General tips for newbie regarding video creation

Hi all!

First of all thank you for the great community. I bought this game yesterday, and I can already see that the developers are very active and the community feels very supportive and fun overall. This is how community should look like, compared to for example communities around Mafia 3 right now (another recent game I bought).

I am already enjoying the game and I can see myself sinking many, many hours into it. I mean just driving the car out of a cliff is so damn satisfying to watch. However, there is still few questions which I haven't been able to figure out despite reading /r/beamng, Steam Community Forums and topics over here..

First of all: recording your material. How exactly do you do it? I would love to make my own videos and share the destruction I am causing. I have no trouble using Shadowplay with GeForce Experience. I know how to use OBS too. I know how to actually record a video from a game. That is really not the issue. I am more interested on everything else you need to do in the game to achieve great looking cinematic crashes.

Like some very basics; how do I get two vehicles to collide at speed? It seems like I can only drive one car at a time, which means I can only hit other cars that are stationary. What if I want two cars so that both cars are driving directly towards each other at the same speed? Is there a way to get computer controlled car to drive direct straight line at 100km/h for example? I played this scenario called 'Intersection' yesterday and there was computer controlled van doing just that. If that is possible to re-create, then I could line my own car directly opposite of that line and make sure that I drive directly towards the computer controlled one. Or could I maybe 'record' my own drive-lines and then make computer drive that exact route after (while I control another car)? What is the best option to do this and how have you personally achieved it?

Also about the camera angles.. I have seen videos on YouTube where there has been multiple angles from the same crash. How is this possible? I just can't understand how I can get multiple angles. You need to record everything "live", right? So let's say that I have done setting up my scene. I position the car which I am driving and swap to the interior camera. I start recording and execute the crash itself. Then I stop recording. Now how am I supposed to get other than the interior camera recorded, like view from the side, view from behind the car etc? Is there option to 'rewind' the scene/time so you could let it unfold again with different camera angle? I noticed that when I pressed insert it did seem to 'rewind' but when I spawned back my vehicle was just fixed and it didn't automatically 'play back' what had happened earlier. It kind of simply fixed my vehicle so I could drive and crash again. Maybe this isn't even possible and the videos I have seen are different crashes in reality which are just cut post-processing so they would look like the same crash? Any help to achieve what I am looking for?

I am pretty sure I had something else on my mind too, but just can't remember what it was right now. I will add to this topic if it comes back. Anyway, these are the main questions after just couple hours in the game. Feel free to share any other general tips, tricks, suggestions, things to try, 'must have mods' etc. Simply any general tips would be appreciated, I am sure many of you have plenty of them after hundreds or thousands of hours in this! I am especially interested on making cool crash videos and different kind of tests. For now I only have the vanilla game with no mods at all.

 

If you hold the throttle on one car and then switch onto another car, the first car will be going full throttle without you doing anything.

You can zoom out of the Orbit cam by preesing the number 9 on your keypad (sorry netbook users) to give a helicopter feel.

 

Oh, really? So it will keep whatever input on car A when changing to car B? Let me explain with example: say I have 500 meter straight long. I have cars on each end facing each other. I start controlling car B and press throttle, then immediately switch to car A while still pressing the throttle too. Now are you saying that the car B still holds that throttle, accelerates it's speed to maximum and goes straight as long as the road is straight and there is no obstacles? And I can just concentrate on driving the car A directly towards and recording the crash? Will this work if I want car to make donuts for example? So if I accelerate and make full turn with steering wheel while changing the car, the car I changed from will end up doing endless donuts?

Your second answer unfortunately doesn't help me at all, I think you misunderstood the question a bit. I know how to change camera angles and all, my issue is how to get multiple angles from the same crash. Let me explain once again, English is not my native language so maybe I expressed myself poorly.. If I press that numpad 9 I get the helicopter-like angle, that is true. Now say I use that angle and start recording. I make my crash. Now how can I get also the interior angle from that very same crash? I have seen YouTube videos doing this, which is why I was wondering. It is possible that despite what I saw it's not the same crash after all, could be that it's actually many different crashes with the same setup and same cars, just edited to look the same or nearly identical. However, since the physic motor is so amazing in this game, if I just make two similar (but different) crashes I think viewers would notice that.. Since there is no guarantee that the cars will be destroyed exactly the same way with every try, so if I record the "same setup" many times the crashes will still be different actually. Two crashes can't be 100% identical on this. So how to get multiple angles for one and only same crash?

 

There's a work in progress feature called replay. It saves the cars movements while "recording" and then you can replay it as many times as you like from any camera angle. It's found under the UI apps tab on the left.

 

You need to use replay and replay the crash instead in a different camera. You can replay your crashes by clicking ESC, finding the Apps button, and adding the Replay app. Then, you want to press esc so you do not see the + in the middle. Then click the red circle on the replay app to record. To stop the rec, press the red square.

edit: ninja'd

 

There was a video by Insanegaz where he explains how he makes his BeamNG videos. I haven't seen it, but I guess it gives nice insight.

Some tricks you might want to know:
1) There is AI control UI app which can make AI chase you, drive away from you, or just move around the roads randomly. It only works on ''marked'' roads. Some maps doesn't support this or implementation is bad.
2)To make different camera angles: film in one position, then press ''j'' to freeze physics, find next position and angle in free camera mode (F8 by preset) and unfreeze physics. Then do it again if needed. Later edit everything woth your editing program.


Pro tip: To make things better in video, record videos in slow motion. Effect changes depending on your hardware and objects spawned. You will need this later on.

Edit: Video by Insanegaz(He is one of the best BeamNG crash compilation makers)

 

Sigh.

 

My fault, sorry. I edited the mistake