Cinematic Camera: New Features

[ApacheTech]

The best camera mod I've ever used for any game is BauerCam. It had some really nice features that would work very well here. I've used my experience with that MC mod to come up with this list of potential features for the camera that would make recording third person timelapse footage really seamless.

    • When in spectator mode, you can use "Q" and "E" to manipulate the Roll of the camera, in addition to the normal "WASD" controls for Pitch, and Yaw. "X" will reset the Roll back to 0°.

    • .nv <on/off> - [Spectator/Creative Mode Only] Enables or disables Night Vision, to allow for recording more than 20 minutes of footage at a time.

    • .cam start <time> <starting-point> - Additional optional argument to allow the camera to start at a specific point along it's route. Very useful for fine-tuning paths, and making sure that corners are handled properly. Default starting point is 0.

    • .cam target - Adds the block the player is standing on as a target for the camera. The camera will face the block, regardless of it's xyz position, or it's roll.

    • .cam target clear - Clears the current target, reverting to manual facing.

    - .cam vw <p1> <p2> [0.1 - 9999] - Adds velocity weighting along the path between the two specified nodes. This will speed up, or slow down the camera along this path, but the overall time of the scene will remain the same. Default weighting along all paths is 1.

    • .cam pb <X> - Add a point to the path before the nth point.

    • .cam circle <radius> <revolutions> <direction> - Creates a circular path of <radius> blocks around the player's current position, with a set number of <revolutions>. The points increment in the chosen <direction> around the circle. Example: ".cam circle 100 1 right".

Example of use: If I want the camera to swoop down through the clouds, and then circle around my build as I'm building, I'd need to define the circle first, as a 100 radius circle focussed on the centre of the build. Wherever point 0 is, is now the end point of the swoop. I'd want to add a new point 0 somewhere in the clouds. Also, if I set the time to be 20 minutes (record-able daylight hours), I'd want to add a weighting to path between the first two points, so that it doesn't spend 8 minutes swooping, and only 12 minutes circling.

Bird swooping, gliding on the wind, and other effects could then be added over time as extra pre-defined paths, like the circle, so that it creates a pseudo-random path mixing roll, pitch, yaw, velocity weighting, and targeting, between two points to make it look like a bird flying overhead.

Edited April 1, 2020 by ApacheTech

[ApacheTech]

One other really nice feature would be:

 • .cam follow <player> <distance> <front|back|dynamic> <noclip> - The camera will follow a specific <player>, at a minimal safe <distance>. The behaviour of the camera can either be static, staying at the <front> or <back> of the player, or <dynamic>, which means the camera will move around the player, in a cinematic fashion, with pans, and sweeps, in a pseudo-random pattern. The camera will collide with solid objects, and do it's best to follow the specified ruleset, unless the <noclip> option is set.

Edited April 10, 2020 by ApacheTech

[ApacheTech]

Expansion on Night Vision for Spectator Mode

I've added this as a request for a Client Side mod, but thought I'd expand on the idea here as well, in case light levels aren't something you can manipulate through mods.

Synopsis:

This feature would add a command :

.nv on|off

This command would only have an effect in Spectator Mode.

When activated, it would add an effect to the player to enable them to see in pitch black, as if it were daylight.

Background:

Spectator Mode is used on secondary "Camera Accounts", to create stop-motion third-person timelapses. This involves either placing the camera in a static position while you build, or setting a path for the camera to follow, and specifying a duration for the flight along the path. Usually, in third-person timelapses, you would need to record over a period of hours, in order to get enough material to fill the time you need for the scene.

Currently, in game, it is only possible to record in 20 minute intervals, because the nights are ridiculously long, and far too dark to record anything in. At 128x speed, this is only ~10 seconds of footage.

Allowing the camera account to have visibility 100% of the time will allow for much longer, uninterrupted recording sessions, which will result in much more impressive, and usable footage.

Example:

As an example, the timelapse at the beginning of this episode was recorded over a 15-20 in-game day period. It's a decent size build, but nothing huge. It has a mix of static, and moving camera segments, and the footage is only sped up to a maximum of 32x. Because the maximum duration of any camera path is around 20 minutes, if you start at dawn, it means that you end up chasing the camera around as you're building. It's a very frantic way of building, and you waste a day or two setting up the camera paths. As soon as it passes midday in game, it's far too late to build anything that day, and you have to wait around until dawn. If you oversleep, the next day is entirely wasted. If a temporal storm warning comes up, you waste up to three in-game days while you reset everything, ready to shoot again.

All in all, everything I've described here would have been eased if the camera were able to be rolling constantly, without the need to reset everything every 20 minutes. Having night vision on the camera would allow a huge range of incredible footage to be filmed that is currently unavailable.

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

Really love your work! Bit off topic but was looking at your mini map in the vid and saw you have icons! Houses and such how do you do that?

[redram]

16 hours ago, MICHAEL CAMPBELL said:

Really love your work! Bit off topic but was looking at your mini map in the vid and saw you have icons! Houses and such how do you do that?

Go to your map screen (M key by default) and right click to add waypoint.  The icons are a pop-down menu in the waypoint dialogue.

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

Fantastic:) Thank you! Redram!