Speaking With the Blizzard Cinematics Team

TheFrunj writes "Blizzard's games, such as World of Warcraft and StarCraft, are perhaps known for their breathtaking cinematics as much as for their gameplay. The process behind these cinematics is complex, involving an entire modeling and coding team — they even needed to make their own physics engine! AtomicMPC has the full story behind these incredible videos. Quoting: 'Storyboards become animated storyboards (thanks to a storyboard team who are also trained animators) complete with temporary music to help set the tone and get the pacing right. Then the animators and modeling team get involved, creating a rough 3D version of the final animation. While the modeling team works on characters and environments, the animators work with very low polygon characters and as the models are refined and updated the animations are refined. This is also where production technicians get involved, supporting the more technical developments like hair and skeletal systems for the characters. And then the effects team kicks into gear. '"

Comments

Re:we want more

[ringbarer]

I'm sure all the nerds would jizz their training pants if the Cinematic team released a full length movie.

Everyone else who cares about narrative and plot would be disappointed with 90+ minutes of voice-overs and slow pans because the Cinematic team can't do lipsync or write a coherent script. (Metzen's coke-addled ramblings do NOT count)

Fuck, go back to Spirits Within and remember how shit it was. Anything Blizz do will be a sub-par knock-off.

Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop wasting time on pointless cinematics and work on the game. You remember the game, right? The most important part of a videogame?

If nothing else, they can save money by getting rid of all these people. They'd still charge $15/mo for WoW and $50+ for a goddamn videogame though.