CGSociety - God of War III

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Developer interview with Art Director Ken Feldman
and Lead Animator Bruno Velazquez.

CGSociety :: Game Production Focus
10 September 2009, by Peter Rizkalla

This is the kind of franchise that sets up a bar for the game industry to jump. 'God of War' first established itself as a new IP on the PlayStation 2 and has since breathed new life into the once dying action/adventure game genre. Art Director Ken Feldman and Lead Animator Bruno Velazquez saw this project as not just another challenge but an opportunity to really spread their wings creatively. Being that this is the first 'God of War' title to be released on the PS3, Ken Feldman and Bruno Velazquez give us a picture of how the development of 'God of War III' progressed from the beginning until now.

Development on 'God of War III' actually began with a small team of coders and tech artists right after the release of the first 'God of War' on PS2. Later when the PS3 was released, development went into full effect. “First and foremost,” says Feldman, “When we started the process of bringing Kratos and the 'God of War' series to the PS3, we knew that visually we wanted the game to feel very grand. Around every corner we wanted to give the player something to look at that is stunning in its scale and beautiful in its detail. We have a lot of graphical features at our disposal including camera and object motion blur, depth of field, godray/lens flares, full screen color correction, distortions, dynamic lights, a robust shader system, dynamic muscle blending, skinned dynamic collision, etc. Our goal is to use each of these features in meaningful ways that add to the game play and story we are trying to tell.”

The environments in the first two installments of 'God of War' were amazing and dwarfed Kratos to a relative ant size. Kratos would literally traverse through huge levels that were mounted on the backs of giant gods called Titans. A lot of production tricks were used to give the player the sense of environme nt size within the first two games but in 'God of War III', no tricks were required. “I know this word gets thrown around a lot when discussing 'God of War' and I don’t mean to be cliché,” Feldman explains, “but the best way I can describe the environments for 'God of War III' is ‘epic.’ We are now building full environments on Titans. What was a level in the first game would now fit on a Titan’s arm. We no longer need to do camera tricks to make an environment seem like its moving. We now have dynamic skinned collisions, so the play field is no longer static. Artistically we want the player to feel they are always part of a massive environment. Even if the player is in what appears to be an enclosed cave, the surrounding environment should be much larger. It’s also very important for us to make sure the worlds feel like they are alive. Thankfully the story of the game supports this and allows us to utilize those elements throughout the game.”

Speaking of the story, 'God of War II' last left Kratos on the backs of Titan’s climbing Mount Olympus on a pursuit to overthrow Zeus and the gods loyal to him. Helios is the first of the gods to face Kratos’ fury. Kratos first knocks Helios off of his flying chariot then approaches Helios and tears his head off in a brutal fashion. As you do. Tearing flesh, bulging eyes, spewing blood and a painstaking amount of other impressive particle effects and shaders are utilized just to create this one scene. “The story we are telling is a horrific visceral version of Greek mythology. Moments like the Helios head rip, fit perfectly into that definition. Based on the fans’ reactions at E3 and Comic-Con, you can be sure there will more graphic moments in 'God of War III'."

In a nutshell
First comes the idea! "Our director Stig decided he wanted Helios to go down in an epic fashion, with his head being ripped off. Then comes the execution. We had the animation department create the head rip and eye bulge. Then character art modeled some guts and we used some shader tricks to get the ripping effect to happen. The fx department added the blood and the rigging guys put the whole thing together.”

Creating a usable set of tools in Maya was the first challenge to meet before even beginning to model. “When the studio started, we decided to use Maya and make it our editor. All of our tools are in Maya. We have five technical artists and three tools programmers who are dedicated to creating tools for the artists, designers and animators. Each department has their own toolboxes to maximize workflow. We use Maya’s particle systems, its rigging/animation system and key framer. We’ve created a CGFX shader that utilizes the hypershade and renders in the perspective window. Pretty much any feature that we have on the PS3 renders in Maya and what doesn’t, we have live linked with Maya attributes. Our Programming Team created an entity system in Maya that uses connections and scripting similar to other game engines and editors...