GS Frame Rendering

Socks

You know what would be great . . . if we could render out individual frames from a GameSalad project.

By that I mean after we'd designed our scene we could render it out to an image sequence.

This is not really for game related work, I mean more for generating motion graphics and effects. I use After Effects quite a lot, I have done so for years, done dozens for projects for just about everyone, but more and more I am turing to GameSalad as a motion graphics engine, the three most recent projects for some Russian TV station I forget the name of, O2 and Lufthansa have all been done in GameSalad whereas in the past I would have done them in After Effects.

When it comes to speed GameSalad kicks After Effects' ass ! After Effects is a lot more powerful, but for lots of work GameSalad is more than enough and much much faster.

So, I thought it would be great to be able to render out the frames of a project, let's imagine you've designed a little robot walking across the screen and he is hit by some falling letters that form a logo (sounds like some classy design!) you would then be able to render out the project to an image sequence for use elsewhere.

Of course you can use screen capture software or external capture devices (I have one), but everything I've tried either kills the quality through compression or the frame rate suffers, I'm pretty sure I've tied everything (and paid for it!!) and nothing really does the job.

This frame rendering wouldn't have to be in real time either, so no big strain on the engine, it could output the frames at its own pace.

This is the path Adobe Flash took, initially a platform for browser graphics it soon ended up being used in animation studios on big projects, it tuned into the animation tool of choice for many.

Anyhow just a thought as I am finishing off this Lufthansa job at the moment in GameSalad (a fake recording device with level meters and interactive buttons and all that) and I just wish I could render out an uncompressed image sequence, at the moment I'm designing and creating the graphics all in GameSalad, then once approved I need to reproduce the whole lot (identically) in After Effects (so I can render out an uncompressed image sequence) and using a GS screen capture only as a guide, whereas in reality it is every bit as good as After Effects quality wise.

Just a thought, who knows maybe it's the kind of thing that would be easy to implement, but of course there are a loads of other way more important things people are clamouring for !

KnightStar

Heh - imagine using GS to render out an animation sequence and then having a GS feature play the video in another project..

I could see using that feature a bunch..

-- J

jamie_c

I'm on board, would be helpful for lots of reasons. One that comes to mind is you could also have complete control over your screen shots. Render out a sequence and get just the perfect frame, and perhaps if you're really able to render, you could control the resolution as well to get large 'for print' images.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Just use reflector and record the screen from the device and the export the movie as an image sequence?

Hopscotch

And here I have been feeling weird using GS for a lot of animated presentations where I would have used flash or AE before. So good to know I am not alone

Socks

@Hopscotch said:
And here I have been feeling weird using GS for a lot of animated presentations where I would have used flash or AE before. So good to know I am not alone

Yep, GameSalad is a fantastic tool for animation, motion graphics and so on, like I say there are loads of things that are much easier and faster in GS than After Effects.

In fact there are quite a few things that are trivial to do with GameSalad that I probably wouldn't even attempt in After Effects. Just need a viable way to dump the frames out without going through screen recording software.

Glad to know I'm not the only one to be using GS for for AE/Flash duties too !

jamie_c

I'd also love to be able to use GS to create HTML 5 banner ads at my design studio but sadly I can't until/if we ever get access to the raw HTML 5 code.

Motive

They should really think about adding those features, would probably bring alot of extra growth to this company, will also allow alot of people that are making their games kill two birds with one stone, when they are making a gameplay video of their new releases.

Socks

@jamie_c said:
I'd also love to be able to use GS to create HTML 5 banner ads at my design studio but sadly I can't until/if we ever get access to the raw HTML 5 code.

I did some banner ads for a music library company entirely in GameSalad, but the final output files (from a cleaned up screen capture) were animated GIFs rather than HTML, worked really well.

Socks

@Motive said:
They should really think about adding those features

The only reason I brought it up was that I suspect it might be easy to implement (I'm sure GS have enough work on their plate !) - especially as the render wouldn't need to be generated in real time - and for broadcast stuff the frame rates needed would be much lower than GameSalad is capable of (24, 25, 29.97 and 30 would cover most things).
But to be honest I don't really know what would be involved so it's really only a guess on my part.

I was thinking, a slowed down (1/10th the normal speed) realtime play back, with incremental screen captures would do the trick.

Another peripheral thought, wouldn't it be good to have a slow motion behaviour, a behaviour that multiplies or divides the master game.time - so you can slow down or speed up stuff.

@Motive said:
will also allow alot of people that are making their games kill two birds with one stone, when they are making a gameplay video of their new releases.

The only issue here would be interaction, most gameplay videos show interaction - but as a method of rendering off a very high quality scene (without interaction) it would be great !