I am always curious to know which software programs are used in game or film studios. What 3D software program helped achieve that level of realism? What program was used to make the Halo trilogy? What program was used to make Fallout 3, or what about the movie Kung–Fu Panda? The visual quality in that movie was incredible. No matter what program a developer chooses, I do not believe there is a set combination that makes one developers game better than the next. It all depends on what tools the developer likes to use within their team and how it fits in and enhances their pipeline. Does it make their pipeline more efficient? Or are they better off using something else?
When it comes to developers Insomniac Games in Burbank, Ca, Autodesk Maya and Motion Builder seem to be their winning combination. Especially when it came time to create the Leviathan character(a legendary beast several hundred meters tall) used in Resistance 2.
Insomniac didn’t use Motion Builder as much as they would like to in the future, but it looks like this could be a great beginning for their visualization and production process.
Excerpt-
“Maya saved us significant time by letting us quickly concentrate on building the parts of the city seen during the battle with the Leviathan, rather than the entire cityscape,” comments Dezern. “Maya has always been a big part of our game building pipeline: We build our environments, characters, animations within the system. On Resistance 2, however, we used Maya more for visualization than we have on other games. We visualize in Maya with a custom shader, and use the system to figure out our physics calculations. For huge, complicated objects, we calculate in Maya and then translate into the game. That way, we get a lot more action on screen.”
The Gamer Report 