Dubai glistens in all its luxurious glory as a monstrous storm approaches to crush the city. In the aftermath of a cataclysmic desert storm, two rogue commando units fight for control of a ravaged Dubai city in an epic: 90 HD promotional trailer for Take 2's highly anticipated Spec Ops multiplayer game. Designed, animated and produced by creative collaborative Tronic, in collaboration with director Marco Brambilla, and featuring the haunting vocals of Bjork's Storm, Spec Ops marks Tronic's first deployment in the world of console gaming.
Working from Take 2's creative brief, Tronic partners Jessi Seppi and Vivian Rosenthal drew deeply on their architectural training (both have Masters in Architecture from Columbia University) to create a futuristic Dubai before and after the storm, as well as a large cast of characters and numerous fast-action sequences.
A Polished Mini-Movie
Tronic, known for its innovative CG imagery with a distinctive architectural aesthetic, produced a polished mini-movie that provided the aesthetic template for Spec Ops' subsequent development. Unlike typical game trailers, whose characters and environment are designed and modeled in advance of the promotional production, the Spec Ops' trailer preceded the game development and allowed for Tronic to design and model all the characters and environments from scratch. "As one can imagine, this made the project more exciting because it required every tool in our creative arsenal, and a tremendous amount of design, modeling and rendering power to create a platoon of photoreal characters who encounter enemy groups who move rapidly through the crumbling urban environment," says Tronic's Jessi Seppi.
After finishing the concept art, Tronic tested a variety of advanced animation techniques for environment and character development, before preparing for a motion capture shoot. Over the course of the six month- long project, Tronic pushed the creative envelope on every front, from 3D character modeling, texturing, animating to compositing. "We discovered that we not only enjoyed the process of working with games, but it was a good fit since it calls for motion capture and other interesting technologies that fit well with our design abilities in relation to characters and abstraction," said Rosenthal, whose previous game experience was a series of animated virals for online game GAIA.
A key challenge was the design and rendering of the environments with their constantly shifting perspectives. "Every environmental scene includes a long shot that shows another view of the city, which required the creation of a huge number of visual assets since we did not re-use shots," said Seppi. "For every shot we wanted to create a before and after feeling, moving from present day Dubai to after the destructive storm."
Architecture by Tronic
Tronic developed the complete visual architecture of Dubai, mixing together existing buildings with ones of their own design. "We built a huge database of visual assets to tell the story of an opulent Dubai and its destruction. From extensive Zbrush work for the characters, to hard and soft body dynamics in many of the scenes, to advanced particle systems like Krakatoa and Fume Effects for the sandstorm and explosions, we got to do it all," declared Seppi. " We also employed fracturing and custom scripting tools to control breaking glass and sync it with gunfire, the wind and sand. It was a big undertaking but well worth it. A true labor of love."