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PBE: League Director and the Replay API (new content creation tools)

RiotRiot ThEntropist·2/7/2019, 5:04:41 PM·1 votes·157,408 views

Hey content creators! Over the last year, we've been trying to improve our creator support programs, with a focus on leveling up globally.

Hopefully you've seen global initiatives like the League Partner Program and checked out the new All-Star Event format in 2018. With those, we want to help connect streamers and video creators to each other and to Riot, but for this post, we're gonna look to the future and talk about our plans around the bread and butter of content creation: actually making cool shit.

Enter: the new Replay API and League Director.

League Director is a downloadable content creation tool that hooks up to the new Replay API on League (more on this below). Play a replay from your match history, boot up League Director, and you'll have access to a timeline, camera tools, video exporting, and a lot more.

Here are a few of the features we'd love for you to try out:

Free camera movement https://media.giphy.com/media/EpWuZkxi3Q9VNVs9fv/giphy.gif

Element visibility https://media.giphy.com/media/OOSUZIBZWxSWlaHt2S/giphy.gif

Timeline editing https://media.giphy.com/media/AFvmD1M2bcA0Ivf1Fk/giphy.gif

Video exporting https://media.giphy.com/media/1jvZUjl8yj0w9l8JHO/giphy.gif

We're happy to also announce that League Director will be open source, meaning community developers can create their own copies with new features and modify and release them as they wish as long it's free and fully available. The current landscape of community-created tools require a lot of manual fixes by their devs as League patches, while League Director should require minimal upkeep (fingers crossed).

League Director is just one example of a tool that community developers could make using the newly-released Replay API. We're really excited to see everyone get stuck in and get creative with the tools we're opening up to the public. Read more about that here.

One note on League Director: consider this release a jumping off point for the community; we're likely not going to keep updating the public tool with large content updates. For the public release, we hope the community can continue owning and developing League Director beyond its current capabilities through the Replay API, but please give us your feedback on what works and what doesn't!

Right now, the tool is only available in English, but will be usable on replays on all servers from the current patch. We hope to release the tool for all live servers during patch 9.4.

Before we go, we all want to give a huge thank you to the work that community creators like SkinSpotlights and League of Editing have been doing over the last few years to push the boundaries of what's possible in League's engine. We have been using SkinSpotlights' Creator Suite alongside our own tools and art internally for a while now - gameplay trailers like Sylas, The Day Before Snowdown, and The Coven and the Eclipse would not have been possible without resources from the League community.

Download League Director from Riot Github (PBE only for now, full release in patch 9.4)

Check out the Replay API on Riot Developer Portal

67 Comments

RiotRiot ThEntropist2/7/2019, 5:06:54 PM28 votes

Also,

One of the Gameplay Capture Artist on our team made some simple tutorial videos, check them out if your interested in learning the basics of the tool:

Feature Rundown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzqydcrw89A&feature=youtu.be

Example Shot Walk through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuHLaDRReRU&feature=youtu.be

Packun Flower2/7/2019, 5:43:12 PM26 votes

Creator: looks cool, lemme try it.

Downloads.

Runs Program.

League Client: You have been banned for use of 3rd party apps.

Creator: ... well played Riot..

In all seriousness though. This is pretty awesome of you guys to do this for us. Thank you.

DrCyanide2/7/2019, 5:13:34 PM9 votes

Looks awesome! I know a while back I wanted to mess with free camera stuff, but didn't want to go through the hassle/risk of being banned with a third party program. Nice that there's an official solution now!

Sebasketbal2/7/2019, 6:09:04 PM4 votes

I'm really hyped for this feature to make cinematics for my montages! I only have a few questions, in Creatorsuite Spotlight you could add things like fog, set a different sky and add blur. Will those features be implemented to this editor aswell?

Infernape2/7/2019, 5:23:14 PM4 votes

Speaking of League's engine, I've always wondered if it's something Riot created from scratch or is based on another engine (like GoldSrc being based on the Quake engine).

Ηarald2/7/2019, 5:16:23 PM3 votes

this is crazy, thank you riot! <3

Small Boobs Ahri2/7/2019, 5:17:02 PM3 votes

THANK GOD ! it's so cool for the editors.

Hexs Fortune2/7/2019, 7:39:47 PM3 votes

Riot should add a skybox to league

rtbf2256182412/8/2019, 1:47:20 AM3 votes

Only took 10 years but at least it is done.

Daraèn2/7/2019, 9:22:48 PM2 votes

This is so cool. Thank you alot I am learning programming with python in school right now and had nothing to do in my free time now i can make something for my favourite game. Thanks alot <3

Míellá2/7/2019, 5:30:14 PM2 votes

YES

Rebel Phoenix172/7/2019, 6:30:33 PM2 votes

I have to ask how the quality is on exporting? The current replays record function exports really terrible quality webm files.

Sträx2/7/2019, 6:53:49 PM2 votes

So the tool looks absolutely amazing. Although, I do wonder if particle manager will be implanted (so you can disable just certain and not all). Also with creator suite it's nearly impossible to record a moving cine and a green screen (because the replay is always different for a tiny bit). Is this still the case with the new timeline?

I would also like to know whether I will be able to disable just 1 champion and not all of them, and possibly even minions?

Who Fed Ru2/7/2019, 8:01:14 PM2 votes

naisu

DarkSpiritslayer2/7/2019, 8:56:58 PM2 votes

wow thats awesome!

Hyrum Graff2/8/2019, 12:22:02 AM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot ThEntropist,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=AmtMIQB3,comment-id=,timestamp=2019-02-07T17:04:41.567+0000)

We're happy to also announce that League Director will be open source, meaning community developers can create their own copies with new features and modify and release them as they wish as long it&#039;s free and fully available.

Shouldn't you license it GPLv3+ then, instead of Apache2.0?

Vírtue2/7/2019, 7:24:57 PM1 votes

So... Is it gonna export it as .webm ?

killwhenlick12/20/2019, 8:17:05 AM1 votes

SOOOOOOO

I got the new app, I tried to find the api disabled and change it to enable. NANI!!! It does not exist???

help

is it bug or am I looking at the wrong place?

Paniro2/7/2019, 6:41:57 PM1 votes

Is it possible to replay games from a previous patch with this?

2Spoon2/8/2019, 4:02:54 AM1 votes

Is there any way to fix the tree outlines or parts of the map that don't have back facing terrain? I am loving the program so far but this is the main issue I'm having as it makes a lot of shots look unusable. https://imgur.com/a/9oGty49

Celestin66692/8/2019, 6:47:23 AM1 votes

Will it be inplemented in replay system, so we dont have to open another programm to do stuff like with skins spolights?

Dragunnitum2/8/2019, 10:55:05 AM1 votes

cries tears of joy

xxxDogmanxxx2/8/2019, 12:10:56 PM1 votes

I love the free camera movement, lossless encoding, and the FPS setting. Sounds amazing and will be really useful.

SirOblivious2/8/2019, 4:04:38 PM1 votes

So with the video exporting feature of this, that means that I don't need to use a screen capture software and risk a choppy framerate? (and will we be able to animate the models?)

REFORMED BREEXY2/8/2019, 4:33:51 PM1 votes

Can i have question . What's the bigest different between this and Creator Suite ?

RGM Player2/8/2019, 5:11:55 PM1 votes

What do you think about add a feature that allows us to change the map theme. Something really cool would be also the possibility to start from zero, add champions and move, resize, rotate etc.. them, add sounds, lights etc... Also the possibility to import external 3D models.

A sort of combination between Adobe premier, C4D(or similar) and Adobe After effects in one program for league of legends. That would be the definitive software to use for league editing.

Lars Fury2/8/2019, 6:59:22 PM1 votes

A feature that should be added is exporting replays as FBX so content creators can create edits in other programs such as Cinema 4D or Blender.

DivineUnicorn2/8/2019, 7:54:57 PM1 votes

As a content creator, how will the replay system be affected by updates?

To clarify, some old replays can’t be accessed due to a minor update. It can be incredibly frustrating (or even summoner 3 ing) to have a really good clip of a late night game, only to see the next morning that the replay expired.

Any comments on how you guys can work around that? Otherwise, still a huge improvement to the creator community!

Iron Juice2/10/2019, 12:12:18 PM1 votes

Will you be able to open other peoples replays with this tool? If not is there any easy way of doing that, i wasn't able to do it with creator suite.

JAYLEN522/10/2019, 4:53:42 PM1 votes

This is a great step in the right direction, but it does needs to some improvement starting by increasing the load time, no like seriously after clicking on league director, its takes millennials to open, first time opening the software I though it didn't work.

Moonboy652/7/2019, 7:41:48 PM1 votes

can you make the background transparent and take a picture in png?

SpicyRussian 2/24/2019, 10:44:53 PM1 votes

Hello! I am an aspiring twitch streamer, le name is SpicyRussian :) and this looks amazing to add content to my channel where it is lacking right now! But whenever I bring up a replay and check all the boxes... nothing happens within the replay window. It just stays the regular replay window without the box to control it all. When I ctrl esc, I can see the control panel (League director) and it can control the replay but it does not pop up within the replay window itself. Any tips? Thank you so much btw RIOT! This is an amazing game and I am proud to be able to create things for it! (POPPY IS BAE) Poppy

(I did watch the tutorials btw)

Taikobou3/4/2019, 12:39:16 AM1 votes

Emotes wont go away and wont scale, so if you zoom out to get a large view of the map, giant emotes will pop-up during the match.