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Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
- The cinematic needed an emotional hook, so the team looked at war movies.
- They considered starting with an Alliance footman writing letters to his family, then Orc grunt who was writing letters to her family, finishing with Varian writing to Anduin.
- Every shot brings the ship from the cinematic closer to the Broken Isles. It was very technically challenging!
- There were thick clouds and they wanted to use sunlight beams to light the characters.
- The ship wasn't going to be featured in the game, so they cinematics team was able to customize it as they wished. They elongated the ship and widened the bow to make it more front heavy.
- The gunship model was very detailed. 7 million faces, 3000 of the 4000x4000 texture maps, raytracing. It takes 4-6 hours to render each frame.
- There were 18th century ships they used as inspiration.
- They also looked at older planes with sheets of metal and rivets.
- The original cabin was going to be much larger, but it felt better smaller, allowing it to just be a backdrop for the character.
- Some of the items on the desk are reused from previous cinematics.
- The compass is passed down from Llane Wrynn.
- The team drew inspiration from all of the different versions of Varian art that already existed.
- Translating the character proportions from art to the 3D model was challenging.
- Varian texture maps were based on real people. Pictures of 40 year old white males that worked in the office were used for reference. These detailed shots are used to make Varian's skin look real.
- Much of the variation in his skin is from the reference photos, not painted.
- There are as many texture maps on Varian as there are on the entire gunship.
- Varian has lots of hair!
- Varian takes 4-6 hours per frame and 20-30 GB of memory to render.
- The lens makes a difference to how Varian's facial features appear.
- Later on in the process the team picks the f-stop / focal length, trying to keep the result look realistic.
- Lens distortion and chromatic aberration help to make it look like a real lens was used. Making 3D look realistic involves adding artifacts back in to the video.
- Lots of reference video was used to give Varian realistic facial movements. No motion capture was used!
- There were 50+ assets on the deck in the first big shot of the deck, helping to make it look filled out and realistic.
- The team can use a motion capture camera to walk around the 3D deck to capture the camera movement, adding the smaller shakes and sways that come with using a real camera.
- Motion capture was used to animate some of the other characters in cinematic, such as the soldiers on the deck.
- The effects team made some really great water by using reference footage of someone in a pool.
- There is a small goblin tugboat in one of the shots.
- Some of the ships were recycled from other cinematics, such as the ship being destroyed in Booty Bay or the ships in the Mists of Pandaria cinematic. More detail had to be added to the ships.
- The reference for the Horde ship coming through the clouds was older Viking ships. It was less detailed than the Alliance ship, with most of it near Sylvanas for her closer shots.
- Sylvanas being an Undead High Elf was something the team wanted to be reflected properly in the cinematic.
- Sylvanas had some more armor added to her midriff.
- It is hard to get the subtle facial detail for younger women right. The team had some photo references of women's faces, projected it on the model, and cleaned it up from there. The pore detail is from real people.
- The team added the illusion of red bloodflow in her ears with the lighting.
- The team worked with Anna Maltese to capture reference footage to make sure Sylvanas moved realistically.
- The fel energy was used as a team color, appearing on all of the enemies.
- The final fighting shot used hundreds of reference footage shots to make it great.
- Lots of effort put in to the lighting and composition to make it amazing!
Q&A
- The Illidan model from Burning Crusade was updated for Legion.
- If the team does reuse assets, they usually have to update them to add more detail.
- Orc skulls are reused in several cinematics.
- Around 50% of environment assets are reused from previous work.
- Cataclysm zeppelins are also in the background of the Legion cinematic.
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