Silent Threat: Reborn Campaign Walkthrough
SPOILERS: As this is a campaign walkthrough, all spoilers for that mission and all previous ones will be unmarked.
Contents
Mission Walkthroughs
- Silence All Voices
- More Than Meets the Eye
- Ghosts
- Field of Destruction
- Cloak and Dagger
- He Who Rides the Tiger
- The Wait
- Hellfire
- The Return to Ross 128
- The Last Hurrah
- Betrayed
- Exodus
- Forced Hand
- Chasing Shadows
- Secrets Reborn
- Blood of the Innocents
- Abandon Hope
- Last Stand
Developer Commentary
The ST:R intro movie was created as the final project for my Fall 2008 Introduction to Animation class at NJIT. The original cutscene was modeled and rendered entirely in Blender without post-processing, 2D elements either procedurally generated in Blender or edited with GIMP, and audio edited in Audacity. Mjn.Mixael later re-rendered the cutscene with enhanced effects.
The general concept was to evoke the same atmosphere as the second half of the FreeSpace 2 intro with a touch of the devastation shown in Independence Day. The FreeSpace 2 'Failure' debriefing music was essential for the ominous feeling of dread, and to pace the opening credits.
At the time, the high-poly Hades model had complete geometry, but no textures, which was not an issue as it's shown in silhouette. The timing of the shadows passing over the landscape was completely coincidental after the lighting and ships were animated (as I couldn't get real-time previews) and the voiceover was edited to match.
The Vasudan skeleton was based on an old Vasudan character model by Venom/Nico, and rigged as a character model for distribution over the ruined landscape. The wreckage is debris chunks from the MediaVPs Aten cruiser.
The little bug scurrying into the Vasudan skull is called a 'kartenta' and is based on the GVA Setekh concept art. A Vasudan science vessel using this design appears in Scroll of Atankharzim.
Galemp 17:56, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Videos
Introduction
Developer Commentary
This cutscene was an interesting bit of development. There was a low-res version hidden on YouTube that Galemp made many years ago. I'd love to hear his side of development in terms of how the scene came together. I got involved when I learned that Galemp was rendering the scene in HD and it was going to take months! I offered to render it on my production rig, which finished in a few days. However, there were issues with the render caused by transferring the Blender scene to my computer. These issues were specifically caused by a particle system used to create the dust blowing. So I ended up completely rebuilding the scene from scratch to match Galemp's original. It was much the same process I used to upgrade the old retail Voltion cutscenes. My fun-filled fact here is that the dust blowing in my render is a post production effect. It is just some stock video of dust that I masked and then scaled in time with the camera move in the scene. I don't get any credit for the design and direction of the scene. I just gave it a facelift.
MjnMixael 16:09, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Ending
