Do a "face cam" (similar to third person cam)

[TomDM6]

Hi !

I hope it is a simple request for you, I've spent some hours with no succes..

I think some sort of a modified third person config will work, but haven't found any. This thread was promising, but look unsolved to me.



I want to have a camera facing the player's face while moving (this means rotating and so accordingly). My closest success is a chasing cam that will keep the distance and the relative distance and position.

I've tried to have many camera key points but it is not working in playback. The blue "camera view" in the capture are ignored when playing. It's a manual time consuming workaround, but may be acceptable.





I'd like that my camera would rotate as the players view does and being always in the center (similar to some go pro videos for example). Or at least that the different cams I set do work.

Thanksss !!

[auri]

Hey Tom,

I like your attempt to create lots of checkpoints. Usually that should work. Maybe you are not locked to the camera view so that's why the blue checkpoints are being ignored. Could that be, did you try? Does any other camera path work for you?

Unfortunately I don't think your reqest will be added to q3mme as the project still exists but I have no idea if people are still working on it. I think it has enough functions as it is.

The camera view you are talking about kind of exists in baseq3 already. You can set the camera to be a third person cam and then rotate the view 180 degrees and it's directly in front of the player. I don't remember exactly how to do that.

Look here, it's not a face cam but it is what you are talking about and you just need to set that up and change the distance and angle: youtu.be/Rgps2D3LptY?t=46

Good luck!

[TomDM6]

Auri I tried you approach and it does the job.

It is a pity you cannot use more vars. I wanted to do some recording with Orbb, but the camera is focusing on the weapon not the eyeball. Only X angle can be moved around  .-(

But with other models it does work!



Hopefully I'll be able to record a demo and then play it back on the Q3 engine seeing what I am showing in the pic. Hadn't had the chance to check yet.

Thanks!!

[auri]

The same things you did with the third person camera there should work in q3mme. We did not remove any features as far as I know.

Orbb, I thought so, but yeah, I don't know how to change the height of the camera. Maybe you can find another way while playing around with the settings some more. Good luck with your movie!

[ent]

Hello.

Unfortunately, there is no way to change the camera height in third person view, only angle and range: github.com/entdark/q3mme/blob/master/trunk/code/cgame/cg_main.c#L164-L166

I could add more options to set camera distance, vertical offset, horizontal offset etc like it's done in Jedi Academy: github.com/jedis/jediacademy/blob/master/codemp/cgame/cg_main.c#L807-L816

If you don't hurry, I could probably make it on the next weekend.

[auri]

ent comes to save the day and prove me wrong, like a boss

[TomDM6]

H¡ Ent!!

Wow.. I feel like when you are given a present you cannot accept.

To be honest, I think that with Auri's advices I could get a similar result that I had in mind. So thanks for the offering but I feel is asking too much. Although of course, when more vars to play with, more room to get a better result.

Since you are so collaborative, I'll share my project with you.

I am doing some custom songs videos in here (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNXjc3kOGV4qX56LHjUtlUg) my aim is to do some sort of crazy but nice videoclip to this Q3 tribute song I recorded drive.google.com/open?id=0BykRRADKmLHXYlpqR3pLN2VfME0.

Thanks guys !!

[TomDM6]

Sorry to bother you again,

Is it possible to change model while in Q3MME? Following this q3mme.proboards.com/thread/30 I tried out the commands but Nor this command 
/clientoverride 8 model tankjr name ^3Player1

or
"/clientoverride red model doom/phobos hmodel orbb/default
"
change the actual model of the player.

If something cannot be sorted out, I'll manage it with Q3 engine demos, and some "cinematics" with Q3MME.


Well thanks again!

PD: you'll be in the credits for sure after being so collaborative !

[auri]

I would totally accept that. What a nice offer.

Did you try everything from that thread for changing the models? Did you find the correct client number? Or you can try overriding all clients. If that doesn't work then I am not sure what's wrong with your setup. I cannot remember anybody having that problem before so I think you should retry.

[TomDM6]

Auri you were right again. MY bad, it was a matter of not selecting appropriate client, 0.

Right after you posted your suggestion it just worked. Now that I was to start working I find something weird (my fault for sure).

when for example using "/clientoverride 0 model orbb/default" I get a "failed to load model file models/players/bone/head.md3"

Model is unchanged, but I can hear Orbb sounds, so something did actually change.

I did mess a lot with commands and changing different vars, so I have just started over again with a fresh Q3 installation and Q3MME and I am getting the same. It's weird because I did get it to work.. any clue? 

Besides, any propper way to clean off the screan from everything but "action" (no hud, no messages, no counters, no chats..)?


Thanks again !!

[auri]

Ugh, I'll try this all from memory

If bones's head.md3 is missing then maybe that's set for the headmodel. Try changing the model and headmodel. And after you change models, it should work. Maybe change to model Sarge/default headmodel Sarge/default or something so you can be sure the files are there. Not sure what your error is exactly. Can you show that or write the exact message?

You could try a vid_restart after you changed the models. Not sure if that works well in q3mme, though.

Hide all console messages on screen but still let them appear in the console itself: con_notifytime "-1"

I don't have Quake installed right now so I cannot check. When normal Quake 3, start a game, then open the console, type cg_draw and then hit Tab. All variables starting with cg_draw will show up. I think the one for HUD is cg_draw2d. If you set that and some others to 0 it should disable display of everything.

To make your video prettier, consider hiding some players that don't matter. "clientoverride xxx hide" I think. Definitely makes any Defrag run movie better and might sometimes be good in fragmovies too if other players are distracting.

Let me know how it goes

[TomDM6]

Wow !!

This time I found the "why" by myself after trying again different approaches. But again, you had the proper answer (you are admin for some reason!). I'd like to have been faster so you didn't had to solve my reqs again..

My conclusion is that in some circumstances (?) changing model only but not hmodel returns this error. Now I am putting the hmodel arg in the clientOverride function and it does work pretty fine.

Now I do have all I need.

I am not sure if I'd have a closer result to what I plan with Ent's feature, so thanks but do not worry about that and enjoy the time you'd have dedicated  .-)

I'll let you know how everything ended in some weeks !!! 

I've taken the lead Lol !

[auri]

Well, this was easy peasy. Glad you figured everything out!
See you in a few weeks with more info or a video then.

[ent]

Hello again.

I've added horizontal and vertical offsetting in third person view with the respectful cvars:
- cg_thirdPersonHorzOffset
- cg_thirdPersonVertOffset

Try them out: www.dropbox.com/s/qr8bb6fuy2hl3b9/q3mme-1.8build4.zip?dl=1

Order of application of all third person view cvars are:
1. cg_thirdPersonVertOffset
2. cg_thirdPersonAngle
3. cg_thirdPersonRange
4. cg_thirdPersonHorzOffset

I hope that helps.

[auri]

So cool! All the cool things we can do now. Thanks ent

Now just a variable that's something like cg_thirdPersonSmoothFactor which determines how fast the camera changes while following the look direction of the player. Then it could look something like modern third person shooters : DDD

Not that I'd ever use that. Thanks, have a good day!

[ent]

Jul 1, 2019 7:23:59 GMT 1 auri said:

Now just a variable that's something like cg_thirdPersonSmoothFactor which determines how fast the camera changes while following the look direction of the player. Then it could look something like modern third person shooters : DDD

Nice idea but requires some effort to implement because we need to store "history" of camera positions and angles and then apply that history correctly.
And there are 2 ways to add the feature:
- common way that applies even if the demo is paused/slowed down so basically will be unnoticed when capturing
- dirty code way that is related to demo playback speed

I am not sure that feature is useful for the most movie makers, I didn't see many videos that used 3rd person view at all.

[auri]

I agree, does not seem useful. Also don't listen to people who have not made movies in 10 years for feature requests. Very neat you are also reading the forum!

[TomDM6]

So coool !

I have already tested the build and the new features do work perfectly! Although I meant something more like thirdPersonAngleY (being current thirdPersonAngle X) I'll see what I can do!!

In case you feel like checking the work in progress, this is a small prove of concept I did last weekend drive.google.com/open?id=15w6UOzWEglyRVCl8kWNN6WJP0yTJlGmf (140mb). It was just to check the tech, we'll see how it ends. Many ideas, not so much time to apply them.

Now I amb looking for way to have more shooting and bloodspilling !!

[auri]

Funny opening with the id logo.

Well, good luck then and I hope it's gonna be awesome. Be sure to watch a lot of other movies to get some inspiration or to find out on which level movies are nowadays.

[ent]

I am glad it works.
Try to disable vibration effect with fx_Vibrate 0 so the camera doesn't "jump" on explosions.
And to adjust final camera angle try using mov_deltaYaw, mov_deltaPitch and mov_deltaRoll cvars. Values are in degrees.

[TomDM6]

Thanks Ent!

It looks much smoother.

This is not a techie one, and I am not being lazy, but I could not get rid of the messages like "Grunt was machinegunned by whoever". I though I'd do it in aftereffects, but don't like at all the result nor the process.

Won't you happen to know what var is that so I can switch it to 0? I disabled sooo many things and it keeps appearing.

And one more, How to disable the sprites rendered in the 3d engine such as "1" or "-1" when kill or get killed, or the blue "comic balloon" tha appears by the model when in the console?

I am in the final steps and before enter in a hellish edition process, with a worse result I feel it's worth asking again!

I have lost the lead!!  LOL

[auri]

Jun 29, 2019 21:36:13 GMT 1 auri said:

Hide all console messages on screen but still let them appear in the console itself: con_notifytime "-1"

I don't have Quake installed right now so I cannot check. When normal Quake 3, start a game, then open the console, type cg_draw and then hit Tab. All variables starting with cg_draw will show up. I think the one for HUD is cg_draw2d. If you set that and some others to 0 it should disable display of everything.

I posted all this a few posts back, did you read this and try these?

Chat bubbles and the floating numbers should be there somewhere as well.

[TomDM6]

Dear Auri,

You are so right. My apologies, I did try so many things and never got back to your post again.

Matter solved. I can handle the rest.

Thanks guys !

[auri]

Great. Now the movie cannot suck

[TomDM6]

Finally the video is done !!

While in the process some thing have changed. It's not so much about showing frags but showing the game itself and how brutal and open it can be !

Hope you like it. If you can share it, pls do so!!

www.youtube.com/channel/UCNXjc3kOGV4qX56LHjUtlUg

Thanks again for your support!

PD: I'm thinking about doing something similar for Q3DM17.. we'll see.