Modtacular! - Update 2

Well, well. Do I have a bit to write about today. First off, I just want to mention that this mod has gone way above and beyond what I had originally expected it to turn out to be. Here are all of the features built into this mod as of now:

- Original toggle timefreeze
- Original screencap tool
- Decrease/inscrease game speed (think smooth slow-motion)
- Cinematic mode (enables constant high LOD models and textures)
- Camera shift, depth, FOV, speed adjusters
- Save & load both camera-state & game-state
- Cutscene camera
- Third-person perspective (with proper reticle aiming)
- Chasecam perspective
- Stillcam
- Devcam perspective (move camera out of the Chief while game stays live)
- Auto hi-res screen grabber
- Image sequence capture (low, 10FPS)
- In-game letterbox toggle (cutscene-style, 1:85.1 widescreen)
- Wireframe mode
- HUD toggle
- AI toggle (not working correctly)
- In-game ambient, primary & secondary lighting controls (this allows us to position light anywhere on the chief, especially in dark rooms, PERFECT for setting up shots in a film)
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Yeah... I know that's a whole lot to swallow, but now I'm going to show you some pics of what some of the newer features do.

- Auto Hi-res Grabber -
Basically, what this command does is take many screenshots of a single frame in-game. After you get your camera in position to take a regular screenshot, you enable the hi-res grabber and immediately the mod will zoom into smaller 'blocks' of the overall image and take 640x480 screenshots of the zoomed-in 'block.' Afterwards, when all the blocks are strung together, they become one massive canvas at 2094x1136 resolution. Here is a sample image in high resolution: (click to show full-size picture)


- Cinematic In-game Widescreen -
Below are a few pictures showing the in-game widescreen feature at work. These pictures were all taken with the highest model & texture settings possible. The mod forces the Halo 2 engine to run any map with everything at full tilt. Think beautiful graphics. Of course, you would think that this would make the game lag severely, yet I was surprised at how well Halo 2 ran with everything enabled. I didn't experience any lag at all, except when I set Zanzibar to wireframe mode.



- Lighting Positioning on Characters -
Look at the two screenshots below. The first image shows the chief with 'default' lighting. It is hard to see the chief because his head is directly in front of the sun. But look at the other image as I maneuver the light primary and ambient light sources to slightly head-on shot. The chief helmet and armor are much more distinguished and color more vibrant. This is exactly what they do in real movie production; they position the lighting to best portray the scene. We're going to be pumping out some awesome film with this.



And so, this is the mod as it stands as of right now.


All these cool new abilities are a lot to take in, yet this will really help us create more of a true 'animation feel' to our films. The camera hack itself is amazing, as you can disconnect from the chief and move around the map while the game is still in play.
And then we have the highest level of detail (LOD) settings for all models and textures in any map enabled no matter where your character is. This means that everything that is way in the background of a certain shot will still be sharp and high-res. And then we also have the built in 1:85.1 widescreen, which will take so much work out of my editing in Final Cut Pro, as I can accurately judge where the camera needs to be as we shoot a scene. And the lighting feature... that simply speaks for itself.

Gah...