3D Brigade, Eastern-Europe’s leading art outsourcing studio for the videogame sector announced today that some of its latest work can be seen in Dark Sector, an atmospheric action thriller designed exclusively for PlayStation3 and Xbox360. Developed by Digital Extremes and published by D3Publisher, Dark Sector is one of the key action titles of the year.

Digital Extremes supplied the scripts, the rough storyboards, the environments, and the characters to 3D Brigade, whose task was to create top-notch quality, engine ready, in-game cut scene movies which included camera placements/movements, movie direction, and character/facial animations (80% of these were made using motion capture technology and the remaining are key-frame animations.) The end results were nine amazing, engine-ready scenes, amounting to a total of 15 minutes.

These incredible cut scenes were made by a team of 9 animators and led by Balazs Kalazdi, 3D Brigade’s industry veteran Animation Director. Using Softimage XSI for the work and 3D Brigade’s own optical motion capture studio to record the motion data, the Budapest-based art outsourcer worked closely with London, Ontario, Canada-based Digital Extremes for 5 months. The company was able to conform to Dark Sector’s unique vision and help smooth the sequences integration into the game’s proprietary next-gen technology, Digital Extremes’ Evolution Engine™.

One of the major cinematic tasks was to give personality to the characters. The third cut scene by 3D Brigade, where the game’s hero, Hayden Tenno, kills an important character was so successful in this, that the style and characterization of this movie became a quality benchmark for all the other cut scenes. This movie demonstrated that 3D Brigade was able to grasp the client’s creative vision and match their AAA quality requirements.

“The 3D Brigade team was fantastic to work with. They understood our vision and requirement for top quality work and they delivered,” said Sheldon Carter, producer at Digital Extremes. “They went above and beyond to make sure we were happy with the end product and you can see the end result in the slick high-production look of Dark Sector.”

“The task to create world-class, AAA cut scenes for one of the key titles of 2008 gave us incredible experience in the field of real time movies,” said John Z. Vamosi, chairman of 3D Brigade. “For the most part, Digital Extremes gave us complete freedom regarding our work because they were very pleased with the results. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a more mutually satisfying cooperation.”

A dark, gritty experience packed with fast action, incredible superpowers, and an engaging story, Dark Sector represents the next evolution of interactive action. Dark Sector thrusts players into the role of Hayden Tenno, a covert operative sent on a dangerous mission into Lasria, an Eastern European city on the brink of ruin that hides a deadly Cold War secret. In the midst of this mission, Hayden is attacked by an unknown enemy and infected by the Technocyte Virus, a brutal bio-weapon that twists its victims into mindless killing machines. Surviving this attack, Hayden finds that the Technocyte virus has granted him powerful inhuman abilities, unlike anything he has ever seen. Now, he must evolve along with his powers, survive, and become a hero. The 7 cut scenes, all integrated into and played back from within Digital Extremes’ powerful Evolution Engine, tell this story with stark clarity and high-octane action.