Note: I don't develop Wolfcam. All credit goes to brugal - I just try to help the community use the tools, answer questions, and give advice.

Moviemaking Discord | #WolfcamQL on QuakeNet | WolfcamQL Cvarlist

The first portion of this guide will be dedicated to setting up Wolfcam, and learning the basics. After that, I'll go more in-depth and explain the advanced aspects of Wolfcam.

INSTALLATION

Download WolfcamQL HERE. The latest version is: 12.0 2018-06-21. The ESR thread is HERE.

Extract all the files to your desired installation directory (for the purpose of this guide, I will use c:\wolfcamql). Next, open up your Quake Live directory, normally located at:

Code:

%programfiles(x86)%\steam\steamapps\common\quake live\

And copy all the contents of your baseq3 over to the WolfcamQL baseq3.

If you don't copy everything properly, then you will get an error screen similar to this:

no-pk3s.jpg

Now, everything should be installed properly. The next step is starting up the program. I use a batch file to launch WolfcamQL, and I think this is the best way to do it.

First, you need to open your text editor, create a new text document, and add this to it:

Code:

@echo off
start wolfcamql +set fs_homepath "c:\wolfcamql" +set r_fullscreen "0"

Note: This changes the directory that the video output is saved to (the jpg, tga, avi or wav output).

You would obviously replace "c:\wolfcamql" with your installation directory, and save as .bat. Once this is done, you can safely launch WolfcamQL. After this, you need to work on configuring the program.

If you want to build your own config, that's perfectly fine, but I have a premade config that anyone can use. It can be found at the top of this post. It has detailed information on (most) cvars, and the quality is as high as possible. Of course, there will probably be quite a few personal tweaks and changes that you will want to make, which is perfectly fine.

Make sure that the config is in the right place, and named properly: c:\wolfcamql\wolfcam-ql\autoexec.cfg, or it (probably) won't work.

That's it! If you can launch the program without any errors, then you have successfully installed WolfcamQL!


CUTTING DEMOS

Once WolfcamQL is configured properly, and runs without any errors, you can start watching demos. If you have a full-length demo with a certain part that you would like to cut out, you can.

Load the demo using the "QUAKELIVE-DEMOS" button in the main menu (assuming the demo is in your Quake Live demos folder, not your WolfcamQL one), then scroll through the list until you find the demo you want.

Once the demo is playing, wait until you find the part you want to cut out. When you find it, pause the demo and find a good spot to start recording. You can make a bind to help with this:

Code:

bind n "pause;record"
bind m "stoprecord"

With this bind, hit "n" to start recording, then hit "m" when you want to stop recording. This will create a new demo with just this small section in it.

When you have your demos cut, and want to start capturing footage to upload to youtube, then read on.


BASIC CAPTURING

The act of capturing is quite simple; all you need to do is load your demo, and use the "/video" command. There's more to worry about than just that, though, so I will explain them here.

File type- There are a few available output filetypes. Jpg, tga, avi. Tga and avi are uncompressed, which means there is no loss in quality whatsoever, but the filesizes are much larger than jpg.

Framerate- You can capture at any framerate, but higher framerates are seldom necessary. To capture a quick clip and upload to youtube, use 30. Set your framerate via cl_aviFrameRate.

Resolution- The standard nowadays is 16:9 (1280x720, 1920x1080, etc.), but the difference in quality between 720p and 1080p on youtube is so small that not many people bother. If you plan only to upload your video to youtube, capture/render at 720p, but for downloads, use 1080p as a "max quality" standard.

Sound- Avi output is useful because it outputs a single file, as opposed to a series of images (jpg and tga), along with a wav. Use "/video jpg wav" to save sound as well, or "/video avins" to output the wav with avi.

Notes:

• If you want to use z-buffers (depth buffers, advanced users only), then you need to use tga output. No other filetype works.
• Higher framerates (200+) can be useful if you plan on slowing your clips down in your editing program, such as Sony Vegas or After Effects, because it won't get choppy (not enough frames).
• If your monitor doesn't support higher resolutions, like 1920x1080, you can use r_useFbo to go beyond your limited resolution.

After you've decided on all your settings, you can finally start capturing. Open your demo and type "/video jpg wav name awesome" when you want to start capturing. It will DRAMATICALLY slow down playback; this is to be expected. For all you who don't know what common sense is, the outputted avi will also play slowly. This is also to be expected, and is NOT an abnormality.

Note: "jpg" can be replaced with "tga" or "avi", as mentioned above. Also, you can remove the "wav" if you don't want sound, or are using avi. And finally, you can name it whatever you want.

When you want to stop capturing, use "/stopvideo". If you use the console, you should make sure to delete the frames that have the console in them, or it will be ugly.

Now you can load your video into a program like VirtualDub, Sony Vegas, pjBmp2Avi, or whatever you want to use to render your video.

Note: Sony Vegas 9 Pro (the version I use) can only load a max of 100 frames per second, so if you capture at a higher framerate than that, be sure to scale down your video track or it will be slowed down.

Rendering and encoding videos isn't my specialty, but there are good tutorials meant to help with that, such as THIS.

HUD stretching fix

There was a new feature added in version 8.4 which changed how HUD elements behave. Before this update, a 640x480 grid was used regardless of the actual screen resolution.

With this new cvar (cg_wideScreen), you are no longer limited to the original grid, and can use the co-ordinates provided by your resolution. If you want to center an item on a 1920-pixel wide screen, set its x-offset to 960. On 1280, set it to 640, and so on. The scoreboard still needs fixing, along with the other hard-coded HUD items such as health and armor.

Easy ad overrides

As of 8.5, there was a new cvar added called cg_adShaderOverride, which allows you to override each advertisement with your own shader. You can change each individual ad on the map, or change them all. Here's how it works:

Code:

cg_adShaderOverride "1"
cg_adShader1 "myad1"
cg_adShader2 "myad2"
cg_adShader3 "myad3"

Notes:

• You can find out the number for each ad on the map by using "devmap <mapname>", then "gotoad <num>".
• For any of this to work, you need to make your own shaders. I'll write a guide on the wiki and put a direct link here, because I don't want any more clutter in this post. I have a very tight character budget.

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Here is a list of things I plan to add to this post sometime in the future:

• Freecamming
• Q3 blood and gib support
• Motion blur
• Special effects
• Checkpointing

This new post is unfinished, so if anyone wants me to add anything, or inspire me to add stuff that I already know needs adding, let me know.