Hello,

I'm currently looking for ways to make cutscenes as an enhancement for narration. Skyrim's Creation Kit doesn't give tools like story-based games editors (Neverwinter Nights, etc) but there is certainly some way to have cutscenes.

The main property of such cutscenes would be that the camera isn't stuck on the position of the player. Basically, no cartmode.
While the documentation about http://www.creationkit.com/Camera_Paths has been removed and not replaced, it seems to be only usable for kill (VATS and dragons) and death cams. Does anyone have more info?

So I'm studying the scene of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBTOdLw8zF4 to fly to Skuldafn. After closing the dialog, the player loses controls, go to 3rd person view and sees her character mount Odahviing. Then Odahviing takes off and fly in the distance while the camera stays on place.
The quest is MQ303 "The World-Eater's Eyrie", the end of the dialog sets the quest stage to 50, the animation starts at stage 55. It's a paired animation (the dragon and the player character). The quest stage 60 moves the player the Skuldafn.


This is the code for quest stage 50 :

; trigger Odahviing transport scene; debug.trace(self + "stage 50")Game.DisablePlayerControls()Alias_Odahviing.GetActorRef().DispelAllSpells()Alias_Odahviing.GetActorRef().SetAllowFlying(true)SetObjectiveCompleted(20)SetObjectiveDisplayed(30)

This is the code for quest stage 55 :

; trigger paired anim of player riding Odahviing; debug.trace(self + "stage 55 - trigger paired animation")Game.DisablePlayerControls(abMovement = true, abFighting = true, abCamSwitch = true, \  abLooking = false, abSneaking = true, abMenu = true, abActivate = true, abJournalTabs = false)Game.ForceThirdPerson()Alias_Odahviing.GetActorRef().PlayIdleWithTarget(groundMountDragonIdle, Game.GetPlayer())MUSOdahviingRiding.Add()

The Scene is MQ303OdahviingScene, the Phase 6 triggers the animation.

I'd like some help to figure out what allows the player character to go away from the camera.
Is it specific to the GroundMountDragon animation, which allows the model to go away when movement controls are disabled?
Is there something else I missed in the scripts that fixes the position of the camera?

Do you have an idea how it could be used for a simple shot reverse shot, or for a traveling?


Thank you for your attention.

Based on work I've done in other engines, I've always speculated that this scene was achieved simply by making an animation in which the player literally moves off of their origin. In other words, the player as far as the engine is concerned is still standing in place, but since the camera is tied to the players XYZ but made to 'look at' the player's root node, as the player's model moves away from it's own origin, the camera stays and just follows.

Another quest for you to investigate is a small quest you can do for one of the students in Winterhold. She turns you into a few different creatures, but it looks like all they did was force 3rd person, hide the player model and draw animal models in place.

I too would like to have some control over the camera for limited cut scenes.

I've really been hoping to get camera control, in order to make a proper clairvoyance spell!