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分享独立游戏预告片的制作经验

发布时间:2014-08-01 12:29:55 Tags:,,,

作者:Roque Rey

在这个行业展示你的作品非常关键。预告片可以成为你的名片。一个美观的预告片可以在无需游戏完工的情况下,提前展示出游戏功能。所以,我们打算为《Okhlos》制作一个预告片。

我们已经制作过一些视频,但我们想为自己的首个“官方预告片”制作一些更精美的东西。它最终比我们所想象得更为管用。但是,我们觉得自己从中学到许多知识,在此要与各位分享我们制作这个玩法预告片的一些技巧。

首先要声明一点:我并不擅长视频编辑,所以对于已经在这一领域有点经验的人来说,或许这些经验根本就毫无用处。这些技巧适用于像我们一样没有专业知识但却想制作一个预告片的人。

你可能会认为制作一个玩法预告片很简单,因为你只需要展示玩法,但相信我,没那么容易。

计划

我们从中学到的一件事就是,事先仔细计划好你想展示的内容有助于节省大量的时间。我们确定了自己想展示给他人的最棒环节,也为之制作了一个列表。

list(from gamasutra)

list(from gamasutra)

然后,你就得开始设置预告片的叙事环节,以及每个部份出场的顺序。这会花上一定时间,但将预告片的节奏和高潮理清楚也是一个重要步骤。

设置节奏比较容易,因为我们有一个由@ashellinthepit制作的音轨,所以我们可以由此着手。这是一种很好的限制,因为它为我们提供了非常固定的结构。

连续镜头

你可能会认为录下一些玩法过程就足够了,但你其实还需要大量连续镜头。

我们知道自己想展示什么内容,但为了有所变化(毕竟在制作预告片的时候我们才刚完成第一个关卡),我们不得不通过不同的回合剪辑每个功能的大量镜头。改变关卡的外观以及采用不同的视角同样有助于令每个环节看起来有所不同。

所以,要准备好录制大量连续镜头。我们制作了61个视频剪辑。我们为这个预告片准备了20GB或者说10分钟长度的视频。我们知道预告片的长度(将近45秒),我认为拥有比你瞄准的长度多10倍的连续镜头,是一个不错的比例。

Screenshot(from gamasutra)

Screenshot(from gamasutra)

你得大量记录每个功能的不同镜头,你在编辑的时候会用上这些内容。

编辑器

有了每个环节的草稿之后,我们注意到自己当时还有一些东西没有执行。此外,将我们想展示的不同内容整合起来可能也会花掉太多时间。在这种情况下,使用Unity的确帮了我们大忙。我们可以简单地将内容拖入场景中,并在视频中进行捕捉。

Screenshot 2(from gamasutra)

Screenshot 2(from gamasutra)

所以,能够以我们所需的任何方式编辑游戏的确对制作预告片很有帮助。

唯一的问题在于Unity 3.5.7版本,并不允许你在全屏模式下显示编辑器。所以,我们用这种方式捕捉的所有连续镜头,都必须在视频编辑器中调整比例。为此,我建议一直以相同的大小以及相同的位置进行录制,这样当你运用到镜头时,你就可以节省下时间并令其自动执行。

如何录制

为捕捉视频我们使用了Fraps这款超棒的程序。它的确非常管用,但你在捕捉视频的过程中还有其他一些需要注意的事项:

*记住录制视频对你的机器来说是一项强度极大的任务,所以要在功率更大的设备上运行。我们是在我的电脑上捕捉视频,因为它是办公室里最强大的电脑了。

*理想情况下你要有两个HDD。其中之一是SO和游戏,另一个用来输出所记录的数据。Fraps在读写相同的HDD上并不是那么管用。

*一件极为重要的事情就是,你得花时间仔细为所记录的每个片段重命名。当你有60多个视频时,你当然不想解析每个缩略图,或者打开每个视频查看其中是什么内容。所以要为你所捕捉的每个视频重命名,为其添加一个意义明显的名称,比如你记录该片段的原因。

*此外,要保持片段的简短。拥有大量小型文件总好比拥有两三个大得不可思议的文件。你得在编辑软件上剪辑视频,但如果你编辑过程中发现自己不打算使用某个剪辑视频,那也很容易将其删除。

除此之外,我还发现一个情况,即出色的VLC不但是一个很棒的播放器,还可以编辑视频!这是一个惊人的发现,因为它允许我从视频项目中移除冗长的电影,并用更小的视频来替换。

Screenshot 3(from gamasutra)

Screenshot 3(from gamasutra)

你得采用高级的控制方式,你可以将更大的视频转变成更小的视频!如下图所示:

Screenshot 4(from gamasutra)

Screenshot 4(from gamasutra)

你得摁压记录按钮,然后再停止记录。这可以在“我的文档”中生成一个文件夹。简而言之,使用VLC可以为你节省大量时间,以及生成一个更具可扩展性的视频项目。

软件

最后,我要再提一下我用来编辑视频的软件。

我并非视频编辑专业人员,我做了最简单的选择,也就是使用Adobe Premiere。它非常直观,当你掌握要领时就很容易管理剪辑的视频了。我知道还有许多比这更专业的软件,但Premiere已经能够提供独立游戏预告片所需的一切工具了。

Screenshot 5(from gamasutra)

Screenshot 5(from gamasutra)

设置大量监视器的确有助于在安排时间线或文件的过程中预览作品。

我使用Premiere所学到的另一件事就是,摁压Enter键可以优化预览窗口的fps。我仍然不解其中原理,它与一个渲染器有关,会占用你HDD的大量空间。我的猜测就是要在预览大小中渲染一切内容,才能更好地处理操作。

关于软件问题的最后一点感想就是,针对Youtube视频进行一些配置引导的确对我大有帮助。

这里的重要环节在于格式中的H.264,Bitrate上的VBR,并且目标分辨率是1920*1080(在Youtube上至少得是1080p)。之前Youtube并不支持超过30fps的帧率,但现在它们可以重制60fps。此外,你还很有可能制作一个以上的视频,所以要在预置中为将来的项目保存这些设置。

音频

我们的音频是由Gordon制作的,他是我们的乐师和SFX人员。最初我们认为他提供的音轨就已经够我们的预告片用了,但当我们有了预告片时,Gordon提出要增加一些SFX。

Screenshot 6(from gamasutra)

Screenshot 6(from gamasutra)

添加音效的确提升了预告片的体验。你可以发现其中的不同之处,所以如果你有一名音乐人,最好也要让对方参与预告片的制作。现在,如果你没有音乐人手,但你想展示自己的作品,你可以去搜索一个创意音轨。除此之外,最好要关掉你可能在游戏中用到的任何音乐。如果你整合了SFX,最好配合音频来捕捉视频,并降低剪辑视频中的音量。

总结

迭代,这个在其他情况下看起来很荒唐的事情,在艺术领域却是家常便饭。对预告视频帮助最大的事情,就是制作两遍。我制作了一个初期版本的预告片,从中学到了许多知识,但我极为快速地完成它的制作,几乎只用了一天时间。

我有了视频后就与一些熟人分享。这让我获得了针对最终版本的大量反馈,但我发现更有趣的是看到每个人对《Okhlos》最重要部分的看法存在区别。有些人想展示广大的视野,还有些人都只是想让摄像镜头进行缩放。每个人对《Okhlos》都有不同的看法,幸归有这个视频,我们才能发现其中一些需求,并在一些古怪的心理层面上提升观众的预期。

通过这些反馈,我重制了视频。我再次捕捉到了自己所需的一切,我们在原来的想法基础上进行了大量调整。

从头制作预告片听起来可能很傻,但在当今这个年代,优秀的预告片就是你的包装。所以要花上必要的时间。如果你想比我更有规划,可能就需要重新捕捉视频,但你当然还要制作更多个版本的预告片并进行迭代。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Indie game, indie trailer. Tips for making a trailer

by Roque Rey

Showing your work is incredibly important in this industry. A trailer can be your calling card. Putting together a nice-looking trailer can help showing the features of a game, without the need of having the game finished. Because of this, we wanted to to set up a trailer for Okhlos.

We had already made a few videos, but we wanted something fancy for our first “official trailer”. It ended up being much more work than we expected. However, we feel that we learned a lot, and that it might be a good idea to share some tips based on the insight we gained while making a gameplay trailer.

First of all, a little disclaimer. I’m no pro at video editing, so this probably will be totally useless for anyone who has some experience in the subject. These tips are aimed mainly at anyone with no professional experience who wants to make a trailer, much like our case.

Disclaimer aside, here we go. At first, you might think that making a gameplay trailer is easy, because you only have to show gameplay, but trust me on this one, it’s not so simple.

Planning

One of the things we learned, is that carefully planning what you want to show will save you lots of time. We established which were the cool parts that we wanted to show to the world, and we made a list out of them.

Well, any kind of list is good enough.

Then, you have to set up the narrative of the trailer, and the order in which each segment will be shown. That will take you some time but it’s important to have the pace and climax of the trailer clearly lined out.

Setting the pace was kind of easy, because we had the track made by @ashellinthepit, so we could work having the course set by the track. It was a good kind of restriction, because it gave us a very solid structure.

Footage, footage, and some more footage

You might think that recording a few play sessions is enough, but you need LOTS of footage.

We knew which things we wanted to show, but in order to have some variety (keep in mind that at the moment of making the trailer we only had the first level completed) we had to take multiple captures of each feature throughout different playthroughs. Changing the how the level looks and having a different mob also helped to make each segment feel different.

So, be ready to record A LOT of footage. We made 61 video captures. We had 20gb or 10 minutes worth of videos JUST for this trailer. We knew the length of the trailer (45 secs approximately) because of the track. And I think having footage worth 10 times the length you are aiming for, is a good ratio.

Morale of the story, you need to make multiple recordings of each feature. You will need them in the editing room.

Embrace the editor

Having drafts of each segment, we noticed that there were a few things that we didn’t have implemented at the time. Also, assembling different kinds of mobs we wanted to show would have taken too much time if we did it playing the game. In this context, using Unity really helped us a lot. We could simply threw out things in the scene and capture them on video.

This is an unnecessary wide screenshot, but is cool to show the behind the scenes.

So, being able to edit the game in whatever way we needed, on runtime, was really helpful while making the trailer.

The only problem was that, as of version 3.5.7, Unity doesn’t allow you to display the editor view in fullscreen. So, all the footage we captured this way, had to be scaled in the video editor. For this, I recommend recording always with the window at the exactly same size, and in the same position, so when you apply the cut, you can save the numbers and do it automatically.

How to record

To capture video we use Fraps, which is a super cool program to do it. It’s proved to be really helpful but there other things you should know while capturing video:

Keep in mind that recording video is a very intensive task for your machine, so try to do it in the more powerful machine you could find. We captured the video in my computer, which is the most powerful computer we have in the office.

Ideally you want to have two HDDs. One, were the SO and the game are, and another in which you output the data recorded. Fraps its not so good when it’s reading and writing the same HDD

Something very importante, is taking the time to carefully rename each segment you record. When you have 60+ videos called Okhlos2014-[...].avi, you don’t want to have to decipher the thumbnail, or having to open each video to see what’s in there. Rename every capture you take, with a declarative name, like why you recorded that segment.

Also, try to keep the segments short . It’s better to have thousands of little files, than two or three incredible large files. You will have to edit the clip on the editing software anyways, but if you are editing and find out that you will definitely not use a clip, its easier to erase it.

Aside from this, an amazing thing I found out, (a little late maybe), is that the awesome VLC, not only is an awesome player, but also EDITS videos! This was an amazing finding, because it allowed me to remove long movies from the video project and instead use smaller ones.

You have to enable advanced controls, and there you have it! You can transform larger videos in smaller ones! It looks something like this:

You have to press rec to start recording, and again to stop recording. This will generate a video in “My documents” folder (I didn’t spend much time trying to change the output folder).So, in short, using VLC will save you lots of time, and a more malleable video project.

The Software

Finally, a few notes on the software I used to edit the video.

As I’m no video editor professional, I went for the easier choice, which is to use Adobe Premiere. It’s pretty straightforward, and once you get the hang of it, it’s really easy to manage clips. I can imagine that there are more professional software for this, but Premiere gives you all the tools you might need for an indie trailer.

Having a multiple monitors setup, really helps previewing the work, while arranging the timeline, or your files.

Another thing I learned using premiere is that pressing Enter really improves the fps of the preview window. What it does is still a mystery to me, it has something to do with a render, and it will take a lot of space from your HDD. My educated guess is that renders everything in the preview size, for better handling.

On a final note on the software issue, something that really helped me a lot is to have some configuration guidelines for youtube videos.

So, here you are. The important parts are H.264 in format. VBR on Bitrate, and the target resolution to be 1920×1080 (at least for 1080p on Youtube). Previously, Youtube didn’t support more than 30fps, but as for now, they can reproduce 60fps. Also, it’s very likely that you will be making more than one video, so save these settings into a preset for future projects. Audio

As I said before, the audio was made by Gordon, who is our musician and sfx guy. At first we thought that the track alone would be enough for our first trailer, and it was an invaluable aid to set the timing, but once we had the trailer, Gordon offered to add some SFX.

Adding sound effects really boosted the experience of the trailer. You can really notice the difference between one and another. So, if you have a musician, don’t hesitate on using him/her for the trailer.

Now, If you don’t have one yet, but you want to show your work, you can always search for a creative commons track. Besides that, is important to turn off any music (final or placeholders) that you might have in the game. If you have sfx integrated, try to capture the video with the audio, and lower the audio volume of the clips. Now, do it again

What might be absurd in any other context, in art it’s a very common thing. Iterate.

The thing that most helped the trailer, was to do it twice. I made an early version of the trailer, from which I learned a lot, but I did it very quickly. I finished the first trailer in almost a day.

This is how the first version looked . We changed the name for Gameplay video because it was no trailer. Also, we uploaded the video, but we didn’t share it, or make fuss about it.

Once I had the video, I shared it with a few acquaintances. This provided me lots of feedback for the final version, but what I found more interesting was seeing what each person thought was the most important part in Okhlos. Some wanted to show large mobs, others absurdly non practical camera zooms. Every person had a different view of what Okhlos was, and thanks to the trailer, we could explore some of those requests and boost expectation of the viewers on some weird psychological level. [Dubious][Citation needed]

With all this feedback, I remade the trailer. I captured everything I needed again, and we made a lot of changes from the original idea.

Remaking the trailer from scratch might sound dumb, but in this day and age, a good trailer is your packaging. So spend all the time you might need working on it. If you are more organized than I am, you might not need to recapture video, but you will most definitely have to make more than a version of your trailer and iterate on it.

Taking all that into consideration, here is a look at our new trailer. You might not think it is the best trailer the industry had seen, but all the advice given will definitely help you show your work in a cooler way. (source:gamasutra


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