Darren New wrote:
> How much effort, do you think, goes into the interactive parts of the
> game engine vs the non-interactive parts?
> 
> In other words, say you wanted to make a trailer for a video game you
> were never going to produce, more a piece of movie than something where
> you needed plot, a real-time engine, AIs, interaction, etc.  Or say
> something like a surreal roller-coaster video, with no player interaction?
> 
> How much effort would that really be for a skilled and experienced
> professional?  What do you think it would cost (or how long might it
> take) to put together a video approximately like this, say, if you knew
> when you started that the only result would be this video, and not an
> actual game?
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8npW85PW0s
> 
> Any ideas? Any ideas how you'd find that out easily?
> 

Compared to producing the entire game, substantially less work at the
end of production. Up front, you are still going to need your graphic
artists creating all of the assets. For that video, even easier because
you don't need any story boards or brainstorming because those are
provided by the original games. Actors are going to be doing just a few
lines of voice work, you don't need to tune any AI to use the tools of
your game, and you can even skimp on the quality of the graphic assets
because no one is going to see them from the back.

Cost? Haven't a clue. Time depends on the team and the stuff they have
to work with. When I was working on a videogame-like project, I spent 3
months waiting on the animator to get me a model and skeleton rig with
several animations built in. But he was new to modeling, I was the
rookie programmer who hadn't worked with the tools before, and it is a
university setting where the progress mattered more than the time frame
used. An artist using the tools they know and like, could probably crank
out static models in a week or so; someone around here with experience
in Blender or Wings or Maya or Rhino, etc, could tell you better.
Multiple static models per scene, depending on the scene, you are
talking a few months at least.

Story board time is going to be only a little less. Sure, you don't need
the entire plot; however, you need enough of it to know what the total
story will look like so you can make the trailer. You won't flesh out
every detail, but the characters and settings need to have some life to
them. Why does this building use teleporters, why is the bad guy trying
to kill you, and so on. Same works for writing a short montage film, I
would guess. The more people you have working on the piece, the more
time you will spend on this step. Each person needs to have a consistant
view of what the end result will look like, or transitions between what
each artist models will look harsh.

For 'just' a surreal roller-coaster, figure a few days for drawing up
the path the coaster will take. A few weeks spent getting a style nailed
down, be it wood construction or metal or some living organism. Since a
lot of pieces will be reused, count on just a few months of someone
working part time to create all the pieces. Maybe just a month if you
are paying them well. Hopefully you have someone else working on the
background and scenery that whole time. After all the parts, you start
assembling them and rendering as you go.

Once you have the finished footage, send that off to the movie team to
turn into the trailer. Expect them to critique each color choice, the
timing of each movement, the pace you are setting, etc. And that is even
if you had them involved the entire time. So, another month or so to
redo the parts they feel do not fit. Then give them a few days to weeks
to piece everything together, and render the video effects, and convert
from several gigs of video footage down to under 500 Megs of a final
video, and you have yourself a trailer.

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