Hugs from Horizon Forbidden West is causing a furor in the video game sector, due to its complexity and realism.
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Horizon Forbidden West It was one of the first big games to land on PS5, although its simultaneous release on PS4 caused some of its features to be diminished in the new generation. Something that has been more than proven with the arrival of its DLC, as we told you in the analysis of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. And, in fact, this additional content has really elaborate mechanics and that they manage to extract the maximum potential that the new Sony system allows, such as the hugs between its characters, which are causing the envy of all developers in the sector.
There are not a few developers who have launched to praise the work of Guerrilla Games to achieve this effect, since it is one of the most complex that have ever been seen in video games. For this reason, IGN’s colleagues contacted the animation director of the Guerilla studio, Richard Old, to try to shed light on the process by which this impressive result has been achieved. According to Oud, the whole process Start with the motion capture of the actorsalthough when hugging it usually happens that the sensors are deactivated, so “a human has to manually “solve” the motion data that has been captured“.
In addition, it also highlights the difficulty of achieving a realistic effect with the clothes worn by the characters and their hair, which in the case of Aloy is especially complex. “So even with the data worked out, you only have the base. So you still have to go there and start to address everything towards the fact that someone is actually hugging around a piece of armor, for example. So all animation after that point has to be addressed so it doesn’t intersect with the cloth that person is wearing and hugging (…) On the other hand, if Aloy’s hair is made up of a bunch of little tubes, those tubes have a physics in which, if they come into contact with another tube, they bounce against each other. But they are not mobile in themselves.”
An extreme challenge to achieve maximum realism in the most intimate moments
“If we avoid those hugs or those intimate moments, the story does not arrive. So we have to find a way to do these things and make sure that the emotion and connection comes to the player without them having to think about it. But as long as (the players) feel it, I already feel blessed to have reached our goal,” concludes Oud.
Definitely, one of the most impressive techniques that have been seen so far in the sector and that helps to provide that increasingly necessary realism in today’s video games. We remind you that Guerrilla Games has already confirmed that Horizon 3 is underway, so we will have to see what new mechanics they develop to amaze the interactive entertainment sector.
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