UDK versus Source Film maker(SFM) for cinematics.
polycounter lvl 10
After checking out the polycount front page about Source Film Maker.I am very impressed with what I have seen.This is real time animating especially for someone like me who is interested in animating stuff in real time.U have direct view of how fire,lights,shadow and textures look in ur scene while animating.There is also post processing which is very simple to add.
Udk is great but u can't animate in it.U can only import animations from external apps like Maya and 3dmax.I don't get why udk has to rebuild light everytime u make changes to ur scene and it can take a long time.SMF allows dynamic lighting in real time and no rebuilding.This was what I liked about Cry engine,only that cryengine requires its users to be online and the license isn't as cool as udk.
Then udk's license requires 15% of ones profit if u use their engine whether one uses their assets in the game or not but with SFM,if u do not use any of their assets,no royalty.I wonder what they collect if their assets are used.Their rendering engine almost mimics mental ray's look.
I read the faq at the website but I still don't understand how the SFM works:
Is SFM a game engine like UDK or I need to download the Source game engine by valve?
-Is the Source engine free or it has a license?
-It says something about an app named STEAM to sign up and use from Team Fortress.
I have never been familiar with this source engine and SFM till now.Do u need to be online to use it like CE?Wonder why SFM isn't as popular as udk.
Udk is great but u can't animate in it.U can only import animations from external apps like Maya and 3dmax.I don't get why udk has to rebuild light everytime u make changes to ur scene and it can take a long time.SMF allows dynamic lighting in real time and no rebuilding.This was what I liked about Cry engine,only that cryengine requires its users to be online and the license isn't as cool as udk.
Then udk's license requires 15% of ones profit if u use their engine whether one uses their assets in the game or not but with SFM,if u do not use any of their assets,no royalty.I wonder what they collect if their assets are used.Their rendering engine almost mimics mental ray's look.
I read the faq at the website but I still don't understand how the SFM works:
Is SFM a game engine like UDK or I need to download the Source game engine by valve?
-Is the Source engine free or it has a license?
-It says something about an app named STEAM to sign up and use from Team Fortress.
I have never been familiar with this source engine and SFM till now.Do u need to be online to use it like CE?Wonder why SFM isn't as popular as udk.
Replies
Hopefully Valve releases some tools that will make this alot easier for the people that will use Source Film Maker.
On a side note Source Film Maker is not as popular as UDK because it was only just released.
Still trying to find out more about SFM,it appears u need the source engine to use SFM.This is the greatest app right now.Its like After effects,Adobe Premiere,Maya combined into one and the awesome thing is its realtime.
Motionbuilder is similar to this but the downside to it is the graphics is not in anyway close to SFM,no post processing and the UI is all over the place.
I just read that an animation movie called Deep is gonna be made with the Source engine.I have to say the graphics is looking gorgeous for real time and clean too.
I am just hoping u don't need to be online to work in the Source engine
Yes it is easier to use...from what we have seen from the video's...which can be hardly put on the same level of 'hands on approach' to newcomers. Just look at GMod to see why no matter on how 'easy' a tool looks on the outside, the inside is where it will bite you.
Also, if you had said something like "Ooooh, the TF2 Meets" videos are made with SFM, I would understand why people are excited, because the 'low' quality assets from TF2 where really polished and made look nice the video, thanks to SFM, but Deep? That looks like a movie made in the 80's, when CGI was new, so it kinda actually goes against the value of SFM.
Also, some extra info:
-UDK doesn't need to rebuild light everytime...you just need to know which lights to use, and that Dynamic Shadows = More Power needed vs. Built Light, which is static, this is not the Engines fault. Same with all Engines which allow backscaling for lower end hardware.
-CE3 was always built around next-next-gen assets, which is why there no option for back-scaling to options, like muted/compressed shader and static built shadows. You sacrifice something to get something.
-So far, SFM is the only software that allows you to animate in a game engine, real-time. GMod does this to an extent, but no other software allows you to do it. Even CE3's Maya Film Plus Plugins are still not public, but even that you need Maya, and for good reason too. Vertices aren't cheap in animations.
-SFM doesn't mimick mental ray at all, everything you see is manual work, putting up animated lights which follow certain object to fake the light casting, etc. Last I checked, Source didn't have any kind of next-gen radiosity. So you better get out your favorite grease, and apply them to elbows, you're going to have to work your ass off.
-SFM will most likely need Source because...you know, it needs to reference certain library files and assets, although the Meet the Heavy assets, will come with it...as they said in the video's.
-SFM isn't popular because it just came out in Beta! Wait a couple of week/months before you the get finalized version, unless you want to sign up for the Beta.
-You will most likely need Steam to be connected during the initial launch, like their games.
-MotionBuilder is ONLY for animation, it's not meant to be a working game engine place last I checked, it's a 3rd-party software like Max, Maya, etc.
(that's re: getting assets into source engine--it's a pain in the ass)
What do u mean by needing steam to be connected?That means one would have to be connected to the internet to use SFM?or Steam is just a program u have leave runing on ur pc while using SFM for it to work and being connected to the internet isn't necessary?I would prefer an offline program.
I know MB isn't a working game engine but it is designed to enable u animate in realtime like simulations are realtime as u animate other stuff.
This was made with SFM,looks good
[ame="
..almost mental ray compartible but of course from watching the videos u need to fake a lot of things lightingwise but I prefer realtime rendering anyday to the longtime Mental ray takes.
[ame="
When SFM is released, we will see how easy (or not so easy) it is to use.
That doesn't mean I don't like udk.udk is cool but think of how much better it would have been if u could animate with all that graphics on display,shadow,reflections,lensflare e.t.c being show in the samaritan video on ur viewport.It will be so much greater,wouldn't it?
This is where udk needs to step up.Admitted,we do not know much about SFM at the moment but from the basics video tutorial,I can tell its gonna be great.
There are some parts in valves videos that its pretty clear they were rendered out in layers and tweaked in a compositing software. An example are some of the particle effects in the dota video above and an extreme example is at the end of the pyro video where you can see happy pyro land through the hole in the guys chest.
Neither Source or UDK are ideal for creating full animations because both are static engines with fixed render pipelines. The best solution would be a 100% dynamic scriptable engine with highly scalable quality controls and component based architecture with a modular compositor friendly rendering pipeline for easy realtime compositing.
SFM seems awesome for people who want to do Machinima or don't have access to a real animation program. UDK is a game engine and SFM is not, so I don't understand why "udk needs to step up".
That Valve is filled with so many very talented animators and film makers bodes well for the continued improvement of this tool.
Of course,SFM is not an engine.Its like matinee and kismet in udk.U need Source engine to use SFM,I think.So SFM might have an upperhand over matinee/kismet owing to the fact that one can make animations from scratch with it in the engine.
I don't see why I wouldn't use SFM for animations with all that visual feedback as what u see while working is what the final audience sees.Of course,some are gonna still prefer Maya and 3dmax,but I see some animators switching to SFM pretty soon.
@commander keen
Its possible an external compositing app was used for certain shots but remember the tutorials they have released does not show all the compositing features in SFM.In one of the videos,u can even do a fade in and fade out,color balance,add grain effects and others and all in realtime.So its possible,all the videos we have seen where done completely with SFM as they have said.Even if they did use external compositing app for some shots,the other shots are quite impressive.
If I want to tell a story I use Source
If I want to make a pretty multiplayer game I use UDK
Not that Source can't be pretty or that UDK can't tell a story, just the tools that are there make these things so much easier in each. Faceposer destroys anything I've seen in UDK for animating characters. Coupled with the built in 'record' functionality that Source had. Absolutley amazing for machinima. Love Source for controlling characters and telling a story. But the shader system in UDK, things like vertex painting on meshes, these ease of asset imports?
God I wish the 2 engines would have a baby.
That scene doesn't have to of been post production. You simply include a clean 'camera' in the game and position it's screen behind the model. Remember how HL2 had the security cameras, and TF2 had realtime reflections in some water. Same tech, not to mention seeing through portals. That's totally believable as in engine.
Here was an example from the attempt with CryEngine 2
[ame="
*cough*Portal*cough*
Additionally, I didn't see any particle effects in the DOTA2 video that couldn't have been done in-engine. Sure, they might be amped up more than you'd expect in-game, but you can afford to do that when you know what your frame looks like.
As somebody mentioned earlier, SFM and UDK seem like two different animals altogether to me. I haven't had a chance yet to spend a whole lot of time with either yet, but it would seem to me that SFM is aimed more at the Machinima crowd which means easier to get into and produce good looking results in relatively short time with the tradeoff being not as much depth (in terms of tools/capabilities/etc). UDK is obviously aimed more at 3D professionals in comparison. It's really not fair to compare the two as if they were both trying to do the same thing in my opinion, because they try to be something fundamentally different from each other. That said, I'm really psyched to get my hands on SFM and play around with it a bit
Somewhat offtopic: Somebody mentioned the CE3 Cinema package. Has that been released yet? Especially the Maya-to-CE tool as seen in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqNHJ-ekMR4)?