Batman Arkham City Trailer

[Gluge]

Thanks guys! lot of Blur people worked really hard on this. I posted some HD stills from my shots - http://barrettmeeker.com/530-batman-arkham-city

Oh and it’s all vray.

[system]

so blur is ditching mental ray. Wow, this looked amazing. totally thought it was live action at first.

[shnoodlek]

Although I was constantly expecting Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford to hang around somewhere discussing the cosmos on a nearby rooftop, the visual themselves were indeed stunning.

Good eye…the end scene from blade runner topped our reference footage for the rooftop fight scene:)

For the first few shots of the guy in the chair, I thought it was live action. Pretty nice work, congrats to Blur!

Less does more sometimes…the nature of this scene invited a refreshing simplicity to our lighting setup, at the same time placing the burden on the successful execution of the character performance.

The facial animation in the interrogation scene was phenomenal. However, I don’t think they are using Conroy’s voice this time around, I couldn’t really tell but it doesn’t sound like him and that is sad, imo. To me he is Batman’s voice, i wish they could go back and replace all of Christian Bales grunting in the movies with his voice. Anyway I look forward to playing the game.

Without getting into details…we did some heavy RnD into facial rig approaches for this scene. One aspect not obvious is the interrogated guard is actually one of our animation supervisors, Derron, who also has an acting background. As a studio who focuses on character driven cinematics and storytelling, we’re always seeking new/better ways to tackle facial animation. For Batman, with a visual style rooted in realism, we thought it’d be an interesting exercise to take advantage of our acting talent, and attempt to match both his likeness and performance as accurately as possible. We went so far as to experiment with live action previz. We took Derron and a Hugo Strange stand in…stuck 'em in a dark room with some rough lighting similar to the cine, pointed 3 cameras on them and they acted out the scene several times. So many guys at blur are hooked on the Canon5D and tinker with photography in our spare time…it was time to tap into some of that curiosity and see how it could inform our CG. The biggest benefit from this process was the amount of footage gathered…it lead to a freedom in the initial editing that is rare with conventional layout done in CG. So often we are constrained to tightly controlled/managed frames and durations that it stifles the editing process. With a live action previz shoot…there was dozens of minutes to experiment with. Ultimately it served only for suggested camera compositions and to block out timing, but there were also several happy accidents, inherent in any live action shoot, that were ques to the layout and lighting teams. Imperfect focal distances, lazy pans, extreme foreground defocused silhouettes…all this hinting at the spontaneity and tension of the live moment…begging a departure from the often sterile and methodical CG pipeline.

Thanks guys! lot of Blur people worked really hard on this.

Yes as Gluge said…EVERYONE on the team really stepped up and kicked major a** on this one. It’s a pleasure and inspiration to partake in the creative process, project after project, with so many insanely talented people.

[Pthomas]

Holy crap!

That is one of your best ones yet Blur!

[Venkman]

I think this might be my most favorite Blur work to date. That says something following the amazing Old Republic trailers.

I caught the start of the trailer from a distance (I was doing dishes) during the airing of the VGA awards. At first I thought - hmm, that’s strange: Why shoot the intro with live actors and then have Batman in CG?

Then it hit me. My word.

Another big leap forward for Blur. Truly impressive stuff. The fight choreography was great, too. That last shot when Batman looks at the camera gave me chills.

[THX1311]

Amazing!
This is the best Facial animation I have ever seen
in CG with human( non cartoonish) Characters.

Cheers

[Ballo]

I saw Mass Effect trailer this morning and it was amazing, but look that surprise to see another amazing trailer, the same day!!!

Blur and Digic always making an cool job.

Thanks!

[oglu]

gratulation great work…!
are you using facerobot still or moved to a new system…?

[Brettzies]

let the world start knowing who you guys are hehehe :deal:

This is a little unrelated, and I don’t want to start a whole thread for it(and it may have been mentioned before)…but…

I was watching Brooklyn’s Finest on HBO-HD this weekend, and about 1/4 of the way in one of the cops is at home, in the corner, his kids are watching TV in the background. Some cg that looked familiar. The next shot was a little closer and I totally recognized it as GopherBroke. You could even see the Blur logo clearly in the corner of the TV in the background. I thought this was very cool but only few people would actually recognize, so I’m wondering if it was intentional or not.

Also, Batman trailer is nice!

[depleteD]

This was badass. I loved how the trailer captured the feel of how batman takes down goons in the game. Arkham is one of my favorite games. Awesome slew of trailers this year, tobad we gotta wait a full year to play.

[ntmonkey]

I was a big fan of Arkham Asylum and really loved the fight mechanics. And I have to agree that this is one impressive trailer. The interrogation scenes were stellar.

Good job to everyone that worked on it. Really impressed.

-Lu

[RobertoOrtiz]

This is a very impressive trailer.

I do have a question to the Blur guys,
how did you avoid issues with the uncanny valley with the motion capture?

[TheDistiller]

I loved the trailer! It really captured the mystery around Dr. Strange, great job!

[Telemachus]

A great trailer, with a very “Nolan-esque” interpretation of the Batman universe - it could have been a trailer for one of the films. I may be wrong but it sounded like Christopher Lee voiced Hugo Strange in this trailer.

[BLADE-RUNNER]

“I’ve seen things you Gotham people wouldn’t believe…Attack Goons on fire off the shores of Wayne Manor…I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Arkham City Gate. All those moments will be lost…like tears in rain…Batman” hahahaha!

-Kevin Margo, and the rest of the team at Blur… It was an honor working with you guys on this epic cine.

-Paul B Frieling

[Zerflag]

You knew! You knew this trailer couldn’t take us down! You knew it was no match for us!

[DanielWray]

Congratulations to everyone who worked on this, such a phenomenal piece of art.

I should also add that this shot is breathtaking!

[ebasta]

Best I ever seen till now. Congrats.

[PhuongDPh]

thanks for the link
looks interesting!

[Shletten]

Somehow I knew it was Blur even though it looked quite better than any of their previous cinematics. Most especially since SW:TFU2, they don’t seem to stop improving. Their switch to Vray is wonderful too. The rendering has highly improved, it’s much more tangible now. But honestly, what made me figure out that it was Blur was the smoothness of the animation. It’s very smooth, it almost looks like 30p instead of 24p, always. I would like to understand how it is achieved or if what I’m saying is the actual case.

Anyway, great job on this one Blur! You made a truly remarkable cinematic.