This  cinematic trailer was made in-house for the MMORPG Guild Wars 2.  It's a brief introduction to a series of dungeons known as the Fractals of the Mists.  The cinematic follows a group of players as they travel from one mysterious location to another...experiencing different realities, threats, and time within the Guild Wars universe.

 

We had a unique challenge to get the in-game assets rendered out of Maya.  All of the textures and materials use specialized shaders that only appear in-engine.  We didn't have the time convert everything in Maya...so we ended up rendering out the animated characters with a model viewer created for Guild Wars 2.  All the 3D assets were either lit and rendered through the GW2 model viewer, and matched with Maya cameras or they were exported out and composited using Andrew Kramer's wonderful Element 3D AE plugin.

 

Thanks to all involved!
 

Lead/Director/Motion graphics - Matthew Oswald
Motion Graphics - Ben Coello
Motion Graphics - John McIntosh
Concept Art - Nick Wiley
Concept Art support - Theo Prins
3D Tech Art - Delly Sartika
Animation - Ian Yonika
Animation - Hongman Leung
Sound - James Ackley

- Here are some early story/mood boards I created during pre-production -

Thanks for looking!