Computer Graphics World

April 2009 29 Gaming•Multimedia n n n n having it planned out from the beginning. It's this on-the-fly nature that has allowed "Chadam" to progress so smoothly—even if this isn't exactly Hollywood, yet. "As we've seen in game development, when you give artists tools that allow them to make modifications instantly and see re- sults instantly, they have an entirely higher level of productivity," claims Tim Swee- ney, founder of Epic Games and creator of the Unreal Engine technology. "Even if our tools are simpler and less powerful than [traditional modeling and animation tools], they allow artists to do cool stuff faster. I think in many cases that's better." Sweeney continues: "We're about to see a complete inversion of that marketplace where real-time game tools take over. With artists' time being so valuable, they don't want to wait around for a day for previsu- alization of their scenes; they want to see it right now. If they can see it right now, they don't need as many special effects as they would have had in the offline render." Nevertheless, even HDFilms did not completely go real time for "Chadam," and the artists continue to use traditional 3D modeling and animation software for the core work. Rather, the gaming tools are supplementing these packages. A Virtual Backlot at does not negate any of the advantages of HDFilms' new system, including the ability to create a virtual backlot of charac- ter models, environments, and animations that can be fine-tuned and ported to televi- sion or video games in the future. e fact that "Chadam" was created inside a video game engine makes the transition to inter- active entertainment natural. According to Hall, all the money that is being spent cre- ating these assets translates almost directly into a video game production. "You come out ahead of the game pro- ducing something like this and dovetailing into a game, and vice versa," contends Hall. If you create a game, you can go into the kind of production we're doing with "Cha- dam," Hall says, but notes that you'll have to make some changes. In games, you're living with certain memory constraints concerning texture sizes and the number of animation types, and we're not, he explains. e art- ists can load up a scene with huge textures, knowing that's the only place viewers are go- ing to see, and the PC is not going to have to render a whole city behind it. Also, the group can be extremely de- tailed and specific in its animations; they know they are just going to use the ani- mation for that scene. "You have to run a balance in a game," Hall adds. "However, there's no question that it's a huge advan- tage moving laterally." Hall certainly hopes "Chadam" finds an online audience, whether broadband or wireless, and hopes to bring these charac- ters to both television and video games in the future, as well. But the ultimate goal with this project, outside of entertaining an online audience, is to prove that UE3 can be used for much more than creating blockbuster games. "Our goal is to set up a way of producing these kinds of animations that are incred- ibly cost-effective and offer opportunities for beginning to intermediate artists to get involved and produce something that's great under the supervision of an advanced artist," explains Hall. "Essentially, we'll have created a cost-effective way to create a type of 3D animation. Hall continues: "Although you can do cost-effective animation with [traditional DCC software], the issue is how it looks at a budget of, let's say, $100,000. If you do the same thing using Unreal and our process, I believe our version will almost always con- tain more content under that compressed budget. We're not trying to replace [those other tools]; it's just a different avenue for a controlled budget to produce these things for the Internet or television." So far, Hall has had an open informa- tional policy regarding this process, but he cautions that it may turn out that ev- erything his team has learned becomes so significant that he won't want to give away the golden goose. Even if he does decide to share this new CG process in more de- tail, it will be a while before he can actu- ally articulate this to others. e team is still learning, not just with "Chadam," but with its second test case. Hall believes that "Chadam" will open Hollywood's eyes to what Unreal can do. And he's happy to be leading the new wave of CG storytelling using this game engine technology. n John Gaudiosi has been covering the video game business for more than 15 years for outlets such as The Washington Post, Wired Magazine, Reuters, and AOL Games. He can be reached at JGaudiosi@aol.com. UE3's Matinee enables the artists to review changes in real time. The group also used the tool for some keyframing, camera work, lighting, and particles.

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