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NEW Development Trailer?

Pieter Boelen

Pieter Boelen

Navigation Officer
Administrator
Storm Modder
Hearts of Oak Donator
@Captain Murphy has been doing an amazing job these past few months on game engine development,
as well as on actually SHOWING this to the world! And @Flannery has recently finished his main theme for our game.

So I am thinking it might be time for us to see about finishing up enough content to be able to create a new promotional trailer.
That way, if we want to showcase our work to anyone, we've actually got something NEW to show them.
As good as the old video is, it does only contain screenshots and some actual video content would make a WORLD of difference!

Who would be willing to join in on such an effort? And what would we need to do in order to create this?
I'm sure it would help a tremendous lot in drawing in new members for the team!

:pirates
 
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Having just (finally!) finished watching @Captain Murphy's video series, the following things spring to mind:

- Somebody should take that Jamaica height map and dot it with detailing; wouldn't necessarily need to be final, just enough to give us something to look at for detailing.
Perhaps it would even be enough to limit it to a small area for showcasing purposes, so this should not become too big a project.

- If I understand correctly, we cannot have sails attached to the most up-to-date version of the ship entity, right?
However, we did have sails in one of those first videos. Perhaps we could stick a few shots of ships under sail in just to "show off"?

- Are there any sort of physical damage spots shown on the ships' hulls yet?
I remember from the earlier videos that this always caused some sort of obvious "missing texture" effect.
 
I already have a theme being specifically made by Flannery for the trailer.

The one thing we'll really need is realistic sails. The ones in the earlier video were a good demonstration, but they aren't even close to being good enough to showcase the game.

Now do we need the sails to actually work for the trailer? Not really. If we need to, we could even model sails in Maya, use the cloth simulation to fill them, then make them part of the Lyon Hoy model. The model's gaff and sails would be modeled to be trimmed properly, and the wind in the trailer would be set to come from that direction. I could do that part, if necessary, so the sails would look realistic.
 
We do have the option to attach sails but the actual problem is the optimizing of framecount. The cloth-simulation will be updated in the next SDK releases, for much more cheap calculation, so I do actual not waste time in research this system.

We have actual chosen to take a few more ships for videos and promotion. As second solution, we can ever deal with the frame intensive cloth-simulation or with still simple vertex animated wave-simulated sails (material based). The day havnt so much hours I need. Actual I urgently need to finish the St Albans with open gunports and new physical proxy, based on the Hoy research.
 
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Honestly I don't think we can even think of any of this until we have a working character model or two.

Pieter Boelen said:
- Somebody should take that Jamaica height map and dot it with detailing; wouldn't necessarily need to be final, just enough to give us something to look at for detailing.
Perhaps it would even be enough to limit it to a small area for showcasing purposes, so this should not become too big a project.
Click to expand...
I believe someone has been working on that already, I am not sure of their progress though.

Pieter Boelen said:
- If I understand correctly, we cannot have sails attached to the most up-to-date version of the ship entity, right?
However, we did have sails in one of those first videos. Perhaps we could stick a few shots of ships under sail in just to "show off"?
Click to expand...
Post Captain said:
The one thing we'll really need is realistic sails. The ones in the earlier video were a good demonstration, but they aren't even close to being good enough to showcase the game. Now do we need the sails to actually work for the trailer? Not really. If we need to, we could even model sails in Maya, use the cloth simulation to fill them, then make them part of the Lyon Hoy model. The model's gaff and sails would be modeled to be trimmed properly, and the wind in the trailer would be set to come from that direction. I could do that part, if necessary, so the sails would look realistic.
Click to expand...
As far as 'can we attach sails'? Yes, we can. The latest model allows for cloth entity attachment in the most basic form. Do they need to be ultra realistic? It might look nice but not a lot of people will care. After having watched the AC4 videos and looking at how 'ultra realistic' people think that game is I think we have a good shot of people thinking this is a real video and not a game. Other than furling and unfurling we can probably just use the current cloth entities in the trailer and be fine without needing a whole new render. I will get with @Wedori and see about getting the rigging of the Hoy completed and sails ready to attach.

Pieter Boelen said:
- Are there any sort of physical damage spots shown on the ships' hulls yet?
I remember from the earlier videos that this always caused some sort of obvious "missing texture" effect.
Click to expand...
The decals can place but they are still not 'permanent' yet. We are using the basic system that places on X decals and then wipes them. I am still working on the decal system to make them permanent. I am also working on a bit of scripting to start random fires and cause larger explosions on a randomized basis for 'cinema effect'.[/quote]
 
The problem was with how the cloth simulation in the engine worked. The sails were just flat, while all real sails are cut to have actual 3 dimensional depth so that they can draw wind correctly. The only depth in the video came from elastic stretching.
 
CM posted as I was writing. That still leaves the issue of getting the sheets and gaff positioned correctly on the hoy. If everything is set dead center, it will look horrible to those who sail, and I think it will represent HOO poorly.
 
In this case, I'm not actually thinking of making an ultra-beautiful trailer or anything.
We could even make it seem more like a "summary" of the development videos that @Captain Murphy did.
Just so that when there are people interested and want to know how things are looking now, they don't have to watch 1.5 hours worth of development videos.

In other words: It doesn't actually need to be perfect just yet. In fact, why not showcase the rough edges, stating that they still need working on.
That might even encourage more people to actually JOIN IN. After all, if we come up with something that looks near-perfect, people might not see a real need to assist.
 
@Post Captain: If you want to understand what the engine is rendering when we use "Cloth Entitys" then compare this system with a real piece of fabric. This system is close to reality but very frame intensive. The sails blows in the direction, the wind come from and "work" in it. Its looks real great but the framecount is horrible. I mean with "Framecount" not the FPS count in drawn pictures, I mean the physical engine that "produces a stottering when the sails start to work. The FPS are still 40 at my system but that physical stottering is horrible.
Based on this I will wait for the SDK update when the much cheaper technique "Cloth Merged Mesh Deform" will work at dynamic objects.

At first I finish the Albans to Hoy state, then I change my plan to research a compromise sail thing (@ Captain Murphy)
 
I don't think you understood what I was saying. I know all that. What I am saying is that the sails we used in the video were flat pieces of cloth. Sails actually have shape, and do not work well without their shape.

Look at the sail in this picture for example:
norwegian-square-rigger.jpg

Look at how there is a "belly" in the sail that gives it shape. It is present in every type of European sail. That is something the cloth simulation we were using lacks. It makes a massive difference in the appearance of 3d digital sails, and it is completely necessary if we wish to accurately portray sailing vessels.

The sails in the development video, while they were good for testing purposes, look like they got all their shape by stretching from the force of the wind, which looks very unrealistic*. We can use that footage for a development summary, as Pieter suggested, if we say it is only for testing purposes. (Not really a trailer, in my opinion, but it is a good option.)

If we want to make a cinematic trailer before improving the sails, though, we'd be better off modeling the sails and just faking it in the engine.

*The canvas used in sails back then did stretch, but it was not elastic. The stretching occurred slowly over several months of use, and it was permanent.
 
Ah, OK, yes, the base shape on the Albans was so. I work on this after the latest reworking on Albans.
 
As much as I'd like to see a more cinematic trailer, I think a development teaser would be both more honest and also more contributory to our cause.
Right now, we want people to see what we have been up to the last few months. And that works better by showing them the real deal, however rough around the edges it might be.
 
It seems those news articles @Captain Murphy has been posting to the ModDB are now making it to the main page there too!
Also looking at the Hearts of Oak stats graph, it is clear that we are making a name for ourselves.
If we can keep it up and hold on to the coverage that we've already got, then we're certainly making progress here. :onya
 
I agree. And that's why I'd propose two trailers, one development, and one storyline. To maximize their usefulness, I'd suggest releasing them a few weeks apart.
 
Yep. We're getting to the point where we'll have enough story content to make a really good spoiler-free trailer. I'd like to get the main character's ship built first, though.
 
Building a ship from scratch would kind-of delay that trailer for a while, though.
Also.... how do you want to handle it without any character models being started on just yet?
 
Getting that particular ship ready for the trailer shouldn't take too long.

All we need are ships, sailing, and a narrator.
 
I second that motion!... even if it's just a picture in a book on a desk in the cabin on the ship in the harbor seen from the street in a foggy town!
 
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