My EVE

The pitch
At Fanfest 2013, CCP showed their new WebGL library, capable of rendering their own assets - an improved version of the WebGL ship viewer "released" just the year before.

My idea: write an application to create animations using all this stuff - eve-kino was born!

The application is under development using the lean approach, meaning regular releases in short intervals. This way I can see whether there is demand for it and could handle feature requests sooner.

Links of importance

• Address of app: https://eve-kino.herokuapp.com
• VLog channel: On YouTube
• Feature Backlog: On Trello (including public voting)
• Open Source: On GitHub

Basic Info
Supported browsers:

• Chrome / Chromium: No issues known
• Firefox: Only in a build that supports the Gamepad API, which is (to my knowledge) only Aurora 17 at the moment.

Supported Gamepads: Should be any, but known to work as intended are the PS3 and XBox controller.
Note that the binding is currently static and just for early development. Manual rebinding is planned.

Workflow: very basic, see a demo video here

• In the popup dialog, specify what kind of session you want to create: a space view (currently only one background available) or a chroma keyed ("Green-Screen") background.
• IF you have an application view (you'd get an error message otherwise)
• Add props by selecting one in the bottom list and clicking "Add Prop", it takes a few seconds to load the thing. Adding a prop gives you gamepad control over it to move/rotate it - yes, camera/prop control is done exclusively via gamepad
• Switch the focus to either the camera or a prop in the set with the corresponding controls at the left side
• With something focused, position it where you want to start and hit "Record". Do as many takes as you like.
• When playing back, input is ignored of course.

I totally dig it, and can already foresee usecases for it. (Banners that are fully animated? Battle reports that shows a mock battle with said ships involved, etc.)

Keep on rocking!

Really cool bit of kit, i can see this being used well in some short cinematic eve vids

The app is now hosted on a public server. It is still in tech-demo stage, but I intend to do continuous delivery along my progress.
I have updated the first post with the main details.

You'll notice the option to switch the focus to existing props now, something I added today. For the first video that I recorded I had to be sure that the take is right before I switched to the next prop :)

As for the core design idea of the recording process: I want to avoid having an interface similar to 3D-modelling tools where I have to provide some 2D-controls over 3D objects frame-by-frame. Or modifying curves specifying coordinates over time.
As a hobby-sound recorder for film I'm more used to the actual film-recording process. I want to record the movement in real-time. If a movement was wrong you record it in another take.



The idea for the renderer is not exactly mine, I'm reusing the one from CCP. My idea is to use it for creating animations - machinimas - where the props of the scene follow a recorded script. In the current tech-demo you can already add props to the scene, record their movement and then play it back.
Since we have full control here, meaning all 6 degrees of freedom for everything, we can create cool choreography that is not possible using in-game recordings.
Not to mention that you only need one person to stage a huge fleet - instead of getting a bunch of people do at your command.

To my knowledge, for the public this is currently only possible by exporting the models and textures from the client, reimport them in some 3D-modelling tool and animate them there. As far as I understood, this is a tedious process - not to mention, that it's not very easy for everyone. Notable example: Future Proof.

You should absolutly do this, movie makers will love you for this

v.0.0.4 is live on the server.

- viewport is properly resized
- fullscreen mode added
- Save/Load functionality added. Start-dialog has a "By file" option with which a previous session can be loaded
- made a nice favicon instead of the debug one :)

Control is done via the GamepadAPI of the (supporting) browser - This means joysticks or gamepad controller; I'm testing with both a PS3 controller and a Logitech gamepad. XBOX 360 controller will also work.

I'm not convinced to use mouse for rotation during recording, both because I haven't figured out a practical way to make this usable during recording and also because a gamepad gives you control over more axes at the same time.

Looks great, can't wait to test it out back home

v.0.0.7 is live

New features:
- Film-based time/force simulation. Input controls now have a certain drag to them and movement isn't so much 'binary' anymore. The current drag parameters are static, modifying them is planned for a later release (so, still all ships have the same speed right now ;)

- Added a dedicated "Add prop" dialog, separating prop types and sporting a search-as-you-type input.

- More stars to choose from; The last upload already contained them, but I didn't spot them before.

- The mouse cursor will be hidden when over the film view. For your viewing pleasure :)

- Also a first bugfix: when the browser was already in presentation mode (F11), entering full-screen mode didn't resize the film view. It will now.

I have recorded a VLog to show the basic workflow for controlling and recording. The video is here. I also updated my first post and rearranged the important information.


Thank you, but to be fair, CCP's library that I am using for this doesn't support laser beams *) either. Regarding all the 3D-rendering stuff I'm pretty much dependent on what CCP provides. We'll see if and when such things will be added.

*) nor explosions, ship trails or shadows