[tutorial] Creating Static Cameras

Fallen Guardian · September 4, 2013

In response to Fair Strides' request for a more detailed tutorial on cameras I've made one. This one only covers static cameras, but I'll probably write one on animated cameras later on.

You can download the tutorial in .docx format here.

You can download the tutorial in .pdf format here.

You can download the tutorial in .rtf format here.

Here's another tutorial on cameras by Tupac Amaru which goes over the very basics of cameras. It covers some things I do and some things I don't. I actually used Tupac's method for orientation, but I've found that you need to subtract 90 from your base angle in order for it to work (and that is reflected in the source script for my addition to Star Admiral's armbands).

Without further ado, let's get started:

Cameras in the KotOR games are rather simple once you get the hang of them, but before I start explaining much let’s do a quick overview on what cameras are.

Cameras: Static viewpoints that you can setup at any given location in an area. They provide you the freedom to make in-game dialogue into more than just a sequence of talking. For the purpose of this tutorial cameras will only refer to static cameras, not animated cameras.

Prior to starting any kind of modding you’ll want the proper tools for what you’re doing. So, without further delay, here are the five things you’ll need to make a camera.

1.

tk102’s K-GFF Editor

2.

tk102’s Dialogue Editor

3.

stoffe’s ERF Editor

4.

Fred Tetra’s KotOR Tool

(Here is

the original release thread

for those interested, the download link there is down)

5.

Utility Armbands

Here is the original link

for the armbands. All credit goes to Star Admiral for the creation of the utility armbands, I just modified his script to include two new fields necessary to orienting the cameras correctly. I also modified his setup of the installer to work for KotOR 2 as well.

Make sure all these tools are installed and ready for use before beginning this tutorial. K1 Utility Armbands is a mod, so therefore it will install into the game’s directory via the TSL Patcher but it is still necessary to have installed in order to follow this tutorial. You will need cheats enabled for this tutorial. I recommend this thread to walk you through the process of enabling them (note that the cheat enabling process in this thread is for KotOR 1, however essentially the same steps can be applied to KotOR 2 as well). Also, to be clear, this tutorial covers static cameras only. Animated cameras are not covered at all.

Before you start making your camera, you’ll have to extract all the files from the game that are necessary for its creation.

So, open up KotOR Tool. Depending on which game you wish to edit, expand the KotOR 1 tree or the KotOR 2 tree. I’ll be editing KotOR 1 for this tutorial, so I’m going to expand that one.

After you’ve expanded your game’s tree, expand RIMs, then Modules. From there you’ll be presented with a list of modules found within the game. The module names displayed here are the game files’ actual names. To help with matching these names to the areas you visit in-game, I recommend looking here for KotOR 1, and here for KotOR 2.

You’re going to need to expand the module name which is not followed by an “_s” (without the quotes, of course). I’m editing Manaan Ahto West for this tutorial so I expanded manm26aa.rim.

From there you want to expand Dynamic Area Info. There you’ll see a GIT file, the base file in which a camera’s information - and many other bits of data pertaining to a module - is stored.

Extract it to a directory of your choice (I recommend a folder titled Module GIT File).

Next, you’re going to want to create a folder in the directory where the extracted GIT file is. Name this folder “Original Module Files.”

Once that is done, you’ll want to select the .rim and extract the entire RIM file to your newly created Original Module Files folder. Repeat this step for the _s part of the module you’re editing (in my case, manm26aa_s.rim).

Now, you’re going to want to open up the GIT file you extracted with tk102’s K-GFF editor. When your GIT file is open, I recommend you fold all trees by going to View -> Fold All, and then only expand the struct labeled CameraList.

Below you’ll find the layout of a GIT file’s generic camera entry that can be found under CameraList.

CameraList is, as you’d imagine, a grouping of all the cameras contained within this one GIT file. The cameras are then separated into STRUCT’s. Now contained within any camera’s STRUCT, you have six fields that flesh out the identity of this individual camera.

CameraID – This is a numeric value given to your camera so it can be used later in a dialogue file. This number can go anywhere from one to infinity, I imagine, but I’ve never had a module go above one hundred cameras. Also, I’d endeavor to make sure this ID is unique – I’ve never had a module where two separate cameras used the same CameraID, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be pretty.

FieldOfView – Another numeric value, this acts similar to a zoom setting, allowing you to give the camera a larger space to look at, without moving its actual location. I don’t mess around with this too much, and the few times I did set it to an extreme, like one hundred, the camera’s view looked odd. I generally keep FieldOfView in the fifty-five to sixty-five range.

Height – This gets added on to whatever you set as the value for the Z coordinate in position (more on position later). I find the average height of a person in the KotOR games tends to be around 1.5 so I generally set most cameras to have a height nearer to that number.

Orientation –

Here is a picture of a basic orientation field:

Now this is the part about cameras that got under my skin when I was first learning to use them. Essentially, as you can see above, the orientation requires two numbers. However, KotOR apparently uses quaternions (weird number value used nowhere else in the game) to calculate the orientation for static cameras and I, for the life of me, had never been able to get the orientation to work very well when first starting out. So, I eventually became frustrated enough with guessing and checking that I added a little bit to the orientation armband’s scripting (from K1 Utility Armbands) in order to give me the correct values to input into the orientation fields (more on that later).

Pitch – This one’s rather simple. It’s just a numerical value that determines if the camera is pointing up, down, or straight. It can range anywhere from 0 to 180, with 0 being straight down, 90 being straight ahead and 180 being directly up. The range might even go beyond 180, or below 0, but I’ve never tried that.

Position -

Here is a picture of a basic position field:

Position, as you can see, has three slots. The top is the X coordinate, the middle is the Y coordinate and the bottom is the Z coordinate. You enter a specific value for each one, depending on where you want the camera located in the area.

Usually, whenever you create a camera you’ll want to select the whole STRUCT and copy it. Then, select the CameraList and paste it. This is a fast way to give you a camera which won’t override any of the existing ones, providing you change the camera ID number.

All right, now that we’ve gone through the basics of the GIT’s camera layout, let’s move onto actually creating a camera.

To start off you, you’re going to want to get all the information necessary from the game, so fire up whichever KotOR you’re modding. When you first get into the area you want a camera, make sure to enter in this cheat “giveitem sa_ori_arm” minus the quotes, of course. This will give you the orientation armband. When activated, this armband gives you tons of information about the playing character’s position, angle orientation, bearing, X and Y orientation, distance from other objects, closest types of objects to the player, etcetera.

(NOTE: The armband gives you the information about the PLAYING character. This means your character that you name and play the game as for the most part. As it is setup currently, if a party member were to use the armband it would still shoot back the player’s information.)

So, as you can see below I’m on Manaan, talking to my trusty, and very enduring, friend Trask Ulgo.

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