Now it's time to get familiar with the functional workflow of the mediatracker.
As you will see, the mediatracker works like a simple video creation program.
I admit, the Mediatracker workflow is a bit complicated, but after all, getting familiar with the Mediatracker is a must for every real Trackmania enthusiast ;-)
In addition to this tutorial, I recommened you to read your User Manual (PDF) which came with your Trackmania game.
Quick reference guide
Version: 2008-08-27 (FINAL)
This is a quick reference guide, giving a short overview of all essential editing and control functions...
Note:
You are free to publish the picture, as long as it keeps completely untouched. If you post it on another website, post a backlink to our website as well.
Here are 2 short exercises for you to get a quick entry into mediatracking.
Short exercise 1
Click icon to download the "MEDIATRACKER SHORTEXERCISE1 EMPTY".
Put it on your "Tracks/Challenges" folder and open it in the track editor (refer: file locations).
Step 0 - Preperations
(1) Click on the Camera Symbol to enter the Mediatracker menu.
(2) Record a Mediatracker Ghost (= drive the track once and = record actual driving data for the Mediatracker), then end the Ghost recording.
(3) Enter the "In-Game" Mediatracker.
Step 1 - Set the Trigger for the 1st clip
(1) After entering the Mediatracker, a fresh empty clip will be created automatically.
(2) If a driving car comes into the "trigger" area during gameplay, the clip will be played.
(3) Set this trigger area with your mouse (horizontal axis) and your mouse's scrolling wheel (vertical axis)... set the trigger directly on the start ramp.
(4) Press the trigger button (lower left corner) again to exit the trigger mode...
Step 2 - Add a text effect track
(1) Press the "New Track" Button. A menu of effects will popup.
(2) Select "TEXT" from the effects menu to add a text effect track to the clip.
Step 3 - Start keyframe
(1) Click on the start keyframe.
(2) Enter the text value next to the writing, insert "GO GO GO" as text...
Values can only be edited when a keyframe is selected.
Step 4 - End keyframe
(1) Click on the end keyframe.
(2) Change the ScaleX+Y to 10 and slide the Opacity value to the very left...
Trackmania will automatically create a seamless transition between different values of start/end keyframes.
Step 5 - Adding a 2nd clip !
(1) Press the "New Clip" Button.
(2) Put the trigger late on the track, as seen on the picture...
Just like the 1st clip has its own trigger, the 2nd clip has of course its own trigger, too.
You can see the little car in the preview window when it enters the trigger area...
Step 6 - Insert a track for the 2nd clip
(1) Press the "New Track" Button. The effects menu will popup.
(2) Select "CAMERA CUSTOM" from the menu.
Step 7 - Start keyframe
(1) Click on the start keyframe.
(2) Change the "Block End to 01:00" to shorten the effect track to 1.0 second duration.
Change the "Target" value to "Local player" to take the car into the center of the camera view.
Step 8 - End keyframe
(1) Click on the end keyframe.
(2) Change the "Target" value to "Local player".
(3) Now use the arrow keys to zoom the camera near to the car.
Trackmania will create a seamless camera movement between start/end keyframe.
Step 9 - Finished
(1) Click on the upper left "Exit" button to exit the mediatracker...
Finished.
Click icon to download the "MEDIATRACKER SHORTEXERCISE1 FINAL" track to check if you've entered everything correctly...
If you followed this quick step tutorial, you can now testplay your track in the track editor...
You can see both clips beeing played with their effects, as soon as the car enters the trigger area of the particular clip...
That's how the Mediatracker works :-)
Short exercise 2
Use the looping camera tutorial as a second short exercise on how to handle the mediatracker.
The Walkthrough in details
We will now do a step-by-step walkthrough from A-Z, information + exercise sections are mixed...
Click icon to download the "MEDIATRACKER WORKFLOW EMPTY".
Put it on your "Tracks/Challenges" folder and open it in the track editor (refer: file locations).
Exercise starts...
Open the track in your editor, Record a Mediatracker Ghost, finish recording and enter the "In game" section of the Mediatracker.
The empty screen
The naked truth after opening the mediatracker for the first time.
You see your track in the distance, some transparent cube following your mouse moves and absolutely no action anywhere.
Section 1: Clips & Triggers
Because your content is still totally empty, the mediatracker will automatically create a first "Clip" and ask you to place a "Trigger".
Clips
You could also say "filmclip". A clip contains a set of actions, which will all be listed in the "tracks" listing on the right, as soon as you insert them...
Buttons / Keys
(1) Insert a new clip (2) Delete selected clip (3) Set the trigger(s)
Hint
Clicking next to the clip's name will select the clip. Click on the clip's name will rename the clip itself.
Rule of thumb
Usually you will have more than 1 clip in your mediatracker content, all of them playing on different occasions (= triggered on different spots on the driving track).
Playing a new clip will STOP THE PREVIOUS CLIP from playing. No exception.
Always keep this in mind when planning your mediatracker contents. It might be neccessary to copy content from Clip1 to Clip2 if you want to keep an effect showing during both clips.
Triggers
A trigger is an "activation point" to start playing the chosen clip as soon as the driver's car enters the trigger area while playing.
Clicking the yellow cube (button "3" in the picture above), you can chose to place/edit one or multiple triggers for your chosen clip. Clicking it again will deactivate the trigger editing
While the yellow cube is activated, nothing else will work (except moving around with your preview camera).
If your previously recorded Ghost drives into this area, the car will appear within the trigger area. This is a good check to see if you placed your triggers right.
How to move your camera in the Mediatracker
Hold right mousebutton and move mouse to change your camera orientation.
Use the cursor keys to move forward / backwards / left / right.
Use page up/down keys to lower/raise your camera.
Hold CTRL+Right mousebutton and move mouse to lean your head left/right.
Mousewheel will Zoom In/Out
If you want to slow down or fasten up your camera movement, use the F/G buttons in the General Helpers section.
While editing triggers the camera control is a bit different.
Mousewheel will lower/raise Trigger camera.
Hold CTRL+Right mousebutton will set the direction from which the car must enter (not working!).
Practice these methods a bit, you'll benefit a lot if you're able to move quickly later.
Is the clip (still) triggered ?
There is a nasty little detail about triggers, which you must know, in order to master the art of setting triggers.
What you know
When your car drives into a trigger area, the condition "is the clip triggered?" would become "TRUE"...
What you haven't realised yet
Just because your car exits the trigger area after driving through it, that does NOT mean, that the "is the clip triggered?" condition becomes UNTRUE ! It is still TRUE !
Why is this important ?
Because it means, that you can't activate/play a clip again and again, just because you pass the same trigger area multiple times ! And in more complicated driving environments with lots of re-using road pieces/driving spots, this might be necessary !
What's the solution ?
You need something, which makes the "is the clip triggered?" condition UNTRUE again. Remember what I've said in the Clips explanation:
Playing a new clip will STOP THE PREVIOUS CLIP from playing. No exception.
And that's because: The triggers of the new clip will set the condition "is the clip triggered?" of the previous clip to UNTRUE ! That's why it stops playing ! As seen in the Loopcam tutorial.
That means: If you want to use the same clip multiple times (triggered on a single spot), YOU NEED ANOTHER CLIP (empty or filled) to set the "is the clip triggered?" of your 'real clip' to UNTRUE, so your car can drive into the trigger area again and therefor : make it TRUE (again).
A simple example
The 1st clip will display a text "NEW ROUND" each time your car drives into the trigger area, but only with the help of the 2nd clip (and its trigger).
Shortly before entering the 1st clip's area again, we put a trigger for a 2nd clip before it, so the condition for the 1st clip's trigger becomes untrue. That's why the 1st clip can be triggered and played AGAIN.
Exercise continued...
Move your camera, so you get a good view of the starting point.
Place a single trigger directly on the start block, like in the picture above.
Then click button(3) to deactivate the trigger editing for your clip.
Section 2: Tracks
Now you can fill your empty clips with film action ;-)
Track
A "Track" is a single effect category you place into a clip. A clip can containt lots of different tracks.
Buttons / Keys
You can add ( 4) or delete tracks (5) for every clip.
Exercise continued...
Select your Clip with the mousebutton.
Press button (4) to add a Track for your clip.
Now you will be shown a popup window with lots of track categories (effects) to chose from.
Chose "Text" from the menu.
Section 3: Blocks & Keys
You've chosen to insert a "Text track" into your clip and now a block of 3 seconds length (default) was automatically inserted into the timeline at the bottom.
Block
A block is a "piece" of an effect within a track, it's about what and how the chosen effect will be realised.. A track can contain multiple blocks after each other.
Depending on what track type you chose before, the body color of the Block will vary ("Text" for example is light green). The different colours provide a better overview over what's happening in the timeline.
Every Block has at least 2 key frames, a "Start Keyframe" and an "End Keyframe".
Of course you can place multiple blocks after each other into the Track. Each block is a "standalone" item and does not interact with another Block.
Key / Keyframe (also called "marker")
A keyframe is a single point of action in a block.
Whenever you want to enter values for your chosen effect in order to control what a block really does, you can only do this on keyframes.
Transition between keyframes
With different values on different keyframes, the mediatracker will always try to create a seamless transition between the values of 2 consecutive keyframes.
Careful: Due to the small icons on the screen , it can quickly happen that you didn't properly select a keyframe before editing values... all entered values will be lost !
Section 4: Keyframe values
How to define action in detail !
Exercise continued...
We will now change the values of they start & end keyframes. As soon as you select a keyframe (mouseclick), it gets white and the value section pops up at the left screen.
Change the values of start & end keyframe as described below.
Select the Start keyframe
Click on "TrackText" & enter text.
Then change ScaleX + ScaleY to "5".
Select the End keyframe
Change ScaleX + ScaleY:0
What is happening ?
The only difference between Start & End keyframe are ScaleX/Y values (textsize).
While playing, the mediatracker will automatically create a seamless transition between the 2 keyframes, which means:
The text size will be at 5/5 (Start keyframe) , then get smaller and smaller until it reaches 0/0 (End keyframe).
Attention !
Never forget to edit start AND end keyframe values to fully control your effect actions.
Section 5: Timeline handling
The Timeline is there to control, what action happens at which time, with the precision of 1/100th second. Luckily most of the things are pretty self explaining...
Replay Time & Timeline slider
These 2 items control "where in time" you are (to preview what's happening, to insert Blocks & Keys etc.pp).
You can either enter the "Replay Time" manually by clicking/editing the value, or you can use your mouse to move the big red square at the bottom...
Both interact, so depending which one you use, the other one will adjust its behaviour.
The large preview window will always show the actual mediatracker content at the actual "Replay Time".
Videoplay options [Buttons T1 to T6]
T1 : Rewind to start of the timeline
T2 : Stop playing
T3 : Play slowly (from "Replay Time" onwards)
T4 : Play at normal speed (from "Replay Time"onwards)
T5 : Fast forward to last Keyframe (=End Keyframe of the last Block of the Track)
T6 : Adjust timeline view, so the timeline is filled from first to last keyframe (Hold right mousebutton in the timeline to zoom in/out)
Blocks
T7 : Insert New Block (at "Replay Time", needs 3 seconds space to the right)
T8 : Delete selected Block
Blocks can be selected / moved with left mousebutton.
Keys
T9 : Insert Keyframe (at "Replay Time", needs 10/100 seconds space to left & right)
T10: Delete selected Keyframe
T11: Delete all Keyframes of the selected Block
Keyframes can be selected / moved with left mousebutton.
If you move Start/End Keyframes of a Block, the Block will be shortened/stretched.
Exercise continued...
To preview your Clip, rewind to the start of the timeline and press the play button. Now the simple text effect should show.
After that, Exit the Mediatracker and play the track. The effect should also show here.
You made your first Mediatracker FX :-)
Click the Icon to download the "MEDIATRACKER WORKFLOW FINISHED" to see if you did everything right :-)
Section 6 : Interaction Timeline / Block / Track
I've hidden something from you until now... a small but complex bit of information.
Interaction of Timeline + Block
Surely you remember this little snippet when we changed keyframe values, don't you ?
As you already thought, "Block Start" & "Block End" are no keyframe values, but Block values.
They just appear when you edit keyframe values, because if you select a keyframe, the block "above" is automatically selected with it... That's why this block always appears together with the effect value section.
What is this good for ?
Here you can edit the exact values when to begin + end the block in the Timeline, much more precisely than you could do it by dragging the start / end keyframes with your mousebutton.
Interaction of Timeline + Track
The "Keep playing" option has nothing to do with keyframe or block values, it's a "Track" option.
Clicking the right of the 2 buttons will cause the last Block of the Track to KEEP ON PLAYING, with the values of its End Keyframe (That also means, that this part of the Clip keeps on playing).
The left button can't be clicked, it's just an optical indicator. It tells you if in the Clip/Track listing there is a Block present that "keeps on playing".
What is this good for ?
Usually a clip's content start to play when triggered and stops when a certain amount of time has passed (that means that all blocks in the track have been played to their end).
In some situations however, this "static" time amount in which the effect is used, is not enough, because you -as the author- simply don't know how long (in seconds) an effect should be visible.
Usually this is the case if different drivers with different speeds are passing a large area while driving the track, and the effect should be visible all the time while driving in that area...
Trackmania Forever offers a new feature for playing clips: conditions.
The name pretty much says it all, it determines special conditions under which the clip will be played. or not.
None (default)
The clip will be played evertime as soon as the player drives into the trigger area.
Racetime < X and Racetime > X
The clip is only triggered, when the actual racetime is lower/higher than X, where X are seconds Example values: 50 (fifty flat), 50.5 (fifty and a half), 125 (2 minutes and 5 seconds)
Speed < X and Speed > X
The clip is only triggered, when the car's speed is lower/higher than X, where X are KPH.
Example values: 220, 220.5
Already triggered X and Not already triggered X
Maybe the most interesting condition.
What you can't see is that every clip in the clip listing has an invisible ID number.
The X in the condition asks, if a particular clip (ID number) in the listing has already been played or not.
Only if this condition is met, the selected new clip will play.
What are these options really good for ?
Setting conditions for playing clips is a pretty powerful option.
Example 1: Preventing "cutting"
If you want to prevent players from trying to cut your tracks, you can insert multiple clips on your driving track, checking for valid racetimes or other clips beeing already triggered (or not). If your specified conditions are met (or not met), you can just darken the screen and tell the player "not to cut" :-)
Example 2: Multilap / Detour
It's cool to get 2 different clips playing although you pass the same spot twice or more... this is especially useful if people are supposed to behave differently when passing for a 2nd time. You could achieve this by asking for valid racetimes or previous clips beeing triggered or not...
Example 3: Time limits
You can also set time limits in which the player needs to pass a certain trigger point, otherwise he's told to restart.
Attention !
There's 1 special thing to be mentioned when dealing with racetime & speed conditions:
The condition might be not true when the car passes the trigger border, but can become true while the car is still driving within the trigger area. In this case, the clip is triggered and will play !
(Example: Clip conditition is set to "Speed > 120kph"... The driver enters the trigger area with 115kph, so the trigger does not play, but the car accellerates and reaches 121kph, while still beeing in the trigger area... AS SOON as the condition is met, the clip will play.)
An Example for a "triggered/not triggered" condition.
Click the Icon to download the "TRIGGER CONDITIONS" track.
"Clip0 (left)" has its trigger at the start block, so it will be shown immediately after the starting countdown... but only, if "Clip1(right)" was not already played...
It shows a yellow arrow "<<<" going from right to left, to show drivers the direction.
"Clip1(right)" is placed behind the startramp (you can't put triggers for 2 clips at the same point of the road)...
It will play and show a yellow arrow ">>>", pointing to the right.
But the arrows will only display once. They won't display again, because neither the condition for Clip0 or Clip1 will ever be met again, once you passed both of them...
1.
Clip0 plays at the start, because Clip1 wasn't triggered yet.
2. Clip1 will play, because Clip0 was already triggered..
And now what? Clip0 can't play again, because... ? Because Clip1 was already triggere and therefor, the conditon of Clip0 is NOT MET.
Clip1 COULD play again and again (because the condition is always true) BUT as you might remember: as long as no other clip is triggered, the previous clip will KEEP BEEING TRIGGERED, that's why Clip1 won't play again...
So how would we manage to get BOTH arrows displayed every round ?
We can't. Unfortunately the explicit trigger conditions don't work like true/untrue settings of triggers. If a condition is true once, it will be always true, it can't be "unset"/made "untrue", like in the general trigger activation/deactivation.
This disfunctionality of 2 things, which seem to be pretty much"the same" is a bit confusing,but you can get used to it.
KNOWN BUGS!
1) Replay conditions don't work in the Outro/Replay section of the mediatracker.
2) Replay conditions don't work while spectating other drivers on an online server (even in "Follow" mode,which equals the "Ingame" Mediatracker content).
Section 8 : General helpers
You can relax, you almost made it !
In the upper left corner of the Mediatracker, there are some useful little tools to organise your work.
Button
Explanation
A
Exit the Mediatracker
B
Save your track
C/D
Export / Import Clips. Very useful to save time when you need to copy large content from one Clip to another (Even between Intro/InGame/EndRace).
E
Import a Driving Ghost to the track (see Ghost GPS for example)
F
Show Mediatracker Ghost names above the cars
G
Shoot Video
H
Make screenshot
I/N
Preview current clip's content / Preview complete clip group
J / K
Reset Camera Roll / Yaw
L/M
Switch to free camera / clip camera
Additional Buttons & Keys
F10 : Make Screenshot
TAB: Show/Hide Mediatracker console
Num+ / Num- : Speed up or Slow down the camera movements
How to copy Clips and Tracks
You can copy one clip's content to another clip by using the "Import/Export" function. You can also use this function to import/export content between Intro / Ingame / Endgame Mediatracker content !!!
How to copy Blocks
Select the Block, press CTRL+C, proceed in the Timeline and press CTRL+V.
Actually it's a simple copy & paste procedure. This is useful if you have many consecutive Blocks with the same attributes.
How to copy values between keyframes
Select the TARGET keyframe, hold CTRL+ and click the SOURCE keyframe.
For better workflow it's often necessary not to enter all single values of an effect by hand, but to copy them from another frame (and then change little details)...
Congratulations, you made it !
If you carefully read the tutorial, you shouldn't really have any big questions anymore. From now on a look at the Quick reference guide at the top of the page should be sufficient.
Last words on Mediatracking
(1) Creating really sophisticated mediatracker content requires lots of practice and some "trickery", when combining several effects and functions into 1 stunning effect... The more you learn & practice in the mediatracker, the more stunning effects you will be able to create.
(2) Using bad looking effects or overloading a mediocre track with too much mediatracker content will make you look stupid. Don't try to show off, if you don't really know what you're doing.
(3) Carefully consider when and what mediatracker content you want to use in your tracks, especially when driving action and Ingame-Mediatracker content might interfere (example: looping camera)...
That's it. Have fun ;-)
Explanations for "Conditions" evaluated by Alcator for TMU blog. Thx to these cool guys.
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Select your Clip with the mousebutton.
A keyframe is a single point of action in a block.
Surely you remember this little snippet when we changed keyframe values, don't you ?
The "Keep playing" option has nothing to do with keyframe or block values, it's a "Track" option.
Trackmania Forever offers a new feature for playing clips: conditions.
Maybe the most interesting condition.
In the upper left corner of the Mediatracker, there are some useful little tools to organise your work.
