A brief making of ...Part 2

Coming back to the question… the first phase, where the abstract idea of a trailer became a colored storyboard, was definitely the period I liked best.

To the second part of the Making of


2) You are also the producer for RISEN, the game – how did you manage to oversee the trailer production and the game production at the same time and still find time to sleep?

Well, that’s the beauty of my job… if I do my job well in the run-up, namely organizing the processes, then I have less stress later. And that worked reasonably well this time… The preparation work for the trailer was very intense, but once we had the colored storyboard, it was very easy to communicate where we wanted to go with the trailer… And this synchronizing of the vision is usually my main job!

3) Post-production is very important in almost every film project – what exactly did you do and where did you encounter the biggest difficulties?

Ettore handled the post-production, and I can’t tell you how much fun it was watching a pro at work. Before working on this trailer, I hadn’t really understood how much more you can get out of a video through post-production! The rendered scenes only get a cinematic look through a variety of techniques, from color grading to motion blur and depth of field. Because the time to the trade fair was so short, we sat in the post-production studio for almost 48 hours straight through without sleep – but I think the effort was worth it.

4) Your name sounds familiar – what other games have you worked on?

I have been fortunate to be able to work with the team from Piranha Bytes for some time – we first crossed paths with Gothic 3.

The trailer was created by VIRGIN LANDS, a very well-known studio for 2D /3D graphics and animation.

Tobias Weingärtner, co-founder and CEO of VIRGIN LANDS, also took the time to answer some questions for us.
In addition, he prepared some images from the development – which is not usual, but provides outstanding documentation of the high level on which VL works:

My name is Tobias Weingärtner. I am a co-founder of Virgin Lands and have been CEO since March 1997. Between 1994 and 1996, I was involved in the graphics creation for several projects. For example, "The Dark Eye 3" for Attic Software or "AquaNox" for BlueByte, two classics from that time. In 1996, along with our commercial work, my colleagues Lars Wagner and Volker Jäcklein and I created an elaborate short film called "Virgin Lands" – with which we were able to win two major film competitions at the first go. The name of the short film ultimately became the name of the company...
 

2) You are also the producer for RISEN, the game – how did you manage to oversee the trailer production and the game production at the same time and still find time to sleep?

Well, that’s the beauty of my job… if I do my job well in the run-up, namely organizing the processes, then I have less stress later. And that worked reasonably well this time… The preparation work for the trailer was very intense, but once we had the colored storyboard, it was very easy to communicate where we wanted to go with the trailer… And this synchronizing of the vision is usually my main job!

3) Post-production is very important in almost every film project – what exactly did you do and where did you encounter the biggest difficulties?

Ettore handled the post-production, and I can’t tell you how much fun it was watching a pro at work. Before working on this trailer, I hadn’t really understood how much more you can get out of a video through post-production! The rendered scenes only get a cinematic look through a variety of techniques, from color grading to motion blur and depth of field. Because the time to the trade fair was so short, we sat in the post-production studio for almost 48 hours straight through without sleep – but I think the effort was worth it.

4) Your name sounds familiar – what other games have you worked on?

I have been fortunate to be able to work with the team from Piranha Bytes for some time – we first crossed paths with Gothic 3.

The trailer was created by VIRGIN LANDS, a very well-known studio for 2D /3D graphics and animation.

Tobias Weingärtner, co-founder and CEO of VIRGIN LANDS, also took the time to answer some questions for us.
In addition, he prepared some images from the development – which is not usual, but provides outstanding documentation of the high level on which VL works:

My name is Tobias Weingärtner. I am a co-founder of Virgin Lands and have been CEO since March 1997. Between 1994 and 1996, I was involved in the graphics creation for several projects. For example, "The Dark Eye 3" for Attic Software or "AquaNox" for BlueByte, two classics from that time. In 1996, along with our commercial work, my colleagues Lars Wagner and Volker Jäcklein and I created an elaborate short film called "Virgin Lands" – with which we were able to win two major film competitions at the first go. The name of the short film ultimately became the name of the company...

1) What was the most complicated scene in the trailer – and why?

The most complicated scene was definitely the final take in the trailer – the rising of the temple. Only the camera tracking was done by hand; all of the effects animations were then physically calculated. After the tracking was defined, the crack formation in the ground was simulated. The tumbling of the larger chunks of ground from the rising platform was also defined in this calculation. Subject to this, the sub-layers were created and calculated: smaller rocks, roots, gravel, and finally sand and dust.
After concluding this work, we started on the surrounding landscape. All of the surrounding large vegetation was animated with shaking and wind during the rising of the temple. The wind environment also ensured that ultimately even the grass layer in the foreground could be moved.

Summing up, this scene was complicated because of the individual calculation stages, which were dependent on the preceding calculations – the complete scene had to be approached piece by piece. Since the animation calculations had to be finished before the actual image calculations, we needed a total of 12 days of calculation time to create this animation.

Gallery: Temple shows the construction of the total image. Overall, however, significantly more layers were used.
 

The images show the total layer structure; while the total scene is also composed of several slides to the right.

2) What role does compositing play in creating the scenes? When creating the footage, is it faster to render the complete scene or to keep the individual elements separate and only put them together later?

We wanted and had to divide the scenes – for a variety of reasons. The complete trailer came together in a short time. A lot of work was done in parallel. That means that backgrounds were sometimes finished before the characters for the individual scene were modeled and animated. Since the background layers demand the largest rendering time, we rendered them in advance on their own layer. When the character models and animations were done, they were rendered as well. For a lot of scenes, we also put the characters on different layers again; in the village scene, there were up to 14 different layers – just for the character animation calculations. Many character layers also had sub-layers for depicting clothing and hair.
After the calculation of all the layers for the backgrounds and characters, the complete footage was merged with compositing software. The individual layers were color balanced and the total image was given effects, such as motion blur and depth of field blur, etc.

By dividing up the footage, we were able to break up the render times into smaller portions. Furthermore, we had much greater flexibility in creating the scenes. Both points were in favor of working separately. Independently of that, there was also a third point: computing power or performance. Because of the complexity of the individual scenes, it would not have been possible to calculate the complete geometry, including textures, animations, and effects in one pass.

All the rendering was separated into backgrounds and characters and then put together in the compositing software.

3) To what extent were you able to use in-game assets for the trailer?

In creating the characters, we were able to build on existing material. The basis for almost all the faces was existing real-time data. They were processed in the appropriate 3D tools (Zbrush, 3D-StudioMax) and fleshed out in detail. Existing body geometries served as a graphic template, but in most cases they had to be recreated because they were not designed for the close-ups of the trailer. In the case of clothing animations, the geometry had to follow certain guidelines, which also led to new modeling.

There was also some real-time material for the backgrounds, which provided graphic orientation. However, we created all the scenes independent of the existing material, because the technical demands of the real-time and cinematic areas are too different.

4) What does the studio pipeline at Virgin Lands look like?

We work separated by individual areas. There are graphic artists who are expert in character modeling, environment modeling, character animation, creating effects, staging (textures and lighting of scenes) including rendering supervision and compositing with 2D post-processing.

In the case of creating a trailer, that means there is no one who single-handedly creates a given clip from modeling to animation to finished rendering. Rather, a scene is divided up among up to a dozen different graphic artists. The wide variety of competencies and the work with a wide variety of tools for the different areas demand this procedure. In addition, this definitely leads to a harmonious total result, without getting different graphic styles in a single production.

5) What does it take to apply for a job at an animation studio like VL? (We have a lot of fans who are interested in graphics, so the question will certainly find interest.)

Artistic abilities, technical knowledge, and a lot of motivation.
Looking at a finished film suggests artistic work. But the technical background to be able to achieve the results should not be underestimated. In scenes like the rising of the temple, the creative expertise (what should the scene look like when it is done...) and the technical knowledge (what parameters do I have to fine-tune...) have to go hand in hand, otherwise it is impossible to achieve a harmonious result.