The level of detail in The Last of Us Part 2 often shifts from impressive to seemingly unreal as it brings the characters and monsters to life in stunning detail. To explain how Naughty Dog achieved these details that bring players so expertly into the game, some of the major art leads presented at the recent SIGGRAPH conference, to show the depths that went into the eyes, specifically.
Naughty Dog Technical Art Director Waylon Brinck and Technical Artist Steven Tang presented earlier this year at SIGGRAPH, a conference for advances in graphics technology around the world. While a recording of The Last of Us 2 presentation isn’t currently available online, there is a slideshow that is available for fans to look through and appreciate the work that went into building the game’s smallest details.
One major focus of the presentation is the work that went into even the tiniest details of the eyes for characters in The Last of Us 2, including everything from reflection mapping to lighting occlusion. In a twist on the standard way eyes are approached in 3D graphics, Naughty Dog went far beyond a simple texture on a dome, but instead used high quality reference photos in order to get a realistic representation of eyes in different amounts of lighting. The result is eyes that can actively reflect the scenery around them and hold shadows that are so true to life that it almost perfectly replicates real-life images without a photographic reference for a side by side comparison.
In addition to simply adjusting the quality of the eyes specifically, this extended attention to detail affected the overall lighting of The Last of Us 2’s best moments. These tweaks, some tiny and tedious, and others coming as a massive overhaul, affect everything from the way light bounces off skin, to the casting of shadows in response to objects and facial features blocking a light source. From some of the more in-depth details on how these were achieved, it seems like implementing these improvements involved a level of brute forcing and an incredibly advanced level of coding.
Looking at how well received The Last of Us 2 has been, it would seem that players absolutely appreciate the extended level of detail that went into making this game. Of course, there were those who didn’t exactly appreciate certain aspects of the story, but narrative grievances aside, it is difficult to argue against Naughty Dog’s attention to detail. Regardless, the art direction and the work of the team alongside Brinck and Tang went above and beyond to bring one of the most cinematic video game worlds to life.
The Last of Us 2 is available now for PS4.
Source: Realtimerendering.com
