Hints from the CS5964 Students from Spring 2008

• From Chad, a tutorial on how to add new animations to an existing model (shows also how to get a model in and change it and get it back into the system).
• More tips from Chad are here.
• Discussion from Al on cameras and lighting.
• Hints from Ken on the camera room idea and how he organized his group.
• Extensive notes from Brian that talks about how to use SVN with the HL2 directory structure and also about getting your own Models into HL2.
• Tips from David on how to create your film files.
• Jason talks about how to make a camera follow a track train (with a tutorial and screen shots).
• Jason has a ton of tips about HL2 including how to keep Monk from holding the shot gun.
• Mike's tips.
• Tim (the wizard of all wizards) has lots of tips that you should study carefully.
• You wrote up a description of how to possibly use Garry's mod to make machinima as opposed to using HL2.

Adam Lloyd

• Groups and Visgroups are very helpful when working on levels. They can make things much easier to move and copy. Also, groups can be nested.
• By far the easiest way to do camera work is triggering them from a scene file, not manually timing them.
• Use plenty of ground nodes when trying to get people to move around. A lot of times if it seems they can't do it, it's just because there aren't enough nodes.
• Scripted sequences are the best way to get someone to do something such as walking somewhere. It is also the best way to get someone to sit down. They can even be triggered from a scene file.
• Closeup shots are good, but hard to do. Watch carefully that the camera isn't too close to their face that it clips. Back it off one inch at a time if it is.
• Double check your lighting on the final settings you are going to use to film with. Sometimes what looks good on lower settings goes crazy on high, especially when metal is involved.
• Don't make levels any bigger than thye need to be. Keeping them small, such as indoor scenes, really cuts down on render time and the hassle of handling things.
• If you're going to use a npc and then change their model, use Breen. Not only does he not have an emp like Alyx, you can kill him when things get frustrating.
• Always, always, always check the flags for something if it doesn't seem to be working.
• Chaining scripted sequences via properties is better than triggering them to go in order.

James Anjewierden - What I learned in Machinima

1. It's only too close of a camera shot if you clip the actor's face.
2. Dummies can't stand in for NPCs when someone else is talking. Reactions!
3. Something will go wrong.  START EARLY!
4. No stealing IP.  No, wait, just don't ask permission.
5. No Children, no Animals/Zombies, no capes.
6. Don't manually time cameras. Use triggers.
7. Bring a pillow to the lab.
8. Remember where the security cameras are in the lab when you bring food.
9. Avoid flame entities, sparks, etc. At least by the camera: The env_sounds produced by the engine overpower audio often.
10. USE THE TEACHING STAFF.
11. Play to the game's strong points.  If you use HL2 do space, Fistfull of Frags for Western, Dark Messiah for medieval, etc.  It is more effective to change the game for a different setting than force denim jumpsuits into western wear.  Likewise, complex animations that aren't found in the game ARENT IN THE GAME so you can't do them. I.E. if you can't find wrestling moves don't do a WWF parody.
12. CUBEMAPS: USE THEM.
13. Don't wait for other teams/team members for content.  If something relies on someone else move on and then go back to it.  Don't waste time.
14. Avoid lyrics in your music.
15. AUTOMATE! Shift-Drag is your friend!
16. Making Custom textures can be easy, don't be afraid to use VTFEdit.
17. Use as many camera angles as you can.
18. No more Target->Ignite.  It was only funny in Frohman (the first time).
19. Leave wriggle room for post process.  Things get cut in editing and if there is nothing to cut then your movie shortens.
20. Use one mic in one soundproof-ish place.
21. No player controlled cameras!
22. Creative Commons is our friend.
23. Valve spent a ton of time on set design for the game.  Use it.
24. Use Info_Target to aim cameras.  Place it at the neck for most cameras.
25. Make it happy, make it light, make it gayyyy. Drama is best: too much comedy and you'll lose the audience too little and they become bored. Notable exceptions were CLUE and Telltale, but had those been longer people would have become disinterested.  The video-game atmosphere lends itself to the machinimas not taking themselves seriously.
26. Script is more important than the special effects
27. GMAIL threads are a great thing.
28. Three Letters: SVN
29. Communication is beyond critical.  Make clear assignments on the project and follow up.

Carlos Fernando Scheidecker Antunes

• I found using the tools hard as I do not play games, it got easier to me once I saw a few hands on videos on youtube and read some howtos. Here are some that I liked (faceposer and hammer).
• I would still try to install it at a computer at home but not spending too much time on it. Instead I would use
  the computers at School's lab. Unfortunately when I went to use those after frustrating attempts the lab was down had
  disks problems.
• Start early. I tried to use the videos and tutorials at the NOESIS disk but, honestly, the ones at youtube are way better.
  In fact I am including AVIs of faceposer and hammer tutorials.
• For the final project, I would try to get in a group early. In fact I would go for a very small group. My group for HW3 had only
  3 people so it was easier for scheduling meetings and discuss ideas and do the actual movie implementation. On the other hand
  my final project had many people. Group work:
1. Division of tasks: In a big group it is very hard to divide even so because these tools were not designed for concurrent
   team work. So if you is working on a Map he either has to finish it or give to another as the work cannot be done together
   unless it is pair programming. Although the files are text files, SVN will not merge them properly and will break those in
   case someone decides to divide the map into parts and each one works on a part. So the division has to be the scenes, maps,
   shooting, faceposer, sounds and that how it went to our team.
   
2. Having a team leader is important but I would say that keeping a smaller group is even more important if you want to enjoy
   your project.
• You also need to have arts skills and like movies so that you can appreciate the course.

Alex Evans

• Hammer is a very delicate tool that requires you to make up a lot of hacks along the way.
  
• The best piece of information for a person to have in Machinima is to give your self plenty of time to get something done. Our team spent weekends in the lab on the final project.
• There are lots of hacks to get different effects. One such hack is that if you want to make someone appear to be floating, you can use an info track train and then put a no-draw texture on it so it is invisible. You can adjust the behavior of the track train to make it do what ever you want including zero-g and flight. It takes a lot of tweaking and they are buggy so you have to adjust it till it looks right.
• Once you figure out the secret of reading the developers wiki and getting the different objects to work how they are supposed to this class becomes a very good exercise in creativity, then you can focus on getting a good script and putting some real creativity into the movie. There is a very sharp learning curve.

Christopher Bireley

• FacePoser:
  • Create many channels for each actor. This makes organizing and planning events much more easy. Channels I would recommend would be:
    
    • Dialog – put all the wav's here
      Expressions – put all the flex animation here
      Gestures – put any gestures or sequences here
      Triggers – put camera and walking triggers here
      Looking At/Facing – put who the actor should be looking at here
• If the camera is going to be looking at an actor, make sure there is some flex animation to make them look more alive
• Hammer:
  • When getting an actor to walk somewhere within a choreograph file, use info targets. It is much easier to get a character to walk to an info target within a choreograph file than it is otherwise.
• When setting up cameras, set up and name each one, then in the choreograph set trigger one to camera one, trigger two to camera two, etc. Then when you are doing your face posing, you can inset trigger two into the trigger channel any time you want that camera to be activated. This makes camera manipulation very easy and you don't have to do any sort of crazy timing stuff.

Derrick Birkes

• I would say that one important thing is that the people in a group should specialze in a certain area. This makes it so the students can learn more about a certain area so that the final project is better.
• Another thing is that you just need to play around with the tools and see what is possible. This allows greater flexibility in what can be done in the film.

Mike Bond

• Time is short - choose a short story. If the story is too long, then some scenes will not get the attention they need.
• Organize quickly. Choose a team leader, someone to keep track of the timeline and a list of TO-DO's. We took to long to organize and found we didn't have enough time once we got going. Get to know everyones talents, its is good to know who to go to with questions and have them establish guidelines for others to follow. Its easier if everyone does things the same way rather than one scene using choreographed_sequences and others using scripted_sequences for example.
• Expect some late nights. These projects take time, so expect to put in the time and stay up late.
• Choose your group wisely. We were fairly lucky, people put in as much effort as they could but some groups end up with duds, so be selective.
• Research Early. Don't wait to figure out how you will do some new trick, while we had some success with this, it also held up production several times. Learn how to change models early if you need new skins, but don't let little details hold up the greater production, do what you can when you can.

Brandon Hansen

• When using cameras be sure to change the defaults to infinite hold time. If you have it focusing on a player, you can set it to look at a part of the player so it doesn't focus on the waist. To do this set the attachment name to look at as "EYES".
• There is a site on Valve's wiki that gives suggested lighting levels for the different skyboxes, search for skyboxes and you will find it.
• Holding down shift and selecting an object allows you drag that object and it will make a copy where you drop it (leaving the original in it's place).
• You can place spotlights outside windows pointing in set to the same color as the environment light to give the effect of light coming through the windows.
• When compiling the map, if you don't care about the lighting, then set the bottom two options in the dialog box that pops up to either fast or no.
• Be sure to name your entities in faceposer and Hammer the same exact name. And this is obvious but very useful in large scenes, but give your camera very descriptive names.
• It is helpful to place a camera and then stand "inside" the camera to get a good idea of exactly what it will look at (this helps you know what will and will not be included in the shot).
• COnsider adding music, sound effects and narration in post-production, rather than faceposer, it makes things easier.
• when recording lines for faceposer that you will need the phonemes, be sure to annunciate well. Also, when typing the sentence into the phoneme editor, do it without ANY punctuation whatsoever (Including things like an apostrophe). These will only confuse the phoneme editor and make it hard to match up the words to mouth. Just type one long run-on sentence with one space between each word.

Casey Shaw

• To make someone sit down, its best to give them a gesture in faceposer. if you do a scripted sequene of them sitting, they tend to sit foward, and that doesnt look natural. also you'll have to make sure that character has a sit down animation in faceposer.
• You can import the tga file you get from recording a movie in half life directly into adobe premier (you dont have to use virtual dub). also you should record your movie using half life, not hammer. its supposed to look better.

Edward Cask

• Be pateint and take your time becoming familiar to the buttons and what they do.
• Explore the menus.
• Learn the short cut keys and use them often.
• Do the tutorial to build your first level.
• You can copy and past items, or multiple items from one map to another.
• Use the Cord on tool as much as possible to cut down compilation times on larger maps.
• To create a monitor, create a block and texture it with "dev_tvmonitornonoise", make into entity (ctrl+t) and select "func_monitor" as the class, then you can choose what camera to display in the properties under "Camera name".
• FREE SOUND EFFECTS: http://www.soundsnap.com

Kolton Casper

• Work on the script ALL LOT. No point in wasting all your efforts on something that wasn't good to begin with.
• Know the limitations of the Engine. NPC's don't look good turning so include as little footage of them doing so. A lot of the beginning assignments are to help you understand what you can/can't do well with the Engine.
• Make a lot of camera changes, even if there isn't a lot of action (more like ESPECIALLY if there isn't a lot of action). Cameras should either be moving (in a 'good' way, no following NPC's unless it is done ironically or can actually be pulled off) or they need to be changed every 3-7 seconds to avoid being bored.
• If you have your whole scene done with one camera I guarentee people will not want to watch it.
• Ambience is the key. There should NEVER be a single voice w/ silence. You can always add fluorescent buzzing, crowds talking, etc. SILENCE KILLS SCENES.
• Garrysmod.org has a lot of cool models you can use for your scenes.
• Postprocessing is almost as important as the movie footage itself. This is where a boring movie turns into a good movie.
• Faceposer: Do large subscenes together in one choreographed scene. Make as many channels as their are participants in the scene. Allow 1-2 seconds to go by before having an actor react. That is where you will change cameras. Do all the camera changes within the logic_choreographed_scene (using the OnStart, then the time parameter). Have Faceposer open and synchronize the camera switches to the 1-2 second pauses between reactions.
• Make sure your voices are normalized and sound professional. Make sure you choose your voice actors well. Voice acting for Machinima is as important as real acting for regular movies. Also, make sure the voices match the NPC's you use.
• Make your scenes so that they go in the order most easily made with Hammer/Faceposer. Putting them in order is what post-processing is for.
• Make sure you download all the Source games you can find. Then, unload all the GCF content into your HL2 (or HL2 mod) directory. You can never have too much content at your fingertips.
• Make sure everyone in your group (if you are in one) feels included. Try to include EVERYONE for writing of the script. Make sure the script is (mostly) approved of by everyone. If everyone likes the script they will be more excited and will invest more time into it since they will have an interest in it looking good. If you believe someone's idea isn't good/ruins the plot/doesn't make sense/isn't funny make sure you tell them why, don't just say it isn't going in the script.
• Make sure you try to reach an audience that isn't a CS major. While some of the humour is funny to US, about 99% of the human population detests it. And if no one is watching your movie, why are you making one?
• Give out work according to everyone's abilities/schedules. If someone will be gone one week, have them do maps/faceposer stuff before they leave or post processing when they get back. Make sure you don't bottleneck.
• If you have different people making different scenes, make sure you show the scenes to the whole group before making them "final" (before post processing). Then have everyone give constructive criticism to each scene so that they can work on it before it is too late to do so (post processing).

Chad Spencer

• Use an "info target" to get the camera to point at something specific
  
• Set your actions to begin when the player walks into a trigger. This way you can avoid "node rebuilding" messages in videos
  
• "point_viewcontrol" == camera (:
  
• Build your maps with as much detail as possible.
  
• Know what you want to show in your movie. Plan it all.
  
• Use visgroups to hide trees while you work
  
• Dont run rad and viz if you just want to check out something quick (compile options)
  
• Start early. It will still be hard to finish on time
  
• Story. Story. Story.
  
• Use closeups. Very close.
  
• Take screenshots using Garrys mod
  
• Record all your dialog/sounds using one (good) mic+computer

Curtis Lindstrom

• Get a good start on the projects. Don't wait until the last minute, you'll find there is a lot more to do than meets the eye.
• When using Hammer and FacePoser remember to save early and often, redoing any of the work isn't very fun.
• The SDK Help Wiki is very useful, if not a little hard to understand at first glance.
• Show people your work, their outside opinions will give you differing opinions.
• When working on group projects remember that everything has to go into one map sometimes, this makes it hard to divvy it up.
• Ask questions of the other people in the class, chances are someone knows how to do what you are trying to do.
• Play around with the settings of the entities in Hammer, the things you can do is quite amazing.
• FacePoser's phenomes are only as good as the audio and even with great audio you'll have to play around with them.
• When using FacePoser think of the timing that you are looking for, this is where you'll do it.
• FacePoser has a limited number of triggers, 8 to be exact, use them wisely.
• Good luck and remember to have fun and do projects that you'll enjoy and understand.

Curtis Madsen

• During this class, I spent most of my time working with Faceposer doing choreographed scenes and became well acquainted with this tool. When using Faceposer's phoneme editor, not all recordings will automatically be processed well. To get around this hang-up you can try the following things: 1) Try retyping the sentence using different punctuation, expanding contractions, or even writing out each individual syllable's sound. 2) If you have to resort to manually adding phonemes, which is a pain, use the add word function and then add phonemes to this word. When adding the phonemes, try mouthing the words yourself (or have a friend mouth the words) to get a better idea of how the npc's lips should move. If the new word you added is too long, try adding some "<sil>" phonemes as extra padding so it all syncs up.
  
• I was not one of the Hammer experts on my team, but I did learn a few things from the scenes I had to put together. A lot of problems can be caused because of flags not being set correctly on things like npcs, cameras, or scripted sequences. I also found that some animations can be done by using scripted sequences as long as you know what to animation is called. You can even get an npc to stay in an idle position by setting the loop in post action animation flag and adding an animation to this field in the sequences properties.
• Items can also be parented to characters using the npcís properties so it looks like they are holding something or wearing something on their head. The last thing I learned using Hammer is that you can add a sun to the map by adding an env_sun object to your map and setting its properties to be the same as the light_env object.
  
• There were a lot of things that were not talked about in class that everyone seemed to eventually figure out, but it would have been nice if they were mentioned earlier. Among these was the animations tool in Faceposer. Originally, I had to add a gesture and select which one I wanted it to be from a list of names without previewing it. Once I found out about the animations tool, I could just drag and drop the gesture I wanted after seeing a preview and could even search for gestures I might be interested in. Another subtle thing that would have been nice to have up front is a list of hotkeys for Hammer. I had the hardest time with my first map because I didnít know how to move things around at first in the 3D view which I found out you could enable just by hitting the ìxî key.
  
• As process goes, our team found that biweekly meetings where we all worked together for an hour or two helped because we could bounce ideas off each other and get help from people who had knowledge that we might not have. We broke our movie up into scenes that each person would work on and then we tied it all together at the end. This seemed to work well for us because it gave everyone something to work on but did not put the entire burden on just a few people.
  
• As a final suggestion, it is best to get to know the tools early in the first two assignments so that the final movie process flows better. A lot of tricks can be learned from just playing around with the tools so play away.

Kristina Doing-Harris

• If you want to edit your movie in iMovie.
  • a. Create the .avi in VirtualDub as instructed.
  • b. Open Quicktime Pro.
  • c. Choose “Export for web..” from the File menu (Desktop, Current frame).
  • d. Open iMovie. Choose Import movie from the File menu.
  • e. Choose either file in the folder Quicktime generated. Either the .m4v or the .mov.
  • f. When you are finished editing, choose Export using Quicktime from the Share menu.
  • g. Click on Options and ensure that you Video settings are on Best. This will ensure you get the highest resolution (definition) possible in your movie.
• Gman will not move if the player character is standing right in front of him.
• Make sure you even out the loudness of your sound files in Audacity before you put them in face poser. This will help with phoneme extraction and give you better sound in your finished movie.
• When fixing phonemes that didn’t extract well, think about the shape your mouth makes when you say the sound not about the letter in the word.
• Although there are purists who want everything to happen “in game” as it does in the final movie, this approach may cost hours when the same thing can be done in post‐production (editing) much faster.
• Do not think that getting a first draft is the same as getting the movie finished.
• Always ask someone, who has no idea what the story is, to watch the movie and tell you what they think.
• NEVER try to edit in VirtualDub. It will be very difficult and take 1000 times as long as using any other editor.
• Background music is key. Think about it a lot.

Kendal Gifford

• In addition to VTFEdit, the program from Nem’s Tools for creating VTF files, there is a plugin for Photoshop (also from Nem’s Tools) that will allow you to save your image directly as a VTF file.  There are several different options of formats which can be used for the VTF file.  I found BGRA8888 to work pretty well in general, but if you are having problems with something about your texture, try different formats such as DXT5.
  
• If you are creating a texture from scratch, you will need to create a VMT file in order for the texture to show up.  Use GCFscape to find a pre-existing VMT file and change its name and the path of the VTF file.  Assuming your texture is a flat texture (which most textures from scratch will be), choose the VMT file from a wall texture or something similar, and you shouldn’t need to change the rest of the settings in the VMT file.
  
• It is possible to make part or all of a texture either partially or completely transparent.  Completely transparent is useful when you want to remove pieces of a model (for example, GMan’s briefcase can be removed by making its texture transparent).  First, in Photoshop or whatever other program you are using, create your image with an alpha channel, and make the channel show which parts of the texture you want to be transparent and how transparent you want them to be.  Make sure when you save the VTF file that you save it as a format that supports alpha channels, because some formats don’t.  BGRA8888 and DXT5 both support alpha channels.  If you are not sure if a format supports alpha, look through the checkbox list when you first select it, and see if eight-bit alpha is checked.  Finally, you will need to add a setting to your VMT file to tell the engine that you want it to check the alpha channel.  Add either "$translucent" 1 or "$alphatest" 1 If one setting doesn’t work, try the other one.  They work in different situations, so just experiment with them if you’re having problems.

Xudong He

• First, try to explore the hammer. Go ahead try to run everything includes in the Hammer. Your curiosity and patience will help you learn the Hammer better and faster, to help you create the movie.
  
• Second, share your creative ideas. Exchange your creative ideas with your classmates. This is going to help all of you guys go further.
  
• At last, try to handle Photoshop. This looks like will not bother the future students since we all use this software to modify our photos. However, you will find it so important when you are start working on the textures.

Charlie Hess

• Diversify your group.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.  Ideally, you should have a Set Designer (Hammer expert), two Dialogue Designers (Faceposer experts), and a Director (Film student, fluent with both tools).  If you have more than four members, you should still stick with this mix: 25% of the team designs the set, 50% of the team sets up the phonemes and gestures, and 25% of the team does the camera work.  Even if no one in your group is an expert in any area, assign specific roles and don’t change them halfway through.  In that manner, each person will become proficient in the necessary area.
• Start with dialogue first.  Most groups decide to build the entire set first, or simply don’t start on the dialogue soon enough.  You can test the dialogue on any actors, on any map; get that in place first and foremost.  Otherwise, you will encounter all sorts of new challenges trying to conform your gestures and dialogue to a set, rather than vice-versa (which is far simpler).
• Follow your storyboard religiously.  This sounds clichéd, but seriously: work smarter, not harder.  Plan things out.  If you don’t approach your film with a strict plan, you will end up hacking things together at the last second, creating a far less polished final product.  Even if you are adapting your movie from a YouTube clip, set up your cameras exactly as shown in the clip.
• Learn the Hammer hotkeys from day one (all of them).  Especially if you are a Set Designer.  Just do it; you won’t regret it.
• Don’t attempt to use Faceposer on Vista.  Seriously.  Don’t even try

Ben Hillis

• Hammer is one buggy piece of code, if inexplicable things are happening a restart of steam and/or your computer may be in order.
• Sometimes you can do things that arenít outlined in an objects properties page, example, parenting a prop_dynamic_override objects to different attachment points on player models using triggers.
• Itís often easier to shoot the same scene from different camera angles instead of trying to time out when to switch cameras. Edit it together in post-processing.
• Changing textures is easy and adds a lot to the project!
• Ignites and explosions are funny for the first 100 times, but after that they arenít very exciting. Have fun with your first 100 exploding flaming kesslers though.
• Story is the absolute most important aspect of a good movie. Start with a good, well thought out script or you will end up with a bad product. You cannot make a good movie from a bad script.
• Turning brushes into func_details, phys_boxes and func_breakables can make for some really interesting effects
• When in doubt, steal from valve's sample maps!
• Valve has a lot of good information on their source sdk page, look at it often!
• There are a few useful console commands:
  • a. cl_showtxtmessage 0 gets rid of ìnode graph out of date, rebuildingî
  • b. sv_cheats 1 cheat mode
  • c. impulse 101 gives you all weapons, good for taking out frustration when stuff isnít working
• Triggers are your friend, donít trigger things to start as soon as the map is loaded, itís much easier to just have a trigger to step on that starts your movie.

Brent Hosie

• My favorite tips/tricks of Hammer:
  
  • ctrl + shift + e centers 3D camera on selected item.
    ctr + e centers the three grid areas on selected item.
    shift + drag to copy.
    changing mode to "lift + select" allows left mouse to "select", right mouse to "paint one surface".
    you can place multiple info player starts, then decide the "master" with the flags.
  • right clicking several selected items in grid view allows you to group several items to move them
    all at once later on with only one click. These items can also be ungrouped.
  • massive amounts of info nodes make the npc's walk to a scripted sequence if the npc does not have
    direct line of sight to that sequence.
  • npc's have a gag flag so they don't talk to you.
  • anything you can pick up and throw in Half Life 2 should be used as a prop_physics in Hammer.
    things the player cannot move are prop_static.
• Face Poser:
  • You can right click on a gesture, add a onFire and reference this in Hammer so that when this trigger
    is passed, you can do something (like start a scripted sequence). These are numbered triggers so you
    just reference them in the outputs of your choreographed_scene in Hammer and say OnTriggerX, do something.

Jason Scott

• There is a program that can decompile the half-life 2 mdl files. By doing this you can tell what textures the different models use- here is a basic description of where to download and how to use the program: (http://www.chaosincarnate.net/cannonfodder/mdldecompiler.php)
• If you want to use the tool, you'll have to place the executable inside of "Steam/steamapps/username/sourcesdk/bin/ep1/bin" This is contrary to the documentation (and took me a lot of time to figure out).
• Supposedly the program is supposed to be able to browse the valve file system to select the model you want to decompile, but I've only been able to get it to work by using GCFScape to extract the mdl file (plus a few other related files) and then unchecking the last check box in the MDLdecompiler.
• The program generates several files- one of which is named mdldecompiler.qc. Inside this file there are comments of the form "// Model uses material ..." indicating which vmt files the model uses.
• If any students are interested in buying decent sound recording equipment for a reasonable price, here are a few suggestions:
  • Microphone: http://www.shure.com/proaudio/products/wiredmicrophones/us_pro_sm57-lc_content ($100 on Amazon)
  • or (a little better for female voices) http://www.shure.com/proaudio/products/wiredmicrophones/us_pro_sm58-cn_content
  • Preamp: http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2002/Tube-MP-Studio-V3-Ships.html ($70 on Amazon)
  • Pop filter: http://www.amazon.com/CAD-EPF-15A-6-Inch-Flexible-Filter/dp/B0002E3FCO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1210047987&sr=8-1
  • Microphone stand: http://www.amazon.com/Stage-Stands-Tripod-Stand-Boom/dp/B0002E55UY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1210048031&sr=8-1
• In hammer, put all of your lights in different groups that you can easily turn off so you only compile the lights for the room you are interested in seeing, as opposed to all of the lights on the entire map
• Split all sound files into relatively short segments- face poser will have an easier time recognizing the phonemes that way.
• I used a specific naming convention for all of my sound files, so they would be easy to find, and it would be impossible to confuse the order. The format is "Scene#_Exchange#_Part#_ActorName_First few words of dialog". The exchange # increments every time the speaker changes. The part # allows you to break up a piece of dialog into multiple wav files. Here is an example from Venison Curry: 03_07_02_Butler_SheArrived.wav. It is helpful to put preceding zeroes in front of single digits. Now, when you're in face poser selecting a wav file, you can type the first portion of the filename in the filter box, and it will list all the wavs for your scene in the order in which they should be played. With the actor name, it's easy to tell who the dialog belongs too, and the first few words of the sentance allow you to tell what the wav file is without actually listening to it.
• Understand blend gestures. Most gestures will take over the animation once they begin, effectively nullifying and gestures that were previously executing. Blend gestures are different- they don't interrupt other animations, but add their effects independantly. They are good for making characters move a little if they're paused in another gesture for a long time. Most blend gestures have a "bg" in the name, so you can get a page of all the blend gestures by clicking on the search button and typing "bg".
• Head movements are easy to see and very easy to do with a flex animation. Look for anywhere you can place a good head shake or nod.

Jesse Wright

• Using the parent property to tie objects movements together can be very helpful on certain tasks.
• When moving or changing the size of an object, these are a couple things you can do in the wire frame view:
  • Shift + left-click + drag an object will make a copy of the object.
  • When you have an object selected with the pointer, you can click the object in any of the wireframe views to change how you can manipulate the object.
• Check out some of the available HL 2 maps, they have some really cool maps + lighting in them.
• Know about the IG button on the toolbar for grouping and ungrouping.  IG stands for “Ignore Group”.
• Get familiar with using the camera on a track and doing cool things early because it will help the whole semester.

John Tidwell

• The Valve Developer Community wiki is EXTREMLY useful (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page)
• When things are not working the first thing to do is check for leaks
• This web page is very useful if you wish to add portals or other objects from this well know valve mod (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Portal_Level_Creation)
• Make sure to get as much input as possible on your script because if this goes bad making a movie will be extremly difficult.
• (http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index.php/Creating_your_first_Faceposer_scene#Lip_Synching_the_Sound_File) useful link for changing manual phonemes (i know i had trouble with this)
• its a good idea to put a team member in charge of making sure the movie flows considering many different people will be creating seperate scenes.

Mark Hopkins

• To get textures into hammer:
  1. Get VTFEdit photoshop plugin (google it)
  2. Make a texture in photoshop, its dimensions have to be powers of 2
  3. Save the texture as a vtf
  4. Put the vtf in the materials folder. E.g. C:\g\Steam\steamapps\m4rk4s\half-life 2 episode two\hl2\materials
  5. make a VMT file for the texure, as shown here http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Vmt. An example of one of mine would be

  • "UnlitGeneric"
    {
                   "$basetexture" "tetris_noborder"
                   "$surfaceprop" "brick"
    }

• Which is for the tetris_noborder.vtf file.
• Then reload hammer and the texture should be selectable.
• Decompiling .bsp files with VMEX.
  If you want to use single player map files, they can be decompiled using VMEX.
  1. Get VMEX (google vmex)
  2. Decompile a .bsp file using VMEX, and it will give you a vmf
  3. Open the vmf in hammer. Try compiling it. It might work already, but probably not.
  4. If it doesn’t work. Go to Map -> Check for Problems and it will list a bunch of errors in the map. Use Fix all of Type until there are no more errors.
  5. Compile, and it should work now, but there may be some glitches in the map that you have to manually fix.
• Note: maps from the single player campaigns usually take a VERY long time to compile (ie 5+ hours on a core2 Quad processor) so you might have to just use the fast RAD and Lighting settings, and should turn them off for development. Even under fast mode the maps looking pretty good to me.

Adam Montero

• You can copy and paste entities/brushes from one map to another
  
• Use the copy and paste functions of the Trigger tab
  
• You can use cordion bounds to specify parts outside of the bounds to not be rendered
  
• Use VTFEdit to gain access to game sounds, models and textures
  
• Use HL2 to record video, because it will get all the frames even if it is displayed as lagging, whereas FRAPS records at the same rate that you see.
  
• Only compile entities when testing a map, to save time
  
• Run the map in a window in case of an error, that way you can close out HL2 without having to waist time waiting for the ability to switch apps and close it.. or possibly shut down windows completely
  
• When placing scripted sequences in the map, make sure they are not close to the wall, and be conscious of the direction the scripted sequences are facing
  
• Be conservative on ground node placement
  
• If you can make the map yourself to avoid unnecessary bugs

Patricia Hendricks

• topic: importing/changing model's clothes : So for this one, Bob already has a really good tutorial, look for the one involving GCFScape and VTFEdit. These will tell you detailed steps on how to get access to all of the character files, textures, objects, etc. The only little iffy thing with this is that it's explaining how to import it into your own mod, while for most people anyway, you just want to import these edited files back into the HL2 directory. So the only thing is, after you've followed to tutorial and made your changes to the tga file, import them directly back into their original hl2 directory and save it there. this will allow you to access it using hl2. And that's it, just pop open hammer or the model viewer, and you'll find that the changes are automatically updated the next time you open either of these programs.
• topic: post editing work for those of you using windows movie maker *IMPORTANT!!! Make sure that when your scenes are filmed with the whole sv_cheats, host_framerate 30, blah blah blah, that EVERYONE films their scene under the same resolution whether it be 640x480 etc. If they are filmed in different resolutions, such as some are filmed in 640x480 and even just one is filmed in 800x600, then when you publish your movie in windows movie maker, any scene that had been filmed in 640x480 resolution will be squished in the top half of your screen while the bottom half is green, and that one single scene in 800x600 will appear normally. So just be careful and consistent.

Sergey Potupchik

• Honestly, probably the number one tip I can give to future students taking this class is to LEARN THE SHORTCUTS. Certain key combinations will just make things so much easier in the long run.
• Hammer:
  (Shift+)Ctrl+E: Centers the views onto the object currently selected.
  Ctrl+Mouse Scroll: Zooms all views in/out at the same time.
  Alt+Enter: Opens object properties.
  Z (in the 3D view): Allows constant mouse control in 3D view.
  Space+Mouse Click/Drag: Allows temporary mouse movement in any view
  Ctrl+M: Opens the transform view (rotations, scale, move)
• With FacePoser, you’re pretty much stuck doing VERY tedious things without many shortcuts. The main thing to realize is that you can modify the timing of just about EVERYTHING. All gestures can be shortened/lengthened as needed, and the phonemes can be modified manually (should you want better vocalizations). The mouse wheel will change the scale/zoom of whichever timeline you’re working with, and that’s about the only shortcut there is. The usual Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click shortcuts still apply (multiple selection and move selection, respectively).
• Hammer is much easier to learn, but harder to master. FacePoser is harder to learn, but easiest to master (just tedious).

Qiushi Wang

• Be realistic: There are many, many limitations that exist within the Source engine. There are also many avenues for creativity within these limits. Having a clear understanding what Hammer can and can't do when you are planning your film as well as what you can actually achieve in the given time frame will largely determine the success of your project.
• Borrow creatively: There's tons of cool effects to be found in the maps provided with Hammer. These effects can be made even more interesting with the right use and creativity. Don't plagarize directly, but just looking through the map files can give you lots of ideas for what you might want to do in your script. Also, while the valve wiki is a good reference guide, it really doesn't provide a good picture of the types of things you can do. I've found online tutorials sites like http://www.halfwit-2.com/ to be much more helpful.
• Do it again: I spent tons of time trying to debug scripts or triggers in my maps that weren't behaving the way I thought they should. The time it takes to hunt these bugs down really wasn't worth it. A lot of the time I couldn't find the problem anyway and just ended up remaking the triggers/etc. Usually, it's something silly you will have missed and it really is just a lot faster to remake it than try to debug using Hammer.
• Use multiple maps: We don't have the luxury of a production studio process where only certain people work on parts of the project before passing it off to the next group and concurrently working on the same map really, really doesn't work in Hammer. Make sure you have maps that everyone can be working on seperately. Even single scenes can be broken up into multiple maps a lot of the time. This will cost you some when you are compiling if your maps are big and can cause some headaches if two maps of the same scene look drastically different, but if you're careful this will allow your team to get a lot more done.
• Save as much as you can for post-processing: This especially goes for sound. A ton of stuff is just so much easier to do in post-processing than trying to do in Hammer. You'll save tons of time, plus have a better idea of what the end result will look like as you make changes. A lot of people neglect sound but it can completely change the tone of your film. Ambient music and audio cues are extremely important.

Reiner Campos

• Using Hammer's ability to incorporate custom textures/models (for NPCs and brushes) early in the class.
  • 1.) For textures, create a folder inside ~/steamapps/materials/ and place all the texture to their respective folders that you want to use.
  • 2.) For models, create a folder inside ~/steamapps/models/ and place all the models in the respective folder that you want to use.
• Learning all the phonemes will help early out in giving characters a better mouth synchronization.
  • 1.) Done so by just playing around with phonemes over and over again, learn the most used ones for example, a - aa, o - ao, e - eh, b - b,
• Try to work in a bigger group, the assets can be work on in less time, and minor things can be tweaked.
• Don't be afraid to experiment with camera angles, but try to keep them as tight as possible.
• Restrain yourself from killing people. It might seem fun at first but it gets tedious after the umpteenth time.
• Make sure that you don't let your story get out of hand in terms of size, keep the story focus and then try to enhance it afterward.
• Comporomise with your teammates, otherwise it's hard to accomplish anything.
• Try and organize the assets you have in your game, once you start utilizing customize assets, getting things lost is rather easy.
• Have fun and lots of it!

Robert Rollins

• Don’t ever try to use a decompiled map for machinima it’s not worth the effort.
• The cameras won’t follow path corners unless you set the flag.

Chris Schwerdt

• Use some form of source control to manage the project (subversion/cvs).
• When using source control, make sure you have a method setup so that peopledon't work on the same file at the same time. This will make things much easier as you won't have to deal with merging files.
• When working in a group, try and create separate map files for each scene. This makes it easier to assign work to different team members.
• The gib/env_shooter will add fun and excitement to your project!
• Cubemaps are very important entities in your map. Make sure you add them and build the cube maps before recording (using the console command buildcubemaps). You can then test your cubemaps using the console command 'impulse 81'.

Ben Servoz

• When coming up with ideas for movies stay sober and always wonder how it will be possible with the half life engine
  
• Changing models look is hardly doable if they don't have a common skeleton, the easiest route is to change their textures.
  
• a little bit of fog makes a BIG difference in the look of a scene (hides texture repetitions, makes thing less perfect and thus more real, ambiance)
  
• you always need background sounds even when you want silence (wind, fluorescent humb, et cetera)
  
• don't forget "/cl_drawhud 0" before shooting
  
• remember everything cs3505 has taught you about team management/dynamic
  
• I've included 2 utils that I found very useful:
  
  • vtf2tga.zip takes half life textures and converts them to TGAs
    
  • vtex.zip is an all inclusive utility to convert TGAs to Textures (no dependencies, no messing aroung) it took me a long time to find it and has been extremely useful.

Shawn Hall

• One additional thing that helped me out a LOT during the semester is figuring out where textures go that are associated with a particular model. There's a program I came across called 'MDLTextureInfo' that works just by dragging and dropping an mdl file onto it and it explains what textures it uses and where they are located....extremely helpful!!!
  
• There's a few websites that I used to look for models and textures but I don't remember them because I just did a google search for 'Half Life 2 models'. But I think the best thing is to go in and create completely new textures for the characters, and if time permits, to get an entirely custom character in-game.

Alex Simashov

• What I think the most useful thing to do is have at least two 'lab' sessions where everybody sits down and actually creates a small movie from start to finish. The movie would have to involve a moving camera, a walking npc, and maybe some exploding props (to get that out of the way). I remember I had to struggle a lot to get the camera to move around, getting people to sit down (and then sitting upright), and also getting some doors to work. Then maybe a full lab session to create dialoge and script it out in face poser. I just felt that seeing you do it in class was definitely not enough and it caused a lot of pain going through it at home. I think that once students can go through and make a basic movie with the entire class then the rest will be much much easier to do and understand.
• Also, have then read the wiki before they try to do stuff on their own.

Kyle Stewart

• Use the large variety of models available in source in order to add some variety to the movies. Learn the techniques behind decompiling models and recompiling them to work with Hammer/HL2. Use the tools by Cannonfodder: http://www.chaosincarnate.net/cannonfodder/cftools.htm
• TAs already have made a lot of models that can be used right away with some pretty good animations. You can also "cross-compile" animation sets as long as both characters are similar. For example, I was able to use Barney's animations with a CS terrorist.

Josh Sumner

• Hammer:
  • Use Cordons to limit large maps to your working area. This will also help with the map build time.
  • If you want to do something that seems "normal" or life like, its probably been done in the game somewhere. Play the game, pay attention to the details. Keep track of what you like and where you saw it. All of the game maps are available in the source sdk folders. Copy paste is your friend.
  • If you want to do something strange, like levatating a group of tiles, you're probably on your own. Picture how to do it if you were building it in real life. Then try to figure out what parts you can make invisible. There are blocks and strings, and all sorts of basic building materials that can make things appear cooler than the underlying objects.
  • Use textures sparingly and with good contrast. If you have a white ceiling, make the walls some other color so that they don't end up blending in.
  • Scripted sequences can be used to loop actions, like sitting, or leaning. This is nice when you have a character that you want to have talking while sitting. Doing all of it in faceposer doesn't work. Figure out which basic actions you can put on the Scripted Sequence and put the detail work in faceposer.
  • Lighting is one of those things that you should borrow from the game maps. The settings on color and alpha that they have figured out make for much more life like scenes. Mat_Fullbright is no good for movies. env_light can be made to provide sunlight at various angles. Very useful for outdoor scenes where you need shadows.
  • Cameras are free and easy to position. Keep moving and setting more of them until you get the shot that shows off your hard work the best. Hours of set building don't matter if your shots aren't right.
  • Save early save often. Hammer is very fragile, and even more so on the lab machines.
• Tips for using FacePoser:
  • Don't overdo the expressions. Less is more in most scenes, so try to let your camera work tell the story, with the faceposer work adding flavor. A well timed eyebrow raise can tell everything, but only if your camera is set up to catch it.
  • You can take any gesture or animation that you can find in faceposer, and apply it to a Scripted Sequence in Hammer. Use faceposer to test them out.
  • Phonemes are the easy part.
• In General:
  • Always remember that since you are in a CS class there will be Computer nerds around to help you figure out the really tricky stuff. Most of them will spend hours figuring something out, just so they can try it out. As usual, be sure to pump their ego a bit.
  • Since you also have the advantage of having Film students in class, use them for the things that seem artsy to you. Take your ideas to them and get feedback. You'd be surprised how things that are soooo funny to you and your buddies fall flat on someone that doesn't have your background.

Tyson Anderson

• Post-processing can be your friend! An effect that's difficult to pull off inside the engine can often more easily be accomplished inside a video editor. For example, a transition from day to night can be accomplished by shooting a scene twice (once with bright lighting, once with dim lighting) and then cross-fading between the two recordings.
• Also, certain sound effects (ambient music, consistent voice over) can be really easy to do inside the video editor.
• Use camera movement sparingly (if at all). It's very buggy and frustrating; also, if you're using the "camera tracking", be aware that the camera will seem to be pointing at the target NPC's feet.
• Don't get too tricky inside faceposer without periodically testing inside the engine. Certain effects that work inside faceposer, particularly ones that involve running different animations simultaneously on one NPC, can "bug out" inside the game.

Daniel Van Tassell

• Learn exactly what each of the different buttons within hammer, both on the side as well as the top, can do. Everything from group, to ungroup, to selecting within a group and not breaking up the group, cardoning, changing textures, adding terrain, as soon as possible.
• When making any movie, it doesnít matter how cool the graphics are, or what people can get special effects to do, but without a decent script, your movie wonít be able to entertain an audience.
• When making a movie, as talked about by the TAís and others, remember who you are making this video for, and stick to that. If your target audience is adults, then entertain adults, not be random and bounce around. Have a plot running through the movie. Sounds simple, but we often miss it. Have a theme, and stay within the theme.
• Start early. As with all other sorts of any assignment, even if it isnít straight code, there are bugs that arise and will cause hours of frustration.
• VOLUME!! Control the volume of not only speaking, but of music within the films. Make sure you record clear enough so that it is heard. Change of pitch and such can affect a movie a lot.
• Remember that there are restraints within hammer. Donít slave hours and hours over something that wonít be able to happen.
• Set aside enough time for camera work in your movies at the beginning in planning, then evaluate at the end and donít be afraid to change camera shots. Donít be afraid to take close ups. Pay attention when watching professional movies how often the actor is zoomed in on so full expression is captured. Look online for camera tricks, you can do a lot by just playing with camera.

Scott Morley

• The best tip that I could give to any future machinima students it to reuse in game maps whenever it is appropriate. If you can find an in game map (from any of the games that run on the half life engine), you will have a great base that you can tear down and build up to suit your needs.
• The in game maps have incredible lighting and you may find other really cool tricks from the level designers. It won't necessarily be easier because it can sometimes be harder to tear everything out and change it to fit your scenes but in certain cases it creates a much better end product.
• A tip for tearing down the maps is to make heavy use of the object hierarchy and coordon boundaries.
• Additionally, I made extensive use of the textures in this texture pack: http://www.fileplanet.com/159933/150000/fileinfo/Half-Life---Texture-Pack- It is big but it has some great textures.
• Other than that, I can only think of obvious things like "google probably know how to do it".
• Oh one other thing, make sure that you have hammer etc working at home and in the lab. Some of the members in my group would work in the lab without any problems and then spend hours trying to set everything up and resolve weird issues at home. Don't wait until 2 days before the second project due date to set up half life at home. Set it up as soon as the semester starts!

Brett Walker

• Thought the source engine doesn’t provide a tool to zoom with the camera, one interesting shot I happened upon occurs when the player picks up the crossbow and right-clicks the mouse to zoom in before the activation of cameras starts. This makes the cameras behave in a zoomed manner, which changes the field of view. So the background looks much different, and it makes it possible to get extreme close-ups without having the camera interfere with the player.
  
• One aspect that could be explored with this is hacking into the code to create a view for the camera that allows a zoom-in feature while the camera is rolling. I’m not sure what this would require however. It might be as simple as quickly changing the zoom by small increments to obtain a fluid motion.