Blizzard Cinematic Quality Deteriorating?

hey guys as you all know blizzard is pretty infamous for their awesome looking cinematics. ever since warcraft 3 the visual spectacle was seriously amazing (not saying sc or d1/2 were bad just graphics wise). and sc2 was no exception. however i felt like the first cinematic (the deal- otherwise known as the cinematic trailer first shown when it was announced) was much nicer than all the other 3 cinematics. the whole texture and reflectivity of the armor was seriously awesome. but anyways if you just pay attention to the skin features on ordinary humans, human kerrigan, raynor, and tychus all had a more cartoony feel than tychus in the first trailer. is it just me or are they actually not as high quality as the first one? how do u think the HotS cinematics will be?

I don't agree. I thought they got better and better as the story progressed.

First Tychus trailer was used as SC2 announcement teaser, thats why it has better quality.

All CGI in game are good in quality, but I don't like ingame movies on game engine, that we have 80% of all cinematics. They have no anti aliasing, and with low graphic settings there are totally different textures (on low graphic settings Raynor looks a lot like 20 y.o. guy)

I wasn't dissatisfied with the visual quality of the cutscenes but with the poor content of them.

1) There were nothing more than that we saw in the previews - don't show every cutscene in the preview, Blizzard!

2) I was expecting at least minor battle of terran units against zerg in the New Gettysburg cutscene, some siege tanks bashing zerg units and then falling under the endless swarm of zerg, I was expecting the marines with the nuke blast on the background from the first cutscene to be in the New Gettysburg cutscene. But everything we've got was Kerrigan shooting few bullets...

3) The ending cutscene - what a letdown. Number of zerg units in that cutscene: 0. Why? They could at least show the blast like in the Fury of the Xel'Naga cutscene from Brood War. But everything we saw was 5 marines.

I think the cutscenes in the original Starcraft and Brood War were much better and more epic than that we've got in Wings of Liberty. Even Warcraft 3 cutscenes were better than Starcraft 2 cutscenes from content related view. Just my opinion.

@Exister: On Extreme with 4xAA, they look magnificient annnnd they allow for a loooot more cutscenes. So, we get dozens instead of a couple.

The in game cinematics were cool but they needed more set pieces. What the prerendered cinematics should've done was really do MASSIVE battles with hundreds and hunreds of zerglings / siege tanks and the likes and have the in game cinematics do the character development.

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Originally Posted by Wankey

The in game cinematics were cool but they needed more set pieces. What the prerendered cinematics should've done was really do MASSIVE battles with hundreds and hunreds of zerglings / siege tanks and the likes and have the in game cinematics do the character development.

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Yes indeed - one disappointing (game engine) cutscene was "Card to Play". After having seen the SC: Ghost intro/trailer several years ago, the number of zerg onscreen at any given time in "Card to Play" was a extremely lacking.

As for the skin shader - It always looked like Tychus was extreme 'dity' in the original cinematic which happened to make it look more detailed.

Well one thing Blizzard had never dissapointed me in the past were their awe-inspiring cinematics, and WoL was no exception

Blizzard completely changed their workflow after doing the Anouncement Trailer for StarCraft 2. That might have lead to any minor differences of style between that and the remaining 3 cinematics.

As a CG artist myself (you might have seen StarCraft First Contact, and the teasers for StarCraft Final Metamorphosis), I fully understand both where the fans are coming from (more units, set pieces, massive battles), but also where the cinematic artists are coming from. The amount of work to pull off an epic battle scene is horrendous and inhuman.

I actually think the quality of the three other CG cinematics in SC2 WoL is superior to that of the announcement cinematic. The best thing about Blizzard cinematics however is that they age gracefully. Look at the SC1 cinematics, the Diablo 2, War 3, etc. They all look good to this day. They passed the test of time, because of brilliant artistic direction.

Old CGI vodeos are cheaper, I think. The new requires a lot moneys (but I think, it's not a problem for Activision-Blizzard)

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Originally Posted by Freespace

As a CG artist myself (you might have seen StarCraft First Contact, and the teasers for StarCraft Final Metamorphosis), I fully understand both where the fans are coming from (more units, set pieces, massive battles), but also where the cinematic artists are coming from. The amount of work to pull off an epic battle scene is horrendous and inhuman.

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I know it is not easy, but it was possible 12 years ago, why not now? The better quality of today's movies really implies a lot less content? That's not exactly the way we should go, or is it?

And a little off-topic: There is some kind of embargo on information about Final Metamorphosis? I think many people are looking forward to it, but it is almost impossible to get at least few words about it.

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Originally Posted by Freespace

The best thing about Blizzard cinematics however is that they age gracefully. Look at the SC1 cinematics, the Diablo 2, War 3, etc. They all look good to this day. They passed the test of time, because of brilliant artistic direction.

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Exactly. Especially if you consider the year and budget available. Blizzard is certainly not the same company when they first rendered the first cinematics for SC or D1.

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Originally Posted by Existor

Old CGI vodeos are cheaper, I think. The new requires a lot moneys (but I think, it's not a problem for Activision-Blizzard)

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It's a bit more complicated than that. Let's take a clear example:

A Terran Marine character.

In 1998: You model it (~1.000.000 polygons), make textures (1k - 2k resolution for whole armor), no shader work (just standard texture shader where you tweak specularity), standard rig (there is the built-in biped rig in 3dsmax), animate to the best of your ability, place basic Lights to simulate real life lighting and render. Once rendered, that's your final result.

In 2010: You model it (~5.000.000 polygons for the armor, several million polygons for the organic head), make textures (8k maps for the head, which include separate skin, subskin, subsurface scattering, reflection, specular --- all this just for the head; then 8k maps for each piece of armor, like shoulder pad, torso, and these also mean diffuse, specular, bump, normal, emmissive, glossiness, masks, HDR), create shaders (properties of how the material behaves, like reflection, refraction, translucency, bumpiness, self illuminated areas, damaged areas, rusty areas, etc), complex rig (to control each and every piece of the armor, and to create hundreds of facial expressions moving the dozens of facial muscles), several iterations of animation (with video reference; no mo-cap for Blizzard), hair simulation (hair has always been hard to do in CGI, there's no shortcut), cloth simulation, create a complex lighting setup (from global illumination controllers to color bleed, secondary light bounces, photometric exposure control, raytraced area shadows, ambient occlusion), you then separate everything into layers (armor pieces, skin, hair, eye specularity, reflection, z-depth, motion blur velocity, particles, etc) to render all these separately in 32 bit, then you composite them together and have full control over how everything comes together, you do color correction, match scenes with one another, add other effects.

A bit more complex now, don't you think? :)

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Originally Posted by Romla

I know it is not easy, but it was possible 12 years ago, why not now? The better quality of today's movies really implies a lot less content? That's not exactly the way we should go, or is it?

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See above.

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Originally Posted by Romla

And a little off-topic: There is some kind of embargo on information about Final Metamorphosis? I think many people are looking forward to it, but it is almost impossible to get at least few words about it.

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Final Metamorphosis is nearing completion. It is a massive project, that I have to do in my free time. I do it for the love of the StarCraft universe and for the confusion when people think it's official. :)

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A bit more complex now, don't you think?

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A bit but its still unacceptable that, with all of Blizzard's trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of manpower, they haven't found some way to get around the very laws of logic. These lazy bastards aren't even trying anymore. I am boycotting HotS.

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Originally Posted by Freespace

In 2010: You model it (~5.000.000 polygons for the armor, several million polygons for the organic head), make textures (8k maps for the head, which include separate skin, subskin, subsurface scattering, reflection, specular --- all this just for the head; then 8k maps for each piece of armor, like shoulder pad, torso, and these also mean diffuse, specular, bump, normal, emmissive, glossiness, masks, HDR), create shaders (properties of how the material behaves, like reflection, refraction, translucency, bumpiness, self illuminated areas, damaged areas, rusty areas, etc), complex rig (to control each and every piece of the armor, and to create hundreds of facial expressions moving the dozens of facial muscles), several iterations of animation (with video reference; no mo-cap for Blizzard), hair simulation (hair has always been hard to do in CGI, there's no shortcut), cloth simulation, create a complex lighting setup (from global illumination controllers to color bleed, secondary light bounces, photometric exposure control, raytraced area shadows, ambient occlusion), you then separate everything into layers (armor pieces, skin, hair, eye specularity, reflection, z-depth, motion blur velocity, particles, etc) to render all these separately in 32 bit, then you composite them together and have full control over how everything comes together, you do color correction, match scenes with one another, add other effects.

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I'm curious, how many visual artists do you think Blizzard employs for one cinematic?

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Originally Posted by Genopath

I'm curious, how many visual artists do you think Blizzard employs for one cinematic?

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The cinematic team has around 100 people, from what I know. These are divided into teams (modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, hair simulation, fluid simulation, volumetric simulation, cloth simulation, animation, scene assembler, compositing) and they're all orchestrated by the art leads and directors. I know one of the modelers, and he is considered one of the most brilliant modelers in the whole industry. So they're all best of the best.

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Originally Posted by Freespace

The cinematic team has around 100 people, from what I know. These are divided into teams (modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, hair simulation, fluid simulation, volumetric simulation, cloth simulation, animation, scene assembler, compositing) and they're all orchestrated by the art leads and directors. I know one of the modelers, and he is considered one of the most brilliant modelers in the whole industry. So they're all best of the best.

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Amazing. Didn't know there was one single department for hair. lol

I remember using poser for a while and it was a pain in the ass to get it to the right place.

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Originally Posted by Genopath

Amazing. Didn't know there was one single department for hair. lol

I remember using poser for a while and it was a pain in the ass to get it to the right place.

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It behaves worse when you animate it. :)

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Originally Posted by Freespace

Final Metamorphosis is nearing completion. It is a massive project, that I have to do in my free time. I do it for the love of the StarCraft universe and for the confusion when people think it's official. :)

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Thanks for the answer.

As for the making of cinematic I would rather have more content with less quality if it is not possible to have both. :) I really liked the two cinematics for Star Wars The Old Republic (Deceived and Hope)...

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Originally Posted by Romla

Thanks for the answer.

As for the making of cinematic I would rather have more content with less quality if it is not possible to have both. :) I really liked the two cinematics for Star Wars The Old Republic (Deceived and Hope)...

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Final Meta is will deliver on both content and quality. That's why it took so long. :)

The Star Wars ToR cinematics were made by Blur Studios.

Their cinematics department handles cinematics for every game they make, every trailer they release.

With more projects now than ever, and an almost yearly release of some game/expansion, they have a lot more on their plates to deliver. Time is something they don't have on their side, so now they're focusing on a few key elements and letting in-game cinematics dictate the rest of their story needs.

If anything, I still hold Warcraft 3's cinematics in high regard compared to what we have in WoL, but I don't think WoL's cinematics are any indication that they're getting any worse. The Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm cinematics still blow my mind.

The only drawback I have with WoL's ending, and this is one of the fundamental appeals of their cinematics, is the lack of a grandiose explosion or large-scale battle scene. Starcraft had it (Tassadar's Sacrifice), Warcraft 3 had it (Archimonde), Diablo even had it (Worldstone exploding), and SC2's ending was even set up to have it - but it was not done properly in a full CG cinematic. Seeing an ingame cutscene of Zerg being wiped out is a complete anti-climactic let down especially when you knew everything was building up to this one moment.

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Originally Posted by Existor

Old CGI vodeos are cheaper, I think. The new requires a lot moneys (but I think, it's not a problem for Activision-Blizzard)

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That isn't the only problem; the biggest one is TIME, a resource Blizzard requires tremedously but then, some thousands of fans can do some pressure...

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Originally Posted by Freespace

Final Meta is will deliver on both content and quality. That's why it took so long. :)

The Star Wars ToR cinematics were made by Blur Studios.

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I am happy to hear that. :) And Blur Studio seems to be a treasury of great cinematics, good to know that too. :)

BTW Freespace - I was gonna watch your first contact video again, but when I click the link in your signature I get;
This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including:

• Activision
• GRY-OnLine S.A

I found the video on SCL's channel, but you might wanna update your signature. :)

just to specify, im comparing between pre-rendered cinematics. not between pre-rendered and rendered. i just feel that "the deal" looked alot more polished and realistic than the other ones.

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Originally Posted by PhanttoM

BTW Freespace - I was gonna watch your first contact video again, but when I click the link in your signature I get;
This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimants including:

• Activision
• GRY-OnLine S.A

I found the video on SCL's channel, but you might wanna update your signature. :)

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Heck, I forgot to update my sig. Thanks :)

I disagree. Yes, many of them didn't have the technical wonder of other cinematics, but they mostly used game engine rather than prerendered. But in actual cinematic terms they were all phenomenal. The dialog was good, and the music and camera work was breathtaking. The cinematic of Raynor's speech juxtaposed with the battle was one of my favorite game cinematics of all time.

If you listen to one of their really old podcasts (Circa 2008), they say the Tychus Findlay suit up cinematic was one of the most tough and enduring ones of the entire game.

We will never see "Avatar" or "Galatic Space battle" cinematics. It's too costly and would be insane to render. Most of the work would go unnoticed as well. What people don't realize is that the cinematic is rendered in the entire room. They can take the "Director's Camera" and move around the room, zoom in, stare at Tychus's ass during the last cinematic and let it play through. So in a giant space battle, EACH ship would have to get rendered I'd imagine and etc...would anyone seriously see/notice ALL of that? Hell no. Hell I bet people can't even name one mark/emblem on Tychus's suit other than the Ace of Spades Girl with the gun :P

The in-game cinematics are a good compromise, we get more cinematics and well yeah.
I realize the StarCraft Ghost trailer had "tons of marines" and ultralisks, but the models look like total crap.
The marines have that "BALD EGGHEAD LOOK WITH GENERIC FACE" sorta look. Man, Metzen's voice acting on the XO is so corny...lol.


Though, saying the quality of the cinematics has gone down could be no further from the truth. The amount of detail in the Tychus cinematic blows away ANYTHING they have done.

Yeah, they could make 4 minutes long cinematic of perfectly animated Kerrigan's ass with detail on every hemorrhoid, but what's the purpose of that? I think the purpose of cinematic is to show some story or interesting scene and not to show some piece of armor.

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Originally Posted by hyde

If you listen to one of their really old podcasts (Circa 2008), they say the Tychus Findlay suit up cinematic was one of the most tough and enduring ones of the entire game.

We will never see "Avatar" or "Galatic Space battle" cinematics. It's too costly and would be insane to render. Most of the work would go unnoticed as well. What people don't realize is that the cinematic is rendered in the entire room. They can take the "Director's Camera" and move around the room, zoom in, stare at Tychus's ass during the last cinematic and let it play through. So in a giant space battle, EACH ship would have to get rendered I'd imagine and etc...would anyone seriously see/notice ALL of that? Hell no. Hell I bet people can't even name one mark/emblem on Tychus's suit other than the Ace of Spades Girl with the gun :P

The in-game cinematics are a good compromise, we get more cinematics and well yeah.
I realize the StarCraft Ghost trailer had "tons of marines" and ultralisks, but the models look like total crap.
The marines have that "BALD EGGHEAD LOOK WITH GENERIC FACE" sorta look. Man, Metzen's voice acting on the XO is so corny...lol.


Though, saying the quality of the cinematics has gone down could be no further from the truth. The amount of detail in the Tychus cinematic blows away ANYTHING they have done.

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I wouldn't mind lower model quality in a space battle cinematic if the art direction itself and the overall dramatic direction are good, just sayin'.

Besides, they can storyboard it out meticulously enough to allow them to "cheat" and make the ships (and other things) farther away from the camera as much lower quality models (action scenes are meticulously storyboarded in any case).

And I don't think the models look like "total crap", if there's a piece of stupid unwarranted criticism, this is one. Apologies if I may come off as harsh here, but there's nothing that grinds my gears as much as an offhand dismissal of anything that took effort (not to mention skill and artistry) to make. The video is certainly rough around the edges when it comes to faces, but still head and shoulders above "crap".

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Originally Posted by Eligor

I wouldn't mind lower model quality in a space battle cinematic if the art direction itself and the overall dramatic direction are good, just sayin'.

Besides, they can storyboard it out meticulously enough to allow them to "cheat" and make the ships (and other things) farther away from the camera as much lower quality models (action scenes are meticulously storyboarded in any case).

And I don't think the models look like "total crap", if there's a piece of stupid unwarranted criticism, this is one. Apologies if I may come off as harsh here, but there's nothing that grinds my gears as much as an offhand dismissal of anything that took effort (not to mention skill and artistry) to make. The video is certainly rough around the edges when it comes to faces, but still head and shoulders above "crap".

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I think he was calling it "crap" in comparison to current day cinematics. I would have to agree with that assessment. At the time that SC:G cinematic was totally awesome.

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Originally Posted by Eligor

...And I don't think the models look like "total crap", if there's a piece of stupid unwarranted criticism, this is one. Apologies if I may come off as harsh here, but there's nothing that grinds my gears as much as an offhand dismissal of anything that took effort (not to mention skill and artistry) to make. The video is certainly rough around the edges when it comes to faces, but still head and shoulders above "crap".

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No worries, I never posted this in my original post.
The Ghost trailer came out in E3 2005 (June).
This came out in 2004 November. That leaves at least one year in technological advances (when you compensate the time to actually create cinematic). The difference in quality is obvious. The human mage and the night elf are excellent models that are "Humanoid".
Maybe the budget was smaller, maybe they did not care as much, maybe Metzen spilt coffee on the original render for the Ghost Cinematic. In anycase, I stand by my original opinion; the models look like crap.




Going back on topic, never has Blizzard created a detailed character in a cinematic like Tychus Findlay. In the render alone, these are all seperate pieces to Tychus
http://images.wikia.com/starcraft/im...ndlayArmor.jpg

The cinematic was so large, it crashed on the first attempt. They had to render portions and piece it altogether in the end. I really don't think that's a sign of "Deteriorating cinematics".

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I wouldn't mind lower model quality in a space battle cinematic if the art direction itself and the overall dramatic direction are good, just sayin'.

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Why not just do it in-engine? If you're going to settle for lower quality, just do it in engine and get it over with.

Personally, the quality of the cinematic rendering was just fine. If anything was off, it was the content, and that's something that Blizzard didn't really do well before.

I know people hate it when I say this, but Blizzard just isn't that good at storytelling. Many of the SC1 cinematics (particularly the non-BW ones) were non-sequitors. They may have had good atmosphere and been memorable, but very few of them actually mattered in-story.

The biggest example of a missed opportunity in SC2's pre-renders is New Gettysburg. It looks fantastic. But it gives us nothing more than we got in the "talking-heads" version from SC1. At least, as far as story and character are concerned.

Do we learn anything about Kerrigan's character? Maybe: see below. Do we learn anything about Mengsk's character? No. Do we learn anything about Raynor's character? No. Even if we came into SC2 without any knowledge of SC1, all we learn here are simple, dry facts: Kerrigan was left to die. It doesn't tell us that Kerrigan was his trusted lieutenant, which is something SC1 made a point to mention. She was just a soldier, maybe an important one. But that's it.

The silly part there is that the cutscene only emphasizes the fact that no evac was really possible: there were way too many Zerg (particularly Hydras) to even think of sending people in. And there wasn't really time to do so, considering how short the scene was.

The part that annoys me the most with this cinematic is that the only thing about Kerrigan's character we learn is that she's a quitter. She's surrounded by Zerg and out of ammo. So what does she do? She drops her gun and gives up.

Really? Is that how we want to portray pre-infestation Kerrigan? Really, guys?

The whole thing should have been about Kerrigan and a few Marines in their desperate last stand. The Marines holed up in the ruins of a bunker, maybe with an Ultralisk corpse nearby to show that they went through hell. Kerrigan would be covering their asses, cloaked and sniping. She'd keep them calm and firing, saying that help was coming, while cutting out to call to Mengsk. She'd emphasize that Mengsk wouldn't leave his XO behind.

Basically, think the opening to the Firefly series, with Mal Renyolds as a cloaked badass Ghost.

This would emphasize that Kerrigan wasn't the only person who was left to die. And it would show that she could be a leader and a fighter. You know, character stuff.

And when she was surrounded, with all her men dead, her gun out of ammo and her suit out of juice. She'd drop her gun. Look up at the sky, knowing that she had been betrayed. Pull out a 12-inch knife, and start cutting the shit out of some Zerg!

The problem in the cinematic department is directing, not rendering.

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Originally Posted by Nicol Bolas

Why not just do it in-engine? If you're going to settle for lower quality, just do it in engine and get it over with.

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Because in-engine cinematics almost always look slightly clunky, especially as far as light and shadow are concerned (show me a good dramatic chiaroscuro or sunset done in engine), as opposed to a pre-rendered cinematic specifically designed to portray a particular scene (even if the models themselves are lower quality).

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Because in-engine cinematics almost always look slightly clunky, especially as far as light and shadow are concerned

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You're talking about a space battle scene. Light and shadow aren't the hardest things in the world. There's precisely one main light source; that's not exactly stressful for hardware.

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show me a good dramatic chiaroscuro or sunset done in engine

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Please. My HD 3300 can handle that. It's all about using the tools available, not the quality of those tools.

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show me a good dramatic sunset done in engine

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Do I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally need to go grab some Crysis pics?

</halfjoke>

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The whole thing should have been about Kerrigan and a few Marines in their desperate last stand. The Marines holed up in the ruins of a bunker, maybe with an Ultralisk corpse nearby to show that they went through hell. Kerrigan would be covering their asses, cloaked and sniping. She'd keep them calm and firing, saying that help was coming, while cutting out to call to Mengsk. She'd emphasize that Mengsk wouldn't leave his XO behind.

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That would have been less "sad". For the story arc that Blizzard had planned, Kerrigan needed to be that typical damsel in distress. We were supposed to feel sorry for her. The campaign was setting up to contrast the difference between her before and after infestation. Basically, before she was good, after she was bad. Infestation made her bad, therefore, de-infestation will make her good. They needed to have a dramatic "sad" cinematic to build up to this so that we, theoretically, would want to de-infest Kerrigan.

PS: That opening cinematic made me miss how threatening the Zerg used to feel.

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Do I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally need to go grab some Crysis pics?

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I don't even need to do that; I could go boot up Twilight Princess for the GameCube and take a snapshot of the sunset from the top of the Desert.

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That would have been less "sad". For the story arc that Blizzard had planned, Kerrigan needed to be that typical damsel in distress. We were supposed to feel sorry for her. The campaign was setting up to contrast the difference between her before and after infestation. Basically, before she was good, after she was bad. Infestation made her bad, therefore, de-infestation will make her good. They needed to have a dramatic "sad" cinematic to build up to this so that we, theoretically, would want to de-infest Kerrigan.

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I don't buy your explanation of Blizzard's thinking here.

First, we feel sorry for her because she was left to die, period. This is the point of having the cutscene to begin with. Indeed, emphasizing the fact that she's his XO would make it even more tragic for her, since someone she knows and trusts is betraying her. We'd feel more sorry for her in my version.

Second, pointing out that she was Mengsk's XO does nothing to say whether she was "good" or "bad" before infestation. Further, her taking care of her men, trying to get them off world, makes her look more "good" and clearly heroic, not less so.

Third, we want to de-infest Kerrigan because doing that would make her weaker. She would no longer be a threat.

It just seems much more likely to be simple incompetence on Blizzard's part, rather than deliberate maliciousness.

Not everyone has the hardware to watch in-engine cinematics at an adequate quality. And while I haven't played either Crysis 2 or Twilight Princess, if they're no better than the in-engine cinematics we saw in SC 2, no, they're not adequate. When a cinematic (even a lower quality one) is done from scratch with a certain scene in mind the palette is selected accordingly, and there's more much more freedom in getting every shot right. The cinematics in the first StarCraft still look more visually coherent than in-engine SC 2 (compare the lighting in Raynor's encounter with Zeratul in WoL and the "Battle of Amerigo" cinematic in the first StarCraft and you'll see what I mean). When you strive for realism it doesn't matter that much how much net detail you can have in a scene, it's much more important what kind of detail you can make more apparent and convincing. And if the engine isn't good enough to get these crucial details (like the sense of atmosphere, reflections on the water or movement of clouds) right, it doesn't matter how well it does everything else, it's already a compromised image. I'm not saying they in-engine cinematics won't be as good as pre-rendered ones in time, but if you don't have a link to youtube video proving they're that good right now, I'm not not convinced.

And space has suns, nebulae, comets, planets and moons that reflect light not to mention the exhaust engines of ships, trails of rockets, lasers et cetera. So definitely more than one light source.

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And while I haven't played either Crysis 2 or Twilight Princess, if they're no better than the in-engine cinematics we saw in SC 2, no, they're not adequate.

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You're misunderstanding the point we were making.

It's not that the in-engine cinematics can't do lighting tricks. It's that Blizzard doesn't do them. There's a difference. They didn't show anyone sillhouetted against the sun because they didn't want to. They didn't show chiaroscuro because they didn't show it. The game could do these things just fine. But those tools don't matter if you don't use them.

It's like blaming a camera for an unimaginative or untrained visual director. Most videogames don't have DoPs (Directors of Photography) on staff. So guess what? They don't use lighting as well as a movie crew.

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The cinematics in the first StarCraft still look more visually coherent than in-engine SC 2 (compare the lighting in Raynor's encounter with Zeratul in WoL and the "Battle of Amerigo" cinematic in the first StarCraft and you'll see what I mean).

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These two scenes are trying to portray two completely different things. Of course they're shot in a different lighting style. If they used the same style, it wouldn't work.

And what do you mean by "visually coherent" anyway?

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I'm not saying they in-engine cinematics won't be as good as pre-rendered ones in time, but if you don't have a link to youtube video proving they're that good right now, I'm not not convinced.

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That wasn't what you asked. Allow me to quote you again:

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Originally Posted by you

show me a good dramatic chiaroscuro or sunset done in engine

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We did. Games can do these particular effects, and quite convincingly when necessary.

Now, you've moved the goalposts, pointing out that in-game cinematics aren't as good as prerendered ones. Um duh. But that doesn't mean that they cannot be used to properly portray atmosphere in a scene. And that's coming dangerously close to saying that Pixar can't portray a scene because they're not rendering photorealistically.

If any particular in-game cutscene does not portray things as you think they should, then its either because the game developers have failed or you aren't getting what the game developers are actually trying to portray. The tools aren't at fault here.

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And space has suns, nebulae, comets, planets and moons that reflect light not to mention the exhaust engines of ships, trails of rockets, lasers et cetera. So definitely more than one light source.

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You don't really understand the properties of light attenuation and the sheer scale of distance that is outer space.

Unless the fight is actually happening next to "nebulae, comets, planets and moons," then there is precisely one light source that matters: the nearest massive ball of fusing hydrogen and helium. Everything else is completely negligible. And even if it's happening next to a planet, that too is easily simulated with a second directional light. You don't have to go very far at all from Earth (in celestial terms) before the lighting contribution from reflected sunlight is negligible.

As for more local light sources, I'll ignore the fact that "lasers" shouldn't be visible to begin with. We'll then go to the point that lights have attenuation. At any real distance from a light source, you can model the light as a point light. The attenuation of a point light varies with 1/r^2, where r is the distance between the point and the surface in question.

Space is big. Ships are big. Anything more than a few hundred feet, and the light cast by localized sources (explosions, "muzzle flashes", engine exhaust, etc) is completely irrelevant to the overall image.

Or, you could just play Homeworld.

And even if you wanted to take into account these small light sources, it's not like we're talking about the Quake engine or something. Every Stalker shot is a light source; marine muzzle flashes are light sources. Etc and so forth. Deferred rendering-based engines like SC2 are very efficient at accumulating values from multiple light sources. They would only get more efficient in space, where the background pixels require 0 computation (and space shots are usually 30+% background). HW was made in the days before such renderers.

Space is the easiest thing for renderers to get right.

I just want the game to have built in AA.