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Step by Step:
Hellgate London

Aug 26, 2006 12:00 PM, By Ellen Wolff

Apocalyptic Cinematics

The opening sequence for Hellgate London only looks like a scene from a CG feature; it is actually the cinematic introduction to a PC role-playing game published by Namco Bandai. Developed at Flagship Studios, Hellgate London depicts a devastated London in 2038 — an apocalyptic time when demons rule and mankind has fled underground.

To create the atmospheric cinematics that establish this netherworld, Flagship chose Blur Studios in Venice, Calif. In the opening cinematic, we meet a key female character called a Cabalist, a tattooed spell-caster. Blur Sequence Lead Kevin Margo developed the look of the battle scene that introduces her, in which her fist turns into a fiery glove. Margo says, “This is her entrance, where she shows off her powers. The glove enables her to shoot bolts of energy at the demons around her.

“This battle occurs in a church courtyard,” he continues. “It's a real 3D-modeled environment, done in [Autodesk] 3ds Max 8.” Blur's environment modelers tried to capture as much of a 360-degree view as possible, Margo notes. “They don't know all the angles that we'll see of the environment until the last minute, when the cameras are locked down. So to be safe they model it from every angle — within file size and workability limitations. We don't want a huge file that's a bear to work with.

“At the same time, they generate environmental props — rubble piles and trees — that they can drop in easily to dress up the shot.” The background buildings also sit in separate, rather small, file sizes so they can be readily moved around like set pieces.

Margo used a scripting tool called Advanced Painter (derived from Nature Painter software) to paint small details on the rocks scattered about. “You select the rock you want to paint — and the ground you want to paint it on — and just click and drag. It starts dropping rocks as you go.”

Creating the characters in Hellgate London inspired Blur to employ a mix of tools, Margo explains. “We're still modeling characters in Max, but occasionally we'll use Softimage XSI for different things. The best example is the Face Robot software, a facial motion capture system that we've been developing with Softimage as an XSI plug-in. When you've done facial motion capture, Face Robot brings in that motion capture data and knows how to treat it. It has built-in knowledge of how human facial muscles move — like how skin crinkles when you smile. When you feed designated [mo-cap] markers in, Face Robot treats the geometry that's around those markers. It makes it behave the way faces do, and you get great subtleties. This is the first project where we've realized its full potential.”

To create the tattoos that cover the Cabalist character in Hellgate London, Blur used Zbrush (a combination 2D-3D tool from Pixologic). Margo says, “All the tattoos were normal maps. With Zbrush, you can extract displacement maps. The difference with displacement maps is if you were to render them in Brazil 2 [Blur's renderer of choice from Splutterfish], you could generate the geometry and the mesh at render time. This makes the scene a lot lighter. You can get more details done at render time, instead of having to physically calculate the mesh.”

Because the Cabalist's fist transforms into a fiery glove, Blur's effects experts had to develop a convincing look. Margo explains, “[Their solution was] to use Particle Flow [incorporated in 3ds Max] to generate the fiery look, and then AfterBurn [a volumetric plug-in for 3ds Max] to create black smoke around it.”

All of the elements in this scene were broken up to save on render times. Keeping the renders light also kept Blur's options open during compositing. Because Blur has done several game cinematics on very tight deadlines, the studio has had to develop efficient ways of rendering. Margo says, “We're constantly conscious of render times. We can't let individual frames sit on the render farm for hours. That's especially important now that most of our projects are rendered at HDTV standards. Nobody wants NTSC anymore.”

By rendering in Brazil 2, Blur could use EXR images, which, Margo explains, are a lot like HDRI images. He says, “EXR is a file format developed by ILM and incorporated into Brazil. When I modeled the environment, I generated an EXR image from that model. It was like a 360-degree panorama. Wherever the sun or fires were, they were all in EXRs. I could generate their light intensities using that. It's as close as we can get at the moment to using an object in the environment to actually light things in the scene. You'll see red fires on the ground behind the characters, and that, to a subtle degree, is being captured in an EXR image. It's what we're using for our ambient lighting passes, and it's a pure, beautiful base to work off of. Then we add accent lights. That's where the artistic eye takes over.”

For Margo, the scene wouldn't be complete without an atmospheric pass. That pass was used during compositing with Eyeon Digital Fusion to simulate depth-of-field blurring. “There's tons of smoke and ashes drifting by, which adds texture and brings the image to life,” he says.

With an average of 35 separate passes to composite in each scene, Margo admits, “It was a bit like a puzzle to fit the elements together.” But having the ability to adjust elements during post inspires what Margo calls ‘What If…’ thinking.

And with that freedom, he says, “Things will always grow and change.”

Credit Roll

For Blur Studios:
Creative Director -	Tim Miller
CG Supervisor -	Jerome Denjean
Lieutenant CG Supervisor/
Environment Modeling/
Lighting/Compositing -	Kevin Margo
Animation Supervisor -	Marlon Nowe
Effects Supervisor -	Kirby Miller
Producer -	Al Shier
Associate Producer -	Debbie Yu
Concept Design -	Hugo Martin
Layout/Animatic -	David Nibbelin
Character Modeling -	Sze Jones
Animation -	Davy Sabbe, Jeff Wilson
Rigging, Hair, and Cloth Simulation -	Jon Jordan, Malcolm Thomas-Gustave

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