Well… I’m not too sure where this goes in all the forums, so I hope this is the correct one…
Basically, my group wants to have movies in their game. However, we’re not too sure whether to use the in-game engine to “program” a movie (preset movements, triggers, etc) or whether to use Maya to make the entire movie.
So… In your opinions guys, which do you think I should go for?
You mean cutscenes? It depends, of course. It depends on the nature of the cutscenes, of your game, and the models that you’re using.
Maya has superior animation tools, and depending on your scene’s complexity, you may be able to export the whole scene from Maya as one big egg file and play it back directly. Or just pre-render it in Maya to an mpeg file and play it back on a texture. If you have a totally pre-canned scene, either of these may be the easiest way to go.
Often there are some dynamic components to a cutscene, though, like the player’s avatar or something. If there are any dynamic components at all, these may affect the ultimate decision.
David