Let's be honest - the latest Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 4 trailer absolutely slaps. The natural motion, the effects, the detail… if you've been into Games Workshop's grimdark future for a few years, you'll remember when Warhammer 40k games didn't look anywhere near this good (I certainly do). When I saw this trailer, I couldn't help wondering exactly how much Hollywood level wizardry went into it - so I had a chat with Platige Image, a Polish CGI studio that made many of the in game cinematics that went into the trailer. Turns out, it's a LOT of wizardry.
"Most of this Story Trailer is an original mix of our shots combined with fragments of in-game sequences, edited specifically for this film," Platige's art director Jakub Jablonski confirms to Wargamer. The finale shot, revealing Lion El Jonson, is an "in-game animation made by the developers", he explains, but the rest of the trailer features tons of cinematics made by Jablonski's teams.
"The first 20 seconds of the trailer, the sequences featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Necrons, as well as the Cyrus vs. Destroyer duel and the entire Dark Angels reveal - except for the final shot with the Chapter's Primarch - are CGI cutscenes created by Platige."
Jablonski is a self confessed Warhammer 40k mega fan, and his nerdy enthusiasm for recreating his favorite grimdark warriors on screen is infectious. "The world of Warhammer 40,000 is exceptionally well suited to interpretation in the medium of animation," he tells us.
"This universe is full of stylized motion. There is no room for ordinariness here. Grotesque elements meet epic scale and ceremonial gravitas; unrestrained, brutal force clashes with elegance and finesse."
And he makes clear that the actual work of creating these intense short scenes is rather extreme. We're a long way past the days of grainy, motion blurred cut scenes with deeply dodgy backgrounds. Now, we're used to movie quality stuff, backed by world class tech and talent. To my layman's eye, at least, that's what I see in this trailer - and Jablonski certainly seems proud of the teams (plural) behind it.
"We used a mix of traditional keyframe animation, created by a wonderful team of animators led by Bartek Kujbida" he explains, "combined with complex motion-capture sessions performed by our talented performers from stunt team Alpha 7, led by the best of the best, Maciej Kwiatkowski".
So how, exactly, was it done?
"It's impossible to count the number of artist-hours that went into a single shot," says Jablonski, "but I can walk you through the process step by step". As an example, he leads me through "one of the more complex shots" that starts one minute, five seconds into the trailer: our Blood Raven protagonists fighting a desperate defence against the Necrons, and beloved series character Cyrus dueling a Skorpekh Destroyer.
"We begin with storyboards and sketching out the entire action," says Jablonski. "Then we move into the most creative phase. During the motion-capture sessions, we recorded dozens of animation clips: deaths, walking, charging, firing every type of weapon, finishing off enemies, and the main duel."
"Next, during a stage called 3D previs, the artists built entire battle scenes using recordings of literally just a handful of actors and brought the camera to life. This is when the shot was created, but at that stage, everything was still a placeholder.
"Character models were simplified, without shaders; the animation hadn't yet been touched by animators; Cyrus was fighting another human instead of a three-legged killing machine, et cetera.
"However, we already knew the shot worked, so we could distribute its components to other artists, who simultaneously sculpted the details of the Space Marines' armor, built the surface of the planet, simulated fire, fabrics, hair and explosions, and lit everything almost as if on a live-action film set."
Because of the sheer number of different expert teams contributing at every stage, Jablonski tells me, my classic journo question of 'how many hours of work go into every second of trailer' just doesn't quite make sense. But it's a lot.
"The short answer to the question 'how many hours'," he says, is: "MANY"!
The 44 year old Jablonski learned his craft at the Polish National Film School's animation department, later serving as an illustrator, concept artist, and finally art director at Platige Image in Warsaw, where he's now been working for 17 years.
In that time, he and his teams have created art and animations for some of the big dogs in gaming and entertainment, from Star Wars to Call of Duty. Platige actually won an animation award for its work on the gobsmacking Witcher 4 reveal trailer published at 2024's Game Awards.
But there's a special place for Warhammer 40,000 in Jakub Jablonski's heart, it seems.
"In this chaos of different battles that we created, there are two shots I like the most," he tells us "I love the charge of the Dark Angels Chaplain on a motorcycle, literally trampling Necron units, and one small RED shot - the camera pushing into the interior of a boarding torpedo packed with bloodthirsty Orks.
"But this is Warhammer 40k, so I like every shot!"
In this blighted age, where generative AI tools are worming their way into every creative industry, I have to ask Jablonski what role, if any, these tools play in creating their Warhammer animations. The answer is, in my opinion, encouraging: "There is no generative AI used in the final images," he says. "Every single frame you see was modelled, animated, and comped by our artists in-house in a traditional CGI way."
As a Warhammer 40k fan of - oh, gods - 20ish years now, and a videogame addict too, I'm genuinely excited to see games set in GW's grim sci-fi universe getting the level of multimedia heft and polish this wonderful setting deserves.
I also really want to see some of this Space Marine mocap work in action, so I'll be badgering our pals at Platige Image to learn more! If that's something you'd like to see - or you just want to hype with us about Dawn of War 4 on the horizon - join the free Wargamer Discord community and let me know if you're Team Cyrus or Team Skorpekh.
For newcomers to the 40k universe, or those who just need a refresher before diving back in with DOW4, you can always check out Wargamer's complete guide to the Warhammer 40k factions. Astartes, Necrons, Orks, Admech, they're all there in detail!