Question: Hiding player names?

[release]

hi, i want to make a funny story based gunz movie. i read all the stickies and couldn't find the answer to this question, sorry if i missed it somewhere.

i noticed pressing M during a replay lets me fly the camera around freely, which definitely will help a lot for capturing scenes. but when i go into free fly mode, all the player names show up above everyone's head. how do i hide player names? thanks in advance

[izukun]

do you press M on ijji gunz?

[Luked]

Ok, here it is.
Press:
M- to fly around ( weeeeeeeee! ).
T- Hides players name.
V- Hides the chat.

EDIT: Lol MTV, what a quinisidence.

[_Zephyre_]

No, you can't hide their names when under free cam. It's just not possible.

They will, however, vanish in chase cam when it's following a character.

EDIT: And what Luked meant for pressing 'T' is that it hides the black frame with the character's name, HP and AP in it, not the names above their head during free cam.

[Paul]

Yes, unfortunately, there's really no way to do that using the legit gunz. And if you're thinking of doing it any other way, then SHAME ON YOU!!! :: Shakes finger with fury. ::

[release]

:\
no possible way? well see, i wanted to make my movie like a real movie or real anime. so, realistic camera angles, close up shots when characters are talking, etc. i probably won't use the 3rd-person normal view ever. but... seeing like... "Release" above a character name, when he's obviously supposed to be named something else in the movie will just look weird, as well as it's a big distraction.. (i watched another gunz movie on youtube, and it was pretty good, but i couldn't help trying to read the names the whole time) and even if i did make new characters and give them the right names its still, you know, looks weird lol.

does anyone at least know any 'tricks' to doing it? like, one that i noticed, was, i could chase-cam a player, but have him right up against a wall, and have him holding a medkit so his arms are down (and this view would act as the camera). the camera will zoom in since its pushed against a wall, and you'll barely be able to see the player i'm chasing with the camera (you might see part of his head and shoulders on the left and bottom of the screen). then, i could just record it in 640x480 and crop that particular video down to 320x240, and get rid of whatever was left of the player on the left/bottom of the screen, making it look like a normal camera shot with no player names.

but.. thats not going to work for all the shots.... does anyone know anything else like that? i just really want to make the video look professional as im kind of a perfectionist on this type of thing. i'd even glitch the game and force it to show all player names as " " (a space) if i knew how.

and the only other option i can think of is digitally removing the names which would be a HUGE pain.

[Yvgeniy]

We've all been struggling with the same problem, but the fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no way of removing the names (at least nothing in my power). There are trick shots that you can use to hide the names, and you can also use the rotating chase cam, but like you said, it will only take you so far. If you want to make a professional movie you're just going to have to accept the fact that the names will be there because there isn't much that you can do about it. However, if you record it at the higher resolution, say... 1024 by 768 or one higher, then the names will appear much smaller and won't be very noticable (don't record on the highest because FRAPS auto reduces it to 640 by 480, pretty annoying actually).

[release]

darn. oh well, i may give the digital editing a try. thanks for the resolution tip, maybe editing the names out might not be so hard if they are much smaller like you said

[Paul]

I don't wanna stomp out your hopes or anything man, but unless you have a team of about fifteen people able to work on this, I would'nt recommend wasting your time even attempting to digitally animate it out.

You've gotta think here: Thirty frames per second. You multiply that by sixty, you get one thousand eight hundred frames per minute. Now let's say you make a short five minute film. Five times one thousand eight hundred is nine thousand frames. That means eliminating that name nine thousand times. Now I understand that your characters name will not always be on screen. But what about when multiple characters are on screen? With multiple characters anywhere in your film, you'll most definately be editing out more than nine thousand names.

In addition to editing out the names, you've got to edit them out perfectly if you're doing frame by frame work, so that the area where the name was before does not look all wiggly. I don't know what kind've background you have in digital media, but editing out a name on a still image in photoshop is very different from doing it in video. If you edit it slightly different from the frame before, and you do the same to the one after and the one after, you'll have a blurry, wiggly looking area over the character's head.

That's a lot of work for a gunz film. And this is only one thing you have to worry about ontop of the other pressures of making a movie.

Just throwing that out there.

[Yvgeniy]

Yah dude, I would definitely not recommend editing the names out. It's a waste of time... Let me put it in a better perspective for you. 9000 frames? Let's assume that on average it takes you 3 minutes to clone a name out, give or take. 3 times 9000 is 18,000 minutes which is 300 hours which is 12 and a half days. Now, assuming that you don't work on this 24/7 it'll take at least 3 times that if you work on it A LOT. Do you honestly want to spend that much time on a small thing like this that may not even turned out all that great (the jiggle effect Paul mentioned)? I don't know about you, but that's insane.

[release]

yeah, when the camera is moving... it will be near impossible for me to do, but what i could do is attempt to do all the moving-cam scenes by following a player (which you wont see hopefully) so the name isnt there to begin with

all the other shots will be stationary camera shots (this will probably be the majority), and i have a trick to editing the names out there, it goes like this:

first from the replay, lets say i wanna have a dude walking down an alleyway from left to right across the screen.. well first i just take a screenshot of the empty alleyway before he walks past during the replay. then i take the video of him walking across, and when i put the video in a vid editing program, i use the screenshot of the empty alleyway and create a moving mask the same shape of the player name, that will move on top of the name. this mask will display the screenshot of the empty alleyway where the mask is, in other words, just an alleyway wall, no player name. needless to say all shots will not be this simple, but changing the mask size and position is pretty easy in adobe premiere

im still worried about some moving camera shots as well as shots where the playername goes over the players forehead instead of above his head... i dunno, we'll see how it goes. its gonna be a lot of work anyway and i really have nothin else to do at the moment

[Yvgeniy]

The problem with that is it will limit your cinematography a lot. I think it's better to have better cinematography than crappier cinematography and no names.

Also, concerning the screen shot idea, scratch that. The thing with video is it's constantly changing. If you compare a screen shot of a location to a still image of one frame there's definitely a difference in quality and look. Not to mention that quality in a video fluctuates a little bit and you sometimes even see some graining. If you want to do what you just described I would suggest using the actual footage. For example, you can either take the left half of the footage that the player is not in (if he's in the right half) and then take the right half of the footage when the player is in the left half. Put to two together and set it as the background layer and then do your masking. Another way you could do this is have the character out of the shot at first so you can have a clean shot and then you'd just use that. I'd experiment with this first by using a short clip to see if it looks good.

[shintenzu]

I finally thought up a solution to the name hiding, its actually quite easy, but may be time consuming

Create a character with only Alt Key spaces and dots. A mixture of alt keys and dots will make it very possible to have 1-12 actors with just a dot or space over their head. The time consuming part about it is LEVELING all these characters to a desired llevel in which they can wear the clothes you which touse for them. Though the amount of space/period names may be thining so reserve some accounts and names ASAP

[Paul]

Yeah, I thought of that a while ago for Axium. Only problem is that if we get other people to participate in the film, it's more than likely that they will not have names of the same nature. That means you must wait for that person to not only get a name of that kind, but level up to whatever level you need them to be.

Unless of course you want the names just showing up at random points during the movie.

[shintenzu]

Originally Posted by Paul

Yeah, I thought of that a while ago for Axium. Only problem is that if we get other people to participate in the film, it's more than likely that they will not have names of the same nature. That means you must wait for that person to not only get a name of that kind, but level up to whatever level you need them to be.

Unless of course you want the names just showing up at random points during the movie.

Yup, that time consuming part. My idea is that you create separete accounts for each actor and they log into that account when your filming, that way you can choose EXACTLY howyou want your characters to look, but yes lvling is the most tedious part. I personally have no prob with the names tho. My only prolem is how lame ale characters walk with med packs XD, hmmmmmm It will be hard creating an extremely good movie with limited animations so I guess when I make mine I'm just gonna have to make ALOT of split scenes and edits.