Previous Halo games raised the bar on cinematics. Halo 3 had to deliver big time, which required special work. All Halo 3 images courtesy of Bungie Studios/Microsoft Game Studios.

As videogames have become more cinematic, the need for movie-quality visuals has grown, particularly in the cut scenes and short sequences between game play called cinematics.

Producing cinematics is not dissimilar from 3D animation and vfx work for film and TV, though the specifics of the game industry and the needs of particular games have a tremendous impact on how these short spots are made.

Here, VFXWorld takes a look at the very different circumstances and techniques used in the creation of cinematics for a few of the current top games.

Of course, no game has made a bigger splash this fall than Halo 3. The previous games helped establish the Xbox as a major gaming platform and raised the bar on cinematics. The third entry in the series had to deliver big time, and that required some special work on the cinematics side.

C.J. Cowan, cinematics director for Bungie Studios, says the entire cinematic pipeline was rebuilt for Halo 3. "In Halo 2, we had to write a script many pages long for each cinematic calling specific animations on characters at certain times, creating and destroying objects and effects, calling out start times for dialog and music... basically everything that happened in the scene," Cowan adds.

Most of that information already existed in the Maya files, and the data that wasn't could easily be added. "Our tools engineers created an export process out of Maya that basically auto-generated the script our engine needed to run the cinematic," he says. "Because we didn't have to hand author it anymore, it allowed us to iterate much more quickly and make changes without worrying about how it would effect the timing of the script."

The game ended up with 30 cinematics running about 50 minutes. Cowan says the cinematics team at Bungie did all the layout and rough animation, sending to animation houses a Maya file with all the camera work, timing and blocking done. "This worked particularly well because we had over 40 animators all over the country (and overseas), and they were able to open a new scene and have very few questions about where I wanted them to take it."

Bungie, meanwhile, used three houses to animate the scenes: DamnFX in Montreal; Zoic Studios, a vfx house that handles such TV shows as Battlestar Galactica; and Rare Studios, a fellow Microsoft Game Studio that lent some animators to the project at key points.

Halo 3 boasts 30 cinematics running about 50 minutes. Bungie's cinematics team did the layout and rough animation, sending a Maya file with the camera work, timing and blocking to animation houses.

Cowan says that while the houses' job was essentially to polish the animation in the layouts, they all had creative input as well. "All of the animators had quite a bit of latitude in the 'acting' of our characters, which worked out well because the individual animators were really free to concentrate on subtle details and character bits that really brought our cinematics to life."

The houses returned their work as Maya files to Bungie, which handled lighting and effects in house and incorporated the results into the game engine.

Cowan says internal layout took place over two years, while the animation was done in a tight five-month timeframe.

One of the challenges facing developers of RPGs is how to make the often-extensive conversations between characters look cinematic.

For the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect, developer BioWare went back to study the basics of cinema and applied what they learned through new tools that let them automate many reactions.