
- #After effects particle playground layer map update
- #After effects particle playground layer map full
One of the key art direction goals from the very beginning was that everything needed to move. Lastly, we hand-placed a small amount of elements to help guide the player during their exploration of the island of Tsushima. We also had to support large vistas across a dynamic weather and 24 hour moving clock.
#After effects particle playground layer map update
This meant we needed to update our content through automated processes as much as possible. The world of Ghost of Tsushima is significantly larger than Second Son but the Visual Effects team at Sucker Punch was only two people for most of the development. The second major goal was that we had to build at a large scale. These are just some of the examples of the kind of data I’m talking about: global wind, player-created wind from movement, character displacement, terrain, and water position info, weather info like wetness, time of day, and much more. There are a lot of ways we made particles more interactive, but it all required more data from the game world. We also wanted to add animal life, provide epic vistas with environmental ambience and really nail the “mud, blood, & steel” direction by dynamically muddying and bloodying characters as they fight and move across the environment. We knew from the very beginning that wind was an important element we had to incorporate across particle systems and beyond. For Ghost of Tsushima, one of my main goals was to take that system and pivot it towards high levels of interactivity. We had a huge investment in expression-driven particle systems from Second Son, where we created a wide array of magical superpowers.

The first was that I wanted to push the levels of interactivity in our particle systems.

When we started Ghost I identified a couple of major areas of improvement, based on what the project needed. Today I’ll be covering how we made the transition from flashy superpowers to a grounded but beautiful game filled with mud, blood and steel – as well as the methods we used to create the visual effects in Ghost of Tsushima. I like to describe my job as solving art and design problems with technology, something I’ve been doing at Sucker Punch since Infamous 2. I’m Matt Vainio, lead visual effects artist at Sucker Punch.
#After effects particle playground layer map full
It’s also considerably different from our last game, Infamous: Second Son, which was full of superpowered visual effects. The island of Tsushima is a beautiful place to explore, made of many tiny details lovingly crafted by our team.
