ZANTHERA Posted March 5, 2018 Share Posted March 5, 2018 In 2016 I emailed the company that was in charge of the 3D animated intros and cutscenes for the LEGO games of the late 90's and early 00's. The one who answered was Stuart Green and he told me about the LEGO Racers intro which I was interested in knowing about how it was made as I plan to remake the intro in HD myself one day. Our back and fourth was quite brief but he definitely had some interesting things to say about their work back then. Q1: Do you still have the original files for the animation? could the intro be simply re-rendered on a modern 3D animation program at a higher resolution? A1: Unfortunately we don't have the final sequence saved. it was rendered in Lightwave from our 3D models so it could have easily be rendered in HD quality. We made the models usable for the Lego Adventurers comic, we also did Lego comic strips for three years, so they were high enough detail and hi-res textures for print. Q2: Do you know anything about the 25fps higher quality yet shortened version of the intro used for the LEGOLAND Windsor Rocket Racers attraction? I understand the ride is now closed but did you also provide the higher quality clips for this? A2: I cant remember a specific version for the park, but if one was done it would have been us, we were their preferred developer, they shut down their own CGI studio and used us exclusively for this work, we did TV adverts, motion simulation rides, ingame animations, books, comic novels - everything! Q3: What program did you use to make the cars originally? did you make the cars out of real bricks and then model them from scratch? A3: All the models were made from real Lego bricks, then modeled and animated in Lightwave, and the textures made in photoshop. We had all the computers linked together as a render farm, we designed and composed during the day and sequences were rendered over the night and weekends, to either pleasure or frustration when we came to viewing. Q4: Interesting you mention a render farm, the animations are very good quality so I suppose a render farm was best for such projects? A4: Yes the render farm was needed, I think our machines were only about 300MHz at this time and everything was single processor, although we did have 4 machines that held 2 processors on the motherboard, (very unusual) we had 40 machines, the majority used by programmers so not usable by day, but left in render farm mode, at night. Q5: What types of computers were used at the time? A5: Our machines were constantly being upgraded to new hardware, so there was no uniform specification, they were around 309MHz at this time, I think the dual processors were 266MHz, so a 4GHz machine is about 32 times faster, and as quad core that's like 128 times faster, more than our whole render farm on one modern PC! Q6: Three Beta designs for the cars are seen in the intro in a few scenes which then switch back to the final models, was this because the intro was being made at the same time as the game was being developed? A6: Yes, we had to start and finish the animation sequences before the game was complete. deaddius, MUCINEXSWEEP, lol username and 6 others 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lol username Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 Neato. Not sure if you're aware, but he's a member here: @StewartG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZANTHERA Posted March 6, 2018 Author Share Posted March 6, 2018 6 hours ago, Terrev said: Neato. Not sure if you're aware, but he's a member here: @StewartG Oh wow no I didn't realise, well that's good, now he knows I definitely posted this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinifigRenderer Posted March 6, 2018 Share Posted March 6, 2018 Also hasn't ArtWorld and DDI now gone bust? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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