I was wondering if anyone knew of a Quake mod that allows some sort of camera control options for recording footage?

What I am after really is smooth camera movement (ie from stationary -> full move speed) and perhaps even the abilty to select a point in space and have the camera pivot around it (like in most 3d editing apps).

The reason is that I want to start work on my Quake version of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu7ekgo0-mk but in my tests the camera movement is really jerky and its very noticeable that a human is driving the movement.

Any ideas? Perhaps any cvars I can play with for camera/player movement? 

camquake should be great if it is static scenery. It is a ezquake fork though, so it is not 100% faithful and won't run some mods.

If one single turn is enough, try with a very low sense and use a ruler to align your mouse so you just have one axis to push.

I got back into the "100 Quake things in 10 minutes" idea recently too since video making has become so easy. Check http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=1198 for random ideas. Is that kinda what you are after? If so, let's find a common denominator and I'll send you snippets of my videos.

If you use any fanmade "enhancements" I will take a plane to the UK and put spiky things in your bum. 

Low sensitivity and turn off always run. There might be cvars to make the mouse/movement look smoother.

Do not use the Debaser textures!!! 

i have an unfinished mod that does pretty much what you describe. it's basically cutscenes, but the camera can smoothly change speed, curve round corners and follow a focal point (which can also move smoothly through a path, like the camera)

obviously it would only work for id1 maps and you'd have to set up the entities in a decompiled .map and do an onlyents compile, so it's not the quickest solution, but produces some nice results when you tweak it enough. and when you use the right engine... (was jerky as hell on fitz/qs, but works fine in rmqe & darkplaces)

let me know if you can't find any other solution :) 

There was the recamming concept used in qdq demos (e.g. check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjCBOVuqCk8 ) which consisted of writing a script with coordinates and times, and then applying the script to a demo using an offline tool called remaic.

There is a later version of remaic called remaic studio 2 which is implemented as a quake server. It serves frames from a demo file while you fly around in your favorite quake client and place the camera where you like.

I never figured it out fully and unfortunately no qdq project was ever released using it. You can download the remaic stuff at http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/downloads.html 

It's important to remember that in base quake engines the angle of rotation is sent as a single byte 0-255. This essentially makes smooth panning almost impossible except for high-speeds, long turns(and even then you might get a jittery feeling from the quantisation of the motion).

Either replace such shots with tracking shots or use an engine with high precision. (I have noticed that your hl2 video is mostly tracking shots anyway).

For moving the camera around the space, I'd recommend just hard coding the motions in some QC code. Making a mod that would be customisable enough to be useful would essentially be more work than direct coding: just imagine the torturous entity chains you'd have to make to express yourself. 

Yeah, ideally you'd want something simple like maybe change the axe such that swinging once saves the first position/angle and swinging twice saves the finish position/angle and then maybe using cycleweaponup/down to increase decrease time in 1 second increments and then the third swing runs the interpolation between the two points/angles in the specified time. 

I had no idea there were so many options for this stuff :)

I would prefer doing as much of this "live" as possible, so things like recompiling maps with new entities I would prefer not to do.

As for visuals, ofc It will be vanilla guys cmon now :) Although thank you Neg for reminding me to disable external tga's :) I will however change the fog etc in some maps depending on the shots I use to make it look best for that shot.

Now then, what maps to select for recording? I have a pretty solid list but I'll go ahead and throw it out there. Keep in mind that what matters most is that the maps are visually stunning and/or atmospheric! I'd prefer the maps have good gameplay also but it's really a little irrelevant as the focus of the video will be showing a visual feast of Quake maps, not demoing the gameplay to the audience.

Any map that has a fantastic vista or other note worthy visual element I will be interested in. No need to shout "Marcher!" or things like that because its so freaking obvious :) I am more interested in lesser known/forgotten maps that were beautiful. 

Quaddicted links for said maps would be awesome tytytyty :D 

I know that to us on func_ the ikblue maps are basically as old as the game itself. But for someone who has never played a custom map for quake, I think they're a fine example of just how different the custom maps can be from anything in the original. Or maybe it's my nostalgia from the first time I played one and had that realisation... 

Ikblue was amazing stuff for its days, I remember downloading that when it came out and was blown away with the colour and scale. Daz you better get on the case and review some awesome q1 map goodness! 

Maps with custom textures to show there's quite a bit of variety besides the stock themes. Some of them are tagged with "textures" on Quaddicted.
Maybe show a few new monsters, too (in their idle pose).

Gameplay shouldn't be a citerion - it's all about visuals (teasing) in such a video.
From great vistas to intricate individual architecture.

Random ideas: the bloodcube temple from Zer (maybe even the boss scene, "I grant you Daz!"); some of locations in Tronyn's maps, e.g. the 'village' in nsoe2, Arcanum etc.; the outside of the Marcher Fortress, Kona's maps, Glassman, Elek... 

no mention of kjspq1 yet (although it's tehnically based on ikblue) - definitely one of the most striking/fresh 

Yeah, totally forgot about that one

Whiteroom also :o 

the mod i got this error

PR_ExecuteProgram3: misaligned edict 0

this happens running aguirre's glquake133 engine

i think this somehow related to the qc, as for example fitzquake's running just fine 

i found i've been actually asking the same question a couple years ago

sorry 

I have tried to expand the flight simulator demo using games for windows live but to no avail. All the things you need to do do to install some free additional content is unnerving. In the end after setting up all the accounts and transaction details etc it still didn't work because it claimed that login details were wrong. I could log in using the browser though...

They do everything to tempt me into other solutions. 

Stealth Mechanics

Posting screenshots is only interesting up to a point, certainly more fun to watch a video of something. A short video showing the basic stealth mechanics of my Quake Mod. All feedback welcome. 

^that's my feedback 

I expected the Ogre to aggro when the eye turned red! Is there some sort of grace period between the eye turning red and the ogre aggro'ing?

Just seemed odd to me.

Aside from that, I loved everything about this :) 

Originally the eye went red when the player was too close, so I moved the colours outwards. green = good, yellow = be careful, red = dangerous, you are very close to being seen. There is like only 30 map units between those boundaries so it can be tricky with the quake movement speed.

The next video will show actual encounters and the AI moving around. This is a training area of the start map with a monster that does not move so people can understand the distance. I was hoping people would also see the pattern on the floor and how that relates to the eye.

The main problem with the video is that it is very long and slow, I think the pacing could be better. Was it too dark or too bright for anyone? 

brightness level was about perfect.

I'm really looking forward to this now, despite feeling 'meh' about the idea of stealthy quake when you first mentioned it. Will that music be playing in the level? Or is that just for the video? I vote no music. Zelda vibes mixed in with the utterly quake looking architecture due to that music and some of the new effects (the eye effect, for some reason).

Anyways, looks amazing, can't wait til it's done! 

This looks good.
I was under the impression using a poison bold made the monster aware of the player and causes it to turn around. Apparently it's much easier. 

Well, the bolts still have limitations, if you shoot a monster in the face they will see you. It is better to turn the monster first with a distraction bolt and then use poison. This video shows the mechanics in a very clinical light, so it might seem easier than a real encounter.

Also the speed of the bolt is designed to be slow, so you can shoot a bolt and have plenty of time to duck behind cover before you are spotted. Also poison cause monsters to in-fight, which you don't really see here but will be more obvious in the next video. 

@Drew, the music in the video is just to give the video something interesting in the background while you are watching. It took me a while to find this music because most creative commons style sites are full of endless happy go lucky trance/techno music!

I don't plan to include any new music (don't know anyone who makes music) with the MOD, just going to use the standard ambient stuff and maybe a couple of new sounds if I have time at the end.