Setting Up a Scene in Cinematic

Background, Zone, and Transition

By now, we know that all of our scenes start with a background, but following the background, usually comes setting the zone, zoom, and transition. We'll walk through all of these steps, but first, let's go ahead and set the background and zone of where we want our scene to open up in. In this case, let's use the following:

Background: EXT. JUVIE POOL HOUSE INTERIOR V2 - NIGHT

Zone: 1

Using your knowledge from previous lessons, try to build this out in your script on your own!

Did you get a good crack at it? Let's go over what setting up our background and zone would look like:

Now, let's add a transition! A transition adds some kind of effect to our screen which is primarily used to transition between scenes or outfit changes, or mimic camera effects (we'll learn how to do that in later courses). In this instance, we'll be using a transition to create a seamless fade in effect to our scene. Here is what this code looks like:

@transition fade in black .25

Let's break this down:

1. First, we call the @transition command to indicate we'll be making a change to the transition.

2. Next, we'll be choosing what type of transition we'll be using. For starting scenes, we usually use "fade in" and for ending scenes, we usually use "fade out". There are more transition types, but we'll be sticking to these typical ones for now.

3. Next, we choose the color we want our transition to be in. Usually, we use either black or white (white is commonly used for memory flashbacks) but you can choose whatever you'd like for your stories!

4. Lastly, we time how quickly our transition will happen (this is measured in seconds). A good time to stick around is between .25 and .50 seconds.

Spot Placement

Let's place our character! Remember, in cinematic format, we can get more creative with where our characters are placed. In this case, let's have our character:

• Walk in from the left side of the screen, to the left side of the screen

• Complete walk in 1 second

• Walk while performing a scared walk animation (walk_scared_loop)

Try this out by yourself first! A bonus will be if you're able to achieve all of this in one line.

HINT #1: To have a character perform an animation while walking, we need to use the syntax "@YOU does it while animation_name"

HINT #2: You can string together all of these performances using the command "THEN" and "AND". Ex. @YOU spot 1.280 160 0 AND YOU is react_pumpfist_happy THEN YOU is laugh_chuckle

How'd it go? If you didn't attempt the bonus, your code could look similar to this:

If you attempted the bonus, you could've gotten something like:

Although both ways achieve our desired result, the bonus way of is the most concise and readable way to do it. When writing our code, we'll find that it's much easier to navigate and look back on when we write it this way. It also creates more seamless directing. Let's break down what's happening in this bonus code, part by part.

@YOU spot 0.948 -111 191 in zone 1

Here, we are placing the initial spot where our character will be walking from. This spot placement is off-screen to the left.

THEN YOU walks to spot 0.948 98 202 in zone 1 in 1

The next part uses the "THEN" command to chain on another event in the same line, immediately after the past one is complete. Followed by placing the character off-screen to the left, they will then walk to this spot placement, which is on the left of the screen. At the end, we add "in 1" to indicate that we want them to perform this action, walking to that spot, in 1 second.

AND YOU does it while walk_scared_loop

This last part also uses the command "AND" to chain on another event in the same line, but instead of it happening after the last event, it will happen at the same time. That means, whatever event we are calling here, will happen at the same time as our character walking to that left spot on our screen. We wanted to have our character doing a certain animation while walking, which is when we would use the syntax "@YOU does it while animation_name". Then, we plug in the "walk_scared_loop" animation.

Putting together all that we've done so far, you should currently be getting something similar to this on your previewer:

Dialogue

Now that we've set up most our scene, let's get into dialogue! Let's add the following in this order:

1. Our character saying "Hello? Is anyone there?" with a worried or scared type of animation

2. Add a narration bubble saying "THUD" (narration bubbles call the name "NARRATOR" or "NARR" instead of a character name)

3. Have our character react from the "THUD" sound afterwards by performing a screaming in horror animation

Remember that you can access the animations library in the Art Catalog or the right side of the script screen under the previewer!

With that, we have set up a scene in cinematic. Take a look at the final code and visual result below for the final scene!

Bonus - Changing Outfit

Here's a bonus segment! If you've really grasped everything we've covered, let's try changing out character's outfit. First, create a new outfit on your own. Then, try to remember the syntax behind the command of changing a character's outfit, and then we'll do it altogether.

Hope you got it! To create a new outfit, you will go to your story's homepage, click "Outfits" > "Create new outfit" > create the outfit > "Save".

To change a character's outfit in our script, we use this syntax:

@CHARACTER changes into Outfit_Name

In this example, we're going to change my story's character into the outfit named "YOU_Winter1".

I've called the command on line 2, before any of the other code. Is this important, and why? Well, in this example, I wanted my character to have already been changed into the outfit as she is walking into the scene. I added it before she was placed in the scene to achieve this. If we added it after the character was on the screen, we would have seen an abrupt outfit change in the middle of the scene.

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