Divinity Bullshittery - Update #4 (Patreon)

Happy New Year everybody. I hope you've all had a smashing one. And Christmas before that.

It's been a couple of weeks since the last update. And I've been squirreling away on the keyframing/animation phase for the next bullshittery. And though the second week proved difficult due to sickness, I've been able to get about 81%.

On the timeline, 84 of 130 scenes are in place and rendered.  With more being slotted in as they're finished. The bulk of the work is now in the last 4 segments and I'm hoping to get most of that done this week.

Here's a link to the google sheet I've been using to keep track of everything.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VrffT-Zu48GjGUe5qJljJNOvXT4-_dPu5sAMgaWvdvY/edit?usp=sharing

This is not my first rodeo with Divinity. And I can report that the keyframing work - as entirely expected - comes in two flavours. Either it's easy to automate, or it's entirely manual and grindy.

In some scenes, we're having a conversation with an NPC - therefore the scene gets finished in a few minutes having tracked something obvious in the frame. Such as the convenient little speech bubble below.

Or when automation is hopeless, it's due to things like spell effects, camera shake, zooming, rain magic, camera rotating. Or the simple fact that the subject in question turned their head briefly and now tracking doesn't know what to make of it. Divinity appears to be stuffed full of things to make this style of editing very difficult.

And I imagine, so will Baldurs Gate 3, eventually. Seems to come with the territory.

Take the scene above as an example of  the challenges.

The spell effects have this nasty habit of covering everything. Player characters included. And it rapidly become something After Effects autotracking cannot handle. Introducing a nauseating wobble if you try it. Meaning that manually keyframing becomes the only real option if you want it look smooth. 

That being said, I'm taking every and any opportunity to "cheat". For sometimes Divinity would provide me with little pieces of contextual text. Such as a popups that says Magic Armor resisted a spell. Which lets me track something, anything, for 5 seconds or so. Or maybe the characters is in the fire, but the tip of their bow is not, etc.

Another trick has been tracking the scaling (zooming) of something, by selecting two unrelated items in the scene. Sure, the player character might be standing in the fire. But are two barrels in the foreground as you zoom in?

Digby's character has continued to be one of the most confounding things to try and keyframe. For someone during animating decided that the fictional species should drop to all fours during most casting animations. Leading to me having to decide repeatedly whether to follow him , or stay at head level.

But the most creative thing worth talking about in this update is the middle segment of the video. The "Hell of Echoes" lore segment I've insisted on including.

Whilst I've stripped most narrative elements, there's a very important revelation.

That a.) the party are in direct competition with each other for Divinity. b.) The Source powers you gain are vampiric in nature. And that the gods of this setting are not benevolent overseers of mortal races. But are, in fact, outright parasites. Gorging upon the slain like "lions in a world of lambs".

Now the original footage for this in game meeting (above) was fairly shit. For a few reasons

• I personally raced through the NPC conversation and didn't take it seriously. Figuring this was just some minor NPC. It's only later in the playthrough did I understand.
• The camera swung awkwardly around the room a few times. With no mind for editing difficulty.
• Stream notifications bounced up and made noise, baked into the audio layer.
• There was a persistent "thrum" sounds from the background ambience that made it very obvious where the cuts were.
• There were actually three encounters in the Hall of Echoes. And combining audio from two of them (as I wanted to do) would have some weird continuity issues.

Therefore I decided to reshoot the scene a single player. Trying to create one smooth take.

So the moment I touch the ritual bowl and I'm teleported away, it becomes a singleplayer version of me, dressed up to look like my multiplayer counterpart. Same gear, same hair. The original interface is overlayed on top.

My audio reactions are the originals. But the dialogue, the camera, all of it is now slower and more deliberate, whilst this important lore NPC explains the main confrontation of the entire game. Without which the finale of the series is going to be very confusing.

Additionally, I saw an opportunity for a cool juxtaposition. 

I found a Steam mod that would let you skip Chapter 1. Made a smurf characters in the form of Digby, Messy and Quebec. And then raced to the same god encounter. My hope was to film their gods - similarly insisting that we turn on each other - and then fade in and out. To make it clear that we're part of a plot.

I was a little disappointed to discover that each of the voice actors and actresses were given an identical script. All 4 gods say precisely the same words. So I couldn't get 4 different takes on it. Bit of a bummer.

My plan now is to get these final segments keyframed, get them rendered, go back and make any final decisions on visual effects, slot in the commissions as they come. And then get the whole project into quality assurance.

Once again, thank you for your patience with me folks. Once this project is out of the way, I'll begin making polls for the next one and you can let me know what you'd like :)

Have a lovely New Year everybody.