00:07In Senua Saga Hellblade 2, we want you to believe in our cast of characters.
00:13By capturing the likeness of real actors and hand crafting costumes using traditional techniques,
00:18we'll achieve a level of realism that will further immerse you in our story.
00:22This is no simple task and has seen us push the boundaries of realism in video game characters,
00:28starting with Senua.
00:39My name is Dan Crossland and I am the character art director here at Ninja Theory.
00:43A character like Senua is comprised of many components, such as anatomy scans, facial scans
00:50and rigs, physical costume creation, hair and makeup creation.
00:54Most elements are created physically so that it gives us a good blueprint and ground truth
00:59model that we can digitise later.
01:04Much like film and TV, we're now creating real life costumes that are scanned into the game.
01:10These are crafted with expert costume designers using traditional materials and techniques
01:15accurate to the time period to achieve a level of realism and detail that simply wouldn't
01:21be possible using purely digital techniques.
01:28From the first game, I didn't really feel like I recognised myself that much because I'm wearing
01:36all this face paint and dreadlocks and costume and that's not how I walk around in real life.
01:41And also because the costume was modelled, it wasn't physically made so I never actually
01:45got to wear it.
01:47Whereas this time around for Saga, we're actually physically making the costume, doing the hair,
01:52doing the makeup.
01:53So I'm getting way more attached to the character and I can walk around in the costume and it's
01:58really, really cool.
02:04The main reason to create a costume physically is so that we can scan the act of playing the
02:09character within the costume.
02:11We want the costume to fit the body correctly and have the weighting and compression in the
02:15right places.
02:16And we want to feel the density of those fabrics and how they fold and interact when in movement.
02:22We wanted the clothing for Senua to be functional and support her journey.
02:26As a player, you want to get behind her trials and key moments to believe in her struggle.
02:36Dan would give me an initial drawing.
02:38Then we would have a meeting about breaking it down, you know, so he usually just gives
02:43me sort of like one angle, you know, so sometimes I'm not aware of what's on the back sides and
02:48stuff like this.
02:49So we'll break down what the costume is, how many pieces is in there.
02:53Then I'll go away and I make a twirl, so that's just like a mock version, a starting point
02:58basically.
02:59Then we'll do one fitting.
03:01Things come to life when we start using the materials that he's after.
03:05Then from there I will make the, I'll go straight into making the initial costume.
03:12We have one last fitting and then from there it's like breakdown mode.
03:16so this is the most exciting bit before we go to scan.
03:20We'll break the costume down meaning basically we're just making it look old and worn and
03:26sort of, you know, as that's been in a fight or create these sort of like erosion lines
03:31and also work on the colour a little bit more.
03:37In my studios there are a lot of other artists so I mean to take the opportunity to work with
03:42other designers is sort of a given really.
03:45I've reached out to Weaver at my workshop called Francesca Miotti.
03:50We created, or she created, the most beautiful woven, she was using hemp chute and nettle.
03:57It's on the side panels of Mel's outfit and it is just stunning.
04:02It's so beautiful to work with as well.
04:06When creating Senua's hair for Hellblade 2, we did various chutes where we tried to use
04:12Mel's hair.
04:13But in the end we had to mat it up and we chose to add on an air weave which
04:18we added
04:18ash and pigment to.
04:21We're using all sorts of like putty and paste and maybe some dirt as well, so charcoals to
04:30create texture and then from that we sort of get a little bit closer to the next session
04:35of creating the hair.
04:38In Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice we partnered with our friends at Three Lateral to bring
04:43Senua to life.
04:44It was natural then that we would rekindle this partnership to explore just how far we
04:48could push Senua's believability once again.
04:56The idea was to push the frontiers of digital humans and to bring them as close as possible
05:01to photorealism while also experimenting or exploring new cinematic techniques.
05:09The closer we reach photorealism the deeper we go into the science.
05:15The science of human anatomy, the science of physics, the science of simulation and even
05:22the science of human perception.
05:26Just to illustrate, a few years back when we were scanning Melina we captured a gigabyte
05:32or so of data in order to build her her digital replica.
05:36Nowadays we are capturing terabytes of data for every minute we are recording Melina within
05:42the scanning facility.
05:46When we look to create a digital double character we need two things.
05:51Great data and amazing runtime systems to recreate the performance from the stage.
05:56The way we go about this is to use 4D scanning.
06:00You can think about 4D scanning as an extension of 3D scanning.
06:053D scanning involves taking a large number of photos of an actor, all taken simultaneously
06:10from a variety of angles.
06:12Using this data we can reconstruct a very accurate 3D model of the actor, using a process
06:18called photogrammetry.
06:20Capturing 4D data involves the same process, but instead of photos we use video.
06:26Once we have all this data we can use it to create a set of blend shapes, a way of
06:30deforming
06:31the underlying mesh in a section of the face, and also a machine learning system that we can
06:36use at runtime to produce an incredibly realistic result.
06:39We use 3Lateral for this work because they're world leaders in creating real-time digital
06:44doubles and we have a fantastic long-standing relationship with them.
06:50Our focus on crafting believability, as you've seen with Senua, will be extended to our principal
06:56cast in Senua's saga Hellblade 2.
06:58Doing so takes a lot of hard work, problem solving and time, but the reward is the connection
07:04that we hope you will build with our characters.
07:08We're trying to immerse the player in Senua's world and part of that is trying to create
07:13all aspects of the game so that they are believable.
07:15Making them in real life takes a lot more effort for sure, but it hopefully makes everything
07:21more real for the player.
07:22To me Senua's story in many ways is relatable to us now more than ever.
07:27She's a complex character with many layers and for me being able to work on a character
07:31like Senua is both a challenge but greatly rewarding, especially when you see how the entire
07:36team brings her story to life.
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