FMVs => just a thought

[Hatsjoe]

holy... we're not paying you, are we? 

No you're not.

I do a lot of modelling for fun so i'd better use all that time for something useful such as this. I hope you like the second vid.

[kage]

i'm thinking about doing a few of the transport videos... this is a point where i think a little change might be good (unless there is strong suggestion otherwise) -- afaik, there's absolutely no current way to have an aircraft of any kind carry 10 tanks, most especially not through vertical takeoff... does anyone have any thoughts on this? (that is, some way to accomplish this without t3+ tech)

[lav_coyote25]

actually there was a vtol (dirigible style) being planned - from what i remember it was to be about the same size as an aircraft carrier ...


actually i was off by a bit...


http://gizmag.com/go/4538/

http://gizmag.com/go/4538/picture/14614/

or maybe not... judging by the size represented here....

[lav_coyote25]

geez looweez... now how bloody close do you want to get to this....


http://gizmag.com/go/4538/picture/14615/


looks a bit familiar dont it??

http://gizmag.com/go/4538/picture/14612/

[Hatsjoe]

i'm thinking about doing a few of the transport videos... this is a point where i think a little change might be good (unless there is strong suggestion otherwise) -- afaik, there's absolutely no current way to have an aircraft of any kind carry 10 tanks, most especially not through vertical takeoff... does anyone have any thoughts on this? (that is, some way to accomplish this without t3+ tech)

I've heard of jet engines that can generate more than 100 000 pounds of thrust. If a few of them would be placed vertically you could theoretically easily lift a few thanks. We're talking about 10 tanks offcourse and a structure to support them + vertical thrust isn't the only nessecity. Stability, forward thrust, brakes (backward thrust, steering ability (sideward thrust),... But then again it's the year 2100 and you can't know how technology has advanced (atleast not before the collapse) maybe the jet engine has been replaced by a laser engine or whatever. Too bad pumpkin didn't leave some detailed technical reports about weapons, units,... like is the case in many modern games.

[Kamaze]

Hm, just one thing i noticed.
What is this 'border', which swaps from the left to the right?

[kage]

lol. the army needs to learn a thing or two about style...

http://gizmag.com/go/4538/picture/14619/

caption: "gigantic beluga surfaces near dock: takes a load off"

[Hatsjoe]

Hm, just one thing i noticed.
What is this 'border', which swaps from the left to the right?

Anyone else has the same isues ? It certainly doesn't appear on my pc so i guess it has something to do with vlc. Can anyone confirm ? Since this is a test render it doesn't really matter anyways

[DevUrandom]

Xine and MPlayer both don't show that issue in the current version.

[Chojun]

The next movie is here:

http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... lComm2.avi

Freak Hatsjoe...  This is sweet........

[Per]

Very nice. Now we need to find a free format we can distribute them in. MPEG is encumbered by patent. OGG Theora is the only video codec I know of that we can use that will work on all platforms and we can link to the GPL code.

Even just playing the Comms video during briefings would be a step forward. We could also play a video behind the main menu for additional effect.

[Hatsjoe]

Very nice. Now we need to find a free format we can distribute them in. MPEG is encumbered by patent. OGG Theora is the only video codec I know of that we can use that will work on all platforms and we can link to the GPL code.

Even just playing the Comms video during briefings would be a step forward. We could also play a video behind the main menu for additional effect.

We shouldn't rush anything. Just these two movies aren't worth all the trouble of importing. It are only test versions anyways. There's no sound yet, no audio effects, voice acting,.. If we want to recreate all the movies we're gonna need a bigger team. But for now Nexus should be easy to model and animate. I'll try to so that asap. shouldn't take more than 2 hours or something. The collective will be harder to model but the animation is very simple. will see what i can do :p

[whippersnapper]

a strong and interesting dynamic executed in this Comm .avi

seeing it again reminded me of the image's inspirational sources - readily traced to Precolumbian MesoAmerican indian art motifs.

kage mentioned Relic's technique in HomeWorld - Blizzard hav also been masters of a simple but elegant dynamism in the design of their Mission Brief's going back to StarCraft at least.

BTW - the .avi played cleanly with QuickTime and RealPlayer but there was some notable artifacting running with Win MediaPlayer, can't imagine why.

[gerard_]

Using FFmpeg (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/index.html) seems easy enough (http://www.inb.uni-luebeck.de/~boehme/u ... codec.html). It supports almost all video formats (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html#SEC21).

After looking at these nice video's I might take a look at adding video support.

[Per]

ffmpeg is difficult to legally distribute (at least as binary) in some countries, and eg most linux distributions do not carry it because of patent worries. See http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/legal.html. I do not see why we should add a dependency on it, when we could just as well use the unencumbered ogg theora codec instead. We already use ogg vorbis for audio.

The API for the libtheora library seems quite well documented, too: http://www.theora.org/doc/libtheora-1.0alpha6/