Advanced Cinematics Guide
By CheeZy
created 3/02/04
Cinematics
This article assumes you already know how to make cinematics, if not please read this article.
Cinematics, they’re a wonderful art. But just like art there are good cinematics and there are bad cinematics. Hopefully by the end of this article you’ll have an idea for what some good cinematics are and how to make them. Since you already know how to use the cinematic editor, this article will instead better your techniques for making your cinematics.
Section 1 – Controlling Objects in Cinematics
Cinematics need motion and then need action. Stuff needs to be happening basically. Like with everything else, you control objects in game by using Triggers.
The first you thing you do is setup your area on the map and place the units that go with it. In this example I’ll be making 3 units walk a path and have the camera follow them.
Now make the camera track that would follow the path of the units. Take note of the duration of the track.
Cinematic blocks are your friend. Place some down in the path that you want the units to take.
Go into triggers and make the units walk this path by tasking them to one of the cinematic blocks, then when they reach it, have them tasked to the next one, and so on.
Make sure that the camera keeps up with the moving units by testing the scenario and timing how long it takes the units to go from one point to another. Take note of this and adjust the timing settings and duration of the Camera Track to get the best results. Keep testing the scenario until you get the timing right. After a while you’ll be used to doing stuff like this and you’ll get it right on the first or second attempt.
That’s it! that’s all you need to do for this example, and the result is quite stunning in game. To see how this looked like see the example scenario – the link is posted at the end of this article.
Other things you can do like this is move units, create motion in cinematics by tasking units to areas, and generally create more movement on the screen.
Section 2 – Cinematic Rules
Here are some general rules and guidelines to making some good cinematics
- Eyecandy Eyecandy Eyecandy! Make your map (and thus your cinematics) interesting to look at, make people wonder how you did “that”, make people remember your work. Without something good on the screen people’ll be bored by your cinematic
- Make the player feel like he’s watching an actual movie. That means use interesting camera angles and try to get bottom to top views. What’s that mean? Have the camera be at ground level and looking up at the sky or buildings, it makes a very nice effect.
- If your camera angle is going to be low or looking at the sky: always keep the camera looking towards the edge of the map! You’ll notice that you get hit with massive lag if the camera is pitched low in the center of the map. That is because of how AoM is made, and you can’t really do anything about it. Even the top of the line computers today get the same hit of lag, so don’t worry, just keep clear of it. If you’re going to have allot of units on the map it’s also a better idea to have them on the edge because of the increased performance; your computer doesn’t have to draw as much stuff when looking towards the edge of the map.
- Slow Down! Don’t make the camera go all over the place and move really fast, that annoys people and can make them dizzy too. Keep things slow and smooth. It makes a camera track look much better too.
Section 3 – Triggers and Effects
Use trigger effects if applicable, such as the Fade to Color effect and turning unit outlines off (SetObscuredUnits)
Also remember to setup the map settings when going into cinematic mode. Specify a Sky type. Available sky types are SkyBlue, SkySunset, SkyWinter, and SkyStormy
Section 4 – The Perspective Trick
Perspective tricks in movies are used to make objects appear bigger or smaller. It’s quite easy to implement and master perspective tricks in AoM too, take a look:
Now look how convincing that looks. All you have to do is scale the objects smaller (or bigger) to add an illusion of distance. Here is what the scene looks like from above:
Yes, surprising isn’t it. The Key to making tricks like these work is to design the scene in the camera angle that it’s going to be viewed at. I made that entire scene in the first screenshot by designing it from the view as seen in the screenshot. This gives the best result as you can directly see how stuff will look like in the camera track.
Also, try to make it look like there is more stuff to look at in the background. What I do is I make mountains or hills at the edges of the map to make it look like there is more on the other side of the hill. It also looks very convincing like you’re high up in elevation and after the hill or elevation the land dips down alot. You’ll notice this when you watch the example scenario
linked at the end of this article.
A good thing to add is trees and other things on the horizon to make it look like the land keeps going and isn’t empty. Note the trees in this screenshot
The trees are slightly behind and lower than the main elevation and makes it look like there’s more after that hill, when really it’s the very end of the map.
And that’s all! I hope this was of good help to you. If you really want to see how to do these cinematics hands-on, check out the Cinematics Example Scenario
The scenario shows all these screenshots in live action, shows how I made the map, and also has a lot of extra scenes and examples all played in-game in a mini-movie that I made in about 3 hours.
Happy Designing!