Fully Rendered 3D Movies

[Skypirate]

After watching "End of an Era"and "Heavensward" over and over again (Oh my god why is it so beautiful?!) and reminiscing on older Final Fantasy games. I began to think about another MMORGP Which shall not be named, and other games of the same company. I Think about how at certain points in their games there are fully rendered "Movies" so to speak.

I Call them that because frankly, they are too good to be cutscenes or cinematics. I also thought about End of an Era and Heavensward and how amazing they look and feel and thought. "You know, they could totally fit that into the game at certain points".

I know I am not the first person to think about that, and I'm sure I won't be the last. My question to you guys is do you think SE Will ever implement something as difficult as that into FFXIV? Especially at key points?

Here is a List of the Cinematics that I Remember off the top of my head :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag2cRTU-Og8 I Completely forgot the WoL Started out as a bard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM End of an Era
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86fG7gdUOw Heavensward

Ty shori

[Catwho]

They did actually with 2.0 - the scene right after you hit level 15 and leave the city for the first time, and the see the Garlean spaceships - the first part of that is fully rendered CG.

Movies take up a LOT of space on the HDD though, so that is the main reason they prefer to use the in-game engine for most cutscenes.

That, and it allows the player character to be involved. (Very critical for scenes like just after The Vault, where the emotional impact relied heavily on the player character being present.)

[ShizumiNeko]

Yeah, I like pre rendered video but they do coast more then the in game one. Plus adding into the game all the time wont really work due to people will complane about there charecter is not in it witch might kill the emotional effect of the game in certen scenes. They could add it in somthing when you dont see the main chsrecter but will people then complane about it being half and half (just like they do with jt being half and half voiced acted)

>M< so you cant really win people always wont more...

[Enkidoh]

They did actually with 2.0 - the scene right after you hit level 15 and leave the city for the first time, and the see the Garlean spaceships - the first part of that is fully rendered CG.

Movies take up a LOT of space on the HDD though, so that is the main reason they prefer to use the in-game engine for most cutscenes.

That, and it allows the player character to be involved. (Very critical for scenes like just after The Vault, where the emotional impact relied heavily on the player character being present.)

That scene was actually not specifically made for ARR though - it was actually part of version 1.0's original opening movie that SE just recycled for ARR (the original scene featured 'Derplander' riding on the back of a Juggernaut - the whole scene was actually within the Echo in the original version).

As amazing as fully rendered CG cinematics are, their main problem is they cost a lot in time, money and labour (I don't have the source sadly but as I understand it the End of an Era/A New Beginning trailer cost over $3 million and took Square Enix Visual Works twelve months to produce. Of course this has proven to be a very wise investment but it's not something they can simply do for every scene in the game, especially with a MMORPG like FFXIV where the player creates their own character.

It's worth noting also that as far as Square's first use of FMV in a FF title (FFVII) was actually not just for the 'wow' factor, but also for technical reasons - the FMV was actually used to hide the loading of new areas into the game, which as it used pre-rendered backgrounds this use of FMV fitted the game perfectly (this is why FFVII often had short FMV of mundane scenes or actions, like a lift going up or down, it was effectively a very cleverly masked 'now loading' screen). But I digress.

[KisaiTenshi]

Movies take up a LOT of space on the HDD though, so that is the main reason they prefer to use the in-game engine for most cutscenes.

There's not much point to pre-rendering any cutscene in the game unless it excludes the player and requires choreography that isn't possible.
Take for example the V1.0 OP/Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXDMDvYu0Fc

and then compare to the V1.0 starting movies (which are pre-render composites a la FFX)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-nmgLvTFD0 Ul'dah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU5N24_5VIk Gridania
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7kxELjRJRM Limsa

In V2.0 we actually lost all the composite movies altogether. But hardware has also moved forward 4 years since. It's -entirely- possible to get enough visual fidelity using the 3D renderer itself that composite renders aren't required. But at the same time ... people still have cheap video cards and laptops that are not capable of running the game at maximum settings. So they also get inferior cutscenes.

Remember, the entire reason we had composite cutscenes in the first place was because the PSX and PS2 were not capable rendering "in real time" the visual fidelity necessary to make the ENTIRE game look good. So Square compromised, rendered the backgrounds and cutscenes, and limited the customization of the playable characters so that the characters were always present and voiced in the rendered cutscenes.

[Catwho]

I think cost is one of the reasons that SE has been developing their Luminous engine - they get that fully rendered CGI look, but can manipulate it in real time.

Of course, the computer that they ran the last demo on had la bunch of nIvida Titan cards working in SLI to grind that out in real time.

[Ninja-Mage]

It's amazing looking back at 1.0 cutscenes, well it's debatable on if the game looks better from a simple picture standpoint, in terms of animation they used it definitely eclipses 2.0-3.0. Like player character actually feels like they react to the environment around them whereas for 2.0 on I've felt even in the big cut scenes (2.55 and such) my character and many of the NPC's do minimal movement, or it feels very slow. Like take the fight that takes place in 2.55's last big cut scene, by comparison to the last cutscene in the 1.0 stuff it feels incredibly weighted.

I want to see better animations in the cut scenes honestly. If they can do that again, it'd be perfect. Till then I still feel like I have a minimal presence in the story.

[Gaddes]

I want to see better animations in the cut scenes honestly. If they can do that again, it'd be perfect. Till then I still feel like I have a minimal presence in the story.

I agree for the most part, especially from 2.0 to the end of 2.55, but I feel that Heavensward was an improvement in our character feeling more involved. It could've been MORE involved, sure, but we actually got a bit more player character-specific animation in the cutscenes this time around.

[Takfloyd]

There is an epic prerendered movie during the Binding Coil of Bahamut storyline. It was a real treat for those of us who managed to get through it. Most people will never get to see it in its original context though because the raid is too hard for them.

[Shori]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag2cRTU-Og8 I Completely forgot the WoL Started out as a bard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM End of an Era
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM Heavensward

Your HW link goes to EoaE/ARR instead