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Improved Cinematics and Beta Guide Coming for Halo 3by Matt Gibbs
While it's only one day before the release of the Halo 3 beta, on May 15 Bungie will release an official "beta guide" containing all sorts of info. We also have some good news for those of you into cinematics.
Posted in the latest Bungie Weekly Update, Frankie said: Naturally we’ve had our share of leaks from the internal beta, and while it makes us angry that some people want to ruin the surprise for others, the real joy of the Beta is in the playing. We hope you’ll agree. On the 15th, the day before the Beta goes live to the public we’ll update Bnet with a cavalcade of Beta related content, including FAQs, tips, tricks, map guides and more.And while it may be surprising for some, apparently the cimematics in Halo 2 weren't as good as they could have been... however there should be no such worries in Halo 3: Now for confession time: In Halo 2, we simply didn’t have the time or resources to make the cinematics the way we wanted them to be. They were compromised by deadlines and resources and while the results were heroic and herculean achievements of hard work and talent, they simply weren’t as polished or pretty as we wanted them to be. This time, no hurdles got in our way. Cinematics has had all the lovin’ it needs.For starters, there’s a bigger team, a team that has had the final cinematic script for much longer, and now has access to vastly more tools, resources and technology than ever before. These range from new tools for rigging facial animation, to better lighting and camera controls. Most of the improvements are a solid blend of technology and manpower this time around, and we hope the fruits of that labor end up as succulent as they look now.Seeing Sergeant Johnson’s face in the Halo 3 cinematics (there are differences in detail and post-processing effects) is a revelation. Using tools on site, our cinematics guys are able to achieve not only proper lip-syncing, but easily rig facial expressions too. In Halo 2, some of that was actually handled by programmers, including Sgt. Johnson’s, and I quote, “Amorous” permutation in the tank delivery scene in Halo 2. Now, there’s a running gag in game development called, “Programmer Art” where a programmer puts in some placeholder art until an artist can get to it. Bur programmer emotion? Surely that’s pushing some sort of envelope?Well this time the emotions and lighting are being handled by a team of 35 animators and cinematics guys only. And they’re not scrubs. We have folks who’ve worked on movies like Shrek, King Kong, Gollum from LOTR and more. So, no compromises. It will still look like game engine (with the aforementioned enhancements, like depth of field and higher levels of detail) but it’s just going to be better.
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| Halo 3 |
| Publisher |
| Microsoft |
| Developer |
| Bungie Studios |
| Game Genre |
| First Person Shoot... |
| Release Date |
| 2007-09-25 |
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| total images available: |
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