Garthilk
05-19-2006, 04:35 PM
By now every Warhammer fan has already seen parts one and two of the amazing Warhammer Online cinematic by Blur Studios. Imagine our excitement when after contacting them we got to talk with the two major creative leads on this cinematic, Jerome Denjean (Jed) the CG Supervisor and Leo Santos the Animation/Layout Supervisor. Naturally we wanted to learn all we could of what it took to put this amazing cinematic together.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/WAR_Dwarf_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=269)Who are Jerome Denjean and Leo Santos, and how were you involved in the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning cinematic?
Jed: I was the CG supervisor for the Warhammer Online cinematic. I was responsible for organizing the different teams here at Blur, working closely with Mythic each step of the way from concept and modeling to final renders. I also got to model a couple characters and work on lighting and compositing.
Leo: I did the Layout, which is a step between the storyboards and the actual animation, where all the cameras are created and the basic editing, choreography and staging are established. Then I supervised the animation work, using a mix of Motion Capture and Keyframed animation (most of the Orcs animation is keyframed from scratch, while the other characters have, in most shots, motion capture enhanced by animation)
Tell us about the Warhammer Online cinematic. How did you guys end up doing the cinematic, what is the story? Were you given a script to follow or was there total creative freedom involved?
Jed: Mythic came to us with a rough script, that involved massive battles and LOTS of characters. We talked about it and they decided to go for something a little lighter for both budget and originality reasons. We had done a lot of big battle cinematics lately at Blur and we were happy that Mythic was cool with working on something a little more character-centric. We all felt that a one-on-one fight sequence was ultimately going to be a lot more powerful in showing the different races, and how they opposed each other, than a massive chaotic battle. People who play online games like WH Online want to have an emotional connection with their character, and Mythic wanted to get as close to that as possible. Besides the one-on-one fights, one of their request was to show the orc catapult in some fashion, so we worked it out as an intro to show the siege around the combatants and as a way to get to the main battlefield. Mythic and Games Workshop were great to work with all along, they trusted us with the cool stuff as long as it tied into the game.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/WAR_DarkElf_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=268)Can you elaborate on the concept designs for the main characters and environments? What resources did you use for inspiration?
Jed: Games Workshop has a strongly established universe, with lots of fans that know everything about all those characters, so it's definitely not one of those projects where you can come in and think you're going to redesign every character. We got the Warhammer books and used them extensively for everything from character designs to the way the Elf spell is supposed to look. We were able to redesign some of the characters a little bit to make sure they were technically fit for CG - the Orc armor, or the Elf's robe for example - but we basically stuck to the concepts that have been around for 25 years. For environments we tried to stay as close as possible to what Mythic had already done for the game. Once it was established that the whole battle would take place at Ekrund gate, we used their beautiful designs and just filled in the blanks.
Can you elaborate on the technical aspects of creating and animated these characters? What kind of software and hardware was used during the production?
Jed: We're using 3DS Max and Brazil R/S for all the 3d, and Digital Fusion for all the compositing on workstations from Boxx. We also have access to a 200-machine render farm for all the final renders. There's nothing fancy about anything we use really, it's mostly off the shelf software with only a few in-house scripts to make sure we can deal with the sometimes massive renders.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/WH_S04_S0017.00_COMP_0184_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=267)In terms of audio effects there seems to be a great deal of similarity between some of Blurs previous work and this one. Was there a lot of audio that had to be made specifically for this job?
Leo: We usually work with the same audio guys, in this case Robert Cairns, who previously had done several scores for our cinematics and short films like Rockfish and Gopher Broke, And Gary Zacuto, who does the sound FX and final mixing. But the final audio itself is done outside our studio, we just have a good relationship with them and often look out for their work.
What sort of a team did you have to assist with the production, and how long did it take from concept to completion? Is anyone on the team a Warhammer fan themselves?
Jed: 28 artists did touch the cinematic at some point, but there wasn't more than 6 guys at any given time I think.. We managed to keep the team pretty small since the schedule was spread out over 12 weeks or so. The core team was 2 concept artists over maybe 3 weeks - one for characters, one for Environments - 4 character modelers, one rigger and 2 environment modelers over around 3 to 4 weeks each . Props and weapons were spread out over a lot of artists whenever they had a little downtime. Lighting, rendering and compositing was 2 guys and 2 FX artists over 3 weeks. For animation we had at some point 5 artists working simultaneously, but most of the time it was a core team of 3 animators a little over 4 weeks. Some artists worked on the whole piece from character/environment modeling to final renders, others only worked on a couple props. The core team was pretty small though.
We thought we had some pretty reliable Warhammer fans at Blur, but I have to say we were outgeeked very fast by the boys over at Mythic and Games Workshop :D
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/Warhammeronline_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=189)What sort of challenges did you face when making the cinematic? Was there any one particular aspect that seemed impossible?
Jed: Nothing seems impossible nowadays, really, but we knew from the get go that hair and cloth were going to be the challenging part on that particular piece, especially the braided beard on the Dwarf, and the hair and flowing robes on the High Elf. We really had to go beyond what we had ever done since these guys are doing some pretty extreme moves. Hair and cloth are always a bear, but when the hair is braided or there's 5 pieces of robe that need to interact with each other PLUS the hair then you kinda need to figure out a plan early on. But our cloth sim artist came out with some impressive tricks for these and it turned out really cool.
Looking back on the completed work, what went right?
Jed: Ha ha ! Everything went right ! Seriously though, projects like these are great cause when artists can focus on smaller scenes rather than crazy wide battle shots, then they really have time to polish stuff that you'll actually get to see. Character modelers were happy because for once you get to see the faces on their models, they're not just whipping by in the middle of a crowd. Lighters and compositors were happy too because they only had a couple character to keep track of so they could add tons of cool stuff like flying arrows, embers, dust, etc ... This project was also a lot of fun to work on with Leo too, he usually specializes in the lighter cartoony jobs, while I 'm more about gritty realistic projects. It was the first time we got to work together and I thought it ended up being a very interesting mix of styles.
If you could have done anything differently, what would it have been?
Jed: Frankly, not much. We're all very happy with the way the piece turned out.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/WAR_Dwarf_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=269)Who are Jerome Denjean and Leo Santos, and how were you involved in the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning cinematic?
Jed: I was the CG supervisor for the Warhammer Online cinematic. I was responsible for organizing the different teams here at Blur, working closely with Mythic each step of the way from concept and modeling to final renders. I also got to model a couple characters and work on lighting and compositing.
Leo: I did the Layout, which is a step between the storyboards and the actual animation, where all the cameras are created and the basic editing, choreography and staging are established. Then I supervised the animation work, using a mix of Motion Capture and Keyframed animation (most of the Orcs animation is keyframed from scratch, while the other characters have, in most shots, motion capture enhanced by animation)
Tell us about the Warhammer Online cinematic. How did you guys end up doing the cinematic, what is the story? Were you given a script to follow or was there total creative freedom involved?
Jed: Mythic came to us with a rough script, that involved massive battles and LOTS of characters. We talked about it and they decided to go for something a little lighter for both budget and originality reasons. We had done a lot of big battle cinematics lately at Blur and we were happy that Mythic was cool with working on something a little more character-centric. We all felt that a one-on-one fight sequence was ultimately going to be a lot more powerful in showing the different races, and how they opposed each other, than a massive chaotic battle. People who play online games like WH Online want to have an emotional connection with their character, and Mythic wanted to get as close to that as possible. Besides the one-on-one fights, one of their request was to show the orc catapult in some fashion, so we worked it out as an intro to show the siege around the combatants and as a way to get to the main battlefield. Mythic and Games Workshop were great to work with all along, they trusted us with the cool stuff as long as it tied into the game.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/WAR_DarkElf_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=268)Can you elaborate on the concept designs for the main characters and environments? What resources did you use for inspiration?
Jed: Games Workshop has a strongly established universe, with lots of fans that know everything about all those characters, so it's definitely not one of those projects where you can come in and think you're going to redesign every character. We got the Warhammer books and used them extensively for everything from character designs to the way the Elf spell is supposed to look. We were able to redesign some of the characters a little bit to make sure they were technically fit for CG - the Orc armor, or the Elf's robe for example - but we basically stuck to the concepts that have been around for 25 years. For environments we tried to stay as close as possible to what Mythic had already done for the game. Once it was established that the whole battle would take place at Ekrund gate, we used their beautiful designs and just filled in the blanks.
Can you elaborate on the technical aspects of creating and animated these characters? What kind of software and hardware was used during the production?
Jed: We're using 3DS Max and Brazil R/S for all the 3d, and Digital Fusion for all the compositing on workstations from Boxx. We also have access to a 200-machine render farm for all the final renders. There's nothing fancy about anything we use really, it's mostly off the shelf software with only a few in-house scripts to make sure we can deal with the sometimes massive renders.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/WH_S04_S0017.00_COMP_0184_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=267)In terms of audio effects there seems to be a great deal of similarity between some of Blurs previous work and this one. Was there a lot of audio that had to be made specifically for this job?
Leo: We usually work with the same audio guys, in this case Robert Cairns, who previously had done several scores for our cinematics and short films like Rockfish and Gopher Broke, And Gary Zacuto, who does the sound FX and final mixing. But the final audio itself is done outside our studio, we just have a good relationship with them and often look out for their work.
What sort of a team did you have to assist with the production, and how long did it take from concept to completion? Is anyone on the team a Warhammer fan themselves?
Jed: 28 artists did touch the cinematic at some point, but there wasn't more than 6 guys at any given time I think.. We managed to keep the team pretty small since the schedule was spread out over 12 weeks or so. The core team was 2 concept artists over maybe 3 weeks - one for characters, one for Environments - 4 character modelers, one rigger and 2 environment modelers over around 3 to 4 weeks each . Props and weapons were spread out over a lot of artists whenever they had a little downtime. Lighting, rendering and compositing was 2 guys and 2 FX artists over 3 weeks. For animation we had at some point 5 artists working simultaneously, but most of the time it was a core team of 3 animators a little over 4 weeks. Some artists worked on the whole piece from character/environment modeling to final renders, others only worked on a couple props. The core team was pretty small though.
We thought we had some pretty reliable Warhammer fans at Blur, but I have to say we were outgeeked very fast by the boys over at Mythic and Games Workshop :D
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/files/3/Warhammeronline_thumb.jpg (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=189)What sort of challenges did you face when making the cinematic? Was there any one particular aspect that seemed impossible?
Jed: Nothing seems impossible nowadays, really, but we knew from the get go that hair and cloth were going to be the challenging part on that particular piece, especially the braided beard on the Dwarf, and the hair and flowing robes on the High Elf. We really had to go beyond what we had ever done since these guys are doing some pretty extreme moves. Hair and cloth are always a bear, but when the hair is braided or there's 5 pieces of robe that need to interact with each other PLUS the hair then you kinda need to figure out a plan early on. But our cloth sim artist came out with some impressive tricks for these and it turned out really cool.
Looking back on the completed work, what went right?
Jed: Ha ha ! Everything went right ! Seriously though, projects like these are great cause when artists can focus on smaller scenes rather than crazy wide battle shots, then they really have time to polish stuff that you'll actually get to see. Character modelers were happy because for once you get to see the faces on their models, they're not just whipping by in the middle of a crowd. Lighters and compositors were happy too because they only had a couple character to keep track of so they could add tons of cool stuff like flying arrows, embers, dust, etc ... This project was also a lot of fun to work on with Leo too, he usually specializes in the lighter cartoony jobs, while I 'm more about gritty realistic projects. It was the first time we got to work together and I thought it ended up being a very interesting mix of styles.
If you could have done anything differently, what would it have been?
Jed: Frankly, not much. We're all very happy with the way the piece turned out.