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Pushing the Envelope For Matrix Reloaded SFX
BenTheDewpendent writes "I just read Steve Silberman's article on the Matrix Reloaded over at wired. I was only slightly anxious to see it previous to reading the article but what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame."
A few months back Newsweek did a cover story on the Matrix movies.
read it here
Read the article, or any number of other articles about the sequels - the Matrix was MEANT to be a trilogy. They aren't stretching the original story, they're telling more of it.
The full story is here: http://www.arenafootball.com/around_the_afl/afl_he adlines/352498.html
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See if I can precis here, for you:
A splinter faction ("ESC") of renegade uber-compositors and animators, originating at Mass.Illusion (founded by Douglas Trumball), led by some guy with the superhero name of Gaeta, has created the first true photogrammetric virtual cinematography technique, using gobs and gobs of technology and expertise. This technology has been put to good use in the new Matrix movies; the team works at a decommissioned 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda. Up to 500 artists have been hired.
Here's an example of what these people are like:
How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.
Wow. That is... just... nuts. There's other good examples, like the mock highway they built, or the world's biggest motion-capture dojo.
It's definitely worth reading if you haven't. Particularly interesting are the bits where Gaeta talks about the in-joke he shares with the Wachowskis regarding the potential subversive uses, particularly for the military.. who have already directed DARPA funds towards such and end. (And before you yell about innefectual gov't spending, I'll remind the reader that DARPA gets shit done.) Even the possibility that this work they've done opens the door that much wider for nightmarish Orwellian realities. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Good job, too, on the latter count. The PR guy told us that the game has some *major* spoilers for Reloaded, and he was kind of pissed off at having had to see the footage to do his job! Thankfully he didn't spill his guts to us, though from the name of one of the levels I have a feeling one of the big twists involves Morpheus.
There was also a real "WTF?" moment as well when he was describing some of the enemies you meet (and the only way to kill them) in the Chateau level (the place with the fancy staircase from the trailers). Is this The Matrix or Buffy?
Actually, the game itself is like a cross between Xbox Buffy and Max Payne, with some Driver/Chase HQ sections in between. (Reflections supposedly worked on the car physics.) Combat in bullet-time (called 'focus' here, though it works just like in Max Payne, somewhat ironic considering where Rockstar ripped the idea off from!) is a good laugh, and your character picks up skills as they go. And yes, you can run up walls. There's also a neat 'hacking' (ie, cheat) mode where you can find codes online and enter them into the game to download new moves into your character. Looks pretty damn good overall, though hopefully the Xbox version will have slightly less jaggy graphics on some of the levels, as that's what I'll be playing it on!
All the main Matrix characters supposedly show up in the game, crossing over with events in the film, though I only saw Trinity and Agent Smith. The character models looked good for the most part, though some of the non mo-capped character movements were a bit wobbly.
The bad news - Jada Pinkett Smith's voice acting was really quite lousy! [Shopgirl monotone] "Let's get the hell out of here." Very wooden. I hope she's not like this throughout the film!
Since the film and game come out on the same day, I'd strongly recommend seeing the film before playing the game if you want to avoid having the ending of Reloaded spoiled...
You must think in Russian.