The flood has started. Right now we have already 1000 movies on SocialClub TV which got viewed 500.000 times. I counted around 150 new movies and around 50.000 new views per day. Most of them are gameplay, stunt or frag style videos, but we start to see some 'story' based movies already. Two movies that got on my radar.
Confession by Overman
Rise by Buddy of DoQ
I can't wait to see what intersting movies come out of the recent contest.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Command line arguments
You can indeed add some intersting command line arguments when starting GTA4. The list of arguments is found in the readme file in the install dir of GTA4 or here.
You can now define your graphics resolution and parameters as well as start in windowed mode.
Just add them to the GTALauncher call. For example: In order to set maximal details indented of the available video memory you need to extend the shortcut targeted at the "GTA4Launcher.exe” with the parameters "-norestrictions" and "-nomemrestrict".
Another option should be to create a file commandline.txt and put them there. Has to be placed in the install directory (not tested that myself yet).
You can now define your graphics resolution and parameters as well as start in windowed mode.
Just add them to the GTALauncher call. For example: In order to set maximal details indented of the available video memory you need to extend the shortcut targeted at the "GTA4Launcher.exe” with the parameters "-norestrictions" and "-nomemrestrict".
Another option should be to create a file commandline.txt and put them there. Has to be placed in the install directory (not tested that myself yet).
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The overcast features GTA4
Main topic of this weeks Machinima podcast 'the overcast' is GTA4.
Phil and Ricky discuss the latest in machinima happenings and software updates, and then settle in for an extensive discussion of their first impressions of Grand Theft Auto IV for PC. They cover interesting topics like, installation problems, clip capture, filmmaking in single and muliplayer game mode, EULA and IP issues, and graphics cards and more. A must listen for everyone interested in filmmaking with GTA4 PC: the overcast #045
Phil and Ricky discuss the latest in machinima happenings and software updates, and then settle in for an extensive discussion of their first impressions of Grand Theft Auto IV for PC. They cover interesting topics like, installation problems, clip capture, filmmaking in single and muliplayer game mode, EULA and IP issues, and graphics cards and more. A must listen for everyone interested in filmmaking with GTA4 PC: the overcast #045
Friday, December 12, 2008
PC Video Editor Contest
Rockstar is running a PC Video Editor Contest during it's Rockstar Games Social Club Weekend Fri Dec 12th through Sun Dec 14th.
To enter, create a video using the Grand Theft Auto IV PC in-game Video Editor suite of tools and upload your clip any time between December 12th through the 14th using the tag ‘best-in-class-contest’. Chance to win a Grand Theft Auto IV prize pack and a $300 shopping spree at our Rockstar Warehouse online store.
Contest Rules
To enter, create a video using the Grand Theft Auto IV PC in-game Video Editor suite of tools and upload your clip any time between December 12th through the 14th using the tag ‘best-in-class-contest’. Chance to win a Grand Theft Auto IV prize pack and a $300 shopping spree at our Rockstar Warehouse online store.
Contest Rules
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Finding locations
Liberty City is huge. Found this Google Maps style interactive map that helps a lot for finding nice spots where to shoot your film:
GTA4 Liberty City Map
Nice feature is that you can highlight 'Points of Interest' like, buildings with a sight, stunt jump places, buildings with interior and 'interactive' areas.
GTA4 Liberty City Map
Nice feature is that you can highlight 'Points of Interest' like, buildings with a sight, stunt jump places, buildings with interior and 'interactive' areas.
Clip Capture Part2
Second interesting concepts of clip capture is that this "effectively, brings back 'recamming' power in a way that is reminiscent of Keygrip 2 (Quake 2)" as Overman already commented before on my previous post.
Clips do not captured only the actual view you see during gameplay as video file, they indeed capture a part of the 'world' and all the action around the character.
A step later in production you can then change the default camera viewpoint and even better, you can add several different camera views for that clip.
As already mentioned this production method is unique to Machinima, was there at the beginning and util now was missed by a lot of filmmakers. Rockstar Games cannot be praized high enough for bringing 'recamming' back.
The advantages are amazing. You don't have to tweak your camera views before and later are no longer able to change them if you the find out how to get a better shot. With GTAs video editor you have all the fleixibilty you need after recording the clip, you can experiment around with different camera views as much as you like. And you don't need to convince the actors to just do another shot or setup and record the scene over and over again. Just think of that what effort it would take to setup the same complex action scene twice to record views from different cameras. Difficult, when you just can record the gamecam and capture to video file.
Easy and fun with 'recamming'.
Having the opportunity to easy experiment a lot with different camera views etc. makes it an excellent tool for learning a lot about filmmaking. As has been pointed out earlier by an excellent article by Matt Kelland.
Machinima is great for learning and to teach film.
Clips do not captured only the actual view you see during gameplay as video file, they indeed capture a part of the 'world' and all the action around the character.
A step later in production you can then change the default camera viewpoint and even better, you can add several different camera views for that clip.
As already mentioned this production method is unique to Machinima, was there at the beginning and util now was missed by a lot of filmmakers. Rockstar Games cannot be praized high enough for bringing 'recamming' back.
The advantages are amazing. You don't have to tweak your camera views before and later are no longer able to change them if you the find out how to get a better shot. With GTAs video editor you have all the fleixibilty you need after recording the clip, you can experiment around with different camera views as much as you like. And you don't need to convince the actors to just do another shot or setup and record the scene over and over again. Just think of that what effort it would take to setup the same complex action scene twice to record views from different cameras. Difficult, when you just can record the gamecam and capture to video file.
Easy and fun with 'recamming'.
Having the opportunity to easy experiment a lot with different camera views etc. makes it an excellent tool for learning a lot about filmmaking. As has been pointed out earlier by an excellent article by Matt Kelland.
Machinima is great for learning and to teach film.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Clip Capture Part1
Your first task when starting to make a movie with the GTA4 video editor is caturing some game footage. This is simply done by pressing the F2 button. This implements 2 interesting concepts for clip capture.
First, caturing is done 'backwards' in time. That means the action that occurs PRIOR to pressing the key. The clip length is limited to about 30-40s depending on game settings and computer specs.
On the first look this is somehow confusing when being used to the standard way film footage is recorded: Defining the start and end point of your recording and always record forward in time. After some thinking it is indeedan amazing concept. For recording interesting scenes during gameplay it's great.
You don't have to record everything and then later select these parts and save. You never know exactly what might be look great before it had happend. This way everything is recorded by default (but not saved) and when you recognize something unique an useful had happend in the game, just press F2 and you have it saved.
And even if you are a forward thinking person, plan and setup a scene in advance this feature is not as bad as it looks. This way you only save when the scene happened as you have planned. No need to save several takes until you got the right one. Just press F2 when you are satisfied. This saves some disk space and time for selecting and organizing all the takes later.
Biggest drawback is of course that they have a fixed clip length we (yet) have no control of that length. That hurts. It's not possible to capture longer scenes (e.g car chases etc.) in one clip or even be able to save disc space and worktime to adjust clip length later for recording smaller clips.
I hope this will get fixed soon by either the game company itself or some clever modders.
First, caturing is done 'backwards' in time. That means the action that occurs PRIOR to pressing the key. The clip length is limited to about 30-40s depending on game settings and computer specs.
On the first look this is somehow confusing when being used to the standard way film footage is recorded: Defining the start and end point of your recording and always record forward in time. After some thinking it is indeedan amazing concept. For recording interesting scenes during gameplay it's great.
You don't have to record everything and then later select these parts and save. You never know exactly what might be look great before it had happend. This way everything is recorded by default (but not saved) and when you recognize something unique an useful had happend in the game, just press F2 and you have it saved.
And even if you are a forward thinking person, plan and setup a scene in advance this feature is not as bad as it looks. This way you only save when the scene happened as you have planned. No need to save several takes until you got the right one. Just press F2 when you are satisfied. This saves some disk space and time for selecting and organizing all the takes later.
Biggest drawback is of course that they have a fixed clip length we (yet) have no control of that length. That hurts. It's not possible to capture longer scenes (e.g car chases etc.) in one clip or even be able to save disc space and worktime to adjust clip length later for recording smaller clips.
I hope this will get fixed soon by either the game company itself or some clever modders.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Reinventing the wheel
Why are they always trying to reinvent the wheel every time a game company adds movie making capabalities to their game (and mostly fail getting it right)?
Having had a first look at the GTA4 video editor, I'm asking myself why they didn't have a look what has been done with GTA San Andreas by modders before. Great tools like San An Studios and other mods made this game a great tool for Machinima filmmakers. Excellent movies have been made with this:
The great machinima intro 'What is Machinima?' , the amazing 'The Days After' and the comedy/drama series 'PEDS' just to name a few.
Machinima has been around since 1994. Most of what is needed for filmmaking and how to get it right is easy to access and could have been used to create a much more usable tool than what I see implemented in GTA4 now.
Ok, it's not that bad as it might sound, but I see a lot of missed opportunities for filmmakers. I'm optimistic the modding community will to help again. Guess one still has to be happy that a game company includes any Machinima tool with the game at all.
Having had a first look at the GTA4 video editor, I'm asking myself why they didn't have a look what has been done with GTA San Andreas by modders before. Great tools like San An Studios and other mods made this game a great tool for Machinima filmmakers. Excellent movies have been made with this:
The great machinima intro 'What is Machinima?' , the amazing 'The Days After' and the comedy/drama series 'PEDS' just to name a few.
Machinima has been around since 1994. Most of what is needed for filmmaking and how to get it right is easy to access and could have been used to create a much more usable tool than what I see implemented in GTA4 now.
Ok, it's not that bad as it might sound, but I see a lot of missed opportunities for filmmakers. I'm optimistic the modding community will to help again. Guess one still has to be happy that a game company includes any Machinima tool with the game at all.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
gameplay4filmmakers
Filmaking can be much easier when speeding up gameplay and using cheats.
Why playing the game at all? First it's fun and second you need to play through the missions to get access to all the areas of Liberty City (Bohan, Algonquin, Alderley). Of course you can access those areas while using multiplayer maps but that is a different story.
So until there are no 'saved games' available from others and could be used you have to play the game at least to some level.
What helps is using the cheats available in the game. The cheats acivated by typing special phone numbers in the phone. Later you can use them from the cheats menu of the phone.
The most important one are to get health, armour, weapons, cars, bikes, helis, and to change the weather. Yes, you can make a call (to whom?) to change the weather :).
List of cheats
(Those are for Xbox, but will work for PC as well)
I've used those to speed up work for my GTA4 movie Liberty City a lot. Although this movie didn't depend on using any cheats it was very handy to use them. Having a car, bike or heli ready when and where you need it was great help. And changing the weather was useful as well. Not to talk about getting rid of the 'wanted level' when you accidentially hit a police car or shot people too much while shooting your film.
But be careful, using cheats will disable soem achievements in the game you need to get to complete the game at 100% for
Using a taxi during the missions helps speeding up gameplay as well. You can instantly go to the destination by paying some extra fee. Even better after some missions done for 'Roman', he'll send you a private taxi when calling him for this service. That helps, because it's often hard to hitch a ride with a taxi in remote areas or exactly then when you need them. And it saves money as well.
Why playing the game at all? First it's fun and second you need to play through the missions to get access to all the areas of Liberty City (Bohan, Algonquin, Alderley). Of course you can access those areas while using multiplayer maps but that is a different story.
So until there are no 'saved games' available from others and could be used you have to play the game at least to some level.
What helps is using the cheats available in the game. The cheats acivated by typing special phone numbers in the phone. Later you can use them from the cheats menu of the phone.
The most important one are to get health, armour, weapons, cars, bikes, helis, and to change the weather. Yes, you can make a call (to whom?) to change the weather :).
List of cheats
(Those are for Xbox, but will work for PC as well)
I've used those to speed up work for my GTA4 movie Liberty City a lot. Although this movie didn't depend on using any cheats it was very handy to use them. Having a car, bike or heli ready when and where you need it was great help. And changing the weather was useful as well. Not to talk about getting rid of the 'wanted level' when you accidentially hit a police car or shot people too much while shooting your film.
But be careful, using cheats will disable soem achievements in the game you need to get to complete the game at 100% for
Using a taxi during the missions helps speeding up gameplay as well. You can instantly go to the destination by paying some extra fee. Even better after some missions done for 'Roman', he'll send you a private taxi when calling him for this service. That helps, because it's often hard to hitch a ride with a taxi in remote areas or exactly then when you need them. And it saves money as well.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Installing the beast
It took me over 2 hours to get everything done. Wasn't it GTA4 I would have stopped the process and bought another game.
Hint: Download and read the Movie Editor and have a read through it while installing
My firewall send me never ending notices to which sites that game want's to getconnected during installation (didn't allow most of them to get through) but I'm still puzzling what those connects are for and what data they want to send.
In addition you need to create 2 accounts and the additional software and the recent updates for
a) Game for Windows-Live (for multiplayer gaming)
b) A Social Club account to publish and share your movies made with GTA4
And I just noticed GTA4 PC uses SecuROM as well. Search the Web for what SecuROM can cause.
After finally installing everything. I just got a simple error:
GTA4: FATAL ERROR RMN40
Browing the web relvealed:
RMN40- Windows XP: Need to have Service Pack 3 or higher to proceed.
Ok I didn't RTFM before, but I've really not planned to update to SP3.
Fears are high other (older) software might not work.
Ok, made a backup disk and then installed SP3.
After that I finally got it to work. Now I have to start playing the game to get the phone (you need that to get access to the movie editor) and get access to all areas of the game. Great to have some experience by playing the game on my Xbox before.
Hint: Download and read the Movie Editor and have a read through it while installing
My firewall send me never ending notices to which sites that game want's to getconnected during installation (didn't allow most of them to get through) but I'm still puzzling what those connects are for and what data they want to send.
In addition you need to create 2 accounts and the additional software and the recent updates for
a) Game for Windows-Live (for multiplayer gaming)
b) A Social Club account to publish and share your movies made with GTA4
And I just noticed GTA4 PC uses SecuROM as well. Search the Web for what SecuROM can cause.
After finally installing everything. I just got a simple error:
GTA4: FATAL ERROR RMN40
Browing the web relvealed:
RMN40- Windows XP: Need to have Service Pack 3 or higher to proceed.
Ok I didn't RTFM before, but I've really not planned to update to SP3.
Fears are high other (older) software might not work.
Ok, made a backup disk and then installed SP3.
After that I finally got it to work. Now I have to start playing the game to get the phone (you need that to get access to the movie editor) and get access to all areas of the game. Great to have some experience by playing the game on my Xbox before.
About this blog
GTA4 for PC is out now and opens this new world for Machinima Filmmaking. Yes, this version comes with a Movie Editor that helps you making your own movie with it.
See Ricky's post for what this could start:
The Great GTA IV Machinima Flood 0f 2009
I decided to start up this blog to write about a bit about GTA4 and Machinima filmmaking. And to get into blogging a bit as well.
Stay tuned.
P.S. If you have found out something intersting about GTA4 filmmaking, please let me know. I'll be more than happy to add it here.
P.P.S As you see I've just used one of the standard design. I'm not good at design at all. It would great to give this blog a nicer GTA style look maybe. If you like to help, please let me know.
See Ricky's post for what this could start:
The Great GTA IV Machinima Flood 0f 2009
I decided to start up this blog to write about a bit about GTA4 and Machinima filmmaking. And to get into blogging a bit as well.
Stay tuned.
P.S. If you have found out something intersting about GTA4 filmmaking, please let me know. I'll be more than happy to add it here.
P.P.S As you see I've just used one of the standard design. I'm not good at design at all. It would great to give this blog a nicer GTA style look maybe. If you like to help, please let me know.
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