Crytek Seeking Cinematic Designers

**Cry-Adam** · **Posted** 14.10.2011, 17:47

Hey there, Cinematic Designers!

Steve Bender here - the Animation and Cinematic Director on Crysis, Crysis: Warhead and Crysis 2, looking to give you guys the Low Down on a few Job Openings we’ve got at Crytek! There have been some questions lately about “what does a Cinematic Designer do at Crytek”?

“Drink Lots of Beer!” was my initial response, but marketing tells me that we can’t say that in public forums, so they wanted me to go and make a much more serious response. So to demystify this job position, I’ll give you the run-down on how we did it for Crysis 2. This process is similar to how it’s done just about everywhere at Crytek, so if you take a look at this and think “HEY! I do that that really well!” then go on over to the job openings page at Crytek.com and send in an application (and remember to include a convincing portfolio and demo reel)!

STEP ONE: The Storyboard

During the story development phase, as we’re working towards a framework, we regularly storyboard scenes and create rough animatics from them as a way of helping us to visualize it better. It helps us to brainstorm ideas for story and actions and to promote new ideas for the story or for level events.

After getting a story treatment and a rough script, we begin the full storyboarding process. During this process, the script may change- both from the writer’s standpoint and also because we’ve found there’s something so amazingly awesome that we’ve just got to get it into the scene. This entire process is very fluid and malleable. The Cinematic Designer may or may not be closely involved at this point depending on their experience and focus. Either way, the CDs would be aware of the process and updated on a regular basis. This process often starts before a fully staffed Cinematic Team is realized.

STEP TWO: The Animatic

This is really just an offshoot of Step One- it is a timed-out, sometimes moving drawing video that helps us to refine our scenes, often with rough or final voices and placeholder dialogue and sometimes including camera pans across images, fades, etc. “Is that conversation taking too long?” “Does that cut really need another shot in-between to help us to continue the flow?” We are able to refine this with a small group of people and solve some of those issues before we bring more staff on board. If we look at the animatic and go “that’s great!” than we know we’ve got something worth going further with. Step One and Two really bounce back and forth a lot until we’re confident we’ve got something we’re happy with.

One extra thing we do here is we set-up these animatics to trigger in the levels- this means that the level designers working on their levels KNOW the story points and beats that are in their level. We’ll often add the animatic videos here so that they trigger in-game, whether or not we will finally do the scene in real-time or pre-rendered. It’s a great way to placehold sections and helps the level designers pace their levels. They can also raise any concerns- there’s too many cinematics in my level, I’m deleting that entire building, the Art Director told me there’s no monkeys in our game….

STEP THREE: Blocking and Layout

Here’s where we first get into 3D in full force, and in the engine. We look for locations within the game that we’d like to use (we’ve been doing this all along, in fact), or we begin laying out the rough geometry of the spaces we need. In Crysis 2, the cinematics were primarily 1st Person, with 3rd/1st Person edited “flashbacks” added in. Often the scenes were related to the gameplay- the Player comes to “here” in the level, the scene plays, then he levels from “there” and continues on. In these cases the Cinematic Designer needed to get those scenes implemented into the gameplay through FLOWGRAPH and TRACKVIEW. The scene isn’t final here- the intent is to translate the storyboard into 3D, with the proper timing, the existing audio, and to start placing characters (Blocking the Actors).

We’ll do a number of iterations in this phase, as it’s the phase before FULL PRODUCTION begins on the scene. Any changes to the scene NOW are relatively quick and cheap to do. Changes during Full Production cost us a LOT of people’s time and a lot of money, so we do our best to try to get it right here. One thing we’ve learned is “if it isn’t at least somewhat fun and engaging when you’re in this phase, it’s NOT going to automagically get better in Full production”!

So to get us out of this phase, the Cinematic Designer must typically:

Set up start/end triggers in Flowgraph
Add camera track and rough camera blocking/motion
Add “actors” (actors are characters or vehicles/objects/buildings) and trackview their positions (sometimes with posing/blocking animations given by the animators)
Add Audio tracks to “actors” and a music track
Add representative placeholder special effects (if a scene is about a building blowing up, a rough explosion needs to be in there)
Add hooks for any additional videos (like the C2 flashbacks)
Add Props and Important Objects in the scene that are important for the blocking of animations and actors
Add any interactivity points into the scene
Add scene-specific effects or items- if there’s a “Torture Machine of Doom” then something needs to represent that

STEP FOUR: Production

Here’s the step where we go from rough stuff to the awesomeness you’ll see in the game. The Cinematic Designer will work closely with representatives from Animation, Audio, Art, Special Effects, Lighting, Tech Art…everyone… to make the final scene we see in game. In some cases the final dialogue might be recorded before-hand (in which case we would put it in the Blocking and Layout phase to use on a mo-cap set later) and in other cases we would record the actors’ voices and facial and body performances at the same time if we were using Performance capture. We’ll also do all the wonderful hand-animated characters and vehicle animations, as we’ve found that placing a Stalker in a mo-cap suit tends to cause mayhem on set…..

When we’re done with this phase, it’s basically just bugs and clean-up that needs to be done, so this is where the full force of Crytek’s Production Staff comes to bear.

Here, the Cinematic Designer will:

Assure all gameplay triggers are correct (start/end/tokens, etc)
Place Final Animation, including Body, Facial, Vehicle, Props
Place Final Dialogue (in conjunction with Audio Department)
Place Final Music (in conjunction with Audio Department)
Place Final Sound Effects (in conjunction with Audio Department)
Place Final Lighting (along with Art)
Place Final Props and build out the scene (along with Art)
Create Final Camera Animation (1st Person)- Position, Rotation, FOV, DOF, etc
Place Final Special Effects- including Particles and Complicated Props (like a building collapsing)
Place and Trigger HUD Effects

STEP FIVE: Finalizing

This is the step that a scene comes to when it’s pretty much finished- it needs a little color work, perhaps the rumble of the joystick is giving users a bit of a hand-ache so we tone that down, there’s a few bugs that need to be worked out, those sorts of things. About this time is also where the FINAL music and audio mix comes in- all the wonderful soundscape sounds tweaked and adjusted so it sounds just right. This is done by our Audio Department, and the Cinematic Designer helps support them in this phase as well.

Crysis 2 Cinematic Production - From Start to Finish

And that’s the job! The Cinematic Designer is a very important position on the game team- they are part artist and part technician- in the quest for a compelling and sometimes interactive story sequence or level event. The Cinematic Designer is someone who has a love of telling stories visually, who wants to provide the player with a memorable WOW experience or emotional impact, and enjoys working with a multi-talented team to achieve a vision.

If you’re sitting there thinking “hey! That’s me!” then let’s hear from you! Remember to include a demo reel so we can evaluate you properly.

Best of Luck and I look forward to hearing from you guys soon!

- Steve Bender

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