Kingdom Hearts: How Do They Do That?!?!

[GarrettMinley]

Hello all, hope this is in the right place,

I've had these questions about Kingdom Hearts production pipeline for a while now but never knew where I could go to get them answered. But since there seems to be a good amount of experienced artist here I feel I can get some of my questions answered here. I find the art of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts to be apsolutely breathtaking, but how in the heck do they do it. I've yet to find any documentation on Square's development process (does anything even exist?) in the states, Japan, Tokyo mabye but I don't speak or read japanese. I'm not asking them to spill all their secrets I was just looking for reference material that I can develope my own process from. If you guys have any clues or directions to point me in I would be much abliged.

Okay now where was I.....:think:

OH! Other questions I only have three really.

RENDERING/MODELING:

In Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 everything is SO smooth as far as characters, well even the buildings to, fingertips, eyes, mouths. Is the PS2 strong enough to handle the extra poly load, or was this somewhat of a rendering trick.

TEXTURES

This is more of an in general question: When it comes to creating the extra smooth skin tone textures is that all the "smudge" tool, it never seems to work out for me. I like FF's and KH's styles of pure diffuse textures, and I want to develope this kind of skill for my own games. Also are the textures complete diffuse or are lights use, like for the third pic at the bottom his hood is casting a shadow on his face.

SFX

I teaching myself DB (Dark Basic) so I am getting a grip on particle effects and the like. I'd like to develop effects like those of the KH (saw that coming a mile away didn't you) any suggestions as to where I should place my energies for that...
One effect in paticular I'd like to see explained is the avalanche in KH2, in the "Ancient China" world, and also the smoke/fire effect of Mushu's Limit Break, also in the "Ancient China" world. Oh and the trail effect for the "Final Form."

These are for the RENDERING/MODELING/TEXTURES question:

[GarrettMinley]

Couldn't find any pics of the avalanche or mushu's attacks, I can post pics of the Final Forms trail effect though if they are needed.

Thank you so much to everyone who helps,
g.m.

P.S. HAHA, whether we get anywhere with this or not,

These are for the SFX question:

[zabuza2k]

hey garrett have u referenc from this guy http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1990&stc=1&d=1198099372 ??

[HntrLuc]

Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy (the ps2 ones) use multiple models.

They have a game play models around 3k triangles, and cut scene models around 6k or so.

So the close ups look really nice and smooth, but the game play is zoomed out enough that the loss of detail isn't noticeable.

[Marcus Dublin]

GarrettMinley: In Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 everything is SO smooth as far as characters, well even the buildings to, fingertips, eyes, mouths. Is the PS2 strong enough to handle the extra poly load, or was this somewhat of a rendering trick.

Marcus: LOD’s and great silhouette modeling buddy;)! HntrLuc has a point about the LOD's and how there used. For the cinematics Square is most likely using models between 5 and 9 thousand tri’s, and for the in game characters LOD 0 models using around 2 and 3 thousand tri’s. I had the Final fantasy X model viewer and saw that some of the in game characters reflected the numbers I mentioned. If you do a bit of digging you can still find the Final fantasy model viewers online, here’s a link to the FF11 model viewer: http://ffxi.killvoid.com/page.php?id=343

GarrettMinley: This is more of an in general question: When it comes to creating the extra smooth skin tone textures is that all the "smudge" tool, it never seems to work out for me. I like FF's and KH's styles of pure diffuse textures, and I want to develope this kind of skill for my own games. Also are the textures complete diffuse or are lights use, like for the third pic at the bottom his hood is casting a shadow on his face.

Marcus: The texturing techniques there using are pretty standard to anyone who’s ever painted anything, what I mean by that is there creating form and volume from light and shadow. For the most part it’s really no different from the painting methods of say God of War 1 and 2; the Square team has pretty much developed there own style but you can find some solid painting tutorials online to get you on your way. To be honest it’s not overly difficult just tricky to maintain the lighting consistency throughout all of the characters. I think that one of the tricks there doing “pre ambient occlusions baking” is vertex baking everything; this keeps the lighting consistent and also helps with the painting process. The third picture on the bottom is a perfect example of this, if my memory serves me correctly the character doesn’t take his hood off on the fly, so it’s just another mesh with the shadow information baked into the texture. Check out Josh's texturing tutorial on what I mean: http://www.gameartisans.org/gamecon/tutorials/tut_2.htm
Last but not least on the look of the texturing is the use of good lighting and subtle post process effects, post processing isn’t new and there are scenes in both FF10 and 12 that use it pretty liberally, this helps with the overall presentation. Three cheers for the graphics programming team!:D

Unfortunately I can’t give my opinions of the SFX side of things but I’m guessing Square has developed a wealth of incredible in-house tools for their respected game engines. Of course you can replicate much of what there doing with good tools, off the shelf software and a bit of code support.:)

[Marcus Dublin]

Here are a few images of FF characters out of the game engine:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67958

[cookepuss]

Kingdom Hearts: How Do They Do That?!?!
*poof*
MAGIC!!
<cue song "The Final Countdown">

Okay, I've seen "Arrested Development one too many times. :)


Seriously though, with regards to SFX, I don't know enough about DarkBASIC, but I doubt that it'd have the necessary oomph, optimizations, or routines necessary for production quality effects. Most of this stuff is probably custom coded in-house using their preferred low level language - C/C++/C# or microcode.

A developer could use middleware for their FX, but it'd likely not perform as well as something built from the ground up for a single, dedicated purpose. Plus, there's the potential issue of licensing fees and such.

You could probably -mostly - mimic this without hand coding your own system. It'd probably involve a combination of simpler, more controllable particle systems, more creative texture work, and working in layers. You just have to pay closer attention to whatever texture limits that DarkBASIC might have. Again, I've never used it - preferring to write code for my own personal stuff. Check your docs.

[TryForce]

"Stop asking to many Questions, just do it!"

This is what a teacher of mine said to me when i was taking extra classes in Math. I wanted to ask him so many thing befor i do wrong, i didnt wanted to do wrong! But I started and got the wrong way, because of the wrong result, then i was taking another way wich worked out.

There are several way's to gain the result of these Sfx and Rendering tricks. It just matters on how far you are advance with it.
About the Texturing its simply practise, if you want to achieve that style, get those ingame pics and use their colors and try to use them well.
I dont know how fare i got with the Kh mood in my models but i guess im getting there.

And yeh, Kh uses LoD's in 2 levels, one is 8-10k otherone is 4-6k.
The main thing that changes in the LoD's is the Head, they use plenty of polygons on the Facial stuff.
The Intro and Outro animations are done in Highpoly.

[GarrettMinley]

Wow... Forgot about this one.... whoops:o

Haha thanks for the info guys, it was really helpful,

zabuza2k: Not quite sure what you're talking about... :think:

Marcus Dublin: All the links to the FF viewers seem to be dead:( Oh well it would have been REALLY cool to use.

cookepuss: Guess I'll have to start learning C++:D

TryForce: Haha, shut up and do it right :lol:

Thanks agian everybody,
gm-

[Mike_inel]

Stop asking to many Questions, just do it!
I agree... Just try it and you'll get the hang of it easily... The hard parts are doing the proportions right (silhouette) and making the faces look pretty/cute/handsome... Well, in KH, mostly handsome for the fangirls... =_='
Try basing it to Dolfies... (Example (http://dreamofdoll.com/))
I teaching myself DB (Dark Basic) so I am getting a grip on particle effects and the like.
Ooh, a fellow dbpro user!!! >w<
Like what Marcus said, they probably have in-house tools to make incredible effects... T_____T
Tho, someone in TGC forums is making a nice plugin with effects similar to squex... Tho imo, it's not as good as expected... Link (http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=108643&b=8)
Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfL5hEo9OQ0) (note: he used my models in that vid... heheh... @w@)

Well, that's my two cents... =w=