Yesterday, I announced my plans to produce a series of machinima films set in Skyrim. The series will feature http://www.youtube.com/user/miracleofsound's (Miracle of Sound) "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FLQ4rACE-0" song which he and http://www.youtube.com/user/malufenix collaborated on, in its opening and closing sequences, and I thank him for permission to do so.

What I want to use this thread to discuss is concepts and techniques for a wide variety of machinima applications. Such as how to possibly string a sequence of events together according to a scene, or setting up scripts that control camera pathing.

One question I have is, can an object like a chair be scripted to smoothly move from point A to point B, and rotate from angle C to angle D taking into account pitching and yawing? If so, what would happen if the player is sitting in that chair while it's moving?

The application for this would be to set up camera pathing for complex pans and tracking so dramatic camera work can be done while allowing world detail to load, which is an issue surrounding the use of TFC in the console. The camera can be moved freely, but it is only detached from the character. world detail does not update if you move too far away.

Ideally, filming a scene would be done by having action sequences scripted and set to fire based on quest stage definitions which would automatically advance as the sequences play out. If the NPCs can be properly scripted to behave and deliver their lines correctly, then what I as the machinimist should have to do is make sure that I'm set up at the correct angles and such. Manual camera control would be done most of the time, but epic and or dramatic camera techniques will need to be resolved with some measure of precision.

Any advice, code snippets, suggestions or other feedback is very much welcome.

Thank you. II hope to be able to produce some entertaining videos. Any help provided will be credited.

Oh, and if anyone has any story ideas they would like to see machinimized, PM me.

Take care...

One alternative to TFC would be to simply use TCL so you can float around as the player. The downside is that you have more limited control on movement speed, and you cannot pan directly up and down as you could with the mouse buttons when using the UFO cam.

To control characters and all that jazz, you could use http://www.creationkit.com/Scene. Then, just trigger them with console commands, or triggers ingame with delay timers. (It waits 10 seconds after you enter it so you can get into position to film)

In previous games I set up complex player oriented cutscenes by disabling the players movement controls, which also disabled Havok on them (meaning they could float around), then using http://www.creationkit.com/SetPosition_-_ObjectReference in a gamemode block to slide the player around, using http://www.creationkit.com/SetAngle_-_ObjectReference to affect the X axis, or verticle angle of the player. (As well as Z axis, or horizontal facing)

You could also possibly mess around with http://www.creationkit.com/TranslateTo_-_ObjectReference to slide the player around. But I'm not too sure. Since the old way may not work anymore, since scripting has changed and I don't believe there is a GameMode or equivalent anymore.

I hope I touched base on everything you asked, feel free to ask more and I'll answer everything that I can.

Much appreciated... Thanks AV

I created a mod which may be helpful for many things as far as machinima is concerned - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10431. You may still want to create landscape "backgrounds", scenes, effects and dialogues in CK, but DT saves the time for many of those small things - you can browse through imagespace modifiers, change weather, visual effects, effect shaders, animations, etc. Even while you won't be using it, it may be good as a reference for many original effects, animations, and settings. It also has a "queue" where you can assign various animations for one or many targets, and set intervals between these, and trigger "remotely", so it may be good for many short scenes when dialogue is not needed (see videos tab for examples). And it was used by Tyrannicon for his quite popular http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1uYsnoUvv8Q machinima movie ;]

Excellent... I will definitely add that to my collection of resources. Thanks, Artisanix.

http://www.creationkit.com/Complete_Example_Scripts#Making_a_Cool_Cut-Scene

I used this script a few times ... It's very good for "camera" position - Though it uses translate, rather than hoping about. But you might be able to use it (assuming you are editing after shooting)

That's the plan.

I'm writing the script for the pilot episode now. Once I finish that and am satisfied with it. I'll be accepting volunteer voice actors. Once voice tracking is done, I'll begin in-engine filming. After that will come the editing process which will include Sound Effects layering, music track layering and of course cutting all the scenes together.

All the characters will be NPCs.

For fight scenes, I'll set all combatants to be invulnerable so I can get some good footage of the hacking and slashing. I may run the fight several times filming from different angles and decide on the one I like best, set up for the next sequence so it begins with the characters where they ought to be. These will probably be the most involved setups I'll need to do. If proper attention to detail is paid, I should be able to turn out something that looks believable. Expect the pilot episode to be heavy on experimentation.

Thanks for the link, h4vent...

That's actually really cool! SOOOO much easier than what I had to do for my cutscenes in Fallout! Thanks for the link! (And thanks to whoever posted that on the wiki!)