Half-Life Fan Movie Project

Half-Life Series
#1

In my spare time I’ve been working on preproduction for a computer animated Half-Life movie.
So I thought I’d open a thread here to keep track of my progress.
What I post might also be useful for someone else.

To start off, here is a chart showing how the games Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Decay all fit together on a timeline with the original Half-Life.

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This is my redesign for Gordon Freeman. It is not a paint-over or a trace, but I’ve been told that it looks precise enough that it could have been. It is in fact, just a digital painting.

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And lastly, this is a Xen test render I performed, to see how taxing the project will be on my system before I start filming, and before I redesign Xen. (It turns out, at 30fps and 1920x1080 resolution, it will take 40 seconds to render 1 frame without motion blur, or 2 minutes with.)

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A video of the test render can also be found at this YouTube address, though it is much brighter due to YouTube video filters.

As possible inspiration for the redesign, I will be using this unused Black Mesa concept, which is also mine.

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I think that covers everything for now.

#2

Sweet! I’ve always loved to think about how the three (or four) games intersect both spatially and temporally. Awesome art, too. What are your preliminary thoughts on how you’ll try to connect the endings of Half-Life and Opposing Force?

I hope you’ll keep us updated as you go.

#3

I will definitely keep this thread updated with my progress.

SPOILERS/

In the ending I have planned, I will have the endings of Half-Life and Opposing Force overlap, using visual effects similar to what you see in the Episode Two Gman sequence.
The scene will play out in such a way as to give you the impression that if Gordon Freeman accepts the Gman’s offer, then Adrian Shephard will go into stasis rather than receive the same offer.
It will then fade to black just before Gordon makes his decision, but you will hear the Gman say for a second and final time “It’s time to choose!” over otherwise silent credits.

The credits themselves, aside from my name, will be the Valve and Gearbox credits, but with the header “Valve was:” in place of the “Valve is:”.

/SPOILERS

#4

Another question: to what extent will you try to emulate the visuals of Half-Life? The render you show is obviously based directly on the original bullsquid scene during the resonance cascade, but you also state you’re planning to redesign it. How much do you plan to diverge from the original designs? Will you take any inspiration from Black Mesa’s reimaginings of the facility and aliens (and eventually Xen)?

#5

I can’t use Black Mesa as inspiration, because my design goals are different:
The Black Mesa Developers sought to recreate Half-Life the way they think Valve would have made it, had they begun with a modern game engine.
So what they did was determine the purpose of an area, and then either follow references that fulfill that purpose, or a design of their own that did.

But I believe given all past failures in adapting games to film, that you should only make changes when they make sense or make something better.
So what I will be doing, is preserving key details, and following references that both fulfill the apparent purpose, and resemble the original design.

In the case of the Bullsquid scene, my plan is to redesign the area to resemble what is called a Cenote, as well as re-add the ‘Floating Fungus’ to help explain how the ‘Xen Fungus’ could have grown with multiple stalks.

#6

It’s a new month, and it’s a new week, and it’s about time I made updates.
Feedback will be welcome over the coming days, as I’ll be posting concept art and models I’ve been working on in the previous months since I started this thread.
This is just a heads-up.

#7

Here is my security guard concept, I hope you like it.

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I will be spacing my updates out, so I can maintain them right up until my fan film comes out.

#8

Looks great.

#9

Time for another update.

Here is my H.E.V. Suit battery.

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Let me know what you’d like to see in my next update
.

#10

Are you going to be aiming for a photorealistic look? I think the geometry looks good for the most part, but the texture is a bit on the dull side, even looking blurry and unmetallic.

#11

Thank you for the feedback Crypt, my model now uses metallic reflections, and I’ve updated the render.

#12

It looks like it will be fantastic, I can’t wait to see the final product. :smiley: :lambda:

#13

It has been over a year since I posted my Xen rendering test. The area has since been redesigned, along with other Xen locations. But I’ll save that for another video.

This is a nuke rendering test for the ending of my Half-Life movie project. Because as we know, the Black Mesa incident ends in only one way.

youtu.be/WxbPJVlT7mo

#14

it would be cool if you can reference aperture science, or something related with portal. maybe we can see job notice about recruitment programmers for working on the next big project: artificial intelligence, as known as glados :slight_smile:

#15

I wasn’t going to mention this, but since you brought it up, I already have a scene planned:

In the Friendly Fire chapter of Opposing Force, the player enters some underground offices that have diagrams of the Displacer Cannon (Black Mesa’s version of the Portal gun) and a conference room with an overhead projector.
The projector screen in the game gets shredded by Vortigaunts as part of an ambush, and never actually shows anything.

In my movie, the screen will show how Black Mesa is competing with Aperture to maintain their funding lead, mirroring the conference room scene of Portal until the screen is shredded.

#16

This is my redesign for the Protozoa. That’s the floaty thing you see on Gordon’s first short trip to Xen while in the Test Chamber.

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The animated version can be viewed on YouTube here: youtu.be/wGvc2efPpdk

#17

I haven’t watched the video yet, but the image looks cool as fudge. Looks like they’ll have some really cool protozoan attributes, which will definitely give Xen a more alien-feeling approach. Do you plan on using them on Earth as well, or just our friendly neighborhood borderworld?

#18

That being said, Protozoan rarely made appearance in Half-Life series. I believe it appeared only thrice (and all in the same map). I guess it was because it did not add much to the gameplay, and it was only for decoration. Hope it gets more attention it deserve in the project.

#19

I will be adding them to Black Mesa locations that have Xen growth, and adjusting their size and number to suit the location.

#20

This is my redesign of a baby Headcrab, for my Half-Life fan movie.

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It hasn’t been rigged or animated yet, because it doesn’t appear on Earth. But a rotating view of it can be found here:
youtu.be/ZuAnNe9nMV4

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.