Cinematic Trailer Production
A two-minute-forty announcement cinematic built entirely in-engine, from storyboard to final grade. Astel Games handled layout, character animation and destruction FX in Houdini, then delivered 4K masters plus 9:16 and 1:1 cutdowns for the publisher's social channels, with all source sequences handed over.
- Client
- Confidential — global AAA publisher
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
- Year
- 2024
- Duration
- 7 months
- Team size
- 15 artists
- Disciplines
- Cinematic layout, Lighting & look development, FX & compositing
- Category
- Cinematics
Artwork from our archive. High-resolution originals are available on request under NDA.
What the client needed.
The publisher redesigned the hero character in month four, after animation and FX had already been approved. The destruction sequence also had to stay readable while every asset used in the cinematic respected the shipping build's LOD and memory budgets.
- Blocked the full 2:40 sequence in low-resolution proxy before a single hero asset was built.
- Built the destruction pass as 12 cached Houdini sims that survived the character redesign unchanged.
- Rigged the redesigned character onto the existing animation skeleton, reusing 70% of approved motion.
- Matched the in-game asset budget so every shot could be reproduced inside the shipping build.
- Ran two lighting passes: a filmic master and an engine-accurate pass for the developer's own captures.
- Final cut delivered 11 days ahead of the publisher's media embargo date.
- One hero film plus six cutdowns in 9:16, 1:1 and 16:9 delivered from the same source sequence.
- The cached destruction sims were reused in three later marketing assets at no extra simulation cost.
Have a similar production coming up?
Tell us the scope and the date. We will tell you what it takes — honestly, including what we would not promise.