can automatically generate.

Our example situation in this tutorial will serve as the beginning of a conversation between the player and two NPCs. The player has just arrived at the campsite where these two NPCs are staying. He walks up to the fire. One of the NPCs is happy to see the player and greets him, but the other is distrustful. The two share a brief exchange to establish this before the interactive part of the conversation begins.

== Creating a new cutscene ==

To create a brand new blank cutscene resource, create a new resource in the usual way:

[[Image:New resource.png|border]]

The result is opened in the cutscene editor.

[[Image:Cutscene new.png|border]]

There are two basic sections to the cutscene editor; the viewports (top) and the timeline (bottom).

=== Viewports ===

{{sidebox|
* Viewports can be attached to various cameras to preview what they can see
* Add a "Safe Frame" to camera viewports to ensure the correct aspect ratio
* Set a viewport to "User" to see where cameras are positioned from another perspective. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar
}}

The camera viewports in the cutscene editor work similarly to the viewports in the stage editor. You can set the number and layout of viewports under the "View" menu:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport layout.png|border]]

And for each individual viewport you can select which camera it's showing and set other display options by right-clicking on the title bar of the viewport:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport properties.png|border]]

When you set a viewport to show the view through one of the cutscene's cameras, it's a good idea to turn on that viewport's "Safe Frame" option as well. This will put a border on the viewport showing what will be visible when the cutscene plays.

Note that when you play the cutscene in the cutscene editor, only the currently selected viewport (the one with the blue title bar) will show the cutscene "live" - the others won't update the view displayed in them until they're selected. To preview the cutscene as the player would see it in the game, you will need to set one of the viewports to "Active Camera" and ensure that this viewport is selected when you play the cutscene in the editor. If the "Active Camera" viewport turns gray, try setting the cutscene property "Enable Level Effects" to false.

=== Timeline ===

{{sidebox|
* There is always exactly one MASTER object in a cutscene.
* Each active object is listed on the timeline, with multiple "tracks" for each.
* All objects have position tracks (divided into X, Y and Z tracks). Some objects have additional built-in tracks.
* Other actions and effects can be added to generic tracks. Objects can have as many generic tracks as you want.
}}

Below the viewport is the timeline. Along the top of the timeline is a time scale; it can be set to show in frames (at 30 frames per second) or milliseconds by changing the "Time Scale" property of the cutscene in the object inspector. A marker indicates what point in the timeline the viewports are currently showing.

Below is a set of rows containing the various actors, cameras, and other objects active in the cutscene. This is where most of the editing is going to take place. Each object will have a number of "tracks", which will contain commands that are sent to the actors at particular times in the course of the cutscene.

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial timeline.png|border]]

The first object in the track list is the "MASTER" object. This is a special object that every cutscene has exactly one of. The MASTER object is the cutscene equivalent to the root node of a conversation tree, a repository for global settings and effects. For example, the MASTER object contains the track that determines which camera is active at any given time. The MASTER object cannot be deleted. By default, a MASTER object appears in the cutscene editor as a small greenish sphere; you can change the MASTER object's appearance in the cutscene option settings.

A new cutscene also has a camera, called Camera 1. This camera can be deleted or renamed if you like; we can add new cameras as needed later on.

Every object has "Position" and "Orientation" tracks that control their locations in space. Cameras also have a FOV (field of view) track.

Objects can have other "generic" tracks added by the editor as needed. These generic tracks contain all the other commands and directions we can give.

== The setting of the cutscene ==

{{sidebox|
* The MASTER object should be moved somewhere near the center of your cutscene.
* You can optionally set a stage for your cutscene, enabling stage-related actions for objects.
}}

Establishing the setting of a cutscene is done in the object inspector in the group of properties labeled "Setting". The most important of these is the "Area" property, which allows you to set the cutscene in an existing [[area]]. We already have a suitable area that was created in an earlier tutorial; the area "great_outdoors".

By default the MASTER object and Camera 1 will be located at the coordinates 0,0,0 in the area. You'll want to move the camera to the appropriate location within the area using standard [[3D control]]s for movement and view management. The MASTER object is invisible when the cutscene is played in-game so it usually doesn't matter where you put it. However, there are some settings that depend on the MASTER object's location - for example, you can set level-of-detail for models so that the model's LOD varies depending on how close it is to the MASTER object - so it's probably a good idea to put MASTER somewhere near the middle of where you'll be having the cutscene's action take place.

You can also set a stage for the cutscene. This is optional, but setting a stage enables "Jump to Stage Place" and "Jump to Stage Camera" actions that could help make setting the cutscene up easier if you already have a good stage defined in the area.

=== Adding objects and creatures ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects already present in the area the cutscene is set in are inactive by default. You need to activate them to control them.
* Other objects can be added from the resource palette as normal.
}}

All of the objects that are normally present in the area (such as creatures and placeables) will be visible in the cutscene editor, but they'll all initially be marked as "inactive". This means that, although they'll be visible in the cutscene when it plays, they won't be controllable; they'll just do whatever ambient activities they would be doing normally. In the case of our campsite area there are two creatures that were placed here in the area editor; the happy camper, named camp_happy, and the angry camper, named camp_angry. We need to seize control of them to make them active participants in the cutscene's activities. To make them active, right-click on them and select "activate objects":

[[Image:Cutscene activate object.png|border]]

The object will then become an active object in the cutscene, getting its own entry in the timeline that will allow you to control its actions.

[[Image:Cutscene object activated.png|border]]

We'll activate both of these campers since they'll both be taking part in the cutscene's dialogue.

You can also add objects that aren't normally a part of the area. Simply open the object palette, select the creature or placeable you wish to use in the cutscene, and then click in the viewport to add the object to that location. It will automatically be made active and get an entry in the timeline. The player won't see these objects during regular play, since they're not a part of the area - they're only in the cutscene.

If you want to make an area object disappear during the cutscene you'll need to activate it (allowing you to control it) and then add a track with an action that makes it invisible in the first frame. It will go back to normal again when the cutscene ends and the game resumes, cutscenes are run entirely separate from the main action of the game and have no direct effects on it.

=== Adding the player ===

{{sidebox|
* Use the "Mapping Tag" property on an actor to make the game replace it with another object (such as PLAYER) at run-time.
}}

Normally we don't have to worry about placing the player in an area since the player controls his own movements and actions. But when we're doing a cutscene we can control the player just like any other actor, so we'll need a way to insert the player as an active object. Furthermore, since we'll have no idea what the player is going to look like at any given moment, we'll need to have a way to insert the player as he appears in the game when the cutscene begins.

This is done by inserting a "dummy" virtual actor and then setting the actor's "Mapping Tag" property to the special "PLAYER" tag.

[[Image:Cutscene dummy player.png|border]]

It doesn't matter what the dummy actor looks like now, it will be replaced with the player's character later on, so we'll just use a default male human model to make it both simple and obvious.

There are ways to tweak the way the cutscene plays based on other characteristics of the player, for example by modifying the position of the camera to account for the player's height or by adding additional dummies to represent followers. We won't go into these more advanced topics in this tutorial.

=== Adding cameras ===

{{sidebox|
* Remember to enable Safe Frame when attaching a viewport to a camera.
* Use an "Active Camera" viewport to preview the cutscene.
* Use a "User" viewport to see camera positions from the outside. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar.
}}

We could film a cutscene entirely from one camera if we liked, either as a single static shot or by moving the camera around to new positions as needed. It's easier and more convenient in most cases just to add several different cameras, however, and use the "Active Camera" track on the MASTER object to switch between them.

For our cutscene we're going to want three different cameras; one camera that's a wide shot showing the player arriving at the campfire, one camera focused on the angry camper, and one focused on the happy camper. We could add more than just these three to make the scene even more dynamic but for simplicity we'll stick to just those for now. We can add more later.

Cameras are added by right-clicking in the viewport and selecting "Insert → Camera".

[[Image:Cutscene insert camera.png|border]]

You can then position them using standard [[3D control]]s. To make it easier to get the camera set up with the correct view, a good technique is to set one of the viewports to display the camera's feed; you can then reorient and reposition the camera using that viewport's camera controls while getting immediate feedback as to what the camera will see in its new state.

We're also going to rename the three cameras at this point with names intended to remind us of what their purposes are. We'll name them "Arrival Camera", "Happy Camera", and "Angry Camera". We'll want "Arrival Camera" to be active initially, so we may as well use the original camera for this role; it's already set active by default. We'll see how to switch which camera is active later in this tutorial.

We now have all the basic props we need to get the cutscene going.

== Adding an animation to an actor ==

{{sidebox|
* Set the "Pose" property for actors to make them breathe and fidget naturally when not doing other animations.
* Other animations are set by adding "Play Animation" actions to a generic track.
* Animation filenames are often arcane and hard to find.
}}

If you play the cutscene now the first thing you'll probably notice is that the actors are all standing perfectly motionless. Normally someone who's standing still isn't really standing ''perfectly'' still; they breathe, they shift their weight from foot to foot, and so forth. Since almost every actor we use is going to need to do this we don't want to have to spend a lot of effort setting it up, and fortunately we don't have to. Every actor has a "Pose" property in the object inspector. Simply set this pose to "Standing Neutral" and the actors will display this default subtle movement whenever no other animations are being explicitly imposed on them.

[[Image:Cutscene set pose.png|border]]

Our next task is somewhat less trivial; we want to show the player walking up to the fire. We're going to have to add a walking animation to the player's actor that runs for a short period of time and then stops.

To do this we'll need to add a new track to the actor's timeline. Right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "Add Track" from the resulting menu:

[[Image:Cutscene add track.png|border]]

The new track will be named "New Track" by default and will start out empty. Actors in cutscenes will sometimes have dozens of tracks directing their actions so we'll want to rename the track to something a little more informative. In this case we'll name it "Walk to fire". To have it actually cause the player's actor to walk to the fire we'll need to add a "[[Play animation]]" action to it. Right-click on the track and select "Add Action" to get the menu to select this.

[[Image:Cutscene add action.png|border]]

The action will be added starting at the point you're currently viewing in the timeline, so you may wish to move the timeline's time slider back to the beginning before adding this animation. You can reposition an action along the timeline simply by dragging it with the mouse.

Initially the action has no animation associated with it. To set the animation, select the action in the timeline and then in the Object Inspector go to the "Animation" property and click on the ellipsis ([[Image:ellipsis.png|link=]]) button.

Unfortunately this is where things turn a bit arcane since the names of the various animation files are often very unclear and not all will appear in the default list. You may need to resort to trial and error to find one you like, but there are many hundreds of animations available in the game's resources so this could take some time. See [[animation list]] and [http://social.bioware.com/project/30/#files Beerfish Excel Utilities] for a list of many of them.

Note that only a single animation can play at any time on a given track. However, it is possible to have multiple animations for a character, each of which must be on a different track. This is essential in order to be able to blend animations together as detailed in [[Play_animation#Blending_Animations]]. Animation blending is necessary in order to have your characters transition seamlessly from one animation to another, which is essential to making character movement look natural.

In this case the animation we want, "mh.dg_f_5p" ("male human dialog forward five paces"), doesn't appear in the default list of animations available in the animation picker. You'll need to click the ellipsis button next to the "Custom Animation" field and find it in the complete list of all animation resources.

[[Image:Cutscene finding an animation.png|border]]

If you try playing the cutscene now you'll see that the player's actor will spend a little over five seconds walking and then come to a natural stop - about as long as we needed. But the actor will be animated in place, his legs taking steps but not actually moving him anywhere. This is where position keys and GAD comes in.

== Moving an actor ==

=== Position and orientation keys ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects be moved over time by setting "key frames" on their position and orientation tracks.
* Intermediate frames are interpolated between key frames.
* You can set the curve type between key frames with the "transition out" property for each key.
}}

Every object in a cutscene has a pre-defined "Position" track with three sub-tracks for its X, Y and Z coordinates. Most objects also have a pre-defined "Orientation" track with three subtracks for roll, pitch, and yaw. These tracks can be used to cause an object to move around within the area over the course of the cutscene.

Movement is handled by setting the position and orientation of objects at specific points in time, called key frames, and then interpolating intermediate positions and orientations. To set a key frame, right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "key position". This will set a key for the current position and orientation at the current time in the timeline. You can set position and orientation keys separately if you like. Since this operation is so common there's a very convenient shortcut for it; "k" inserts a key for the currently selected object's position and orientation, "p" inserts a key for its position, and "o" inserts a key for its orientation. Alternately, select the object and click the key command in the toolbar: [[Image:IconKey.png|link=]]

[[Image:Cutscene key selection.png|border]]

For our purposes right now all we'll need to do is set a key frame at the beginning of the timeline. Move the pointer to the beginning, select the player actor, and set a key. Small boxes will appear on the position and orientation tracks to mark the key frame.

[[Image:Cutscene key marker.png|border]]

These markers essentially mean "at this particular point in time, dummy_player will be in this particular place and facing in this particular direction."

To get an actor to move over time you could set two key frames - one at the beginning of the movement, with the actor in his starting position, and one at the end of the movement, with the actor at his end position. You can set how the cutscene engine interpolates between the two positions by setting the "Transition Out" property of the starting keyframe to either Bezier (a smooth curve), Linear (a straight line), or Step (a sudden jump from the starting position to the end position). See the [[curve editor]] page for more detail.

We're not going to actually do this in this case, however; we'll try it at a later point in this tutorial to move a camera around. For this particular actor it would be difficult to manually match the actor's walking action with his motion over the ground. If the animation and the movement don't match the actor's feet will "skate" unrealistically along the surface.

There's an easier way to match an animation such as this one with movement through the scene; a mechanism called GAD.

=== Using GAD ===

{{sidebox|
* GAD is a mechanism by which an animation applies a built-in displacement to the object it's animating.
* You need to set at least one key frame for an object to use GAD, even if you don't otherwise use key frames to move it.
}}

GAD is a displacement that is automatically added to the actor's current position as the animation plays. Each animation has its own GAD information built into it, custom-designed to make the actor move in a manner appropriate to its actions. If we enable it the actor will be moved forward as the animation plays.

Not all animations have GAD associated with them. For example, having an actor wave his hand wouldn't displace him, so there would be no GAD associated with that animation. We only need to worry about GAD in cases like this one where the animation should accompany movement.

To enable GAD select the animation action and set "Play Gad" to true in the object inspector. If no key frames have been defined for the actor the cutscene editor will pop up a warning at this point suggesting that we add position and orientation keys before we add GAD:

[[Image:Cutscene gad warning.png|border]]

It's important to set at least one set of keys for an object using GAD. The animation's GAD may seem to work correctly without it at first, but unexpected and unpredictable errors could occur later that will send the actor careening off into the distance.

Once we've set a key frame and have set the action's "Play Gad" option to true you'll see that the actor now moves forward as he walks. This is good, but since we started him off in the position he's meant to end in it results in the actor walking straight through the campfire. You'll need to move the actor back so that he starts farther away from the fire.

Note that if you've already set a keyframe as described in the previous section you'll need to re-set it for the actor's new location (or alternately set the "update keys" mode with the [[Image:IconUpdateKeys.png|link=]] tool), otherwise the moment the animation starts the actor will instantly jump back to the place he was where you set the keyframe. Once you set a keyframe for an actor, moving the actor around in the cutscene editor doesn't really change its position unless you re-set the keyframe to the new position. Keyframes and the curves interpolating between them always take precedence.
^
|
(ED: This need extreme explanation by someone that knows how to do this properly because this paragraph is obtuse!!)

{{sidebox|
* An animation's "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property makes Gad's displacement persist after the animation ends.
}}

The other GAD properties are set to the most appropriate defaults automatically when you select an animation but one particular property bears mention here in case you run into trouble with it later on; the "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property. In the case of this walking animation it defaults to true. That means that once the animation ends, the displacement that the actor has undergone as a result of it will remain in effect - he will stay in the final position he walked to. If this were set to false, once the animation ended all of the displacement the actor had gained as a result would be undone and he'd instantly jump back to where he started walking from again. If at some point in the future you find your actors doing this, this property is the first place to look for the answer.

There's one final detail we'll tweak here. The walking animation begins with the player starting from a standstill, which is not the impression we want to convey; the player has supposedly been walking for some time before the camera started rolling. We could set the animation to begin playing partway through by changing the animation action's "Start Offset" property, but since this is happening at the beginning of the cutscene's timeline an easier approach is to simply select the animation action and drag it so that it begins a half second before the cutscene does. The cutscene will only begin displaying at the 0 mark and anything that falls before this point in time will never be shown so the initial half second of the actor's walk animation will go unseen.

== Moving a camera ==

The scene now has some of the dynamic action we wanted, showing the player walking up to the campfire and stopping at its edge. But it's still a rather dull introduction and we can do better. Instead of a static camera shot we can set the camera so that it pans across the scene to follow the player's arrival.

Select the Arrival Camera and open up its track list. It has Position and Orientation tracks just like the other actors, and can have keyframes set just the same. With the time marker set to 0, move the Arrival Camera so that its view shows how you want the shot framed at the beginning of the cutscene. In our example we're going to set it so that it shows the player in the center of the frame. With the camera still selected, press "k" to set a key frame for the camera.

[[Image:Cutscene camera start position.png|border]]

(You may notice that the Field of View (FOV) track also gets a key marker. We won't be changing the camera's FOV so you can ignore that.)

Next move the timeline scrubber to the end of the walking animation at the 5 second mark. The player's actor will now be at the final position where he'll be standing for the conversation. Change the camera's orientation, panning to the right so that all of the actors can be seen in its field of view. In our case the camera's too close to encompass everyone so we'll also move its position to allow it to see them all.

Once you have the shot lined up correctly, press "k" to set a second keyframe.

[[Image:Cutscene camera end position.png|border]]

You may notice that the User viewports now show a red line tracing out the selected object's trajectory through space (if not, you may need to click the "show trajectories" [[Image:IconShowTrajectory.png|link=]] button in the toolbar). As the first five seconds of the cutscene plays, the Arrival Camera should slide smoothly along the red line and rotate smoothly on its axes to transition from the first keyframe to the second keyframe (If it suddenly jumps from one position to the other instead you may need to click the "default curve mode" tool [[Image:IconDefaultCurveMode.png|link=]] and try setting the keys again, or change the "transition out" property of the keyframe to Bezier).

You can fine-tune the trajectory of the camera by adding additional keyframes between the starting and ending ones. In our case we see that when the time marker is set to the middle of the camera's movement the player slips slightly out of frame.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position unadjusted.png|border]]

We can fix this by changing the camera's position and orientation as needed, and then adding a new keyframe with "k". In this case we'll pull the camera back slightly so that its motion through space becomes a curve instead of a straight line.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position adjusted.png|border]]

We now have a nice, dynamic establishing shot. The scene begins with the player alone and in the center of the camera's shot, and as he walks toward the fire the camera moves and pans around him to show him arriving in the presence of our two campers.

== Switching cameras ==

{{sidebox|
* A track on the MASTER object defines which camera is currently "active."
}}

Once the player arrives he is going to be greeted by the camper who is happy to see him. To give a clear shot of who's doing the talking, we'll want to switch the active camera from Arrival Camera to Happy Camera.

The track where the active camera gets changed is attached to the MASTER object. Move the timeline's time indicator to the point in time where you wish to switch active cameras, in this case 5.5 seconds (giving the scene a half-second view of the player after he's come to a halt). Right-click on the Active Camera track and select Add Action. The only option available for this track is the "Switch Camera" action so go ahead and add one. In the new Switch Camera action's properties set it to switch the active camera to Happy Camera.

Now when the cutscene is played we'll get an establishing shot showing the player walking up to the fire and then switch to a closeup of the happy camper so that he can deliver his greeting.

[[Image:Cutscene switch active camera.png|border]]

== Adding dialogue ==

{{sidebox|
* Lines of dialog can be inserted from an existing [[conversation]] resource. For convenience, create a new conversation to hold the dialog for a cutscene.
* Caption text, voice over, and facial performance are all included with each line.
* If you edit the conversation later, the changes will be reflected in the cutscene. Remember to generate new VO and FaceFX in the conversation editor.
}}

There are three major components to dialog in Dragon Age; the text of the line being spoken (which is displayed as a caption at the top of the screen), the voice-over for the line being spoken, and the facial performance that makes the virtual actor lip-synch and display appropriate emotions.

There's already a tool in the toolset that is designed for handling all of these things; the conversation editor. Actors in a cutscene can be given "Speak Line" actions that cause them to deliver lines from an existing dialog, with all three components added together into the actor's performance automatically.

Here we are going to add dialogue to a cutscene (though sometimes it is better to take a [[Conversation#Conversation-centred_approach | conversation-centred approach]]).

To create the dialog for this cutscene we'll now create a new conversation resource. This conversation is not going to be used in the game directly so we'll be able to ignore many of the more advanced features and settings covered in the conversation tutorial; its only purpose is to serve as a repository of dialog lines for use in this cutscene.

The following screenshot shows our intended conversation. The only things that we need to define for it is the text of the dialog and optionally the emotion settings for RoboBrad to use when generating facial performance. As with our previous conversation we'll generate synthesized placeholder voice-over and generate FaceFX based on that; when we record real voice over later on we can simply update this conversation with it and the cutscene's performance will change to match.

[[Image:Cutscene conversation.png|border]]

To help keep track of which lines are spoken by which actors you could also optionally set the speaker tag on each line to identify who's doing the talking. This particular conversation has only two speakers so we won't bother with that. The cutscene engine won't need speaker tags, we'll be explicitly telling it who is saying each line. You'll only need to set those things if you wish to preview the conversation before using its lines in the cutscene.

Once you've created your dialogue go back to the cutscene editor and add a new track to the camp_happy actor. Rename it to something informative, such as "Dialogue". Move the timeline marker to the spot where you want the actor to start speaking and add a new "Speak Line" action.

In the Speak Line action's properties, set the "Source Conversation" property to the conversation resource we just created. Then, select the specific line you want the actor to speak in the "Source Line" property (it will have a drop-down menu with all of the lines from the source conversation in it).

That's all you need to do to get the actors to talk. You may wish to add one other detail at this point; head tracking. This is the action that causes actors to turn their heads toward a specific target, usually the person they're talking to or who is talking to them. It's added as its own action, so create another track and add a headtracking action to it with the player as the target. In this case we want the happy camper to turn his head toward the player right before he starts speaking.

== Adding other details ==

{{sidebox|
* Headtracking actions make actors look at other objects in the cutscene.
* You can have more than one action on a track provided they don't overlap.
}}

We've now gone through all the basics, so we'll just finish fleshing out the conversation with a few other details that are done the same way as the examples above.

To add a little more animation to the scene, we add another track for camp_happy with an animation action (mh.dg_hnd_salute_01, a salute) to play during his spoken line. This animation is simpler to deal with than the walking animation because it doesn't displace the actor; there's no need to define position keys or worry about enabling GAD.

We'll set camp_angry's headlook so that she turns toward camp_happy while he's speaking; when we subsequently switch cameras to show her line of dialog she'll already be looking in his direction.

For camp_happy's next line, however, we'll make the headtracking change visible during his shot so the player will see how his attention has switched to camp_angry. Note that we can reuse the existing "Dialogue" and "Headtracking" tracks for this actor; we don't need to create a new track for every single action that an actor performs. So long as the durations of the actions on a track don't overlap they can coexist peacefully.

Finally, after camp_angry's last line we'll set her headtracking to look back toward the player. He's going to get the next word in when we integrate this cutscene into a conversation so this is a good way to indicate that the conversation's focus has gone to the player now.

Once we've finished crafting the cutscene we now know how long its duration needs to be. You can now go to the conversation's properties in the Object Inspector and set the cutscene's duration to the desired length.

The finished timeline of our cutscene:

[[Image:Cutscene finished timeline.png|border]]

[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:Cutscenes]]

=== Cutscene Tips and Tricks ===

Here are a few tips and tricks that might save the cutscene creator some time and perhaps hair pulling.

- Head tracking is often used to look at another actor or a visible item in the cutscene. However you can further manipulate the head of the actor by having the actor look at invisible objects. You can have the actor look from one invisible object to another or move the invisible object around in the cutscene to get the actor to look at things independent of visible actors or items.

- You may find it useful to give meaningful names to your cameras if you are using more than one or two. (You might name a camera after the actor or placeable that it follows or name one camera ‘close-up’ and another ‘wide-angle’ for example.)

- If you are panning a camera around a room following a series of actors or placeables and you find that the camera suddenly decides to rotate in the other direction you can force it to stay moving in the direction you desire by adding or subtracting 360 degrees from the position/orientation you are using to move the camera.

- Feel free to experiment with animations. Try using animations that are not normally meant for your actor type, you might find some interesting or bizarre movements for your actor.

- You can put multiple actions along one track as long as they do not overlap rather than using many different tracks.

- Pay attention to what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to when moving your cameras. Step will jump the camera from position to position while Bezier and Linear will move the camera in a smoother motion. If you are not getting the desired effect when moving cameras check what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to.

- If you have a longer more detailed cutscene you can keep the number of cameras you use to a reasonable number by just moving one (or more) around while another camera is the ‘active’ camera.

- For testing purposes change the length of the cutscene in the cutscenes properties to a smaller value and enlarge that number as you add on to the cutscene. In this way you won’t need to wait for a long period of time for the cutscene to end.

- After placing an animation on a track you can speed up the animation by left clicking on the small circular arrows on one end and dragging it shorter or make the animation play slower by dragging the animation longer on the track.

- You can make the content of your scene seem to change by placing invisible objects in the cutsence, using an fx to obscure the view and making the object visible while the fx is playing. (For example you might have some invisible rock debris. Use a cave in fx with clouds of dust to obscure the screen. While the fx is playing make the debris visible. When the fx is finished your debris will be in place.)

- If you find that your actor is walking across surfaces (such as water for instance) when they should be following the ground you can set ‘items follow surface’ in the area that your cutscene is based on. The actor should then walk on the ground and thus wade into the water. Conversely if you want a character or placeable to not follow the surface of the ground (for instance if you want a placeable or actor to be near or on the surface of water) move the actor or placeable higher by adjusting the Z axis of the boat or actor. (An example of using a placeable partly submerged in water might be something like a boat.)

- In a cutscene you can only activate things that are unique. As in if you plopped down three identical chests in an area, when trying to activate them all in a cutscene it will not allow this and gives you a warning message. In the example above you would have to make three different chests (though they could look the same) to be able to activate them all in the cutscene.
{{Languages}}

Cutscene tutorial

2012-05-15T05:08:04Z

Lord Methrid: /* Viewports */

{{Infobox cutscenes}}

[[Cutscene]]s can be stand-alone cinematic sequences that are triggered by scripts in the course of the game, or they can be inserted into [[conversation]]s in place of the simplified cinematics that conversations can automatically generate.

Our example situation in this tutorial will serve as the beginning of a conversation between the player and two NPCs. The player has just arrived at the campsite where these two NPCs are staying. He walks up to the fire. One of the NPCs is happy to see the player and greets him, but the other is distrustful. The two share a brief exchange to establish this before the interactive part of the conversation begins.

== Creating a new cutscene ==

To create a brand new blank cutscene resource, create a new resource in the usual way:

[[Image:New resource.png|border]]

The result is opened in the cutscene editor.

[[Image:Cutscene new.png|border]]

There are two basic sections to the cutscene editor; the viewports (top) and the timeline (bottom).

=== Viewports ===

{{sidebox|
* Viewports can be attached to various cameras to preview what they can see
* Add a "Safe Frame" to camera viewports to ensure the correct aspect ratio
* Set a viewport to "User" to see where cameras are positioned from another perspective. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar
}}

The camera viewports in the cutscene editor work similarly to the viewports in the stage editor. You can set the number and layout of viewports under the "View" menu:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport layout.png|border]]

And for each individual viewport you can select which camera it's showing and set other display options by right-clicking on the title bar of the viewport:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport properties.png|border]]

When you set a viewport to show the view through one of the cutscene's cameras, it's a good idea to turn on that viewport's "Safe Frame" option as well. This will put a border on the viewport showing what will be visible when the cutscene plays.

Note that when you play the cutscene in the cutscene editor, only the currently selected viewport (the one with the blue title bar) will show the cutscene "live" - the others won't update the view displayed in them until they're selected. To preview the cutscene as the player would see it in the game, you will need to set one of the viewports to "Active Camera" and ensure that this viewport is selected when you play the cutscene in the editor. If the "Active Camera" viewport turns gray, try setting the cutscene property "Enable Level Effects" to false.

=== Timeline ===

{{sidebox|
* There is always exactly one MASTER object in a cutscene.
* Each active object is listed on the timeline, with multiple "tracks" for each.
* All objects have position tracks (divided into X, Y and Z tracks). Some objects have additional built-in tracks.
* Other actions and effects can be added to generic tracks. Objects can have as many generic tracks as you want.
}}

Below the viewport is the timeline. Along the top of the timeline is a time scale; it can be set either to show frames (at 30 frames per second) or milliseconds by changing the "Time Scale" property of the cutscene in the object inspector. A marker indicates what point in the timeline the viewports are currently showing.

Below are a set of rows containing the various actors, cameras, and other objects active in the cutscene. This is where most of the editing is going to take place. Each object will have a number of "tracks", which will contain commands that are sent to the actors at particular times in the course of the cutscene.

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial timeline.png|border]]

The first object in the track list is the "MASTER" object. This is a special object that every cutscene has exactly one of. The MASTER object is the cutscene equivalent to the root node of a conversation tree, a repository for global settings and effects. For example the MASTER object contains the track that determines which camera is active at any given time. The MASTER object cannot be deleted. By default, a MASTER object appears in the cutscene editor as a small greenish sphere; you can change the MASTER object's appearance in the cutscene option settings.

A new cutscene also has a camera, called Camera 1. This camera can be deleted or renamed if you like; we can add new cameras as needed later on.

Every object has "Position" and "Orientation" tracks that control their locations in space. Cameras also have a FOV (field of view) track.

Objects can have other "generic" tracks added by the editor as needed. These generic tracks contain all the other commands and directions we can give.

== The setting of the cutscene ==

{{sidebox|
* The MASTER object should be moved somewhere near the center of your cutscene.
* You can optionally set a stage for your cutscene, enabling stage-related actions for objects.
}}

Establishing the setting of a cutscene is done in the object inspector in the group of properties labeled "Setting". The most important of these is the "Area" property, which allows you to set the cutscene in an existing [[area]]. We already have a suitable area that was created in an earlier tutorial; the area "great_outdoors".

By default the MASTER object and Camera 1 will be located at the coordinates 0,0,0 in the area. You'll want to move the camera to the appropriate location within the area using standard [[3D control]]s for movement and view management. The MASTER object is invisible when the cutscene is played in-game so it usually doesn't matter where you put it. However, there are some settings that depend on the MASTER object's location - for example, you can set level-of-detail for models so that the model's LOD varies depending on how close it is to the MASTER object - so it's probably a good idea to put MASTER somewhere near the middle of where you'll be having the cutscene's action take place.

You can also set a stage for the cutscene. This is optional, but setting a stage enables "Jump to Stage Place" and "Jump to Stage Camera" actions that could help make setting the cutscene up easier if you already have a good stage defined in the area.

=== Adding objects and creatures ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects already present in the area the cutscene is set in are inactive by default. You need to activate them to control them.
* Other objects can be added from the resource palette as normal.
}}

All of the objects that are normally present in the area (such as creatures and placeables) will be visible in the cutscene editor, but they'll all initially be marked as "inactive". This means that, although they'll be visible in the cutscene when it plays, they won't be controllable; they'll just do whatever ambient activities they would be doing normally. In the case of our campsite area there are two creatures that were placed here in the area editor; the happy camper, named camp_happy, and the angry camper, named camp_angry. We need to seize control of them to make them active participants in the cutscene's activities. To make them active, right-click on them and select "activate objects":

[[Image:Cutscene activate object.png|border]]

The object will then become an active object in the cutscene, getting its own entry in the timeline that will allow you to control its actions.

[[Image:Cutscene object activated.png|border]]

We'll activate both of these campers since they'll both be taking part in the cutscene's dialogue.

You can also add objects that aren't normally a part of the area. Simply open the object palette, select the creature or placeable you wish to use in the cutscene, and then click in the viewport to add the object to that location. It will automatically be made active and get an entry in the timeline. The player won't see these objects during regular play, since they're not a part of the area - they're only in the cutscene.

If you want to make an area object disappear during the cutscene you'll need to activate it (allowing you to control it) and then add a track with an action that makes it invisible in the first frame. It will go back to normal again when the cutscene ends and the game resumes, cutscenes are run entirely separate from the main action of the game and have no direct effects on it.

=== Adding the player ===

{{sidebox|
* Use the "Mapping Tag" property on an actor to make the game replace it with another object (such as PLAYER) at run-time.
}}

Normally we don't have to worry about placing the player in an area since the player controls his own movements and actions. But when we're doing a cutscene we can control the player just like any other actor, so we'll need a way to insert the player as an active object. Furthermore, since we'll have no idea what the player is going to look like at any given moment, we'll need to have a way to insert the player as he appears in the game when the cutscene begins.

This is done by inserting a "dummy" virtual actor and then setting the actor's "Mapping Tag" property to the special "PLAYER" tag.

[[Image:Cutscene dummy player.png|border]]

It doesn't matter what the dummy actor looks like now, it will be replaced with the player's character later on, so we'll just use a default male human model to make it both simple and obvious.

There are ways to tweak the way the cutscene plays based on other characteristics of the player, for example by modifying the position of the camera to account for the player's height or by adding additional dummies to represent followers. We won't go into these more advanced topics in this tutorial.

=== Adding cameras ===

{{sidebox|
* Remember to enable Safe Frame when attaching a viewport to a camera.
* Use an "Active Camera" viewport to preview the cutscene.
* Use a "User" viewport to see camera positions from the outside. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar.
}}

We could film a cutscene entirely from one camera if we liked, either as a single static shot or by moving the camera around to new positions as needed. It's easier and more convenient in most cases just to add several different cameras, however, and use the "Active Camera" track on the MASTER object to switch between them.

For our cutscene we're going to want three different cameras; one camera that's a wide shot showing the player arriving at the campfire, one camera focused on the angry camper, and one focused on the happy camper. We could add more than just these three to make the scene even more dynamic but for simplicity we'll stick to just those for now. We can add more later.

Cameras are added by right-clicking in the viewport and selecting "Insert → Camera".

[[Image:Cutscene insert camera.png|border]]

You can then position them using standard [[3D control]]s. To make it easier to get the camera set up with the correct view, a good technique is to set one of the viewports to display the camera's feed; you can then reorient and reposition the camera using that viewport's camera controls while getting immediate feedback as to what the camera will see in its new state.

We're also going to rename the three cameras at this point with names intended to remind us of what their purposes are. We'll name them "Arrival Camera", "Happy Camera", and "Angry Camera". We'll want "Arrival Camera" to be active initially, so we may as well use the original camera for this role; it's already set active by default. We'll see how to switch which camera is active later in this tutorial.

We now have all the basic props we need to get the cutscene going.

== Adding an animation to an actor ==

{{sidebox|
* Set the "Pose" property for actors to make them breathe and fidget naturally when not doing other animations.
* Other animations are set by adding "Play Animation" actions to a generic track.
* Animation filenames are often arcane and hard to find.
}}

If you play the cutscene now the first thing you'll probably notice is that the actors are all standing perfectly motionless. Normally someone who's standing still isn't really standing ''perfectly'' still; they breathe, they shift their weight from foot to foot, and so forth. Since almost every actor we use is going to need to do this we don't want to have to spend a lot of effort setting it up, and fortunately we don't have to. Every actor has a "Pose" property in the object inspector. Simply set this pose to "Standing Neutral" and the actors will display this default subtle movement whenever no other animations are being explicitly imposed on them.

[[Image:Cutscene set pose.png|border]]

Our next task is somewhat less trivial; we want to show the player walking up to the fire. We're going to have to add a walking animation to the player's actor that runs for a short period of time and then stops.

To do this we'll need to add a new track to the actor's timeline. Right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "Add Track" from the resulting menu:

[[Image:Cutscene add track.png|border]]

The new track will be named "New Track" by default and will start out empty. Actors in cutscenes will sometimes have dozens of tracks directing their actions so we'll want to rename the track to something a little more informative. In this case we'll name it "Walk to fire". To have it actually cause the player's actor to walk to the fire we'll need to add a "[[Play animation]]" action to it. Right-click on the track and select "Add Action" to get the menu to select this.

[[Image:Cutscene add action.png|border]]

The action will be added starting at the point you're currently viewing in the timeline, so you may wish to move the timeline's time slider back to the beginning before adding this animation. You can reposition an action along the timeline simply by dragging it with the mouse.

Initially the action has no animation associated with it. To set the animation, select the action in the timeline and then in the Object Inspector go to the "Animation" property and click on the ellipsis ([[Image:ellipsis.png|link=]]) button.

Unfortunately this is where things turn a bit arcane since the names of the various animation files are often very unclear and not all will appear in the default list. You may need to resort to trial and error to find one you like, but there are many hundreds of animations available in the game's resources so this could take some time. See [[animation list]] and [http://social.bioware.com/project/30/#files Beerfish Excel Utilities] for a list of many of them.

Note that only a single animation can play at any time on a given track. However, it is possible to have multiple animations for a character, each of which must be on a different track. This is essential in order to be able to blend animations together as detailed in [[Play_animation#Blending_Animations]]. Animation blending is necessary in order to have your characters transition seamlessly from one animation to another, which is essential to making character movement look natural.

In this case the animation we want, "mh.dg_f_5p" ("male human dialog forward five paces"), doesn't appear in the default list of animations available in the animation picker. You'll need to click the ellipsis button next to the "Custom Animation" field and find it in the complete list of all animation resources.

[[Image:Cutscene finding an animation.png|border]]

If you try playing the cutscene now you'll see that the player's actor will spend a little over five seconds walking and then come to a natural stop - about as long as we needed. But the actor will be animated in place, his legs taking steps but not actually moving him anywhere. This is where position keys and GAD comes in.

== Moving an actor ==

=== Position and orientation keys ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects be moved over time by setting "key frames" on their position and orientation tracks.
* Intermediate frames are interpolated between key frames.
* You can set the curve type between key frames with the "transition out" property for each key.
}}

Every object in a cutscene has a pre-defined "Position" track with three sub-tracks for its X, Y and Z coordinates. Most objects also have a pre-defined "Orientation" track with three subtracks for roll, pitch, and yaw. These tracks can be used to cause an object to move around within the area over the course of the cutscene.

Movement is handled by setting the position and orientation of objects at specific points in time, called key frames, and then interpolating intermediate positions and orientations. To set a key frame, right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "key position". This will set a key for the current position and orientation at the current time in the timeline. You can set position and orientation keys separately if you like. Since this operation is so common there's a very convenient shortcut for it; "k" inserts a key for the currently selected object's position and orientation, "p" inserts a key for its position, and "o" inserts a key for its orientation. Alternately, select the object and click the key command in the toolbar: [[Image:IconKey.png|link=]]

[[Image:Cutscene key selection.png|border]]

For our purposes right now all we'll need to do is set a key frame at the beginning of the timeline. Move the pointer to the beginning, select the player actor, and set a key. Small boxes will appear on the position and orientation tracks to mark the key frame.

[[Image:Cutscene key marker.png|border]]

These markers essentially mean "at this particular point in time, dummy_player will be in this particular place and facing in this particular direction."

To get an actor to move over time you could set two key frames - one at the beginning of the movement, with the actor in his starting position, and one at the end of the movement, with the actor at his end position. You can set how the cutscene engine interpolates between the two positions by setting the "Transition Out" property of the starting keyframe to either Bezier (a smooth curve), Linear (a straight line), or Step (a sudden jump from the starting position to the end position). See the [[curve editor]] page for more detail.

We're not going to actually do this in this case, however; we'll try it at a later point in this tutorial to move a camera around. For this particular actor it would be difficult to manually match the actor's walking action with his motion over the ground. If the animation and the movement don't match the actor's feet will "skate" unrealistically along the surface.

There's an easier way to match an animation such as this one with movement through the scene; a mechanism called GAD.

=== Using GAD ===

{{sidebox|
* GAD is a mechanism by which an animation applies a built-in displacement to the object it's animating.
* You need to set at least one key frame for an object to use GAD, even if you don't otherwise use key frames to move it.
}}

GAD is a displacement that is automatically added to the actor's current position as the animation plays. Each animation has its own GAD information built into it, custom-designed to make the actor move in a manner appropriate to its actions. If we enable it the actor will be moved forward as the animation plays.

Not all animations have GAD associated with them. For example, having an actor wave his hand wouldn't displace him, so there would be no GAD associated with that animation. We only need to worry about GAD in cases like this one where the animation should accompany movement.

To enable GAD select the animation action and set "Play Gad" to true in the object inspector. If no key frames have been defined for the actor the cutscene editor will pop up a warning at this point suggesting that we add position and orientation keys before we add GAD:

[[Image:Cutscene gad warning.png|border]]

It's important to set at least one set of keys for an object using GAD. The animation's GAD may seem to work correctly without it at first, but unexpected and unpredictable errors could occur later that will send the actor careening off into the distance.

Once we've set a key frame and have set the action's "Play Gad" option to true you'll see that the actor now moves forward as he walks. This is good, but since we started him off in the position he's meant to end in it results in the actor walking straight through the campfire. You'll need to move the actor back so that he starts farther away from the fire.

Note that if you've already set a keyframe as described in the previous section you'll need to re-set it for the actor's new location (or alternately set the "update keys" mode with the [[Image:IconUpdateKeys.png|link=]] tool), otherwise the moment the animation starts the actor will instantly jump back to the place he was where you set the keyframe. Once you set a keyframe for an actor, moving the actor around in the cutscene editor doesn't really change its position unless you re-set the keyframe to the new position. Keyframes and the curves interpolating between them always take precedence.
^
|
(ED: This need extreme explanation by someone that knows how to do this properly because this paragraph is obtuse!!)

{{sidebox|
* An animation's "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property makes Gad's displacement persist after the animation ends.
}}

The other GAD properties are set to the most appropriate defaults automatically when you select an animation but one particular property bears mention here in case you run into trouble with it later on; the "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property. In the case of this walking animation it defaults to true. That means that once the animation ends, the displacement that the actor has undergone as a result of it will remain in effect - he will stay in the final position he walked to. If this were set to false, once the animation ended all of the displacement the actor had gained as a result would be undone and he'd instantly jump back to where he started walking from again. If at some point in the future you find your actors doing this, this property is the first place to look for the answer.

There's one final detail we'll tweak here. The walking animation begins with the player starting from a standstill, which is not the impression we want to convey; the player has supposedly been walking for some time before the camera started rolling. We could set the animation to begin playing partway through by changing the animation action's "Start Offset" property, but since this is happening at the beginning of the cutscene's timeline an easier approach is to simply select the animation action and drag it so that it begins a half second before the cutscene does. The cutscene will only begin displaying at the 0 mark and anything that falls before this point in time will never be shown so the initial half second of the actor's walk animation will go unseen.

== Moving a camera ==

The scene now has some of the dynamic action we wanted, showing the player walking up to the campfire and stopping at its edge. But it's still a rather dull introduction and we can do better. Instead of a static camera shot we can set the camera so that it pans across the scene to follow the player's arrival.

Select the Arrival Camera and open up its track list. It has Position and Orientation tracks just like the other actors, and can have keyframes set just the same. With the time marker set to 0, move the Arrival Camera so that its view shows how you want the shot framed at the beginning of the cutscene. In our example we're going to set it so that it shows the player in the center of the frame. With the camera still selected, press "k" to set a key frame for the camera.

[[Image:Cutscene camera start position.png|border]]

(You may notice that the Field of View (FOV) track also gets a key marker. We won't be changing the camera's FOV so you can ignore that.)

Next move the timeline scrubber to the end of the walking animation at the 5 second mark. The player's actor will now be at the final position where he'll be standing for the conversation. Change the camera's orientation, panning to the right so that all of the actors can be seen in its field of view. In our case the camera's too close to encompass everyone so we'll also move its position to allow it to see them all.

Once you have the shot lined up correctly, press "k" to set a second keyframe.

[[Image:Cutscene camera end position.png|border]]

You may notice that the User viewports now show a red line tracing out the selected object's trajectory through space (if not, you may need to click the "show trajectories" [[Image:IconShowTrajectory.png|link=]] button in the toolbar). As the first five seconds of the cutscene plays, the Arrival Camera should slide smoothly along the red line and rotate smoothly on its axes to transition from the first keyframe to the second keyframe (If it suddenly jumps from one position to the other instead you may need to click the "default curve mode" tool [[Image:IconDefaultCurveMode.png|link=]] and try setting the keys again, or change the "transition out" property of the keyframe to Bezier).

You can fine-tune the trajectory of the camera by adding additional keyframes between the starting and ending ones. In our case we see that when the time marker is set to the middle of the camera's movement the player slips slightly out of frame.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position unadjusted.png|border]]

We can fix this by changing the camera's position and orientation as needed, and then adding a new keyframe with "k". In this case we'll pull the camera back slightly so that its motion through space becomes a curve instead of a straight line.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position adjusted.png|border]]

We now have a nice, dynamic establishing shot. The scene begins with the player alone and in the center of the camera's shot, and as he walks toward the fire the camera moves and pans around him to show him arriving in the presence of our two campers.

== Switching cameras ==

{{sidebox|
* A track on the MASTER object defines which camera is currently "active."
}}

Once the player arrives he is going to be greeted by the camper who is happy to see him. To give a clear shot of who's doing the talking, we'll want to switch the active camera from Arrival Camera to Happy Camera.

The track where the active camera gets changed is attached to the MASTER object. Move the timeline's time indicator to the point in time where you wish to switch active cameras, in this case 5.5 seconds (giving the scene a half-second view of the player after he's come to a halt). Right-click on the Active Camera track and select Add Action. The only option available for this track is the "Switch Camera" action so go ahead and add one. In the new Switch Camera action's properties set it to switch the active camera to Happy Camera.

Now when the cutscene is played we'll get an establishing shot showing the player walking up to the fire and then switch to a closeup of the happy camper so that he can deliver his greeting.

[[Image:Cutscene switch active camera.png|border]]

== Adding dialogue ==

{{sidebox|
* Lines of dialog can be inserted from an existing [[conversation]] resource. For convenience, create a new conversation to hold the dialog for a cutscene.
* Caption text, voice over, and facial performance are all included with each line.
* If you edit the conversation later, the changes will be reflected in the cutscene. Remember to generate new VO and FaceFX in the conversation editor.
}}

There are three major components to dialog in Dragon Age; the text of the line being spoken (which is displayed as a caption at the top of the screen), the voice-over for the line being spoken, and the facial performance that makes the virtual actor lip-synch and display appropriate emotions.

There's already a tool in the toolset that is designed for handling all of these things; the conversation editor. Actors in a cutscene can be given "Speak Line" actions that cause them to deliver lines from an existing dialog, with all three components added together into the actor's performance automatically.

Here we are going to add dialogue to a cutscene (though sometimes it is better to take a [[Conversation#Conversation-centred_approach | conversation-centred approach]]).

To create the dialog for this cutscene we'll now create a new conversation resource. This conversation is not going to be used in the game directly so we'll be able to ignore many of the more advanced features and settings covered in the conversation tutorial; its only purpose is to serve as a repository of dialog lines for use in this cutscene.

The following screenshot shows our intended conversation. The only things that we need to define for it is the text of the dialog and optionally the emotion settings for RoboBrad to use when generating facial performance. As with our previous conversation we'll generate synthesized placeholder voice-over and generate FaceFX based on that; when we record real voice over later on we can simply update this conversation with it and the cutscene's performance will change to match.

[[Image:Cutscene conversation.png|border]]

To help keep track of which lines are spoken by which actors you could also optionally set the speaker tag on each line to identify who's doing the talking. This particular conversation has only two speakers so we won't bother with that. The cutscene engine won't need speaker tags, we'll be explicitly telling it who is saying each line. You'll only need to set those things if you wish to preview the conversation before using its lines in the cutscene.

Once you've created your dialogue go back to the cutscene editor and add a new track to the camp_happy actor. Rename it to something informative, such as "Dialogue". Move the timeline marker to the spot where you want the actor to start speaking and add a new "Speak Line" action.

In the Speak Line action's properties, set the "Source Conversation" property to the conversation resource we just created. Then, select the specific line you want the actor to speak in the "Source Line" property (it will have a drop-down menu with all of the lines from the source conversation in it).

That's all you need to do to get the actors to talk. You may wish to add one other detail at this point; head tracking. This is the action that causes actors to turn their heads toward a specific target, usually the person they're talking to or who is talking to them. It's added as its own action, so create another track and add a headtracking action to it with the player as the target. In this case we want the happy camper to turn his head toward the player right before he starts speaking.

== Adding other details ==

{{sidebox|
* Headtracking actions make actors look at other objects in the cutscene.
* You can have more than one action on a track provided they don't overlap.
}}

We've now gone through all the basics, so we'll just finish fleshing out the conversation with a few other details that are done the same way as the examples above.

To add a little more animation to the scene, we add another track for camp_happy with an animation action (mh.dg_hnd_salute_01, a salute) to play during his spoken line. This animation is simpler to deal with than the walking animation because it doesn't displace the actor; there's no need to define position keys or worry about enabling GAD.

We'll set camp_angry's headlook so that she turns toward camp_happy while he's speaking; when we subsequently switch cameras to show her line of dialog she'll already be looking in his direction.

For camp_happy's next line, however, we'll make the headtracking change visible during his shot so the player will see how his attention has switched to camp_angry. Note that we can reuse the existing "Dialogue" and "Headtracking" tracks for this actor; we don't need to create a new track for every single action that an actor performs. So long as the durations of the actions on a track don't overlap they can coexist peacefully.

Finally, after camp_angry's last line we'll set her headtracking to look back toward the player. He's going to get the next word in when we integrate this cutscene into a conversation so this is a good way to indicate that the conversation's focus has gone to the player now.

Once we've finished crafting the cutscene we now know how long its duration needs to be. You can now go to the conversation's properties in the Object Inspector and set the cutscene's duration to the desired length.

The finished timeline of our cutscene:

[[Image:Cutscene finished timeline.png|border]]

[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:Cutscenes]]

=== Cutscene Tips and Tricks ===

Here are a few tips and tricks that might save the cutscene creator some time and perhaps hair pulling.

- Head tracking is often used to look at another actor or a visible item in the cutscene. However you can further manipulate the head of the actor by having the actor look at invisible objects. You can have the actor look from one invisible object to another or move the invisible object around in the cutscene to get the actor to look at things independent of visible actors or items.

- You may find it useful to give meaningful names to your cameras if you are using more than one or two. (You might name a camera after the actor or placeable that it follows or name one camera ‘close-up’ and another ‘wide-angle’ for example.)

- If you are panning a camera around a room following a series of actors or placeables and you find that the camera suddenly decides to rotate in the other direction you can force it to stay moving in the direction you desire by adding or subtracting 360 degrees from the position/orientation you are using to move the camera.

- Feel free to experiment with animations. Try using animations that are not normally meant for your actor type, you might find some interesting or bizarre movements for your actor.

- You can put multiple actions along one track as long as they do not overlap rather than using many different tracks.

- Pay attention to what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to when moving your cameras. Step will jump the camera from position to position while Bezier and Linear will move the camera in a smoother motion. If you are not getting the desired effect when moving cameras check what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to.

- If you have a longer more detailed cutscene you can keep the number of cameras you use to a reasonable number by just moving one (or more) around while another camera is the ‘active’ camera.

- For testing purposes change the length of the cutscene in the cutscenes properties to a smaller value and enlarge that number as you add on to the cutscene. In this way you won’t need to wait for a long period of time for the cutscene to end.

- After placing an animation on a track you can speed up the animation by left clicking on the small circular arrows on one end and dragging it shorter or make the animation play slower by dragging the animation longer on the track.

- You can make the content of your scene seem to change by placing invisible objects in the cutsence, using an fx to obscure the view and making the object visible while the fx is playing. (For example you might have some invisible rock debris. Use a cave in fx with clouds of dust to obscure the screen. While the fx is playing make the debris visible. When the fx is finished your debris will be in place.)

- If you find that your actor is walking across surfaces (such as water for instance) when they should be following the ground you can set ‘items follow surface’ in the area that your cutscene is based on. The actor should then walk on the ground and thus wade into the water. Conversely if you want a character or placeable to not follow the surface of the ground (for instance if you want a placeable or actor to be near or on the surface of water) move the actor or placeable higher by adjusting the Z axis of the boat or actor. (An example of using a placeable partly submerged in water might be something like a boat.)

- In a cutscene you can only activate things that are unique. As in if you plopped down three identical chests in an area, when trying to activate them all in a cutscene it will not allow this and gives you a warning message. In the example above you would have to make three different chests (though they could look the same) to be able to activate them all in the cutscene.
{{Languages}}

Cutscene tutorial

2012-05-15T04:44:16Z

Lord Methrid: /* Timeline */

{{Infobox cutscenes}}

[[Cutscene]]s can be stand-alone cinematic sequences that are triggered by scripts in the course of the game, or they can be inserted into [[conversation]]s in place of the simplified cinematics that conversations can automatically generate.

Our example situation in this tutorial will serve as the beginning of a conversation between the player and two NPCs. The player has just arrived at the campsite where these two NPCs are staying. He walks up to the fire. One of the NPCs is happy to see the player and greets him, but the other is distrustful. The two share a brief exchange to establish this before the interactive part of the conversation begins.

== Creating a new cutscene ==

To create a brand new blank cutscene resource, create a new resource in the usual way:

[[Image:New resource.png|border]]

The result is opened in the cutscene editor.

[[Image:Cutscene new.png|border]]

There are two basic sections to the cutscene editor; the viewports (top) and the timeline (bottom).

=== Viewports ===

{{sidebox|
* Viewports can be attached to various cameras to preview what they can see
* Add a "Safe Frame" to camera viewports to ensure the correct aspect ratio
* Set a viewport to "User" to see where cameras are positioned from another perspective. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar
}}

The camera viewports in the cutscene editor work similarly to the viewports in the stage editor. You can set the number and layout of viewports under the "View" menu:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport layout.png|border]]

And for each individual viewport you can select which camera it's showing and set other display options by right-clicking on the title bar of the viewport:

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial viewport properties.png|border]]

When you set a viewport to show the view through one of the cutscene's cameras, it's a good idea to turn on that viewport's "Safe Frame" option as well. This will put a border on the viewport showing what will be visible when the cutscene plays.

Note that when you play the cutscene in the cutscene editor, only the currently selected viewport (the one with the blue title bar) will show the cutscene "live" - the others won't update the view displayed in them until they're selected. To preview the cutscene as the player would see it, then, you should set one of the viewports to "Active Camera" and ensure that this viewport is selected when you play the cutscene in the editor. If the "Active Camera" viewport turns gray, try setting the cutscene property "Enable Level Effects" to false.

=== Timeline ===

{{sidebox|
* There is always exactly one MASTER object in a cutscene.
* Each active object is listed on the timeline, with multiple "tracks" for each.
* All objects have position tracks (divided into X, Y and Z tracks). Some objects have additional built-in tracks.
* Other actions and effects can be added to generic tracks. Objects can have as many generic tracks as you want.
}}

Below the viewport is the timeline. Along the top of the timeline is a time scale; it can be set either to show frames (at 30 frames per second) or milliseconds by changing the "Time Scale" property of the cutscene in the object inspector. A marker indicates what point in the timeline the viewports are currently showing.

Below are a set of rows containing the various actors, cameras, and other objects active in the cutscene. This is where most of the editing is going to take place. Each object will have a number of "tracks", which will contain commands that are sent to the actors at particular times in the course of the cutscene.

[[Image:Cutscene tutorial timeline.png|border]]

The first object in the track list is the "MASTER" object. This is a special object that every cutscene has exactly one of. The MASTER object is the cutscene equivalent to the root node of a conversation tree, a repository for global settings and effects. For example the MASTER object contains the track that determines which camera is active at any given time. The MASTER object cannot be deleted. By default, a MASTER object appears in the cutscene editor as a small greenish sphere; you can change the MASTER object's appearance in the cutscene option settings.

A new cutscene also has a camera, called Camera 1. This camera can be deleted or renamed if you like; we can add new cameras as needed later on.

Every object has "Position" and "Orientation" tracks that control their locations in space. Cameras also have a FOV (field of view) track.

Objects can have other "generic" tracks added by the editor as needed. These generic tracks contain all the other commands and directions we can give.

== The setting of the cutscene ==

{{sidebox|
* The MASTER object should be moved somewhere near the center of your cutscene.
* You can optionally set a stage for your cutscene, enabling stage-related actions for objects.
}}

Establishing the setting of a cutscene is done in the object inspector in the group of properties labeled "Setting". The most important of these is the "Area" property, which allows you to set the cutscene in an existing [[area]]. We already have a suitable area that was created in an earlier tutorial; the area "great_outdoors".

By default the MASTER object and Camera 1 will be located at the coordinates 0,0,0 in the area. You'll want to move the camera to the appropriate location within the area using standard [[3D control]]s for movement and view management. The MASTER object is invisible when the cutscene is played in-game so it usually doesn't matter where you put it. However, there are some settings that depend on the MASTER object's location - for example, you can set level-of-detail for models so that the model's LOD varies depending on how close it is to the MASTER object - so it's probably a good idea to put MASTER somewhere near the middle of where you'll be having the cutscene's action take place.

You can also set a stage for the cutscene. This is optional, but setting a stage enables "Jump to Stage Place" and "Jump to Stage Camera" actions that could help make setting the cutscene up easier if you already have a good stage defined in the area.

=== Adding objects and creatures ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects already present in the area the cutscene is set in are inactive by default. You need to activate them to control them.
* Other objects can be added from the resource palette as normal.
}}

All of the objects that are normally present in the area (such as creatures and placeables) will be visible in the cutscene editor, but they'll all initially be marked as "inactive". This means that, although they'll be visible in the cutscene when it plays, they won't be controllable; they'll just do whatever ambient activities they would be doing normally. In the case of our campsite area there are two creatures that were placed here in the area editor; the happy camper, named camp_happy, and the angry camper, named camp_angry. We need to seize control of them to make them active participants in the cutscene's activities. To make them active, right-click on them and select "activate objects":

[[Image:Cutscene activate object.png|border]]

The object will then become an active object in the cutscene, getting its own entry in the timeline that will allow you to control its actions.

[[Image:Cutscene object activated.png|border]]

We'll activate both of these campers since they'll both be taking part in the cutscene's dialogue.

You can also add objects that aren't normally a part of the area. Simply open the object palette, select the creature or placeable you wish to use in the cutscene, and then click in the viewport to add the object to that location. It will automatically be made active and get an entry in the timeline. The player won't see these objects during regular play, since they're not a part of the area - they're only in the cutscene.

If you want to make an area object disappear during the cutscene you'll need to activate it (allowing you to control it) and then add a track with an action that makes it invisible in the first frame. It will go back to normal again when the cutscene ends and the game resumes, cutscenes are run entirely separate from the main action of the game and have no direct effects on it.

=== Adding the player ===

{{sidebox|
* Use the "Mapping Tag" property on an actor to make the game replace it with another object (such as PLAYER) at run-time.
}}

Normally we don't have to worry about placing the player in an area since the player controls his own movements and actions. But when we're doing a cutscene we can control the player just like any other actor, so we'll need a way to insert the player as an active object. Furthermore, since we'll have no idea what the player is going to look like at any given moment, we'll need to have a way to insert the player as he appears in the game when the cutscene begins.

This is done by inserting a "dummy" virtual actor and then setting the actor's "Mapping Tag" property to the special "PLAYER" tag.

[[Image:Cutscene dummy player.png|border]]

It doesn't matter what the dummy actor looks like now, it will be replaced with the player's character later on, so we'll just use a default male human model to make it both simple and obvious.

There are ways to tweak the way the cutscene plays based on other characteristics of the player, for example by modifying the position of the camera to account for the player's height or by adding additional dummies to represent followers. We won't go into these more advanced topics in this tutorial.

=== Adding cameras ===

{{sidebox|
* Remember to enable Safe Frame when attaching a viewport to a camera.
* Use an "Active Camera" viewport to preview the cutscene.
* Use a "User" viewport to see camera positions from the outside. This can be done by selecting "Detach From Camera" in the viewport's right-click menu in the title bar.
}}

We could film a cutscene entirely from one camera if we liked, either as a single static shot or by moving the camera around to new positions as needed. It's easier and more convenient in most cases just to add several different cameras, however, and use the "Active Camera" track on the MASTER object to switch between them.

For our cutscene we're going to want three different cameras; one camera that's a wide shot showing the player arriving at the campfire, one camera focused on the angry camper, and one focused on the happy camper. We could add more than just these three to make the scene even more dynamic but for simplicity we'll stick to just those for now. We can add more later.

Cameras are added by right-clicking in the viewport and selecting "Insert → Camera".

[[Image:Cutscene insert camera.png|border]]

You can then position them using standard [[3D control]]s. To make it easier to get the camera set up with the correct view, a good technique is to set one of the viewports to display the camera's feed; you can then reorient and reposition the camera using that viewport's camera controls while getting immediate feedback as to what the camera will see in its new state.

We're also going to rename the three cameras at this point with names intended to remind us of what their purposes are. We'll name them "Arrival Camera", "Happy Camera", and "Angry Camera". We'll want "Arrival Camera" to be active initially, so we may as well use the original camera for this role; it's already set active by default. We'll see how to switch which camera is active later in this tutorial.

We now have all the basic props we need to get the cutscene going.

== Adding an animation to an actor ==

{{sidebox|
* Set the "Pose" property for actors to make them breathe and fidget naturally when not doing other animations.
* Other animations are set by adding "Play Animation" actions to a generic track.
* Animation filenames are often arcane and hard to find.
}}

If you play the cutscene now the first thing you'll probably notice is that the actors are all standing perfectly motionless. Normally someone who's standing still isn't really standing ''perfectly'' still; they breathe, they shift their weight from foot to foot, and so forth. Since almost every actor we use is going to need to do this we don't want to have to spend a lot of effort setting it up, and fortunately we don't have to. Every actor has a "Pose" property in the object inspector. Simply set this pose to "Standing Neutral" and the actors will display this default subtle movement whenever no other animations are being explicitly imposed on them.

[[Image:Cutscene set pose.png|border]]

Our next task is somewhat less trivial; we want to show the player walking up to the fire. We're going to have to add a walking animation to the player's actor that runs for a short period of time and then stops.

To do this we'll need to add a new track to the actor's timeline. Right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "Add Track" from the resulting menu:

[[Image:Cutscene add track.png|border]]

The new track will be named "New Track" by default and will start out empty. Actors in cutscenes will sometimes have dozens of tracks directing their actions so we'll want to rename the track to something a little more informative. In this case we'll name it "Walk to fire". To have it actually cause the player's actor to walk to the fire we'll need to add a "[[Play animation]]" action to it. Right-click on the track and select "Add Action" to get the menu to select this.

[[Image:Cutscene add action.png|border]]

The action will be added starting at the point you're currently viewing in the timeline, so you may wish to move the timeline's time slider back to the beginning before adding this animation. You can reposition an action along the timeline simply by dragging it with the mouse.

Initially the action has no animation associated with it. To set the animation, select the action in the timeline and then in the Object Inspector go to the "Animation" property and click on the ellipsis ([[Image:ellipsis.png|link=]]) button.

Unfortunately this is where things turn a bit arcane since the names of the various animation files are often very unclear and not all will appear in the default list. You may need to resort to trial and error to find one you like, but there are many hundreds of animations available in the game's resources so this could take some time. See [[animation list]] and [http://social.bioware.com/project/30/#files Beerfish Excel Utilities] for a list of many of them.

Note that only a single animation can play at any time on a given track. However, it is possible to have multiple animations for a character, each of which must be on a different track. This is essential in order to be able to blend animations together as detailed in [[Play_animation#Blending_Animations]]. Animation blending is necessary in order to have your characters transition seamlessly from one animation to another, which is essential to making character movement look natural.

In this case the animation we want, "mh.dg_f_5p" ("male human dialog forward five paces"), doesn't appear in the default list of animations available in the animation picker. You'll need to click the ellipsis button next to the "Custom Animation" field and find it in the complete list of all animation resources.

[[Image:Cutscene finding an animation.png|border]]

If you try playing the cutscene now you'll see that the player's actor will spend a little over five seconds walking and then come to a natural stop - about as long as we needed. But the actor will be animated in place, his legs taking steps but not actually moving him anywhere. This is where position keys and GAD comes in.

== Moving an actor ==

=== Position and orientation keys ===

{{sidebox|
* Objects be moved over time by setting "key frames" on their position and orientation tracks.
* Intermediate frames are interpolated between key frames.
* You can set the curve type between key frames with the "transition out" property for each key.
}}

Every object in a cutscene has a pre-defined "Position" track with three sub-tracks for its X, Y and Z coordinates. Most objects also have a pre-defined "Orientation" track with three subtracks for roll, pitch, and yaw. These tracks can be used to cause an object to move around within the area over the course of the cutscene.

Movement is handled by setting the position and orientation of objects at specific points in time, called key frames, and then interpolating intermediate positions and orientations. To set a key frame, right-click on the actor's entry in the timeline and select "key position". This will set a key for the current position and orientation at the current time in the timeline. You can set position and orientation keys separately if you like. Since this operation is so common there's a very convenient shortcut for it; "k" inserts a key for the currently selected object's position and orientation, "p" inserts a key for its position, and "o" inserts a key for its orientation. Alternately, select the object and click the key command in the toolbar: [[Image:IconKey.png|link=]]

[[Image:Cutscene key selection.png|border]]

For our purposes right now all we'll need to do is set a key frame at the beginning of the timeline. Move the pointer to the beginning, select the player actor, and set a key. Small boxes will appear on the position and orientation tracks to mark the key frame.

[[Image:Cutscene key marker.png|border]]

These markers essentially mean "at this particular point in time, dummy_player will be in this particular place and facing in this particular direction."

To get an actor to move over time you could set two key frames - one at the beginning of the movement, with the actor in his starting position, and one at the end of the movement, with the actor at his end position. You can set how the cutscene engine interpolates between the two positions by setting the "Transition Out" property of the starting keyframe to either Bezier (a smooth curve), Linear (a straight line), or Step (a sudden jump from the starting position to the end position). See the [[curve editor]] page for more detail.

We're not going to actually do this in this case, however; we'll try it at a later point in this tutorial to move a camera around. For this particular actor it would be difficult to manually match the actor's walking action with his motion over the ground. If the animation and the movement don't match the actor's feet will "skate" unrealistically along the surface.

There's an easier way to match an animation such as this one with movement through the scene; a mechanism called GAD.

=== Using GAD ===

{{sidebox|
* GAD is a mechanism by which an animation applies a built-in displacement to the object it's animating.
* You need to set at least one key frame for an object to use GAD, even if you don't otherwise use key frames to move it.
}}

GAD is a displacement that is automatically added to the actor's current position as the animation plays. Each animation has its own GAD information built into it, custom-designed to make the actor move in a manner appropriate to its actions. If we enable it the actor will be moved forward as the animation plays.

Not all animations have GAD associated with them. For example, having an actor wave his hand wouldn't displace him, so there would be no GAD associated with that animation. We only need to worry about GAD in cases like this one where the animation should accompany movement.

To enable GAD select the animation action and set "Play Gad" to true in the object inspector. If no key frames have been defined for the actor the cutscene editor will pop up a warning at this point suggesting that we add position and orientation keys before we add GAD:

[[Image:Cutscene gad warning.png|border]]

It's important to set at least one set of keys for an object using GAD. The animation's GAD may seem to work correctly without it at first, but unexpected and unpredictable errors could occur later that will send the actor careening off into the distance.

Once we've set a key frame and have set the action's "Play Gad" option to true you'll see that the actor now moves forward as he walks. This is good, but since we started him off in the position he's meant to end in it results in the actor walking straight through the campfire. You'll need to move the actor back so that he starts farther away from the fire.

Note that if you've already set a keyframe as described in the previous section you'll need to re-set it for the actor's new location (or alternately set the "update keys" mode with the [[Image:IconUpdateKeys.png|link=]] tool), otherwise the moment the animation starts the actor will instantly jump back to the place he was where you set the keyframe. Once you set a keyframe for an actor, moving the actor around in the cutscene editor doesn't really change its position unless you re-set the keyframe to the new position. Keyframes and the curves interpolating between them always take precedence.
^
|
(ED: This need extreme explanation by someone that knows how to do this properly because this paragraph is obtuse!!)

{{sidebox|
* An animation's "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property makes Gad's displacement persist after the animation ends.
}}

The other GAD properties are set to the most appropriate defaults automatically when you select an animation but one particular property bears mention here in case you run into trouble with it later on; the "Extend Gad Beyond Action" property. In the case of this walking animation it defaults to true. That means that once the animation ends, the displacement that the actor has undergone as a result of it will remain in effect - he will stay in the final position he walked to. If this were set to false, once the animation ended all of the displacement the actor had gained as a result would be undone and he'd instantly jump back to where he started walking from again. If at some point in the future you find your actors doing this, this property is the first place to look for the answer.

There's one final detail we'll tweak here. The walking animation begins with the player starting from a standstill, which is not the impression we want to convey; the player has supposedly been walking for some time before the camera started rolling. We could set the animation to begin playing partway through by changing the animation action's "Start Offset" property, but since this is happening at the beginning of the cutscene's timeline an easier approach is to simply select the animation action and drag it so that it begins a half second before the cutscene does. The cutscene will only begin displaying at the 0 mark and anything that falls before this point in time will never be shown so the initial half second of the actor's walk animation will go unseen.

== Moving a camera ==

The scene now has some of the dynamic action we wanted, showing the player walking up to the campfire and stopping at its edge. But it's still a rather dull introduction and we can do better. Instead of a static camera shot we can set the camera so that it pans across the scene to follow the player's arrival.

Select the Arrival Camera and open up its track list. It has Position and Orientation tracks just like the other actors, and can have keyframes set just the same. With the time marker set to 0, move the Arrival Camera so that its view shows how you want the shot framed at the beginning of the cutscene. In our example we're going to set it so that it shows the player in the center of the frame. With the camera still selected, press "k" to set a key frame for the camera.

[[Image:Cutscene camera start position.png|border]]

(You may notice that the Field of View (FOV) track also gets a key marker. We won't be changing the camera's FOV so you can ignore that.)

Next move the timeline scrubber to the end of the walking animation at the 5 second mark. The player's actor will now be at the final position where he'll be standing for the conversation. Change the camera's orientation, panning to the right so that all of the actors can be seen in its field of view. In our case the camera's too close to encompass everyone so we'll also move its position to allow it to see them all.

Once you have the shot lined up correctly, press "k" to set a second keyframe.

[[Image:Cutscene camera end position.png|border]]

You may notice that the User viewports now show a red line tracing out the selected object's trajectory through space (if not, you may need to click the "show trajectories" [[Image:IconShowTrajectory.png|link=]] button in the toolbar). As the first five seconds of the cutscene plays, the Arrival Camera should slide smoothly along the red line and rotate smoothly on its axes to transition from the first keyframe to the second keyframe (If it suddenly jumps from one position to the other instead you may need to click the "default curve mode" tool [[Image:IconDefaultCurveMode.png|link=]] and try setting the keys again, or change the "transition out" property of the keyframe to Bezier).

You can fine-tune the trajectory of the camera by adding additional keyframes between the starting and ending ones. In our case we see that when the time marker is set to the middle of the camera's movement the player slips slightly out of frame.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position unadjusted.png|border]]

We can fix this by changing the camera's position and orientation as needed, and then adding a new keyframe with "k". In this case we'll pull the camera back slightly so that its motion through space becomes a curve instead of a straight line.

[[Image:Cutscene camera middle position adjusted.png|border]]

We now have a nice, dynamic establishing shot. The scene begins with the player alone and in the center of the camera's shot, and as he walks toward the fire the camera moves and pans around him to show him arriving in the presence of our two campers.

== Switching cameras ==

{{sidebox|
* A track on the MASTER object defines which camera is currently "active."
}}

Once the player arrives he is going to be greeted by the camper who is happy to see him. To give a clear shot of who's doing the talking, we'll want to switch the active camera from Arrival Camera to Happy Camera.

The track where the active camera gets changed is attached to the MASTER object. Move the timeline's time indicator to the point in time where you wish to switch active cameras, in this case 5.5 seconds (giving the scene a half-second view of the player after he's come to a halt). Right-click on the Active Camera track and select Add Action. The only option available for this track is the "Switch Camera" action so go ahead and add one. In the new Switch Camera action's properties set it to switch the active camera to Happy Camera.

Now when the cutscene is played we'll get an establishing shot showing the player walking up to the fire and then switch to a closeup of the happy camper so that he can deliver his greeting.

[[Image:Cutscene switch active camera.png|border]]

== Adding dialogue ==

{{sidebox|
* Lines of dialog can be inserted from an existing [[conversation]] resource. For convenience, create a new conversation to hold the dialog for a cutscene.
* Caption text, voice over, and facial performance are all included with each line.
* If you edit the conversation later, the changes will be reflected in the cutscene. Remember to generate new VO and FaceFX in the conversation editor.
}}

There are three major components to dialog in Dragon Age; the text of the line being spoken (which is displayed as a caption at the top of the screen), the voice-over for the line being spoken, and the facial performance that makes the virtual actor lip-synch and display appropriate emotions.

There's already a tool in the toolset that is designed for handling all of these things; the conversation editor. Actors in a cutscene can be given "Speak Line" actions that cause them to deliver lines from an existing dialog, with all three components added together into the actor's performance automatically.

Here we are going to add dialogue to a cutscene (though sometimes it is better to take a [[Conversation#Conversation-centred_approach | conversation-centred approach]]).

To create the dialog for this cutscene we'll now create a new conversation resource. This conversation is not going to be used in the game directly so we'll be able to ignore many of the more advanced features and settings covered in the conversation tutorial; its only purpose is to serve as a repository of dialog lines for use in this cutscene.

The following screenshot shows our intended conversation. The only things that we need to define for it is the text of the dialog and optionally the emotion settings for RoboBrad to use when generating facial performance. As with our previous conversation we'll generate synthesized placeholder voice-over and generate FaceFX based on that; when we record real voice over later on we can simply update this conversation with it and the cutscene's performance will change to match.

[[Image:Cutscene conversation.png|border]]

To help keep track of which lines are spoken by which actors you could also optionally set the speaker tag on each line to identify who's doing the talking. This particular conversation has only two speakers so we won't bother with that. The cutscene engine won't need speaker tags, we'll be explicitly telling it who is saying each line. You'll only need to set those things if you wish to preview the conversation before using its lines in the cutscene.

Once you've created your dialogue go back to the cutscene editor and add a new track to the camp_happy actor. Rename it to something informative, such as "Dialogue". Move the timeline marker to the spot where you want the actor to start speaking and add a new "Speak Line" action.

In the Speak Line action's properties, set the "Source Conversation" property to the conversation resource we just created. Then, select the specific line you want the actor to speak in the "Source Line" property (it will have a drop-down menu with all of the lines from the source conversation in it).

That's all you need to do to get the actors to talk. You may wish to add one other detail at this point; head tracking. This is the action that causes actors to turn their heads toward a specific target, usually the person they're talking to or who is talking to them. It's added as its own action, so create another track and add a headtracking action to it with the player as the target. In this case we want the happy camper to turn his head toward the player right before he starts speaking.

== Adding other details ==

{{sidebox|
* Headtracking actions make actors look at other objects in the cutscene.
* You can have more than one action on a track provided they don't overlap.
}}

We've now gone through all the basics, so we'll just finish fleshing out the conversation with a few other details that are done the same way as the examples above.

To add a little more animation to the scene, we add another track for camp_happy with an animation action (mh.dg_hnd_salute_01, a salute) to play during his spoken line. This animation is simpler to deal with than the walking animation because it doesn't displace the actor; there's no need to define position keys or worry about enabling GAD.

We'll set camp_angry's headlook so that she turns toward camp_happy while he's speaking; when we subsequently switch cameras to show her line of dialog she'll already be looking in his direction.

For camp_happy's next line, however, we'll make the headtracking change visible during his shot so the player will see how his attention has switched to camp_angry. Note that we can reuse the existing "Dialogue" and "Headtracking" tracks for this actor; we don't need to create a new track for every single action that an actor performs. So long as the durations of the actions on a track don't overlap they can coexist peacefully.

Finally, after camp_angry's last line we'll set her headtracking to look back toward the player. He's going to get the next word in when we integrate this cutscene into a conversation so this is a good way to indicate that the conversation's focus has gone to the player now.

Once we've finished crafting the cutscene we now know how long its duration needs to be. You can now go to the conversation's properties in the Object Inspector and set the cutscene's duration to the desired length.

The finished timeline of our cutscene:

[[Image:Cutscene finished timeline.png|border]]

[[Category:Tutorials]]
[[Category:Cutscenes]]

=== Cutscene Tips and Tricks ===

Here are a few tips and tricks that might save the cutscene creator some time and perhaps hair pulling.

- Head tracking is often used to look at another actor or a visible item in the cutscene. However you can further manipulate the head of the actor by having the actor look at invisible objects. You can have the actor look from one invisible object to another or move the invisible object around in the cutscene to get the actor to look at things independent of visible actors or items.

- You may find it useful to give meaningful names to your cameras if you are using more than one or two. (You might name a camera after the actor or placeable that it follows or name one camera ‘close-up’ and another ‘wide-angle’ for example.)

- If you are panning a camera around a room following a series of actors or placeables and you find that the camera suddenly decides to rotate in the other direction you can force it to stay moving in the direction you desire by adding or subtracting 360 degrees from the position/orientation you are using to move the camera.

- Feel free to experiment with animations. Try using animations that are not normally meant for your actor type, you might find some interesting or bizarre movements for your actor.

- You can put multiple actions along one track as long as they do not overlap rather than using many different tracks.

- Pay attention to what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to when moving your cameras. Step will jump the camera from position to position while Bezier and Linear will move the camera in a smoother motion. If you are not getting the desired effect when moving cameras check what your key frames ‘transition out’ are set to.

- If you have a longer more detailed cutscene you can keep the number of cameras you use to a reasonable number by just moving one (or more) around while another camera is the ‘active’ camera.

- For testing purposes change the length of the cutscene in the cutscenes properties to a smaller value and enlarge that number as you add on to the cutscene. In this way you won’t need to wait for a long period of time for the cutscene to end.

- After placing an animation on a track you can speed up the animation by left clicking on the small circular arrows on one end and dragging it shorter or make the animation play slower by dragging the animation longer on the track.

- You can make the content of your scene seem to change by placing invisible objects in the cutsence, using an fx to obscure the view and making the object visible while the fx is playing. (For example you might have some invisible rock debris. Use a cave in fx with clouds of dust to obscure the screen. While the fx is playing make the debris visible. When the fx is finished your debris will be in place.)

- If you find that your actor is walking across surfaces (such as water for instance) when they should be following the ground you can set ‘items follow surface’ in the area that your cutscene is based on. The actor should then walk on the ground and thus wade into the water. Conversely if you want a character or placeable to not follow the surface of the ground (for instance if you want a placeable or actor to be near or on the surface of water) move the actor or placeable higher by adjusting the Z axis of the boat or actor. (An example of using a placeable partly submerged in water might be something like a boat.)

- In a cutscene you can only activate things that are unique. As in if you plopped down three identical chests in an area, when trying to activate them all in a cutscene it will not allow this and gives you a warning message. In the example above you would have to make three different chests (though they could look the same) to be able to activate them all in the cutscene.
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