Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

Self explanatory. I want to make a video play on a vmf texture akin to the l4d2 intro being played in the dead before dawn campaign. I know valve made the vmf's for them and sent them over, however how did they do it? I can't find anything about it anywhere.

Thnx

Um, the intros to the campaigns are done within the maps in real time. I'm not sure if they just used a point_viewcontrol entity on a track using path_track entities, or a view control parented to an invisible animated dummy model that moves in a smooth fasion (Zeno Clash used this technique for their cutscenes).

I can't say the same for the Dead before Dawn campaign, but if it is a video, it uses the Bink video player I'm sure. I forget how you do it exactly, but I think it's just a console command that plays the video you tell it to. So in other words you would have to record a video and convert it to the bink video format to play it in-game.

um no you don't understand. In dead before dawn they have brushes play videos akin to func_monitor, however they are textures and not func_monitors...

You can make animated VTFs, however they can get quite large in file size due to the nature of VTF compression, if you had a 100 frame texture it would be 100 times the size of a regular texture. Also its difficult to sync it with audio

As far as I know the two methods nub suggested are the only feasible ways to put such scenes in source

that is what I believe valve did for the DBD campaign. However, each of the files are single vtf's and not a collection of textures. It's as if they were all compiled into vtf's which could be played.

I remember reading in the news back in the day valve made the custom animated textures for them, so I know it's possible.

animated VTF files are easy enough once you get your head around it

tutorial http://www.editlife.net/tutorial.php?tutid=43

program that makes it easier http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?c=178

You could make a texture with a proxy which refers to an AVI, but I recall you would have to make some changes to the game engine's code. Since it's all done that would be a simple copy and paste job.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/AVI_Materials

I've tried the AVI method and its not all its cracked up to be. The only codecs that work with it are all outdated and difficult to convert videos to, and if the files are too large the game crashes. Looking at the videos in game causes a lot of lag, affecting the video's framerate, so it is literally impossible to match it to any audio

I guess I can shoot Mike Durand an email asking about this.

Anyone found an easy solution to this?

Im interested now

i saw that nyan cat portal thing but that uses .bik (blink video)

Anyone got an solution yet?

To make .bik(s)?

I've done that since Halo2 modding, just google their tools.