Blur Studio has produced a computer-animated intro-movie video for Activisions RETURN TO WOLFENSTEIN CASTLE, the sequel to CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN 3D. The video, presenting the back story to the Wolfenstein saga, will be packaged with the game and will also screen in movie theaters worldwide in fall 2001 supporting the games launch. To accommodate theater screenings, Blur Studio produced the animation for the trailer at film resolution. They also incorporated a high degree of detail and fluid motion. One of the most distinctive features is its un-computer graphic look. It has a painterly quality where foreground objects are rendered in sharp focus while the backgrounds appear in a soft chiaroscuro. Animators produced the effect by rendering the lighting for each scene twice. We first rendered a base layer with nothing but fill light and blurred it so that it looked soft and fuzzy, said Blur Studio lead animator Jeremy Cook. We then rendered a second pass with only key light, so that everything appeared starkly lit. We composited the two scenes to produce the final look. Our goal was to make it look like a living painting.
