VN Opening Animation Style Question

[Morhighan]

Hi there!
I've always kinda wanted to make animations, but it always seems really intimidating to me. But I noticed when playing Umineko no Naku Koro ni that the animation on the original VN Openings that the animation style is simple but powerful.
Umineko opening:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f184GruHq9o[/youtube]

This was brought back to me by watching this Hatsune Miku series:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRfPe9zVlOo[/youtube]

I like the way that characters move across the screen, even though they are static images. I know that some people have used the engine they make VNs with to produce these openings, but I want to try it in a video editor or animation program.

So, my questions:
What sort of program would be good for making this sort of video?
If you have made an opening animation, how did you do it? (Feel free to link it here! : D)
How exactly do you make the static images move across the screen so cleanly (in whatever program)?

Thanks much!

[papillon]

I don't have any decent video creation software, so the two openings I've done so far have been hacked together in different ways.

For The Royal Trap, I just coded it in RenPy with ATL and a bunch of custom dissolves. This has the benefit that it should run on any user's computer that can play the rest of the game (real videos are known to lock up sometimes because of driver problems and so on). The downside is that the animations don't always time correctly if someone's computer and graphics processor is running slower than intended, especially when people record themselves playing the game for LPs - since video recording tends to slow down graphics processing, the whole opening will lag terribly and get way out of sync with the music.

For Date Warp, I programmed it all in Game Maker where I could control certain effects more easily, recorded the result with fraps, and put it in the game as an ogv video file.

[Morhighan]

I don't have any decent video creation software, so the two openings I've done so far have been hacked together in different ways.

For The Royal Trap, I just coded it in RenPy with ATL and a bunch of custom dissolves. This has the benefit that it should run on any user's computer that can play the rest of the game (real videos are known to lock up sometimes because of driver problems and so on). The downside is that the animations don't always time correctly if someone's computer and graphics processor is running slower than intended, especially when people record themselves playing the game for LPs - since video recording tends to slow down graphics processing, the whole opening will lag terribly and get way out of sync with the music.

For Date Warp, I programmed it all in Game Maker where I could control certain effects more easily, recorded the result with fraps, and put it in the game as an ogv video file.

Oh sweet! I'll be using (re: learning) Game Maker, so that's good to know! And I use fraps, too. XD Thanks!

[llplldll]

That Umineko opening looks like it was made in video editing software. There's so many effects in it that would seem cumbersome to recreate in a regular game engine. One of the shots looks like its in 3d space (The one showing the cast). A video editing software like After effects ($$$), could easily do that though.

[Kinjo]

So, my questions:
What sort of program would be good for making this sort of video?
If you have made an opening animation, how did you do it? (Feel free to link it here! : D)
How exactly do you make the static images move across the screen so cleanly (in whatever program)?

Adobe After Effects and Sony Vegas are what I used for Detective Butler's opening movie. As you can tell from the video, I also liked the simplicity of Umineko's opening, so I can give you a few pointers there. I'm also fairly sure that AE was used to create Umineko's opening movie, but regardless of that, you can certainly achieve the same effect.

In short, you'll need to learn how to work with camera objects in 3D space. It's not as difficult as you might think; switching from 2D to 3D is done with the push of a button. The hard part is making sure the movements of the sprites are smooth and look polished (use several adjustment layers for this). All you can do is learn from trial and error, to see what works and what doesn't. In that sense, it's not really difficult as it is just time consuming, so if you put in enough effort your video will look pretty cool by the end.

I should also note that the smoothness of sprite movement is done via keyframe. Simply put, you give the sprite a start-position and end-position at a start-time and end-time. The computer figures out the rest. Velocity is also customizable, if you want the sprite to move fast and then slow, but it defaults to a constant value. So like I said, it's just trial and error, seeing what looks good and letting the program work out all the math for you. Nothing to it except lots of patience and a good eye for detail.

There are hundreds of AE tutorials out there, which is how I learned to use it myself. Try finding some on Youtube and learning step-by-step. Learn 2D, then 3D, but most importantly you'll need to put what you've learned into practice.

[arachni42]

I haven't used any other video software, but I think Sony Vegas would work well, and you can do more with it than just animation in the game engine. You can import 2D images into Vegas and, as Kinjo mentioned, use keyframes to make them move, rotate, resize, whatever. The Miku video you linked had a film effect -- programs like Vegas make effects like that easy to do. Good luck!

[sake-bento]

For Jisei, I used Anime Studio. It's a cheaper option than most video editing software and it has some nice capabilities, but the GUI isn't very intuitive, so learning how to use it was kind of a pain. Still, I'm pleased with the results, so I can't complain too much.

[pineapplepocky]

I believe some of these things are doable on renpy. One really unique animation is that you have two images animating in different directions, so you get the feeling that there is depth between two images. I am really noob at renpy, but basically just have one character 'slide' from one direction to another, and very slowly move a larger image in the background in another direction. You can also mimick lighting by having a .png file that's the 'black shadows' and is transparent in the middle, get a larger image in the background, have it slowly slide in the back, but keep the 'black shadows' .png in the front and not moving. These are simple animation 'hacks' that people use to save time and effort when animating. Actually it's not a hack. Old anime cels had the exact same concept.
But for things that actually DO animate, that's a totally different story.