by paul » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:26 pm
You're right that full motion video would be smoother, but there are some tradeoffs. As Kerry said, the length of video might be an issue. If you used a few seconds there would be a jump when it restarted and that jump would be more distracting when the rest of the motion is so smooth. But the biggest drawback with FMV would be resolution and editability. The game's resolution is much higher than even "HD" video cameras, so we'd lose the sharpness.
Maybe some day we'll have a version that could use a hybrid of the two techniques. We may be able to combine a high-res still shot of the land overlaid on FMV water, as the water doesn't need such high resolution. This would be tricky to shoot, though. You'd need to shoot the video and the still from exaclty the same location, so you'd have to switch cameras on the tripod. Or use video mode on the digital still camera. Vice-versa would also be possible (getting the still from a camcorder that has a high-resolution still camera function.) That might be the ideal, but blending subsurface fish with moving video in real time would be very tricky as Kerry noted. But it might be possible.
With the game using still shots to animate the water, the trick is to shoot when conditions are favorable. The more waves on the water and the more contrast between the surface glare and the rest of the water, the more noticable the flickering effect will be. As I'm sure you've noticed in the game there are some sites where the water motion looks quite natural and others where it's jumpier. Recently I've found some other imaging editing techniques that help reduce the jumping effect too.
Thanks for doing the photography! I can't wait to see (and fish) those rivers.
Paul
