In today's Gamasutra feature, Brad Kane reviews the book
Real-Time Cinematography for Games, by Brian Hawkins, which makes a comparison between creating movies via a conventional filmmaking pipeline versus a real-time animated environment..
As Kane explains in his introduction:
"The movie biz and game industry have a lot in common these days, with developers increasingly drawing on the lessons of Hollywood to bring a cinematic element to their games. In that vein comes Real-Time Cinematography for Games, by game developer and computer scientist Brian Hawkins, which translates the time-tested principles of live-action filmmaking into the language of interactive gaming.
In Hawkins' cinematography model – which mimics the structure of a real-world film crew – the two most important elements of a cinematic engine are its cinematography and editing agents. These two, under the guidance of a director agent, make all aesthetic and technical decisions about a given scene, which they implement through a squad of secondary agents, such as a camera operator and a gaffer."
You can now
read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).