If you've had the pleasure of loading Rise of Nations onto your computer, then you've undoubtedly been blown away by the introductory movie. As you walk through the ages like a spectral observer who knows not the boundaries of time, you experience glimpses into a number of historic cultures. It's all animation magic, brought to you by Blur Studio and Tim Wallace, one of Blur's CG Supervisors.

Tim Wallace, age 30, graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Illustration and Electronic Media. He has been working for Blur Studio for nearly four years after coming from "several very uninteresting places" in the past. During his first three years at Blur, Tim did a wide variety of tasks including environment modeling, character modeling, lighting, scene assembly and compositing, and some scene animation for projects such as the Return to Castle Wolfenstein cinematic and the Empire Earth cinematic. He then served as Assistant Supervisor for Vivendi Universal's release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring game cinematic.

For the past year Tim has been supervising projects at Blur. In addition to supervising the Rise of Nations cinematic, he co-supervised the computer generated (CG) shots in Shania Twain's "I'm Gonna Getcha Good" music video and is currently in production on another cinematic for a not-yet-released title for the PC.

Tim took a few minutes out of his incredibly busy schedule to talk to us. Here's what he had to say.

What is the first step in designing the introductory movie for a game like Rise of Nations?

Tim: Like any movie or animated film, the first step in creating a good cinematic is to have a solid script. However, before the script is finalized you have to decide what type of cinematic it will be...what is your goal? Game cinematics usually fall into two categories...Story Building and Presentational. Story Building cinematics are designed to set up the story of the game. They are a prelude to what you are about to experience and should not be a separate entity from the game. You could compare Story Building cinematics to the first chapter of a novel.

Presentational cinematics are less story driven and are comprised more of visual elements you may find in the game. Rise of Nations [opening cinematic] would be considered a presentational cinematic because it doesn't tell us a story as much as it illustrates the different time periods and cultures we might experience in the game.

Most of the time a client has a pretty good idea of what they are looking for, while other times they'll come to us and say "Hey, you guys are creative, this is what our game is all about...come up with an idea." This job usually falls on Tim Miller, President and Creative Director of Blur, who will then write up a handful of potential story ideas and/or scripts that clients mull over and respond to. Before too long we have a final script, and the ball starts rolling.

Can you describe the technology used to create the movie?

Tim: Blur used Intel-based hardware running 3D Studio MAX and Character Studio as our primary 3D software. We used Digital Fusion for compositing or scene assembly software, and we used Photoshop in the creation of texture maps. We use a render farm that houses more than 100 computers and an in-house motion-capture facility.

How did you research the historical elements of the movie, such as historical data and culture?

Tim: Fortunately both Blur and Big Huge Games have their own in-house history buffs, both of whom were very concerned about being historically accurate. So we just asked those guys.

How long did it take you to build the Rise of Nations intro movie?

Tim: I think production began in September and we delivered around the first week of December. So all in all, it ran about 8 or 9 weeks.

What was the greatest challenge you faced in the making of this movie, and how did you finally overcome it?

Tim: One of the biggest challenges in the RoN cinematic was transitioning between each time period. In the cinematic, we have a camera that is constantly moving from left to right, so trying to set up the next shot without ending up with hic-ups in the camera motion was a bit tricky. To solve the problem, we came up with the idea of placing transitional elements over the "seams" between each scene that help ease us into the next shot. For example, when exiting the scholar's temple, we had a piece of fabric blow into the field of view full frame, and when it blows back we are looking at the next shot. These transition elements helped us hide any inconsistencies you might have noticed had they not been there.

Thinking futuristically, what big changes do you envision in the 3-D graphics environment that will radically improve its quality?

Tim: Technology. As computers become faster we'll start to see things happen in real time which means having more time to make better artistic decisions. Eventually you won't have to wait long periods of time to render your frames out, and you [will be able to] make adjustments that much sooner. There has yet to be a project that I've worked on that I haven't said, "If I just had another day I could have fixed that or made that look better." You can always use more time to make things look better, and unfortunately we never have too much time to do a cinematic before the client needs it.

Well, Tim, tomorrow's another day, and what you didn't have time for on your previous projects will undoubtedly get incorporated into your future ones. I can't wait to see them. Onward to the future! Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Tim: I'd like to give credit to the other guys who worked on the project:

• Tim Miller: Creative Director
• Paul Hormis: Assistant CG Supervisor, Character Rigging, Modeling, FX
• Al Shier: Producer
• Chuck Wojtkiewicz: Concept Design and Storyboards
• Dan Rice: Modeling, Surfacing, Lighting, Scene Assembly
• Gabriel Portnof: Modeling, Surfacing, Lighting, Scene Assembly
• Willi Hammes: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting
• Dave Wilson: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting
• Irfan Celik: Character Modeling, Texturing
• Jerome Denjean: Character Modeling
• Jon Jordan: Character Animation
• Bryan Hillestad: Character Animation
• Seung Jae Lee: FX
• Jeff Weisend: Animatic
• John Bunt: Mocap