The first time that I played Doom 3. I used Game-Cam to record short films which I edited using Windows_movie_maker.



Click on the images below, to go to the film clips. They are all about 2.megs.
When I stood in that 'waterfall' of souls I really thought that DoomGuy had been killed!



Of course, you don't need Game-Cam for Doom, but it is easy to use.There are the console commands like aviDemo and aviGame which output frames into multiple tga screenshots. More details about using aviDemo/Game are included further down on this page.

aviDemo won't output sound, or the GUIs but it renders high quality images.

aviGame may output sound, I've no idea?



Not the best example of how to take on a Pinkey, my excuse is that the game was almost too laggy to play...this does not explain why I couldn't find my plasma gun though.




First thing that you need to do with Doom3 if you plan to make films, or just want to play around with the game is to edit the shortcut so that you can access the console.

To enable the console create a shortcut that adds
+seta com_allowConsole "1" to Doom3



Ah the teleporters, I love the machines of Doom.




The whole thing looks like this:
Doom3.exe +seta com_allowConsole "1"

Access the console using the ' key (below ESC).



To use the aviDemo renderer set the following CVars first:
  • com_aviDemoTics
    • Here you choose how much frames per second you want to render for your movie. DemoTics 1=15fps, 2=30fps, 3=45fps, 4=60fps, and so on...

  • com_aviDemoHeight
  • com_aviDemoWidth
  • Here you set the resolution you want for your final movie. Anything is possible here, even 4000x3000, but I don't think you need more than 640x480 for a high quality movie. ;)

  • com_aviDemoSamples
  • Here you set the multisampling for the renderer. How much do you want your movie be Anti Alialised? A good number here is 16 for example.

  • And if you want to use softshadowing you have to set this 2 CVars:
  • r_lightSourceRadius 8
  • r_useOptimizedShadows 0
  • lightSourceRadius sets how smooth you want your shadows. 8 is already a very nice number. You have to turn of optimizedShadows cause they are just precalculated shadows which will look ugly on the final render.


After you set all this (the graphic detail will be taken from your own PC-settings, so you want to make sure that it is set to ultra high before rendering maybe) type "avidemo demoname" and go for a coffee or something. The rendering will take it's time. The higher your settings the longer it will take.

You can use all this for a single image rendering too. Instead of using the com_avidemo* CVars then you just provide the info directly with the screenshot command. Set all detail and the softshadowing thingy like you want it and then make a screenshot like this:
  • screenshot 1600 1200 16
    • This would render one image with 1600x1200 resolution and 16x Anti Alialising.

    Links.
  • Game Cam.
  • FRAPS.