Sakurai says tricks and techniques are used to make games look as good as absolutely possible

Masahiro sakurai, the director of Smash Bros. Ultimate talks about SSBU production. Japanese magazine Famitsu published his discussion. One of the Social Media users who is also a Smash Bros. Ultimate player translated it. Lets have a look what Sakurai says:

-during development, microphones are used to talk about dozens of check items for supervised projects with dozens of people. There is often a need to repeat the explanations from the beginning, regardless of whether the staff is new or old.

-Sakurai thought about his daily life as a director. Occasionally, items he points out are where staff get caught up in development. He adds that writing it all out is ridiculous, but if he were write a column once in a while, it may help other developers.

-Sakurai talks about backgrounds. The background of the stage and more. There is terrain and the distant background. There is an element of “drawing light, not drawing objects.” There is a lot of work to be done.

-To explain in simplest terms, the terrain where the character fights and navigates is composed of polygons. By pasting a texture on it, and applying light, it looks like the real thing.

-Most modelers can do a good job of getting polygonal shapes and textures at the object level. Trees are trees, grasses are grass, rocks are rocks, buildings are buildings, and so on. The texture is beautiful with the photo material alone, but it is not enough.

-Even if it is correct as an object, it does not improve as a landscape. It’s not as simple as putting it under the same light source or applying the same perspective for every object and texture.

-Sakurai adds that game consoles are, surprisingly, often not powerful [Sephazon note: as developers would perhaps want them to be]. Tricks and techniques are used to make games look as good as absolutely possible and move realistically while pushing the capability of the console.

– Regardless of the work that you want to do until ray tracing, you can modify the design through material composition, diffused reflected light, highlights, contour lighting, drop shadows and self-shadows, bump map, fog and more. These functions are combined to a singular point.

-Artwork first checked by each artist tends to be closely related to the object. Sakurai feels Japanese people tend to be slightly insensitive to subtle changes in light and dark because their eyes are typically darker than westerners.

-Sakurai says when drawing trees and forests, instead of sticking solely to designing the colors and shapes of the leaves correctly, try drawing light as it interacts with the leaves. It is important not to see a tree as a singular entity, but instead as a group of individuals.

We would like to thank Robert Sephazon. to translate his message

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