Thief FM Movie Tutorial
by Don Willadsen, known on TTLG as dlw6 

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Special thanks to Lazarus for his advice, and for making me a cool video logo when I lacked the skill and tools to do it.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, WITH SOME PARTS YET TO BE WRITTEN.  SEND FEEDBACK to don at willadsenfamily dot org.

Introduction & Tools

This tutorial will explain a process for creating briefing and cutscene videos for Thief Fan Missions using freely available tools.  I say "a process" not "the process" because there may be other ways.  This tutorial will concentrate on the classic "Rustmonkey-style" videos found in Thief 1 and some of the Thief2 videos.

You may need a photo editor, microphone, or other tools to create or edit the sounds and images, the "raw material" that will become the parts of your movie.  See my voice acting tutorial for more information about microphones and recording your own sounds.  Every camera, scanner, and printer on the market seems to come with a photo editor these days.  I use Corel Photo-Paint so my screen shots will reflect that.

Finally, you need a computer with a good processor, memory, and a lot of hard disk space.  The processor and memory help you work faster during certain stages (more on that below).  The need for hard disk space is due to the concept that some types of compression and conversion result in data loss.  Data loss in video results in pixellation or fuzziness.  Data loss in sound results in garbled, tinny, or other ugliness in your recording.  Therefore, you should not compress anything until the final product, and convert as little as possible.  All your intermediate products, both the "raw material" and files you create during intermediate steps, should be uncompressed and as high quality as possible.  This is why a large hard disk is important.

Setup

Create a working folder for the movie you are recording.  Unless you like to work on multiple projects at a time, set your programs to point to your working folder by default.  This is a huge time saver.  If you are inclined to be organized, you can also create subfolders for Sound, Video, and Images.  This will help you organize your files and find them more easily.

Audacity Setup

If you will make your own recordings, you should set up Audacity for good quality audio, something better than your microphone can produce and certainly better quality than the raw materials you might find, such as original mission (OM) sounds or music you download. This way, working with the sounds will not degrade their quality.  Note that the following settings are different from my Thief voice acting settings.

To set this up in Audacity, first you have to get the MP3 encoder, here and install it via the instructions. Then, use the menu Edit .. Preferences, and change the settings as follows:

This will allow Audacity to record quality sounds and export them to MP3 format which the follow-on programs prefer.  Note that these settings are different than for voice acting, so if you are doing voice acting for the movie use these settings.

Anim8or Setup

Anim8or settings are fairly simple.  In the Scene mode, set your environment background to solid black and turn off the ground grid.  The first time you render, set the size to 640x480.  The current version of Anim8or does not keep these settings so you have to set them each time you open the program.  Under View...Preferences, you will set the frame rate to 15 and check the "limit playback" box.  This last item allows you to preview the movie's timing on-screen from the Scene window at "real time" speed.  Under the menu File .. Configure you can set the folders where Anim8or will look for your images, textures, working files, etc.  Note that Anim8or will NOT remember some of these settings when it is closed, so check each one every time you start the program.

Movie Maker Setup

Movie Maker has an annoying tendency to crash.  This can happen when it runs out of memory, but most of its crashes are due to problems with video CODECS, the dozens of different ways to turn audio and video into compressed data files and back to audio and video again.  Use the menu Tools .. Options .. Compatibility to show a list of all the video CODECS on your computer, and turn them all off except for Indeo 5.11.  As you import and use video clips, it will turn on the ones you need automatically, and keeping the others off avoids most crashes.  You can also set the folder where the program will put your video, in Tools .. Options .. General. 

Prism Setup

For Prism, the Output Format can be set to AVI in the lower-left corner.  The other settings are accessible via the "Edit Output" button.  You want the following settings to be compatible with Thief 2:

Script

The script is a description of what will happen in your movie.  Unlike voice acting which simply shows what people say, a script has to show what is happening with images, videos, music, sound effects, what the actors are saying, and how they are saying it.  The standard movie industry format is explained here and is easy to learn.  Plus, if you ever go professional with your screen-writing, you will already have the format the producers expect. 

When you write your script, describe what happens in as much detail as you can.  When you can read the script and visualize what the movie will look and sound like, and you like what it looks and sounds like in your imagination, you are ready to proceed.   Even so, plan to refine it as you go along.  As you go through the steps below, you can refine your script.  For example, your first draft might say you want a lonely sounding ambient noise as the first scene fades in.  Later, you may decide to use the sound file named "cave6.wav," in which case you update the script to reflect that exact sound name.  When you build the soundtrack, you may decide that moving a certain sound effect until after the narrator says a certain line sounds better, so you can update your script to reflect the change.

Raw Materials

The raw materials for your video include images, video clips, and sounds.  Sounds could be music, sound effects, ambient noises, and voices.

Selecting Sounds

A video has several different kinds of sounds.  For example, you might have some music to set the mood, the narrator telling the story, actors talking in the current scene, and sound effects from the current scene, all happening at the same time.  All this has to be planned when writing the script and refined as you go along. 

For a Thief briefing, I like to use sounds from the original game when I can, to keep things familiar.  To get Thief sounds, copy the file SND.CRF from your game CD, or the RES folder of your installed game, to a folder and change the file extension to ZIP.  After that you can extract the ZIP file to your own sound library.  There are over 1100 sounds in the SFX folder of the first two games.  So the best course is to decide what kinds of sounds you want, then browse through the list.  Using the file name and file size (which is an indicator of the sounds' length), listen to those which look promising.  If you think you might want to use one, copy it to your working folder.  If you want voice lines from the original game, you can browse the sound folder for those also.  After you have finished selecting sounds, you can go to your working folder to make your final selections of sounds.  Don't forget to update your script once you do. 

To record your own sounds, look at my voice acting tutorial.  Break any recordings you do into sound bites, split at natural pauses in the conversation.  There are two reasons for this.  First, if you make a mistake, you can re-record only the part with the error.  Second, you can adjust the timing easier if the recordings are in smaller bites.

Extracting Video Clips

You may want to slip bits of original game videos into your video, both for familiarity and to help tell your story.  Check the MOVIES folder of your game CD to get the original movies, from which you can extract clips.  You can import the clip into Movie Maker, select the part you like, add it to the storyboard, and save that clip as a separate movie file.  When selecting the part you will extract to a clip, it is better to include an extra 1/2 second before and after the exact frames you want.  These extra frames can be removed later, if necessary, or be used to cover transitions when one clip is fading into another.  When saving the clip, you can select whether to include the sound with the clip.  Since you are making your own soundtrack, you will probably just want the video.  Save the clips into your working folders.

Working with Images

The original Thief movies used a technique of panning, zooming, and rotating still images for many parts of their videos.  To do this, you need images to work with.  640x480 is the absolute minimum resolution, but bigger is better within reason.  1024x768 is good.  If you can go as high as 1600x1200, do it.  This allows you to move the images around in your 640x480 frame that will be the final video. 

If you can find a good artist, then treat him or her well.  Original art makes a beautiful video.

In-game screen shots require special handling.  First, go for high resolution.  Second, remember that your gamma settings will not affect the screen shot's brightness.  So, ideally, you want the mission author to take your screen shots in the game editor, where he or she can increase the ambient light levels.  It is much easier to darken a screen shot than to lighten it.

Building the Soundtrack

I like to create the soundtrack before I create the images.  You have to make one of them first then time the other one to it, and for me it works to make the soundtrack first, get it sounding exactly right, then time the video to it.  But for some people or some videos, the reverse may work.

Animating

For the simple OM-style panning and zooming, you only need 1 object per image. Create a box (I name it "canvas" in Settings). Then look at your artwork's size. If it is, for example, 1024x768, double-click the box and manually enter those measurements for the X and Y sizes of the box. For the Z size you can use 1 or 5, something small. Then, set your view to FRONT and zoom to whatever level lets you see the entire canvas on the screen. Save your project.

Create a new material and name it something that indicates what artwork it will represent. Use the "Textures" button to open the texture window, use the "..." button next to the Ambient setting to open the "Load Texture" window, select your artwork, and click OK to set the ambient to that texture. Do the same with the diffuse setting, then OK. You will now have a material that uses your artwork as a texture. From the FRONT view, select your canvas, and APPLY the material to it. Because the canvas is the same aspect ratio, it will not be stretched out of shape. Save your work.

Switch to Scene mode. Use the Settings to name the scene and set the number of frames -- 15 frames per second is the OM movie setting. Go into the Environment settings, set the background to black, and turn off the ground grid. Then use the Build menu to add your canvas object. Save your work.

Switch to Perspective view and double-click the camera. Set its rotational angles to 0, 180, 0. Then you can alternate between front, top, and left/right views to move the camera to where it is looking right at your canvas. Switch to camera view to check that you are seeing what you want to see for your first movie frame. Save your work.

Now would be a good time to run a preview render, to be sure the lighting is good. For the render, use 640x480 since that is the T2 video size. If it's too dark, return to object mode, open the "art" material you made, and move the "color" slider all the way to white. You can also add lights in scene mode, always checking the camera view to be sure you like what you see. Save your work.

Now you are ready to animate. Go to Front view, select the canvas, then switch to camera view. Click the "key" icon on the toolbar, so it turns green. This tells Anim8or that the first frame has the canvas in its current position. Now select the last frame (the tick marks along the bottom), and use the move tool to pan or zoom your artwork to its final position. If you are comfortable with the Move tool, it is best to move the canvas from camera view so you can see what the result will be. Slow movements are better than fast ones. Double-check that the key button is still green.

Now, use the "rewind" button on the tool bar to flip to the first frame, and the "play" button to run your movie through all the frames. Anim8or will calculate the movement in between the first and last frames, giving you a smooth panning or zooming motion. Save your work.

Go to View .. Preferences and set the frame rate to 15 fps. Ensure you are in Camera view and render the movie to an AVI file. It will draw all the frames one by one to do this, so it may take a few minutes. When it is done, save your work, then play the movie in your favorite media player to be sure the speed and length are correct.

Video Editing:

 

You now have a movie clip you can import into Windows Movie Maker (or iMovie if you're a Mac user). If you are going to add music, sound effects, or narration (of course you are), then it is best to do that in Audacity (see my voice acting tutorial for more info on Audacity). If you are doing a briefing movie for an FM, you will probably use several bits of artwork and make one movie clip from each one. In that case, you will have to carefully time each clip's length to match your sound file. Err on the side of going too long on the clips. You can always cut them a bit in your movie making software, and fade in/out can make the clips overlap and cut the movie's overall length by half a second per transition.

When you have the finished movie, Prism is a good tool to turn it back into an Indeo 5 AVI format that the OMs use. The one I just made was 4 MB for half a minute. With some practice you can move on to more interesting tricks like multiple movements with one scene, or letter-box with subtitles.

 

Happy video making!

Don

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