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The opening cinematic for RTCW was a love-hate project.
While the content made it a seemingly dream job, the other factors like; budget, client politics and time constraints made it a grueling 6 weeks.
The whole project actually took much longer, but with script changes to the ending(s) and editorial difficulties, it really came down to the final 6 weeks being the bulk of the work time.
But let me say, all problems aside, it was a cool project to supervise and work on, and everyone who contributed should be proud of the end result.
The key phrase here is "fake-it". We pulled every trick in the book to get the amount of effects and assets completed for this ambitious movie.
People frequently ask me "how did you do the gore?" faked it.
It was myself and my lead animator (the ONLY other person working with me for those last 6 weeks) out in our parkinglot with a high 8 camera, a water bottle, a white board and some California sunshine.
The other difficulties we ran into were cloth simulation, rigid body dynamics, all the rain, and the massive amounts of shots to be completed.
To speed the process and make it actually look better, we used 2D elements for alot of the close-up nature effects. Rain on the lens, ECU rain and dust, were all practical effects.
Things like the huge collapse at the end, general rainfall and magical effects were done the way you'd expect. Particles, blood, sweat and tears.
We used Motion capture for all of the character animation. I actually got to do all the action myself. Yes, that's me, cutting my own head off.
Technical specs:
• I used a dual P3 500 Mhtz box with 1 gig of ram.
• This was created in 3D Studio Max 3.5.
• For compositing,Digital Fusion, by Eyeon Software.
• Photoshop 7.
• Other plug-ins used were; Particle studio, Afterburn, Stitch and Character Studio
• Scanline Render | 
