Blizzard Cinematic Quality Deteriorating?

[Romla]

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 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.

[Genopath]

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.

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.

[Freespace]

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

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?

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?

See above.

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.

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.

[TheEconomist]

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

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.

[Genopath]

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.

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

[Freespace]

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

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.

[Genopath]

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.

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.

[Freespace]

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.

It behaves worse when you animate it.

[Romla]

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.

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)...

[Freespace]

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)...

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.