Following the release of all 7 episodes of Alien: Isolation The Digital Series last week, IGN also published an article in which Kinga Smith from Reverse Engineering Studios and Fabian DuBois from DVgroup talk about pitching the idea to Fox and some of the choice making that went into adapting the game for the Digital Series.
“We then made storytelling choices based on the idea that we would be going deeper into Amanda Ripley’s psychology – to discover her demons, her fears, her motivations. The final series is comprised of three types of scenes: brand-new scenes that are rendered from scratch, cinematics taken directly from the game, and first-person scenes from the game we re-shot, edited and inserted a CG model of Amanda Ripley. Viewers will get to enjoy an exciting narrative that doesn’t repeat the Alien: Isolation story, but completes it.”
Concept art from Alien: Isolation The Digital Series released via Alien Theory on Twitter.
You can head on over to IGN to read the complete interview. If you haven’t already, you can also watch all seven of the episodes on IGN as well.
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That's right. The complete Amanda model didn't exist in the released game, because in the process of optimising the 3D assets they culled all unnecessary polygons from the models, which included parts of Amanda that would never be seen by the player.
However, If you go to one of my earlier posts, you'll see an earlier stage of development during which Isolation was a 3rd person game, and the complete Amanda model did exist. (But she looked a little rough.) Presumably the Digital Series producer got a hold of that.
Actually, the biggest lesson out of all this (for me, anyway) has nothing to do with the technical curiosities.
In reviewing the 70 minute show again I could see that this movie serves as the perfect demonstration of what story structure is all about; or rather, what a story is like when it suffers from the lack of structure. They tried to enforce their own kind of structure with the Amanda-floating-in-space scenes, but it was a flimsy artifice that didn't really work. The story was just as episodic and paceless as it ever was.
In fact, calling it a "movie" is probably the best way of sabotaging it. Marketing it as a cutscene compilation is a better way of positioning the audience's expectations; which is kind of what they did do, but unfortunately I, like most people, just didn't pay enough attention to what they were announcing. So I have to accept some of the blame for my own disappointment.
TC
Secondly, regarding the low poly Amanda model, I don't think one actually exists in the game. I have 2 reasons for thinking this.
The first is that when I was looking for Amanda models, I found a forum where the members were saying that they were having trouble ripping the model from the game. They were getting parts but not a full 3D model. I'd look for the site again, but this evidence is backed up in my next reason...
...which is this:
Interesting, eh?
And sure, the behind-object part is a little more complicated, but 15 years ago, in movie school, a friend of mine told me about a program which could select and follow a specific part of the shot. Surely if it was doable 15 years ago, you'd have no trouble to do this now. Otherwise personally, if I had to do this simply, I'd just add back the chair or other elements in the shot after integrating Amanda. A little quicker than to always erase a precise part of her frame after frame.
I guess we'll never know for sure what went on, but continuing to speculate for the curiosity value...
I had another look, and I'm not sure they are composited. Are you thinking this is the case from this quote from the makers?:
I think this is a rather ambiguous statement, and could just as easily mean they converted the 1st-person scenes into 3rd-person scenes by going back into the game engine but his time including the (low-poly) Amanda model.
ON THE OTHER HAND some of the shots DO look very odd (as though composited on top):
In this top down angle of Amanda walking past Ricardo, look at the dodgy shadow she's casting on the floor. Not only is it very low res and lacking in density, it also sits on top of the existing shadows being cast in the room. Surely a sign that she is comped on top, yes?
https://i.postimg.cc/yNQft6K6/After-Talking-To-Ricardo2.jpg
But then again, in this shot, the shadow from the clamp laying on the floor seems to fall on her foot, which would be very difficult to achieve if she was comped:
https://i.postimg.cc/qRNmTfBs/Meet-Axel2.jpg
Plus, sometimes she crosses behind other objects in the scene. Not a problem if you were willing to rotoscope an animated matte around (in this case) the chair backs, but I don't think they had the budget for that kind of messing around:
https://i.postimg.cc/bwRV0HFt/Talking-To-Taylor-WS2.jpg
This actually happens quite often:
https://i.postimg.cc/YSqndGJy/Find-Motion-Tracker2.jpg
But then, going back to the scene where she converses with Taylor early on in the movie (and probably the most egregious shot of all), look how horrible Amanda's close-up is integrated into the background, exactly like she was poorly comped (you can even see a dark edge around her highlighted hair):
https://i.postimg.cc/SNCvRp6V/Talking-To-Taylor2.jpg
There are also many shots where they have added a random jiggle to the camera to simulate a hand-held effect. When Amanda is in the foreground, it creates a disturbing "swimming" effect, which is normally a giveaway of an imprecise 3D match move. IOW, they had a background (without Amanda) which had lots of camera movement, and tried to add a new Amanda to the foreground, having to duplicate the camera movement in her element too, but not quite getting it right.
BUT, this same swimming effect can also occur if you don't use the right sort of jiggle on your camera; namely, you want to make your camera jiggle through rotations, not translations.
What does this all mean? Danged if I know...
TC
Sure, there's more you could have done (The Hive, i.e.), but I enjoyed this more than Prometheus and Covenant.
Right, but what I'm saying is that the third person shots aren't rendered in game. The background is, but Amanda is rendered separately and then composited into the shot.
Given that info, there's no reason they couldn't have used a higher quality model.
Probably because the model featured in that artist's Artstation page was too high-res for use in the game engine, because it was made for offline rendering of the cutscene cinematics. It's also likely that this high-res model had incompatible shaders applied to it, such as a "sub-surface scattering" shader for realistic skin, and a special hair shader (which seems to be missing), that were also incompatible with the game engine.
Here's a reel by one of the Isolation animators who worked on both the in-game animations (for playback in realtime inside CA's custom game engine) and the cinematic cutscenes which were pre-rendered. If you look carefully you'll see the low-poly nature of some of the in-game scenes (e.g. cylinders that are faceted instead of rounded - look at the explosive bolts scene.)
https://vimeo.com/205282438
TC
I was just wondering why they didn't use the models on the artstation page, since it seems the artist worked on A:I.
It's possible that they did for the new scenes of Amanda in spacesuit floating among debris. The model and textures and lighting look a lot better here than in the new in-game scenes. I guess they had to create all new assets for these scenes so it suited them to go the extra effort.
But the new 3rd person scene angles (e.g. Amanda talks to Taylor in the Torrens commissary) used the in-game assets supplied by Creative Assembly, and their workflow required that they be rendered mechanima style (i.e. in realtime with their game engine). So in these cases either they had to create their own low-poly Amanda model because it wasn't a pre-existing CA asset, or if it did come from CA then it came from the early prototype builds when Isolation was still a 3rd person game.
TC
I think the Tongal shorts were a means for FOX to try and generate ideas for the franchise. I'm still upset I missed the deadline because I failed to factor in the time zone differences and hope to one day release my short script for fans to read, but as of now Im glad that I didn't just blindly share my ideas because in the fine print it read that Fox owns any ideas you submitted. Standard or not, not my speed.
f**kin hell the teaser intro reeled me in but once we see Amanda and Samuel's intro.....f**kin hell son who wiped away the smooth 60fps into a choppy 30-24fps low resolution with a downgraded color and missing dynamic lighting? This bugs me so much, the f**k?!?
David> Lovely work! <3 Thank you so much! And it's so good to see the beacon shutdown again.
Honestly looking at how excellent quality the game engine is, it actually make sense to package it in that format. Like a pseudo-animated series form. In a way it would be a great testing ground to see if people would be interested in a Alien animated series of sorts. Its about time that there are mature animated series that don't have to be all about rough comedy like Family Guy or Rick and Morty.
Or I guess maybe they could go the opposite, do the first on Alien Day and then scatter them until the October US theatrical release of Alien.
We're still waiting on those Tongal short films. I won't get much hopes up for anything more than those on Alien Day.
I like following Amanda for this though I don't think I'd be interested in a series based around her. I'd rather see some new characters.
Wonder what's going to be released for Alien Day!?
Oh, I didn't take it like that. Thanks for the clarification.
All episodes seamlessly branched together.
Sigourney's voice has been restored.
The beacon shutdown has been re-inserted.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z5lqbX
I notice that it was posted 2 months ago, so it's fairly recent. The artist says they're not the final renders, because he hasn't got access to the files, but they're better than what was put in the digital series. I wonder why they didn't use these? Or at least ask to use them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpaQGDCgwOg
Eh...I don't even think it was telegraphed or obvious by his comment about sleep. Call me dense, but when he first said he didn't need as much sleep, my original reaction was merely, "What?" I felt they were using a cheap tactic there to build tension. But it's tension that doesn't really lead anywhere. There was really nothing gained by the first overt reference to Samuels being an Android not coming until Waits says so. Felt clumsy and unfinished, and it's sure to have something to do with the fact that he originally was a villain.
Really, that's the reason they put it out now? The ReadPlayWatch marketing started in January. Blackout and Resistance came out days apart from each other. People were logically expecting that the watch part comes out soon as well. I thought they delayed the release because of the reaction from Blackout? To keep the rhythm going, they could have announced the series officially at the end of January, keeping the pace consistent from the previous releases, but release the series on Alien Day.
So what if there was a leak? Knowing what's coming shouldn't be a problem. Fox should've announced it a lot sooner IMO. We know an Isolation novel is coming and there's no revolt to give us the book this very moment. If they really intended to polish this more, they should've waited.
Oh, well. Appreciate the idea and good will. Wish it had been better executed, but hey, I'm looking on the bright side. At least it's not another A:CM...
Only just realised that Dan Abnett co wrote the original story too.