Creating Cut Scenes For iPad

Question

I am working on an iPad game, and would like to have a few, pre-rendered cut scenes that are shown at key moments throughout the game.

How do low-budget software developers create pre-rendered cut scenes, especially when the target device is an iPad?

Answer 1

A common method is to record a movie, encode it to a file such as Mpeg-4, and use the iPhone's selection of video controls to play that movie back.

The movie itself can be produced in a variety of ways:

e.g.

• Live action;
• Computer generated images using a CGI package such as Autodesk's 3ds Max or Maya;
• Play out your scene using your own game and record it using something like FRAPS.

Answer 2

I would suggest paintings with subtle animations in a comic like presentation. If you are lucky you might find a talented young artist that will spend his/her free time to get their art exposed in a game.

A good example of awesome "2D" cutscenes are the mini-cutscenes before missions in Warhammer40k: Chaos Rising. It's basically paintings overlain on an animated 2D mesh. Very clerver, good looking and affordable! I can't find a video example online though. Most of the ones online are full 3D.