Commercials for Epic's Gears of War used "realtime, on engine" game assets and was rendered entirely through Unreal Engine 3. This convergence provides gamers with an accurate depiction of game visuals and game play. © Microsoft.

Call it the not-so-little engine that could.

The engine in question is the Unreal Engine, developed by Epic Games, one of various game engines being licensed out to videogame producers. But when Ed Ulbrich, president, commercial division, and evp of Digital Domain saw Unreal Engine 3 in action in Epic's own Gears of War videogame, he also saw the future.

"Convergence is something that we've been talking about for some time, but with Gears of War it came together," Ulbrich contends. Digital Domain worked on the E3 presentation and the television commercial for Gears of War, and Ulbrich says that the presentation and commercial used "realtime, on engine" game assets. In fact, the commercial was rendered entirely through the game engine on Xbox 360.

The results, Ulbrich says, look better than out-of-game cinematics. "In the past," he adds, "pretty cinematics tended to over-embellish the product. That level of quality set up expectations that the game couldn't meet. For Gears of War, this is not the case." The Gears of War advertising provides gamers with an accurate depiction of game visuals and game play, because actual game assets have been utilized.

While Ulbrich admits that Gears of War represents the early days of convergence, he notes that "very robust videogame engines could be used to produce parts of movies and commercials as well as games."

Star Power
That newfound versatility is attracting established film and TV directors to the videogame scene. "Game engines are striving to replicate the real world and the fantasy world as realistically and as believably as possible," comments Gary Roberts, vp, Vicon House of Moves/Vicon Feature Unit, whose company also worked on the Gears of War commercial. "To do this, the game engines often find ingenious and very creative ways of cheating to create atmospheric and visual clues that fool the viewer and player into a false sense of reality, and to suspend their disbelief. This technology has many feature film directors excited, since it can be used for previsualization and for visualizing a feature film shot, which may be completely live-action in the end, using game engine technology."

But it's not only engine power that's drawing the interest of directors such as Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg. Developments in other areas, such as motion capture -- technologies that are equally useful on a movie set -- are also showcased in videogames.

Vicon House of Moves' Gary Roberts observes that game engines are striving to replicate the real world and the fantasy world as realistically and as believably as possible.

"We are now seeing many game developers hiring directors from film, broadcast and theater to help them direct their story within their cinematic and game sequences," Roberts says. "These -- along with feature film, commercials and TV clients -- are really pushing the envelope, and we have been developing more and more tools and technology to bring the artistry of filmmaking to the motion capture set."

Roberts adds that previs is an aspect of motion capture that is being used more and more. "Often, shoot days for feature film and some games are expensive due to sound stage requirements, audio and video crews and, of course, big-name talent," advises Roberts. "It is important to be as prepared as possible for what is going to be shot. Typically, scripts and storyboards are developed to aid in this process. Now we are able to use motion capture to provide an entire 3D previsualization of shots quickly and efficiently. Simple body motions and virtual camera tracking is used on set to allow directors and the 'creatives' to essentially shoot the scenes in simple 3D to provide blocking and continuity. This also allows agencies and the creative directors to sign off on shots prior to the actual film or game shoot itself."

Roberts explains that virtual camera tracking (allowing the director and DP to frame their shots in the virtual world in real time), real-time previz of characters and sets during actual capture, immediate playback for captured scenes and direct feeds into editing suites to the director can begin to cut scenes together on set, are all new tools that many feature film and game directors find especially exciting.

"We are also advancing our tool sets in post-production to be able to process the large data sets now being captured (250 markers per actor) in a more efficient and automated manner," he says. "This allows us to reduce costs and man power in post-production, and more importantly pass on these costs savings to our clients."

Vicon House of Moves has brought its motion capture expertise to such videogames as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2007 (in association with Electronic Arts and its motion capture team) and Guitar Hero II, by Harmonix (all motion captured for CG characters, band members, singers and the crowd). "For this project, we engineered and developed a custom beat box that derived the beat of any music track, and captured this as sequence of lights flashing and delivered as a 3D element to ensure all motions are synchronized within the game engine," Roberts says.