Making -Or biohazards development behind the story- 3, Effects By Yusuke Hashimoto VFX unit lead engineer Effects team started from "What can we do with Gamecube" Our goal was "Persistently realistic......right!?" I expected we could do a variety of effects because hardware specification are higher at Gamecube. About background animation Background computer graphic animation takes the game atmosphere to another level. Computer graphic animation is beautiful and awesome, The first time the staff saw the animation, we were so carried away to think about the hardware specification, it raised hope that we can "make every background by computer graphic animation." I so understood everyone's feeling because awesome thing is just AWESOME. When we got the material for texture by video camera, I heard screaming from all staff, like "Maybe someday, we will make a blue set like movie and shoot a picture." "That will be soooo fun!!" or "I'm getting scared about technology." "Hey! On this occasion, anything goes....ANYTHING!!" I was trembling from excitement but I had to go back to fundamental game thing, "Animation is great but it is not so much fun if it has nothing to do with playable character." I tried almost everything, and the result is "Animation is too HEAVY" (Takes a lot of capacity and processing) So, we decided to use partial animation but make the game atmosphere to appear live. I wanted to create the stage that moment of playable character and the user became as one body, give influence with no sense of incongruity for player. I think, because we had raw material as a animation and we had a goal, we could give birth the question "How to draw our expression to reality and put everything to the game." and we had found an answer. This all computer graphic animation matter made me realize the importance of the "Proper use and proper dynamics." About blood color Mikami director told me "Hum..blood looks like red cellophane kind of color." and another staff member said "We don't use enough brightness on the blood?" .......We are working on next generation console machine, so I felt like people's opinion is kind of in the next generation too. If it is just little gap from real world, people feel a sense of incongruity because we wanted make real world and people actually live in the real world. When Mikami director said that, I thought blood color is "This is it! this is the next generation thing." so the director's opinion made me disheartened. I think just disagreement of value. "Don't we pursue the reality?" By the way, I made biohazard announcement picture in this time. Blood expression is the most important subject on RE. Mikami director's requirement was "Realistic at first sight, but deformed for game and no-brutality expression." The users doesn't need to feel disgust. -TRUE In RE, splashing blood is part of the feeling of attacking. We decided to express this item with little showiness impact, with blood only running on floor and highlighted. About liquid or fluid expression, we need to be engaged in and study for it. I think I put everything I can put on and that's already a past thing..... Recently, computer graphic tools are grate and it seems like those tools make you feel like you can do anything you want like magic. But as much as magic tools can help, we will have more obstacles, honestly, old style game creation techniques sometime work to solve these kind of obstacles. Oh no... The discussion we had about blood (which we had several times) is still on my head, I can't get away from it. Original Japanese text from: Capcom Japan biohazard official web-site Published by : Capcom All text translated by doughboy. Original Japanese text and art all rights reserved by Capcom. English version of text rights reserved by doughboy and written permission required to re-use text. All art rights belong to doughboy, must have written permission to use.