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Read this on Seer this morning, thought I would drag it over here. I think the rumour woke me up more than my coffee

From Colonel Kreitz of Warseer;



Hey folks!

Just got back from LA Gamesday. It was, of course, a good time to be had by all. I thought the 40K Big Game was a little weak this year, but there were some very good club tables and the Golden Daemon entries were top-notch.

The seminars didn't really break any new ground on the rumors front with a few exceptions:

- Phil Kelly confirmed he is working on Planetstrike, but he does not have any confirmations for the timeline

- The Valkyrie is (supposedly) still a possibility, but not definite. Phil said there are no technical problems with doing it, due to the scanning technology they now have, but there is a question of whether it would be worth putting into production.

- A 40K scenario book is being considered by GW. There's been thought about releasing a compendium of additional missions and possibly some campaign materal, but no work has yet begun.


HOWEVER, by far the biggest rumor came from the Black Library presentation. An audience member asked if BL had ever considered doing any screen-plays, shorts, etc. The presenter had a long pause, then replied with something to the effect of "Well, hypothetically, there could maybe be a direct to DVD release of some kind of CGI movie with Ultramarines next year. Maybe." The long and short of it was there is clearly some kind of direct to DVD, CGI 40K movie that is in progress, though the presenter placed massive stress on the fact that it was still not a sure thing and that he could not promise the release date, much less the fact that it would actually be completed (as reflected by anyone that remembers Exile Films' with Bloodquest).

It should be noted that the presenter also said that neither THQ nor the company that did the cutscenes for Dawn of War are involved, but that the movie would be "to that level of quality."

Rather interesting, no?


I thought the CGI movies/intros were incredibly expensive to make? Anyone with expertise in that field?

I thought the CGI movies/intros were incredibly expensive to make? Anyone with expertise in that field?

My remarkably limited knowledge suggests that yes they are, which confuses me seeing as GW are supposed to be penny pinching. That said, these things are subject to diminishing expenditure of cost - modelling an Ultramarine takes X amount of money, but you can then use that model as much as you like. Of course, you need animation, motion capture (maybe), voice work, etc etc etc, so it will still be a very high cost endeavour.

It only costs a lot if you want it fast. One man can do the job twenty people should be doing, it will just take him a lot longer.

if it does happen, and it is to the DoW level of quality, i will buy it without a doubt.

Now, if they can only write a good story for it, it doesnt matter if its a beautiful looking movie if the story is crap.

A DoW cut scene level movie would be absolutely amazing! I just hope they actually make it.

Now this is the kind of news I wanna hear!

If this is going through BL I think we can safely assume that it will be in limited numbers and sold for quite some quid.

I think that any effort to expand the IP into other forms of media is good. Not too sure if CGI will be better or worse than regular animation - I guess it will come down to the time/money invested into it.

As other's have mentioned, if it's on par with the recently released DOWII trailer, I think it will have a lot of potential, provided the story is solid.

AJC

Does anyone know what the time/money investment would be on a DOWII Trailer level of quality CGI movie that was, say, an hour long?

How long would something like that take to produce?

I can't help but be excited by this news!

The cost depends on how you decide to make it, how long it is and how "good" you make it.

A script is a script. You need one good writer.

A lot of the models are easy -- once you've made one SM model the rest are just minor texture changes. Same for a lot of vehicles. The backgrounds can be more work though it depends partly how you design it. For instance, a building can be a cube with textures on it. A street can be a series of cubes with textures on, and so on.

The difficult bit is the animation. Some CGI is done using motion capture, which is realistic and expensive. Other CGI is done by hand animation -- you need talented animators to make this look really good. Doing it cartoony helps.

I guess a budget of 1-5 million dollars depending how long and how good they make it. There's no upper limit to what you can spend -- Final Fantasy The Spirits Within cost over $100 million.

Making it straight to DVD saves on rendering (lower resolution) and publishing costs (about £1.50 to put a disc in a shop.) Since GW can release it through their own retail chain, the potential profit per disc is quite high. They need to make a good estimate of the number of copies they can sell.

His Master's Voice wrote:It only costs a lot if you want it fast. One man can do the job twenty people should be doing, it will just take him a lot longer.

It then might take that one man twenty times as long and might even cost more...

Reecius wrote:if it does happen, and it is to the DoW level of quality, i will buy it without a doubt.

Now, if they can only write a good story for it, it doesnt matter if its a beautiful looking movie if the story is crap.

Games Workshop has great writers like Dan Abnett that have been involved in a lot of their works. Dark Heresy as well as Black Library novels are just a couple examples. I would be extremely disappointed if they didn't come up with a great story. The background and fiction is something GW does really well. I think it's something they do better than most competitors.


By the way, why WH40k and not WHFB? I thought the top guys at GW loved Fantasy more. It seems like they would do a Fantacy movie first.

~Logic

if someone's going to all the trouble of animating CGI 'intermission scenes' to show between levels etc in a game, it's _relatively_ little work to then re-use those computer models in a longer movie.

But story is king - both Final Fantasy movies were stunningly animated but boring storywise, whereas Mr Lucas is surrently doing rather well with the the Clone Wars movie which is quite cartoonishly animated.

Dan Abnett for the script? Screw that, get Ian Watson back already, he writes scripts for a living!

And remember, Relic is a big company, even bigger and richer than GW, so they can afford the services of Blur Studios for short top-notch intro cinematic movies. If GW is doing a CGI thing I'd hazard a guess that they will avoid the moneypit that was Blood Quest the Movie and instead maybe go for the best way out: an animated short of around 10-15 minutes. Maybe use that as a demo to see if the market is ready for such a hefty investment.

It should be noted that the presenter also said that neither THQ nor the company that did the cutscenes for Dawn of War are involved, but that the movie would be "to that level of quality."

It'll be interesting to see how they pull that off. I don't really know of any other studios doing full CGI contract work that can pull off something to Blur's level of quality.

Hmmmm... Maybe they'll make a movie of the Assualt on Black Reach as a promotional tie in for the box set, since they're already making a novella based on it...

Clang wrote:if someone's going to all the trouble of animating CGI 'intermission scenes' to show between levels etc in a game, it's _relatively_ little work to then re-use those computer models in a longer movie.

Except that the software used for those is propietary to those companies, most likely. And that part of the animation isn't as hard as getting the right pieces in the right places. And those companies aren't going to the "trouble"...they are getting PAID.

Clang wrote:But story is king - both Final Fantasy movies were stunningly animated but boring storywise, whereas Mr Lucas is surrently doing rather well with the the Clone Wars movie which is quite cartoonishly animated.

The movie isn't doing that well at all, even with a brand name GW or FF would kill for. And the CW story is laughably juvenile. The FF movie in 2001 cost about 10-15 times what GW would rationally consider paying. As a nbew property, a GW film would be more reliant on quality than Star Wars or some straight to DVD sequel or comic character. It would need to stand out.

That costs money. The current market is amenable to the business, though, and if done well, it could be a real advertising coup for GW and it's ancillary properties. Call it Dawn of War: Assault on Black Reach

I assume this film will be in black & white with a 2 minute colour section in the middle?

Sadly, I could care less about an Ultramarines movie.

Something involving Guard or centered around Chaos marines, or even Eldar, would be far more interesting.

Logic wrote:

His Master's Voice wrote:It only costs a lot if you want it fast. One man can do the job twenty people should be doing, it will just take him a lot longer.

It then might take that one man twenty times as long and might even cost more...

The Cathedral was made by a single man over a three year period. Did it cost his ma lot? Sure, for a single man. But it wasn't anywhere near the normal cost estimate for projects like that. If you want a CG movie fast (or at least reasonably timed) you need to hire a studio and studios pay a lot of bills even when they're not working.

Darth Fugly wrote:I assume this film will be in black & white with a 2 minute colour section in the middle?

Will crucial and connecting parts of the expostion be in seperate sections of the DVD, such that you have to chapter select back and forth to make sense of it?

Will crucial and connecting parts of the expostion be in seperate sections of the DVD, such that you have to chapter select back and forth to make sense of it?

Before I buy this film I'm going to ask Stelek for his advice on the optimum TV/sound system/DVD player combos.

Hi, long time reader, first time poster

Anyway, take this for what its worth and all that. But, there is a page on the gamesworkshop website that might have something to do with this.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?community=&catId=cat210004&categoryId=600002&aId=7000002

I have never seen it before, and I don't know if it is old, if it is maybe supposed to be a spot to promote a future game, or maybe its a future spot for the new movie.

Either way, there is nothing there yet.

Wasn't that just for 5th ed. release?

dienekes96 wrote:Except that the software used for those is propietary to those companies, most likely.

Plugins, custom scripts and the like may be proprietary but most of these companies use the same software (Maya, 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, etc.). Also, you can import models back and forth between most of these programs without losing too much data (ie, you maintain the model itself but may lose texure mapping information, inverse kinematic rigging, item groups, etc).

Bloodsbane wrote:

It should be noted that the presenter also said that neither THQ nor the company that did the cutscenes for Dawn of War are involved, but that the movie would be "to that level of quality."

It'll be interesting to see how they pull that off. I don't really know of any other studios doing full CGI contract work that can pull off something to Blur's level of quality.

Several animation and effects studios in Soho (London) could do it, but they are not cheap. (Framestore, Smoke and Mirrors, The Mill, etc.)

AzurePhoenix wrote:

dienekes96 wrote:Except that the software used for those is propietary to those companies, most likely.

Plugins, custom scripts and the like may be proprietary but most of these companies use the same software (Maya, 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, etc.). Also, you can import models back and forth between most of these programs without losing too much data (ie, you maintain the model itself but may lose texure mapping information, inverse kinematic rigging, item groups, etc).

Pixar built their success on great scripts and proprietary software. However, what is super-high-tech proprietary one year, often becomes a standard plug-in for XSI/Maya a few years later.

There is software to convert models from one format to another. It doesn't always work perfectly.

While I really would like to see a movie made, I have to wonder what the PG-rating would end up at?
Think about it; much of the GW customer base are kids or teens. Quickly checking my DoW1-box, I
see that it has a 16+ rating. So for a movie, I can see them doing two things; try to hit as many of
the young kids with parental wallets as possible, which would probably make the movie resemble
something like the ton of run-of-the-mill kids movies that come out these days, or they'll go with
making a movie for the more adult crowd; gritty, gothic, dark and generally non-kid friendly. I so
do hope they go with the movie that would actually represent how the setting feels, not with the
kids' version.

al-Majid Agandhjin bin Ahfal al-Rashid (Who is tired of having the kids at work tell him what movie
they shouldn't be allowed to see for 10 years, but just saw because their parents bought it for them)

I was at the seminar as well, and as I posted in my thread, I think the mantra that the quality will be as good as the DOW trailer was just wishful thinking.

The amount of money it cost to pay blur to make that 3 minute trailer is no doubt in the several millions. To extend that kind of quality out to a 30 minute release would probably be somewhere around 30-40 million.

Unless they are paying blur to make the film (unlikely) there is no guarantee that any sort of digital asset sharing can or will take place between blur and the house that makes the film.

Also remember that the DOW games are purchased by plenty of non-GW gamers and with an overall package price of $50-60 the cost of such a movie can easily be justified in the cost of the game's development.

A straight to DVD video cannot be priced that high and will likely be purchased by less people than those who buy the DOW games. In other words, the amount of money they can afford to spend on this movie has to be relatively small unless they are willing to not to make much of a profit in return for the video hopefully helping to broaden their audience a little bit. Ultimately it is just a promotion for their core games after all.

Making a 'cheap' CGI product is much more likely IMHO, like the kinds of cartoons you see on TV. There are many animation houses in India and China that handle such animation projects on a regular basis.

I am hopeful that I'm wrong and that it will be great but my reality sensor TM tells me to expect something more so-so.

Oh god, GW no! I just hope to god it doesn't have orks in it. I can see it now them all voiced by Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham. Although I have to admit it would be quite exciting to see a trailer for this in the cinema!

yakface wrote:The amount of money it cost to pay blur to make that 3 minute trailer is no doubt in the several millions. To extend that kind of quality out to a 30 minute release would probably be somewhere around 30-40 million.

As already stated it doesn't work this way. The most expensive part of the process is always modeling and texturing. After that it's just reusing existing puppets.