So You Want to Make an OpenTTD Timelapse Film

[TheCoopCompany]

Recently Roujin has released a great patch which allows you to make timelapse films. The patch works by taking a giant screenshot at an interval you choose which you can later turn into a great film showing your OpenTTD skills to the world.

This is the second timelapse film I’ve made using Roujin’s patch and the one that I’ll be using as an example for this tutorial.

Youtube OpenTTD Timelapse Film II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YHdhuEqK_M

Youtube OpenTTD Timelapse Film II - Higher Resolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YHdhuEqK_M&fmt=18

To keep the Timelapse project cohesive feel free to write any feedback and comments about the patch on the patches thread in the Timelapse patch development thread and any feedback and comments about this tutorial in this thread.

Part I

In this Part I we'll use Roujin’s Timelapse patch to create a series of images, which we’ll put together later.

Head over to the Timelapse patch development thread and get yourself a copy of the Timelapse patch.

Run OpenTTD and you will notice new settings in the advance game settings box. The two settings are an on/off switch and an interval setting. The interval refers to the number of days between each image been taken.

For your first movie I suggest a 64x64 map, either random or one you’ve created, and an interval of 12 days. This will use around one gigabyte of hard drive space, though after we convert it to a film this will drop to aroound 10 megabytes.

Advanced Settings

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I also suggest using the png format for your screenshots as the film size is much smaller with no loss of quality.

Game Options

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You may also want to turn off full animation, to stop the water cycling and appearing odd in the final film.

Now here comes the fun part. Open up your map and start playing. After a few months check back in your OpenTTD folder and you’ll see a steadily growing number of image files along the line of ‘timelapse0000001.png’.

Feel free to play your game over several sittings, though ensure that if you play a different map in-between make sure it isn’t saving over your images by turning the timelapse patch off in the advanced settings box.

Once you’ve finished your game head along to Part II and we’ll turn your images into a film.

[TheCoopCompany]

Part II

So you’re now the proud owner of a gigabyte of OpenTTD pictures, well done. In this section we will use another open source program Blender to turn these pictures into a film.

There are many alternatives but I’ve chosen Blender, a 3D graphics program, because what we are doing is very similar to how graphic designers make their films and animations. Long films and animations in the 3D graphics world are often first rendered as images before the final film Is created, just like we’re doing.

Head over to www.blender.org to get the latest version.

Unfortunately blender does not have a particularly friendly user interface, and in particular the buttons on the mouse are reversed, so you will be right-clicking your way through making your film.

Open up Blender and click on the Window Type button, as in the picture below, and select Video Sequence Editor.

Changing View Window

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Next click Add > Images.

Adding Images

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‘Ctrl+A’ selects all your timelapse images. This is one of those sections where the tricky right-clicking comes in, if you want to deselect an image hold ctrl and right click on it. To make this step easier it may pay to move all your images to a separate location.

Once you have all your images selected click ‘Select Images’ in the top right. This will put you back in the main screen dragging a long bar, this bar represents the film. Move it left until the white number reads 1, meaning it starts on the first frame. Note that my screenshot names are different as they were made with an earlier version of the Timelapse patch.

Working with the Timeline

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[TheCoopCompany]

Next we are going to tell Blender how we want the video to be rendered. There are two locations where we will change settings, shown in the images below. These are the ‘Render Buttons' tab and the ‘Sequence Buttons' tab both located just below the ‘Add’ button we clicked before. Alter the settings so they are the same as in the images below.

Render Button Tab Settings

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Sequence Button Tab Settings

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The settings themselves are self-explanatory; just hover over them to get more detail. If you click on the tab but there are no buttons avliable ensure you have selected your images by right-clicking on the long, purple bar we dragged before.

I’ve cropped the images, flipped time (depending on the order of your images you may have to do this, or switch it to watch your networks unbuild themselves!). Next I’ve told Blender to make a sequence, set the end frame, set the frames per second, used a specified codec and render it in a YouTube friendly resolution.

Next click the big ‘ANIM’, animate, button and away we go. If you didn’t change it the default located of your finished project will be ‘C:\tmp\’.

Render Progress

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Once that’s finished rendering head along to Part III and we’ll do some post-production work on our film.

[TheCoopCompany]

Part III

So you're now in the possession of an timelapse film of your OpenTTD game, well done. In this part we'll put the finishing touches on your film to get it Youtube ready.

For all you Windows users your computer shipped with Movie Maker, a great little program that I used in making my both my films. Run Movie Maker, if you haven't got a link to it in your start menu just run a quick search for 'Movie Maker', and lets get editing.

The true genius of Movie Maker lies in its simplicity. Using the Task menu on the left hand side you can quickly achieve a polished film. Have a play around with the different transition effects, titles and add a great background song. Below is my second film going through its final viewing before being uploaded (though it seems my screen capturing software hasn't captured the actual film in the right side)

Using Windows Move Maker

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Once your masterpeice is complete view it a few times to ensure everything is satisfactory and upload it to Youtube, or any other video site your like, and post a link to it in this thread for all to enjoy.

There will be prizes for the first person to

- Make a film on a map bigger than 64x64
- Make a film of a multiplayer game
- Make a film using the great new 32bp graphics

(the prize is the respect and admiration from everyone who watches your film!)

The Final Product

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Click to Watch the Final Product

Tips and Tricks - The Local View

I've had a request from a few people as to how I achieved the Local view in my second timelapse film. The two Local views I used focused on the the maps two big cities, and turned out really well.

The Local view

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Remember back in Part two where we set the crop values in Blender? By altering these values and making them quite large we can create the Local view. There's a little math to do in ensuring that when you crop your local view ends up with a Youtube friendly 380x360 resolution . Only after making the Local views did I realise that the trees grow, get old, die then disappear.

As an aside I'm sorry about the Windows ethnocentrism during this tutorial. With a little imagination anyone running any OS can make an OpenTTD film. Both Blender and OpenTTD ship in numerous OS flavours and there are plenty of high-quality movie editing software packages out there.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial as much as I have had writing it. Good luck and happy film making.

[Roujin]

Hi, nice to see your tutorial finished

I tried making a little timelapse film using your tutorial, and unfortunately my blender seems to be a bit different. I don't have that AVI Codec option, and also the "Sequence Button Tab" seems to be missing completely

I've still managed to produce something, it's using the newest version of my patch which features zoomed out levels for taking the screenshots, thus being able to handle bigger maps. I'm using a 128² map, with a setting of 1 screen per day and 25 fps, which resulted in a 45 second video that covers about 3 game years.

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=txTUNLBF6hQ

[Youri219]

Nice tutorial.

If you need codecs, I use k_lite codec pack myself, you can find it with google. This will most likely fix you avi problems (if you use Windows).
Also a nice open source program for editing movies is virtualdub.

I don't really like movie-maker myself, I tried opening some 1-2GB movies with it and it went completely nuts, unable to handle all this data. Virtualdub on the other hand had no problems opening 5-6 4GB files at once.

[TheCoopCompany]

I've had a request from a few people as to how I achieved the Local view in my second timelapse film. I've added a new Tips and Tricks section to the Tutorial to explain how I produced it.

I've also been in contact with a person who's working toward winning the 'Make a Film in Multiplayer prize', he sent me his work so far and I was really impressed. Should be well worth a watch after hes finished tweaking it.

That's true Youri, Movie Maker does have some severe limitations, though for what we're doing here Movie Maker is fine. Especially as for many people the application is already on their computer. That said, once you've used it for a while you realise just how many Youtube videos have the same Movie Maker transitions and effects!

Its good to see plenty of people reading the Tutorial and downloading the patch, now all we need to see are some fantastic films!

[Roujin]

Dang, I thought of archieving the "multiplayer"-prize myself by recording an openttdcoop game but maybe the guy you're talking about had exactly the same idea... ^^

At least I was the first one with a map bigger than 64² (although my vid is short and boring)...


Looking forward to see this multiplayer movie you're talking about

[Roujin]

Sorry to doublepost here, but I have to announce another video by me *shameless advertisement*

It uses the newest feature of my patch - local views.
Here's the video: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=q6_DbWRhmeE

[Roujin]

Well, a week has passed, and still nothing from that ominous person who wanted to claim the multiplayer prize?

I've also been in contact with a person who's working toward winning the 'Make a Film in Multiplayer prize', he sent me his work so far and I was really impressed. Should be well worth a watch after hes finished tweaking it.