Hey guys, here's my attempt at the LC Effects tutorial I've promised to write for all those looking to spice up their movies. For those who don't know, LC effects is what you use to get those beautiful smooth flybys in cod4. In this tutorial I'll be covering the spline aspect of LC Effects, the matrix and dolly features are easy enough to figure out how to use once you've learnt the ins and outs of making a spline. Before we start the tutorial, make sure you've backed up all of your playing configs/movie configs, just in case something happens to go wrong (which has happened to me). Also, it's been a long time since I installed LC effects so I might be a little fuzzy on the details...this is my understanding of how i got it to work

So now we begin, download LC Effects and extract all of the files within, when you open the folder it should look like this within...



Copy all of these files to your activision/Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare/ Players directory, should look something like this.



Now go ahead and install LC effects, I can't remember what does what but go ahead and run all of the .exes and the _install batch file. After you've done that go ahead and run the LCeffects.exe, if this comes up eventually then you are on the right track



...BUT, we don't need that right now, so go ahead and close that. Instead, fire up COD4 and select a mod, for no particular reason I use promod204 - it's good to get into a habit of using the same mod to make your splines so it's easier to remember where your co-ordinates are. Once you're in the mod, load up the map of your choice (the one you want the spline to be executed on) in developer mode (/devmap mp_crash in console) and join a team and select a class. Now that you've spawned, in console type /noclip. You will now be able to fly around the map. In console again type /logfile 1, this will mean the game will now keep a record of everything you do. Fly around the map to specific points where you want your spline to go and at each point in console type /viewpos. Once you've done that exit the game.



Now head to the Mods folder in your Call of Duty 4 directory and open the folder of the mod you just used, in my instance it was promod204. There should now be a text file in there called console_mp. Go ahead and open this with notepad. Scroll down the list of text until you come across your list of co-ordinates, they should look something like this...



Copy these numbers and go back to your Players folder where LC Effects is. In this folder create a new text document named coords . Open the document and paste the numbers in, then go ahead and delete everything apart from the numbers with one space between them, so it ends up looking something like this...



This is a very important step and has to be done correctly. Once that is done save the file and run the LC Effects.exe. When it comes up click on the 3D spline button. A warning will come up saying "this program will only work if you have a correctly formatted coords.txt", click OK. The next screen will look like this, fill in the bits like this, make sure the number of frames value is 1953, it won't work with anything else.



Click OK and 3 boxes will eventually come up, this is your spline being created, once all 3 boxes are up close them all and exit LC Effects. In your players folder there should now be 2 new .cfg files, one named 3Dspline and another 3Dsplineconstant. To be completely honest, I don't really know what the difference is between them, I just use the 3Dspline one. You can rename it to whatever you want, in this instance I will rename it to 'testspline'. Copy this file and put in your Main folder in your Call of Duty 4 directory.




Avidemo:

Once again, fire up the game, this time in your movie config (if you are avidemoing, if you're planning on using fraps skip to the fraps section). Depending on what mod you are using to record your footage in, open that mod and once again /devmap mp_mapyoucreatedsplineon. Once you have selected a team and class, once again /noclip in console. Press any colour binds you may use for your movie config also. Once that is done you need to get rid of the player gun and shit on screen so enter /cg_draw2d 0 and /cg_drawgun 0 into console. Now in console type /exec testspline (obviously will be whatever you named the spline). To execute the spline in console type /vstr flyg1 in console. It should now fly through your spline, it doesn't matter if it's choppy at the moment, once you start avidemoing it will all be smooth. So now just, /cl_avidemo 240 (or whatever value you are using) in console before doing /vstr flyg1 and wait for it to finish, all of the screenshots will now be in your mod folder ready to convert to video.


Fraps:

Things are slightly more complicated with fraps, because you can't record a spline straight from the game. Long story short in order to fraps it you have to create a demo which you then record. To do this you need to have two copies of CoD4 running off your computer, an easy way to do this is just to copy and paste the entire cod4 folder. Firstly fire up your first game, create a dedicated LAN server and follow the steps above in the avidemo section until you've got your spline working. Next open up the second copy of your game and join the server off the first game. Once in the game go to spectate mode and spectate the first games player. Make sure you are recording as the spectator and now head over to the first game to execute the script. Once that is done, quit both games and head to the mods folder in your second game's directory. Open up the mod's you were just ins folder and in the demos folder will be your demo you just recorded. Run the demo using your movie config and after /cg_draw2d 0 and /cg_drawgun 0, record the footage using fraps (in a lower timescale of course).


GG, lots of that probably makes no sense but I'm over writing it, hope it helps some people , any questions just ask below... And if anybody has a DL link for LC Effects would be great if they could post it, I'm too tired to find it. Cheers

Edited once, 2/6/10 - 11:40pm.

Nice.

**** forgot one screenshot, uploading now

i love this guy... he is a legend

Nice write-up!
/Sticky
Well done once again >>matt.

Matt how do you execute a spline within a demo? So you can watch the players running for example, as opposed to just a flyover. Also, how many coordinates do you recommend we use when creating the transitions?

The difference between 3dspline and 3dsplineconstant is that the first one will go through the spline with the time taken between each coordinate the same, so the result depends on how far apart your coordinates happen to be. Using constant, however, makes the whole transition the same speed throughout. (Correct me if I'm wrong )

sigh carnage, if you had even attempted to research that question on tek9 at least once in the last 2 years, you would know by now that you cannot do free spectate in splines

-_-

Then how the **** is it done? I have attempted to research it but I could never find an answer (yes I mainly looked on tek9).

you act it all out. you either multiply your cods, and run them all simultaneously, which you will see the result of it in my little clip ill be releasing soon, or you get people in a private server to do what you ask them to, whilst /recording

Ugh, I was afraid it would come to this. Thanks hektik.

Carnage, there is no way to execute a spline within a demo, any of the splines with moving players in them are completely set up (and take a ****load of work tbh). It builds on what you do to record with fraps, setting up a server with one person executing the script, one person recording a demo of the script, and more people doing the acting - it's a complete bitch because you can only do this in a server hosted by the person executing the script, in my case it involved having 3-4 copies of the game running at one point and switching between all the games :S.

I don't really think it matters how many co-ordinates you use, it depends on how big you want the spline to be. Generally the less would be better because it looks more natural but of course you get less control of where the camera flies, it's a balance I guess. I have some splines with only 2 points and some (for example the backlot spline for camz's kill in the movie) had heappps because it had to navigate a tricky area (through the mid building and up the stairs).

As for the difference between 3dspline and constant, thanks for clearing that up it sounds about right, I guess it never mattered to me because I always edit the footage using velocity envelopes anyway to get the feel I want from the fly.

>>matt. is number1 kids