S3 - Cinematic Cutscenes?

tomst

When I saw the Season 2 Cinematic trailer not long ago, it reminded me just how nice the cutscenes can look (and used to look in the old LucasArts days).

I'm talking of course about the increase in Polygons, so that every character and environment gets a major boost in terms of texture quality, which really brings it to life.

I'm wondering whether this would be a possible thing to consider for S3, at least for intros? Of course I realize the limitations of it within the Web Episodic realm, the major being an increase in file size and so on, but just look at the cinematic trailer of S2, it looks - amazing.

What do you think?

Will

Actually, I think they are using the exact same models we always use. The difference is that it is rendered entirely in maya, so we can do all sorts of extra lighting passes and filters. Plus everything is hand animated.

Goalseil

Will wrote: »

Actually, I think they are using the exact same models we always use. The difference is that it is rendered entirely in maya, so we can do all sorts of extra lighting passes and filters. Plus everything is hand animated.

Just out of interest, how long did the hand animation proccess took?

TelltaleTool

A long time.

Dedlok

Personally I kinda perfer games that stick to in-game cutscenes, It's okay for MAYBE the beginning and/or end of a game, but sometimes seeing a scene rendered in in glorious beautiful cg and then going back to simpler graphics (sometimes to even continue the cutscene already in progress) can be pretty jarring. Granted key, some important or key scenes can be allowed to have it, but I still perfer in-game cutscenes to the prettied up cg.

Just my 2 cents.

Badwolf

Dedlok wrote: »

It's okay for MAYBE the beginning and/or end of a game, but sometimes seeing a scene rendered in in glorious beautiful cg and then going back to simpler graphics (sometimes to even continue the cutscene already in progress) can be pretty jarring.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's annoying, especially on games where you can get different equipment/suits for characters which show up in gameplay but magically revert to the character's default stuff whenever a cutscene comes on (prime offender, Ratchet and Clank on the PSP).

Sometimes FMVs are useful, like in the Final Fantasy games where you couldn't get the sense of scale, or the number of people wandering a street or whatever using just in-game graphics, but I still prefer cutscenes to be rendered in real-time.

Harley Quinn

I am completely lost here

Oh wait no, I think I get you.

xChri5x

Yeah, unless the whole game looks as good as the cutscenes I'd be against this.

I am looking forward to another amazing cinematic trailer for Season 3 though. It's going to be tough to top the last one.

Harley Quinn

I always thought the cut scenes in the early MI looks really odd and random.

kadji-kun

Seeing as though all the features shown in the prerendered footage can be done on the PC today with moderately new pc hardware. Was just playing Lego Indiana Jones, and found that it runs pretty well on low end Dell laptops. Minus Ambient Occlusion and Antialiasing and these features can be done on the computers of the general PC populace. If you don't believe me, check out the hardware survey Steam provides online.


Now making for a lightweight episodic online series? Well that may be a problem. It all relies on who are the programmers and what they are capable of.

EDIT: features that truly require high end hardware are HDR (Sam & Max really doesnt need this), High Pass Depth of Field (You can still incorporate this into S&M, but the blur passes should be a lot less. Honestly, just have the option to set the quality of the DoF), 2048x2048+ texture resolutions (Its a little excessive using this high a texture resolution anyways), real time ambient occlusion (this is pretty new to gaming and truely makes things look as if they are prerendered....honestly, we can live without this).

All you need to do is add a light amount of Bloom and Low Pass Depth of Field, and you should have yourself something that looks generally amazing. Depth of Field itself also can be used only for Conversations and cinematic.