you have continued to underestimate what tv/movie production quality CGI costs. You can't keep looking at video games and say, see a CGI tv show is cheap. For one video games cost a ton to make these days, and they still don't have the details that you see in CGI tv/movies.
My mentions of using a videogame 'in-engine' CG was for
the rendering of 3-D CGI environments
mostly.
the actual animation would be done by motion capture data and rendered by a game console.
It is a possibility but would look better if that motion capture data were used by better animation software than a gaming engine.
regarding Borg drones could use the AI
model created
in a videogame engine so they wouldn't have to be animated.
It's possible to mesh the two technologies and composite various things into a 1920x1080 24fps video which would be a series.
Borg drones in the background do not need the level of detailed rendering if they are out of focus and with modern CG animation you can control depth of field much better than 2D animation.
To create an animated show using a videogame physics engine and CG models doesn't mean it has to be fleshed out to be a game. As long as it can be used to create the environments and what is needed to create a TV series would be adequate. By a fleshed out game I mean [debugging all levels, recording a music score, mixing music and placing it dynamically where a character walks, sound FX and dyanmic placement, smooth transitions from levels of the game, managing data bitrates to load the levels, music, and gameplay high fps.
We are talking about motion picture for HDTV which would be a 24fps source from which would be recorded to a HDCAMSR videomaster at 24fps [which would have a 180degree shutter and cinematic motion blur] and then from that a 30fps or 25fps video can be made for the various networks requirements.
It's just an idea that there is the possibility of now due to costs coming down and lighting and atmospheric effects getting much better.
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