Lemma Soft Forums

So, I can make sprites. I can make backgrounds. I could even make music (except I'm tone-deaf and have no musical talent or education, but I know what tools to use and how it's done). But I can't make movies. At all.

To make an animated movie for a VN, do you actually have to draw every frame, like old-fashioned animation? Or is there some kind of rendering...thing? Shows how much I know of the topic...

...at any rate, how does one make a cutscene for a VN? And how long does this process take?

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There are lots of different ways to go about that. You can go for traditional animation, but not only is that difficult, but takes a crazy-long time.
Alternatives would be using effects and things in movie-making software, (Can be difficult to get it to look good) or using flash (Can take a while to get used to, also can be quite expensive.)
Really, it all depends on what sort of thing you want in the movie.

Also... you could use Adobe Photoshop's Puppet Tool... to make cheap and quick animations...



For quick and cheap environments, you could use google sketchup and export your project as a video file where you could edit it using a third party program...



"POOF" (Disappears)

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Most of the OP animations I have seen for VNs are pretty simple. Some are actual animation (I know Lux-Pain had an animated sequence) that would require real animation techniques, as in the use of frames, just like any cartoon. But the majority seem to be just a mixture of static graphics with animation and effects applied. I'm pretty sure most of them would use Adobe After Effects or a similar program. I have been messing around with the program and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too difficult to get a movie together with moving elements, effects and music.

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Then apparently what I need to do is either get my hands on some expensive software...or find this puppet tool and figure out how to make it work.

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Well, there are free programs you can use, but in my experience they're pretty buggy and don't always export video the way you want them to. (still, you should try to find some and test them out!) I suggest trying Wax (http://www.debugmode.com/wax/) and/or Zwei-Stein (http://www.thugsatbay.com/tab/?q=zweistein) There are tutorials around the net, so help is just a google search away!

However it's much safer to go with a software you pay for. But you don't need EXPENSIVE software to get what you need. Expensive software comes with tools you won't ever use, so it's best to try to find a software that has the tools you need- which are multiple layers of video and the pan/crop tool!

Someone posted this link before on the forums: http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ It's a list of top consumer video editing software. Most of these programs have both multiple video tracks (multiple layers of video that I was talking about) and a pan/crop tool. $50 is quite cheap for software, so it wouldn't be a bad investment. You can also download free trials to see how you like them, maybe even get some practice video editing too!

I used to be impressed with them, but most "animated" VN openings now come off as cheap. Usually it's just zooming in and out on the sprites and CGs with AFX sparkles and timed to music. Full anime openings are out of the question. Plus when used as a promo it doesn't honestly portray how the actual game will play like... which is usually just text, click, more text, click, ad infinitum.

But there happens to be this director called Makoto Shinkai who started out making 5-minute black and white shorts and eroge openings. Suffice to say I remember the openings more than the actual games they were attached to.

I myself, while making a game using Ren'py, is learning how to use Flash. Sure, Flash is hard to understand it takes perhaps months or years to master it, but I'm sure I can understand the basics pretty quickly. Flash can be use a lot of things, like pictures, animations, videos, and games. Once you know how to use it, it's pretty neat for you.
I'm using Micromedia Flash 8 Portable though, I'm not the kind who would buy software. But in the future, big chances I would. What I'm trying to say is, try to search for a free software, if you lucky enough you'll get the full edition, but if not, try searching for the Portable. They are actually good (but make sure you got them from a good source too).

But I'm pretty curious about making videos as well. I'm always wondering how they did that pretty neat editing and beautiful flow, like most AMVs and all.

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Heh, I used to use SWISH (an alternative flash editor) to make videos with some degree of success. Of course, using dedicated video editing software is always the better choice. Just here to say it worked for me:
Took me only a few hours or so do this.

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How do you make your games? I see. Thank you for the prompt replies, but it is my considered opinion that you're doing it wrong inefficiently because I am a perfushenal professional. Do it my way this way and we can all ascend VN Nirvana together while allowing me to stroke my ego you will improve much faster. Also, please don't forget to thank me for this constructive critique or I will cry and bore you to death respond appropriately with a tl;dr rant discourse of epic adequately lengthy proportions. - Sarcasm Veiled in Euphemism: Secrets of Forum Civility by lordcloudx (Coming soon to an online ebook near you.)

It would be nice if there was someone with advanced MAD skills to guide us into how to make a good OP. And ideas.

I only used renpy to make some sort of in game video. I wanted to achieve the same result as the ending in Cross Channel.
But it takes time. I had the OP made 85% by then before my HD crash. Still have the drawings for it somewhere under my pile of character designs though.

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Sorry for the slightly OT and stupid question, but how do you guys embed youtube videos to this forum?
The <iframe> thing doesn't work.

If you use the quote button you can see the BBCode used in the post. In this case this:

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Neat, I didn't know about the youtube tag!

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Corel had this program called "RAVE" that was kind of like a vector-based animation maker. I think it might have been discontinued, but maybe you can find it somewhere for cheap? Not sure how good it is.

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