*God Of War 3 Thread v2.0 + Interview Stig Asmussen

"self-shadow" is referring to a shadow cast from an object onto itself, not from one object to another, so no.

 

Why is self shadowing so difficult?

 

Maybe they didn't do it to avoid having flickery self shadows ? Cause its pretty much given that if its implemented on the grunts then it'll be a much lower resolution shadow map. Since there can be as many as 50-60 grunts on a screen.

But I'll put the same question as you did for the bigger enemies though

 

OK, I've done some research and found out the main light source "the sun" would cast self shadows on the characters such as Kratos, Titans, bosses, Centuar, Gorgons and others, but light sources from red&green orbs and Kratos's blades do not. The skeletons don't cast any SS under either situations and I guess that's their priority. It's a good decision by all means, why would anyone go near and check out a low res buffer on a decapitated grunt in the first place and I doubt most would notice them in fast action gameplay.

 

They cast an recieve shadows ,so it's there .

 

Yah since the sun/shadow casting lightsource makes shadows fall in about 45 degree direction towards top left side. So the even if it had self shadowing the hammer top would not cast a shadow onto character. Only the handle would on his stomic.

 

Heh heh, this would contrast with Heavy Rain's close ups (with QTE moment too !).

 

His skin detail is amazing.

 

That looks unbelievable.

 

http://hiphopgamershow.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sony-gow-3-couldve-looked-even

Some very nice footage and info at the beginning and around 53:40 (I wonder if this scene is realtime or prerendered in retail game ).

 

I love how excited hip hop gamer is heh. Also, the part in the gametrailers link where he rips off Hades' pec... wow...

 

Great interview =D Thanks for asking some of my questions =D Going to pass it on to some of my journo friends and see if they can pimp it (and you) =D

 

Great interview ! Very informative. Thanks for doing it. ^_^

 

Really great interview. Thanks Warcrow.

 

From IGN's 30 minutes preview

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Nice interview warcrow, shame it wasn't longer!

 

Interesting:

" Most important, the E3 content is over a year old. The team has learned a lot since then, so the final game should reflect that effort. off the top of my head, features added since E3 include: -anti-aliasing on the cpu - looks much better then the 2x at E3. -Motion blur that works for the camera, object and inner object. -lens flare/god ray tech -reflection and refraction - improved character lighting -improved texture streaming, the E3 demo was problematic and had blurry textures due to streaming not texture authoring. That has been fixed. Ken Feldman"

So better AA, better textures...

"A significant improvement i forgot to mention is dynamic shadows. Ben Diamand one of our coders spent nearly the entire project writing shadow code. In the end it really paid off. The last couple months we had a couple tech artists dedicated to dialing in the tweakers so there would be no shadow pixelization in the game. A big issue i have is bad looking shadow casting on characters up close. When shadows are done right, you shouldn't even notice them. When they crawl, it becomes the focus and takes away from everything else. The final build of the game, i hardly noticed the shadows, they were so well done."

Oh and better shadows