A user friendly machinima tool built into eve would be nice, and likely lead to more Eve based machinima, however…
- it would also divert dev resources from the game,
- there are already a plethora of free tools available that are capable of doing all sorts of stuff
- and, some of those free tools offer functionality that we can’t expect CCP to replicate any time soon.
Thus, even if something was integrated into Eve, many creators would still likely turn to 3rd party tools. Thus, I’m thinking the best course of action is to let CCP concentrate on Eve, and let creators use the tools that are already available to them. However, that does not mean that creators won’t run into any issues.
So, here are a few things worth mentioning:
- Be aware that there are a ton of tools capable of doing all sorts of stuff -i.e. image upscaling and debluring, message editing (altering the subject’s lip movements), animating still photos, deepfakes, aging, deaging, sex change, mustache removal
, and other alterations, and, of course, the kind of machinima tools that one would expect. There are even tools that can extract assets from certain games. I don’t know what all there is, but I do know there is a tool floating around that can extract assets from games made in unreal engine. Anyway, it’s starting to get to the point where the sky is the limit. It’s just a matter of whether or not you’re willing to put in the effort to learn the tools that are available. - Speaking of which, some tools aren’t very user friendly, and I found that guides for newer tools were often outdated by the time I got to them. Of course, there are plenty of tutorial resources out there, but if you are looking for the most up to date guides on certain things, you might need to take a dive into darker corners of the web -places where people might be using these programs in ways that some might consider to be unethical and/or distasteful.
- Some tools will heavily tax your graphics card, and new cards are still overpriced. Fortunately, some tools have the option to switch between using GPU or CPU, and some tools will even let you use two different GPU’s aren’t in SLI, or whatnot. Anyway, if you do get a new video card, know that some tools supposedly work better with nVidia cards, and some tools only work with nVidia. Naturally, I would definitely recommend getting an nVidia card. And, hopefully, graphics card prices will continue to fall.
- Start with shorter test videos that offer ideal conditions. To learn how your tools work first.
- If you’re not sure that your source footage is up to snuff, do a short test clip first. You don’t want to waste hours or days running your software, only to find out that your settings were suboptimal, or that your source footage just isn’t good enough to get you the results that you want.
- Starting small will also help you figure out a good workflow.
- Figure out what your minimum quality standards are from the get go. Personally, I don’t recommend ever aiming for perfection, as the time investment required tends to increase exponentially as you get closer and closer to perfect. So, just because you can make it perfect, that doesn’t mean you should. It’s probably better to make a lot of content of great quality, than little to no content of perfect quality.
- Eve has a character green screen built in, which is good enough for certain applications. There are also threads talking about downloading ships models. Unfortunately, I don’t know if you can use the same process to download other models (i.e. characters, gates, stations, planets, etecetera). Regardless, check out these links: hyar, hyar, and hyar.
- Finally, work smarter and not harder. If a step seems to be particularly labor intensive, someone else has probably thought the same thing and found a better way (i.e. like creating a new batch process in photoshop, that will perform a particular set of actions on every frame in a folder). So, don’t beat your head against the wall; instead try searching for a better solution.
Alright, I’m sure I’ll think of more stuff, but I’ve wasted enough time on this post. Have some videos.
