The way the world ends
What’s beautiful in Halo ? Halo
Let’s redo it in Blender
A legendary game, a legendary level
This short movie is a between-jobs side project
It features the entirety of the last level of Halo 3 and two remade cutscenes
I handled everything but the character and weapons and the rigging. Nature outdoor environments use Quixel assets, the game environments are modeled and textured by me
I made a massive amount of progress in 3D and in particular in cinematography, composition and color, at the cost of spending time on the animation side. The final result is far from perfect, it is good overall
Analysis
Cinematography first
The progress in general 3D is colossal
4 minutes of fast paced action shots in wildly different environments is an obscene amount of work. Compromises had to be made to finish a project that size alone. I mostly cut down on animation
I have experience in Unreal Niagara from my previous job. The Blender VFX system is still being built so I stuck to minimal VFX
This was my first experience with compositing and color grading. The general cinematographic skills (scene layout, lighting, shaders, camera work…) were the biggest timesink
While I improved those skills, my starting point was so low they remained the problematic part most of the time. I thus reworked them over and over, until the time ran out
Sacrificing animation
The time spent on general cinematography was colossal
The animations were stuck to their first draft. Chief (foreground) is well animated, but the Arbiter (background) should have been reworked
That’s just bad animation
In consequence the animation part which was my strongest skill, did not get nearly as much polish and time spent. The quality is mostly ok all throughout without really ever being amazing. There’s still some nice moments but it remains far from my best animation work
The Flood runs would have deserved to be redone for example. There’s few bits that are outright awful, such as the video on the right
A testament to commitment
Still, it was worth it. This is a testament to an ability to commit to a long term project and release it. Hopefully the next ones are better.
It’s far from perfect but it’s a unique object, made in a unique style that brings something unique to the scene. The amount of work animation requires makes those kind of videos very rare. The more content, the better
