media | Rampancy

HaloDev has put up the first of in a series of "Feature Focus" articles. This one, by Talin, is accompanied by a very complex render done by Talin and Veegie and covers the technique of normal mapping to add the appearance of detail to textured polygons.

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Abnormal Mapping

This image, which apparently took more than 30 hours to render and includes models extracted from Halo 2, was created by Talin and Veegie to demonstrate the technique of "normal mapping". There is at least one easter egg, as well as a few "doesn't really belong" objects in the image, if you can find them.

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Coming Not To Praise Tartarus, But To Bury Him

So the Brute documentary is out. I'm going to stop using Bungie's VIDOC or Video Documentary term, because I really couldn't think of any other kind of documentary except perhaps for film, and since George Lucas says film is dead and HD Video is the way to go, I suppose it's redundant.

Certain pockets of the fan community, while they enjoyed the very slick and polished Halo 3 Announcement Trailer, have been bothered by the stream of apologia that accompanied first the non-real-time, non-Halo-engine CG television commercial, and now the pre-pre-alpha, not-yet-finished visuals of the Brute documentary.

I'd like to praise Bungie for its candor, however. The documentary on the Halo 2 Limited Edition was quite frank about some of Halo 2's shortcomings, as well as some of the reasons for them. This latest documentary is no different: first and foremost Bungie is admitting that Brutes in Halo 2 were a late addition to the game. They were tough only because they could take a lot of damage; there was no differentiation between different Brute individuals except for Tartarus himself and a few honor guard headdresses, and fighting Brutes was more like fighting Super Flood than fighting Elites or other Covenant units.

Click "read more" below from the front page for the complete text.

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A Closer Look At The CG TV Advertisement

In addition to the text-only transcript of the dialogue and events in the CGTV ad from yesterday, and a preliminary commentary piece (which has already gone through several revisions) offering interpretations of the content in the ad, I've posted a frame-by-frame analysis with

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Frame By Frame Analysis Of CG TV Advertisement

[image:43168 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Establishing shot of two children lying face-up in a clearing in a grassy field. The area is quite verdant, indicating that either this setting is not the same as that in the latter half of the ad, or that considerable change has occurred in the region to change its appearance. More on that later.

The two children appear to be dressed alike, in simplistic black outfits, possibly singlets. They are barefoot.