Any idea how they did this intro?

Years ago I watched an intro of an obscure PC strategy game from the mid 90s. The game itself it pretty forgettable, but the intro stuck with me.

I've never seen anything quite like it.

It has the aesthetics of the first Stars Wars movies from the 70s/the original Battlestar Galactica. It looks like it used photographed models of ships. But, the game itself was quite an obscure effort, I really doubt that they constructed anything for that thing, let alone used Dykstra cameras and what not.

I am puzzled how they made this thing.

So, do you have any ideas? And how would you replicate this look with modern tools?

Screenshot:




The intro:

 

It looks to me like they just have a few sprites and scale and slightly move them to get the effect. If something gets smaller, it seems further away...then you have it move just slightly to the left, and since it gets smaller, it seems like it is moving away and to the left, but faster than it really is because it also gets smaller. You can see the planets doing the same thing, and since planets "don't move" in a general sense, it makes it look like you are moving away from the planet accordingly.

 

The ships look like early 3D modeling to me, rendered out then scaled.

 

Yes, the fighters look like scaled sprites.

But the big ship at the begining and the transporter ship at 2:22 look as if they were shot from different angles. This really puzzles me. I don't think they constructed real models and used camera equipment for this.

 

they didn't. It's 3D models.

 

How did they make it look so much like the 70s sci-fi movie props? I am especially talking about cruiser in the beginning and the transporter.

If you look at other intros from that era (Wing Commander III etc.) the aesthetic looks entirely different. Wing Commander etc. looks "rendered", this doesn't.

If it's 3D models, do you have any idea how to emulate that 70s Star Wars/BSG look with modern tools?

 

Nah, this is 100% just a prop that they probably kitbashed together from old toy parts.

 

It totally looks like older 3D rendering to me, especially the large cruiser later in the intro (2:23), the way the perspective changes on it during the shot. I was doing space ships like this in Lightwave in '91 on an Amiga. This game came out in 1995. Given the excitement and interest towards digital 3D at the time combined with the feeling that using physical models was "old news", I'd bet it's 3D and not actual filmed models. I could be wrong, of course, but that seems the most likely method to me, and it just looks like it.

 

Are you talking about the look and style of the ships and not the look and style of mid 90s games, then (I thought it was the latter)? If you're trying to emulate a certain look you just emulate that look when you build the ship. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're asking.

 

I'd agree, but the lighting on the ship is pretty clearly just from a standard physical rig. The diffuse and shadow quality itself just doesn't line up with that at all.

 

You could be right, but I'm not seeing it. It still just looks like standard mid 90s 3D rendered as frames and put into a pseudo 3D cinematic.

My job in the early-mid 90s was as a cinematics artist so I'm there's some bias there on my part, but that's what I would have done back then if I was working on this scene. Digitization of video footage wasn't super common in the studios I worked at so we just built everything in 3DS Max or Wavefront and went from there.

 

When the big ship flies away from the scene, and big circle (sphere?) start covering it, isn't this camera frustum region? Or could be just extra special effect? But then why would be needed?

 

I don't think that's a 3d render actually. I think those 2 ships are practical stop motion shot with cameras.

The first ship at around 40 seconds wiggles slightly left and right as it's traveling, and there's visible change in perspective as it wiggles. I seems unlikely they would add a small imperfection like that on purpose, it looks like stop motion.

Additionally, that ship at 40 seconds has a big chunk of it missing at the top as if there's a black pole there holding the ship up. I think the ship was suspended by a black pole of some sort and you can see different parts of the ship pass behind the pole as it moves separately from the ship. That looks like an artifact of photography rather than a 3d render.

And no, they didn't need any fancy cameras at the time, just a digital camera or something they could capture frames from to make stop motion from. If the game was made in 1995, they had plenty of digital cameras and video inputs on computers then.

 

The wiggle I would have explained as an artifact from poor scaling tech, the "black pole" I would have explained as a shadow, arguing it makes less sense to put it on the top instead of back or bottom, but I can't explain how you can clearly see the focus of the DOF change as the ship from the 40 second mark gets very close to the camera (set to 25% playback speed). For that to be CGI someone would have had to do that intentionally and it's an effect that only would happen this exact way if everything was scaled and setup like a small scale model very close to a camera in the 3D program. And I'll admit that seems unlikely.

 

Why not? That's what the Doom guy did and that was just an indie shareware game at the time.

 

To me looks like multiple asset in discussed title are 3D made. Just later turned to sprites. So if they had already artist to do 3D animation, why sweating about camera photo shooting?

However, once I watch that video, on big screen, rather than mobile, I see many details. Feels too many details for 3D model, for the period when game was apparently was made, even it is just an intro. + Camera bluring at the end.
Also I can see now poll on the top, if that what it is. And other things, which were already discussed.
Poll from the top is easier to control (handle) / more convenient, rather from the sides / back / bottom. Plus it is easier to 'green screen' filter things out.

 

I went back in and watched it much slowed down, and yup I think that's the kicker right there. Seeing that as well as other people's thoughts on it in this thread it does seem likely that they filmed actual models. At least for some parts. At that 40 second mark there's also a halo of "green screen" looking wobble as well. But yes, the DOF change would have been more work to pull off back then in 3D rather than simply filming the model.

So I'm pretty well convinced now that it was filmed models, and not 3D as I'd originally assumed. As pointed out above, Id did that with Doom around the same time, so it wasn't entirely unheard of, just not as common since everyone back then was cuckoo for computers.