Computer Graphics World

April 2009 26 n n n n Gaming•Multimedia ment, limited to our computer specs." HDFilms is working with Exigent, former game developer Paul Steed's com- pany, to re-create the original character models designed by Pardee for use in the Unreal engine. "Paul Steed is well known for being the key character modeler in top video game franchises, such as Quake," says Hall. "Taking two-dimensional char- acters that were not designed for 3D space has its challenges, and it is important to have someone building your models who understands and brings an essential cre- ative component to the mix to help make it all work." A good portion of the work is actually done outside the game engine. e artists build and animate the characters mainly using Autodesk's 3ds Max. Because many of the characters have odd designs and proportions, keyframing offers the most suitable animation option. In addition to 3ds Max, the group also is doing some keyframing within Unreal's Matinee. Ac- cording to Hall, there's a lot that can be done in Matinee that helps development on the fly; for instance, the team is able to review many of its changes in real time, rather than waiting for new renders with- in 3ds Max. For the facial animation, the artists used OC3 Entertainment's FaceFX. For some action sequences, the group turned to motion capture, provided by House of Moves (HOM). e goal was to shoot everything in one day, but in the end, an additional day was required for pickups. e main stage at HOM is equipped with 64 Vicon MX-F40 cameras for capturing body and basic finger articulation. For the "Chadam" project, the team focused solely on the movements of the characters' bodies, which was done inside the 70x40x22-foot volume. Later, the data was applied to the characters with Autodesk's MotionBuilder. Hall says collaboration has been a key component of this project, even when it came to outsourcing the mocap work. Rather than walking in and asking for a list of animations, he instead requested that the HOM team read the "Chadam" script to determine which actions would be handled more efficiently and creatively through motion capture as opposed to keyframing. Within the 'Chadam' World Digital ToyBox, led by Landon Pascual, is filling in the environments and creating the special effects. e artists use primar- ily 3ds Max, along with Pixologic's ZBrush and Ryan Clark's CrazyBump, for the en- vironments. Most of the special effects, on the other hand, are handled by the particle system within the Unreal engine. e lighting, meanwhile, also is han- dled within Unreal. "We're using a heavy amount of dynamic lighting and high- quality ambient occlusion. ere's no need to optimize based on what we're doing. e results are in real time and look beauti- ful," Hall explains. "What you're going to see will be in-game renders." e size of the "Chadam" team is actu- ally a little smaller than those Hall assem- bled in the early days of Monolith's game development. When creating a game and cinematics for in-game presentation, de- velopers don't have the advantage of con- trolling exactly what the player will see at all times because of the interactivity. Yet, they have to live within the game-specific environments because [the scenes] will run from a level to an in-game cinematic. In contrast, HDFilms operates much more like a film studio. ere doesn't have to be a back to the buildings in the world of "Chadam." e crew has the luxury of knowing it can go back and edit these UE3-rendered scenes and switch back and forth from camera angle to camera angle with a nonlinear editing system. All the camera work is handled in Unreal through Matinee. Once the scenes are set up, the renders are dumped as single im- ages and composited in Adobe's Premiere. "We're designing our show around what- ever the limitations are for game technol- ogy," explains Hall. "at makes the size of the team manageable because we don't need 50 people or an army of program- mers. When you're doing a game, you're trying to make something that surpasses what's previously been done with the Un- real Engine and distinguish yourself that way. In this case, [we don't believe anyone has] ever done anything like this with the Unreal Engine." at said, Hall emphasizes that he's not out to create the next Shrek, nor does he Former founder of game developer Monolith, Jace Hall is trying to bring game techniques to the Hollywood stage in an attempt to revolutionize and streamline the production process for television and online projects.

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