Killzone 2 Rendering Techniques Disscussion

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:15 am

Well here's a picture: http://tech2.in.com/media/images/img_23 ... one2.2.jpg
It's quite big, so I only linked to it instead of embedding it.

Quite frankly, the main thing that impressed me in Killzone 2 was the smoke, fire, and cloud rendering. I'm almost absolutely sure they aren't using a particle renderer because everything is so perfectly lit per-pixel with no oddities. GTA IV appears to use the same technology for smoke and fire rendering when you blow up a car with the rocket launcher.

Are they using some kind of new volume based rendering technology? If so, are there any papers on it?

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:40 am

Maybe they are using soft particles?

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... _id=408822

Aside from that you could stick a bump map on each particle to get nicer lighting, I did that for the rain refraction effect (But only for refraction, not lighting.).

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:00 am

That's my first time seeing that technique. And they very well could be using that. (Man, I would really like to look at some of Guerilla Games code for KZ2.

)

By the way, my mistake, I posted a screenshot from there 2005 hype trailer. Here's an in-game screenshot: Killzone 2 Smoke.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 4:37 am

Here's a 40 minute video of the Guerilla Game developers talking about the game: http://www.gamekings.tv/index/videos/mi ... on-subbed/

They actually do give some great insight as to what there doing. The deferred renderer is nothing new, same with the material system. But one thing that did interest me was the little discussion about the animation system they're utilizing. I've never heard of blending real-time ragdoll physics on top of already blended animations. It doesn't really seem like ragdoll physics would really help, but I'm going to check it out. By the way, they did a great job with the IK solver unlike Halo 3 where it always looks like the character is about to sprint from the standing position.