Fox Announces Alien: Isolation Digital Series!

Started by Corporal Hicks, Feb 27, 2019, 05:44:31 PM

Author
Fox Announces Alien: Isolation Digital Series! (Read 68,667 times)

Roby

You think we'll have to wait until Alien Day for those Tongal shorts?

Nightmare Asylum

Maybe throughout April leading to Alien Day if they don't want to drop them all at once, otherwise, yeah.

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.

Jordie

Jordie

#347
Wow, what a lazy POS. Slap together some cutscenes, add some animation that's worse than the game, and just post it on IGN's janky site. Disney must really be dropping the Aliens franchise as fast as possible.

Mr.Turok

Mr.Turok

#348
So basically the game but in a tv-series-sort-of format?
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.

Oasis Nadrama

Quote from: David's Creation on Mar 03, 2019, 06:37:37 PM
Alright, finally got this done.  Had a few setbacks and it takes forever to render.

All episodes seamlessly branched together.
Sigourney's voice has been restored.
The beacon shutdown has been re-inserted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gbt4saizfk

David> Lovely work! <3 Thank you so much! And it's so good to see the beacon shutdown again.

Mr.Turok

Quote from: Mr.Turok on Mar 04, 2019, 04:01:17 AM
So basically the game but in a tv-series-sort-of format?
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.

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?!?

Stitch

Quote from: Mr.Turok on Mar 04, 2019, 04:30:46 AM
Quote from: Mr.Turok on Mar 04, 2019, 04:01:17 AM
So basically the game but in a tv-series-sort-of format?
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.

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?!?
I was waiting for your reaction. I saw your first post and was going to say something, but there's nothing that can be said, is there?

CainsSon

CainsSon

#352
Quote from: Roby on Mar 03, 2019, 11:04:06 PM
You think we'll have to wait until Alien Day for those Tongal shorts?

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.

TC

Quote from: Stitch on Mar 03, 2019, 05:22:26 PM
I was looking online for Amanda Ripley models, to see if they had been ripped from the game when I found this:

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.

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

Stitch

Quote from: TC on Mar 04, 2019, 10:05:29 AM
Quote from: Stitch on Mar 03, 2019, 05:22:26 PM
I was looking online for Amanda Ripley models, to see if they had been ripped from the game when I found this:

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ7xtDvUxEc

TC
As far as I read in the IGN creators interview, there was no machinima. The third person scenes were made using the first person view from the game to capture the background, and then a new model of Amanda was inserted into the scene, which is why the lighting for Amanda looks off in these scenes.
I was just wondering why they didn't use the models on the artstation page, since it seems the artist worked on A:I.

TC

Quote from: Stitch on Mar 04, 2019, 10:28:30 AM
...
I was just wondering why they didn't use the models on the artstation page, since it seems the artist worked on A:I.

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

Stitch

Quote from: TC on Mar 04, 2019, 11:45:18 AM
Quote from: Stitch on Mar 04, 2019, 10:28:30 AM
...
I was just wondering why they didn't use the models on the artstation page, since it seems the artist worked on A:I.

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

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.

maron

maron

#357
Taylor has more character depth than Fifield. Congratulations.  ;D

Sure, there's more you could have done (The Hive, i.e.), but I enjoyed this more than Prometheus and Covenant.  :P

TC

Quote from: Stitch on Mar 05, 2019, 01:20:48 AM
...
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.
...

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?:

QuoteThe 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.

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?




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:




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:




This actually happens quite often:




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):




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

Oasis Nadrama

Actually the shadow-on-foot thing can be accomplished in multiple ways, it's a simple effect. You could even do that with Photoshop, frame after frame, if you're patient. But After Effect (an old and very easy to get for free program) can do this kind of thing on the move.

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.

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