Renkewitz Studios

(Nov 2008)

Renkewitz Studios And ‘Secret Weapon’ - wondertouch particleIllusion - Create Cinematic Experiences For Today’s Best Videogames

Renkewitz Studios, based in Playa Vista, CA, is a boutique video game branding and marketing studio. The Studio utilizes top talent in the visual effects industry to create film quality cinematic experiences and help boost awareness and anticipation of game publishers' upcoming releases. The studio’s impressive credits include the recently released, “Rise of the Argonauts,” as well as such popular titles as “Timeshift,” “John Woo's Stranglehold,” “Spyro: The Eternal Night,” and “Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust.” The company is currently at work on “League of Legends: Clash of Fates, due in 2009”.

According to Matt Moses, Renkewitz’s Lighting Director and lead technical director, for many years the Renkewitz creative team had been using Autodesk Combustion, which has an older version of the wondertouch particleIllusion engine built into it. But Matt discovered the standalone version of particleIllusion is a faster and more efficient way to create convincing dynamic effects.

“Much of the effects work we design involves dust, splashes, sparks, puffs of smoke, small explosions and particleIllusion has become my “secret weapon” of choice for creating particle effects as it gives us the look we need much faster than 3D rendered particle systems and it does not slow down the compositing application,” Matt notes.

“It takes a tremendous amount of time to produce realistic effects using 3D animated particles,” he explains. “I might spend a week getting proxy puffs, dots, lines, or other stand-in geometry to look and move properly in a 3D viewport, then spend a day rendering a scene, only to then realize it looks strange and have to tweak it over and over. That kind of development time on a single effect is a luxury I can’t afford, which is what initially drove me to try particleIllusion.”

One of the ways particleIllusion adds efficiency to the Renkewitz workflow is that the software lets the designer see effects in real-time, which allows them to handle 20 to 30 revisions and tweaks in a matter of minutes. For Matt, it’s not uncommon to begin the effects work at the end of the process, after a scene is nearly fully composited.

“With particleIllusion I can load a rendered proxy of my shot into the background and design the effects on the fly,” says Matt. “If I do something that has many uses, I'll save a preset and reuse it later. Typically, particleIllusion lets me design effects in less than an hour that become final elements in the project. The effects are almost an afterthought, done at the last moment, instead of weeks ahead of time -- and the results look fantastic.”

Rise of the Argonauts

On the company’s most recent project, the teaser/trailer for Rise of the Argonauts, the Renkewitz Studios team needed to depict Jason's epic travels, as well as introduce a full cast of mythological characters, creatures and obstacles that players encounter in the game. The piece features intensive amounts of water splashes, lava explosions, smoke, magical sparks, blood effects, dust blowing and puffs. Those effects could not be accomplished as three dimensional particle effects in the time they had for the project. “It was necessary to use particleIllusion's realtime feedback to speed up production,” explains Matt.

“There was a huge opening battle scene with Jason fighting a Minotaur, and the camera is pitching, panning and following the action all in one take. That was one of those scenes that normally requires 3D particles. We attempted that in 3dsmax, but were not satisfied with the render times and the results needed many tweaks. So we used particleIllusion to create 'zones' of effects in between drastic camera movements. Some of the effects were re-used on card geometry inside 3dsmax as their own pass, so they could be 'tracked' into the moving scene.”

“Those animated texture-cards, mixed with some timed blowing dust effects and puffs, helped create a convincing fight scene in a dusty terrain, kicking up dust on every blow, while dust swirls around them. It was the most complicated shot we had in the project, and one of the first finals to show the client. They were very pleased. We were then able to reuse many of those particleIllusion elements and effects on the gladiator shot. That was one of my favorite shots. The swirls of dust and puffs off of their shields and weapons look very convincing against the darker stadium backdrop. The effects in that shot were created in about 45 minutes using particleIllusion.”

“Timeshift” and “John Woo's Stranglehold”

Another example of how particleIllusion aides in Renkewitz’s creative projects is found in their work on the videogame Timeshift, featuring practical smoke and rain effects that the designers filmed live using a fog machine and a garden hose. However for certain details, like smoke puffs when characters get hit with bullets, muzzle flashes from the weapons, splashes of rain hitting the ground and puddles, particleIllusion was key.

“We were able to create a custom rain splash particle using a little 10 frame image sequence of a splash of water against a black background,” explained Matt. “That was then spread in an area emitter to simulate rain splashes moving across the ground. We created several angles of splash sprites to accommodate different camera angles. The result was a very convincing rain effect that took very little effort to produce. We didn't have to resort to a 3D particle effects solution that would require vast amounts of setup and render time.

For John Woo's Stranglehold, a next generation action game, Renkewitz Studios was asked to emulate John Woo's distinct style of visual action. In his films, Woo is known for his over-the-top use of smoke, sparks and explosive pieces of debris that fly everywhere in his extended gunfight scenes. Breaking glass, muzzle flashes, puffs of dust and smoke, and lots of sparks flying, are his cinematic trademarks. particleIllusion played a crucial role in recreating those effects, specifically particleIllusion’s new Professional Emitter Libraries, to handle the epic amount of glass shattering.

“wondertouch particleIllusion is a permanent part of our visual effects pipeline thanks to its versatility, speed, and flexibility for creating custom effects,” Matt added. “So many effects we do are subtle in nature. Often all that is needed is a hint of smoke or flash, coupled with sound effects to make the scene come to life. Sure, you could recreate the effect in 3D using real world physics simulations, but many times that’s not what’s required. Keeping it simple using particleIllusion has worked for Renkewitz Studios and keeps our clients coming back.”