Continuing our monthly look at 3D environments, Stash magazines Stephen Price helped VFXWorld compile a gallery of some of the best 3D environments for Warhammer by Blur Studios and environmental pics by KDLAB.
Stash is a new innovative DVD magazine that corrals the best work being done in animation, vfx and motion graphics for advertising and broadcast. As part of our November focus on 3D environments, Stash editor Stephen Price compiled two galleries of leading work.
For Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Blur Studio produced a CG cinematic that rivals a blockbuster feature film. The thrilling, two-minute film, included with the game CD, introduces players to Warhammers dark, futuristic fantasy universe through an intense, tactical battle between legions of alien warriors.
Blur Studio teamed with the games developer, Relic Ent., in developing the storyline for the cinematic and in translating its characters and environments to the cinematic format.
THQ wanted a pulse-pounding open to get Warhammer fans excited about starting the game, explained Blur Studio creative director Tim Miller. It wasnt hard to come up with something that fit that mission the Warhammer universe is filled with drama, death, destruction and epic combat. Our main difficulty was holding our team back from going NUTS and trying to put everything in this two-minute open. Theres just too much cool stuff in the game and we wanted to do it justice.
is a multidisciplinary studio focusing on design, direction and production. Co-founder Joseph Kosinski shares some of his studios work, which is explained briefly below.
Desert House
The Desert House is a project I designed in architecture school and decided to use as a setting for an experimental all-CG film in which I wanted to explore a couple of different digital tools and techniques. One was mental ray and its Global Illumination tools, which were new to 3ds max at that time, another was using motion capture to simulate handheld camera movement. Desert House was shown in both the SIGGRAPH and RESFEST film festivals in 2001.
iSPEC
These images are from another experimental short film, which was meant to be viewed as a commercial from the not-too-distant future. The product, eventually revealed to be a future incarnation of the iPod, allows you to browse through a spatial database of feature films, select the film of your choice, and watch it play out in virtual reality. I chose to use the Colorado Lounge because it is for all purposes, a character in the The Shining, and it is probably one of the most recognized spaces in all of film. This project was also done in 3ds max with mental ray 3.
F-150
These images are from a commercial pitch for the F-150 pickup. The pitch was for three different spots set in three different treacherous all-CG environments. I got the vehicle mesh from Ford then designed and built the environments in 3ds max.
Les Jumelles
This is a short film for Nike, which was done for their Art of Speed campaign. It was inspired by Einsteins theory of time dilation, which explains how high speed travel can affect the passage of time. The girl was shot with both digital still and video cameras on bluescreen, then cloned and composited into a 100% computer-generated environment. The setting is a chateau in the forest, which is meant to be a hybrid of classic style and high technology. This project was also done in 3ds max utilizing both the scanline and the mental ray renderers.
EYE[D]
This project is a short spinoff of Les Jumelles where I used the same twins and placed one on a high-speed running track in the desert and left the other at home in the chateau. In order to get the flexibility I wanted with the camera, we created an all-CG version of the running girl which is used in the first half of the spot.
Verizon
In this project I got the opportunity to use the virtual set system at Sonalysts Studios. This system allowed me to load the digital sets onto a workstation at the shoot, and see a realtime composite of the actors in the virtual sets, in high definition. The camera head, crane and track are all encoded so the system knows exactly where the camera is located in the virtual world at all times. It can also record the data to disc so you dont have to track your shots after the shoot. I ended up doing a final render to get shadows and reflections but I imagine even that may not be necessary in the near future.
Nintendo
This is an image from an all-CG teaser I recently did for the Nintendo in which the new DS hijacks the broadcast signal from an undisclosed location.
Stephen Price is the editor of Stash magazine.
