Animated Intro Screenshots

by: Eric Poggel
E_Poggel@Hotmail.com

You know those pictures beside the level descriptions in Unreal Tournament?
This will allow you to create an animated (movie) that will show in place of a regular still screenshot.
I assume you already know how to create a regular intro screenshot and import textures, so I"ll skip some of grizzly details. If not, there are other tutorials to help you with that. The first thing you need to do is create the frames you wish to use for your movie.
One method of doing this is as follows..
Enter you level, type in "slomo .1" (no quotes), and hit F9 (screenshot) about 1 (10fps) or 2 (20fps) times a second as you move through the area you wish to be displayed in your movie. Try to be consistent with your timing, for if you don"t, your movie will be quite jerky.
A second method, which is quite easier, but isn"t quite as thrilling to watch is the slideshow method. Take about 5-10 screenshots of your map in various interesting places. When finished, the pictures will change from one to the next at an interval we will set later.
Using a graphics editing program (I use Paint Shop Pro - www.jasc.com) to open your screenshots from the UnrealTournament/System directory. Resize them to a resolution of 256x256 with 256 colors. Save them as pcx files in order using the names Screenshot, Screenshot2, etc.
Open UnrealEd 2 and open your map. On the texture window, go to file / import from .pcx
Open the first image of your animation.
Type "MyLevel" (No Quotes) for package
Type "Screenshot" for Group
Type "Screenshot" for Name
Make sure Generate Mipmaps is unchecked, unless you want a blurry animation when low detail textures are selected in options.
Repeat the above process, but import and type in "Screenshot2", "Sceenshot3", etc. for each sequential frame. Go to the first image (Screenshot) that you imported, right click in the texture window, and go to properties.
Expand the animation tree, and where it displays AnimNext, type in "Texture"MyLevel.Screenshot.Screenshot2"" (No Quotes). You can also click on "Screenshot2" in the texture window and click use. Now right click on "Screenshot2" and go to properties. Set Screenshot3 as the next frame the same way you set "Screenshot2" in "Screenshot". Repeat until you reach the last frame. For this frame, set "Screenshot" (first picture) as the AnimNext.
Close all extra windows and right click on "Screenshot" to go to properties. Set the MaxFramerate to how fast you want your animation to play. 20-25 fps is really smooth, but you"ll need that many pictures for every second that your movie plays. 10 is kinda jumpy, but still produces the desired effect if you are using the movie method. If you want a slideshow of images, set the framerate much lower. Here are some variables and how fast the image will change.
1 = once every second.
0.5 = once every two seconds.
0.25 = once every four seconds.
As you can see, it works on an inverse scale.
After this, click view and go to level properties. Expand LevelInfo. Type Texture"MyLevel.Screenshot.Screenshot" where its says screenshot and enter any other information you wish to be displayed in the appropriate places. Save your level and run to make sure it works.
I have found that about every 15 frames will increase the size of your level by 1mb (about 500kb when zipped). If you don"t want to force 56k"ers (me!) to wait through a long download, I would recommend using the slideshow method or keeping the movie length to only a few seconds.
For an example of this tutorial in action, download CTF-Antimatter][ at NaliCity.