Might and Magic/Heroes of might and magic CGI

The role-playing games (I-X) that started it all and the various spin-offs (including Dark Messiah).
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Deftclaw Redreaver
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Might and Magic/Heroes of might and magic CGI

Unread postby Deftclaw Redreaver » 27 Apr 2013, 17:57

Hello everyone. My name is Alexander. And I was actually interested of making the same type of graphics used in the SWK and Cutscenes of the games. But I dont know what softwares where used to make them, Does anyoen know?. I am new to all this so I am not sure where I was supposed to post this.

~Alexander

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 27 Apr 2013, 20:10

You might want to spellsheck your posts, to avoid any possible misinterpretation :devious:

Otherwise, the CGI scenes were made with 3DS Max, but you're better off doing them in Blender (because everything at Autodesk is absolutely unaffordable, while Blender is free and open source software).

It requires making a scene, then animating it, then rendering it, and telling Blender to export the render into a video file.

The cutscenes in HoMM3 and MM 6-8 are in either Smacker (SMK) or Bink video (BIK). Smacker is old and low-quality, though. Bink is still in production, so it does make sense to convert the output to it, and there are tools to do so.

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Unread postby Deftclaw Redreaver » 28 Apr 2013, 13:34

Yes, Sorry. I was in a rush to write all this because i couldn't sign up before and I was getting irritated. I had to use yahoo to finally receive the E-mail.

Anyhow, Thank you very much for you're help and don't worry about the "Un-Affordable" I don't pay for softwares so eh. I think I have 3DS max on one my CDs. I will try to produce some of Might and Magic like short scenes (Like the ones when you visit a shop and it's all animated)

Oh and I know about .BIK and .SWK part, I extracted all these files using the MM8lvleditor, I also have a question. Why do the longer cinematics (Like the ones you get after finishing the game or making alliances) Are in .BIK format and the ones where you visit a place (Shorter ones) In .SWK format?

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 28 Apr 2013, 17:01

Deftclaw Redreaver wrote:Anyhow, Thank you very much for you're help and don't worry about the "Un-Affordable" I don't pay for softwares so eh.
:disagree:
Deftclaw Redreaver wrote:Oh and I know about .BIK and .SWK part, I extracted all these files using the MM8lvleditor, I also have a question. Why do the longer cinematics (Like the ones you get after finishing the game or making alliances) Are in .BIK format and the ones where you visit a place (Shorter ones) In .SWK format?
It's SMK, for Smacker. And again, Bink has better quality, therefore it's better suited for long cutscenes, where a lot of colours matter. SMK probably had better compression for short clips or something, although these times it's really irrelevant, as SMK is deprecated in favour of BIK.

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Unread postby Xdarkon » 28 Apr 2013, 19:13

Do you know exactly which 3DS max was used?

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Unread postby Pol » 28 Apr 2013, 19:34

SMK is older than BiNK. SMK can compress "bettter", however the compression is visible, so it's only good for scenes where it will blend, due to its age it can use less colors. The colors itself were the reason for developing BiNK format.

@Do you know exactly which 3DS max was used?
At best they used 3D Studio Max R3. Likely just 2.5 That's my guess. Why so exactly?
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Unread postby Xdarkon » 28 Apr 2013, 19:54

I needed to know because there's a lot of different version of Autodesk 3DS max. I don't know which one to use better use the one they used

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 28 Apr 2013, 20:17

Xdarkon wrote:I needed to know because there's a lot of different version of Autodesk 3DS max. I don't know which one to use better use the one they used
It really, really doesn't matter. The result is a video, whether you create it with one version of 3DS Max or another, with Blender, with another modelling program, with the UDK, or film it using a camera, makes absolutely no difference. The output is a bunch of images. Which tool to use should only be determined by your existing experience with one tool or another, or platform/financial/moral or other important factors. Use the best available tool for the job.

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Unread postby Xdarkon » 28 Apr 2013, 20:30

Thank you for your aid, Now that all my questions has been answered along with a few tips this post can be locked

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Unread postby Xdarkon » 28 Apr 2013, 23:25

GreatEmerald wrote:
Xdarkon wrote:I needed to know because there's a lot of different version of Autodesk 3DS max. I don't know which one to use better use the one they used
It really, really doesn't matter. The result is a video, whether you create it with one version of 3DS Max or another, with Blender, with another modelling program, with the UDK, or film it using a camera, makes absolutely no difference. The output is a bunch of images. Which tool to use should only be determined by your existing experience with one tool or another, or platform/financial/moral or other important factors. Use the best available tool for the job.
No but I want to be able to create the old looking graphics like the ones in mm7 (Would look better in a mod) :S Can Blender do that?

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 29 Apr 2013, 05:12

Well yes, of course. Once again, the software that you use makes no difference, they didn't use any presets or anything. They modelled everything manually. You can get the same result with any modelling software.

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Unread postby Talin_Trollbane » 29 Apr 2013, 21:40

now the real question is, why do you want to make those kind of cutscenes?

you making a game, OP?
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Unread postby Xdarkon » 06 May 2013, 10:33

Talin_Trollbane wrote:now the real question is, why do you want to make those kind of cutscenes?

you making a game, OP?
No, Not really. I am not sure about I want to do with it but I am good enough I may try to work with "The Legend of Erthia" or other overhaul mods


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