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[Disclaimer: I did not work in the video games industry in the 90s, but I did work in VFX studios hired to do cutscenes in the mid-00s] Before engine-compatibl

[Disclaimer: I did not work in the video games industry in the 90s, but I did work in VFX studios hired to do cutscenes in the mid-00s] Before engine-compatible assets were good enough to render in-engine, cinematics that involved character animation were authored with an entirely parallel path, using the same reference art, in a character animation program. Maya and 3d Studio Max were popular at the time and most reference art and lookdev was done with them anyway, so that was a popular choice, and Softimage (RIP) was an artist favorite in offline animation too. Sometimes making the cinematics wasn't a core competence of the studio working on the game, so VFX or animation studios would be contracted to do this. Often this meant the studio was already set up to work for TV or Film, so it was staffed such that a 3D render would reach a compositor relatively quickly, where many manual corrections would happen in 2D space. Compositing software has largely consolidated nowadays to the few survivors (Nuke, Flame mostly) but at the time there were many, like Combustion and Henry (Quantel), and even After Effects was used a bunch in places I worked. To this day, not all engines love creating cinematics, because even if an external/offline renderer can do the full render (like in Unreal Engine), some engines don't support the animation systems required to do cinematics, or don't support them at a velocity artists like. In other words, the same software workflows are used today.

DoesntMatter22 4y ago
Alias Power Animator I'd anyone remembers that
intelVISA 4y ago
3ds max was pretty popular before in-engine I remember trying to learn it before C++ and it was harder than any programming concept... can't tell if it was my laggy head or the obtuse UI.
- travbrack 4y ago
  I couldn't figure it out either, coming from lightwave.
- andybak 4y ago
  I remember Max being remarkably intuitive compared to the other 3D software I'd seen at the time. Non-destructive mesh modifiers were mind-blowing.
- Grazester 4y ago
  3ds max harder than C++? hmm I don't know about that. I think it was the opposite for me as a young teen. C++ was like what the hell and it wasn't until college I could grasp that. It was one of the easier pieces of 3d software to learn at the time I thought. I believe it was Maya I also tried but didn't even bother.
stevenwoo 4y ago
IIRC all the character artists used one tool, 3D Studio Max, and all the background artists used Maya or maybe the other way around. I just remember the cutscenes were delegated to Blizzard South or the main studio in Irvine (they did them in house), and the guy who was like the story evangelist down there was so enthusiastic (he came up to our studio for a couple of meetings) about things that had little connection to the game play but was critical to the story he was telling in the cinematics, I remember looking at the quest list and comparing it to the plot of the cinematics and not seeing a lot of similarities but it's been 20 years so I may be getting some things wrong here. My memory is in early views we got of the cinematics there were also creatures that had no resemblance to any we had in game but that's what the guy in charge of cinematics wanted.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > 3D Studio Max, and all the background artists used Maya What I've seen in my past glory days (years ago) was the opposite, Maya excelled at character animation (or general animation) and the rest was done in 3DS Max. Someone deeper into the industry might want to correct my correction though.
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    IME it depended a lot on individual studios. The company I worked at (Radon Labs) was a 100% Maya shop, other Berlin game companies were entirely 3DSMax based. I guess today it's more mixed up because Maya and 3DSMax have ended up in the same company and (hopefully) can easily exchange data.
andybak 4y ago
Max was released in 1996 and Maya in 1998. From my foggy recollection, it took a while for Max to become widespread so my hunch is that 3D Studio for DOS and Lightwave ruled the roost for most of the 90s.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Maya had a popular (on SGI) predecessor called Wavefront (at least the company was called that, but IIRC it was also the name of their 3d modelling/animation product), the company Wavefront was then aquired and merged together with Alias Research (PowerAnimator) by Silicon Graphics into a company called Alias|Wavefront, which then created Maya from scratch, but Maya took a lot of inspiration from Wavefront (and PowerAnimator I guess). As far as I remember, 3DSMax was still an outlier throughout the 90's, but it quickly gained popularity in the PC game development scene because it also ran on PC and didn't require a separate investment in SGI workstations or beefed up Amigas (and I guess the rampant software pirating on PC in the 90's also played a role to make 3DSMax popular).
  - antihero 4y ago
    What about Lightwave? Wasn’t Babylon 5 done with that?
    - flohofwoe 4y ago
      Yeah, as far as I know the Amiga was popular for US TV productions, probably because of the Video Toaster heritage, and the low resolution of TV allowed to render out lower resolution video which didn't require powerful SGI render farms. I don't think Lightwave was ever popular in the PC game development scene (I remember one small Berlin game studio though which sticked with Lightwave for a fairly long time because they had built a pretty extensive workflow around it).
  - mixtur2021 4y ago
    My understanding is that Maya wasn't a total rewrite, it bolted together parts of Power Animator and Wavefront together with a new architecture.
strife25 4y ago
> Sometimes making the cinematics wasn't a core competence of the studio working on the game, so VFX or animation studios would be contracted to do this. That explains why FFX's cinematics had different character models compared to in-game designs.
- adql 4y ago
  All the way to FFVII at the very least. With comically badly done jiggle physics too

DoesntMatter22 4y ago

Alias Power Animator I'd anyone remembers that

intelVISA 4y ago

3ds max was pretty popular before in-engine I remember trying to learn it before C++ and it was harder than any programming concept... can't tell if it was my laggy head or the obtuse UI.

travbrack 4y ago
I couldn't figure it out either, coming from lightwave.
andybak 4y ago
I remember Max being remarkably intuitive compared to the other 3D software I'd seen at the time. Non-destructive mesh modifiers were mind-blowing.
Grazester 4y ago
3ds max harder than C++? hmm I don't know about that. I think it was the opposite for me as a young teen. C++ was like what the hell and it wasn't until college I could grasp that. It was one of the easier pieces of 3d software to learn at the time I thought. I believe it was Maya I also tried but didn't even bother.

stevenwoo 4y ago

IIRC all the character artists used one tool, 3D Studio Max, and all the background artists used Maya or maybe the other way around. I just remember the cutscenes were delegated to Blizzard South or the main studio in Irvine (they did them in house), and the guy who was like the story evangelist down there was so enthusiastic (he came up to our studio for a couple of meetings) about things that had little connection to the game play but was critical to the story he was telling in the cinematics, I remember looking at the quest list and comparing it to the plot of the cinematics and not seeing a lot of similarities but it's been 20 years so I may be getting some things wrong here. My memory is in early views we got of the cinematics there were also creatures that had no resemblance to any we had in game but that's what the guy in charge of cinematics wanted.

capableweb 4y ago
> 3D Studio Max, and all the background artists used Maya What I've seen in my past glory days (years ago) was the opposite, Maya excelled at character animation (or general animation) and the rest was done in 3DS Max. Someone deeper into the industry might want to correct my correction though.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  IME it depended a lot on individual studios. The company I worked at (Radon Labs) was a 100% Maya shop, other Berlin game companies were entirely 3DSMax based. I guess today it's more mixed up because Maya and 3DSMax have ended up in the same company and (hopefully) can easily exchange data.

andybak 4y ago

Max was released in 1996 and Maya in 1998. From my foggy recollection, it took a while for Max to become widespread so my hunch is that 3D Studio for DOS and Lightwave ruled the roost for most of the 90s.

flohofwoe 4y ago
Maya had a popular (on SGI) predecessor called Wavefront (at least the company was called that, but IIRC it was also the name of their 3d modelling/animation product), the company Wavefront was then aquired and merged together with Alias Research (PowerAnimator) by Silicon Graphics into a company called Alias|Wavefront, which then created Maya from scratch, but Maya took a lot of inspiration from Wavefront (and PowerAnimator I guess). As far as I remember, 3DSMax was still an outlier throughout the 90's, but it quickly gained popularity in the PC game development scene because it also ran on PC and didn't require a separate investment in SGI workstations or beefed up Amigas (and I guess the rampant software pirating on PC in the 90's also played a role to make 3DSMax popular).
- antihero 4y ago
  What about Lightwave? Wasn’t Babylon 5 done with that?
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Yeah, as far as I know the Amiga was popular for US TV productions, probably because of the Video Toaster heritage, and the low resolution of TV allowed to render out lower resolution video which didn't require powerful SGI render farms. I don't think Lightwave was ever popular in the PC game development scene (I remember one small Berlin game studio though which sticked with Lightwave for a fairly long time because they had built a pretty extensive workflow around it).
- mixtur2021 4y ago
  My understanding is that Maya wasn't a total rewrite, it bolted together parts of Power Animator and Wavefront together with a new architecture.

strife25 4y ago

> Sometimes making the cinematics wasn't a core competence of the studio working on the game, so VFX or animation studios would be contracted to do this. That explains why FFX's cinematics had different character models compared to in-game designs.

adql 4y ago
All the way to FFVII at the very least. With comically badly done jiggle physics too