Cinematographic computer interface made in Synfig

Artwork Finished works
1

Hey there, dudes!

I’ve recreated a cinematographic computer interface seen in the game called ‘Descent II’.
I played this game a lot when I was a kid and it was awesome. A completely different experience after DOOM so I decided to pay a little tribute to the game.

Original video: https://youtu.be/3WntynkchuY?t=346
My attempt at recreating it: https://youtu.be/12K_SJqsAMI

So, what we’ve got here:

  • A lot of text effects, like blurs/distortions, cursor movement, implementation of ‘slow console output’, etc.
  • A very simplified Solar system. Science fact: planet’s dimensions are actually accurate in scale to Sun, except Sun itself is half of its size. You can fix it by setting ‘Radius’ to 1u of the ‘SUN’ layer, but effect will be less cinematographic. Orbits though are completely off XD It would be cool to make a proper model of Solar system in Synfig but there’s no reason to except pure practice. It’s already done in all those fancy 3D programs.
  • All kinds of different masking and even a TCB interpolation to make a proper zoom in effect. I finally realized that you have to use ‘Graphs’ to make it useful.
  • Some kind of lazy starfield you can create by messing around with ‘Distortion’ layer.

I’ve attached the source of this animation, maybe someone will find it useful. The source is under CC-BY 4.0 as the animation itself. Some notes about the source:

  • It’s unusable in the newer Synfig versions due to the fact that new render still can’t handle some layers (distortions especially) which is sad :frowning: So better use Synfig 1.0.2
  • I chose ‘Consolas’ font for the animation. If you’re running Windows XP or some kind of UNIX-like OS you may not see any text at all. The font can be changed in ‘Library’ without modifying all the ‘Text’ layers. Just be sure to change it to monospace one. Little corrections in masking layers might be needed but nothing too big.
  • Animation uses only two colors: bright green and dark green. You can change them in ‘Library’.
  • To change orbits angle edit ‘ORBITS-Y/R’ parameters also in ‘Library’.

P.S. It would be awesome to make a model of ‘MD1032’ ship (MD = Material Defender) in Synfig but I need to return to my lip syncing practice. Maybe someday…

P.P.S. Oh yes, I’ve included Pluto as member of Solar system. Legends say it’s still crying over the fact that evil scientists booted it off the official list of Planets, so I wanted to make it a bit happier :slight_smile:

Descent2.sifz (65.5 KB)

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