Introduction

Although cutscenes can be a lot of work they are one of the best ways to advance a story and provide information on the wider consequences of the players actions. This was why the decision by TG to switch from the freely available Smacker format used in XvT: Balance of Power to a proprietary snm animation format with X-Wing: Alliance was rather frustrating.

However thanks to Isildurs XCR they can now be done for XWA. Rather than crack the snm format and try to produce animations of that type the decision was made to produce a supplementary DLL which would intercept any calls by XWA to play a snm animation (be it a cutscene or one of the large animations) and check for a avi file of the same name and if an avi was found then this would be played instead.

The same choice of types of cutscene exist for XWA now as there had been for BoP (ranging from a slideshow to a full motion video) but as with BoP these cutscenes may be large enough to create problems with fitting them into your available webspace. There are various hosting services though as well as people in the community who have access to servers which could accommodate your files though.

Recommended software

A paint package to resize and edit pictures at a minimum and possibly to create pictures from scratch for some types of cutscene.
Some kind of wave file editing software to create a soundtrack, even if just simple music rather than having any sound-effects.
Something to take the pictures, turn them into an avi file, and combine them with the soundtrack. I would recommend the freeware RAD Gametools.
Optional- A 3D Rendering package if the type of cutscene and the method you plan to use requires this, there are various packages available either semi-illegally or as freeware on magazine cover CDs.
Optional- If you are using a 3D rendering package then downloading OPT3DS will allow you to use the OPT files in your animation.

Remember that XCR uses whatever avi codecs are on the users system so when creating use a commonly available codex for your avi so people will have it.

Section Links: OPT3DS | XCR

Option 1: Full Motion

This sort of cutscene is the one most often found in games and can be both the hardest to get right and the most impressive when you do. To produce smooth motion you will need to create 15 frames per second (at least) and so you will either have to do a great deal of work or have automated this either with a 3D rendering/animation package or through some other program that could create frames to link the key-frames you have defined together.

One alternative that works surprisingly well (as seen in Order of the Sith) is to create a mission in XWA which can be recorded and replayed in XWAs Film Room. This footage can then be displayed using different camera options so that different camera angles and sequences can be saved from it with a video capture tool. This has the advantage over using a 3D rendering package of automating processes such as lasers and explosions and also means that your cutscene would match the style of the actual game.

However you plan to generate the cutscene it is quite vital to have a good plan before you start. Referring to notes and a storyboard as you go through the long process of transferring what you can see in your mind into an animation that other people can see can help to avoid mistakes and wasted effort.

Something you may want to consider is whether to attempt character animation as in some of XWAs default cutscenes. Conveying fairly complex plot elements can require the presence of people but unfortunately character animation is far more difficult than simply zooming ships around the screen. Although there are various tools to try to automate character animation (calculating how flesh distorts or clothing folds and stretches) these can be complex to use and the simple fact is that people have an instinctive feel for how people should move and it only takes a very slight mistake for this instinct to be triggered and the motion not feel right.
It is because of this instinctive feel that motion-capture is such a commonly used way to generate how a CGI character should move, by copying the motions from a person all the little quirks of movement that can barely been noticed consciously are also duplicated.

One option for character animation would be to not actually animate the characters fully and combine full motion rendered ships with flickscreen characters in the same way as the Homeworld cutscenes combined drawings and game-engine created cinematics.

I have not tried 2D animation to any great extent though I know enough about the theory to know that it would be possible to create it in the same way as was classically done, just with layers in an art package rather than drawings on transparent cels. Therefore I will be assuming from here on that you are using a 3D rendering/animation package and are producing a ship or vehicle based animation.

There will be two sources of models for your cutscene, either the Internet where many Star Wars ships are available as highly detailed models or using OPT3DS to convert OPT files. OPT3DS is in some ways the better option both because there are ships which are not available as anything other than an OPT file (either because they are fan-created ships or purely because of the luck of the draw) and because the lower-facecount 3DS files converted from OPT files will render nice and fast compared with higher detail models designed for still pictures.

Remember though that if using OPT3DS that this does mirror the model left/right and that if you have dramatic lighting with nice deep shadows and the camera will be close enough to one of the converted ships for this to be noticeable that you will also need to create illumination maps so that windows and other lighted areas are lit. The rears of engines can be dealt with though by setting the material properties to be self-illuminated or through a glow filter.

From your planning and storyboarding you should have some sort of image in your mind of how this cutscene is going to look. Try to strike a balance between having the camera chasing the action at close range and having a more static camera at longer range to let people see more clearly what else is going on.

Option 2: Slideshow

Although a slideshow will have the lowest number of pictures and so the lowest filesize this does not mean that it is the least work. Since each picture will be shown for a longer period of time each picture needs to be of a high standard which can require more talent than producing a relatively simple animation. To produce a slideshow there are several possible methods.

Firstly you could try drawing the pictures yourself, which will require only a good art package (or a scanner and some paper) and more importantly a great deal of talent. If you are good then this will produce distinctive results, unfortunately if you are not as good then it will still be distinctive but for the wrong reasons. You can also use the layers option to bring in a picture to trace over which will allow you to convert pictures from various sources into the same style. This could be considered cheating but as real artists do it so can you.

Another method would be to use a 3D rendering package to create pictures which can be as highly detailed as possibly without the problems (mostly time) that rendering the amount of frames a full-motion cutscene would require would cause. The more models and the more complex the models are in a scene the longer each frame will take to render but the main things that seem to increase render time are complex lighting (multiple lightsources, especially with ray-traced shadows enabled) and some video post effects.
I downloaded a hangar which had a light for every marker-light on the hangar floor and a picture took more than an hour to render, but when I deleted all the lights the render time went down to a few minutes. This sort of render time would obviously be unusable for a full motion cutscene with hundreds of frames but would be practical for a slideshow.
The lesser number of frames also means that these pictures could be edited in your art package to further enhance them.

The final method would be to take advantage of XWAs ability to produce rather attractive pictures. This was possible in BoP as well but the increased detail of the models (especially if you have downloaded the XWAU patches) and the ability to set the strength, direction, and colour of the lighting greatly increases the prettiness of the screenshots. You can get pictures through this method (see old example) which are very nearly as attractive as those created by converting the OPT files to 3DS and rendering them in a 3D modelling package.

Whichever method you use you must ensure that the actions of the ships are obvious and dramatic. You should explore the different options of your paint program, sometimes a simple effect can make things look dramatically better.

Option 3: Flickscreen

Originally when I wrote this guide I compared this with how in some anime you can have a complicated picture with just some blinking lights or even just being slowly fed past the camera or being zoomed in or out on. A much better comparison however would be the cutscenes found in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm which had hand drawn sequences for various aspects which were fairly simply animated but where the drawings were of a very nice high quality.

There is rather a lot of overlap between this and having a slideshow as obviously if you change the pictures of a slideshow fast enough it would be a flickscreen but the way I am defining the terms a flickscreen would be one where you have the same picture more than once but with changes rather than each picture being from a new angle or of a new scene.

To make a flickscreen cutscene you will need to produce some good high quality pictures either by drawing or rendering and you will need to decide what changes are going to happen and how you are going to make these changes happen.
If you produce a large picture then you can start with the entire picture being displayed and then "zoom in" on an area.
Blinking lights can be created by simply having the light on a separate layer and switching the layer on and off.
Simple motions (such as a ship flying along) can be created by having the elements that will move be on a separate layer and then moving/rescaling the layer.
Remember that you can blend pictures together by loading them into separate layers of the same intermediate picture and then adjusting their transparency. You could also convert pictures to greyscale or darken them to show a change of scene.
Remember also that the more complicated the effects you decide to apply to sections of the cutscene the higher the framerate you will require and that this might require you to duplicate pictures (or if your animation creator uses a list file edit this to have multiple entries for those pictures) if you have any sections of the cutscene where the screen is remaining static. This also applies if you plan to merge flickscreen elements with full motion.

Sounds

How vital a part of the cutscene the sound is depends on what sort of cutscene you are creating. A slideshow can be just music, a flickscreen needs some effects, but a full-motion cutscene will require a full set of effects and preferably speech.

If you need to do a complex soundtrack then you may find it can be quite difficult to anticipate what sounds are or are not needed to make things sound right. Even sounds which would seem like they would be quite important can sometimes be found to be unnecessary. For this reason you should be prepared to mix the pictures and various versions of the sound together several times and to keep plenty of backups of the sound with and without different effects.

The first element of the sound I would start with would be the music as this provides a base on which the other elements can be overlaid. The choice of music is quite important as it should fit the feel of the cutscene and you should have timed shifts in the video to fit with shifts in the music (for example if there is sudden fanfare or increase in tempo then something exciting should happen).
This is actually the reverse of how real filmmaking can work as it would be more normal for the film to be given to the composer for him to fit the music too rather than visa versa.
Remember though that if you are careful you can edit the music to snip out sections and adjust the timing or to fade one theme into another.
Remember also to keep a backup of your music as you may find that as you overlay the various effects and voices that the music has been drowned out, but if you have a backup then you can overlay this on top of the effects (at 5% or 10% volume) and thus boost the music a little again.

The next thing I tended to do with my simple ship animations was to look for any flybys of the camera and mix in at that point the sound effect for that sort of fighter flypast. The volume of this effect would vary depending on how fast and how close to the camera the ship was passing. At this point I would mix the sound and video together to check.

Then if all was well I would add laser or missile firing effects and the sounds for any explosions. Again the volume would depend on how close to the camera the firing ship was with those further away obviously being quieter. Mix and check again.

Now any special sounds like S-Foils moving or a ship entering/leaving hyperspace should be added. These can be fairly quiet sounds, they may be drowned out by the other noises, so only add them if the event occurs close to the camera.

Then should come the engine noise, which I tended to leave until late since I have found that unless there are some quiet bits the engine noise is not really needed, and can act to deaden the sound of the background music. You should be fairly strict with the engine noise and only have ships engines audible if they are really quite near the camera.

And finally the voices which could be a real pain to make so they do not sound like someone sitting in front of a PC with a microphone. Some distortion in the voice will make it sound more like the fighter-comm systems heard in Star Wars and a slight echo could make it sounds more like the speaker is in a large room like a starship bridge.

Remember that experimentation is the thing, if it sounds right then it is right.

Installation

XCR should already be installed, but if it is not then do so.

If you are producing a Total Conversion then you would probably be replacing TGs cutscenes but it is possible to supplement them instead. If you add the entries for your cutscenes to the end of cutscene.txt and cutscene.lst, edit cutscene.txt so that all TG cutscenes are played on a single mission, and distribute a pilot who has completed that mission then the players will be able to see the TG cutscenes and have your custom ones appear as they continue with your mission set.

The process for installing your custom cutscenes is quite simple.

First copy the avi files (remember these should be encoded with a common codex) into ..\xwa\movies\.

Then create a dummy file of the same name but with the *.snm extension rather than *.avi for each of these. These dummy files will be seen by XCR which will also see the avi files and therefore play those instead, still acting as a cutscene-replacer but with the cutscene it is replacing being a dummy rather than a proper one.

Next you should place the thumbnails for your cutscenes in the ...\xwa\frontres\cutscene\ directory. These should be 256 colour bitmap files which XWA will then convert into CBM files. The TG thumbnails are 90*56 and although larger pictures do work I would recommend your thumbnails are a similar size to this.

The list files you will need to edit, cutscene.txt and cutscene.lst, are also in the ...\xwa\frontres\cutscene\ directory.

Edit cutscene.lst to add the information that tells XWA what cutscene and what picture are linked. Simply copy and paste a line and substitute your cutscene and picture names for theirs. Note though that although the pictures are *.cbm that in the list file they are *.bmp.

Then edit cutscene.txt which is slightly more complex as there are 5 lines of information per cutscene. There is a helpful template at the top of the file though which explains what each line means but I will reiterate it.
First line is the name of the cutscene file (you don't need to include the extension).
Second line is the name of the cbm file which is associated with the cutscene (the one you just added)
Third line is a description which will be displayed as a label on the cutscene replay screen. Note that the text between the !s is not displayed.
Fourth line is the mission number the cutscene is played on.
Fifth line states whether the cutscene is played before or after the debriefing (in BoP they were played before or after the mission). Most of the TG cutscenes are "0" for before debriefing.

With luck all this should work.

You can either distribute your cutscenes as one large zip file with all cutscenes, cbms, and list files in plus instructions (i.e. copy these to there and these to there).
Or could could create individual zip files for each cutscene with the appropriate files and information in each.
Or you can distribute them as an XMOD (either by themselves or with the rest of the Total Conversion) which would have the advantage that XIS would copy the files to the right place automatically using the InstallMovie command for the avis and dummy-snms and the InstallFrontRes command for the new cutscene.txt, cutscene.lst, and the cbm files.
Or if you want to split the files but still use the XMOD format then you could create some simple placeholder cutscenes to be included in the main XMOD and give people the option of downloading the proper cutscenes separately, and not having to download all of them (or indeed any of them).

Section Links: XIS