Katsuhiko Omori writes:
Hello
My name is Katsuhiko Omori and I work as technical artist at SEGA Japan.
One of my main responsibilities is to research new technology and evaluating them for a possible application for SEGA’s game titles.In 2010, I designed a shader rendering pipeline for Virtua Tennis 4 (SEGA) with the help of Blender 2.4. I utilized the material node-editor to generate and compose different surface materials and fine tune the finale results. In this aspect, the node-system was an extremely helpful tool in exploring the possibilities of this artist oriented experiment.
VT4 adopted the ueber shader and thus was it possible to re-implement my designed materials and user parameters on the game console. The attached image illustrates the face-skin material - the most complicated shader. As you can see it is a rather complex combination.
At the beginning the ueber-shader produces real-time shading effects such as direct light and ambient occlusion passes [1].The results are being combined with passes such as "diffuse direct light[2]","diffuse indirect light[3]","specular light[4]","sss[5]"and "sub fuzz scatter[6]". After this lights are added [7], exposure adjusted [8], and finally converts the color spare [9].Blender is for us a very valuable tool.
Katsuhiko Omori
Katsuhiko Omori
Sega Virtua Tennis 4
http://www.sega.com/games/virtua-tennis-4/
(c) SEGA. All trademarks used herein are under license from their respective owners.
23 Comments
nice! blender as a realtime shader dev kit :D
That's pretty sweet! Didn't know that so much work went into shaders in games!
Another example of the use of Blender in absolutely professional projects. Thanks for sharing!
Me and my early dyslexia, I thought the RSS feed said "Blender being sued for Sega's Virtua Tennis 4".
That made the news sweeter after I found out my mistake XD
cool!
Great news. Nice to see blender being used in something so high profile
I wish I could see the how the whole shader is set up though :P
"...One of my main responsibilities is to research new technology and evaluating them for a possible application for SEGA’s game titles. ...Blender is for us a very valuable tool."
Looks like more blendering is going to happen at sega :D
haha, keurig.
SEGA is so cool. I love GameGear and Dreamcast. And i love Blender. And i love Virtua Fighter.
SEEEGAAA!
just too awesome :D
SEEEGAAA!
just too awesome :D now I'm going to have to check what Virtua Tennis 4 is and if it's on Wii :D
Go Sega!
it makes me miss 2.49 so much...
sorry for the melancholy.
Cool! Good to see a big name like Sega use Blender! (And hey, I've got Blender 2.57 and I STILL have and use Blender 2.49 on my desktop.)
"Blender is for us a very valuable tool."
So can we presume that Sega has been grateful enough to donate some hard cash to the Blender Foundation?
pretty cool. :D
Katsuhiko
Is it possible to put up a clearer image of the shader tree itself
Katsuhiko
Is it possible to put up an image of the shader tree itself
"sub fuzz scatter"?
I've never heard of that before. I've Googled it, but without success. Could it mean the light scattered by the small hairs on the skin?
Can anyone enlighten me?
Wooo!
+ 1 for Blenders street cred!
Wow! I grew up playing SEGA games... After Burner is one of my favorites... Arcade soul!
Thank you very much for the new Cekuhnen and Katsuhiko! It's a joy to see both names, Sega and Blender in the same sentence. :)
Would have been nice of them to release the shader though I suppose thats a pretty big ask.
Still, cool to hear though I'd hoped it was used in the modeling process.