Space Engineers bullshittery - Update #4

Good evening all. Hope you've all had a nice weekend.

Another progress update on the bullshittery

I've had about 1 week and 1 day on the keyframing. So I should have completed at least 6 minutes. I've completed 7 minutes and 14 seconds so far. Honestly, everything is going smoothly.

For those unfamiliar, the whole Space Engineers video is about 25 minutes long. But I'm going to try to deliver it in two halves - second half first - to give you something to watch as soon as possible.

There's thankfully few editing surprises when it comes to this particular game.

Keyframing the text is generally pretty lenient. Space Engineers has very consistent points of tracking for many of its in-game assets. Clear points of colour differentiation and contrast that don't confuse After Effects.

The Space Engineers themselves also have these helpful little lights on their suits. Which means you can trust the program to continually track the lights. Provided the player in question doesn't turn around.

It is however a bit of a shame that there's no light directly above the head. That would have been perfect. For text tracked on the shoulder or the backpack behaves differently if the character shimmies around on the spot. But I'll take what I can get.

It is worth noting that I'm often caught with a bit of a quandary in this stage.

If the subject is moving around a lot, to the point that their tracking reference has to change, I need to decide whether to do automated tracking in short bursts. Switching the tracking point repeatedly to whatever is available.

You can do that. I do it all the time. The wonderful benefit to After Effects (over old Sony Vegas) is that everything has its own layer properties. So when the tracking point moves, I can simply move the text in relation to the new tracking point, whilst maintaining its current position.

The challenge though is simply...faff.

If the tracking point on a subject changes 4-5 times, I end up asking the age old question after 30 minutes of messing with it:

"would this would have been faster if I just had just manually keyframed".

Therefore I often do so, purely anticipating tracking bullshit if I spot a Space Engineer spinning around. I just go in there and keyframe it personally from start to finish. My human brain being able to identify where the text should be. Doing it all in one layer. In one attempt.

Tedious yes. But far more reliable.

That is, I suppose, one of the challenges baked into automation - I remember a similar problem with test tools in software development. If you're spending as much time, if not more, working around the limitations of the tool, sometimes its just better to have a human do it perfectly in one shot.

A human won't miss.

Another thing to mention in Space Engineers is the annoying amount of interface that's on screen a lot of the time. A minimalist UI space engineers is not. Sadly I've often got to accept that the text from me is going to share space with the HUD.

Or moments where the build menu blocks everything. Always annoying.

Additionally, as if often the case in my videos, I'm spotting lots of opportunities in this bullshittery to add additional audio to improve scenes:

• Tom drives a forklift around. But it makes no noise whatsoever. Same when he lifts the cart its carrying. I might see if I can insert some forklift sounds to make it sound less weird.

• ZF Social flies through the air and bashes into a pane of glass we're standing behind. I might add a loud thudding sound for comedic effect.

• A piston driven elevator starts to wobble bizarrely. I could add text to indicate that it's the physics engine going weird. I could add the infamous CLANG sounds as an audible indicator.

So going forward, I need to try and get to at least 11 minutes out of 13 this week. There's probably insufficient time to get all the keyframing complete this week. But it'll certainly be brushing up against its quality assurance.

Making steady progress. All going smoothly.