How do they make photorealistic game trailors?

[Tech_Dreamer]

We all have experienced the photorealistic eye candy trailor that led us to buy the games , but the graphics on the real game are DX9 level grade render. so this made me wonder how do they do it?

 

 

 

 

So my question is in a series, forgive me for that (too many0.

1. how do game devolopers come up with photorealistic rendered trailors?
2. what software / filters do they use?
3. is it motion capture animation with real actors?
4. can i recreate the similar effects on a powerful rig @ home from ground up?

feel free to answer you own way..

 

 

Post your comments on where Gaming future is headed "in terms of photorealistic post processing". or do you preffer the classic 3d gaming experience. B)

 

 

 

 

eg:

 

 

 

 

 

a ninja never plays around

[midrim]

I'm pretty sure Hollywood already has better effects than most game trailers. Best you ask a filmmaker rather than a game designer.

After Effects is a good software to start with. I'm sure a powerful home rig can render those effects, but you need a lot of know-how to use it.

 

 

BTW has anyone watched Blizzard Trailers? Sure, WoW's graphics are sooo 2004 but damn do they make good trailers!

 

[Bluejay0]

CGI and TONS and TONS of rendering and man hours.

[darkspeedy26]

-3: i think i heard that star citizen uses the same technology from avatar movie (the blue guys). I don't know about any other games, but i guess the cheaper ones just are scripted

[ZetZet]

That is CGI.

[darkspeedy26]

-1 and -2 and -4:

i don't know exactly what programs they use for games, but look up the youtube channel of BrandonJla (called freddiew2 before). Brandon did a series of tutorials in 3dsMax (i guess it was that).

[Nineshadow]

It's Maya/3DS Max ,most probably.Or other software(Blender C4D),but more rarely it's actually the game engine.

[darkspeedy26]

here is the link to brandonJla his tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcyfIKhQZ_gbhcGfoi1EcgNFx723EofgN

[MooseParade]

Call of Duty gets me with this every year. You look at the leaked photos and think wow, they really did use a new a graphics engine...and then the game comes out. 

 

Butter: Everything on that chick was perfect butter face.

[Nineshadow]

Computer Generated Images are very realistic(if they are intended to be so).

Here are some examples :

 

As you can see,they look very damn good and more than just realistic.

 

1.Already answered

2.3DS Max/Maya/Blender/C4D/Etc.

3.For the big stuff,yes.Cheaper productions don't use that though.You can simply script it.

4.Of course.Here's something I made quickly in blender(not animation,just a picture) :

But,I tell you,for an animation,it's gonna take not minutes and not hours,it's gonna take days,if not weeks(depending on the amount of frames).I mean,this little animation took me 8 hours to render at 500 samples and at 1080p.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojahzvFRO-c

[mvitkun]

As said above Maya and 3DS max are very popular for both creating the games as well as creating more hype for them.

 

I wouldn't doubt that Mudbox is used as well for sculpting since it lets you change the level of complexity of a 3D mode, that way they could show you the cgi with say a subdivision level of 5, and then tone it down to maybe subdivison level 3.

That way they can use the same model, rather than two different models.

[Hawx]

-3: i think i heard that star citizen uses the same technology from avatar movie (the blue guys). I don't know about any other games, but i guess the cheaper ones just are scripted

Motion tracking is just that, they have a studio to plays out scenes that would be too hard to manually create movement. They take the telemetry from those scenes and put them into a program like 3DSMax or professional-grade rendering software that the big budget studios use. Star Citizen, of course, imports the data directly into CryEngine where it's rendered in realtime.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Computer Generated Images are very realistic(if they are intended to be so).

Here are some examples :

 

 

 

 

As you can see,they look very damn good and more than just realistic.

 

1.Already answered

2.3DS Max/Maya/Blender/C4D/Etc.

3.For the big stuff,yes.Cheaper productions don't use that though.You can simply script it.

4.Of course.Here's something I made quickly in blender(not animation,just a picture) :

 

But,I tell you,for an animation,it's gonna take not minutes and not hours,it's gonna take days,if not weeks(depending on the amount of frames).I mean,this little animation took me 8 hours to render at 500 samples and at 1080p.

Thats what i'm looking for, but holy crap! that 3 second long animation took 8 hours? i'm Really shocked

 

so if i wanted to pan around that picture of the wheel base that you created its gonna take weeks or even months? all in that exact quality?

 

 

this is surreal! I mean i wanted to do something like that, but holy , holy crap! *excuse me* my current specs arent upto it even remotely! atleast 3 years backward compared to entry level specs! Just Wow! i'm gonna need quad sli quadro 6000' configuration with dual xeons if want to do something like in those trailors, i guess, well i'm gonna have to work on that one for coming years! maybe Nvidia's volta stacked memory thing is gonna put the price down around 2016 , but have to wait until then

 

this is like that scene from the movie "Jaws"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shocked ninja

[Hawx]

Avatar and films with heavy CGI actually use entire 'Render Farms', basically multi-million dollar servers dedicated to the task of rendering CGI, not just a single computer.

[Nineshadow]

 

shocked*

Yep,here's the answer to that :

 

Avatar and films with heavy CGI actually use entire 'Render Farms', basically multi-million dollar servers dedicated to the task of rendering CGI, not just a single computer.

 

It's lots and lots of rendering...

[LukaP]

Thats what i'm looking for, but holy crap! that 3 second long animation took 8 hours? i'm Really shocked

so if i wanted to pan around that picture of the wheel base that you created its gonna take weeks or even months? all in that exact quality?

this is surreal! I mean i wanted to do something like that, but holy , holy crap! *excuse me* my current specs arent upto it even remotely! atleast 3 years backward compared to entry level specs! Just Wow! i'm gonna need quad sli quadro 6000' configuration with dual xeons if want to do something like in those trailors, i guess, well i'm gonna have to work on that one for coming years! maybe Nvidia's volta stacked memory thing is gonna put the price down around 2016 , but have to wait until then

this is like that scene from the movie "Jaws"

shocked ninja

Dont be intimidated. its not really that long, since for the most time when you start learning, you dont make high quality renders, you learn techniques and such, as only when you are versed in modeling and texturing can you make excellent renders

[ShadowCaptain]

Yep I remember reading about the 3rd transformers movie. The scene where the giant worm attacks the building. took something like 180 hours per frame using ILMs render farm when rendering at IMAX resolution (up to 18K apparently)

 

Apparently one of the PCs exploded from rendering

[LukaP]

Yep I remember reading about the 3rd transformers movie. The scene where the giant worm attacks the building. took something like 180 hours per frame using ILMs render farm.

Apparently one of the PCs exploded from rendering

I don't believe it exploded since they use xeons clocked rather low, and very hogh end cooling for the racks

[ShadowCaptain]

I don't believe it exploded since they use xeons clocked rather low, and very hogh end cooling for the racks

 

I did say apparently. Its on the wiki and on the movie trivia on imdb and such places

 

they probably just overheated and smoked

[LukaP]

I did say apparently. Its on the wiki and on imdb trivia.

Well it surely wasnt the heat making it explode. Might have been a short ot something

[ShadowCaptain]

Well it surely wasnt the heat making it explode. Might have been a short ot something

 

Where is the information on what specs they render with?

 

This was an interesting quote

 

"For a last push on the final weekend of work, ILM’s entire render farm was used for Transformers 3. ILM calculates that that added up to more than 200,000 rendering hours per day -- or the equivalent of 22.8 years of render time in a 24-hour period." 

 

I assume the render farm is ludicrously big

 

here is Pixars looks insane. between 3000 and 5000 processors

[LukaP]

Where is the information on what specs they render with?

This was an interesting quote

"For a last push on the final weekend of work, ILM’s entire render farm was used for Transformers 3. ILM calculates that that added up to more than 200,000 rendering hours per day -- or the equivalent of 22.8 years of render time in a 24-hour period."

I assume the render farm is ludicrously big

here is Pixars looks insane. between 3000 and 5000 processors

Im guessing from the processors that are available for that (eg. The 24core xeon)