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Speaking With the Blizzard Cinematics Team

Posted by Soulskill on from the murlocs-zerg-and-giant-demon-guys dept.

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. '"

4 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. we want more by omgarthas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Too bad we just get one of these each year or so :(

    1. Re:we want more by DeadDecoy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ya, my first question would be why they haven't made a movie yet. I don't care if it's starcraft, warcraft, or diablo, I'd drool over it just the same.

    2. Re:we want more by adamkennedy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Setting the scene or the tone for something is easy.

      You have a couple of shiny eye-candy "hero shots", maybe introduce the opening of the storyline.

      That's the easy part. Tons of shitty movies are able to put together a pretty awesome looking trailer.

      Putting together enough complexity, story telling and depth to carry an entire movie is a whole different kettle of fish.

  2. Am I the only one? by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Am I the only one who could care less about cinematics in video games?

    Any time I am playing a game and a cut scene occurs, all it does is remove me from the game play, and I just find the "skip" button as quickly as possible.

    When I am playing a game, I want it to be interactive. I want control, I want to act as the character. Cut scenes and cinematics totally detract from that - they take me out to a third person view they act like the "third wall" still exists, when in the rest of the game, it does not exist.

    At the end of it - if I wanted to watch a film, that is what I would be doing, not playing a video game.

    I wish all of these cut scenes and cinematics were just add-ons later or dropped; imagine how much quicker a game could be released if so much time and money was not invested in this.