Free camera and 3rd. person view

(.FROST.) #1

Hi folks. How can I activate a free moving camera and/or a 3rd. person view in Brink? Not while actual playing, but for taking screenshots. And since we are at it, is there a way to stop/disengage the mission countdown timer for the same purpose(without ESC of course)?

(Crispy) #2

I don’t know what you mean by free position bots. Do you mean kicking bots?

(.FROST.) #3

I meant positioning them(sry). Like placing them somewhere on the map; without themselfs running away afterwards of course. It would be way easier for me to orchestrate/pencil a mass scene in that way. Everything in “noclip” and “si_scriptControlledtimeLimit 0” mode naturally; sometimes also in “pm_thirdperson” mode, in order to get a reference for the scale of things, related to the chars -wich are btw. actually quite small in comparison to the bot, the doorways and a couple of other things. When I play in first person I feel quite taller than my char actually is. So, without switching to third person from time to time I’m starting to tend to draw the chars a little bit to big, or some of the items to small.

(Crispy) #4

I don’t think we included a way to spawn in a bot in front of the player camera.

The only way you can do this is very time-consuming, and involves pausing all the bots, unpausing the one you want to reposition and luring him to a specific location before pausing him again and moving on to the next one. The defending bots won’t want to leave the objective area, so this will be tricky if not impossible if your locations are not close to the objectives.

It’s best to just use people.

(.FROST.) #5

Thanks Crispy for your reply. I figured that it would be much more time consuming, than it would be any helpful. And since I don’t wanna do a “mass scene” every other panel, the thirdperson view and its options to change the angle and the distance is enough. Having a completely build and textured world is allready more than I can ask for. After the glorious day on wich I’ve finally finished my book I’ll probably never have the virtue of drawing from a fully build virtual environment. But, by all it’s benefits, having this rich 3D world to draw from can also be a curse sometimes, since I want to make everything as accurate as possible and therefore spend a lot of time with not drawing(sometimes I’m just lazy of course).

I’ve spend hours over hours in noclip mode, flying around in search of the right angle, and did the “gate blow part” in CC dozens and dozens of times, just to get the bot where I wanted him to be. I also spend a lot time in the armory to take screenshots from every single weapon from each faction; each from 6 different angels. Did the same with every attachement(of course only on one weapon from each weapon class(medium and light weapons and pistols) and only from the Sec). The folder has around 500 files; at least I dont have to go ingame anymore just to view the weapons; I even have the whole folder also on my mobile.

From the chars I took only one frontal headshot from each medium archetype; since you can change so incredibly much on a char it just wouldn’t have made sense to screenshot every part of clothing, in every colour and so forth.

I’m very tempted to go ingame for every itsy bitsy piece of reference, but in the end it will work out I hope. I allways was a huge fan of rich backgrounds and complex looking weapons, I just can’t stand stuff like that from Rob Liefeld; no hands, no feet, weapons look lazy drawn and he allways draws his chars in 1 of 5 stances. When I look at a comic, I can really get lost in detailed penciled brickwalls and trash cans, or the folds in clothing. Never cared for those ridiculously tight costumes where you can spot even the tinyest little muscle on the hero’s body(well, maybe as a kid, or when Todd McFarlane drew them).

It doesn’t make sense to allways draw a very detailed background, sometimes it’s better to go the more stylized way in a comic, but I’ll never take any shortcuts because of lazyness.

(.Chris.) #6

Is it not possible to place models through the console and use PlayAnim or something similar? I recently learned you can do this with ET:QW’s editor and place models and assign a animation so you can stage scenes for taking screenshots of maps, not sure if can do this through the console though. Shame we never got Brink SDK :frowning:

(ola90) #7

Actually I really searched for the first two .
:stroggbanana::stroggtapir:

Note : Kizi school is TOP flash in online games, it’s good for people tired after work.

(Roxan) #8

Third person view can be activated by pressing F5. Pressing F5 once, twice, and three times gives you the vantage point from behind the player, in front of the player, and at normal eye level, respectively.

(.FROST.) #9

I finally found the answer(just should’ve googled "BRINK console commands). Now I have “my” free moving camera(devmap+noclip command) though it’s still in ego perspective(weapon and HUD), except if I ad the “pm_thirdperson 1” command. But I can still only view my char from behind in that(thirdperson) view mode and the HUD stays nevertheless, but its better than nothing.

But “noclip” thing is a blast. Now I’m able to move the “cam” in every angle I need to take reference shots for my comic, or just stay 30 feets above the ground in mid-air. Before that I had to imagine how it may look from this or that perspective. Mostly I wasn’t too far off, but other than just giving me the right angle for a shot it also gives me new ideas for shots I couldn’t have imagined before. Like epic wide shots across the whole map from the top of the highest containers. Stuff you’d never be able to see ingame.

Now I’m still looking for a command to disengage the mission-timer, so I don’t have to push ESC all the time to stay in the mission. It will get even more annoying when I’m going to draw the second stage objective stuff. I could run around and take as many screenshots as possible from the “market”, but since they are only 2D I prefer to draw in the 3D(ingame) world so I can move around the cam, just like when drawing from life.

(Breo) #10

Do you mean this:

si_scriptControlledtimeLimit “0”
si_timelimit “0”

Allthough it only stops the timer but not the game.

(.FROST.) #11

YEAY, YOU^ are my hero. No seriously, thank you very much, that did the job :slight_smile:

(Crispy) #12

pm_thirdpersonangle xxx
pm_thirdpersonrange xxx
bot_pause -1 (0, 1, 2 pauses specific bots with id 0, 1 , 2, etc.)

…may also be interesting.

(.FROST.) #13

Ah, very cool Crispy, thanks. Haven’t visited this post for a while. And those^ commands are very helpful. Actually I really searched for the first two. And if you got some “camera” related commands or some to “free position” bots, I’d be happy to “hear” them :smiley: